God’s Presence Changes Everything

Good evening everyone. Thanks to Alistair and the worship team for leading us so well in the first part of our service.

Abraham was a great man, but he was a pretty lousy husband at times.

Now he's not the only one who's that. A lot of politicians, businessmen, church leaders even, are highly respected in many ways.

And yet when it comes to being effective heads of their home, they often fail.

And I'm sure that is true of many of us, as well as looking further out.

But Abraham certainly did make a mess of things at times.

Twice he presented his wife Sarah, and I probably will say Sarah is just a force of habit.

Twice he presented his wife Sarah as being his sister, which was half true but wholly deceitful,

and was only done to save his own skin with little thoughts of the consequences for her.

And the chapter we're looking at this evening, it seems to me that Abraham totally wimps out of taking a lead

and of making sure that things are done properly in a very difficult situation.

He passes all the responsibility on to Sarah and does very little himself.

He fails in his duty as a husband.

So that was, for me, as a man, as a husband, was one of the key lessons, challenges from this chapter.

But there's a great encouragement as well.

Because if we come to the second part of the chapter, we see Abraham's mess,

and we see God stepping in and resolving that mess.

So despite Abraham having gone really badly wrong along with Sarah,

God steps in and he shows his compassion to the one who's been so badly hurt, to Hagar,

and he brings his purposes about through her.

And it's a great reassurance that when I mess up, that God is still in control,

God will still bring about his purposes.

That if we are hurt by others and by their actions, God is still in control,

and God can come and can resolve the situation and can speak to us as he did to Hagar.

So there's challenges, and not just for husbands, there are challenges,

and I think there are encouragements in Genesis 16.

And the big difference between the two parts of the chapter is that in the first part,

in the family situation there, God is absent, or at least appears to be absent.

There's no thought of Abraham coming to God or hearing from God.

In the second part of the chapter, God is very much present and is seen to be at work,

and that is when he is able to fulfil his purposes.

So we're going to look tonight in two sections at what happens when God is absent

and what happens when God is present.

So when God is absent, there is often faltering faith.

If you read commentaries on Genesis, almost all of them are really hard on Abraham at this point.

That this was a huge crisis of faith for Abraham when he took things into his own hands

rather than waiting for God's time and for God's provision.

Now I have to say I have a lot of sympathy for Abraham in this particular part of the chapter.

When we first meet Abraham and Sarah, the first thing that's said about Sarah is that she was barren,

she was childless.

So probably for quite a long time before then, Sarah hadn't been able to conceive a child.

Ten years have gone past and still nothing has happened.

Not terribly clear exactly the timescale between chapter 15 of Genesis,

when God repeats his promise to Abraham, his covenant that Abraham would become a great nation and so on.

There's probably some time in Genesis 15 and 16,

but there's ten years since God first called Abraham

and probably a lot longer than that when Abraham and Sarah were married.

And all this time they've been longing for a child and it's never come.

Now they do have God's promise.

God has promised that he will make Abraham the father of the great nation.

But you can understand why they are having a difficult time and wondering what is happening.

I think there are a number of mitigating factors as we think about Abraham's faltering faith,

if that's what it is here.

First thing is that God had never promised Sarah a son.

He promised Abraham a son, promised Abraham to become the father of nations.

He hadn't explicitly said it would be through Sarah.

That comes in the next chapter, in chapter 17.

So it may be that Abraham and Sarah got to the point,

and it appears that was the case, where they said,

well, maybe Sarah isn't to be the mother.

They then come up with what might seem to us a strange and almost repugnant solution.

That instead of Sarah being the mother, her slave girl, Sagar, would take her place and would bear Abraham's child.

Now I think we do have to look at that in the context and the culture of the time.

This is something that would have been considered normal in those days.

In fact, it was sometimes built into marriage contracts, into the marriage vows, if you like,

that if the wife was unable to conceive, then the husband would have a child through a servant.

And it wasn't considered the way we would.

Indeed, right through a large part of the Old Testament,

monogamity was not necessarily the way, right up to David,

it was not necessarily the way that people behaved

and was not seen as being as wrong as we would now.

So Abraham and Sarah were doing what they thought was right

and what they thought perhaps would produce the child.

And they were trying to cling on to God's promise,

but at the same time to try and bring things about by themselves.

But still, I don't think we can totally exonerate them.

Because surely Abraham must have thought,

God is not going to go for second best.

The best thing would be if Sarah was able to bear me a son,

why would God go for second best?

Even if, as is probably the case,

Sarah was well beyond the age when, in natural terms,

she could have borne Abraham a son.

