Andy Davis preaches an expository sermon on Genesis 16. The main subject of the sermon is the decision Abram and his household make because of their faithlessness.
sermon transcript
The Test of Faith: Sarai’s Barrenness and Bad Advice
One of the favorite things that I used to do when I was growing up with my father was go hiking in the mountains of New Hampshire. I really enjoyed going up to the White Mountains, and they are very high mountains up there, the ones in the presidential range. I remember hiking up Mount Washington, which is the highest of those mountains up there, and as we were hiking, my dad would be telling me it wouldn’t be long before we would break out above the tree line. That was always a big moment, and I was always eager for it, because then the views just got spectacular and we could see all over that whole region, that whole district, once you are above the tree line.
But, as you’re looking up the trail, you can always see some glimpses of blue sky and I’m thinking, “Is that it?” And so, we would reach that place and there would be more trees beyond, and so we would keep on going. As we would go, I would look up and then I would see, I thought, an opening and that wasn’t it either. It was a real test of patience for someone my age. It was a test of the body for someone his age, but a test of patience for someone my age. I was looking up and I kept waiting, when are we going to break above the trees? Once we did, the view would get spectacular, and I would think, “We have got to be almost there, to the summit.” Then I would look and I would see the summit right up there, just as it was curving, and I would think, “Boy, not long, and we are going to be at the top.” I would reach that little curving place and there would be another little curving place further up. This is what is known as the false summits. They would go on for another hour and a half or two hours after I broke above the tree line. What an incredible test of patience it is, and so also, I think in the Christian life, God is exercising our patience. He can give you a glimpse of what is to come, a foretaste, and then it is back to the grind. The grind more than anything is a wrestling with our own wickedness and sin, our own unbelief. And so, we have what is known as the mountain top experiences, an encounter with God, something you would never forget.
It isn’t long after that that you are back into sin, you are struggling, you are weak, and you are needing to confess. And that’s exactly what we have in Genesis 16. Genesis 15, is one of those incredible mountain top experiences in which God reveals His eternal purposes to Abraham, to Abram. He speaks a promise to him, the promise that he heard and believed, to the salvation of his soul, “So shall your offspring be.” He heard and he believed, and he was justified by faith. And then, the incredible covenant cutting ceremony, the intensity of that moment, the darkness and the dread, the terror of the Lord that came over him.
The burning torch and the fire pot appearing, and then just moving between the pieces, an incredible picture, answering Abraham’s question, Abram’s question, “How can I know that I will gain the Promised Land?” It sure doesn’t look like it. How can I know? God answered the question, in effect saying, “It is as likely for me to cease existing as it is for me to lie to you about this covenant. I can neither stop existing and nor can I lie, but I will most certainly fulfill everything that I have spoken to you.” And so, that is Genesis 15, an incredible mountain top experience. But then we go into Genesis 16, and we see the relapse into unbelief of Abram, our father in faith.
Stunning Contrast: “Abram Believed the Lord” vs. “Abram Listened to the Voice of Sarai”
What a stunning contrast between Abram believed the Lord, and Abram listened to the voice of his wife, Sarai. It’s an incredible contrast, as he does something he should not have done, breaks God’s pattern for marriage, all because of the expediency of the moment. It’s not working out the way he thought, and so he’s going to take matters in his own hands, after Sarai’s advice. The Bible is consistently honest, isn’t it, about the failings of its heroes? We’ve talked about this before, but it’s one of the great evidences of the truth of the Word of God is that it’s very honest about sin, it’s very honest about sinfulness.
For example, Noah, that great patriarch, he gets drunk and lies uncovered in his tent. What a shameful picture. David, to whom a great covenant had been made, and Jesus is called the son of David in some ways, in some places, he commits adultery with Bathsheba and conspires to kill Bathsheba’s husband, Uriah. And then there’s Elijah, incredible man of courage and faith, takes on the prophets of Baal at Mount Carmel. And then after that, he has a run in with Jezebel and runs away, fleeing for his life and lies under the broom tree and says, “Take my life, I’m ready to die.” The weakness we see there in Elijah. And then there’s Hezekiah, able to stand and face a huge Assyrian army, undefeated army, and just take this letter and spread it out before God in prayer, and prevailing in God in prayer, he’s able to stand firm and God sends out an angel, 185,000 Assyrian troops killed. But in later years, Hezekiah grew prideful and arrogant and hard in his heart.
And then there is John the Baptist. Jesus said, “No one born of women is greater than John the Baptist.” Greatest man that had ever lived. And yet, he in Matthew 11, sends messengers to Jesus saying, “Are you the one who was to come or should we expect someone else?” A moment of weakness for him. And then there’s Simon Peter, “You are the Christ, the Son of God,” he confessed, revealed to him by Christ’s Father in Heaven. Yet, moments later, rebuking Jesus that he would never die and go to the cross, and Jesus has to say, “Get behind me Satan.”
Again and again, we see the great men of the Bible and women of the Bible revealed to be sinners, because there is really only one true center, perfect center of Scripture, and that’s God Almighty, the holy eternal God. And we are all sinners saved by grace, even Abram. The lesson is consistent and clear. Jesus put it this way, “No one is good, but God alone.” The apostle Paul put it this way, “There is no one righteous, not even one.” And that includes Abram. When all is said and done, everyone including our father in faith, Abram, Abraham, is saved by grace through faith alone, and no other way. And so, we have this mountain top experience in Genesis 15, and then the trial of Genesis 16.
Abram’s Faith Repeatedly Tested
Abram’s faith is repeatedly tried, isn’t it? I mean, he gets the original call in Ur the Chaldeans, and he’s got to have a wrestling of faith of whether he’s really going to obey, and he does so it seems in stages. He doesn’t immediately obey, but it takes him a while as he kind of waits in Heron and finally separates from his father and moves on. Then his faith is tested in the Promised Land. When he gets there, a little while after that, there’s a terrible famine and he and his entourage, his wife, have to go down to Egypt, so he thinks, in order to survive. Down there they meet another trial of faith in which he is tempted and yields to the temptation to fear, and he has Sarai lie for him saying that “he is my brother.” And so, that whole encounter.
Then, when they get back into the Promised Land and he’s restored and he’s back on track, then he’s got the challenge with Lot and the herdsmen as they argue and bicker over grazing rights, it seems. After that, he’s got to go and gird on his sword and become powerful and strong and go rescue Lot when Kedorlaomer king of Elam, and his allies invade. Right after that, there’s another test in that the king of Sodom wants to give him some of the loot, the plunder from Sodom, and he doesn’t want anything to do with it. So, it’s just one test after another, and here we have another test.
The Rhythm of Faith’s Trials
What is this test? The most severe test of all. It is waiting on the Lord to fulfill His word. Is that not the test of your life? Waiting and waiting and waiting for something you don’t have yet. Waiting for heaven, waiting to see Christ face-to-face, waiting for freedom from sin forever, our full salvation. We don’t want just the down payment, the deposit guaranteeing our inheritance, we want the full inheritance. And so, we’re waiting and waiting. It’s amazing how much we need to be on our guard, because as these trials of faith come, they come at the worst moments sometimes, don’t they? A.W. Pink put it this way, “It is God’s usual pattern to bless and then to test.” Let me say that again. “It is God’s usual pattern to bless and then to test.” It is thus highly necessary for us to take the lesson to heart. It is when we have received some special mark of the Lord’s favor, or immediately after we have enjoyed some unusual season of communion with Him, that we most need to be on our guard.”
Abram’s Most Severe Test: Waiting on the Promise of God
And so, Abraham has to face, or Abram has to face his severe test. Now, what is the nature of this test? Well, here in this chapter, it is two things. It’s Sarai’s barrenness and Sarai’s bad advice.
Sarai’s Barrenness
First the barrenness. It says in Verse 1, “Now Sarai, Abram’s wife, had borne him no children.” In Verse 2, “so she said to Abram, ‘The Lord has kept me from having children.’” Now, like Abram, she considers children to be a direct gift from God, and so they are. Therefore, the absence of children, the inability to have children, barrenness, is a direct act of God. Both Abram and Sarai see it that way, and so it is. Now, in this way, we need to understand that God doesn’t completely lavish us with blessings 100% with no trials, neither does He overwhelm us with curses or trials or challenges, but there is always a wise kind of mixture in our lives, isn’t there?
