“The First Love(less) Triangle: Abram, Sarai and Hagar” (Genesis 16) | 6/28/20
Genesis 16 | 6/28/20 | Will DuVal
This morning we continue our study of the book of Genesis in ch.16. And parents, if you thought LAST week’s sermon was pretty PG-13, what with all the animals getting cut in half and walking through their blood, try explaining Abram’s relationship with Hagar here in ch.16 to your kids! My 4-year old, Ellery, asked me this week “Daddy, what are you preaching on this Sunday?” She asks me that every week, and I LOVE it, but boy did I struggle this week! And after I fumbled my way through my best attempt to explain BOTH marital infidelity and slavery in an age-appropriate way, she of course asked, “Can I watch a VIDEO about it?” She’s always looking for any excuse to watch a VIDEO. So I had to tell her, “Baby, I don’t think they make kids’ videos about this story.”
If Abram, Sarai, and Hagar had had Facebook 4,000 years ago, you know, where you can describe your “relationship status” - “Married, Single, In a Relationship with…” - this one fits squarely in the “It’s Complicated” category. That’s why I’ve titled this message “The First Love-LESS Triangle”.
But there is one main point I want us to glean from this troubling story for this morning, and that is, that “It is GOOD to wait on the Lord, and things go BAD when we take matters into our own hands.” Got that? Write it down in BIG, ALL-CAPS LETTERS your bulletins, if you’ve got one, or type it into your digital bulletins… “It is GOOD to wait on the Lord, and things go BAD when we take matters into our own hands.”
The Bible is FILLED with exhortations and commendations of those who WAIT on the Lord:
Ps 27:14 “Wait for the Lord;
be strong, and let your heart take courage;
wait for the Lord!”
Ps 37:7, 34 “Be still before the Lord and wait patiently for him… Wait for the Lord and keep his way, and he will exalt you”
Ps 62:5 “For God alone, O my soul, wait in silence, for my hope is from him.”
Ps 130:5 “I wait for the Lord, my soul waits, and in his word I hope”
Lam 3:25 “The Lord is good to those who wait for him, to the soul who seeks him.”
Micah 7:7 “as for me, I will look to the Lord; I will wait for the God of my salvation; my God will hear me.”
Isa 30:18 “The Lord waits to be gracious to you… blessed are all those who wait for him.”
Isa 64:4 God “acts for those who wait for him.”
And perhaps most well-known of all, Isa 40:31 “Those who wait for the Lord shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings like eagles; they shall run and not be weary; they shall walk and not faint.”
And we could add DOZENS more to that list! Scripture’s call to WAIT on God is clear and consistent. But perhaps it is so repetitive because WE are so FORGETFUL. We are so quick, when times get tough, to forget God’s past faithfulness, and forget his promise of PRESENT provision. So instead of waiting on HIM, we take matters into our own hands. But this morning, Genesis 16 confronts us with a disturbing story meant to remind us of the dangers - and the potentially long-term CONSEQUENCES - of our failing to wait on the Lord.
So would you stand with me... read: Genesis chs 16:
Now Sarai, Abram's wife, had borne him no children. She had a female Egyptian servant whose name was Hagar. 2 And Sarai said to Abram, “Behold now, the Lord has prevented me from bearing children. Go in to my servant; it may be that I shall obtain children[a] by her.” And Abram listened to the voice of Sarai. 3 So, after Abram had lived ten years in the land of Canaan, Sarai, Abram's wife, took Hagar the Egyptian, her servant, and gave her to Abram her husband as a wife. 4 And he went in to Hagar, and she conceived. And when she saw that she had conceived, she looked with contempt on her mistress.[b] 5 And Sarai said to Abram, “May the wrong done to me be on you! I gave my servant to your embrace, and when she saw that she had conceived, she looked on me with contempt. May the Lord judge between you and me!” 6 But Abram said to Sarai, “Behold, your servant is in your power; do to her as you please.” Then Sarai dealt harshly with her, and she fled from her.
