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Reading: Genesis 16:1-16

It’s Pentecost Sunday and today my task is simple. I want to open you eyes a little bit (or a little bit more) to the wonder of who God is and what he has done for every person here in the church.

He has given us himself to us; not a theology, not a religion, not a philosophy or even a lifestyle. He has given us himself.

And that is what makes the day of Pentecost so remarkable. God gave himself to his waiting disciples

• and, it’s very obvious from the story, to thousands of ordinary unsuspecting people like us who received God along with the eleven disciples.
• In fact they encountered the Lord in such an intense way that their language failed them (they spoke in other tongues) and God’s joy overwhelmed them – to the extent that cynics thought they were drunk.

It was a once-in-a-generation happening that kick-started the church of Jesus Christ as we know it today.

• So my prayer is simply this: ‘Lord, for once in a lifetime, please do it again!’
• We’re ordinary people just like they were – we’re here to worship just as they were, we’ve done this a thousand times before, as they had,
• So we say to you, Lord, today “We want more of you!” >>>

Now what has Pentecost to do with Genesis 16 and the story of Abram? Simply this.

• I want to you see that Abram was counter-example of being open to God
• In Genesis 16 he shows us how his mind was closed to the Lord.

Look back at Gen 15 … ‘I am your great reward! <ppt>

On the day of Pentecost God gave himself to his people, so God promises the same to Abram.

Abram has been living by faith – and was a shining example of keeping in close touch with the Lord. So God taken him on one side in Gen 15 and says to him “Abram – I – am your shield and your very great reward!” – and Abram’s faith was counted as righteousness

But here, in the incident we’re looking at today (Genesis 16) – the Lord is never consulted, the characters are trying to short-cut God’s promise.

• <ppt> Chapter 15 is all about the results of living by faith – Chapter 16 is about the consequences of living on your wits, trusting in no-one except yourself.
• Abram took the Frank Sinatra philosophy of life – “I did it my way!”

toxicity

Let’s look at the situation as the drama starts – it’s a spiritually toxic cocktail!

Abram – increasing frustration

In Abram there was increasing frustration – and we can easily understand why. He’d been waiting for God to give him and Sarai a child for ten years – but no sign of it.

• I can imagine him saying “Lord, Have you forgotten me?”

• and reasoning “Well, maybe He expects me to do something myself”

So at this point Abram used the logic of expediency (what’s going to produce a result) rather than faith (what has God promised?). And that is always dangerous territory to enter.

b) Sarai – mounting bitterness

Sleeping right next to Abram every night was his wife Sarai – and in Sarai we see mounting bitterness.

v2 “The LORD has kept me from having children”

At first hearing, this sounds as if Sarai is accepting that God allows tough things like this to happen to us

• but in the light of what happened later we can hear an undertow of bitterness.
• She is beginning to assume that the Lord is someone who restricts her rather then liberates her

Sarai too must have been desperate because the suggestion that Abram sleep with Hagar was hers.

What forces would drive a wife to give away her exclusive right to sex with her husband? What could possibly have taken her to a place where she gave up her deepest prerogative as a married woman?

• She was now in her 80s and couldn’t see how God would possibly fulfil His promise of a child through her creaking old body.
• and her biological clock had long since stopped ticking!

Bitterness is one of the most spiritually destructive of human emotions. It’s a chronic and pervasive state of smouldering resentment. >>>

There may be some of us here today who are exactly where Sarai was. You’ve never been able to forgive God for not giving you that baby.

• or for taking away the one you thought you were going to have.

What I want you to know today is that as we open ourselves as fully as we can to receive God himself (as Sarai could have) this self-destruction can be turned around.

• we still feel the pain, but God, the Holy Spirit, helps to release us from the bitterness.
• Bitterness need never have the last word!

Hagar – easily available

Hagar, the servant girl. She was taken into the family when they lived in Egypt and she would have been treated as one of Sarai’s possessions.

So Sarai reasoned “She’s of childbearing age, we’re not, could this be a solution?”

There’s a very telling phrase in v 2 “Abram agreed to what Sarai said”

Abram was guided by ‘the voice of Sarah’ not by the voice of the Lord

• For Abram the temptation came from the most unexpected source (the one person he loved more than any other) and that made it all the more difficult to resist.