There are blessings and there are challenges, and so it is. Look at Sarai. She’s got incredible physical beauty, she’s got a strong faith, she’s submissive to her husband, and therefore a pattern of all godly women that follow after her. She has a wonderful husband who loves the Lord and who is greatly blessed by God. She has all of this, but she doesn’t have a child, and so this is the trial, this is the burden for her. And so, she says, “The Lord has kept me from having children.” And it is true. We need to understand that it is the Lord that gives and it is the Lord that chooses not to give. It is the Lord that gives, as Job said, and the Lord who chooses to take away.
Think of what God said to Moses in Exodus 4, Verse 11, “The Lord said to him, ‘Who gave man his mouth? Who makes him deaf or mute? Who gives him sight or makes him blind? Is it not I, the Lord?’” “I the Lord do all these things,” he says, and says the same thing in Isaiah 45:7, “I form the light and create darkness, I bring prosperity and create disaster; I, the Lord, do all these things.” And so, she is right to bring this issue to God and say specifically “it is that God has kept me from having children.”
Now, why is this? Why did he do it? Well, that His glory and His power might be revealed in a far greater way. He’s waiting, you see, for Abram’s body to be as good as dead, He’s waiting for Sarai’s womb to be proven to be totally dead and hopeless. He’s waiting so that there is no doubt about it whatsoever. And why? So that he can show us that He is the God that gives life to the dead and calls things that are not as though they were. And why? So that we who come later may trust in Jesus Christ to raise us from the dead. That’s right. Amen. We are all waiting for resurrection from the dead, and we are trusting in the same God who was able to give a child to this barren couple.
And so, in Romans 4:17, this is exactly what Paul says, “We’re trusting on God who gives life to the dead and calls things that are not as though they were.” And so, Sarai’s barrenness is the first aspect of this trial, but then comes the bad advice, Sarai’s bad advice. Now, Sarai had a female servant named Hagar, who was an Egyptian. Probably, she was among those servants that had been given to Abram and Sarai by Pharaoh in that earlier encounter in Genesis 12. You remember I just alluded to it when Abram said to Sarai, “Lie for me so they don’t kill me.” And Pharaoh is about to take Sarai into his harem, about to take her as a wife, and God judges Pharaoh and the household. Abram has to pray for Pharaoh and Pharaoh gives them all of these possessions to get them out of there, among them were male and female servants, and I believe Hagar was one of those.
So, to some degree, Hagar is a little bit of a shameful reminder of a bad moment in Abram’s life, and there she is, Hagar, the female servant from Egypt. Sarai saw that she continued to be barren and she wanted to take matters in her own hands, she wanted to act. Let’s get this thing going. If you have got all these great promises and if I’m not the one, then let’s move on. She is willing in a way to some degree to get out of the way. But along with this is a common practice of the day, of the culture. This idea would be strange to us, but back then not so strange. The idea was that if a mistress had a servant girl, a servant woman, if that one bore to her master any children, they are really accounted or reckoned to be Sarai’s in this case
Now, that is a strange thought to us, but it was common in the culture of the day. You remember that later Jacob had two wives, Rachel and Leah, and each one of them had a maid servant, and so in effect he had four wives and each one bore eventually the 12 patriarchs of Israel. So, this was a common thing back in the day, but just because it is common doesn’t mean it is godly. Just because it was the common practice of the culture of the day, doesn’t mean it was what God intended. There are many examples of polygamy in Scripture, and none of them ever turn out well. Ever. God’s pattern for marriage is established in Genesis Chapter 2, Verse 24. “For this reason, a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and they will become one flesh.” It was the evil man Lamech who first took another wife to himself and was a polygamist. Watch out for this one, folks, it’s coming soon to a country very near you.
Sarai’s Bad Advice
If they are going to redefine marriage, soon polygamy will come. I’m not speaking just theoretically, I’m saying it’s coming if we don’t define marriage by Genesis 2:24. One man, one woman, one flesh union for life. And so it was, that was God’s pattern. And so, we have this bad advice from Sarai, it was not from the Lord. Now, it’s bad enough to get bad advice, but it’s especially tough to get it from your wife. I’m not meaning in any way to be insulting to you ladies or to my own wife who I love very dearly, I’m just executing the text. I’m just saying it’s just not good to get bad advice from your wife, because it goes right to the heart. A godly wife is among God’s greatest earthly gifts to a man. It’s an incredible gift to get a wife who loves the Lord, who fears the Lord. “Her worth is far greater than rubies,” it says in Proverbs 31. The heart of her husband, it says, trusts in her. He can rely on her to give him good advice.
She’s a fountain of blessing to him in every way. She meets his physical needs, she meets his relational needs, she cares for him, she’s involved in every aspect of his life and ministry. An incredible gift, a fountain of blessing. And one of the greatest gifts that she can give to her husband is godly, sound advice. Pointing to the Lord, saying, “What does the Lord want us to do?”
The Danger of Bad Advice from a Wife
But here, you can see the danger of bad advice from a wife. Matthew Henry said it this way, “It is the policy of Satan to tempt us by our nearest and dearest relations, for those friends that we have an opinion of and an affection for, the temptation is most dangerous when it is sent by a hand that is least suspected. It is our wisdom therefore to consider not so much who speaks, but what is spoken.” You have to take each one to the Lord and to His revealed word. And so, we have barrenness and bad advice. This is the test of faith, and Abram caves in. We see his failure of faith in Verses 3 and 4, specifically in that Abram acts without prayer.
The Failure of Faith: Abram Acts Without Prayer
Abram’s Failure of Faith: Listening to Sarai, Not to God
Abram’s failure of faith is that he listened to Sarai and not to God. God clearly defined marriage, He had clearly established the pattern. Furthermore, He had made His promise clear, and so from the Genesis 2:24 standard, coupled with the fact that through his own body there would be an offspring, to me, it is clear that he needed to wait on the Lord and not go for this expedient, this culturally acceptable expedient. Sarai’s barrenness should have been a cause for greater faith and more prayer, not for giving up and giving in and going some different way. In effect, he should have said, “The God who made the stars, and I’m going to have descendants as numerous as the stars, is able to make my wife fruitful. He’s able to give me a son by my wife.”
Hints in the Text
Now, we have some hints at the problem in the text. It says, “After Abram had been living in Canaan 10 years. . .” Why does it say that? Well, I think there’s a sense of a chronology here and that’s fine. But also, could it be the ideas of the Canaanites were getting in his mind? It’s so easy for us to be influenced by a surrounding culture, to just take in as acceptable what our neighbors are doing because everybody is doing it. Note that God in the text kind of establishes the way it really should have been. Look at Verse 3, “So after Abram had been living in Canaan ten years, Sarai his wife,” note that, “took her Egyptian maidservant Hagar” that’s who she is, “and gave her to her husband to be his wife.” Do you see how this whole thing is confused and how God establishes Abram, Sarai, husband, wife, Hagar, servant in the household. That’s the way it should have stayed, but instead they went across, they transgressed the boundaries that God had established.
Abram’s Possible Train of Thought
Now, what was Abram thinking? Do you ever wonder that? You think to yourself, “What was I thinking? How could I have done it?” Well, this I think is probably his train of thought. It seems to me that God has promised an heir, I’m going to have an heir, and it’s not going to be Eleazar of Damascus, learned that last chapter. They didn’t have chapters back then, but anyway, we learned that. It’s going to be a son from my own body. So, there’s an unfolding here. Sarai’s barren, so culturally it’s acceptable for me to be with Hagar. And the clincher is that Sarai’s even suggesting it, and so, therefore, I’ll do it. And that’s kind of how it worked. It went right to his heart and he acted.
Isaac’s Superior Example
Now, I think his son, eventual son, Isaac, gives a superior example. In Genesis 25, Isaac had the same problem as Abraham. He had a wife, Rebecca, who was barren. But you know the interesting thing about Isaac, he doesn’t get a lot of play in Scripture. We don’t learn a lot about him, but one thing about him is he was a one-woman man, he never went in for polygamy unlike his son, Jacob, or his father, Abraham. He just had Rebecca. Furthermore, Rebecca was barren, as happened so frequently. And what did Isaac do? He prayed to the Lord and asked that God would open her womb. This is in Genesis 25:21, “Isaac prayed to the Lord on behalf of his wife, because she was barren. The Lord answered his prayer, and his wife Rebecca became pregnant.”
The Fruit of Faithlessness and Broken Relationships
Now, that’s what he should have done. Abram instead had a failure of faith, and look at all the problems that come as a result, the fruit of faithlessness in Verses 4-6, and it really is, more than anything, broken relationships, that’s what always comes from a failure in the area of marriage and sex and it always comes with broken households, broken relationships. That’s where the price gets paid.