I think also as we look at what Sarah says,

it is very much about herself and her being childless

rather than about God's promise being fulfilled.

And Abraham, as the husband perhaps at that point,

should have stepped in and said,

let's take it to the Lord,

let's see what God has to say about this.

If we look at the thing that is probably closest

to a New Testament commentary on this instance,

the book of Galatians,

where Paul talks about Ishmael as the child of the flesh

and Isaac as the child,

the son of promise.

Now that may be largely a reference to the miraculous

and normal nature of their births.

Also perhaps, though,

a reference to the fact that the way it came about,

it was the flesh that led to Abraham and Sarah

acting as they did,

and God's promise was brought about through Isaac.

So I'm trying to be kind to Abraham,

but I don't think there's any doubt

there is a bit of a faltering of faith here.

But it is in circumstances

where in many ways it is understandable,

and as we look at ourselves,

perhaps we would think,

well, in that kind of circumstance,

would I have acted any different?

One of the things that really comes across to me

as we look at the beginning of this chapter

is I think there's a lot of sympathy

in the way the passage is written

for the predicament that Abraham and Sarah

find themselves in.

This is not harsh and judgmental.

It is recognizing a human problem,

a human issue,

and rightly or wrongly,

Abraham and Sarah try to address that issue.

Now we can extend that.

There are many people who go through

very difficult circumstances

in their Christian lives.

Some of them similar to what we're thinking about,

people who month after month

are hoping for children

and they never seem to come.

But there are lots of others as well.

There are people who have illnesses

or have relatives who are very ill

and they're praying for an element of recovery

month after month after month.

They pray and nothing seems to happen.

Or there are people who have family situations

which cause them great distress.

Perhaps children who have wandered away

from the Lord Jesus,

perhaps never come to have faith in him.

And you pray and you pray and you pray

and you think,

what must I do?

And it becomes really, really distressing for you.

Or people who don't have a job

and are looking and applying again and again.

It never seems to happen for them.

And they're wondering,

what is happening here?

What is God doing?

What should I do?

Now these aren't hypothetical examples.

The three I've just mentioned

are very live for people

in our church here at this point.

And a lot of us go through these kinds of heartaches

that Abraham and Sarah went through

and it is a real test of our faith.

And perhaps we're wondering,

what should I do?

What more can I do?

Now Abraham and Sarah perhaps

took the absence of the child

as being guidance from God

that they should do something different.

And very often that is one of the ways

in which God guides us.

He guides us as we pray.

He guides us through scripture.

He also guides us through circumstances.

But we need to be careful,

as Abraham and Sarah should have been careful,

as we look at circumstances

to say,

well, what is it really that God is saying here?

And make sure we don't misinterpret.

And one thing that is often helpful to do

is to find a mature Christian,

someone we respect

and someone who's judgment we trust

and to talk to them about our situation.

So if tonight you're facing a heartache of any kind

and it may be similar to Abraham and Sarah,

it may not be,

and then look to God for his help.

Keep trusting in him

that he will bring his purposes about.

But also look for his guidance.

I think what is it God might want me to do?

Is his will for me that I should wait

and wait for him to bring about the fulfillment?

Or is he calling me to do something?

And if we're unsure,

good to talk to someone else

and to pray through it with them.

When faith is faltering,

we've got to hang on to the fact

that we have a good God

who cares for us

and who will bring out the best for us

and look to him for our guidance.

Now, it's slightly kind, I think, to Abraham

in that part of this passage.

I'm not going to be as kind to him

in the next section.

I've called it fragile families.

So you have the situation.

Sarah has suggested to Abraham

that he could have the child through Hagar.

Abraham goes in,

she becomes pregnant,

and then perhaps not surprisingly,

Hagar begins to look down on Sarah.

Being able to have a child

was such a big thing

for women in those days,

that if you weren't able to conceive,

it was seen as a great shame

and something which in some way

would make you seem lesser

and perhaps not deserving of God's favor.

So Hagar looks down on Sarah

and probably quite disrespectful

in the way that she deals with her,

and Sarah comes to Abraham.

Now, she begins by blaming Abraham

for the situation,

which is a little unfair,

when she was the one

who had instigated it,

but he should have taken responsibility too.

But he says,

may the Lord judge,

she says,

may the Lord judge between you and me.

And Abraham then has the opportunity

as the husband,

as the one who's supposed to be

a leader in the family,

to look at the situation,

possibly to bring the two women together,

and to try with God's help

to seek a resolution.

And what does he do?