Ur – a liberal city

Ur was Abram’s home town, the town he’d left behind; Abram may have left Ur, but Ur had not left Abram!

The custom of giving a slave to the master of the household in cases where the wife is barren is well attested in ancient inscriptions.

• It is known to have been practised in Ur about the time of Abram’s time there.

It is clear that the sex ethics in Ur were such that the laws of the city allowed this practice.

Breaking the sanctity of marriage like this is never presented in the Bible as a wise course of action

• (see also chap 30 where Rachel gave Bilhah to Jacob. Also, it was God who was blamed for not allowing the woman to conceive, 30:3).

However in Ur, and the surrounding area children conceived this way were treated as full members of the family – after all, nobody can be held responsible for their origins.

Principle here: Living by my wits and not by faith is often dressed up in the guise of ‘well we all do it this way nowadays’

When we face a difficult situation (i.e. have to bear a cross) the exercise of faith consists in patiently submitting and waiting for the Lord’s time, and using only those means which He appoints for the removal of the cross.

• The Lord was asking Abram to wait, but that seemed too much for Abram
• This passage is a powerful warning about faith by self effort.

As Christians we sometime have to wrestle with God’s “wait”s –

• maybe for a marriage partner (JL),
• a child (AB),
• a ministry (IW) etc.

It is easy to try and answer our own prayers, instead of allowing the Lord to dictate both the timing and the method.

• Sometimes our heavenly Father’s higher priority is what he is doing in us as we wait for the fulfilment of his promise

His goal is spiritual formation – which is the task of transforming us to be like his Son.

For Abram, ‘The promise was definite, but the wait seemed endless.’

the emotional landscape

As a consequence of this one decision the emotional landscape of Abram’s family changed for ever.

v2 Abram agreed to what Sarai proposed. 3 So after Abram had been living in Canaan ten years, Sarai his wife took her Egyptian slave Hagar and gave her to her husband to be his wife. 4 He slept with Hagar, and she conceived.

We can see three noxious emotions came into play here

Derision

Derision: looking down on someone with disdain.

• Hagar had been a servant girl for years and here is her chance to assert herself and claim superiority

4. When [Hagar] knew she was pregnant, she began to despise her mistress.

A little word here or there – to put someone else down so that I’m shown up in a good light!

The Hebrew word behind our English ‘despise’ means ‘to make small, trifling, dishonourable’.

• In the ANE a barren woman was no use to society because she consumed valuable resources without contributing children to the city. So by becoming a surrogate mother, Hagar deserved a higher place in their society that Sarai.

Blame-shifting

5 Then Sarai said to Abram, “You are responsible for the wrong I am suffering…”

Hang on – whose idea was all this?!

• I think Sarai could see that this decision of hers had backfired and wanted to transfer her guilt on to someone else! “You are responsible, hubby”

If you’re late for work, what goes through your mind on the journey

• “how can I explain this? – find an excuse, shift the blame on to the traffic, or the kids, or …”
• If I don’t pay up on time – “Oh the cheque got lost in the post”

How much better Sarai would have felt if she had lived with the truth – “I’ve made a poor choice” because when we do that, God can ive us himself, but His spirit bring freedom to our aching souls.

And Sarai increasingly angry

Anger

5 Then Sarai said to Abram, … I put my servant in your arms, and now that she knows she is pregnant, she despises me. May the LORD judge between you and me.”

Oh! Now she’s taking it to a higher authority!

• “If the Lord was here judging between us, he’d find in my favour! After all, it was you who had sex with Hagar!”

In one respect Sarai’s anger might have been expected

She was experiencing the one thing that is likely to make us angry (probably) more than any other – a blocked goal <ppt>

One of Sarai’s life goals was to have children and build a home – but she knows this is never going to happen.

• But she has this crazy husband who keeps saying “God will do it, God will do it” – for ten years! But no sign of a pregnancy.

Anger is often sparked when a goal – something we dearly want to happen – something we’ve pinned our hopes on – is blocked

• so she takes matters into her own hands.

It could have been so much better! God can bring us to a place of reassurance and peace when we acknowledge our blocked goals to Him.