7 The angel of the Lord found her by a spring of water in the wilderness, the spring on the way to Shur. 8 And he said, “Hagar, servant of Sarai, where have you come from and where are you going?” She said, “I am fleeing from my mistress Sarai.” 9 The angel of the Lord said to her, “Return to your mistress and submit to her.” 10 The angel of the Lord also said to her, “I will surely multiply your offspring so that they cannot be numbered for multitude.” 11 And the angel of the Lord said to her,
“Behold, you are pregnant
and shall bear a son.
You shall call his name Ishmael,[c]
because the Lord has listened to your affliction.
12 He shall be a wild donkey of a man,
his hand against everyone
and everyone's hand against him,
and he shall dwell over against all his kinsmen.”
13 So she called the name of the Lord who spoke to her, “You are a God of seeing,”[d] for she said, “Truly here I have seen him who looks after me.”[e] 14 Therefore the well was called Beer-lahai-roi;[f] it lies between Kadesh and Bered.
15 And Hagar bore Abram a son, and Abram called the name of his son, whom Hagar bore, Ishmael. 16 Abram was eighty-six years old when Hagar bore Ishmael to Abram.”
This is the word of the Lord... (LET’S PRAY...)
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Now as we said, the OVERARCHING moral of this story is that we must wait on God, but in making that point, the text actually offers us 3 additional, related SUB-lessons we also need to learn here. So you traditionalists, who give me grief for my 8 and 12 point sermons, consider this your classic, 3-point sermon.
LESSON #1: Your THEOLOGY will determine your IDENTITY, which will determine your ACTION. (vv1-6)
Let me say that again: One’s THEOLOGY (Your View of GOD), will determine your IDENTITY (Your View of SELF), which will then determine your ACTION (the way in which you relate to the WORLD)
Sarai’s problem here, in vv1-6, is not ultimately a biological problem, it’s not a physiological problem; hers is a THEOLOGICAL problem. Likewise, Abram’s problem is not ultimately a relational problem, a marital problem; it is a THEOLOGICAL problem. The root problem lies with their view of GOD.
In Sarai’s case, she views God as the ENEMY. She says in v2: “Behold now, the Lord has prevented me from bearing children.” Sarai is MAD at God. She is HURT. Perhaps even RESENTFUL, of God. It’s not just that God has let her down, the sense she gives here is that God is actively working AGAINST her - preventing her - from having kids. If God would just get out of the way, things would work out for me. But God has become the ENEMY.
And Sarai’s theology then determines her IDENTITY. If God is the enemy, that makes her the VICTIM. She is a MARTYR. She presumably thinks of herself as a devoted follower of God, who despite her YEARS of faithfulness, is being not just overlooked by God, but outright oppressed by Him. “He is preventing me”; GOD is the problem, she says.
And when that becomes your identity - VICTIM - then pretty quickly you feel rather entitled, and justified in standing up for yourself. “If God’s not gonna fight for me, then I guess I’ll have to fight for MYSELF”. Take matters into my OWN hands. And the way in which Sarai goes about DOING that reminds us of that age-old, regrettable sociological truth, that “HURT PEOPLE HURT PEOPLE”. We’ve seen that in past sermons, I trust we’ve ALL seen it in our personal lives and relationships, and we see it here with Sarai: “Hurt people, hurt people”. Victims tend to victimize. Because we convince ourselves that we deserve happiness in this life; that we have been ROBBED of it, by someone else; and so we begin to accept the reality of this “Dog-eat-dog” world we live in, and the fact that if you wanna make an omelet, sometimes you gotta crack a few eggs; and if you feel beaten down into the ground, sometimes you gotta use OTHERS to pull yourself up, and if, in the process, you end up pulling THEM DOWN to the ground, Hey, so be it. That’s life. Right?
Gordon Wenham (7) notes: “Throughout the ancient East, polygamy was resorted to as a means of obviating childlessness. But wealthier wives preferred the practice of surrogate motherhood… the mistress could then feel that her maid’s child was her own”; think “Handmaid’s Tale”, where the handmaids are essentially just used as baby incubators by wealthy, infertile women. Margaret Atwood just re-envisioned Genesis 16.
