Does God Actually See Me? What Hagar's Story Says

Man.

Well, hello.

I'm Misha.

Um I'm so glad to be with you and with those of you watching online.

Um we're we're in our second week of this preaching series where we're talking about who needs God.

And I wonder if anyone's ever heard this big long word before.

Here it is.

It's uh phazagoraphobia.

Anyone know what that word means?

This is like the psychological term for the fear of being forgotten or ignored or unseen.

Now, even if you didn't know the big long word with all the letters before, many of us have felt this fear.

And maybe we we didn't call it a fear, but but but if you've ever if you ever felt like, does anyone even notice me?

Would anyone miss me if I was gone?

If you've ever thought, does my life matter?

Does my story matter?

Does God even see me?

You know this feeling.

And there are people who sit in these seats, there's people who watch online every single week.

That they're just moving through life, just feeling like they're invisible, like this, like they're unseen, like nobody cares.

If that's you, I want you to know that God sees you.

And he doesn't just like see what you're going through, like like he sees you, and he loves you, and he's got a plan and a purpose for your life.

In fact, there's a name, a title given to God in the Bible.

Um, the the name is El Roy, not to be mistaken for your great-great-grandfather Elroy, okay?

Elroy means the God who sees.

And this name was given to God by someone who felt very unseen.

Um, her story comes to us from Genesis chapter 16.

Genesis 16 · chapter mention

So if you want to follow along, we're gonna be hanging out there all day today.

Genesis chapter 16.

Genesis 16 · chapter mention

It's the story of a woman named Hagar.

And here's how it begins.

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, and perhaps I can build a family through her.

Abram agreed to what Sarai said.

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

He slept with Hagar and she conceived.

And when she knew she was pregnant, she began to despise her mistress.

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

I put my slave in your arms, and now that 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 best.

Then Sarai mistreated Hagar, so she fled from her.

And if that's not just about the most predictable mess anyone's ever heard about, what did they think was gonna happen?

None of us are surprised that this turned out to be drama.

I mean, I mean, here we we got Hagar, who's a slave, who's got no voice in any of this.

Nobody came to her and said, Hey, do you do you think you you'd like to maybe you know carry a child for for for us?

You know, we're we're struggling to have kids and we love.

No.

They were told, she was told this is what you're gonna do.

And Sarai seems the most upset about all this.

She's the one who came up with the idea.

Yeah, and and so so not shockingly at all.

Hagar gets pregnant, and then all these emotions come up.

She doesn't want to give up her baby, she's carrying this baby.

It's her baby, and so she gets all emotional, and then Sarai, all her insecurities about not having and not being able to have a kid, all those start to boil up in her, and she goes and takes it out on Abram.

And Abram's like, hey, look, I'm just doing what I was told to do here.

I don't, you guys got an issue, you do you deal with it with each other, and so she goes and she mistreats Hagar, and then she was Hagar was the easy, easy target.

She had no voice, she was a slave.

Her dignity had been taken from her a long time ago.

And so now she's in this mess and and she's mistreated, and so she she runs away, she flees.

And nobody went looking for her.

Except God.

Verse 7 starts like this the angel of the Lord found Hagar.

She didn't cry out for help, she didn't, she didn't pray some prayer, and then God showed up.

Like God pursued this runaway slave woman, and he found her.

If you see in the Bible, it says the angel of the Lord, and and in your Bible you may see that this is all caps lock, L-O-R-D.

Whenever you see that in your Bible, it is a translation from a Hebrew word that many people pronounce Yahweh.

This is like the personal and proper name of God.

Some other people will pronounce it um Jehovah, but just so you know, if you ever see the all-caps Lord, that's why it's there.

Uh another interesting note here, there's uh there's a theological term called Christophany.

And a Christophany is uh what scholars would say is this is a an appearance of Christ in the Old Testament, an appearance of Christ before Jesus showed up on earth.

And many people think that when it says the angel of the Lord, that that was actually, that was actually Christ, the children, that Jesus was the one that was pursuing Hagar.

And whether or not this actually was Jesus, the point that that's being made here is that God moves in the direction of people who feel forgotten and overlooked.

