Abraham Part 1

Welcome to the Awakening Church podcast.

We pray this message encourages you and provides the hope and light of Jesus Christ.

Thanks for tuning in.

All right, Awakening.

Hey, thanks for greeting those around you so well and hope you are all having a good Sunday.

And uh like Lacey mentioned, today we are going to be uh approaching a very sensitive topic.

Uh some of you know my role here as the executive pastor, it's really to just give support to the team and as well as Ryan as we pursue our mission to awaken this generation to new life in Christ.

And um when it comes to uh part of that support, every now and then it's just to help uh with uh easing uh the teaching load with Ryan, and so several of us help with that and allows him to have a break, but also allows him to focus on other priorities.

He's actually right now with our college students and young professionals at a retreat this weekend, and uh yeah, so that's um why I'm here today.

And actually, it was uh several months ago, maybe, we were talking about support that he was needing for teaching, and it looked like I was going to be teaching last Sunday's message on uh Babel, and then about a month ago it transitioned to the first part of Abraham.

And as I started to reread the story of Abraham, uh I was reminded of a rather difficult conversation that I had about uh several weeks ago.

Um several months ago, we had a workshop that we were offering here to help people in our community go through a journey of healing from past pains.

And the main facilitator and his colleague uh were one the only ones to receive intake forms from both the men and women that had to fill out these intake forms to be a part of this workshop.

Following the class, we then met for a review, and he said something to me that stuck with me.

He just said, Hey, you just need to know that I've been doing this a long time, and the people that filled out those intakes from your church, there was a lot of background with sexual abuse.

And he said, This is something that awakening should consider teaching on.

And so when I started to read this passage, I feel like I don't know, it may be too strong to say I was called, but I definitely felt compelled uh to teach directly on this subject.

I want you to know too that uh this story that we're about to jump into, it's comprehensive.

As most stories around abuses like this are.

They're kind of complicated.

I encourage you, I just what I ask of you is just hang with me.

Lean in.

Stay with me through the story.

It's a lot.

Before we do, let's go ahead and just talk to God just for a quick second.

And so, God, um, we just want to acknowledge you're here.

That you're our strength.

God, wherever there is darkness, we ask that you would shine your light.

Wherever there is angst right now, we ask you would bring peace.

Wherever there is pain, may you heal.

We just want you right now to be our guide.

We ask this in your name, amen.

It's the poet David White that writes one of the more profound poems on pain, and it's titled The Well of Grief.

Listen to his words.

Says, Those who will not slip beneath the still surface on the well of grief, turning down through its black water to a pl to the place we cannot breathe, will never know the source from which we drink the secret water cold and clear, nor find in the darkness glimmering the small round coins thrown by those who wished for something else.

This poem, The Well of Grief, is a reminder that there is pain, there is loss, and that there is tragedy in this world.

We know this, it's inevitable.

Suffering is universal, experiencing the unescapable ugliness and quite frankly the absurdity of life.

And it's within this well of drowning darkness that we can feel like God is gone.

And the only thing keeping us company is our misery.

As the poet gave his well the general name grief, we know that everyone's encounter with loss and suffering, it is unique.

Every failure, tragedy, and offense are painful in their own way, and they need to be named.

With the well as a metaphor for this deep, dark pain.

Maybe you wouldn't name your well the well of grief.

Maybe you would name it the well of broken dreams.

Maybe the well of loneliness.

Maybe the well of debt.

The well of addiction.

The well of disease.

Or what we'll be looking directly at today, the well of sexual abuse.

For it's the well of sexual abuse that we are going to journey into this morning, not to find answers as to why it happened.

Because I don't know why.

But through the dim, frigid, and suffocating waters, like in our poem, can there ever be this dark, glimmering hope to find at the bottom of this cruel well?

And that is such an offensive question to even pose to such an offensive act.

But as we started this series in Genesis, titled The Dysfunctional Family of God, our lead Pastor Ryan commissioned us to look for God's redemptive thread in the midst of humanity's dysfunction and brokenness.