Kent Hughes notes (238): “Tellingly, neither Sarai NOR Abram ever refers to Hagar by name in the account, but only by label (“my servant”, “your servant,”).” Hughes says, “It’s so much easier when you depersonalize those you abuse.”
And make no mistake, friends, that is EXACTLY what’s going on here: abuse. I found it so interesting in my research this week that virtually every commentator I read understood Hagar’s “contempt” for Sarai in v4 to be a form of PRIDE. We hear that “when Hagar saw that she had conceived, she looked with contempt on her mistress.” And everyone wants to interpret that as a sort of “haughty disdain”, like “Ha - look how pregnant I am! Now Abram will love me more” But there is NOTHING in the text that suggests to me that Hagar wanted any PART of this affair with Abram, or even the child that resulted from it. I don’t care HOW valued children were in the ancient world; I think when Hagar realized that she had conceived as a result of this RAPE - cuz that’s what it IS - she was ANGRY, she was contemptuous, of Sarai, for ever sending her into Abram’s bed.
And when Sarai recognizes it, and starts to feel like the balance of power is shifting, like the tables have TURNED, and she’s starting to get worried that Hagar might do something stupid… like abort the baby. Or keep the baby for herself. And run away back to Egypt. What does Sarai do? She desperately tries and re-assert her power over Hagar. V6: “Then Sarai dealt harshly with her”. And in so doing, she shoots her own plan in the foot. And drives Hagar away.
Now let’s turn to Abram. God isn’t the ENEMY for Abram here, so much as he’s just an ABSENT FATHER. Abram has had PROFOUND, intimate encounters with God in every chapter so far - in ch.12 he was uniquely called by God, in ch.13 God personally showed him the Promised Land, in ch.14 God miraculously helped him defeat the 4 superpowers of the ancient world, and in ch.15, God formed his special covenant with Abram. But tellingly, there is NO mention of God interacting with Abram AT ALL in ch.16 here. Abram is now 85 years old; He left Ur when he was 75. He’s been waiting for 10 years now for God to make good on this promise of a child, but God seems to have gone silent. So when Sarai says, “Sleep with Hagar,” Abram’s response ISN’T “But God said you and I are supposed to be “one flesh”, Abram’s response ISN’T “But God said he would give us a child, Sarai; we can TRUST him”, no, Abram’s response is “Yes Dear”. V2: “Abram listened to the voice of Sarai”.
Friends, when God stops being God for you, when you stop listening for HIS voice, you will naturally start listening to OTHER voices instead. You will find substitute gods instead. God designed our hearts for WORSHIP. We were made to worship HIM, but if we’re not worshipping him, we’ll find the next best thing. You’ll worship success. The American dream. You’ll worship relationships. Your kids. Your spouse. That’s Abram - he stopped listening for God, and started listening to SARAI instead. And friends, if you’re not living to please God, you will ALWAYS live to please someone else instead. Most often, it’s just YOURSELF. We become OUR OWN gods. But maybe like Abram, it turns you into a people-pleaser. Let’s be honest: living to please God really IS so much HARDER, because his holy standards, His good desires for us really ARE so much higher than any other human being’s. And living to please God just doesn’t give us the same degree of instantaneous gratification. I can go on Facebook RIGHT NOW and get my hourly dopamine fix by seeing exactly how many of my friends have “LIKED” my last post. That makes me feel good, immediately. I don’t get the same “fix” from God. God doesn’t WORK like that.
So instead... many of us, like Abram, will settle for, and get our IDENTITY FROM, pleasing other people, rather than God. And when that becomes our identity, our course of action becomes obvious: we simply say “Yes Dear”.
“Abram: I want a child; go commit adultery.” “Yes Dear”
“Abram: I immediately REGRET this plan; and it’s all YOUR fault.” “Yes Dear. Do whatever you think is best.”