He says to Sarah,

okay dear,

you do whatever you want,

I'm not getting involved in this.

He totally absolves himself

of his responsibility for it.

He avoids getting in the situation

of conflict.

Now, conflict's difficult.

When I was in secular employment,

we used to fairly regularly

be asked to do psychometric tests.

So you ask lots of questions,

and depending on how you answered them,

they'd tell you how good you were,

how bad you were in leadership.

One I particularly remember

was one where they were comparing us

against a benchmarking group of leaders.

Now, my results were so bad,

I managed to convince myself

that they were trying to compare

middle managers against chief executive,

and I thought that was quite unfair.

But the one result I particularly remember

from that was they had one of the sections

about avoiding conflict.

And I was off the scale with it,

that I would totally avoid

all kinds of conflict.

Now, those who know me well

will testify that it's probably

got a grain of truth

and it perhaps exaggerated slightly.

I'm someone who doesn't

readily take to conflict

and doesn't certainly seek it.

Now, other people have different

ways of dealing with conflict.

Some people seem to quite enjoy it

and it invigorates them,

and in a strange kind of way,

they welcome it.

Other people take it very personally

and feel there is any kind of conflict.

There's a personal slur on them

and they get very offended by it.

And all three of these are bad ways

of dealing with it.

But in our lives,

if we're in leadership situations,

or even if we're not,

there are going to be times

when we're faced with conflict

and we need to be able to resolve it

and to resolve it well.

And it's very difficult,

it needs an awful lot of grace,

it needs a lot of dependence on the Lord,

but we need to be able to deal with conflict

and to produce good outcomes from it.

And that's what Abraham totally fails to do.

He totally fails in his duties as a husband.

Now, at this point,

Abraham is a husband to two wives.

We mustn't forget that,

Sarah and Hagar.

Hagar clearly, he fails

as she is bullied by Sarah

and then has to run away.

Sarah, he fails too

because he doesn't provide

the kind of leadership

she might reasonably have expected

in a very emotional situation.

He should have been the one who was calm

and was able to take control of things.

Now, being a husband in these kind of situations,

particularly with two wives,

fortunately, none of us have to do that,

but being a husband can at times be difficult

as we would seek to take the lead

and perhaps be very difficult for us.

Fortunately, the Bible has told us

how we should act as husbands.

And it's put quite simply,

we should love our wives

as Christ loved the church

and gave himself up for her.

Now, Abraham significantly fails to do that with Hagar.

He doesn't love her enough

to even be able to keep her

as part of the family.

He also fails in it with Sarah

because he doesn't show real love

in being able to help her

to work through the difficulties that she has.

Interesting, the passage in Ephesians 5,

we usually kind of stop in our thinking,

well, I've stopped there.

But the following verse is about Christ

being able to present the church

as pure and blameless to himself.

That is achieved ultimately

through the cross at Calvary,

but also, I think, as part of an ongoing process

as Christ would work with the church

and would help us to grow more like him.

If we look at the literature of churches in Revelation,

where the Lord Jesus is directly addressing

a number of churches,

he doesn't shy away

from the difficult conversations there.

He can tell them they've lost their first love

or that they need to wake up

or that they're lukewarm

and they're only fed to be spewed out of his mouth.

Hard words, but necessary words

and showing real love and concern for them.

So if you're a husband like me,

if you're a leader in any kind of situation,

or just if you're in a situation

and you can see the things are going wrong

and there's something you can do about it,

don't shy away from conflict.

Just go into it in a prayerful attitude

and with a desire that God's will may be done

and that there may be a real love

for all those who are involved in it

and that they may benefit from God's presence

and God's guidance in the situation.

So faltering faith, fragile families.

That's what happens when God is absent.

What then happens when God is present?

Now God is very much present

in the second half of this chapter.

He is present through someone

who's called the angel of the Lord.

And many people, as they look at descriptions

of the angel of the Lord in the Old Testament,

they look at it and they see

that is a pre-incarnation appearance

of the Lord Jesus,

what's called a Christophany.

So it's the Lord Jesus himself

coming into a situation

and dealing with it.

Now the argument from Genesis 16,

I say there are lots of other passages.

Genesis 16, clearly at the end of the passage,

Hagar believes that she has seen God.

I have seen the one who sees me.

Now God the Father never appears in human form.

God the Spirit never appears in human form.

The only member of the Trinity

who comes in human form is the Lord Jesus.

And so many people believe

that this was the Lord Jesus

coming to appear to Hagar.

There is a different view

which says that very often in that time

that you sent an emissary,

someone to give a message to someone,

then they spoke as if they were you

and they received the same kind of respect

that you would receive.

