Hagar.

It's over. The sermon that has loomed over me the past few weeks ended at 11:32. Praise the Lord. I was the first in the class and it was my first narrative message. Ever. Whooo. It's over.

It's been a journey as I've studdied for this message. I'm seeing how far I have to go and how dependent I am on our Lord. Really, I had nothing at all to say today when I stepped up to that pulpit. Nothing. Just a megar manuscript to offer as a verbal offering. And He took it, and will use it, I trust. Will I know how? Probably not, but as long as He's glorified I'll rest content.

Here's my manuscript. I thought I'd share it. When I sat down, my professor said, "It's okay, the first one is always rough."Just don't preach it, okay? More for your benefit, than mine. :)

The sun has risen to its midday height. The dusty road has grown hot beneath her bare and bleeding feet. Each step leaves a reddish-brown print which quickly dies away along with her hope. The relentless rays of the sun beat down on her dark, Egyptian skin, and produce intense heat will not be dissuaded by the occasional whipping of the wind. Each time the air stirs, it picks up grains of sand and drops them to stick to her parched and cracking lips. Her mouth is dry; the kind of dry which feels as if your tongue is made of cotton. She squints into the desert wind, searching the horizon for a mark, any mark, any indicator of how far she has come and how far she has still to go. She comes to a spring and rests her weary, aching bones. “How did I get here,” she wonders. “and where am I going?” Slavery made her run, and slavery is her only destination. She is alone; well, except for the child tucked inside her growing abdomen. “How did I get here? And where am I going?”

Hagar’s story is a complicated one. We’re going to see how she got here in today’s story. So if you will turn with me to Genesis 16, we’ll read her narrative together.

(read verse one through three).

The tents of Abram was a striking sight: mustard, persimmon, and auburn specked the scene. His tents were grand, his entourage great. Among the harnessed camels, the burlap tents, and the dimming fires we meet them: Sarai, the barren wife of Abram. Abram, the beloved patriarch of our faith. And Hagar, the belonging of Sarai. But something isn’t right, something tastes sour in sound of their introduction. Look at this first verse again. (read verse one again) Here we meet Abram and Sarai, and their shameful inability to produce and heir. In essence, we’re hearing about their marital relationship, their sexual relationship. Hagar should never have been mentioned in this context in first place.

God has made a promise to Abram and Sarai just before we arrived on the scene. In chapter 15, God makes a promise to Abram, a promise of a land, a nation, a people, but mostly a promise of a child. A child specifically through Sarai. But Sarai’s barren. She hasn’t borne a child all these years and is now in her old age, probably past menopause by now. The promise has encountered a problem. So what do they do? They take matters into their own hands. They help God out with this problem His promise has run up against. I can see in my mind’s eye, Sarai coming to Abram late in the evening. Same is in her countenance, bitterness in her words. “The Lord has restrained me from having children,” Sarai says. “I know you said He spoke to you, I know He promised you a child, but He must not have meant it though me. Did Yahweh really say I would have a child? If that was what He really wanted wouldn’t I be pregnant by now? Wouldn’t my shame have been removed by now?”

So she offered her plan. She took Hagar and gave her to her husband. And he heeded the voice of his wife. Here are dramatic echoes from a narrative past. “Did God really say?... she took…she gave…and he heeded the voice of his wife.” We have been here before. We are revisiting Eden. There is one choice that is acceptable, and another that is not; there is a life of blessing promised, and an alternative plan. There it was two trees; here, two women. Eve and Sarai, the mothers of nations, disbelieved the words of God, found a substitute, and offered it to their husbands. Adam and Abram, heard the words of God first-hand, but rather than engaging His plan, they were more quickly persuaded to passivity, more easily convinced by convenience.

Now, polygamy was an accepted practice of their day. So, though it is hard for us to understand, it wasn’t sin for Abram to have both a wife and a concubine. It’s just that that wasn’t the promise. The promise was that Sarai would have a child. So the issue isn’t adultery, the issue is doubt; we don’t call this marital unfaithfulness, we call it faithlessness.

According to the code of their day, Hagar, as a piece of property, could be used for task just as quickly as for drawing water. And when she had conceived and given birth, as a piece of property, she could be sold to the highest bidder. Sarai has pictures in her head of rocking a baby to sleep at night; feeding and nurturing him, watching him take his first steps. And, if her plan works, she has no intentions of sharing this long-awaited motherhood with her slave.