And today, could it be that the redemptive thread in this deep well is that the deep well of sexual abuse, yes, it is dark, yes, it is destructive, but maybe it doesn't have to define us.

We live in a world right now with one in four girls, one in six boys in the United States, they are sexually abused before the age of 18, with even further abuses currently happening within adulthood.

Renowned psychologist and author and co-founder of the Global Trauma Recovery Institute, Diane Langberg, she writes these words.

Sexuality is one of the most vulnerable aspects of being human.

It is present both birth and death.

Sexuality is intricately tied to both identity and intimacy.

The potential for damage is extremely high.

The well of sexual abuse, it is filled with poisonous waters that touches all of us in some fashion.

Those very close to me have experienced sexualized violence.

I've pastored numerous men and women over the 32 years of ministry that have dealt with the trauma of such violations.

And we know that these horrific abuses, they're happening within our homes, they're happening within our schools, they're happening within our workplaces, they're happening in public settings, and yes, they are even happening within the church.

And what we discover in our biblical text today is that these atrocities were also happening within the homes of our biblical heroes.

Our story starts off in chapter 16, verse 1, with nine concerning words.

Those nine words are this.

Now Sarai, Abraham's wife, Abram's wife, had borne him no children.

We're immediately faced with a point of tension, a rather significant problem, which is Sarai's infertility.

The barrenness of Sarai, or whom we know as Sarah, is a problem for two key reasons.

The first reason is Sarah's infertility was a severe dilemma during this time and culture due to the extreme pressure that was placed upon women to bear children.

As mentioned last month, following the fall, man and woman, they transitioned from this space of complete oneness and mutuality to a fractured hierarchy and power struggle where Adam then gave the woman the name Eve, meaning mother, reducing and manipulating her identity to just one function.

Therefore, bearing children is the mark for success of a wife.

Sarah's infertility was a constant reminder of just feeling less, not having any ability to give her husband security and prestige through an heir.

And some of you that have struggled with infertility, you know how crushing this place can be.

Now, the second reason why Sarah's barrenness was problematic was due to an apparent lack of follow-through on a promise that God made back in chapter 12.

And so, guys, allow me to set the context here.

Again, following the blessing and empowerment of humanity to rule and flourish within the garden of chapters 1 and 2, that power was then abused in Genesis 3, choosing evil over good.

And so these selfish actions resulted in the fall with the spilling out of like this brokenness and this chaos that we see all throughout the first 11 chapters of Genesis, ending with Babel that Ryan just taught on last Sunday.

And so what we find is God is still on this relentless pursuit of to rescue his creation, to bring back man and woman to the goodness of the garden.

And in chapter 12, and really for the rest of the book, we see that there's actually a shift and a focus on a particular family fathered by Abram, or as we know, Abraham.

Therefore, strictly out of God's grace, hear me on this, strictly out of God's grace, unconditional favor, nothing else.

We find God calling out to Abraham back in Genesis 12.

The words read: The Lord said to Abram, Go from your country, your people, and your father's household to a land I will show you, I will make you into a great nation, I will bless you.

These are some of the most recognized words within all of Scripture.

It's known as the Abrahamic covenant, and it actually launches a slow and gentle unfolding of God's rescuing plan, first for a particular people, but then there is a redemptive free-for-all through Jesus.

However, if you are the wife of the man who has been promised a great, glorious nation under the one true God, and you are not conceiving, the pressure is on.

And at the time of this promise, Sarah is 65, she's in her mid-60s, Abraham's in his mid-70s, and then there's just 10 more years of rejected pregnancy tests as we come to then Genesis 16.

And so, how is Sarah supposed to trust a God that seems really untrustworthy right now?

Patience on God in any area of our lives can lead to great pain.

Desperation can seep in, and sometimes our desperation designs dark deeds.

As the deep well of sexual abuse, it always starts in the darkness.

Here are the moments we find our heroes of faith acting very unheroic and actually even hideous.