Initially, you could say there’s good fruit, Hagar is pregnant, and so she’s expecting a child, but trouble comes soon after that, the first broken relationship is between Hagar and Sarai. Look at Verse 4, it says that “He, Abram, slept with Hagar and she conceived. When she, Hagar, knew she was pregnant, she began to despise her mistress.”
Now, probably Hagar thought that her position in the household had now changed, now that she was expecting the heir that everyone was waiting for, it could be that she saw herself now as Sarai’s equal, perhaps even as her superior. Perhaps she is going to take Sarai’s place. Now, how did it manifest itself? Well, the Hebrew says that she despised, she disdained or made light of her mistress, maybe she was a little sluggish to obey at one point, maybe she sighed or rolled her eyes or made a comment under her breath. Maybe she was overheard in a tent saying something disparaging or maybe even mocking Sarai for her barrenness. I don’t know, but we do know that she despised her mistress.
It says in Proverbs 30:21-23, “Under three things, the earth trembles, under four it cannot bear up; a servant who becomes a king, a fool who is full of food”−watch that one−”an unloved woman who is married, and a maid servant who displaces her mistress” and, that’s what I think is going on here. Hagar has ambitions to displace Sarai in the household, broken relationship number one. Broken relationship number two is Abraham or Abram and Sarai. Look at Verse 5. “Then Sarai said to Abram, ‘You are responsible for the wrong I am suffering.’” It’s your fault.
Now, how did she figure that? But we’ll get to that in a minute. At any rate, it is Abram’s fault. 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. Well, obviously, this is what is known as a marital discussion. Now, maybe you have had marital discussions and maybe you haven’t, but here is a marital discussion, and the two of them kind of have to work this thing out. To some degree, it may be that Abram is playing what is known as the passive male syndrome role, you’re kicking back, laying back, just kind of letting it happen in the household. He’s not taking the lead, he should have stepped in when he heard Hagar disrespect her mistress and done something about it, instead he’s passive. He’s just kind of watching the two ladies. I don’t know if they are having a cat fight or what’s going on, but he’s just letting it go, he’s just passive in this situation.
Now, I think Sarai is unfair. She unfairly blames Abram for the conflict she is having. It’s not Abram’s fault directly. You could ask Sarai, “Can I ask a question? What did you think was going to happen? This is exactly what you wanted to happen. Now it has happened. Now you don’t want it?” So, I think it’s very clear that Sarai didn’t think through what she was doing, she wasn’t ready for it. But there is nothing but trouble here, broken relationship number two. Broken relationship number three is Abram and his household as a whole. Look what he says in Verse 6, “Your servant is in your hands.” Abram said, “Do with her whatever you think best.” Now, there are different ways to read this, okay? But I read this as more passive male syndrome stuff. Basically, “Hey, look, don’t involve me, it’s between you two ladies. Work it out, everything is fine.” What he should have done is step to the fore and resolve this issue and said, “You are Sarai’s servant and so you will remain.” But you see that he is on uncertain ground because he is already stepped outside of what God has ordained, and so he is losing his authority.
Whenever you turn away from God and his commands as a leader in your home, a husband, a father, you lose your moral authority, it becomes very difficult to lead your home. And so, we see a broken home here, and then Sarai, it says, mistreated Hagar, so she fled from her. It’s interesting this word “mistreated” in Verse 6 is the exact same word that is used concerning what the Egyptians will later do to the Israelites when they are in bondage. Isn’t it ironic? Before the Israelites were harshly treated in bondage to the Egyptians, the thing was reversed, and an Egyptian was harshly treated by an Israelite in bondage. And so, we have it, and finally the ultimate and the most significant broken relationship is Abram, Sarai, Hagar and God Himself.
The Restoration of Faithlessness
He is a holy God, and there is a real problem in their relationship with Him at this point. Well, God moves and acts to restore and to redeem. Praise God, He doesn’t let this decay go on. Our God is a God of restoration, He is a God of forgiveness, a God of grace and mercy, a God who can pick up the broken pieces in your life and put them back together. And that’s exactly what goes on in Verses 7-14.
The Angel of the Lord
In Verses 7 and 8, we see the angel of the Lord and it says, “The angel of the Lord found Hagar near a spring in the desert; it was the spring that is beside the road to Shur. And he said, “Hagar, servant of Sarai, where have you come from, and where are you going?” She answered, “I’m running away from my mistress, Sarai.” Now, here we meet the angel of the Lord.
Now, this angel of the Lord is an amazing person in the Book of Genesis and also in Exodus. It is my belief that the angel of the Lord here is none other than the second person of the trinity, Jesus Christ himself. Well, why do I say that? Well, look what it says here in Verse 10, or Verses 9 and 10. It says, “Then the angel of the Lord told her, ‘Go back to your mistress and submit to her.'” Well, that is fine, angels can give commands, but Verse 10 is a little unusual for an angel. The angel added, “I will so increase your descendants that they will be too numerous to count.” Now, can I submit to you, this is not something an angel usually does? This is something God does. God is speaking to Hagar through the angel of the Lord. The angel of the Lord, I believe is the second person of the trinity, Jesus Christ himself.
Fleeing in the Desert
And so, the angel of the Lord appears to Hagar out in the desert. Now, she is fleeing in the desert, it says, in the desert, that she’s meeting with him and she comes to an oasis, a spring. Water is life, especially out in the desert, and there Jesus meets her.
The Grace of Restoration
You know it reminds me of another woman in sin that Jesus met so much later, the Samaritan woman at the well. Do you remember what Jesus said in John Chapter 4, Verse 10, to the woman at the well there? Jesus said, “If you knew the gift of God and who it is that asks you for a drink, you would have asked Him and He would have given you living water. ‘Sir’, the woman said, ‘you have nothing to draw with and the well is deep. Where can you get this living water? Are you greater than our father Jacob, who gave us this well and drank from it himself, as did also his sons and his flocks and herds?’ Jesus answered, ‘Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again, but whoever drinks the water I give him will never thirst. Indeed, the water I give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life.’” This is Jesus meeting the woman in the desert, this is Jesus meeting Hagar and pointing ultimately to himself, this is the grace of restoration. It’s an incredible thing that God does for us, isn’t it? When we are venturing out on a sinful path, a sinful course, the worst thing that God can do in this world is to give us over to that sinful course and let us go.
That’s the worst thing. And that’s exactly what he does to some unbelievers. He gives them over to their sin and to the hardness of their heart to continue doing that very sin. In fact, He confirms them in that wickedness and that sin, but for us, He interferes, He gets involved, He says, “No more, you’ve gone far enough down this road. Turn back and go where you need to be.” This is the grace of restoration. Aren’t you glad for it? Aren’t you glad that God won’t let you go in a free fall to just keep on sinning and sinning, but instead he meets you and says, “Stop, this is far enough.” And so, He comes and restores her. And how does He do it?
God’s Strategy of Restoration
Well, the first thing He does is He humbles her. Look at Verse 8, He said, “Hagar.” Does he say, “Wife of Abram? The one carrying the promised child,” does he say that? No, He says, “Hagar, servant of Sarai,” stop there. You know, before He restores you, He humbles you. He makes you see your sin; He makes you see what you really are. And so, it says in James Chapter 4, Verse 6, “God opposes the proud, but gives grace to the humble.” The second thing He does is He asks her two probing questions, “Where have you come from and where are you going?” Now, can I submit to you that when the devil wants you to go ever increasingly faster and faster down a road to sin, these are two questions he never wants you to ask or face? He wants you to live in the moment. Live for right now because he knows if you take a step back and look, what was it like before with the Lord? How was it then when you were obeying? What was it like in your walk with Him? And the course you’re on now, where is it going to end up? Do you really want to go where you’re ending up? Let’s look at Hagar. Alright, Hagar, where are you going to go? You’re going back to Egypt? You’re going back to the gods of the Egyptians, back to Anubis, the jackal-headed god? Where are you going to go? And how are you even going to get there? You’re going to go across the burning sand pregnant as you are? This is the last water stop for a long, long time. Where are you going? And where have you come from? How has it been? Don’t you know that God’s hand is on Abram, your master? Why are you running away? Where have you come from? And where are you going?” And thirdly, He commands her to repent.
Look in Verse 9, the angel of the Lord told her, “Go back to your mistress and submit to her.” “Oh no, no. That’s one thing I won’t do. Alright, we’ve had it, we’ve said some things to each other and I’m moving on.” “No, you’re not. No, you’re not. You go back and you make it right. You make it work the way I originally established. You submit yourself to her.” And so, she did for 13 years, she went back and she obeyed and she submitted, she was commanded here to repent. And fourth, the angel of the Lord encouraged her with astonishing promises about the future. And so, he humbles her, he asks her probing questions, “Where have you come from and where are you going?” He commands her to repent, and then he makes some promises to her.