“Okay, I want to BEAT your new wife Hagar, who is carrying your unborn child, I’m gonna beat her back into submission.” “Yes Dear”
And friends, I suspect that MOST of us aren’t malicious, God-resenting victimizers of others; we’re simply people-pleasers who will do what we need to do to get people to LIKE us. But in ANY case, please recognize that your THEOLOGY will determine your IDENTITY, which will then determine your ACTIONS.
*If you view God as the enemy, you will see yourself as the victim, and you will resort to victimizing others to feel not quite so powerless.
*If you view God as an absent father, you will see yourself as directionless, and you will live to please OTHERS instead.
*If you view God as a vending machine, you will see yourself as the button-pusher who is in charge, and you will use God as a prop to get your own way.
*If you view God as the moral policeman, you will see yourself as a disappointing failure, and you will constantly relive the cycle of sinning, then feeling ashamed, then resolving to just try harder, but falling short and feeling even worse.
*But friends, if you view God as a Gracious, LOVING FATHER, you will begin to see yourself the way that HE see you, as someone worth DYING for, someone worth sending his only SON, to DIE for, and your RESPONSE will be to joyfully surrender your life to him, in humble obedience and grateful worship.
Lesson #2 of this story is the Slippery Slope of Sin (vv1-6, 12). The SLIPPERY SLOPE of Sin.
There’s a certain ENTROPY to sin. Sin naturally tends to compound upon itself, doesn’t it? Just consider the domino effect at work here:
Hagar shouldn’t even be in their lives in the first place. Why’s she with them? Presumably, she was part of Pharaoh’s gift to Abram back in ch.12, the REVERSE DOWRY Pharaoh offered Abram as a token of his appreciation for his favorite new concubine Sarai. So if Abram had never distrusted in God, and fled to Egypt, if he hadn’t LIED about Sarai’s identity and threw her under Pharoah’s bus to save his own skin, there wouldn’t even be the OPTION in ch.16 for Sarai to craft this alternative to God’s plan for a child.
Hughes points out (236): “There is also an ironic reversal here. Down in Egypt, trustless Abram had given Sarai over to the Egyptian Pharaoh. Now in Canaan untrusting Sarai gave Abram over to her Egyptian servant. Abram’s fiasco in Egypt was costly indeed.”
So Abram’s sin leads to SARAI’S sin, her mere suggestion of this plan is inherently sinful. Abram’s acquiescence to the plan is even MORE sinful. And both their sin drives HAGAR to sin, in her hatred of Sarai. To which Sarai responds by blame-shifting and essentially CURSING Abram in v5. To which Abram responds by enabling Sarai’s further abuse of Hagar in v6. And the whole scene ends in tragedy for everyone involved: Hagar has lost her home and protection, Sarai has lost her servant and hope of a child, and Abram has lost his WIFE, unborn child, and the trust of his FIRST wife. Oh, and by the way, BECAUSE of their attempt to shortcut and undermine his plan, God will make them wait an ADDITIONAL THIRTEEN YEARS after this before Isaac will finally be born.
But the fallout doesn’t end there. I included v12 under this point in your bulletins, because we need to understand just how far-reaching the consequences of this slippery slope of sin can be: God prophesies that Ishmael, the product of this entangled WEB of sin, “shall be a wild donkey of a man,
his hand against everyone
and everyone's hand against him,
and he shall dwell over against all his kinsmen”.
Do you know who the descendants of Ishmael are, historically? It’s the Muslims. The entire religion of Islam - the FALSE religion of Islam - was born out of this very episode in Genesis ch.16. 1.8 billion Muslims today, who explicitly reject Jesus as the Christ, and believe that anyone who PROFESSES him as such is a blasphemer damned to Hell, and they ALL trace their origins back to the conception of Ishmael here.
And friends, you may not THINK the consequences of your sin are all that bad -
It’s just a little “white lie”, right?
Or - “Everybody punches out early on Fridays and fudges a little on their time sheet.”
Or - “It’s okay to THINK the thought, as long as I don’t ACT on it.”
