Genesis 16
Rushing God
Today, there are between 1.6 and 2 billion muslims in the world, depending on what source you check; making it the second largest religion in the world. Imagine, between 1.6 and 2 billion people who don’t know the Lord, terribly deceived by a false religion; largely, some suggest, because of 1 man and 1 woman who couldn’t wait on the Lord.
In almost every country where Islam is the major religion, Christians are persecuted; because 1 man and 1 woman didn’t wait on the Lord.
Today, Israel is surrounded by 4 countries, Lebanon to the north, Syria to the east, Jordan to the south east, and Egypt to the South west. Most of these countries have pledged to destroy Israel; all because 1 man and 1 woman wouldn’t wait on the Lord.
It can be difficult, knowing what to do sometimes. Do you stay where you are and wait for the Lord to work, or do you take that new job, with much better pay, that requires you to uproot your family and travel across the country, leaving all of the things and all of the people you and your family know?
You’re getting a bit older. Things haven’t worked exactly like you had hoped and you are still single. The person you’re seeing doesn’t really make the Lord a priority in his life. Do you continue in that relationship when your friends and family have some concerns, or do you let him go and wait for someone with a few less flags?
If you really work hard at your side job, you think you can make it into something that down the road might support you; but in order to make that happen, it means you’ll have to miss some of your families outings and special days for the next couple of years and your children will only be young once. What do you do?
You and your spouse have finally got your finances balanced. They aren’t working great, but they are working. You’ve agreed that you’re not going to go into debt anymore until you get a bit more of a cushion in the bank; but, a friend is selling his car and is willing to make you a great deal on it; houses are going up everywhere, but a family member is selling there’s and is willing to sell it to you for less than it’s worth.
Sometimes it gets hard to know the right thing in life, sometimes choosing the right path can be difficult, but, if we rush and try to make things happen when the Lord isn’t leading, it can not only impact our lives, but hurt those around us as well.
This morning I would like us to look at the dangers of rushing God, of trying to make something happen where God is not leading.
- Read Genesis 16
In a perfect world, choices are not difficult. In a perfect world, God’s will is known perfectly and clearly. In a perfect world, as soon as we first get an inkling that the Lord may be leading us in a certain direction, the door is opened, the way is clear, and the path is obvious. But, this is not a perfect world, and the Lord works according to His timetable and according to His will, not our’s. He often gives us a foreshadowing of what is to come, but waits to open doors until our hearts are right and He has things aligned the way He wants them.
We see that in this situation. Let’s think of Abram’s struggle.
I. ABRAM’S STRUGGLE
- Read Genesis 15:4-6
God had promised Abram that He would be the father of many nations. Then He took Abram outside and told him to count the stars. He said, “Count them if you can, and your descendants shall be more numerous than all of them.”
That is some promise. Count the stars if you can Abram, and I’m going to give you more descendants than all of them.
And poor, little Abram didn’t have any more sense than to believe the Lord.
Abram believed God, and the Bible says, the Lord credited that belief to Abram as righteousness.
Abram believed God. Anything God wolf him directly, specifically and clearly, Abram believed. Abram, I’m going to make you the father of many nations. Abram, I’m going to make your descendants so numerous you won’t be able to count them all. And Abram believed Him. Abram believed God.
What a great accomplishment it would be if more of us could reach even that stage of faith, to believe the Lord when He tells us something clearly, and plainly.
Now, something God did not specifically say or explain was how He was going to do that. He didn’t specifically say, yet, I’m going to make you the father of many nations and Sarai will be the mother. He didn’t specifically say that. He promised the kids would have Abram’s DNA, but He didn’t yet promise they would have Sarai’s.
So, with each passing month, with every month Sarai is again not pregnant, the pressure grows.
I imagine those in Abram’s household, and perhaps some in the community had heard Abram share God’s promise to him, and yet there was no child.
Finally, Sarai, with her eyes on her womb, instead of on God, took matters into her own hands. She told Abram, “Sleep with my servant Hagar. “
In that age, in that society, women without children were considered a waste of resources. What good, went the thinking, is a woman who is unable to have children, or to carry on the family line?