So they would say the angel of the Lord

isn't necessarily an appearance

of the Lord Jesus.

I find the description that Alec Mottier gave

was quite helpful.

He said that this is a chief preview,

a chief Old Testament preview

of the second person of the Trinity.

Whether we believe it is the Lord Jesus himself there,

it is certainly God coming down to men

and dealing with their issues and their problems.

So God is very much present

in this part of the passage.

And God does three things.

Now we're sort of dealing in the reverse order

of what we might think was logical,

but we're dealing with them in the order

that they're in the passage.

And the first thing is that God sends.

So angel of the Lord comes

and he finds Hagar near a spring in the desert.

And he asks her,

where are you come from and where are you going?

Hagar doesn't really answer the where are you going.

It appears very likely

she was trying to head back to Egypt.

She was going that direction,

likely to head back to Egypt

where she came from.

Now she was a pregnant woman,

alone going through the desert.

So the prospects for getting to Egypt

were never very good if God hadn't intervened,

but that was probably the situation.

And the angel says,

go back, return to your mistress

and submit to her.

Now to really understand this,

you need to understand that in verse nine,

when the angel talks about Hagar submitting to Sarah,

he uses the same verb that's used in verse six

when it talks about Sarah ill-treating Hagar.

One is truly active

and one is passive tense of the verb,

but it is the same word.

So the angel is effectively saying to Hagar,

go back and allow Sarah to keep ill-treating you.

Now hopefully that didn't happen,

but that is the thrust of what he's saying.

Go back and submit to Sarah.

Whatever she does to you,

you need to accept.

That must sound quite harsh

and we'll look at the moment

in a moment at what the angel says further

to reassure her.

But he's not promising that Hagar will go back

and everything will be fine

and she'll be fully accepted

and there will be no future problems.

His command to her is to go back

and to submit to Sarah

even if she continues to be ill-treated by her.

I think for us,

the lesson is God doesn't promise

that our lives will be easy

when he sends us out to serve him.

He doesn't promise

that everything will be roses

and that people will accept us

and that we'll be positively received by others

and there will be no problems.

On the contrary,

the Lord Jesus tells his disciples,

in this world you will have problems.

But then he says,

take heart

because I have overcome the world.

I think that's the difference with Hagar.

When she was alone

with Abraham and Sarah

and was being ill-treated,

she felt the best thing she could do

was to get out of that situation.

As she goes back now,

she knows she's going back

with God's instruction

and that God will be with her

and that he will give her the ability to cope

with whatever may face her

when she returns.

And we must take that kind of assurance too

that when we go into the difficult situations

where people might be opposed to us,

if we go knowing that we're going in God's will

and that he has called us to that,

then we know that he will go with us

and he will allow us to be able to take

whatever the world may throw at us

and to emerge victorious

and to emerge with a real peace in him.

God sends her back,

but he doesn't send her back alone.

He sends her back

with his reassurance of his presence.

Second thing that happens is that God speaks.

Now, like Alistair,

I've got a bit of Hebrew

and I suspect I know even less Hebrew

than Alistair does,

but I've got translations up there from others.

So the angel sends Hagar back

and he sends her back with a promise

that she's going to have a son

and that he is going to be

giving her descendants

that are too numerous to count.

Now, interesting,

that very much reflects

what God has already said to Abraham,

that Abraham's descendants

would be greater than the stars in the sky

and the sands in the seashore and so on.

There's a real echo of that,

even though ultimately Ishmael

isn't the child of promise,

there's an echo of what God said to Abraham.

And I was especially,

I think when you read in chapter 17,

it's probably confirmed

that when Hagar went back,

Abraham took the words

the angel had said to her

as confirmation that Ishmael

would be the child of promise.

That's why he was so surprised

in chapter 17

when God says it would be Sarah

and Abraham laughs at the thought

that Sarah could possibly have a son.

God makes this great promise to Hagar

that the son she's going to bear,

he's going to be the father

of many, many descendants.

And he will be the one

who forever will be testimony

that God has heard her in her distress

and God has acted on it.

Now he then makes some prophecies

about Ishmael,

so we won't go into great detail,

which are not so positive,

as someone who's a bit of a loner,

who is against others,

and who will have,

in many ways,

quite a difficult life.

And of course,

that prophecy continues

down to Ishmael's descendants.

And the conflicts in the Middle East

between Jews and Arabs

are in many ways

between the descendants of Isaac

and the descendants of Ishmael.