Look what he says in Verses 10-12, “The angel added, ‘I will so increase your descendants that they will be too numerous to count.’” The angel of the Lord also said to her, “You are now with child and you will have a son. You shall name him Ishmael, for the Lord has heard of your misery. He will be a wild donkey of a man; his hand will be against everyone and everyone’s hand against him, and he will live in hostility toward all his brothers.” So, he promises, the angel of the Lord promises numerous descendants. It turns out in Genesis 25 that Ishmael would give birth to 12 tribal chieftains, 12. The angel of the Lord promises therefore a son and gives him a marvelous name, Ishmael means “God hears.” God hears. And then the promise of God’s ongoing concern; the Lord has heard of your misery and the Lord will continue to hear him and continue to see him, and so he gives promises.
Aside: Who Are the Ishmaelites?
Now, let’s take a moment just on the side and try to ask who are these Ishmaelites? Verse 12 describes them, “Ishmael will be a wild donkey of a man; his hand will be against everyone and everyone’s hand against him, and he will live in hostility toward all his brothers.” Amazing statement, a wild donkey of a man. Now, what does that mean? Well, Job 39:5-8 describes the wild donkey. “Who let the wild donkey go free?” says the Lord. “Who untied his ropes? I gave him the wasteland as his home, the salt flats as his habitat. He laughs at the commotion in the town; he does not hear a driver’s shout. He ranges the hills for his pasture and searches for any green thing.” So, this is a man who can live where the wild donkey lives out in the desert in the salt flats. And he is a free man, his ropes are untied, he can go wherever he wants, he can do whatever he wants.
Hagar is chafing under the yoke of servanthood, Ishmael will not, he will be a free man. He will live in the desert, free from all human relationships, he will make his living in the desert. And so, we see two things about the Ishmaelites, we see striving and surviving. Those two things go on with them. First of all, their hand or his hand will be against everyone and everyone’s hand against him, and he will live in hostility toward all his brothers, striving. We also see surviving. He will live. He’s going to survive. Now, ultimately, these folks settled in what we call Arabia. The question then is, were the Ishmaelites the fathers of the Arabs? Are they the Arabians? Listen to what it says. In Genesis 25:13-15 Ishmael’s included, “Nebaioth, the firstborn of Ishmael, Kedar, Adbeel, Mibsam, Mishma, Dumah, Massa, Hadad, Tema, Jetur, Naphish, and Kedemah.”
Now, again, and again, when some of the names in this genealogy are listed, they are linked with Arabia. For example, caravans of Tema look for water in Job 6:19. Isaiah 21:13 and 14 says this, “An oracle concerning Arabia: You caravans of Dedanites,” that’s one of the descendants of Ishmael, “who camp in the thickets of Arabia, bring water for the thirsty; you who live in Tema, bring food for the fugitives.” Ezekiel 27:21 says, “Arabia and all the princes of Kedar” that’s one of the descendants of Ishmael, “were your customers; they did business with you in lambs, rams and goats.” Joseph, as you remember, was sold into bondage at the hands of the Ishmaelites. There was a caravan of them when they were going down to Egypt to trade. They roamed freely in the desert, they lived in Arabia, and they traded with people in the surrounding areas. Almost every time in the Old Testament that Arab or Arabia is mentioned, it is tied to one of the descendants of Ishmael.
A modern note is that the first Muslims were Arabians who lived in that exact same area, and so there is a connection here between the descendants of Ishmael and the eventual Muslims. Verse 12, “He will be a wild donkey of a man; his hand will be against everyone and everyone’s hand against him, and he will live in hostility toward all his brothers.”
Hagar’s Awestruck Faith-filled Response
Well, Hagar has an awestruck response to what the angel of the Lord has told her. First of all, she names God. She says, “You are the God who sees me.” Isn’t that remarkable? You are the God who sees me, you see my past history, you see my sin, you see my present desperate circumstances, you see my responsibilities, you see what I’m going to go back to, and you see into my distant future. You are the God who sees me. Reminds me so beautifully of Psalm 139, Verses 1-10, “O Lord, you have searched me and you know me. You know when I sit and when I rise; you perceive my thoughts from afar; you discern my going out and my lying down; you are familiar with all my ways. Before a word is on my tongue you know it completely, O Lord. You hem me in−behind and before; you have laid your hand upon me. Such knowledge is too wonderful for me, too lofty for me to attain. Where can I go from your spirit? Where can I flee from your presence? If I go up to the heavens, you are there. If I make my bed in the depths, you are there. If I rise on the wings of the dawn, if I settle on the far side of the sea, even there your hand will guide me, your right hand will hold me fast.” This is exactly the God who confronted Hagar, the God who sees me, the God who sees every one of us.
The Lesson of Faith: God Hears, So Ask and Wait
Now, what is the ultimate lesson of faith here in Verses 15 and 16? Well, the name Ishmael ends up being a rebuke to Abram. What’s his name going to be? Ishmael. He’s the God who hears, He hears prayer. Maybe next time, before you do something really, really important, you should ask God about it.
George Muller, who looked after thousands of orphans in the mid-19th century, cared for 2,000 orphans all by faith in God and by prayer. He laid out some patterns for knowing the will of God, and steps 5-8, I think are pertinent here. He was asked how he determined the will of God on any matter. Muller listed the 10 steps. Number five, he said, “I ask God in prayer to reveal his will to me.” Number six, “I make sure I have a clear conscience before God and man.” Listen to number seven, “Every time I listened to man instead of God, I made serious mistakes.” Have you ever made an important decision? Leaving a job, taking a job, getting married, buying a home, any major purchase without bathing the thing in prayer? Perhaps you can testify with George Muller, “Any time I listened to man instead of God, I made serious mistakes,” and I think that is what happened to Abram in this chapter.
And number eight, “I act only when I am at peace after much prayer, waiting on God with faith.” And you know, the name Ishmael is not only a rebuke, it’s also an encouragement. This is the way God deals with us from here back, as we look back, we get rebuked for our sin and we have to learn from it, but from here forward, we get encouraged to do the right thing. God’s mercies are new every morning. And so, the God who you should have spoken to yesterday is the God who will hear you now, and so He is the God who hears. And so, therefore, pray and ask for wisdom. God hears prayer.
Application
Now, what application can we take from this? First and foremost, the angel of the Lord, the second person of the trinity, Jesus Christ, He is the savior of the world. And He, to some degree, may be confronting you right now as you are running away from God. It’s not really that you are running away from some earthly situation, some job you don’t like, or some other thing, you are really running from God, and it could be that today, just like Hagar in the desert, the Lord is meeting you and saying, “Trust in me.” The Lord Jesus Christ for the salvation of your soul, trust in Him, because if you do, He will become for you a spring of water welling up to eternal life inside you. But you know the principles are the same even if you are a Christian, first and foremost, He is the God who hears. Therefore, don’t make any important decision or even any unimportant decision without asking Him for wisdom in prayer. Learn to wait on God and not to take matters in your own hands.
Secondly, learn that the end, does not justify the means. Just because Abram was trying to achieve God’s plan, God didn’t give him permission to do it any way he chose. The end doesn’t justify the means. Do it God’s way. Thirdly, test cultural norms by the Word of God. Do you sense any pressure in our society to redefine marriage, any pressure in the exact same area that we are facing here in Genesis 16? We’ve got to test what our neighbors are saying on talk radio shows, and our co-workers are saying around the water cooler and around the coffee pot about what marriage is, we need to test it and say, “No, God has already told us what it is.” In Genesis 2:24, “One man, one woman, one flesh for life,” that’s what marriage is. And when we digress, we have problems.
Fourth, test all advice you get on a key issue against the word of God, even if it comes from a wife or a husband. Test all things by the word of God. And fifth, God is a God who sees, He is searching your heart now, He sees you; nothing is hidden from Him, everything is uncovered and laid bare before the eyes of Him to whom you must give an account. And God hears, so speak to Him, tell him what is going on in your life. We don’t use prayer enough. And finally, be in awe of God’s specific prophecies about Ishmael. The scripture says some more things about the Ishmaelites.