Jumping back to Genesis 16, again it reads this Now Sarai, Abram's wife, had borne him no children, but she had an Egyptian slave named Hagar, so she said to Abram, The Lord has kept me from having children.

Go sleep with my slave.

Perhaps I can build a family through her.

These two paragraphs reveal a gross and sinful backdrop to some gross and sinful actions.

First, the gross and sinful backdrop is this slavery, which was prevalent within this culture.

Now, this is different than the horrific racialized chattel slavery of our ugly American past that kidnapped and enslaved millions of African brothers and sisters for 200 years, where the echo of generational trauma and oppressive systems still exist.

This form of slavery within our text was actually normative, didn't distinguish between race, later allowed slaves to buy themselves out with wages they earn.

But guys, let's not sugarcoat this.

One human owning another human is fundamentally wrong.

It's anti-biblical.

And we are commanded to love every person as a dignified image bearer.

And so you may ask, if it's anti-biblical, if it's simple, then why does God allow it?

In a strange and obscene way, it comes down to his disturbing grace.

For he's patient.

He actually has a progress of redemption that keeps in stride with our progress of corruption.

Allowance doesn't mean acceptance.

Silence doesn't mean it's sanctioned.

Our God gently mothers his children towards his heart over a period of time.

Scripture even tells us that Abraham worshipped other gods all throughout his lifetime while worshiping God.

And God allowed it.

But then there was a line in the sand where God eventually said, okay, enough.

One God, one spouse.

When Jesus came as liberator, placing everyone on equal footing, he set a new kingdom standard and he abolished slavery and patriarchy.

And when Jesus was asked in Matthew 19 why God allowed a looser version of divorce under Moses, he responds, because their hearts were hard.

Even now, our hard hearts and evil actions, they break the heart of our loving Creator, but he is patient and he is gentle, seeking to restore us back to the foundations of his kingdom.

The Apostle Peter puts it this way: the Lord is patient toward you, not wishing any of you should perish, but that all should reach repentance.

Now for Sarah, not only was the slave system a norm for her day, but so was the use of these servants as breeders.

Again, due to the heavy pressure upon women to bear children, it was not uncommon for the wealthy, infertile couple to use and objectify their slave as a surrogate to bear a child that would then be claimed by the wife as her own.

And so, with now a bitter heart towards God, Sarah offers up her slave Hagar, allowing us to see how the father of our faith responds.

We continue in Genesis 16, too.

Abram agreed to what Sarai said.

So after Abram had been living in Canaan ten years, Sarai, his wife, took her slave, Hagar, and gave her to her husband to be his wife.

He slept with Hagar and she conceived.

Sexual abuse is any sexual act directed against another person without their consent.

And here it appears there is no consent from Hagar.

And so we stand at the foot of this deep well of sexual abuse, wondering just how dark and just how destructive this will be to her, and will this define her?

The voice of Hagar isn't even recorded in this section.

As a matter of fact, they don't even call her by name, ever.

You can barely imagine what she had to endure through this act.

But the text alludes to a passive response.

Sometimes when we judge the victim of sexual abuse from our white ivory towers, we can ask the question: why didn't they run?

Why didn't they fight back?

But what science has unveiled about the way our Creator has designed us is that we have a reaction to these experiences that isn't just fight or flight, but there's also freeze.

It's a way in which the body seeks to protect itself.

We may not fully understand, but sometimes freezing is the safest and only response the body has, and to say to survivors under such circumstances that they actually wanted these violations or that it was their fault.

That is ignorant.

That is destructive, that is ungodly, as the exploitation of the vulnerable reveals everything about the abuser and nothing about the victim.

And yet we also can't ignore the power dynamics at play here, as any refusal in Hagar's heart meant very little.

Consent means that it is safe to say no.

And for Hagar, she was not only the tea under the tyranny of slavery, but the possibility of death if she refused.

For others caught in sexual abuse, they're children under the power dynamics of an adult.

