Good evening everyone. Thanks to Alistair and the worship team for leading us so well in the first part of our service.
Abraham was a great man, but he was a pretty lousy husband at times.
Now he's not the only one who's that. A lot of politicians, businessmen, church leaders even, are highly respected in many ways.
And yet when it comes to being effective heads of their home, they often fail.
And I'm sure that is true of many of us, as well as looking further out.
But Abraham certainly did make a mess of things at times.
Twice he presented his wife Sarah, and I probably will say Sarah is just a force of habit.
Twice he presented his wife Sarah as being his sister, which was half true but wholly deceitful,
and was only done to save his own skin with little thoughts of the consequences for her.
And the chapter we're looking at this evening, it seems to me that Abraham totally wimps out of taking a lead
and of making sure that things are done properly in a very difficult situation.
He passes all the responsibility on to Sarah and does very little himself.
He fails in his duty as a husband.
So that was, for me, as a man, as a husband, was one of the key lessons, challenges from this chapter.
But there's a great encouragement as well.
Because if we come to the second part of the chapter, we see Abraham's mess,
and we see God stepping in and resolving that mess.
So despite Abraham having gone really badly wrong along with Sarah,
God steps in and he shows his compassion to the one who's been so badly hurt, to Hagar,
and he brings his purposes about through her.
And it's a great reassurance that when I mess up, that God is still in control,
God will still bring about his purposes.
That if we are hurt by others and by their actions, God is still in control,
and God can come and can resolve the situation and can speak to us as he did to Hagar.
So there's challenges, and not just for husbands, there are challenges,
and I think there are encouragements in Genesis 16.
And the big difference between the two parts of the chapter is that in the first part,
in the family situation there, God is absent, or at least appears to be absent.
There's no thought of Abraham coming to God or hearing from God.
In the second part of the chapter, God is very much present and is seen to be at work,
and that is when he is able to fulfil his purposes.
So we're going to look tonight in two sections at what happens when God is absent
and what happens when God is present.
So when God is absent, there is often faltering faith.
If you read commentaries on Genesis, almost all of them are really hard on Abraham at this point.
That this was a huge crisis of faith for Abraham when he took things into his own hands
rather than waiting for God's time and for God's provision.
Now I have to say I have a lot of sympathy for Abraham in this particular part of the chapter.
When we first meet Abraham and Sarah, the first thing that's said about Sarah is that she was barren,
she was childless.
So probably for quite a long time before then, Sarah hadn't been able to conceive a child.
Ten years have gone past and still nothing has happened.
Not terribly clear exactly the timescale between chapter 15 of Genesis,
when God repeats his promise to Abraham, his covenant that Abraham would become a great nation and so on.
There's probably some time in Genesis 15 and 16,
but there's ten years since God first called Abraham
and probably a lot longer than that when Abraham and Sarah were married.
And all this time they've been longing for a child and it's never come.
Now they do have God's promise.
God has promised that he will make Abraham the father of the great nation.
But you can understand why they are having a difficult time and wondering what is happening.
I think there are a number of mitigating factors as we think about Abraham's faltering faith,
if that's what it is here.
First thing is that God had never promised Sarah a son.
He promised Abraham a son, promised Abraham to become the father of nations.
He hadn't explicitly said it would be through Sarah.
That comes in the next chapter, in chapter 17.
So it may be that Abraham and Sarah got to the point,
and it appears that was the case, where they said,
well, maybe Sarah isn't to be the mother.
They then come up with what might seem to us a strange and almost repugnant solution.
That instead of Sarah being the mother, her slave girl, Sagar, would take her place and would bear Abraham's child.
Now I think we do have to look at that in the context and the culture of the time.
This is something that would have been considered normal in those days.
In fact, it was sometimes built into marriage contracts, into the marriage vows, if you like,
that if the wife was unable to conceive, then the husband would have a child through a servant.
And it wasn't considered the way we would.
Indeed, right through a large part of the Old Testament,
monogamity was not necessarily the way, right up to David,
it was not necessarily the way that people behaved
and was not seen as being as wrong as we would now.
So Abraham and Sarah were doing what they thought was right
and what they thought perhaps would produce the child.
And they were trying to cling on to God's promise,
but at the same time to try and bring things about by themselves.
But still, I don't think we can totally exonerate them.
Because surely Abraham must have thought,
God is not going to go for second best.
The best thing would be if Sarah was able to bear me a son,
why would God go for second best?
Even if, as is probably the case,
Sarah was well beyond the age when, in natural terms,
she could have borne Abraham a son.
