Now, will you turn with me to Genesis
chapter 16, and will you listen as I
read the sixteenth chapter.
A word by way of reminder of the
context.
In the preceding chapters, Abram has been dwelling
in the highlands, and then in chapter fifteen
particularly, we have the famous statement, he believed
in the Lord and he reckoned it to
him for righteousness, and then there followed that
most remarkable ceremony of the ratification of the
Abrahamic covenant by the symbolic picture of the
Lord God through the smoking oven and flaming
torch passing between the pieces of the sacrificial
animals.
Abram was not invited to follow, which of
course is designed to indicate that this was
an unconditional covenant.
That is, it is a covenant that God
himself has determined to carry out.
A unilateral agreement.
Now Abram is therefore encouraged, and no doubt
was tremendously lifted up by that experience.
But chapter sixteen is a different story, and
we read in verse one, Now Sarah, Abram's
wife, or Abram's wife, had borne him no
children, and she had an Egyptian maid whose
name was Hagar.
So Sarah said to Abram, Now behold, the
Lord has prevented me from bearing children.
Please go into my maid, perhaps I shall
obtain children through her.
And Abram listened to the voice of Sarah.
And after Abram had lived ten years in
the land of Canaan, Abram's wife Sarah took
Hagar, the Egyptian, her maid, and gave her
to her husband Abram as his wife.
Now this relationship was recognized as a relationship
of husband and wife, but definitely a secondary
relationship, subordinate to the relationship of Sarah to
Abram.
And he went into Hagar, and she conceived.
And when she saw that she had conceived,
her mistress was despised in her sight.
And Sarah said to Abram, May the wrong
done me be upon you.
I gave my maid into your arms, but
when she saw that she had conceived, I
was despised in her sight.
May the Lord judge between you and me.
But Abram said to Sarah, Behold, your maid
is in your power.
Do to her what is good in your
sight.
So Sarah treated her harshly, and she fled
from her presence.
Now the angel of the Lord found her
by a spring of water in the wilderness,
by the spring on the way to shore.
And he said, Hagar, Sarah's maid, where have
you come from, and where are you going?
And she said, I am fleeing from the
presence of my mistress Sarah.
Then the angel of the Lord said to
her, Return to your mistress and submit yourself
to her authority.
Moreover, the angel of the Lord said to
her, I will greatly multiply your descendants so
that they shall be too many to count.
The angel of the Lord said to her
further, Behold, you are with child, and you
shall bear a son, and you shall call
his name Ishmael, because the Lord has given
heed to your affliction.
Ishmael means God hears, or God has heard.
And he will be a wild donkey of
a man.
His hand will be against everyone, and everyone's
hand will be against him.
And he will live to the east of
all his brothers.
Now that expression, to the east of, is
a possible rendering of the Hebrew expression here,
but it is also possible to render it,
that he will live in the face of,
or in defiance of, all his brothers.
In my opinion, that is the better rendering
of that phrase.
This incidentally illustrates something that it's well for
us to remember.
From this pulpit, and from other teaching stands
throughout Believer's Chapel, you will often hear references
to the Greek text says this, or the
Hebrew text says this, and people gain the
impression that if you know Greek and Hebrew,
then interpretational problems are all solved.
And that therefore, since one does not know
Greek and Hebrew, one is a second class
citizen, so far as interpreting the Bible is
concerned.
Now that is not true.
When a person learns to read Greek and
Hebrew, he discovers problems that he did not
even know existed, when he was reading only
the English text, as anyone who's learned any
foreign language knows.
Furthermore, almost all interpretive problems are solved by
a reading, careful study of the context.
So it is possible for a person who
does not know Greek or Hebrew, if he
will just get two or three translations, which
give possibilities of rendering, to study those English
translations, and by a careful investigation of the
context, in almost every case, he will come
to the meaning of the passage, because the
context will lead him to it.