So, in many situations like this, where the wife was unable to bear a child, the husband would sleep with the help, and then kind adopt the child to carry on the family. So, that’s what Abram, at the prompting of Sarai decided to do.
God never intended anything like this. Do you remember what was recorded of man and woman in the Garden of Eden? In Genesis 2:24 we read,
> Genesis 2:24 This is why a man leaves his father and mother and bonds with his wife, and they become one flesh.
All of this running around and fooling around, was never God’s plan. His plan was for 1 man and 1 woman, faithful and true.
You know, the sad thing in this whole process is that it is not once recorded that Abram burned a sacrifice on one of the many altars he had built and sought the Lord’s guidance in this situation. No where is it recorded that Sarai prayed and asked the Lord’s will in the situation.
They knew they had the Lord’s promise, so perhaps He wanted them to take things into their own hands and try to figure things out.
- Genesis 16:4
“The biblical record doesn’t preserve Abram and Sarai’s dinner conversation after Hagar showed signs of conceiving, but, I know how rationalizations can go. To rationalize is to “devise a self-satisfying but incorrect reason for one’s behavior. I imagine the old couple saying, ‘Isn’t it amazing, honey, how the Lord blessed our decision? He never would have allowed Hagar to get pregnant if He didn’t approve.’”
My friend, be careful. “It is mighty easy to find signs of God’s approval in a situation when we want it bad enough.” (Charles Swindoll, Abraham, p 71).
II. THE RESULT OF RUSHING
The results of Abram and Sarai rushing God, didn’t take long to show themselves. Hagar had barely begun to show, when she began to despise her master Sarai.
Here were 2 women. 1 rich, powerful, old, and the head of the house, feeling bad about her empty womb; and another, young, enslaved, poor, but pregnant.” 1 still devastated, the other proud, just because of the condition of their bodies, something neither one had control over. There was nothing Sarai had done that made her infertile, and nothing Hagar had done that made her fertile, but 2 women judging themselves the way the world does, by something neither one of them had any control over, judging themselves by the world’s standards.
Sarai and Abram had sinned, and it didn’t take long for there to be fallout. Where there had been peace in the family before, now there was strife and turmoil.
When the consequences of sin begin to fall, relationships always suffer.
Sarai says to Abram, “This is all your fault. I put my servant into your arms and now she despises me. This is all your fault!”
Isn’t it sad how sin can twist peoples’ thinking? Sarai is the one who thought the whole thing up, but now she wants to blame someone else!
In way she is correct. Let’s face it, the idea was Sarai’s. She is the one who suggested this thing in the first place. But, Abram is the spiritual leader of the house. Abram is the one who spoke to God personally. Abram is the one who should have told Sarai “no” until they had some clear guidance from the Lord, but he didn’t; so Sarai comes back and blames him for something that was her idea.
Gentlemen, each of us are responsible for our own sins and our own decisions. We shall each give an account to the Lord for the choices we have made, but, you are given the responsibility to be the spiritual leader of the house. Don’t sit around and wait for your wive’s spiritual leadership, don’t sit around and try to live off of her quiet time, off of her relationship with the Lord. You go and talk to him. You go and listen to him. You seek His face and His guidance.
So, Sarai gets upset, and what does Abram do? He once again abandons his responsibility to be the spiritual leader in the house. He says to his wife, “She’s your servant, do with her what you want.”
What a cowardly, wimpy, response is that? This was your idea. This woman is now carrying my child, but you do whatever you want with her, just leave me alone.”
How many of us fail to do what is right, fail to stand up for other people just because we want peace in the house?
Go ahead and do what you want with the kids. Let them join 5 different teams and run them all over the place so they’re too busy to bother me.. You and your friends go shopping, or go out, or do whatever you want, just let me retreat to my man cave where I can have some peace. Just leave me alone.
She’s your servant. Do whatever you want with her, just leave me alone.
Sarai begins to mistreat Hagar, so Hagar runs away.
When we think of Hagar running away, we have to ask, how bad must the situation had gotten for Hagar to run away?
