God Sees and God Cares

October 6, 2024 Speaker: Ben Janssen Series: Genesis Part 2: Abraham and the Blessing of Living by Faith

Topic: Freedom, Justice Scripture: Genesis 16:1–16

‌Our text this morning involves an incident within Abram’s family life, similar to the conflict between him and Lot told in Genesis 13. This the 7th of only 19 narratives we have about the life of Abraham. Why is this story told? What is the narrator wanting to teach us through it?

Let’s remember to situate the stories within the framework of the promise God made to Abram in chapter 12. God promised blessings to Abram and then promised blessings through Abram to the nations. Last week, we saw God formalizing these promises in a covenant. So, with Abram, we are eager to see how God will bring these covenant promises to fulfillment. And quite naturally, with Abram, it is that first part of the promise—the blessing to Abram—that we expect to be fulfilled before we can be much concerned with how the second part will be fulfilled.[1]

So, how is God going to bless Abram? God’s promise to Abram, in the previous chapter, is that his reward would be very great (Gen 15:1). Now, what would this promise mean to you? What “reward” would you be wanting to receive? We see in Abram’s response what he was expecting. “O Lord GOD, what will you give me, for I continue childless.” Abram’s concern is for his posterity, especially since God has already promised him three times that he would have a multitude of descendants (Gen 12:2, 7; 13:16). What has gripped Abram is the hope that this God will turn Abram and his descendants into the mediators of God’s saving reign over the entire world. That, Paul says in Galatians 3:8, is the gospel that was preached to Abram. Whatever else might be of interest and concern to Abram, this is the primary concern.

But the clock is ticking, the biological clock that is. And the story we find here is quite a tragic story, here to show us that when we lose faith in God and his promises, we end up colluding with evil and promoting injustice in the world. This story teaches us about the reason for injustice, God’s recognition of it, and his resolve to do something about it.

The Reason for Injustice

First, the reason for injustice. There are three scenes in this story. This first scene is in verses 1-6.

‌A Real Problem and a Common Solution

This first scene begins with a reminder that “Sarai, Abram’s wife, had borne him no children.” We were first told this all the way back in Genesis 11:30: Sarai was barren. Infertility continues to bring grief to countless women and their husbands to this day, and this is a story that has a message for such dear people. To be infertile in the ancient world was a serious matter. To be left without an heir was a shame for a man; to be unable to conceive was a total life failure for a woman.[2] In our story, the childlessness of Abram and Sarai is also a concern for God since he has specifically made a promise to them that involves having a child.

So, we need to understand that what Sarai and Abram do next is a reasonable solution to their dilemma. “Go in to my servant,” Sarai says to Abram, “it may be that I shall obtain children by her” (v. 2). Sarai is suggesting that perhaps God will fulfill his promise to them by surrogacy.

‌‌“And Abram listened to the voice of Sarai,” we are told. And though verse 4 is morally unacceptable to our ears, the point is that in the ancient world this was common practice. Nothing unusual. “Given the social mores of the ancient Near East, Sarai’s suggestion was a perfectly proper and respectable course of action.”[3]

Another Fall Account

But the narrator would clearly want us to see that though this plan may have been acceptable to society in that day, something is desperately wrong here.

The negative perception on the whole narrative is not first detected by what happens in verses 4-6, but by the way the narrator has told the story in verses 2-3. We are told at the end of verse 2, “And Abram listened to the voice of Sarai,” a phrase that occurs only here and in Genesis 3:17 which reads, “Because you have listened to the voice of your wife.” In verse 3, the sequence, “Sarai, Abram’s wife, took Hagar . . . and gave her to Abram, her husband” sounds just like Genesis 3:6 where we are told of Adam’s wife who took the fruit and gave it to her husband.” In other words, the narrator would have us see here another “fall account” similar to the one in Genesis 3.[4]

Why did Eve eat the fruit? Because “it was good for food” and “a delight to the eyes” we are told, but also because it “was to be desired to make one wise” (Gen 3:6). Does God not want Eve to have wisdom? Of course he does! But Eve’s transgression was “the acquisition of wisdom independently of God.”[5]

What is going on here with Sarai? Does God not want her to have a child? Of course he does! That is what he has promised. But what she says in verse 2 is telling. The verse literally says, “Perhaps I will be built up by her.”