In Isaiah 60:7, it says that “. . .the rams of Nebaioth,” one of the descendants of Ishmael, “will serve you; they will be accepted as offerings on my altar, and I will adorn my glorious temple.” They will be offered up in the eternal temple of God, the Holy City. What does that mean? It means that there are going to be Ishmaelites who will trust in Jesus Christ for the salvation of their souls. They will repent, they will believe, and they will be there on judgment day, praising Jesus Christ, the Savior of their souls.
sermon transcript
The Test of Faith: Sarai’s Barrenness and Bad Advice
One of the favorite things that I used to do when I was growing up with my father was go hiking in the mountains of New Hampshire. I really enjoyed going up to the White Mountains, and they are very high mountains up there, the ones in the presidential range. I remember hiking up Mount Washington, which is the highest of those mountains up there, and as we were hiking, my dad would be telling me it wouldn’t be long before we would break out above the tree line. That was always a big moment, and I was always eager for it, because then the views just got spectacular and we could see all over that whole region, that whole district, once you are above the tree line.
But, as you’re looking up the trail, you can always see some glimpses of blue sky and I’m thinking, “Is that it?” And so, we would reach that place and there would be more trees beyond, and so we would keep on going. As we would go, I would look up and then I would see, I thought, an opening and that wasn’t it either. It was a real test of patience for someone my age. It was a test of the body for someone his age, but a test of patience for someone my age. I was looking up and I kept waiting, when are we going to break above the trees? Once we did, the view would get spectacular, and I would think, “We have got to be almost there, to the summit.” Then I would look and I would see the summit right up there, just as it was curving, and I would think, “Boy, not long, and we are going to be at the top.” I would reach that little curving place and there would be another little curving place further up. This is what is known as the false summits. They would go on for another hour and a half or two hours after I broke above the tree line. What an incredible test of patience it is, and so also, I think in the Christian life, God is exercising our patience. He can give you a glimpse of what is to come, a foretaste, and then it is back to the grind. The grind more than anything is a wrestling with our own wickedness and sin, our own unbelief. And so, we have what is known as the mountain top experiences, an encounter with God, something you would never forget.
It isn’t long after that that you are back into sin, you are struggling, you are weak, and you are needing to confess. And that’s exactly what we have in Genesis 16. Genesis 15, is one of those incredible mountain top experiences in which God reveals His eternal purposes to Abraham, to Abram. He speaks a promise to him, the promise that he heard and believed, to the salvation of his soul, “So shall your offspring be.” He heard and he believed, and he was justified by faith. And then, the incredible covenant cutting ceremony, the intensity of that moment, the darkness and the dread, the terror of the Lord that came over him.
The burning torch and the fire pot appearing, and then just moving between the pieces, an incredible picture, answering Abraham’s question, Abram’s question, “How can I know that I will gain the Promised Land?” It sure doesn’t look like it. How can I know? God answered the question, in effect saying, “It is as likely for me to cease existing as it is for me to lie to you about this covenant. I can neither stop existing and nor can I lie, but I will most certainly fulfill everything that I have spoken to you.” And so, that is Genesis 15, an incredible mountain top experience. But then we go into Genesis 16, and we see the relapse into unbelief of Abram, our father in faith.
Stunning Contrast: “Abram Believed the Lord” vs. “Abram Listened to the Voice of Sarai”
What a stunning contrast between Abram believed the Lord, and Abram listened to the voice of his wife, Sarai. It’s an incredible contrast, as he does something he should not have done, breaks God’s pattern for marriage, all because of the expediency of the moment. It’s not working out the way he thought, and so he’s going to take matters in his own hands, after Sarai’s advice. The Bible is consistently honest, isn’t it, about the failings of its heroes? We’ve talked about this before, but it’s one of the great evidences of the truth of the Word of God is that it’s very honest about sin, it’s very honest about sinfulness.
For example, Noah, that great patriarch, he gets drunk and lies uncovered in his tent. What a shameful picture. David, to whom a great covenant had been made, and Jesus is called the son of David in some ways, in some places, he commits adultery with Bathsheba and conspires to kill Bathsheba’s husband, Uriah. And then there’s Elijah, incredible man of courage and faith, takes on the prophets of Baal at Mount Carmel. And then after that, he has a run in with Jezebel and runs away, fleeing for his life and lies under the broom tree and says, “Take my life, I’m ready to die.” The weakness we see there in Elijah. And then there’s Hezekiah, able to stand and face a huge Assyrian army, undefeated army, and just take this letter and spread it out before God in prayer, and prevailing in God in prayer, he’s able to stand firm and God sends out an angel, 185,000 Assyrian troops killed. But in later years, Hezekiah grew prideful and arrogant and hard in his heart.
And then there is John the Baptist. Jesus said, “No one born of women is greater than John the Baptist.” Greatest man that had ever lived. And yet, he in Matthew 11, sends messengers to Jesus saying, “Are you the one who was to come or should we expect someone else?” A moment of weakness for him. And then there’s Simon Peter, “You are the Christ, the Son of God,” he confessed, revealed to him by Christ’s Father in Heaven. Yet, moments later, rebuking Jesus that he would never die and go to the cross, and Jesus has to say, “Get behind me Satan.”
Again and again, we see the great men of the Bible and women of the Bible revealed to be sinners, because there is really only one true center, perfect center of Scripture, and that’s God Almighty, the holy eternal God. And we are all sinners saved by grace, even Abram. The lesson is consistent and clear. Jesus put it this way, “No one is good, but God alone.” The apostle Paul put it this way, “There is no one righteous, not even one.” And that includes Abram. When all is said and done, everyone including our father in faith, Abram, Abraham, is saved by grace through faith alone, and no other way. And so, we have this mountain top experience in Genesis 15, and then the trial of Genesis 16.
Abram’s Faith Repeatedly Tested
Abram’s faith is repeatedly tried, isn’t it? I mean, he gets the original call in Ur the Chaldeans, and he’s got to have a wrestling of faith of whether he’s really going to obey, and he does so it seems in stages. He doesn’t immediately obey, but it takes him a while as he kind of waits in Heron and finally separates from his father and moves on. Then his faith is tested in the Promised Land. When he gets there, a little while after that, there’s a terrible famine and he and his entourage, his wife, have to go down to Egypt, so he thinks, in order to survive. Down there they meet another trial of faith in which he is tempted and yields to the temptation to fear, and he has Sarai lie for him saying that “he is my brother.” And so, that whole encounter.
Then, when they get back into the Promised Land and he’s restored and he’s back on track, then he’s got the challenge with Lot and the herdsmen as they argue and bicker over grazing rights, it seems. After that, he’s got to go and gird on his sword and become powerful and strong and go rescue Lot when Kedorlaomer king of Elam, and his allies invade. Right after that, there’s another test in that the king of Sodom wants to give him some of the loot, the plunder from Sodom, and he doesn’t want anything to do with it. So, it’s just one test after another, and here we have another test.
The Rhythm of Faith’s Trials
What is this test? The most severe test of all. It is waiting on the Lord to fulfill His word. Is that not the test of your life? Waiting and waiting and waiting for something you don’t have yet. Waiting for heaven, waiting to see Christ face-to-face, waiting for freedom from sin forever, our full salvation. We don’t want just the down payment, the deposit guaranteeing our inheritance, we want the full inheritance. And so, we’re waiting and waiting. It’s amazing how much we need to be on our guard, because as these trials of faith come, they come at the worst moments sometimes, don’t they? A.W. Pink put it this way, “It is God’s usual pattern to bless and then to test.” Let me say that again. “It is God’s usual pattern to bless and then to test.” It is thus highly necessary for us to take the lesson to heart. It is when we have received some special mark of the Lord’s favor, or immediately after we have enjoyed some unusual season of communion with Him, that we most need to be on our guard.”
Abram’s Most Severe Test: Waiting on the Promise of God
And so, Abraham has to face, or Abram has to face his severe test. Now, what is the nature of this test? Well, here in this chapter, it is two things. It’s Sarai’s barrenness and Sarai’s bad advice.
Sarai’s Barrenness
First the barrenness. It says in Verse 1, “Now Sarai, Abram’s wife, had borne him no children.” In Verse 2, “so she said to Abram, ‘The Lord has kept me from having children.’” Now, like Abram, she considers children to be a direct gift from God, and so they are. Therefore, the absence of children, the inability to have children, barrenness, is a direct act of God. Both Abram and Sarai see it that way, and so it is. Now, in this way, we need to understand that God doesn’t completely lavish us with blessings 100% with no trials, neither does He overwhelm us with curses or trials or challenges, but there is always a wise kind of mixture in our lives, isn’t there?
There are blessings and there are challenges, and so it is. Look at Sarai. She’s got incredible physical beauty, she’s got a strong faith, she’s submissive to her husband, and therefore a pattern of all godly women that follow after her. She has a wonderful husband who loves the Lord and who is greatly blessed by God. She has all of this, but she doesn’t have a child, and so this is the trial, this is the burden for her. And so, she says, “The Lord has kept me from having children.” And it is true. We need to understand that it is the Lord that gives and it is the Lord that chooses not to give. It is the Lord that gives, as Job said, and the Lord who chooses to take away.