Well, it does. Her plan does work. Hagar is pregnant. Just like Sarai wanted. Just as Sarai planned. But as Hagar’s belly begins to swell, her disposition towards Sarai swells with contempt. Hagar understands her position. She understands that she simply the carrying case for Sarai’s child; no more than the cradle of flesh that sustains the son of Sarai until he can be placed into his mother, Sarai’s, arms. She is not a mother, she is storeroom. She is devoid of personhood. She is devoid of value. Hagar is utterly invisible.

So she fights the injustice of her situation the only way she can: “Sarai, too bad you couldn’t get pregnant. Wanna feel the baby kick? I wonder if he’ll look like his daddy.” How many of you women are thinking, “There are too many women in this house!”

Now, it’s easy to demonize one woman and justify the other. But the truth is, both are in the wrong: Sarai put Hagar in a position she should not have been in; Hagar, on the other hand, refuses to honor the position she holds in the household. Both are in the wrong, but both still stir our sympathies. Both are socially repugnant: Sarai is barren; she cannot do the only job she has as a wife. Hagar is a slave who is now pregnant with another man’s child. Both are ostracized, both are outcast, both are outside of the plan of God.

So Sarai takes the matter to Abram. “This is your fault!” she says. “Look at this mess: I gave you my maid, you said you’d take care of it, and now she’s being mean to me!” How many of you know women who do this: they create a plan, and when it doesn’t work out the way they thought, they blame you!

So Abram does what most husbands would do. Abram waves his hand in indifference at the woman who is carrying his child. “Do what you think is best,” here’s this apathetic passivity again. And Sarai, victimized by barrenness, becomes the victimizer. This language of Scripture is very gentle in saying Sarai “Dealt harshly with her.” This is more than snotty remarks like, “your purse don’t match your shoes.” Sarai begins to beat Hagar. To physically abuse her. And though we do not know exactly what actions take place, we know it is enough to cause Hagar to flee.

And this is where we met her, by a spring along the desert road, alone. Though not for long.

(read verse seven and eight)

She is on familiar under tread; the hot dessert road that will lead her back to the splendor of Egypt and the shackles of slavery. And the Lord finds her here. This finding isn’t happenstance, but intentional and deliberate. Yahweh finds her when no one else has bothered to come looking for her. She is not a believer, not a godly woman. Is she looking for God? No, but He is looking for her. Does she love God? No, but He loves her. Is she calling out to Yahweh? No, but He is calling out to her.

(read “Hagar”)

“Hagar.” This is the first person to call her by name. Abram called her “your servant” or “her.” Sarai called her “her” or “my maidservant.” But the Lord, Deity Himself, calls her by name and asks her this question, “Where did you come from and where are you going?” Probably a question she was asking herself. “How did I get here? And where am I going?” “I’m running away,” she responds. “See, she was beating me; and, well, this child isn’t exactly mine, and this baby’s father, well, he’s her wife, and he didn’t give a bit about me; and I just couldn’t handle it anymore. So I’m running away.”

“Go back,” He replies.

You may be thinking what I’m thinking, and most likely what Hagar is thinking: “What? Go back? She was beating me. She was going to take my child. And You’re asking me to go back?” This is a hard command to swallow. Even I want to tell Hagar, you don’t have to go back; you don’t have to return to slavery. But Yahweh says, “Go back.” Many of you may be thinking, why would God ask someone to return to an abusive situation? But this is a specific command to a specific woman for a specific purpose. Abuse is never right. If you are in an abusive situation, this Text is not telling you to stay. But this is a specific command to a specific woman for a specific purpose. So before we protest, let’s let Him finish. He doesn’t stop there.

(read verses 10)

These words are familiar territory, and may have been familiar to Hagar’s ears. As she served about the tents of Sarai and Abram, as she scrubbed their clothes and as she winced at the smoke from the fire she stood over as she prepared their meals, we can imagine that she overheard particular conversations about a particular promise. They were a grand portrait of a life of land and family and resources. And they were for Abram and Sarai and their son. Here, in this dessert encounter, the Lord makes this promise her own property.

Then the Lord gives this oracle of the child in her womb.