I think also as we look at what Sarah says,
it is very much about herself and her being childless
rather than about God's promise being fulfilled.
And Abraham, as the husband perhaps at that point,
should have stepped in and said,
let's take it to the Lord,
let's see what God has to say about this.
If we look at the thing that is probably closest
to a New Testament commentary on this instance,
the book of Galatians,
where Paul talks about Ishmael as the child of the flesh
and Isaac as the child,
the son of promise.
Now that may be largely a reference to the miraculous
and normal nature of their births.
Also perhaps, though,
a reference to the fact that the way it came about,
it was the flesh that led to Abraham and Sarah
acting as they did,
and God's promise was brought about through Isaac.
So I'm trying to be kind to Abraham,
but I don't think there's any doubt
there is a bit of a faltering of faith here.
But it is in circumstances
where in many ways it is understandable,
and as we look at ourselves,
perhaps we would think,
well, in that kind of circumstance,
would I have acted any different?
One of the things that really comes across to me
as we look at the beginning of this chapter
is I think there's a lot of sympathy
in the way the passage is written
for the predicament that Abraham and Sarah
find themselves in.
This is not harsh and judgmental.
It is recognizing a human problem,
a human issue,
and rightly or wrongly,
Abraham and Sarah try to address that issue.
Now we can extend that.
There are many people who go through
very difficult circumstances
in their Christian lives.
Some of them similar to what we're thinking about,
people who month after month
are hoping for children
and they never seem to come.
But there are lots of others as well.
There are people who have illnesses
or have relatives who are very ill
and they're praying for an element of recovery
month after month after month.
They pray and nothing seems to happen.
Or there are people who have family situations
which cause them great distress.
Perhaps children who have wandered away
from the Lord Jesus,
perhaps never come to have faith in him.
And you pray and you pray and you pray
and you think,
what must I do?
And it becomes really, really distressing for you.
Or people who don't have a job
and are looking and applying again and again.
It never seems to happen for them.
And they're wondering,
what is happening here?
What is God doing?
What should I do?
Now these aren't hypothetical examples.
The three I've just mentioned
are very live for people
in our church here at this point.
And a lot of us go through these kinds of heartaches
that Abraham and Sarah went through
and it is a real test of our faith.
And perhaps we're wondering,
what should I do?
What more can I do?
Now Abraham and Sarah perhaps
took the absence of the child
as being guidance from God
that they should do something different.
And very often that is one of the ways
in which God guides us.
He guides us as we pray.
He guides us through scripture.
He also guides us through circumstances.
But we need to be careful,
as Abraham and Sarah should have been careful,
as we look at circumstances
to say,
well, what is it really that God is saying here?
And make sure we don't misinterpret.
And one thing that is often helpful to do
is to find a mature Christian,
someone we respect
and someone who's judgment we trust
and to talk to them about our situation.
So if tonight you're facing a heartache of any kind
and it may be similar to Abraham and Sarah,
it may not be,
and then look to God for his help.
Keep trusting in him
that he will bring his purposes about.
But also look for his guidance.
I think what is it God might want me to do?
Is his will for me that I should wait
and wait for him to bring about the fulfillment?
Or is he calling me to do something?
And if we're unsure,
good to talk to someone else
and to pray through it with them.
When faith is faltering,
we've got to hang on to the fact
that we have a good God
who cares for us
and who will bring out the best for us
and look to him for our guidance.
Now, it's slightly kind, I think, to Abraham
in that part of this passage.
I'm not going to be as kind to him
in the next section.
I've called it fragile families.
So you have the situation.
Sarah has suggested to Abraham
that he could have the child through Hagar.
Abraham goes in,
she becomes pregnant,
and then perhaps not surprisingly,
Hagar begins to look down on Sarah.
Being able to have a child
was such a big thing
for women in those days,
that if you weren't able to conceive,
it was seen as a great shame
and something which in some way
would make you seem lesser
and perhaps not deserving of God's favor.
So Hagar looks down on Sarah
and probably quite disrespectful
in the way that she deals with her,
and Sarah comes to Abraham.
Now, she begins by blaming Abraham
for the situation,
which is a little unfair,
when she was the one
who had instigated it,
but he should have taken responsibility too.
But he says,
may the Lord judge,
she says,
may the Lord judge between you and me.
And Abraham then has the opportunity
as the husband,
as the one who's supposed to be
a leader in the family,
to look at the situation,
possibly to bring the two women together,
and to try with God's help
to seek a resolution.
And what does he do?
He says to Sarah,
okay dear,
you do whatever you want,
I'm not getting involved in this.