Or - “Pornography doesn’t really HURT anyone”.
Or - “Gossip doesn’t really hurt anyone. She’ll never even know we were talking about her.”
Or - “God doesn’t want me to read the Bible out of OBLIGATION; I’ll get to it when I FEEL like it.”
Or - “Ehh, that person probably already KNOWS about Jesus anyway”.
Or - “What’s the big deal about one little bite of fruit?”
And millennia later, we are STILL feeling the consequences. Notice the parallelism, by the way, between Adam and Eve’s Fall in Genesis 3, and Abram and Sarai’s fall here. Sarai distrusted God, she “took” Hagar, she “gave her to her husband”, and Abram passively listened to his wife instead of God, and complied. It’s the Fall all over again. And 4,000 years later, we’re still feeling the consequences, with Islam.
Friends: the consequences of YOUR sin may not seem all that DIRE to you in the moment. But the Bible declares, “There is a way that seems right to a man,
but its end is the way to death” (Prov 14:12). Indeed, Romans 6 informs us that the wages of ALL sin, is death. James 2:10 says “whoever keeps the whole law but fails in just one point has become guilty of all of it.” And you and I need to recognize this morning that we do not have the faintest GLIMPSE of just how far-reaching the consequences of the slippery slope of our OWN sin can be. We ought to be FAR more fearful of the effects of our sin than we are. If you are in Christ, the PENALTY of your sin has been paid for, praise God, but the EFFECTS, the real-world consequences of your sin, have not been erased. And Jesus said that if your sin causes a child to so much as STUMBLE, it’d be better to tie a rock around your neck and jump in the sea. He said if your own EYE causes you to sin, it’s better to pluck it out, than have your whole BODY and SOUL be thrown into Hell. Jesus was WELL aware of the dire consequences, the ETERNAL consequences, of our sin. Are WE?
But here’s the GOOD news for sinners like you and me, friends: Point #3 - God Sees the Needy (vv7-16). God sees the needy.
As much as this story is about WAITING on the Lord, and the dangers of our SINFUL failure to do so, it is equally if not MORE SO about God’s CARE for those in need. That’s the bulk of the passage. 6 verses on the dangers of sin; 10 verses on God’s care for the needy, for needy Hagar here, and later, even for Ishmael.
V7: The “angel of the Lord” - who Hagar will soon identify in v13 as God HIMSELF; many scholars believe this is another Christophany; an OT appearance of the preincarnate Christ - and He finds Hagar on her way to Shur. Three important things to note about this:
God the Father, God the Holy Spirit, AND God the SON are ALL active throughout ALL of Scripture and all of history. God’s work of redemption didn’t start at the birth of Jesus; Christ has been redeeming our messes since Day 1! Praise God.
The angel of the Lord doesn’t WAIT to BE found by Hagar. He seeks HER out. Like the good shepherd who leaves the 99 to search for his one lost sheep, like the father who runs out to meet his prodigal son, God doesn’t WAIT for us to find him in our time of need; in LOVE, he seeks us out. And…
Where does he FIND Hagar? On her way to Shur. That is, on the border with Egypt. Hagar is headed home. And isn’t that like us, too? When life gets tough, we want to escape, so we run back to what’s familiar to us. Hagar has traveled with Abram’s family for YEARS now. She had SEEN God bless them with abundant riches. She had WITNESSED God miraculously defeat the Unstoppable Kings from the East. She had HEARD of God’s special covenant with Abram. But when trials come, her default is to go back to her OLD life, her pagan life, in Egypt. Fortunately for you and me, friends, even when we turn to the wrong places, old coping mechanisms, looking for comfort and security, God seeks us out.
And when he FINDS Hagar, he asks her two pointed questions: “Hagar, servant of Sarai - this is CLEARLY omniscient God, talking; how else would he know who she is? And he asks her - where have you come from and where are you going?””