And here he finds Hagar near a spring in the desert, it says.

It was the spring that is beside the road to Shur.

Hagar was leaving a place of promise and a people of promise, because she was unseen, she was mistreated, and so she's going back to Egypt, and while she's in the desert on the road back to Egypt, God finds her next to a spring, next to a source of life.

And this is important, not just because of the exact place where he finds her, but because it shows us another thing about God is that he just meets her along the road.

Like I think sometimes we have this picture that God shows up mostly in the holy places.

So we'll come to church on Sunday because God's gonna meet me there.

I'm sitting listening to the message.

But what we see all throughout history, all throughout scripture, God just shows up in the ordinary places where life happens, along the road, near a spring, near a well, while people are working, while people while we go about life, God tends to show up there.

And that's what he does for Hagar here.

But he does more than just see her there, he speaks to her, he calls her by name.

This is what it says next.

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

And where are you going?

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

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

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, and his hand will be against everyone, and everyone's hand against him, and he will live in hostility toward all his brothers.

Now, not gonna lie, Hagar probably could have gone without that last sentence.

So you know, you were getting a good track record there, God, and then all of a sudden you had to throw that in there.

But but don't miss what's so remarkable about what we just read.

God pursued a runaway Egyptian slave woman.

And when he found her, he didn't scold her, he didn't force her to do his bidding.

He asked her a question.

And then he listened to her, like God listened to Hagar.

And by doing so, like he he he was like, okay, and I let me give let me give you some hope.

And he he made promises to her.

He gave her hope, he gave her purpose, he restored her dignity to her.

And in response, Hagar gives God the name that we mentioned earlier.

It says, next, she gave this name to the Lord who spoke to her.

You are the God who sees me.

For she said, I have now seen the one who sees me.

That is why the well was called Bir Lahi Roy.

It is still there between Kadesh and Bared.

And I don't know if it's actually still there, but when this was written, it was still there.

Hagar gave God the name El Roy, the God who sees me.

And here's what we cannot miss today, okay?

If you're watching online, you cannot miss this.

The God who saw Hagar for us has been revealed in Jesus.

Okay, Jesus, when he showed up on earth, he did this same thing.

He saw people who were unseen, who were overlooked.

We could go through story after story.

I'll name a feed there.

The woman at the well, the blind man Bartimaeus, there was the crippled man next to the pool in Bethesda, there was the woman who was known for her bleeding.

Jesus saw them.

He saw them, he saw the pain in the eyes of the centurion whose servant was sick.

He saw the lifeless body of Jairus' 12-year-old daughter who he raised to life.

Time and time again, there's story after story after story.

Children, widows, sinners, people who are sick, Jesus saw them.

And he just proves to us that God keeps moving in the direction of people who feel overlooked, unseen, forgotten, like no one cares about them.

And Jesus himself tells us why.

In Luke 19, 10, he says, the Son of Man came to seek and to save the lost.

Church, this is the good news.

That God doesn't just watch us from a distance, that He has come to us, and He's come for us.

He's come for us just as we are while we were still sinners, Romans chapter 5 says, while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.

Romans 5 · chapter mention

While you were still a sinner, Christ died for you.

Just let that sink in for a moment.

On the cross, Jesus took on to himself your sin, your shame, your rebellion, your brokenness, and mine.

On the cross, Jesus took onto himself all the things that separate us from God, and he paid for it, and it killed him.

And then he rose from the dead.

And he rose from the dead so that you and I could receive new life, not a second chance at an old life.

He rose from the dead so that we could have a new and transformed life through him.

And so when we don't have to go through life wondering, oh, does God see me?

Does God care about me?

Does my story matter to God?

The cross is proof.

Hagar didn't have this, but on this side of the resurrection, we have God's demonstration of his love for us, his declaration is the risen Jesus.

He says, I love you, I care about you, and I've come for you.

And his invitation to you and to me is simply to receive that.

To be found by Him.

That's what Hagar experienced the day.

Near a spring in the desert beside the road that leads to Shore.

God found her.

And then she went back.

But she didn't go back the same.

Because God is Elroy, the God who sees.

She went back changed because God saw her.

Here's how Genesis 16 ends.