Now of course, if a person will do
that fundamental study, and also knows the original
language, well that is a plus.
But the facts are that many people who
know Greek and Hebrew, do not do that.
And therefore, those who don't know Greek and
Hebrew, but who will study the Bible diligently,
become often better interpreters than those who have
more capacity.
Now what I'm saying, and why I'm saying
this, is that you might realize that if
you will get yourself two or three versions,
and apply yourself to the study of the
scriptures, the fact that you do not know
Greek and Hebrew, will not be much of
a deterrent at all to the understanding of
the Word of God, in a deep sense.
So do not get the impression, because you
do not know Greek or Hebrew, that you
cannot discover the meaning of the Word of
God.
God has made it possible for all His
saints to understand His Word, if they will
really apply themselves to it.
So I think it should be a challenge
to you.
I think I'll learn the Bible, and I
will interpret it better than some of these
fellows who stand up in Believer's Chapel and
know Greek and Hebrew.
That's your challenge.
And let me assure you, it is possible
for you to succeed in that.
Now we were reading chapter 16, and so
we better finish it up.
Verse 13, Then she called the name of
the Lord who spoke to her, Thou art
a God who sees.
For she said, Have I even remained alive
here after seeing him?
We'll say a little bit more about that
later on.
That expression is capable of a double, or
perhaps triple meaning, too.
Therefore the well was called Bir Lahai Roi.
Behold, it is between Kadesh and Bered.
So Hagar bore Abram a son, and Abram
called the name of his son whom Hagar
bore Ishmael.
And Abram was eighty-six years old when
Hagar bore Ishmael to him.
That's eleven years after he entered the land
with the promises.
May the Lord bless this reading of his
word.
Our subject this morning in the exposition of
the sixteenth chapter of the book of Genesis
is Ishmael, the product of doing God's will
in the power of the flesh.
The experiences of Abram, the father of the
faithful, are similar to those of the children.
He dwells on the mountaintops where it is
fresh.
The air is bracing and exhilarating.
Heaven is near enough to be touched, it
would seem.
But then he dwells also in the valleys
where the air is heavy and confining, and
the mountains seem far away.
It's when one is in the valleys if
we may use that illustration, that the life
of faith becomes difficult and demanding.
Abram's life was not like a roller coaster,
but nevertheless it was one of peaks and
valleys and, as we would put it, he
had his ups and downs.
That in itself is illustrative.
It indicates to us that the true Christian
life is not a life of constant advance,
of constant success, and we must not in
our affirmation of the perseverance of the saints
interpret that to mean that their life is
one continuing road of progress in grace and
in the knowledge of the Lord Jesus Christ.
In chapters 13, 14, and 15, Abram has
spent his time in the upland meadows, but
now he stumbles again and slips down the
side of the hill to the lower levels
of life.
The occasion, the historical occasion of his misstep
was Sarah's reasoned and reasonable suggestion that after
ten years he take her maid and produce
the seed through her.
In some respects we might think that Sarah's
suggestion was a very selfless suggestion.
No wife would ever want to make a
decision like this.
And so it is a reflection of the
faith that she had in the promise of
God.
She believed that God intended for Abram to
have a seed, and consequently we must give
her her credit, where credit is to some
extent due, that it was a selfless decision
in some ways.
But nevertheless it was a wrong decision, and
that is very plain from the teaching that
we have had up to this point on
the subject of marriage.
God had said to Adam, it is not
good for the man to be alone, I
will make him a helper.
Not helpers, but a helper.
And then he had also said at the
conclusion of that paragraph, for this cause a
man shall leave his father and mother and
shall cleave to his wife, not wives, and
they too, not three or four, shall be
one flesh.
So while we are sympathetic with what was
going on in Sarah's mind, to some extent
we must admit that it was wrong.
It was clearly, so far as we can
tell, contrary to the word of God.
Now Abram capitulated to female pressure, and of
course we men, we all have sympathy with
that.
We can understand how he capitulated.