But I think from the point of view

of what we might take from it

this evening,

it is that God has heard Hagar.

And as he sends her back,

he gives her his promise

and his commitment for the future

that the son she is bearing

will be the father of many people.

And then finally,

God sees.

And we have this El Roy,

in appreciation may not be right,

but the name that Hagar gives to God

is the God who sees me.

I have now seen the one who sees me,

she said.

And I believe a slightly better translation

is the God of sight,

so it refers both to Hagar,

sight of God and of God,

seeing Hagar in her situation.

But the assurance here for Hagar

is that all she's been through,

all the difficulties she's experienced,

they've not been hidden from God.

She knows that God has seen

and God has come

and God has acted in that situation.

And that must have been the thing

that really comforted and reassured her

and gave her a faith

and a trust to go back

to Abraham and to Sarah.

That her situation,

for once she felt abandoned

and alone

and that no one was on her side.

Yet God was there

and God had seen everything

that had happened.

And God, having seen what had happened,

he had acted

and he had worked things

for her good.

The one who was oppressed

was not invisible to God.

He saw her

and he came to her.

And that's the God we have.

A God who sees

those who are in distress,

those who have been unfairly treated,

those who are going through

the most difficult times

and is able to come

and to reassure

and to help them.

And we know that, of course,

because we have a God

who saw us in our sin

and who came to us

in his son

to pay the penalty for our sin

and to bring us back to God.

There's the old hymn, isn't there?

It says,

He saw me ruined in the fall,

yet loved me notwithstanding all.

He saved me from my lost estate,

his loving kindness.

Oh, how great.

We have a God

who has seen us

and has seen our fallen condition

and has given us

the opportunity

through the Lord Jesus

to be restored to him

and to have our sins forgiven.

We have a God, too,

who sees us

in all our situations in life,

in all the distress

that we suffer,

in all the circumstances

that we find

really, really difficult.

And as he sees us,

he is there to help us

and to bring about

his purposes.

As Paul said,

he didn't spare his only son

but gave him up for us.

And how much more

will he not,

along with him,

freely give us

all things?

God sees us.

God cares about the situations

in our life.

And God acts.

And he brings about

his purposes.

And as we seek

his help

and his guidance,

we can be confident

that he knows

what is best for us

and that he will bring

that about

in our lives.

So as I said at the start,

it's a chapter

which has challenged me

and it's also greatly

encouraged me.

The challenge is there

about our faith

and about our willingness

to deal with situations

that arise

and to deal with them

in God's way

rather than our own.

As a husband

or as a leader

or as someone

with responsibilities

to take on

these responsibilities

and in love

and in care for others

to be willing

to take

the responsibility

God gives to us

at where necessary

to deal with situations

of conflict

in a loving

and gracious way.

when we are

struggling to see

God's will

and struggling to see

how the thing

that has been

such a problem for us

for so long

could ever be resolved,

God asks us

to keep trusting in him

and to keep

our faith strong

and not to falter.

And we have the assurance

that God is with us.

He is with us

particularly in our day

through his Holy Spirit

who is with us

as our guide,

as our comforter,

as our counsellor.

and God sees

our situation.

God can speak to us

through his word,

through prayer

as we are aware

of his voice

speaking to us,

through others

as we seek their help.

And sometimes

God sends us out

and he says

this is what I want you to do

and whatever happens,

whatever circumstance

you face,

I'll be with you

and I will protect you.

Let's take the God

who sees,

the God who speaks,

the God who sends

and let's go out

this week

with a confidence

in him

and a desire

to really serve him

and to live lives

that are pleasing to him.

Let's pray together.

Our Father,

we thank you

for your word

and we thank you

that your word

challenges

as well as encourages us.

We pray that you

will help us

to be people

who have a real love

for one another

and that that love

won't just be

warm feelings

or plight handshakes

but it will be

a real concern

and a real willingness

to help each other

through the difficult situations

and to tackle issues

as they might arise.

We thank you too

that you are a God

who sees us

in our distress

and in our difficulty

and who is able

and willing

to be there for us.

And we do pray

for a very large number

of people

in our church fellowship

here

who are going through

very difficult situations

where they may

be finding it

very difficult

to see your will

or how good

can come out of it.

And we too pray

that you will

help them

to retain

a strong faith in you

to have a dependence

on you

and a knowledge

that you do

work things

for our best

and that you do care

about every situation

in our lives.

We thank you

for our time together

this evening.

We thank you

for your word.

We thank you

for our worship

we were able

to bring you earlier

and we commit ourselves

to you now

in the name

of the Lord Jesus.

Amen.