Sarai is mostly concerned with her own reputation and status than with God’s great promise. And so she has become impatient, and impatience with God and what he has promised is not all that different from unbelief with God’s promises. And that is a fundamental reason why there is so much injustice in the world.

It's not just when we want something other than what God wants. It’s more subtle than that. It’s when we want what God wants but on our own terms, in our own timing, and for our own selfish ends.

Look, what we want—what everyone wants, in fact—is the kingdom of God. The rule and reign of a righteous and utterly just and loving God? Who wouldn’t want that?

Only those who want to be God themselves. And that’s what we are doing when we try to bring about the kingdom of God in our own way. So stop and think for a moment, brothers and sisters. What is it we want for our families, for our communities, for our nation, and for the world? If it is “the kingdom of God” then we must be patient, and we must be consistent, we must see it come God’s way and not settle for the temptation of immediate gratification and comfort.

Chaos Results

The results of Sarai and Abram’s actions are what concern most of the rest of the chapter. But verses 4-6 show us the same kind of result that we saw in Adam and Eve’s sin in Genesis 3. In verse 4, we are told that Hagar conceived, as planned. But when Hagar saw “that she had conceived, she looked with contempt on her mistress.” Other translations here read, “She began to despise her mistress” (NIV) or even “she treated her mistress with contempt” (HCSB). The relationship between the two women has begun to change, though the narrator is subtle in how so. It seems that the slave girl has come to see herself more of an equal to Sarai, now that she is carrying her husband’s child.

‌But Sarai’s response to this is to blame Abram. “May the wrong done to me be on you!” (v. 5). She claims she has been wronged, that violence has been done to her. The word translated “contempt” is from the same root word in Genesis 12:3, warning anyone who dishonors Abram that they will be cursed. Sarai’s concern is more than just social. Given the promise to Abram in chapter 12, Sarai is concerned that she will now be left out of the promise. Her plan has gone terribly wrong, and she is desperate to find a solution to the disaster.

‌What is to be done now? All eyes are on Abram, the patriarch. “Behold, your servant is in your power; do to her as you please.” Here, he affirms Sarai’s place in the household, and directs here to “do to her as you please.” The phrase is literally, “Do to her what is right in your eyes.” The problem is, what is right in Sarai’s eyes is not what is right. “Then Sarai dealt harshly with her, and she fled from her.” This is a chaotic mess. As Gordon Wenham states, “‌Thus the first scene ends in total disaster for all concerned. Hagar has lost her home, Sarai her maid, and Abram his second wife and newborn child.”[6]

The Recognition of Injustice

When we find ourselves in “total disaster” we often wonder, “Where is God? Does he care?” The next scene, verses 7-14, are designed to answer that question with a resounding, “Yes!” God does see. God recognizes injustice.

God Finds Hagar

Verse 7 tells us that Hagar is “by a spring of water in the wilderness, the spring on the way to Shur.” She appears to be on her way home; she’s heading back to Egypt. It seems likely that Hagar was part of the payment Pharaoh had made to Abram in that tragic story in Genesis 12, the last time we were told anything about Sarai. It seems reasonable to assume that she was once owned by Pharaoh but had now been living as a slave of Sarai. Now she’s running away from Sarai and going back to the life she had previously. That’s where we find her. Well, that’s where “the angel of the LORD found her.”

‌The angel of the Lord? This is the first time such a character is mentioned in the Old Testament, and his precise identity is a mystery. It seems as if Hagar sees nothing unique about him at first, and we should assume that his appearance here is just like any normal human being. But the narrator has at least told us that this person is an authorized messenger of the God of Israel. What he will say to Hagar is to be understood as what God is saying to her.