The text says, Abram listened to the voice
of Sarah, and the interesting thing about it
is that that's the precise expression that was
used of Adam in the Garden of Eden.
He listened to the voice of Eve, and
he fell.
And so Abram repeats the mistake, so he
capitulated to female pressure.
He also shirked the responsibility for his action,
for those words in verse 6 seemed to
me to be something of a shirking of
responsibility.
It is true that he was speaking truth,
that is, that Hagar was under the authority
of Sarah.
But he seems to want to wash his
hands of the responsibilities himself, and so he
says, Behold, your maid is in your power,
do to her what is good in your
sight.
But the fundamental error of Abram is that
he rested, and Sarah, is that they rested
upon human reason and human effort.
That's the basic error at the heart of
legalism.
It's not surprising, then, that the Apostle Paul
in the Epistle to the Galatians draws upon
this incident in the fourth chapter.
It speaks of Ishmael as the son that
was born according to the flesh.
And the Apostle uses this as an illustration,
this experience in the one later on in
chapter 21, as an illustration of how those
who seek to gain acceptance before God by
the things that they do shall not inherit
the blessing of God.
So Ishmael is born according to the flesh,
and the son of the bondwoman shall not
inherit with the son of the free, Paul
says.
So fundamentally, then, this was a turning to
human reason and human effort, and of course
God must condemn that.
Works, human works, have no value in themselves
before God.
What emerges, then, illustrates the fact that God
will fulfill his Word in his own way.
He will not fulfill his Word in our
way.
He will fulfill his Word, but he will
also fulfill his Word in his way.
That is important.
All human efforts and human schemes are rejected.
So the promised seed's birth, who turns out
to be Isaac, must be seen to be
a divine miracle, traceable to God's will and
to God's power.
And that's what Paul does as he expounds
this in Romans chapter 7.
He says that Isaac is the seed who
was born according to promise, and it is
this that glorifies God.
So it's not only vain and foolish, but
sinful to help God out.
God helps those who help themselves.
You hear even Christians say, but that's the
voice of human reason.
That's the voice of an idea that is
contrary to the Word of God.
If we have to have some kind of
rule like that, and I don't know why
we have to have it, we would say
God helps those who cannot help themselves, but
who turn to him for help.
He does not help those who help themselves.
He will not share his glory with anybody.
And he will not share his glory in
the birth of Isaac with Abram, Sarah, or
Hagar.
The conception of Ishmael is described in the
first six verses of the sixteenth chapter.
Abram has been in the land now for
ten years.
He had entered the land with the promises
in his hands.
Everything seemed lovely as he came into the
land.
But now ten years have elapsed.
He still has the promises.
They have been confirmed, but he does not
have any seed.
It was, of course, a very reproachful thing
for a woman and a man in those
days to be barren of children.
And to be barren of children was regarded
as a reproach from the Lord.
You will notice that Sarah expresses her ideas
in tones of the knowledge of the doctrine
of the sovereignty of God.
She says, Now behold, the Lord has prevented
me from bearing children.
She realized that ultimately this inability to give
birth to a child was traceable to the
will of God.
So we could say that Sarah adheres to
the doctrine of the decretive will of God.
But evidently, she feeling the shame of barrenness
is the first to weaken.
Now this act is softened by several things,
and I don't want to overly criticize Sarah,
but criticize her as the text of Scripture
seems to justify.
In the first place, this practice of giving
one's maid to one's husband was not an
unknown thing.
We will later have it in the thirtieth
chapter of the book of Genesis when Rachel
does the same thing with Bilhah, her maid,
in giving her to Jacob.
And so the idea was known in biblical
language and experience in history, but it was
also illustrated in several of the sources from
outside of the biblical literature.
So it was a sanctioned practice.
It was an evidence of some selflessness on
her part, a belief in the seed, and
a willingness to sacrifice her own relationship to
Abram by introducing a third party.