It says, So Hagar bore Abram a son, and Abram gave the name Ishmael to the son he had borne.

Abram was 86 years old when Hagar bore him Ishmael, and 14 years later, believe it or not, he would become a dad again.

But that's a story for another day.

Okay, Genesis 16 begins with Hagar having no voice, and it ends with her voice being the one that declares the God is Elroy, the God who sees me.

And if you keep reading in Genesis 21, God does fulfill his promise to Hagar.

Uh Abram and Sarai do not take Ishmael to be their son, and he does grow up to be a great nation and a wild donkey, and everyone's kind of hand against him, and his hands against him.

Okay, point is Hagar's story is still told today.

Her story is still told today because God still is Elroy.

He's the God who sees you and me.

So what are we gonna do with this story?

What step can we take in light of how God reveals Himself in Genesis chapter 16?

Genesis 16 · chapter mention

I'll tell you this.

Whatever step you take, it's gotta start with receiving the truth that God sees you.

That is the grace of God, that is the gift of God.

So receive it.

What would it look like for you to put your trust in the truth that God sees you?

Start there.

And if you're struggling with that, ah man, Misha, if you knew my story, maybe you'd think twice about saying that.

Will you share your story?

In fact, we're gonna have our prayer team around the room.

If you're struggling to receive that God sees you, start there.

Reach out to anyone with illuminated lanyard, that's our prayer team.

They would love to hear your story.

They would love to help you see that God sees you.

So start there.

And then once you've received that, here's the step for all of us to take.

See someone.

Go and see, make someone known.

Consider who are the people in your life that need this the most?

Who are the ones that you've overlooked?

Who are the ones that are always sitting alone?

Who are the ones that you know, man, they I know they need encouragement.

What would it look like for you to see them?

Last week, if you were here, we started talking about this thing we're calling the No Needs Project.

The No Needs Project is one way we're seeing people in our community that we might not see any other way.

In fact, it it what we've done with no needs, if if you haven't heard about this, uh in the around all of our seven 242 locations, we've created an online platform in those radiuses for people to share.

Here's a need I have, but also for people to go on and say, hey, I think I can meet one of those needs.

And I checked it this morning here in Brighton, in this Brighton area.

There were 404 total open needs, but just in this area, there were 75 needs in the area close to where we all are gathered today.

There are people that need bills paid, there's people that need transportation help.

Someone needs a recliner for their mom.

Someone needs the drywall on their home patched.

Um my my family got a refrigerator for someone that needed one.

There's other people that need fridges.

Let's meet these needs.

And let's not just meet it, because the okay, the point isn't just that we're we're meeting needs with this.

That I mean, that's a big part of it, but but it's that this is one way that we get to see people.

I mean, there and there and there's so many needs that could never get thrown up on a website.

We know that.

People carrying stuff that we'll never know about.

There, there's marriages that are barely hanging on.

There's a single mom that doesn't know how she's gonna get through the end of the month.

You all got neighbors that are isolated kids that are behind in school and it's just a forever struggle to catch up.

One of the best ways we can demonstrate God's love in a practical way is by saying with our words and our actions, I see you, I see what you're carrying, and I'm not gonna let you carry it alone.

So as you scroll through the needs on that, that the no needs list, if you text serve to 27242, you'll see the list.

And as you scroll through them, don't just ask, okay, what am I capable of doing?

Or, you know, what can I afford?

Ask yourself, who can I see?

Because God, the God who sees, has called us to follow him in that way.

So let's see people.

Who needs God?

Forgotten people need God, lonely people need God, people carrying pain that we'll never know about need God.

Church, if I need God, so do you.

We all need God.

The good news is that the God who's been revealed to us in Jesus Christ is still Elroy, the God who sees.

Let's pray.

God, thank you for seeing us.

Thank you for seeing me.

In our pain, in our sin, and in in our distress, in our where are you?

Does anyone know me?

Does anyone care?

In that state, God, you didn't abandon us, you didn't send us off, you didn't mistreat us.

You came to us and you saved us.

God, may we receive that, and then may we go and live in light of it.

And God, may you be honored and glorified through us as we do.

In Jesus' name.

Amen.