He totally absolves himself
of his responsibility for it.
He avoids getting in the situation
of conflict.
Now, conflict's difficult.
When I was in secular employment,
we used to fairly regularly
be asked to do psychometric tests.
So you ask lots of questions,
and depending on how you answered them,
they'd tell you how good you were,
how bad you were in leadership.
One I particularly remember
was one where they were comparing us
against a benchmarking group of leaders.
Now, my results were so bad,
I managed to convince myself
that they were trying to compare
middle managers against chief executive,
and I thought that was quite unfair.
But the one result I particularly remember
from that was they had one of the sections
about avoiding conflict.
And I was off the scale with it,
that I would totally avoid
all kinds of conflict.
Now, those who know me well
will testify that it's probably
got a grain of truth
and it perhaps exaggerated slightly.
I'm someone who doesn't
readily take to conflict
and doesn't certainly seek it.
Now, other people have different
ways of dealing with conflict.
Some people seem to quite enjoy it
and it invigorates them,
and in a strange kind of way,
they welcome it.
Other people take it very personally
and feel there is any kind of conflict.
There's a personal slur on them
and they get very offended by it.
And all three of these are bad ways
of dealing with it.
But in our lives,
if we're in leadership situations,
or even if we're not,
there are going to be times
when we're faced with conflict
and we need to be able to resolve it
and to resolve it well.
And it's very difficult,
it needs an awful lot of grace,
it needs a lot of dependence on the Lord,
but we need to be able to deal with conflict
and to produce good outcomes from it.
And that's what Abraham totally fails to do.
He totally fails in his duties as a husband.
Now, at this point,
Abraham is a husband to two wives.
We mustn't forget that,
Sarah and Hagar.
Hagar clearly, he fails
as she is bullied by Sarah
and then has to run away.
Sarah, he fails too
because he doesn't provide
the kind of leadership
she might reasonably have expected
in a very emotional situation.
He should have been the one who was calm
and was able to take control of things.
Now, being a husband in these kind of situations,
particularly with two wives,
fortunately, none of us have to do that,
but being a husband can at times be difficult
as we would seek to take the lead
and perhaps be very difficult for us.
Fortunately, the Bible has told us
how we should act as husbands.
And it's put quite simply,
we should love our wives
as Christ loved the church
and gave himself up for her.
Now, Abraham significantly fails to do that with Hagar.
He doesn't love her enough
to even be able to keep her
as part of the family.
He also fails in it with Sarah
because he doesn't show real love
in being able to help her
to work through the difficulties that she has.
Interesting, the passage in Ephesians 5,
we usually kind of stop in our thinking,
well, I've stopped there.
But the following verse is about Christ
being able to present the church
as pure and blameless to himself.
That is achieved ultimately
through the cross at Calvary,
but also, I think, as part of an ongoing process
as Christ would work with the church
and would help us to grow more like him.
If we look at the literature of churches in Revelation,
where the Lord Jesus is directly addressing
a number of churches,
he doesn't shy away
from the difficult conversations there.
He can tell them they've lost their first love
or that they need to wake up
or that they're lukewarm
and they're only fed to be spewed out of his mouth.
Hard words, but necessary words
and showing real love and concern for them.
So if you're a husband like me,
if you're a leader in any kind of situation,
or just if you're in a situation
and you can see the things are going wrong
and there's something you can do about it,
don't shy away from conflict.
Just go into it in a prayerful attitude
and with a desire that God's will may be done
and that there may be a real love
for all those who are involved in it
and that they may benefit from God's presence
and God's guidance in the situation.
So faltering faith, fragile families.
That's what happens when God is absent.
What then happens when God is present?
Now God is very much present
in the second half of this chapter.
He is present through someone
who's called the angel of the Lord.
And many people, as they look at descriptions
of the angel of the Lord in the Old Testament,
they look at it and they see
that is a pre-incarnation appearance
of the Lord Jesus,
what's called a Christophany.
So it's the Lord Jesus himself
coming into a situation
and dealing with it.
Now the argument from Genesis 16,
I say there are lots of other passages.
Genesis 16, clearly at the end of the passage,
Hagar believes that she has seen God.
I have seen the one who sees me.
Now God the Father never appears in human form.
God the Spirit never appears in human form.
The only member of the Trinity
who comes in human form is the Lord Jesus.
And so many people believe
that this was the Lord Jesus
coming to appear to Hagar.
There is a different view
which says that very often in that time
that you sent an emissary,
someone to give a message to someone,
then they spoke as if they were you
and they received the same kind of respect
that you would receive.