And then I think there's something else we
should bear in mind, because I don't want
to criticize her too much.
Remember that while the Bible has up to
this point stated that Abram is to be
the father of a seed, it has not
been stated clearly that Sarah was to be
the mother of that seed.
Now in the fifteenth chapter, when Abram is
disturbed about Eliezer inheriting, God had said in
the fourth verse, this man will not be
your heir, but one who shall come forth
from your own body shall be your heir.
But He does not say from your own
body and from Sarah's own body, but from
your own body.
So, so far as the revelation at that
point was, Sarah might well have said, God
has not said that the seed would come
from me.
He has said the seed shall come from
you, Abram.
And so why can we not fulfill the
word of God by having Hagar be the
mother and you the father?
I'm sure that there was quite a bit
of talk about who was barren, was it
Sarah or Abram?
And from this we learn that at this
time it was Sarah who was barren.
So in spite of these things, we must
nevertheless point out that this was wrong.
It was due ultimately to an inability to
see that God fulfills His word, even when
natural means may have to be bypassed in
order for it to be fulfilled.
Sarah could only think that God could fulfill
His word by natural means.
And so she resorts to this activity of
the flesh.
Now this principle, I want to stop for
just a moment and make an application or
two, because this principle is a very important
principle in biblical truth.
It has application to so much of the
life and work of a local church and
so much of the life and work of
an individual, an individual believer in the Lord
Jesus Christ.
Let's just take evangelism as a beginning.
We preach the gospel of the Lord Jesus
Christ and we are convinced that the Holy
Spirit brings men to Christ.
There are hardly an evangelist traveling around the
country who wouldn't agree to that statement, that
it is God who saves souls.
But oh how we have developed all kinds
of human means in order to expedite the
decision-making process.
And so we have long, lengthy, emotional appeals.
We have appeals to raise hands in meetings.
We have appeals to come down front.
We have appeals to pray through.
We have appeals to sign decision cards.
Evangelism is conducted as if God saves and
we also are the ones who bring them
to Christ in that secondary sense.
We are not willing really to practice what
we preach, that is that God saves men
through his word.
We're not willing to preach his word and
allow the Holy Spirit to bring men to
Christ.
That's one application of the principle.
It has its application also in Christian giving.
Many of our Christian institutions, many of our
Christian churches believe that it is God that
supplies the needs of the saints.
But we are exposed to pledge systems, constant
appeals from the pulpit.
We are urged to give.
We are exhorted to give.
We are often hit over the head if
we don't give.
We are embarrassed if we don't give.
All kinds of schemes have been originated in
order to gain, get men to give to
the work of the Lord.
Now so far as I can tell from
the word of God there is no justification
whatsoever for any one of the Lord's people
ever asking for money for himself and the
Lord's work.
It is possible to ask for money for
others as the apostle did for the poor
in Jerusalem.
But that's not like asking money when you
yourself are to benefit from it.
Scripture teaches that God will supply the needs
of his saints and he will support work
that he calls into existence.
And consequently if he calls a work into
existence he will support it.
And if he stops supporting it, it may
well be that he is, he has finished
with the use that he intended to make
of that particular work.
And there is no embarrassment about closing doors
and closing the shop if God has withheld
funds.
We believe, I'm speaking for the elders, we
believe in Believer's Chapel that the Lord's work
is supported by the Lord's people.
And consequently we believe that if we will
do the work of the Lord and preach
the gospel without equivocation, we'll preach it firmly
and definitely and without apology.
We'll preach it as much like the apostles
as is possible and attract to ourselves all
of the reproach and contumely that the apostles
did.
We'll preach the hard things as well as
the easy things and we believe that if
that is so, if that's God's will, he
will bring people to the support of that
ministry.
People who like to have the word of
God proclaimed and who want it proclaimed in
a forthright way.
And if we preach the cross of Christ,
God will supply the funds.
And of course that is what has happened.