Teens manipulated and desensitized by the calculated grooming process of a trusted spiritual leader, employees under the threats of termination from their boss.

And so whether you were drunk on a party room floor, whether you were 14 with a 40-year-old, under the threat of harmful retaliation, you didn't have the capacity or safety to say no.

And yet it's at this deep well of sexual abuse that there are many that are still suffocating in the darkness and the destructive waters with a sense of guilt and anger towards themselves, feeling like they've betrayed God.

They carry a heavy blame, sometimes even judging their past childhood, teenage, or drunken self through the present lens of their adult, sober-minded self.

Judgments that are unfair.

You see, the deep well of sexual abuse, it isn't just dark and destructive.

And it isn't just a dark and destructive event or series of events, but it is a long-term, comprehensively damaging part of a person's being that is endured throughout a lifetime, but can it be that it doesn't have to define you?

Now we have to ask this question.

Why would Sarah, a woman, want to forcibly force another woman into such a violent and abusive act?

There's more than cultural norms and desperation at play here.

Sarah's actions are also stemming to a very dark and destructive past.

I want us to jump back, hang with me again, back to chapter 12, because as we jump back to chapter 12, following God's covenant with Abraham to make a great nation through him, we find that Abraham's response with obedience, which is great.

We celebrate that.

Following God's command to pick up his family, leave his home in southern Iraq, and journey to a land that God will eventually reveal.

I mean, this is a great act of faith.

But then it quickly subsides into a posture of faithlessness.

So awakening, again, backstory.

Because as Abraham is making his way to this land that is promised to him and his family, we read in chapter 12, verse 10, a problem arises.

It says this now there was a famine in the land, and Abram went down to Egypt to live there for a while because the famine was severe.

Now, famine within Canaan was typical during this time, infrequent rainfalls.

The standard practice was to flee to Egypt.

It was by the Nile.

And historically, Egypt acted as a sanctuary city.

They were open to refugees, they were open to immigrants.

And so the story continues in verse 11.

As he went to enter Egypt, he said to his wife Sarai, I know what a beautiful woman you are.

When the Egyptians see you, they will say, This is his wife.

Then they will kill me, but let you live.

Say you are my sister.

So I will be treated well for your sake, and my life will be spared because of you.

Historians say Abraham's reaction here is actually very unusual.

Immigrants were typically protected within this region.

Actually, adultery during this time was a significant offense.

So whether it was the insecurity of being an unattached from extended family, he was in a new land, he panics with a lack of.

Faith in God's promise and protection, and He begins to take the narrative and control it.

The deep well of sexual abuse, it requires a blend of both coercion and deception.

And the ingredients have been sprinkled in our story, waiting to destroy.

We continue reading in verse 14.

When Abram came to Egypt, the Egyptians saw that Sarah was a very beautiful woman, and when Pharaoh's officials saw her, they praised her to Pharaoh, and she was then taken into his palace.

He treated Abram well for her sake, and Abram acquired sheep and cattle, male and female donkeys, male and female servants and camels.

And so now the question is: when it comes to Abraham's scheme, was it really for survival or economic gain?

Because he emerges here an even wealthier man.

He's not only given livestock, but also he's presented with both male and female servants, where he most likely acquires Hagar, that we find about four chapters later.

The tragedy of Abraham's actions is that he knowingly endangers Sarah, sending her into the chambers of Pharaoh as a member of his harem with a real possibility of rape.

Once again, we have the hero of our faith acting incredibly unheroic, reminding us this that evil isn't something that we do, it's something that's in us, no matter our righteous acts, no matter our strong faith or our stellar reputation.

Understand at this time, Abraham is the closest person to God hearing directly from him.

In many ways, he is the only spiritual authority of his day where he has a sacred trust that's assumed in his leadership over others.

And studies reveal that when a spiritual leader egregiously exploits their position of trust and power over those entrusted to their care, the traumatic effects, the spiritual injuries, they are exponential.