So they would say the angel of the Lord
isn't necessarily an appearance
of the Lord Jesus.
I find the description that Alec Mottier gave
was quite helpful.
He said that this is a chief preview,
a chief Old Testament preview
of the second person of the Trinity.
Whether we believe it is the Lord Jesus himself there,
it is certainly God coming down to men
and dealing with their issues and their problems.
So God is very much present
in this part of the passage.
And God does three things.
Now we're sort of dealing in the reverse order
of what we might think was logical,
but we're dealing with them in the order
that they're in the passage.
And the first thing is that God sends.
So angel of the Lord comes
and he finds Hagar near a spring in the desert.
And he asks her,
where are you come from and where are you going?
Hagar doesn't really answer the where are you going.
It appears very likely
she was trying to head back to Egypt.
She was going that direction,
likely to head back to Egypt
where she came from.
Now she was a pregnant woman,
alone going through the desert.
So the prospects for getting to Egypt
were never very good if God hadn't intervened,
but that was probably the situation.
And the angel says,
go back, return to your mistress
and submit to her.
Now to really understand this,
you need to understand that in verse nine,
when the angel talks about Hagar submitting to Sarah,
he uses the same verb that's used in verse six
when it talks about Sarah ill-treating Hagar.
One is truly active
and one is passive tense of the verb,
but it is the same word.
So the angel is effectively saying to Hagar,
go back and allow Sarah to keep ill-treating you.
Now hopefully that didn't happen,
but that is the thrust of what he's saying.
Go back and submit to Sarah.
Whatever she does to you,
you need to accept.
That must sound quite harsh
and we'll look at the moment
in a moment at what the angel says further
to reassure her.
But he's not promising that Hagar will go back
and everything will be fine
and she'll be fully accepted
and there will be no future problems.
His command to her is to go back
and to submit to Sarah
even if she continues to be ill-treated by her.
I think for us,
the lesson is God doesn't promise
that our lives will be easy
when he sends us out to serve him.
He doesn't promise
that everything will be roses
and that people will accept us
and that we'll be positively received by others
and there will be no problems.
On the contrary,
the Lord Jesus tells his disciples,
in this world you will have problems.
But then he says,
take heart
because I have overcome the world.
I think that's the difference with Hagar.
When she was alone
with Abraham and Sarah
and was being ill-treated,
she felt the best thing she could do
was to get out of that situation.
As she goes back now,
she knows she's going back
with God's instruction
and that God will be with her
and that he will give her the ability to cope
with whatever may face her
when she returns.
And we must take that kind of assurance too
that when we go into the difficult situations
where people might be opposed to us,
if we go knowing that we're going in God's will
and that he has called us to that,
then we know that he will go with us
and he will allow us to be able to take
whatever the world may throw at us
and to emerge victorious
and to emerge with a real peace in him.
God sends her back,
but he doesn't send her back alone.
He sends her back
with his reassurance of his presence.
Second thing that happens is that God speaks.
Now, like Alistair,
I've got a bit of Hebrew
and I suspect I know even less Hebrew
than Alistair does,
but I've got translations up there from others.
So the angel sends Hagar back
and he sends her back with a promise
that she's going to have a son
and that he is going to be
giving her descendants
that are too numerous to count.
Now, interesting,
that very much reflects
what God has already said to Abraham,
that Abraham's descendants
would be greater than the stars in the sky
and the sands in the seashore and so on.
There's a real echo of that,
even though ultimately Ishmael
isn't the child of promise,
there's an echo of what God said to Abraham.
And I was especially,
I think when you read in chapter 17,
it's probably confirmed
that when Hagar went back,
Abraham took the words
the angel had said to her
as confirmation that Ishmael
would be the child of promise.
That's why he was so surprised
in chapter 17
when God says it would be Sarah
and Abraham laughs at the thought
that Sarah could possibly have a son.
God makes this great promise to Hagar
that the son she's going to bear,
he's going to be the father
of many, many descendants.
And he will be the one
who forever will be testimony
that God has heard her in her distress
and God has acted on it.
Now he then makes some prophecies
about Ishmael,
so we won't go into great detail,
which are not so positive,
as someone who's a bit of a loner,
who is against others,
and who will have,
in many ways,
quite a difficult life.
And of course,
that prophecy continues
down to Ishmael's descendants.
And the conflicts in the Middle East
between Jews and Arabs
are in many ways
between the descendants of Isaac
and the descendants of Ishmael.
But I think from the point of view
of what we might take from it
this evening,
it is that God has heard Hagar.