You have been responsive to it.
You have responded to the ministry of the
word.
You have supported the word.
We do not pass any collection plates in
Believer's Chapel because we do not feel that
those of you who are not believers yet
should be asked to contribute to the Lord's
work.
He supports his own work.
And you have responded.
And our needs have been met.
And we feel it's our responsibility to preach
and that you will respond as the Holy
Spirit works in your heart.
We will not rely upon fleshly appeals.
We will not urge you to give.
We will not put pressure on you to
give.
We expect you to respond in gratitude for
what Christ has done.
And so far as the present elders are
concerned, they want to continue that policy until
our Lord comes.
We would like for this to be a
testimony to the grace of God.
You support the radio ministry.
There are many thousands of dollars that go
into the radio ministry.
There are many thousands of dollars that go
into the tape ministry.
It is not self-supporting.
You support it.
You who give.
This ministry is your ministry because you have
responded to the giving.
And you have given out of gratitude, without
pressure.
And we intend to keep it that way.
We feel that when you lean on the
arm of the flesh, the glory is a
divided glory.
It is partly the Lord's and it is
partly ours.
And he does not like to share his
glory with us.
He wants the full amount of the glory
for himself.
So we shall continue to do that as
long as God's people respond.
If they don't respond, we don't blame them.
It may be he's going to do something
else.
And we'll close the doors.
We won't feel bad.
God has worked.
He has supplied needs.
He has accomplished a spiritual work.
He doesn't always work through any particular agency.
He's not limited to us, unfortunately.
So, you know this principle applies in family
life too.
How often has a father become a Christian
and then resorted to all kinds of schemes
and devices in order to put pressure upon
his wife to believe?
How often has a wife been converted and
then has engaged in all kinds of schemes
and devices in order to trap a husband
into believing, rather than relying upon the same
power that brought that individual to the knowledge
of the law of Jesus Christ?
There was a woman in Dallas some years
ago, a very good friend of mine, and
still is a good friend of mine.
She doesn't live here any longer.
And she has learned the lesson that she
had not learned at this time when she
was a very young Christian.
She had become a Christian and she was
a very strong character anyway.
And she was so anxious to have her
husband become a Christian that she tried every
scheme that was possible.
She invited every Bible teacher over for supper,
hoping that the Bible teacher would engage her
husband in conversation and lead him to the
Lord.
She had all kinds of schemes.
I remember one in particular.
She thought, if I could just get Bob
Thieme, who was coming to town, Bob Thieme
would be able to convert her husband.
And so Bob was coming to stay at
my house and so she called over and
she said, Lewis, I hear Bob's coming to
town and if I could just get him
over to the house for supper, I just
feel that he might be the instrumentality.
Well, of course, that's fine.
Perhaps Bob would be the instrumentality.
So we arranged the meal and we sat
down to eat.
And she spoke, I would imagine 75%
of the conversation was carried on by her.
And when we left that night about two
hours and a half later, Bob turned to
me and said, anybody could see why he's
not a Christian.
The problem was with her.
She was scheming and inventing devices and pressuring
her husband and no wonder that she was
having no response.
This principle is, I say, a tremendously important
principle.
God fulfills his promises, but he also fulfills
his promises in his own way and in
his own time.
Remember that, in his own time.
Well, the act is described in a delicate
euphemism.
Abram went in to Hagar and she conceived
and the results that follow seemed to be
successful.
I would imagine that there was some basis
for Sarah saying to Abram, well, the plan
is working handsomely because Hagar is pregnant.
But she overlooked one significant thing.
The plan seemed to be working handsomely and
incidentally.
That too is an illustration of how so
many immature people look at the Lord's work
in various places and some work that's not
the Lord's but goes under the banner of
the Lord.
And they look at the size of the
buildings and sometimes the size of the congregation
and the membership and they say, God must
be blessing that work.
Not so.
It may have appeared that the Lord was
blessing the union because here is a child
on the way.