I have known women, cruelly treated by their husbands, who return to them time and time again. I have known men, married to some really sorry women, who hang in there, and never leave them. So how bad must the treatment have gotten to cause Hagar to leave? Here she is pregnant, no money, no food, no place to go, and yet she runs away. She runs away into a wilderness where she could easily fall victim to whatever predators there might be. She could fall victim to whatever roaming men there might be; but she runs away.
Sin can certainly blind us to our responsibilities. Sin can blind us to how our actions are impacting others. Sarai didn’t care, and Abram didn’t look.
But, there was someone Who watched, and there was Someone Who cared.
III. GOD IN A BAD SITUATION
- Read Genesis 16:7-16
Hagar ran away. The Angel of the Lord finds her. They have a conversation. Hagar, Sarai’s servant, where have you come from and where are you going?
I want you to know, that even when you and I mess up, God can work in our messes. You and I can make mistakes that have long-lasting consequences, but that doesn’t mean that God doesn’t see and that He doesn’t work.
There are those who say the Lord didn’t treat Hagar fairly and that He didn’t work very well in this case, telling her to return to an abusive situation. They are mistaken for several reasons.
1. The Lord calls her by name. Commentaries say this only known instance in ALL of ancient Near Eastern literature where a deity addresses a woman by name. If you look through the Old Testament, you’ll find that not Eve, not Deborah, not Sarah, just Hagar hears her name in a personal address.
2. God wants to have a conversation with her.
Not only does the Lord speak her name, He wants her to engage in a conversation. “Where have you come from? And where are you going?”
This Egyptian serving girl is getting the same kind of one-to-one attention that Abraham has gotten. And we wonder: could the God who just made his covenant to form one special nation, also care about this representative from a different nation? From the nation of temptation no less?
Do you remember when Peter was called to go share the Gospel with some Gentiles? In Acts 10 he says,
> Acts 10:34-35 “Now I truly understand that God doesn’t show favoritism, but in every nation the person who fears him and does what is right is acceptable to him.”
Here is a woman who’s descendants will one day stand against the Lord’s people and yet the Lord calls her by name. He wants to have a conversation with her.
3. Hagar gets to give God a name. Hagar’s response shows she’s stunned– stunned God noticed her. The gods Hagar grew up with, the gods of Egypt, would never notice a slave girl. In order to get Egyptian gods to notice you, you had to be high up on the priest ladder, you had to coax and feed and flatter and forfeit. So Hagar reacts in a way utterly unique in Scripture. Hagar becomes the only human-male or female- in all of the Bible to give a name to God.
Hagar names Him “El-Roi.” This naming only underscores what has been clear throughout the entire passage. This story is all about eyes, about vision. 1) A wrong vision that prompts the mess, 2) A “God vision” that enters the mess, and 3) the new vision that results. (Center for Excellence in Preaching, commentary on Genesis 16:1-6, Lora Copley)
She calls God, “The One Who Sees Me.” What an honor is given to this slave girl.
4. God gave Hagar’s children this land.
Those who first heard this account, would recognize that the area where the Angel of the Lord met with Hagar was an area, that was by that time, controlled and populated by Hagar’s descendants. That would give weight to what the Lord was telling her here.
He tells her to return to Abram’s house, and He makes a promise to her, that her descendants would be numerous also. God gave Hagar and her children this land.
My friends, we can make messes when we try to rush God, or when we get ahead of Him; but God can work even in the midst of our messes.
Hagar returns to Abram’s house. Sarai continues to treat her poorly, and eventually Abram puts her out. There is a terrible mess, a mess with results that continue until this day.
When we try to coerce the Lord into giving us what we want, when we want it, He responds in effect, “You’re not ready. Want until I tell you. You have so much more to learn. Wait and trust me, and don’t expect Me to explain Myself. Just wait.
I spent a lot of time waiting before the Lord brought Gladys and I together. I often told Him, when I was a single pastor, how much more effective my ministers would be if I had a helpmeet. But He made me wait. Wait you’re not ready yet. Wait, you won’t appreciate what I’m giving you enough yet. Wait. And when the time came, what a great gift he gave me.