“Lord, you know this is what I really wanted and I lay it at your feet.”

Being in that place brings freedom and liberation.

Any of us sitting here with a blocked goal? >>>

Abdication

I’m sure we would like to think that Godly Abram took command in the marriage to calm things down, reason it through, bring husband and wife into God’s presence to receive his peace in a time of crisis!

Dream on! – this is what actually happened:

6 Abram said: Your servant is in your hands,” [a phrase meaning ‘she’s your property’] “Do with her whatever you think best.”

I can’t help thinking this is a peculiarly male trait! Shrug it off – “so what?” “It’s your problem”

In reality Abram was avoiding his obligation

• His responsibility as the leader of the household it to deal with problems like this! To lead by example. Instead he’s turning his back.

Guys, – we avoid facing difficult issues at our peril!

God’s blessing is able to flow when we face up to our obligations

• to make a budget and stick to it
• to make the call I’ve been avoiding for weeks,
• to do the training I know I need
• to love my wife or family unconditionally

When a man does that, God’s blessing can flow through him.

But Abram didn’t square up, and the inevitable happened

v6 … Then Sarai ill-treated Hagar; so Hagar fled from her.

Where do we find God?

In Gen 15, God is all over the place, in Gen 16 he’s absent until now.

Look! …

God met HAGAR, not Abram

God heart turned to the innocent victim of Sarai’s ill-treatment

• Just because Abram was the one receiving God’s promise did not guarantee that God would be with him when he sought to take matters into his own hands.

This is a solemn word to all long-standing Christians.

• you cannot sit on your laurels in the Christian life!
• you may have grown to be mature in the Christian life (that’s good!) may be gifted by the Lord (that’s good)
• you may look back and remember how God worked in wonderful ways in your family or work (that’s good) BUT
• the victories, successes of the past are not a guarantee of the Lord’s blessing today.

the Lord doesn’t ask “what was I to you last week, last month, last year?” –

He asks “what am I to you today”

will you open heart mind an strength to receive me in all my fullness today?

Can you see, in this sordid situation it was Hagar who cried out to the Lord – and it was Hagar who discovered that God hears us when we call out to him.

God met Hagar when she was at her lowest ebb

What was she doing? She was heading back towards Egypt – “I’ll go back home”

• She didn’t expect God to speak to her like he had to Abram – after all he was the head of the house – the one with a hot-line to heaven (or so it seemed) BUT

1. The angel of the LORD found Hagar near a spring in the desert;…

   God went looking for her!

8 And he said, “Hagar, servant of Sarai, where have you come from, and where are you going?”

“I’m running away from my mistress” [she replied]

Am I talking to anyone who is on the run from a difficult situation or abuse?

• you’re the innocent victim and you’re running to avoid the pain and bitterness that’s bound up in it
• that’s exactly where Hagar was when God tracked her down and went to meet her.

He reached out to her when she was at her lowest ebb.

God spoke to the one person who would listen

v9 [God said] “Hagar – I’m going to ask you to do the hardest thing you’ve ever done in your life – go back – face it.”

“Why? because I made a promise to Abram that his son would be the father of a great dynasty. That baby you’re carrying is Abram’s son, so My promise, Hagar, will come to him. You have My word” … “and by the way – he’ll be a feisty little wotsit!”

And the boy’s name? Ishmael, which means “God hears.”

Then she gave a name to God. A pregnant slave girl, bought in a slave market in Egypt is not giving God a name!

13 She gave this name to the LORD who spoke to her: “You are the God who sees me,” for she said, “I have now seen the One who sees me.”

14 That is why the well was called Beer Lahai Roi; (=the well of the Living One who sees me) … [and it was still there at the time of writing.]

How wonderful God is!

to meet with her in her desperation

Story – programming – 1 bug – prayed – found it

• I could have said “You are the God who finds my bugs”

If you could look at what God’s done in your experience, What name will you give the Lord?

• You are the God who finds me a parking space (IW done that!)
• You are the God who hears me when I cry out to you
• You are the God who give me strength to keep my promises
• You are the God who … [write it down]

Remember ‘I am your shield and your very great reward!”

• God is for you
• God is greater than you
• God loves you