But polygamy has now taken place.
The mother of envy, the mother of jealousy,
the mother of strife.
And now that polygamy has reared its head,
all kinds of evil consequences shall come.
The baser elements in men are unleashed by
this act.
And you can see them in Sarah, in
Hagar, and also in Abram.
There was sorrow for Hagar.
I can imagine that when she became pregnant,
she thought in her heart, Sarah speaks about
being sorry for Hagar.
She's such a spiritual Christian.
She acts as if she's a great believer
in this Jehovah, her God.
But she has been prevented from having children.
That's an evidence of God's lack of blessing
upon her.
And now I have become pregnant.
That's the evidence of God's blessing upon me.
Evidently Sarah's a hypocrite.
She acts as if she knows this God
but she doesn't because He is punishing her
by not giving her children.
And so the creation of false pride in
the heart of Hagar by this incident is
illustrated.
There was sorrow to Sarah because she had
to drink the dregs of this bitter cup
of gall that this maid of hers is
now the mother of the child, or to
be the mother of the child of her
husband.
And so she breaks out in irrational blame
of Abraham.
May the wrong done me be upon you.
I gave my maid into your arms but
when she saw that she had conceived, I
was despised in her sight.
It was Sarah's suggestion.
But she wants now to throw the blame
upon her husband.
And finally there was resultant sorrow for Abram.
There is a false rejection of responsibility and
no doubt stung by Sarah's bitterness.
It introduced an element into their relationship that
was not good.
Furthermore he later became attached to his son
Ishmael and it was difficult for him to
obey God when God said ultimately to send
Ishmael away.
So you see the difficulties that arise from
our failure to follow God's will follow us
after the decisions are made.
You know the difficulties of the Christian life
are not really the things that come to
us by working of divine providence.
The tragedies of life are very difficult.
The experiences through which we go that God
has put in our lives by his providential
arrangement of circumstances, they are not easy to
confront.
Most of you in this auditorium have had
some experiences that are not good.
You've had some tragedies in your life.
You've lost some loved ones.
It's not easy.
But let me say this, that the difficulties
of the life of a Christian are most
frequently the difficulties that result from the persistent
manifestation of the flesh or self-life of
the believer.
The difficulties that arise in our lives are
most frequently the products of the sin principle
within us.
When men think or boast that having become
a believer in Jesus Christ that the sin
principle is thereby dying or dead as some
would have it, why it peeps out in
their very assertions of their sinlessness.
It's well to remember that.
Now Hagar has an encounter with the angel
of the Lord.
She's been driven out from the presence of
Sarah and Abram by harsh treatment.
How often the angel of the Lord finds
us in our extremity.
And even Hagar, who has been guilty of
this relationship, is found by the angel of
the Lord.
And those two questions that he asks are
so, such fundamental questions of life that it's
almost as if they form a kind of
text that you could extract from this passage
and preach on it apart from the context
in which it is found.
Where have you come from and where are
you going?
It's a good question to ask everyone in
the audience.
Where have you come from?
Where are you going?
But of course this was an attempt on
the part of the angel of the Lord
to bring Hagar to her senses to realize
what has happened.
And so he addresses them to her.
He is interested in her and the Lord
will even turn this incident into a source
of blessing for her in the promises that
he will give to her.
Who is this angel of the Lord?
Well I want you to look at verse
7 and listen as I just read these
words.
Now the angel of the Lord.
Verse 9.
Then the angel of the Lord.
Verse 10.
Moreover the angel of the Lord.
Verse 11.
The angel of the Lord.
And then verse 13.
Then she called the name of the Lord.
Not the angel of the Lord.
The Lord who spoke to her.
Thou art a God who sees.
You see the angel of the Lord is
another of the pre-incarnate appearances of our
Lord.
Jesus Christ.
We call them theophanies.
Appearances of God.
And here is an appearance of our Lord
Jesus Christ.
Why?