I don’t where you are in your walk right now. I don’t know what decisions you may be trying to make, what path you may be trying to pursue, but until the Lord makes that path clear to you, let me encourage you to wait.
Now, wait is an acrostic I’m borrowing from Chuck Swindoll.
Wait.
W - Walk a little slower
When you feel the need to rush, to hurry God along, to make something happen, walk a little slower. Take your time.
I believe was Corrie Ten Boom who once said, “There are no emergency sessions in heaven.”
God works according to His own time. It is often the Devil who tries to get us to rush, to hurry, to make rash and hurried decisions without thinking and praying through the situation.
Walk a little slower. Allow the Lord to work. Give Him time to bring a peace into your life.
What did Jesus tell the disciples shortly before He left? My peace I leave with you.
Slow down. Walk a little slower. Let the Lord work and cause the pieces to fall into place.
W Walk a little slower.
A - Ask God for wisdom, patience, self-control, and clarity.
Don’t make the mistake Abram did, and jump into action without checking with the Lord to see what He wants done in a situation. Ask.
> James 1:5 Now if any of you lacks wisdom, he should ask God—who gives to all generously and ungrudgingly—and it will be given to him.
Spend time asking the Lord for His guidance, for His clarity and His peace.
Your best decisions are made when your spirit is calm, when confidence in God’s sovereign control has displaced your worry, when you’re tuned in to the gentle prompting of the Holy Spirit.
Use this time, to pray and tell the Lord about all of your concerns, and worries. Let Him work in response to your prayers.
Wait. Walk a little slower. Ask. I, imagine the worse-case scenario that might happen if you waited.
I - Imagine the worse-case scenario that might happen if you waited.
In most cases, imagining this usually leads to more of the status quo. Thinking about the worse case for waiting sometimes helps us clarify what the Lord is calling us to do.
If I do nothing, if I continue to pray and wait, what is the worse thing that can happen?
I have gotten some help with my roof recently. While Charily and his crew have been helping me with my roof, he and I have gotten the opportunity to visit and to share quite a bit.
He told me the other day that he has only been a Christian for about 5 years. Now, I always want to know what causes a person to get saved when they are grown, after they have lived life for a while. so I asked him, “What caused you to get saved at this time in life? He said, it was his wife. He wanted to get married, and she told him she wasn’t going to marry anyone who wasn’t a man of God. So she waited. He started attending her church just to keep her happy. He said, “Every Sunday I would stare daggers of hate at that preacher. I didn’t hate him, I just didn’t want to be there, and I wanted to find out if what he was saying was real, if it was true. After several years, he began to see how it all made sense and how the Bible was true. He was finally saved, and he and his wife were married. The 2 young men Charlie brings with him, are also members of his church.
Imagine what would have happened if his wife had refused to wait.
Now, she has a godly man as a husband, because she was willing to wait.
Let me tell you my friend, there are worse things than being single and lonely. You could be married and lonely, and I have know a bunch; or, you could be married to someone who doesn’t share your same goals or priorities.
Wait, Walk a little slower. Ask God for peace, patience, and clarity. I Imagine what would happen if you do not move.
T - Think of who will be impacted by your decision.
Running ahead of God’s timing always causes collateral damage. If you’re moving your family for the wrong reason, think go how they will be impacted. If you choose to marry for the wrong reason, how will your future family be impacted?
If you hurry and get ahead of God, who else will be impacted by your decision?
We have been told that God’s disappointments are His appointments, that God’s delays are not denials; but do we believe what we hear? We live in a restless, impatient day. We have little time for preparation, and less time for meditation and worship. We feel we must be active, energetic, enthusiastic, and humanly effective; and we can’t understand why inactivity, weakens, weariness, and seeming uselessness should become our lot.
The discipline of delay is written large in the life of God’s people, as we can observe in Abraham’s longing waiting for his promised son.
But we are promised,
> Isaiah 40:31
But they that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings as eagles; they shall run, and not be weary; and they shall walk, and not faint.
