Origins: Abraham Pt 5 – God’s promises our way
Readings: Genesis 16
Video coming soon
As we continue with Abram’s story a brief reminder of where we are up to. God called Abram, calling him to leave where he was living and go to a place that God would show him. And he makes this promise: ‘I will make you into a great nation, and I will bless you; I will make your name great and you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you and whoever curses you I will curse; and all peoples on earth will be blessed through you’. It’s a wonderful promise. Various things have happened in the years since but most recently, as we heard last week, Abram was wrestling with doubts about this promise, it seemed to be taking rather a long time, particularly since Sarai can’t have children, but God has just reaffirmed his promise, assured him that his descendants will be as many as the stars in the sky, and assured him that his own descendants will inherit the land he is living in by solemn oath.
So you’d think Abram would be in a pretty secure place come the start of chapter 16, but, as we heard it really doesn’t go well. In fact whilst in the past we’ve seen Abram buckle into sin, here he really messes up. But as he and Sarai do, in the midst of the total mess they create, we see a moment of grace, as, for the first time in the Bible, someone names God, and it is the last person you’d expect.
Have you ever been tempted to take matters into your own hands? Two people seem perfect for each other but they can’t see it so you decide to set them up on a date. You want to build an extension but the processes with the council are taking far too long to get permission so you do it anyway. Such plans rarely end well do they. And we can do this with God’s promises too can’t we. God has promised that he will build his church, but it doesn’t seem to be happening very quickly and so we’ll do whatever it takes to get people in, to fill the pews, even if it compromises the Gospel. And when we try to fulfil God’s promises ourselves we often don’t quite realise the seriousness of what we are doing, we’re doing it to help God out after all, we’re doing what he said would happen just in our own way, a way that will get us there quicker. But it rarely ends well. And it’s exactly this case in the passage today.
Despite the promises, despite God’s assurance that he will come through for Abram and Sarai, our chapter begins not with his promises, but with the problem. Sarai has had no children. And so they’re thinking ‘how are we meant o become a great nation if there is not even one child?’ And, as we see in verse 3, it’s not like they’re lacking in patience, they’ve been living in this new land for a decade, it must be an agonising wait as they keep getting older. And one day Sarai sees a potential solution, she sees her slave who she’s brought from Egypt, Hagar, perhaps she can have children for Sarai.
It was not uncommon in the culture in those days for slaves to have children on behalf of their mistresses, but nowhere has God commanded them to do this or given his blessing on such an arrangement. Everyone else is doing it, Sarai thinks, this is a way forwards, but it’s not God’s way forwards. Have you ever thought like that? Everyone else is doing it, and it would get God’s promises moving quicker.
And so she suggests this idea to Abram, and rather than pushing back, once again Abram buckles, he goes with it. Once again he throws his marriage vows out of the window and sleeps with Hagar. Perhaps he reasons that the promise is to him, God never said it had to be Sarai’s child. And perhaps you can already feel the snowball gathering momentum. What Sarai suggested, perhaps in a moment of weakness or desperation, Abram has now done, he has now sinned too, committed adultery. And then Hagar becomes pregnant and begins to despise Sarai. Hagar is now in many ways Sarai’s equal, they are both wives of Abram, but Hagar is bearing him a child which Sarai can’t, Hagar has the upper hand. And now Sarai gets upset, angry even, telling Abram that this situation is all his fault. Now it was Sarai’s idea wasn’t it, but we so easily blame others when our plans go awry. But we should probably feel some sympathy for Sarai here, she’s going through a lot. And so how does Abram resolve this? He buckles again ‘do whatever you want with her’ is basically his response. How utterly cowardly, once again, perhaps, we’re questioning God’s choice of man to begin his chosen people with. Sarai treats Hagar badly, and so Hagar, quite understandably, runs away.
What started with an idea to fulfil God’s promise themselves has snowballed into adultery, contempt, jealousy, cowardice, cruelty. The road ahead may have looked golden as they chose it, but it’s turned into a complete train wreck. So it always is when we take God’s promises into our own hands and try to accomplish them by our own means.