Why do we have this series of appearances
of the Lord in the Old Testament?
Well to prepare Israel for the incarnation.
When in the manger in Bethlehem there would
be a babe that would be born who
would be no newcomer to this human scene.
But one who had down through the years
come forth as Micah says for ministry to
the nation Israel.
So that they would not be able to
say our God is one Lord only and
not a Trinitarian God.
Christians believe that God is one.
But they believe he subsists in three persons.
And this was designed to prepare Israel for
the coming of the Messiah.
Now the angel gives comfort to Hagar.
It's a three-fold comfort.
He promises her first a vast number of
descendants.
We read in verse 10.
I will greatly multiply your descendants so that
they will be too many to count.
And so out of Ishmael shall come a
great number of people.
A vast nation.
Out of Isaac shall also come a vast
nation.
But out of Ishmael shall also come this
vast number of descendants.
But there is an important difference between them.
In the case of Isaac.
In Isaac shall thy seed be called.
And from Isaac there shall come spiritual blessing
that shall affect all the families of the
earth.
But no such blessing is promised to Hagar
and to her seed.
A numerous number, a numerous body of descendants.
But no spiritual blessing is set forth.
She's promised a son secondly.
But she's also promised that the son is
going to be a wild donkey of a
man.
What a strange expression.
The reference is to the beautiful swift Onaga.
The wild ass.
That when it is grown is so wild
that it can hardly be captured at all.
Job writes about the wild ass in the
39th chapter of his book and describes him
in very beautiful language.
And Ishmael is to be a wild ass
of a man.
Very suggestive of the life of the Bedouin
down through the centuries.
And of course this is at the root
of the present conflict today.
The conflict down the centuries between the Arabs
who trace their descendants, their origin back to
Ishmael and also the Israelis.
So that today the Israeli Arab conflict is
traceable to this act of Sarah in which
appealing to human flesh and the activity of
human reason, she suggested to Abram that Hagar
be the mother of the seed.
Oh the results of our acts of sin.
Now finally the consequences of the divine encounter
are expressed in verses 13 and 14.
Then she called the name of the Lord
who spoke to her, thou art a God
who sees.
Now the Hebrew expression may be thou art
a God who sees may mean a to
see in the sense of care for.
Thou art a God who sees in the
sense that thou art a God who cares
for individuals because God has interrupted her in
the midst of her journey back to Egypt
and has told her to go back and
return and submit.
He cares for her and he has given
her great promises here.
That may be the meaning.
Or it may be, and I prefer this,
thou art a God of seeing or a
God of vision.
That is, he is a God who is
a visible God.
And furthermore he is a God who manifests
himself.
She goes on to say, have I even
remained alive here after seeing him?
The meaning of that clause incidentally is simply
this.
She knew that if she were to look
upon the face of God she would die.
That was well known.
And so she said, have I even remained
alive here after seeing him?
She is startled to realize that she has
looked upon the face of God and she's
still living.
She doesn't yet know the difference between looking
upon God in his essential being and looking
upon that manifestation of God in the angel
of Jehovah.
The difference between looking upon God in his
essential being and looking upon the face of
Jesus Christ who is God.
Or it may mean, as I have suggested
to you, it's more preferable to me, from
the Hebrew text, have I even seen here
after the one who saw me?
And so she was evidently in the presence
of this being, the angel of Jehovah, and
she averted her eyes evidently because of the
glory of his presence.
Did not look into his face fearful of
that.
But as he moved away she looked after
him and she saw, to put it in
the language of Moses' experience of God, she
saw the back parts of the angel of
Jehovah.
Have I even seen after the one who
has seen me?
I think that is what is involved in
this because it does agree with the later
experience of Moses who said, show me thy
glory.
And God said, I cannot show you my
glory directly Moses, but I will hide you
in the cleft of the rock and I
will let you look at me as I
pass by.