(read verses 11 and 12)

“The Lord has seen your misery.” The word misery is interesting here because it has the same root form as “mistreatment” and as “submit.” In essence, He is saying, “I have seen, Hagar. I have seen you in your mistreatment, in your misery. I have seen you when you were no more than a bargaining chip in Egypt. I have seen you when you were the invisible individual who Sarai took and Sarai gave as property. I have seen you when the man who impregnated you waved his hand in indifference. I have seen you take every beat of Sarai’s fist and every word that pierced your spirit. I have seen you in your misery, and I can command you to return because I will still see you in your submission. I am the seeing God.”

He says her son will be a wild donkey of a man. This is peculiar to us and to our ears not all that flattering. But to Hagar’s enslaved ears, “wild donkey” is a metaphor for a fearless, individualistic lifestyle untrammpled by social conventions. Yes, he will be away from the promised land, away from the promised family, and away the promised resources. And this is all Hagar has ever wanted.

(read verse 13)

Hagar is given the honor given to no other woman in Scripture. She gives a name to God. She calls Him El-Roi, the God who sees. She says, “Now I see the One who has always been seeing me.” She sees God! She sees God! This pregnant, pagan, slave-woman is camped with Moses, Elijah and John the Baptist! Here she is, on a desert road, running from a relational catastrophe, on her way back to slavery, and she sees God!

(read verse 15)

Hagar went back, and she bore a son to Abram. The story that opened with “Sarai…who had borne him no children…” ends with “Hagar bore Abram a son.” Though Sarai had an alternative plan, though Abram chose the easy path of passivity, and though Hagar responded with spitefulness the Lord, the Seeing God, restores what is broken and makes right what is wrong.

Praise the Lord the same is true for us today. When we run ahead of God and to ruin and El-Roi can restore us. When we take matters into our own hands only God can reconcile our wreckage.

Using Scripture as our mirror, let’s come and see our reflection. Where are you in this narrative? Who?

Maybe you’re Sarai. Maybe there is a promise you believe God is holding out on you. Are you waiting for a husband? A wife? You know this is a part of “the plans I have for you.” Or is it? And if it is, you’re tired of waiting. Graduation is coming, and the Lord’s plan seems to have a problem because that godly woman or godly man is no where in sight. So instead you’re dating that girl who doesn’t love the Lord or that guy who isn’t interested in the Word. You’ve taken matters into your own hands.

Or maybe there’s a friend, RAs – a guy on your floor, you need to confront. It’s been nagging at you, always in the back of your mind. You know you need to talk to them and say some hard things, have that conversation that will be awkward for both sides. You know its right, you know its God will. But the temptation is, instead of waiting for God’s timing on the matter, to run ahead of Him; to rush to that conversation. And when you do, you will spit out words that are honest and true but are received as harsh and rebuking because it wasn’t in the Lord’s time. Wait on the His timing. Wait on His plan.

Maybe you’re Abram. You know the plan. God has shown you a ministry He wants you to pursue, a seminary He wants you to apply to, a relationship to be involved in. And it’s not that you’re running away from it, you’re not fleeing, you’ve just stopped engaging. You’re not disobedient, you’re just passive; you’re not defiant, you’re just not proactive. Your Bible is in your lap, but you’re not zealous. You pray, but you’re not passionate. You’re attitude shrugs its shoulders lazily and yawns, “Whatever…whatever you think is best. Whatever.” Wake up, rub the sleep from your soul, and begin engage His plan.

Maybe you’re Hagar. Maybe you have a parent who is unbelieving; who, like Sarai, is embittered by life. Maybe he or she has harsh expectations of you, so you have come to Moody to be “free” of them and have began to slander your parents. You, because of their treatment of you, refuse to honor your parents as the Lord commands. And you need to go back and realign yourself with them relationally. You need to take ownership for your part of the relational fracture and work to restore the broken relationship.

Friends, we are Sarai: manipulating, replacing, substituting. We are Abram: apathetic, complacent, indifferent. We are Hagar: denying, seeking, fleeing. And He, He is still El-Roi. He is still the seeing God today, now, peering into our hearts, our past, our relationship, our mess. Meeting us in our relational catastrophe, and inner chaos. He has plans and promises for us, too. Plans and promises we’ve heard again and again and again and again. And He is here, reiterating them to us today. This time, let’s listen. And wait. And find that we, in this very moment, sit under the gaze of One who set His eyes upon her so many years ago.