But in the midst of all of this mess is Hagar. We don’t know whether she went along with this plan willingly, or whether she was coerced, or even forced into this situation. Here is a woman with very little power who has been put upon by those with all the power. I don’t think it’s going too far to say that in this chapter Hagar is used and abused. First in Abram taking her to bear a child, and then in being deeply mistreated by Sarai such that she feels the only way forwards is to flee. She’s not totally innocent in this situation, she has sinned against Sarai in the way she has treated her, but she has also been deeply, deeply, sinned against.
And so she flees, she maybe has nowhere to go but anywhere is better than where she is. And I can’t imagine what’s going through her head as she does. She’s pregnant, and she’s fleeing, she’ll be a single mother, she needs to find food and water and shelter for herself and for her unborn child. She’s alone in the world, pregnant and alone. It’s a terrible situation. And into this situation steps God. It’s put beautifully in many ways; the angel of the Lord found Hagar near a spring in the desert. God comes looking for her.
Now there’s much debate about the identity of the Angel of the Lord. This is his first appearance in the Bible, but he pops up from time to time. And the interesting thing you’ll see is that this angel speaks as God, makes promises in the name of God ‘I will do this’ and is sometimes worshipped as God. This is God entering the story, what theologians call a theophany, an appearance of God, an encounter with him. And many have argued that this is the Second Person of the Trinity, God the Son, pre-incarnate, before he became Jesus, here in Genesis is the one we will come to know as Jesus. It’s a compelling theory, but we’ll think more about that at Small Group on Tuesday.
Because what I want to focus on is that God comes to Hagar, he seeks her out. In her distress and worry and suffering he draws near. And he asks a question to which he already knows the answer, but wants her to speak for herself, no-one else has let her speak yet in this chapter, but God does. And she tells him she’s running away from her mistress, and surprisingly God calls her to go back. He tells her to go back to Sarai and Abram. It’s rather shocking. Why should she go back we may ask. One suggestion offered by Jonathan Griffiths is that Abram is the one to whom the promises have been given, the one who has God’s blessing. So to return is to go back to the place of God’s blessing, and to return to the safety of a home and provision.
Now what makes this such hard reading is that our minds immediately jump to women fleeing abusive partners, violent homes. And perhaps our minds rush to them and think ‘how could God send someone back’. But this passage isn’t about that, we can see echoes of their experiences here, and we’ll return to that in a moment, but what we’re not being given is an instruction for those women. God knows that in returning Hagar will be cared for, God knows that his promises are for this family and so she will receive blessing by returning. And as he gives her that instruction he also gives her a promise of her own ‘I will increase your descendants so much that they will be too numerous to count’. It echoes the promise to Abram, and perhaps not surprisingly for this child too is a child of Abram. In going back God will care for her, God will bless her. But remember this is about Hagar, and Hagar alone.
And then we hear the first annunciation of the Bible, the first announcement of the imminent birth of a child, accompanied by the name he is to be called: Ishmael which means ‘God hears’. And in response to all of this Hagar says ‘You are the God who sees me’. Not just that, she names him that: ‘El-roi’ the God who sees. Here in the midst of all this mess, as she has fled the sin of Abram and Sarai, as she despairs and wonders if anyone cares, here comes God, the God who sees. The God who sees her. And in seeing her draws near. She’s the overlooked one in this story, but God doesn’t overlook her.
In life we can end up in terrible situations, awful times inflicted upon us by others, or simply by events around us, and we feel abandoned, forgotten, uncared for. We wonder if anyone hears our cries for help, if anyone notices us, if anyone cares. God is the God who sees. He sees you, he hears you, he knows your distress. He does not stand afar and uncaring. God sees, and he cares. He is the God of grace who will not leave or abandon you, he sees.
Abram and Sarai have utterly disgraced themselves in this chapter, but God perseveres with them, he keeps his promises to them, and is still working to transform them into the people he created them to be. Because through their descendants he himself is coming amongst us. In the person of Jesus God is given another name, no longer simply ‘El-roi’ the God who sees, but Emmanuel ‘God with us’. In Jesus God has not simply seen our distress or heard our cry, but he has entered in, come to join us in our sinful messed up world, come to bear the price of that sin, come to bring us through it. In Jesus God has come to us, put a face to the name, that we might see him, and know him, even as he sees and knows us.
Amen.