Therefore, we have to wonder how the actions and trauma of this event affected Sarah.

To have the apparent father of our faith use his power to manipulate and pressure her to lie.

Biblical scholar Susanna Larry puts it this way: Sarah received the deep hurt of learning that women's bodies could be useful commodities in the power plays of men.

Now, understand that the promise of blessing that God had with Abraham and his offspring, it wasn't a typical agreement that if humanity doesn't hold up to their end of the bargain, actually, then God swoops in and he terminates the contract.

This is really one of the main points of the Old Testament leading up to Jesus, is that this was a covenant like none other.

That God was fully committed to rescue his people no matter the cost or no matter the level of human sin.

For nothing will separate us from the love of God.

And so God's unmerited favor and rescue is then set in motion.

Our story continues in verse 17.

But the Lord inflicted serious diseases on Pharaoh and his household because of Abram's wife Sarai.

So Pharaoh summoned Abram.

What have you done to me?

He said.

Now then, here's your wife, take her and go.

Then Pharaoh gave orders about Abram to his men, and they sent him on his way and his wife and everything they had.

I want you to notice this is a much different Egyptian Pharaoh than the one that we're familiar with centuries later in Exodus.

This Pharaoh in Genesis 12, he's actually quick to release God's people.

As a matter of fact, he has more faith in the one true God than Abraham does at this time.

Abraham and Sarah, they're rescued, but the damage upon Sarah has already been done.

The text never explicitly says whether or not Pharaoh had intercourse with Sarah, but many scholars can conclude that the description of the plagues, Pharaoh's visceral response to Abraham's lie, and the admission that Pharaoh took Sarah as his wife indicates sexual intercourse did occur.

And we get to a point where like this is too much darkness, this is too much destruction.

It's too much for us to take in, and it's disgusting.

I mean, why would God allow his holy book to entail so much horror and abuse, especially done to women?

But actually, our God cares too much to ignore the pain.

Dr.

Helen Payne at Bristol Baptist College says it this way: if the narrative is to be truthful, it must also portray the darkest sides of women's experience.

If we did not find that side portrayed, we would rightly be indignant that women's suffering were so irrelevant to the authors, they didn't bother to record it.

And so we find in our story that Sarah has also been thrown into the deep well of sexual abuse that is so dark and so destructive.

And we have to ask the question: is this now going to define her?

The destructive nature of sexual abuse upon both men and women is that it not only causes like body shaming and self-harm, but it also has a deep emotional impact.

Yes, there is fear, there is anger, there is grief, but there can also be reactions of just emotional numbness, unworthiness, thinking God isn't good, his love doesn't exist, he won't come through.

Aside from being a broken person, like you and I, I mean, this story does give further meaning into Sarah's treatment of Hagar.

It explains it, but it doesn't excuse it.

It reminds us, guys, that hurt people hurt people when healing hasn't taken place.

Just because you're the victim in one context doesn't prevent you from becoming an abuser in another context.

And we see Sarah's abuse only continue.

As we jump back to Genesis 16 and to Hagar's story, it continues.

When Hagar knew she was pregnant, she began to despise her mistress Sarai.

Then Sarai said to Abram, You are responsible for the wrong I am suffering.

I put my slave in your arms, and now she knows she is pregnant.

She despises me.

May the Lord judge between you and me.

Your slave is in your hands, Abram said.

Do with her whatever you think is best.

Then Sarai mistreated Hagar, so she fled from her.

The tables have turned initially in the story.

We have Hagar looking down on Sarah.

We're not sure if this was out of pride and seizing her new cultural status as being a pregnant woman, or if it was just out of spite that she had to endure the hardship of carrying a child that she would then have to forfeit over.

Whatever the source of Hagar looking down on Sarah, Sarah doesn't like it.

She blames Abraham for her situation.

Therefore, Abraham passively turns Hagar back over to Sarah, which then results in domestic violence.

Hagar's previous sexual abuse is now compounded with physical abuse.