Think of what God said to Moses in Exodus 4, Verse 11, “The Lord said to him, ‘Who gave man his mouth? Who makes him deaf or mute? Who gives him sight or makes him blind? Is it not I, the Lord?’” “I the Lord do all these things,” he says, and says the same thing in Isaiah 45:7, “I form the light and create darkness, I bring prosperity and create disaster; I, the Lord, do all these things.” And so, she is right to bring this issue to God and say specifically “it is that God has kept me from having children.”
Now, why is this? Why did he do it? Well, that His glory and His power might be revealed in a far greater way. He’s waiting, you see, for Abram’s body to be as good as dead, He’s waiting for Sarai’s womb to be proven to be totally dead and hopeless. He’s waiting so that there is no doubt about it whatsoever. And why? So that he can show us that He is the God that gives life to the dead and calls things that are not as though they were. And why? So that we who come later may trust in Jesus Christ to raise us from the dead. That’s right. Amen. We are all waiting for resurrection from the dead, and we are trusting in the same God who was able to give a child to this barren couple.
And so, in Romans 4:17, this is exactly what Paul says, “We’re trusting on God who gives life to the dead and calls things that are not as though they were.” And so, Sarai’s barrenness is the first aspect of this trial, but then comes the bad advice, Sarai’s bad advice. Now, Sarai had a female servant named Hagar, who was an Egyptian. Probably, she was among those servants that had been given to Abram and Sarai by Pharaoh in that earlier encounter in Genesis 12. You remember I just alluded to it when Abram said to Sarai, “Lie for me so they don’t kill me.” And Pharaoh is about to take Sarai into his harem, about to take her as a wife, and God judges Pharaoh and the household. Abram has to pray for Pharaoh and Pharaoh gives them all of these possessions to get them out of there, among them were male and female servants, and I believe Hagar was one of those.
So, to some degree, Hagar is a little bit of a shameful reminder of a bad moment in Abram’s life, and there she is, Hagar, the female servant from Egypt. Sarai saw that she continued to be barren and she wanted to take matters in her own hands, she wanted to act. Let’s get this thing going. If you have got all these great promises and if I’m not the one, then let’s move on. She is willing in a way to some degree to get out of the way. But along with this is a common practice of the day, of the culture. This idea would be strange to us, but back then not so strange. The idea was that if a mistress had a servant girl, a servant woman, if that one bore to her master any children, they are really accounted or reckoned to be Sarai’s in this case
Now, that is a strange thought to us, but it was common in the culture of the day. You remember that later Jacob had two wives, Rachel and Leah, and each one of them had a maid servant, and so in effect he had four wives and each one bore eventually the 12 patriarchs of Israel. So, this was a common thing back in the day, but just because it is common doesn’t mean it is godly. Just because it was the common practice of the culture of the day, doesn’t mean it was what God intended. There are many examples of polygamy in Scripture, and none of them ever turn out well. Ever. God’s pattern for marriage is established in Genesis Chapter 2, Verse 24. “For this reason, a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and they will become one flesh.” It was the evil man Lamech who first took another wife to himself and was a polygamist. Watch out for this one, folks, it’s coming soon to a country very near you.
Sarai’s Bad Advice
If they are going to redefine marriage, soon polygamy will come. I’m not speaking just theoretically, I’m saying it’s coming if we don’t define marriage by Genesis 2:24. One man, one woman, one flesh union for life. And so it was, that was God’s pattern. And so, we have this bad advice from Sarai, it was not from the Lord. Now, it’s bad enough to get bad advice, but it’s especially tough to get it from your wife. I’m not meaning in any way to be insulting to you ladies or to my own wife who I love very dearly, I’m just executing the text. I’m just saying it’s just not good to get bad advice from your wife, because it goes right to the heart. A godly wife is among God’s greatest earthly gifts to a man. It’s an incredible gift to get a wife who loves the Lord, who fears the Lord. “Her worth is far greater than rubies,” it says in Proverbs 31. The heart of her husband, it says, trusts in her. He can rely on her to give him good advice.
She’s a fountain of blessing to him in every way. She meets his physical needs, she meets his relational needs, she cares for him, she’s involved in every aspect of his life and ministry. An incredible gift, a fountain of blessing. And one of the greatest gifts that she can give to her husband is godly, sound advice. Pointing to the Lord, saying, “What does the Lord want us to do?”
The Danger of Bad Advice from a Wife
But here, you can see the danger of bad advice from a wife. Matthew Henry said it this way, “It is the policy of Satan to tempt us by our nearest and dearest relations, for those friends that we have an opinion of and an affection for, the temptation is most dangerous when it is sent by a hand that is least suspected. It is our wisdom therefore to consider not so much who speaks, but what is spoken.” You have to take each one to the Lord and to His revealed word. And so, we have barrenness and bad advice. This is the test of faith, and Abram caves in. We see his failure of faith in Verses 3 and 4, specifically in that Abram acts without prayer.
The Failure of Faith: Abram Acts Without Prayer
Abram’s Failure of Faith: Listening to Sarai, Not to God
Abram’s failure of faith is that he listened to Sarai and not to God. God clearly defined marriage, He had clearly established the pattern. Furthermore, He had made His promise clear, and so from the Genesis 2:24 standard, coupled with the fact that through his own body there would be an offspring, to me, it is clear that he needed to wait on the Lord and not go for this expedient, this culturally acceptable expedient. Sarai’s barrenness should have been a cause for greater faith and more prayer, not for giving up and giving in and going some different way. In effect, he should have said, “The God who made the stars, and I’m going to have descendants as numerous as the stars, is able to make my wife fruitful. He’s able to give me a son by my wife.”
Hints in the Text
Now, we have some hints at the problem in the text. It says, “After Abram had been living in Canaan 10 years. . .” Why does it say that? Well, I think there’s a sense of a chronology here and that’s fine. But also, could it be the ideas of the Canaanites were getting in his mind? It’s so easy for us to be influenced by a surrounding culture, to just take in as acceptable what our neighbors are doing because everybody is doing it. Note that God in the text kind of establishes the way it really should have been. Look at Verse 3, “So after Abram had been living in Canaan ten years, Sarai his wife,” note that, “took her Egyptian maidservant Hagar” that’s who she is, “and gave her to her husband to be his wife.” Do you see how this whole thing is confused and how God establishes Abram, Sarai, husband, wife, Hagar, servant in the household. That’s the way it should have stayed, but instead they went across, they transgressed the boundaries that God had established.
Abram’s Possible Train of Thought
Now, what was Abram thinking? Do you ever wonder that? You think to yourself, “What was I thinking? How could I have done it?” Well, this I think is probably his train of thought. It seems to me that God has promised an heir, I’m going to have an heir, and it’s not going to be Eleazar of Damascus, learned that last chapter. They didn’t have chapters back then, but anyway, we learned that. It’s going to be a son from my own body. So, there’s an unfolding here. Sarai’s barren, so culturally it’s acceptable for me to be with Hagar. And the clincher is that Sarai’s even suggesting it, and so, therefore, I’ll do it. And that’s kind of how it worked. It went right to his heart and he acted.
Isaac’s Superior Example
Now, I think his son, eventual son, Isaac, gives a superior example. In Genesis 25, Isaac had the same problem as Abraham. He had a wife, Rebecca, who was barren. But you know the interesting thing about Isaac, he doesn’t get a lot of play in Scripture. We don’t learn a lot about him, but one thing about him is he was a one-woman man, he never went in for polygamy unlike his son, Jacob, or his father, Abraham. He just had Rebecca. Furthermore, Rebecca was barren, as happened so frequently. And what did Isaac do? He prayed to the Lord and asked that God would open her womb. This is in Genesis 25:21, “Isaac prayed to the Lord on behalf of his wife, because she was barren. The Lord answered his prayer, and his wife Rebecca became pregnant.”
The Fruit of Faithlessness and Broken Relationships
Now, that’s what he should have done. Abram instead had a failure of faith, and look at all the problems that come as a result, the fruit of faithlessness in Verses 4-6, and it really is, more than anything, broken relationships, that’s what always comes from a failure in the area of marriage and sex and it always comes with broken households, broken relationships. That’s where the price gets paid.
Initially, you could say there’s good fruit, Hagar is pregnant, and so she’s expecting a child, but trouble comes soon after that, the first broken relationship is between Hagar and Sarai. Look at Verse 4, it says that “He, Abram, slept with Hagar and she conceived. When she, Hagar, knew she was pregnant, she began to despise her mistress.”
