And we read in verse 6, But Abram
said unto Sarah, Behold, thy maid is in
thy hand.
Do to her as it pleaseth thee.
And when Sarah dealt hardly with her, she
fled from her face.
Now she took off, she ran away.
And it would probably have meant death to
her and certainly to the child.
And so the angel of the Lord, and
again, I'm inclined to believe the angel of
the Lord here is none other than the
pre-incarnate Christ.
And it's the picture of him.
He's always out looking for the lost.
And the angel of the Lord found her
by a fountain of water in the wilderness,
by the fountain in the way of Shur.
She had gotten a pretty good ways from
home here.
And he said, Hagar, Sarah's maid, whence camest
thou?
And whither wilt thou go?
And she said, I flee from the face
of my mistress Sarah.
And the angel of the Lord said unto
her, Return to thy mistress.
Submit thyself under her hands.
And the angel of the Lord said unto
her, I will multiply thy seed exceedingly that
it shall not be numbered for multitude.
Now you find when you get to the
fourth chapter of the epistle to the Galatians
that Paul uses this as an allegory as
he tells us.
That's what it is.
And he speaks of Hagar and her offspring
as being Mount Sinai where the law was
given and the legality of it.
And the bondage of it.
And he speaks of Sarah, the one that
is free.
The thing is that the one that belonged
to Abraham actually was Sarah.
That was his wife.
And a great many today want to take
on something different.
They want to get under the law.
Well, my friend, we've been joined to Christ.
The church has been espoused to Christ.
Paul says there's a chaste virgin and will
someday be the bride of Christ.
Now, may I say to you, you don't
want to take on the law.
That's another one that you and I just
don't need.
That's like Hagar.
That's the point that Paul's making over in
Galatians here.
Now this is going to be a great
sorrow not only to Sarah, it's already that
to her, but it's going to be a
greater sorrow even to Abraham later on.