This time with Hagar's fight, fight, flight, or freeze responses, the physical abuse we see is just so intolerable that she took flight, seizing the role of mother on her own terms.

Now, hang with me here.

It's in this next scene of our story that we find Hagar, she's in a dire situation.

She suffered unimaginable sexual and physical abuse.

She is single, she is pregnant, she's highly vulnerable, yet determined to make the impossible journey through the desert to her homeland in Egypt.

But when the brain is flooded with traumatic stress, a person's decision making is impaired, which in reality Hagar is on a suicide mission.

And so if you're thinking that this story is just so brutal and backwards and exploitive and oppressive, questioning how on earth can Abraham and Sarah be the heroes of our scriptures, that's the point of the story.

They're not.

God is.

For as Hagar is resting at a well on her road to death.

She's also carrying her deep well of sexual abuse, and it's dark and it's destructive, and we're wondering: is this how she will end?

Is this what she will be defined as?

But our story continues in verse 7 with actually a dramatic turn of events.

The angel of the Lord found Hagar near a well in the desert.

It was the well that is beside the roe of Shur.

And he said, Hagar, slave of Sarai, where have you come from?

Where are you going?

I'm running away from my mistress, Sarai, she answered.

Awakening?

I want you to notice a few things.

This is not only the first time we hear someone call Hagar by name, but it's the first time we hear the voice of Hagar.

And who gives a voice to the voiceless?

It's none other than God Himself in angelic form.

Awakening our loving Creator, he doesn't come with accusations, explanations, simple, quick solutions.

He comes with the ministry of presence.

He just has some simple questions to give her the space and the dignity to process her pain, to tell her story.

He says, tell me about this deep well of sexual abuse.

I know how dark and destructive it is.

But Hagar, I want to hear it from you, and I want to hear it from your own words.

Because God already knew the answers.

But he embodied the loving act of bearing witness to listen to her pain, realizing time doesn't heal.

Survivors must warrant agency over how they process their suffering at their own pace because what is unspeakable must be spoken with proper care and in proper settings.

We now come to one of the more disturbing and misused verses within scripture, and you're probably wondering, more disturbing than what we've just read, yes.

Then the angel of the Lord told her, Go back to your mistress and submit to her.

This verse has been twisted and weaponized by white Southern pastors during the Civil War era.

Manipulating slaves to return to their masters.

This verse is still recklessly exploited by pastors and spiritual leaders to drive spouses back into an abusive relationship.

But even recognizing those evil misinterpretations, this verse is still very disturbing.

That the supposed God of goodness and love delivers this command.

That yes, does he see this well, this deep well of dark destruction, of sexual abuse, and he's okay to allow more darkness and more destruction?

A few things.

First, we realize that the only practical way for Hagar's survival isn't forward into the desert, which is death, but backward.

Even if going backward is still dangerous.

But here, it may not be as dangerous as we think.

We have to keep reading.

Because as we read on, we see that this unique command given just to Hagar is tied to a promise, and therefore it presupposes protection.

We continue on, verse 10.

The angel added, I will increase your descendants so much that they will be too numerous to count.

The angel of the Lord also said to her, You are now pregnant, and you will give birth to a son.

You shall name him Ishmael.

For the Lord has heard of your misery.

He will be a wild donkey of a man, his hand will be against everyone.

And everyone's hand against him, he will live in hostility towards all his brothers.

Hang with me here, Awakening, don't miss this.

For what we find is that the God of the universe not only comforts this abused foreign slave who worships Egyptian gods, but he also makes a similar covenant that he does with Abraham.

He affirms that, yes, this deep well of sexual abuse, it is dark and it is destructive, but my sweet child, I won't let it define you.

For as Abraham is the great patriarch, Hagar, you will be destined and defined as the great matriarch.

And she was not only promised a son that will birth a nation, but that he will also be a wild donkey of a man.

Not the most flattering of translations.

A better translation would actually mean stallion for what the Hebrew word is trying to get at here and what was being said, because it's seeking to illustrate that her offspring will be running free and wild.