Now, probably Hagar thought that her position in the household had now changed, now that she was expecting the heir that everyone was waiting for, it could be that she saw herself now as Sarai’s equal, perhaps even as her superior. Perhaps she is going to take Sarai’s place. Now, how did it manifest itself? Well, the Hebrew says that she despised, she disdained or made light of her mistress, maybe she was a little sluggish to obey at one point, maybe she sighed or rolled her eyes or made a comment under her breath. Maybe she was overheard in a tent saying something disparaging or maybe even mocking Sarai for her barrenness. I don’t know, but we do know that she despised her mistress.
It says in Proverbs 30:21-23, “Under three things, the earth trembles, under four it cannot bear up; a servant who becomes a king, a fool who is full of food”−watch that one−”an unloved woman who is married, and a maid servant who displaces her mistress” and, that’s what I think is going on here. Hagar has ambitions to displace Sarai in the household, broken relationship number one. Broken relationship number two is Abraham or Abram and Sarai. Look at Verse 5. “Then Sarai said to Abram, ‘You are responsible for the wrong I am suffering.’” It’s your fault.
Now, how did she figure that? But we’ll get to that in a minute. At any rate, it is Abram’s fault. 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. Well, obviously, this is what is known as a marital discussion. Now, maybe you have had marital discussions and maybe you haven’t, but here is a marital discussion, and the two of them kind of have to work this thing out. To some degree, it may be that Abram is playing what is known as the passive male syndrome role, you’re kicking back, laying back, just kind of letting it happen in the household. He’s not taking the lead, he should have stepped in when he heard Hagar disrespect her mistress and done something about it, instead he’s passive. He’s just kind of watching the two ladies. I don’t know if they are having a cat fight or what’s going on, but he’s just letting it go, he’s just passive in this situation.
Now, I think Sarai is unfair. She unfairly blames Abram for the conflict she is having. It’s not Abram’s fault directly. You could ask Sarai, “Can I ask a question? What did you think was going to happen? This is exactly what you wanted to happen. Now it has happened. Now you don’t want it?” So, I think it’s very clear that Sarai didn’t think through what she was doing, she wasn’t ready for it. But there is nothing but trouble here, broken relationship number two. Broken relationship number three is Abram and his household as a whole. Look what he says in Verse 6, “Your servant is in your hands.” Abram said, “Do with her whatever you think best.” Now, there are different ways to read this, okay? But I read this as more passive male syndrome stuff. Basically, “Hey, look, don’t involve me, it’s between you two ladies. Work it out, everything is fine.” What he should have done is step to the fore and resolve this issue and said, “You are Sarai’s servant and so you will remain.” But you see that he is on uncertain ground because he is already stepped outside of what God has ordained, and so he is losing his authority.
Whenever you turn away from God and his commands as a leader in your home, a husband, a father, you lose your moral authority, it becomes very difficult to lead your home. And so, we see a broken home here, and then Sarai, it says, mistreated Hagar, so she fled from her. It’s interesting this word “mistreated” in Verse 6 is the exact same word that is used concerning what the Egyptians will later do to the Israelites when they are in bondage. Isn’t it ironic? Before the Israelites were harshly treated in bondage to the Egyptians, the thing was reversed, and an Egyptian was harshly treated by an Israelite in bondage. And so, we have it, and finally the ultimate and the most significant broken relationship is Abram, Sarai, Hagar and God Himself.
The Restoration of Faithlessness
He is a holy God, and there is a real problem in their relationship with Him at this point. Well, God moves and acts to restore and to redeem. Praise God, He doesn’t let this decay go on. Our God is a God of restoration, He is a God of forgiveness, a God of grace and mercy, a God who can pick up the broken pieces in your life and put them back together. And that’s exactly what goes on in Verses 7-14.
The Angel of the Lord
In Verses 7 and 8, we see the angel of the Lord and it says, “The angel of the Lord found Hagar near a spring in the desert; it was the spring that is beside the road to Shur. And he said, “Hagar, servant of Sarai, where have you come from, and where are you going?” She answered, “I’m running away from my mistress, Sarai.” Now, here we meet the angel of the Lord.
Now, this angel of the Lord is an amazing person in the Book of Genesis and also in Exodus. It is my belief that the angel of the Lord here is none other than the second person of the trinity, Jesus Christ himself. Well, why do I say that? Well, look what it says here in Verse 10, or Verses 9 and 10. It says, “Then the angel of the Lord told her, ‘Go back to your mistress and submit to her.'” Well, that is fine, angels can give commands, but Verse 10 is a little unusual for an angel. The angel added, “I will so increase your descendants that they will be too numerous to count.” Now, can I submit to you, this is not something an angel usually does? This is something God does. God is speaking to Hagar through the angel of the Lord. The angel of the Lord, I believe is the second person of the trinity, Jesus Christ himself.
Fleeing in the Desert
And so, the angel of the Lord appears to Hagar out in the desert. Now, she is fleeing in the desert, it says, in the desert, that she’s meeting with him and she comes to an oasis, a spring. Water is life, especially out in the desert, and there Jesus meets her.
The Grace of Restoration
You know it reminds me of another woman in sin that Jesus met so much later, the Samaritan woman at the well. Do you remember what Jesus said in John Chapter 4, Verse 10, to the woman at the well there? Jesus said, “If you knew the gift of God and who it is that asks you for a drink, you would have asked Him and He would have given you living water. ‘Sir’, the woman said, ‘you have nothing to draw with and the well is deep. Where can you get this living water? Are you greater than our father Jacob, who gave us this well and drank from it himself, as did also his sons and his flocks and herds?’ Jesus answered, ‘Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again, but whoever drinks the water I give him will never thirst. Indeed, the water I give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life.’” This is Jesus meeting the woman in the desert, this is Jesus meeting Hagar and pointing ultimately to himself, this is the grace of restoration. It’s an incredible thing that God does for us, isn’t it? When we are venturing out on a sinful path, a sinful course, the worst thing that God can do in this world is to give us over to that sinful course and let us go.
That’s the worst thing. And that’s exactly what he does to some unbelievers. He gives them over to their sin and to the hardness of their heart to continue doing that very sin. In fact, He confirms them in that wickedness and that sin, but for us, He interferes, He gets involved, He says, “No more, you’ve gone far enough down this road. Turn back and go where you need to be.” This is the grace of restoration. Aren’t you glad for it? Aren’t you glad that God won’t let you go in a free fall to just keep on sinning and sinning, but instead he meets you and says, “Stop, this is far enough.” And so, He comes and restores her. And how does He do it?
God’s Strategy of Restoration
Well, the first thing He does is He humbles her. Look at Verse 8, He said, “Hagar.” Does he say, “Wife of Abram? The one carrying the promised child,” does he say that? No, He says, “Hagar, servant of Sarai,” stop there. You know, before He restores you, He humbles you. He makes you see your sin; He makes you see what you really are. And so, it says in James Chapter 4, Verse 6, “God opposes the proud, but gives grace to the humble.” The second thing He does is He asks her two probing questions, “Where have you come from and where are you going?” Now, can I submit to you that when the devil wants you to go ever increasingly faster and faster down a road to sin, these are two questions he never wants you to ask or face? He wants you to live in the moment. Live for right now because he knows if you take a step back and look, what was it like before with the Lord? How was it then when you were obeying? What was it like in your walk with Him? And the course you’re on now, where is it going to end up? Do you really want to go where you’re ending up? Let’s look at Hagar. Alright, Hagar, where are you going to go? You’re going back to Egypt? You’re going back to the gods of the Egyptians, back to Anubis, the jackal-headed god? Where are you going to go? And how are you even going to get there? You’re going to go across the burning sand pregnant as you are? This is the last water stop for a long, long time. Where are you going? And where have you come from? How has it been? Don’t you know that God’s hand is on Abram, your master? Why are you running away? Where have you come from? And where are you going?” And thirdly, He commands her to repent.
Look in Verse 9, the angel of the Lord told her, “Go back to your mistress and submit to her.” “Oh no, no. That’s one thing I won’t do. Alright, we’ve had it, we’ve said some things to each other and I’m moving on.” “No, you’re not. No, you’re not. You go back and you make it right. You make it work the way I originally established. You submit yourself to her.” And so, she did for 13 years, she went back and she obeyed and she submitted, she was commanded here to repent. And fourth, the angel of the Lord encouraged her with astonishing promises about the future. And so, he humbles her, he asks her probing questions, “Where have you come from and where are you going?” He commands her to repent, and then he makes some promises to her.