And the text of scripture says that Moses
was hidden there as God passed by, but
he did, was unable to look at the
back parts of Jehovah as he went by.
And evidently this is the same kind of
experience.
So what she has learned then is that
this God, the angel of Jehovah, is a
visible God and he is a self-manifesting
God.
Well that was tremendously important of course because
she was an Egyptian and she thought of
God as being like those blind Egyptian idols
that stare with stony gaze out over the
desert like the sphinx.
But the God now that she's come in
contact with, she learns is a different kind
of God.
He's a living God.
He's a God that you can see and
he's a God who sees you and cares
for you.
So he has blessed Hagar with an experience
and an experience that she told when she
came back because Abram named the child Ishmael.
God hears.
God has heard.
Well the chapter concludes with some results, a
description of the results of the union.
The son is born.
He is named.
Abram obeys the word of God, names him
Ishmael, formally acknowledges him as his son, and
also due to the natural relationship between a
father and a son, he hopes, he hopes
that this is perhaps the seed that God
has promised.
And later on he has a little difficulty
because he thought so much of his son
Ishmael.
Still no heir after eleven years.
You have need of patience, the writer of
the epistle of the Hebrews says, after that
having done the will of God you might
receive the promise.
So Abram still waits.
He has the promise of God, but he
still must wait.
Well there are lots of lessons here.
I don't have time to speak of them.
Let me just, just enumerate some of them.
We find here a beautiful illustration of the
fact that we are often most susceptible to
temptation after the experience of great privilege.
Abram has had the great privilege of observing
the ratification of the unconditional covenant and it
is right then that perhaps basking in the
blessing of God, he was most susceptible to
weakness, the temptation.
And isn't it interesting too that the strongest
temptations often come to us from the least
expected quarters.
Abram must have thought, well I better look
to those kings of the east, they're liable
to come back.
But actually the great temptation came from his
own wife, the one closest to his bosom,
Sarah.
That doesn't mean men be suspicious of your
wives and wives be suspicious of your husbands,
but it does mean that the test might
come from them.
It also illustrates that crooked ways lead to
evil results always, inevitably.
Those missteps lead to bad consequences.
Perhaps the most important lesson though is the
peril of doing God's will in the power
of the flesh.
And what happens then is that we become
devoted to our own interpretation of our own
destiny.
We seek, we think that we can work
out our own destiny in a way that
will be pleasing to the Lord.
You cannot do that.
You must be submissive.
You must be willing by the grace of
God to submit to his interpretation of your
destiny.
You must be willing to accept what comes
to you as from him.
And you must look for him in those
circumstances to accomplish his perfect will for you.
Ishmael, Sarai, is a lot of disobedience.
The crop of nettles is still troubling Israel
even to this day.
But it also is a beautiful revelation of
the tenderness of the Lord in dealing with
sinners, in the angel's capture of Hagar and
bringing her back to the family of Sarah
and Abram.
If you're here this morning and you have
never believed in the Lord Jesus Christ, we're
not really speaking directly to you.
Your need is personal trust in Jesus Christ,
a recognition of your sin, a recognition of
the need of repentance and faith accomplished only
by the power of the Holy Spirit, and
then that reliance upon him that brings life.
For believers, may God help us not to
lean on the arm of the flesh in
the expectation experiences of our Christian life, but
to lean on the arm of our great
sovereign Lord, waiting for him to accomplish his
will in his own way, in his own
time.
Let's stand for the benediction.
We are thankful to thee, Lord, for these
ancient illustrations of important spiritual truths.
Deliver us from trust in the arm of
the flesh.
Why should we appeal to men when we
have the mighty God to lean upon?
O Father, we magnify thy name.
By thy wonderful grace, draw us to thyself.
Bring us to yielding to thee and to
leaning upon thee.
And if there should be some here who
have not come to know Christ yet, give
them no rest nor peace until they rest
in him who loved them and gave himself
for sinners.
This we pray in Jesus' name.
Amen.