They will be liberated from the bondage of slavery, they will be untethered from social conventions.

And so God names this son Ishmael, which means the God who hears.

Ishmael will be a living, constant reminder for Hagar.

The God who heard her cries when being sold to Abraham's family and removed from her homeland, the God who heard her cries when being forced into sexual intercourse and pregnancy, the God who heard her cries when being beaten by Sarah.

And so she is just astonished by God's care for the oppressed and the afflicted.

And Hagar is the first person and only person within Scripture to then directly respond by naming God back.

She says this she gave this name to the Lord who spoke to her.

She said, I have seen the one who sees me.

What Hagar is saying is that the world saw abusable and disposable and discarded, you saw cherished.

They saw trash and you saw treasure, they saw property and you saw person, a mother of a nation.

That though the deep well of sexual abuse is dark and destructive, I will not allow it to define me.

Because only the great author and creator of this universe has the right and the power to define me.

For those that never find healing from sexual violence, trauma and victimization becomes their identity.

But for Hagar, she is given and embraces a new identity rooted in God's promise, goodness, and truth.

And so therefore, strengthened in her spirit, Hagar returns to Abraham and Sarah, and our story of rescue and redemption ends with these verses right here.

This is why the well was called the well of the living one who sees me.

It is still there between Kadesh and Bared.

So Hagar bore Abram a son, and Abram gave the name Ishmael to the son she had born.

Take note.

And Sarah would give birth to, then later, 14 years later, her promised son Isaac.

But in this final section, I want you to notice one more thing.

In this final section, she does something very powerful.

Hagar marks the moment, naming the well by her side, the well of the living one who sees me.

And so if you're a person right now sitting in the deep well of sexual abuse, still today, I want you to know there is a well right next to you.

It's the one who sees me, the living one who sees me.

He sees you.

He sees you.

He saw the unimaginable offense and offenses that violated you.

He saw the subtle charms, calculated dismantling of your senses and the silent struggle that you're drowning in.

He saw how your body went in the freeze mode, feeling confused and paralyzed.

He sees the pain, the disgust, the anxiety that you are carrying.

He sees those feelings of guilt and worthlessness and bitterness, and he sees this deep well of sexual abuse and its darkness and its destructiveness, but he refuses to allow it to define you.

Because he declares, you are strong.

You are worthy.

You are a beautiful creation made in the image of the Creator.

We've gone deep into the well of sexual abuse.

And this text reminds us that trauma and sexual abuse, it comes in all sorts of jagged shapes, painful situations.

Everyone has your own harmful story, healing timeline, whatever that may be.

But where do we go from here?

I want to provide just a few potential next steps.

Maybe today you're feeling like parts of Hagar.

You're a survivor.

You suffered the harsh effects of sexual abuse, yet you've also experienced the long and difficult healing process.

Today, one thing, just remind yourself, we could lose this.

What happened to you was dark and destructive.

It was dark and destructive.

Careful not to minimize the evil.

Careful not to minimize what was taken from you.

Though the abuse doesn't define us, we can't deny that it's changed us forever.

And so may you be reminded that you are worthy.

And may you and many others in this room create safe spaces where we can be tangible healing agents for the countless victims in our community.

We want to be a representation of the God who hears, the God who sees.

We want to weep with those who weep.

For others, maybe you feel like some pieces we witnessed in Sarah today.

Someone who's potentially stuck in bitterness, numbness, isolation, unable, unwilling to confront the painful past.

But you know, we see it here, the research shows it, that will eventually come back to harm you, your family, and your friends.

God's big enough to receive any rage you have, any frustrations, any cynicism.

But healing comes from the purposeful and prudent processing with a trustworthy, empathetic witness, as well as a trained professional.

And so on the back of your teaching notes, you'll find two counseling groups in our area that you can just begin to explore next steps with on your hard yet necessary healing journey.

But that journey starts on your own terms, on your own time, in step with the Spirit.