‌Indeed, by the time we get to verse 13, both the narrator and Hagar herself can speak of this messenger as if he is the God of Israel. Here, and throughout the Old Testament, where the angel of the Lord is mentioned around 50 times, it remains a puzzle precisely how he is related to God.[7] It is of course a traditional Christian interpretation that the angel of the Lord is a Christophany, a preincarnate appearance of the second person of the Trinity. At the very least we can suggest that such a figure as the angel of the Lord prepares us for a category we might otherwise not anticipate, someone who is a “visible manifestation” of God and “essentially indistinguishable from God”: “more a representation of God than a representative of God.”[8]

So, although the precise identity of the angel of the LORD remains a mystery, one important point in verse 7 is straightforward. Here in the story when we might begin to wonder if God is anywhere around, we are told that it is God who finds Hagar. She didn’t find him; he found her.

God Questions Hagar

The angel of the LORD says four things to Hagar. The first is in verse 8, where he addresses Hagar by name, calling her the “servant of Sarai.” He knows who she is, surprisingly, but then he asks her where she has come from and where she is going. If he knows who she is, might he also know the answer to his own question? It makes us think that this question is more for her benefit than for his. God arrests Hagar with this question, giving her a moment to reflect upon her actions here and whether she is making the best choice.‌

It is clear she doesn’t have a plan. She knows where she has come from, but she doesn’t know where she is going. I mean, I’m sure she was heading back to Egypt, but what will she do when she gets there? Will she, by running away from Sarai, find the freedom she is seeking?

God Directs Hagar

The second thing the angel of the Lord says to Hagar is in verse 9. “Return to your mistress and submit to her.” This is counterintuitive, perhaps even dangerous. The command to “submit to her” employs the same root word that describes Sarai’s harshness toward her back in verse 6. Rather than trying to win her freedom by running away from Sarai, the angel is directing her back to the oppressive life of being a slave to Sarai.[9]

It needs to be said here that it is a horrible mistake of exegesis and pastoral wisdom to think that Genesis 16:9 requires anyone to go back and submit to an abusive relationship of any kind. What the angel of the Lord here says to Hagar is not what God has said to everyone. If you are in an abusive situation, you need to talk to a wise friend, counselor, or pastor and get some help. Similarly, this story cannot be used to prove that the Bible condones human slavery of any type. What it does show is that God is involved with his people and his world in the real-life conditions in which they find themselves. God finds us where we are.

Still we have to wonder: why would God send Hagar back to Sarai? ‌

God Promises Hagar

That takes us to the third thing the angel says to her, in verse 10. He makes her a promise. “I will surely multiply your offspring so that they cannot be numbered for multitude.” This sounds like the promise made to Abram in Genesis 15:5, the blessing that has motivated his life of faith. And so, Hagar, in spite of the risk she is being asked to take to return to her life of slavery, is told the same thing Abram has been told, that the life of faith, with all its risks and real-life experiences, including the experience of suffering and injustice, will result in the desired blessings. In returning to the faith family, Hagar will be in on the Abrahamic promise.[10]

And so it is to this day. The family of faith, the church of Jesus Christ, is the place where God “has commanded the blessing, life forevermore” (Psa 133:3). No, the church is not perfect, but her Lord is, and the church is his temple. It is where he dwells. It is where he is powerfully at work.

The Resolution Against Injustice

‌God has signaled to Hagar, and to all of us, that he is here, that he is with us, that he has resolved to set right all wrongs. This story in Genesis 16 demonstrates God’s resolution against injustice.

The God Who Sees

The angel’s fourth statement to Hagar comes in verses 11-12. She will have a son, she will name him Ishmael, “because the LORD has listened to your affliction.” (The name Ishmael means “God hears.”)

Verse 12 looks even further into the future and describes the kind of life that Ishmael and his descendants will lead. It is a prophetic word that is explicitly fulfilled by the statement in Genesis 25:18, and while it is “a somewhat ambiguous blessing” what it does promise is “the untamed power . . . of the future Ishmaelites to thrive under” extreme conditions.[11] What God promises to Hagar is that “the freedom she sought would be realized in her son one day.”[12]

And her response in verses 13-14 demonstrates that she is overwhelmed by God’s grace. She says of this God who found her, “You are El Roi,” a God who sees. And in the Bible, whenever God sees, he cares.[13] He sees this lowly Egyptian slave fleeing for her life, and he cares. The first readers of Genesis would remember how God saw their affliction in Egypt and redeemed them from slavery. And you and I ought to remember how God found us, “dead in the trespasses and sins” in which we lived, and resolved to make “us alive together with Christ” (Eph 2:1-6).