Now watch Hagar’s response in v8: “She said, “I am fleeing from my mistress Sarai.”” God asks her a 2-part question, but she only responds to the first question - She says, “I’m running from Canaan, and Sarai.” But she doesn’t REALLY know where she’s going, because she’s just reactively running FROM her past.
But here’s the point: You can’t outrun your past. If your whole life is determined by where you’ve come from, your past will inevitably dictate your future. You have to make PEACE with your past, before you can leave it there, IN the past, and move on from it.
When my father left in 6th grade, I made up my mind to live the rest of my life to make him SORRY for ever making such a big mistake. For ever leaving a son as AWESOME as me. And with every straight-A report card, with every no-hitter I pitched, every perfect score on the SAT, every tennis regional championship... when I used my Valedictorian’s address to public SHAME him for the father he had failed to be, and I thought I would finally feel justified... feel satisfied... feel VINDICATED - do you know what I felt instead? Empty. Crying on the bathroom floor on graduation night while all my friends were out celebrating.
If you don’t deal with your past, you’re doomed to always be reacting AGAINST it, and it will ultimately dictate your future.
Fortunately for Hagar, the Lord confronts her, and forces her to face her past. V9: “Return to your mistress and submit to her.” Which might sound CRUEL.
Just like it might sound CRUEL to us, for God to continue promising Abram and Sarai children, but keep delaying, year after year.
It might seem CRUEL, that God took that loved one away from you, too soon, too young.
It might seem CRUEL, that God hasn’t yet redeemed your loveless marriage.
It might seem CRUEL, that He hasn’t yet SAVED your prodigal children. That He has allowed them to continue straying from the faith.
We don’t always get to see why God does what He does, but the Bible defines faith as “believing WITHOUT seeing”. And it asks us: “What USE is your faith when everything’s peachy; anyone can believe in a good God then.” But will you still believe when times get tough? If your faith won’t sustain you through life’s storms, what’s it really good for, anyway?
Friends, we need a faith that reminds us even in the DARKEST of nights, that God still sees us. A faith that assures us, when we feel like all hope is lost, that God still hears our cries. A faith in our moments of deepest despair, that still clings to God’s good promises.
And even in Hagar’s dark night of the soul, God’s light breaks through, with His promise in v10 that He will “surely multiply your offspring so that they cannot be numbered”. Why? Why does God bother, with this lowly, pagan servant-girl, and make her such an ASTOUNDING promise? Because v11: “the Lord listens to affliction”. Because v13: He is “a God of seeing”; He is a God who “who looks after me”. Because v14: He is “the Living One who sees me”.
Friends, I don’t presume to know where you’re at in life right now, at the time this sermon is hitting you. But I bet there’s SOMEONE here who feels pretty invisible. Perhaps invisible in your own HOME. Your parents don’t really SEE you. Your spouse doesn’t GET you. You feel like NO ONE truly knows you. And you feel alone.
Know this today, beloved: GOD sees you. GOD hears you. GOD knows you. The Almighty, Sovereign, Creator God of the universe is pursuing you, because he LOVES you. And He promises you that “though your father and mother have forsaken you, the Lord will take you in” - Psalm 27:10.
That “He will never leave you nor forsake you” - Hebrews 13:5.
That He “is near to the brokenhearted and He saves the crushed in spirit.”” - Psalm 34:18
That Psalm 40:17 - “As for me, I am poor and needy, but the Lord takes thought of me. You are my help and my deliverer, O my God!””
So my simple question for you this morning is: are you NEEDY? Listen: Jesus only CAME for the needy. He only DIED, for the NEEDY. Mark 2:17 - He said, “Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick. I came not to call the righteous, but sinners.””
So I ask you AGAIN, friends: have you admitted to yourself and to the Lord, that you are a sinner in desperate NEED of a Savior? And have you trusted in Christ alone to be that Savior, for you?
Thanks be to God, that He is altogether trustworthy, and worth WAITING on. And thanks be to God, that even when we FORGET it, and we fail, and take matters into our own hands, we have a Savior who SEES us, and LOVES us, and MEETS us, in our need. Let’s pray...