Third, we also can't be naive to think that there aren't those in our myths that are identifying with the portions of Abraham.

Either someone complicit to or even currently active in the sexual abuse of another.

Because the unnerving truth about the God who sees is that yes, he sees the victim, he also sees the abuser.

Yes, we have a God of grace and forgiveness, but he is also a God of justice and of boundaries, especially protecting the vulnerable.

Your deception is not only dark and destructive towards an innocent person that's made in the image of God, but it is also dark and destructive to your Very own soul.

Healing comes from bringing your sin into the light and holding you accountable.

Not being held accountable for the sake of rehabilitation, it's an insult to your humanity.

So if you are someone who's being sexually abused, you're witnessing it being done to others, or if in fact you are the very abuser, get help now.

You'll find several reporting options on our teaching notes as well.

And if you need support in making such a difficult yet necessary statement, we are here to help with that.

I don't know where all of us are on the continuum of this difficult topic, but I just want you to be reminded there is a God that stands in solidarity with you.

He is close to the brokenhearted.

There is a well of the living one who sees me next to all of our wells.

Sexual abuse, disease, addiction.

The well of the living one who sees.

And so as we approach communion, we're reminded that actually God continues his redemptive plan all throughout the scriptures, and we discover that he's not only the God that sees, and he's not only the God that hears, he's actually the God that enters into and experiences the depths of the darkness, the depths of the destruction through his son Jesus.

In the very nature of God did not consider equality with God something to be used to his own advantage.

Rather, he made himself nothing by taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness, and being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to death, even death on the cross.

God's precious son is the great empathizer of our pain.

Because as many of us know, that deep journey to the cross was very dark, very destructive.

He's gone before us in every way, experiencing the total sufferings of this world.

Awakening, hear me.

Jesus knows what it's like to be pushed aside.

He knows what it's like to be not believed, betrayed.

He knows what it's like to be humiliated, mocked, treated like trash.

He knows what it's like to experience the silence of his heavenly father.

He even knows the pain and evil of sexual abuse.

Twice it's recorded that his clothes were stripped off of him, a form of sexual assault that seeks to strip off the person's dignity.

We also know that from the traditional Roman crucifixion practices of Jesus' day, not only did that include beatings and whippings with horrific instruments, but it also at times included sexual abuse as a way of opposing just total humiliation upon their victim.

We began with a poem titled The Well of Grief and its subtlety towards this idea that there could be something glimmering in the darkness.

Yes, this deep well of sexual abuse, it is dark and it is destructive.

Yet the deeper we swim towards the bottom, we find, in fact, that there is a glimmering hope.

The great empathizer Jesus, who has experienced all of our sufferings and more, he made himself nothing on our behalf.

And so in a moment, the team's going to lead us in worship.

And as we approach the communion tables up front or in the back, I encourage you that as you take the bread, be reminded that it represents Jesus' body abused on our behalf.

As you dip it into the cup representing blood spilled, it reminds us that this was not just to dismiss sin.

This was to severely pay for it.

And as you eat, be reminded that he went to those dark and destructive places so that we can rest in the glimmering hope of himself and that one day there will be no more death, no more crying, no more pain, no more abuse of any kind.

This deep well of sexual abuse in our world, it is dark, it is destructive, but through Jesus' death and resurrection, it will not define our lives, it will not define his coming kingdom.

Let us go to God now and just talk to him.

God, we just want to talk to you in our hearts.

And we just want to thank you.

Thank you for your presence here, but also thank for you, thank you for your presence in those dark and really painful places in our lives that you've gone before us.

You understand.

And so we ask that you would continue to heal.

And when we are healed up enough, may we be agents of healing.

We offer ourselves to just be ambassadors of you.

And so now we just want to give you our worship.

We just want to say that you are good, that you're strong, you protect.

And we also want to be reminded of the incredible act that you did on the cross for us.

And so we just give you our worship now.

In your name.

Amen.

We hope you are blessed by this message.

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