Abram’s Son

The final scene of this story is short, the last two verses, and there may not look like there’s much to it. But what is striking is that Sarai is not mentioned one time. Hagar’s worst fear about going back has been settled, as God had promised her.

Sarai had planned for any child of Hagar to be her child, but the story refuses to recognize those plans. Not a single mention of Sarai here.[14] But there are three references to the fact that Ishmael was indeed Abram’s son and, given the promise to him, we wonder at this moment if Ishmael perhaps will be the long-awaited son of Abram through whom blessing will come to the world.

Blessing to the World

Indeed, the last verse of chapter 16, coupled with the first verse of chapter 17, both noting Abram’s age, set the stage for this world-wide expectation. Finally, Abram has a son. It must be time for the blessing to Abram to become a blessing through Abram for the whole world. God is always up to more than just our own individual blessing.

I am reminded of this when I see in the words that God says to Hagar in verse 11 a similarity to what he said to Mary many years later. “Behold, you will conceive . . . and bear a son, and you shall call his name Jesus” (Lk 1:31). Why Jesus? Because “he will save his people from their sins” (Matt 1:21). Hagar, like Mary, exemplifies those who, by trusting in God’s word, not only find blessing themselves but become channels of blessing to countless others.[15]

Yes, God has resolved to do something about the injustice he sees all too well. But we must wait for him to bring injustice to its proper end. And that is the challenge of faith.

Another 13 years goes by between this chapter and the next, enough time for Abram and Sarai and probably Hagar and for you and me to once again begin to doubt if God sees and if God cares.

But there’s a well in the wilderness which testifies of “the Living One who sees” people like Hagar, forgotten and abused and unwanted, just as there’s a table of bread and wine for us this morning, reminding us of the Living One—raised from the dead in fact—who sees us, too. He sees, and he cares. So let us commit ourselves again to trust him who has promised to bring his blessing to us and through us to all the world.

_____

[1] Peter John Gentry and Stephen J. Wellum, Kingdom through Covenant: A Biblical-Theological Understanding of the Covenants, Second Edition (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2018), 315.

[2] Gordon J. Wenham, Genesis 16–50, Word Biblical Commentary, vol. 2, ed. Bruce M. Metzger, David A. Hubbard, Glenn W. Barker (Dallas: Word Books, 1994), 7.

[3]  Wenham, Genesis 16–50, 7.

[4]  Wenham, Genesis 16–50, 7–8.

[5] Kenneth. A. Mathews, Genesis 1-11:26, The New American Commentary, vol. 1A, ed. E. Ray Clendenen (Nashville: Broadman & Holman Publishers, 1996), 238.

[6] Wenham, Genesis 16–50, 9.

[7] Kenneth. A. Mathews, Genesis 11:27–50:26, The New American Commentary, vol. 1B, ed. E. Ray Clendenen (Nashville: Broadman & Holman Publishers, 2005), 188ff.

[8] Victor P. Hamilton, The Book of Genesis, Chapters 1–17, The New International Commentary on the Old Testament (Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1990), 451.

[9] Mathews, Genesis 11:27–50:26, 189.

[10] Wenham, Genesis 16–50, 10.

[11] Robert Alter, Genesis: Translation and Commentary (New York: W.W. Norton, 1997), 71.

[12] Wenham, Genesis 16–50, 10.

[13]  Wenham, Genesis 16–50, 11.

[14]  Wenham (Genesis 16–50, 11) observes that "the absence of Sarai is noteworthy.”

[15]  Wenham, Genesis 16–50, 13.

More in Genesis Part 2: Abraham and the Blessing of Living by Faith

November 24, 2024

Living to See the Day

November 17, 2024

God’s Faithfulness Is Unfazed by Death

November 10, 2024

Friends with God