Look what he says in Verses 10-12, “The angel added, ‘I will so increase your descendants that they will be too numerous to count.’” The angel of the Lord also said to her, “You are now with child and you will have a son. You shall name him Ishmael, for the Lord has heard of your misery. He will be a wild donkey of a man; his hand will be against everyone and everyone’s hand against him, and he will live in hostility toward all his brothers.” So, he promises, the angel of the Lord promises numerous descendants. It turns out in Genesis 25 that Ishmael would give birth to 12 tribal chieftains, 12. The angel of the Lord promises therefore a son and gives him a marvelous name, Ishmael means “God hears.” God hears. And then the promise of God’s ongoing concern; the Lord has heard of your misery and the Lord will continue to hear him and continue to see him, and so he gives promises.
Aside: Who Are the Ishmaelites?
Now, let’s take a moment just on the side and try to ask who are these Ishmaelites? Verse 12 describes them, “Ishmael will be a wild donkey of a man; his hand will be against everyone and everyone’s hand against him, and he will live in hostility toward all his brothers.” Amazing statement, a wild donkey of a man. Now, what does that mean? Well, Job 39:5-8 describes the wild donkey. “Who let the wild donkey go free?” says the Lord. “Who untied his ropes? I gave him the wasteland as his home, the salt flats as his habitat. He laughs at the commotion in the town; he does not hear a driver’s shout. He ranges the hills for his pasture and searches for any green thing.” So, this is a man who can live where the wild donkey lives out in the desert in the salt flats. And he is a free man, his ropes are untied, he can go wherever he wants, he can do whatever he wants.
Hagar is chafing under the yoke of servanthood, Ishmael will not, he will be a free man. He will live in the desert, free from all human relationships, he will make his living in the desert. And so, we see two things about the Ishmaelites, we see striving and surviving. Those two things go on with them. First of all, their hand or his hand will be against everyone and everyone’s hand against him, and he will live in hostility toward all his brothers, striving. We also see surviving. He will live. He’s going to survive. Now, ultimately, these folks settled in what we call Arabia. The question then is, were the Ishmaelites the fathers of the Arabs? Are they the Arabians? Listen to what it says. In Genesis 25:13-15 Ishmael’s included, “Nebaioth, the firstborn of Ishmael, Kedar, Adbeel, Mibsam, Mishma, Dumah, Massa, Hadad, Tema, Jetur, Naphish, and Kedemah.”
Now, again, and again, when some of the names in this genealogy are listed, they are linked with Arabia. For example, caravans of Tema look for water in Job 6:19. Isaiah 21:13 and 14 says this, “An oracle concerning Arabia: You caravans of Dedanites,” that’s one of the descendants of Ishmael, “who camp in the thickets of Arabia, bring water for the thirsty; you who live in Tema, bring food for the fugitives.” Ezekiel 27:21 says, “Arabia and all the princes of Kedar” that’s one of the descendants of Ishmael, “were your customers; they did business with you in lambs, rams and goats.” Joseph, as you remember, was sold into bondage at the hands of the Ishmaelites. There was a caravan of them when they were going down to Egypt to trade. They roamed freely in the desert, they lived in Arabia, and they traded with people in the surrounding areas. Almost every time in the Old Testament that Arab or Arabia is mentioned, it is tied to one of the descendants of Ishmael.
A modern note is that the first Muslims were Arabians who lived in that exact same area, and so there is a connection here between the descendants of Ishmael and the eventual Muslims. Verse 12, “He will be a wild donkey of a man; his hand will be against everyone and everyone’s hand against him, and he will live in hostility toward all his brothers.”
Hagar’s Awestruck Faith-filled Response
Well, Hagar has an awestruck response to what the angel of the Lord has told her. First of all, she names God. She says, “You are the God who sees me.” Isn’t that remarkable? You are the God who sees me, you see my past history, you see my sin, you see my present desperate circumstances, you see my responsibilities, you see what I’m going to go back to, and you see into my distant future. You are the God who sees me. Reminds me so beautifully of Psalm 139, Verses 1-10, “O Lord, you have searched me and you know me. You know when I sit and when I rise; you perceive my thoughts from afar; you discern my going out and my lying down; you are familiar with all my ways. Before a word is on my tongue you know it completely, O Lord. You hem me in−behind and before; you have laid your hand upon me. Such knowledge is too wonderful for me, too lofty for me to attain. Where can I go from your spirit? Where can I flee from your presence? If I go up to the heavens, you are there. If I make my bed in the depths, you are there. If I rise on the wings of the dawn, if I settle on the far side of the sea, even there your hand will guide me, your right hand will hold me fast.” This is exactly the God who confronted Hagar, the God who sees me, the God who sees every one of us.
The Lesson of Faith: God Hears, So Ask and Wait
Now, what is the ultimate lesson of faith here in Verses 15 and 16? Well, the name Ishmael ends up being a rebuke to Abram. What’s his name going to be? Ishmael. He’s the God who hears, He hears prayer. Maybe next time, before you do something really, really important, you should ask God about it.
George Muller, who looked after thousands of orphans in the mid-19th century, cared for 2,000 orphans all by faith in God and by prayer. He laid out some patterns for knowing the will of God, and steps 5-8, I think are pertinent here. He was asked how he determined the will of God on any matter. Muller listed the 10 steps. Number five, he said, “I ask God in prayer to reveal his will to me.” Number six, “I make sure I have a clear conscience before God and man.” Listen to number seven, “Every time I listened to man instead of God, I made serious mistakes.” Have you ever made an important decision? Leaving a job, taking a job, getting married, buying a home, any major purchase without bathing the thing in prayer? Perhaps you can testify with George Muller, “Any time I listened to man instead of God, I made serious mistakes,” and I think that is what happened to Abram in this chapter.
And number eight, “I act only when I am at peace after much prayer, waiting on God with faith.” And you know, the name Ishmael is not only a rebuke, it’s also an encouragement. This is the way God deals with us from here back, as we look back, we get rebuked for our sin and we have to learn from it, but from here forward, we get encouraged to do the right thing. God’s mercies are new every morning. And so, the God who you should have spoken to yesterday is the God who will hear you now, and so He is the God who hears. And so, therefore, pray and ask for wisdom. God hears prayer.
Application
Now, what application can we take from this? First and foremost, the angel of the Lord, the second person of the trinity, Jesus Christ, He is the savior of the world. And He, to some degree, may be confronting you right now as you are running away from God. It’s not really that you are running away from some earthly situation, some job you don’t like, or some other thing, you are really running from God, and it could be that today, just like Hagar in the desert, the Lord is meeting you and saying, “Trust in me.” The Lord Jesus Christ for the salvation of your soul, trust in Him, because if you do, He will become for you a spring of water welling up to eternal life inside you. But you know the principles are the same even if you are a Christian, first and foremost, He is the God who hears. Therefore, don’t make any important decision or even any unimportant decision without asking Him for wisdom in prayer. Learn to wait on God and not to take matters in your own hands.
Secondly, learn that the end, does not justify the means. Just because Abram was trying to achieve God’s plan, God didn’t give him permission to do it any way he chose. The end doesn’t justify the means. Do it God’s way. Thirdly, test cultural norms by the Word of God. Do you sense any pressure in our society to redefine marriage, any pressure in the exact same area that we are facing here in Genesis 16? We’ve got to test what our neighbors are saying on talk radio shows, and our co-workers are saying around the water cooler and around the coffee pot about what marriage is, we need to test it and say, “No, God has already told us what it is.” In Genesis 2:24, “One man, one woman, one flesh for life,” that’s what marriage is. And when we digress, we have problems.
Fourth, test all advice you get on a key issue against the word of God, even if it comes from a wife or a husband. Test all things by the word of God. And fifth, God is a God who sees, He is searching your heart now, He sees you; nothing is hidden from Him, everything is uncovered and laid bare before the eyes of Him to whom you must give an account. And God hears, so speak to Him, tell him what is going on in your life. We don’t use prayer enough. And finally, be in awe of God’s specific prophecies about Ishmael. The scripture says some more things about the Ishmaelites.
In Isaiah 60:7, it says that “. . .the rams of Nebaioth,” one of the descendants of Ishmael, “will serve you; they will be accepted as offerings on my altar, and I will adorn my glorious temple.” They will be offered up in the eternal temple of God, the Holy City. What does that mean? It means that there are going to be Ishmaelites who will trust in Jesus Christ for the salvation of their souls. They will repent, they will believe, and they will be there on judgment day, praising Jesus Christ, the Savior of their souls.