And as he sends her back,
he gives her his promise
and his commitment for the future
that the son she is bearing
will be the father of many people.
And then finally,
God sees.
And we have this El Roy,
in appreciation may not be right,
but the name that Hagar gives to God
is the God who sees me.
I have now seen the one who sees me,
she said.
And I believe a slightly better translation
is the God of sight,
so it refers both to Hagar,
sight of God and of God,
seeing Hagar in her situation.
But the assurance here for Hagar
is that all she's been through,
all the difficulties she's experienced,
they've not been hidden from God.
She knows that God has seen
and God has come
and God has acted in that situation.
And that must have been the thing
that really comforted and reassured her
and gave her a faith
and a trust to go back
to Abraham and to Sarah.
That her situation,
for once she felt abandoned
and alone
and that no one was on her side.
Yet God was there
and God had seen everything
that had happened.
And God, having seen what had happened,
he had acted
and he had worked things
for her good.
The one who was oppressed
was not invisible to God.
He saw her
and he came to her.
And that's the God we have.
A God who sees
those who are in distress,
those who have been unfairly treated,
those who are going through
the most difficult times
and is able to come
and to reassure
and to help them.
And we know that, of course,
because we have a God
who saw us in our sin
and who came to us
in his son
to pay the penalty for our sin
and to bring us back to God.
There's the old hymn, isn't there?
It says,
He saw me ruined in the fall,
yet loved me notwithstanding all.
He saved me from my lost estate,
his loving kindness.
Oh, how great.
We have a God
who has seen us
and has seen our fallen condition
and has given us
the opportunity
through the Lord Jesus
to be restored to him
and to have our sins forgiven.
We have a God, too,
who sees us
in all our situations in life,
in all the distress
that we suffer,
in all the circumstances
that we find
really, really difficult.
And as he sees us,
he is there to help us
and to bring about
his purposes.
As Paul said,
he didn't spare his only son
but gave him up for us.
And how much more
will he not,
along with him,
freely give us
all things?
God sees us.
God cares about the situations
in our life.
And God acts.
And he brings about
his purposes.
And as we seek
his help
and his guidance,
we can be confident
that he knows
what is best for us
and that he will bring
that about
in our lives.
So as I said at the start,
it's a chapter
which has challenged me
and it's also greatly
encouraged me.
The challenge is there
about our faith
and about our willingness
to deal with situations
that arise
and to deal with them
in God's way
rather than our own.
As a husband
or as a leader
or as someone
with responsibilities
to take on
these responsibilities
and in love
and in care for others
to be willing
to take
the responsibility
God gives to us
at where necessary
to deal with situations
of conflict
in a loving
and gracious way.
when we are
struggling to see
God's will
and struggling to see
how the thing
that has been
such a problem for us
for so long
could ever be resolved,
God asks us
to keep trusting in him
and to keep
our faith strong
and not to falter.
And we have the assurance
that God is with us.
He is with us
particularly in our day
through his Holy Spirit
who is with us
as our guide,
as our comforter,
as our counsellor.
and God sees
our situation.
God can speak to us
through his word,
through prayer
as we are aware
of his voice
speaking to us,
through others
as we seek their help.
And sometimes
God sends us out
and he says
this is what I want you to do
and whatever happens,
whatever circumstance
you face,
I'll be with you
and I will protect you.
Let's take the God
who sees,
the God who speaks,
the God who sends
and let's go out
this week
with a confidence
in him
and a desire
to really serve him
and to live lives
that are pleasing to him.
Let's pray together.
Our Father,
we thank you
for your word
and we thank you
that your word
challenges
as well as encourages us.
We pray that you
will help us
to be people
who have a real love
for one another
and that that love
won't just be
warm feelings
or plight handshakes
but it will be
a real concern
and a real willingness
to help each other
through the difficult situations
and to tackle issues
as they might arise.
We thank you too
that you are a God
who sees us
in our distress
and in our difficulty
and who is able
and willing
to be there for us.
And we do pray
for a very large number
of people
in our church fellowship
here
who are going through
very difficult situations
where they may
be finding it
very difficult
to see your will
or how good
can come out of it.
And we too pray
that you will
help them
to retain
a strong faith in you
to have a dependence
on you
and a knowledge
that you do
work things
for our best
and that you do care
about every situation
in our lives.
We thank you
for our time together
this evening.
We thank you
for your word.
We thank you
for our worship
we were able
to bring you earlier
and we commit ourselves
to you now
in the name
of the Lord Jesus.
Amen.