When God's Way Makes No Sense (Genesis 16:1-16)

Hi, I'm Pastor Creighton, and thank you for tuning into Newsong Churches Podcast.

We're a biblically faithful, gospel-centered Anglican church in Port Perry, Ontario, proclaiming the true and life-giving word of Jesus as we love and serve our neighbors.

You can learn more about us at Newsongportperry.ca.

May God bless you today through his life-giving word.

This is from Genesis 16, verses 1 to 16.

Genesis 16 · chapter mention

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

She had a female Egyptian servant whose name was Hagar.

And Sarah said to Abram, Behold, now, the Lord has prevented me from bearing children.

Go into my servant.

It may be that I shall obtain children by her.

And Abram listened to the voice of Sarah.

So after Abram had lived ten years in the land of Canaan, Sarah, Abram's wife, took Hagar the Egyptian, her servant, and gave her to Abram, her husband, as a wife.

And he went into Hagar and she conceived.

And when she saw that she had conceived, she looked with contempt on her mistress.

And Sarah said to Abram, May the wrong done to me be on you.

I gave my servant to you, to your embrace.

And when she saw that she had conceived, she looked on me with contempt.

May the Lord judge between you and me.

But Abram said to Sarah, Behold, your servant is in your power.

Do to her as you please.

Then Sarah dealt harshly with her, and she fled from her.

And he said, Hagar, servant of Sarah, where have you come from?

And where are you going?

She said, I am fleeing from my mistress Sarah.

The angel of the Lord said to her, Return to your mistress and submit to her.

The angel of the Lord also said to her, I will surely multiply your offspring so that they cannot be numbered numbered for multitude.

And the angel of the Lord said to her, Behold, you are pregnant and shall bear a son.

You shall call his name Ishmael, because the Lord has listened to your affliction.

He shall be a wild donkey of a man, his hand against everyone, and everyone's hand against him.

And he shall dwell over against all his kinsmen.

So she called the names of the Lord who spoke to her.

You are a god of sea.

For she said, Truly, here I have seen him who looks after me.

Therefore, the will was called Irlahan.

It lies between Kadesh and Baren.

And Hagar bore Abraham a son, and Abram called the name of his son, whom Hagar bore.

Ishmael.

Abram was eighty-six years old when Hagar bore Ishmael to Abram.

This is the word of the Lord.

Blessed Lord, who has caused all holy scriptures to be written for our learning, grant that we may in such wise hear them, read, mark, learn, and inwardly digest them, that by patience and comfort of thy holy word we may embrace and ever hold fast the blessed hope of everlasting life which thou hast given us in our Savior Jesus Christ.

Speak, O Lord, give us ears to hear, hearts to believe, and wills ready to obey.

We pray in the mighty name of Jesus Christ and through the power of God the Holy Spirit.

Amen.

Please be seated.

It's a joy to be here.

Who attended the catechism class this morning?

Excellent.

What did you learn?

Uh-oh.

Okay.

It's all good.

It's all good.

Mike uh Mike Tweedle uh this morning informed me that he is taking a homiletics course.

And my encouragement to him was not to take notes based on my homiletics.

I tend to break all the rules.

I I don't preach in the theory of most uh seminaries.

I simply pray and then relay what God the Holy Spirit gives me to convey to his people.

And this morning, your rector has has given me what I have always found to be a remarkably difficult text to preach.

So I thank him for that.

Last time, do you know what I preached on?

Money.

It was awesome.

And Creighton, I'm gonna say it, at passing of the piece, he goes, better you than me, right?

But but all is well.

All is well because God's word is good.

Um this text is difficult to preach because there's just an awful lot going on in it.

And a lot of what's going on can be misspoken, and a lot of what's going on can be misheard and misunderstood.

When we are speaking of sinners and of sin and of the outworking of sin in the world, it's never really easy.

This text refuses to be clean and simple.

I like stories, right?

Often the stories we engage are very clear-cut.

There's the good guys and the bad guys, and with any luck you're reading stories where the good guys prevail.

If you're looking for heroes, Genesis 16 is precisely the wrong place to come.

This text groans under the weight of sin.

Sarai sins, Abram sins, Hagar sins, no one is innocent.

All of them, like all of us, fall short of who God created us to be.

So it's not an easy text.

I like stories where good triumphs over evil.

I like stories where victims are rescued.

I like stories where villains are rightfully vanquished.

But Genesis 16 gives us something much more uncomfortable.

Rather than a clean, straightforward story, we get sinners hurting sinners, selfish people grasping for themselves, self-absorbed people, self-centered people behaving as though what they see and what they want and what they think and what they crave and what they judge to be right is acknowledged as truth and good and established as the way that others should go.

But even there, in Genesis 16, remember, standing above it all, not absent, not confused, not surprised by any of this, we glimpse God.

And as we read that text, we might wonder, why doesn't he do something?

He should, you know, have done something.

I would have done something.

And right there is the sting of the text.

We so easily set ourselves in the place of God.

We so easily judge God and what he should do by my standard.

So it's just that easy to fall into and wallow in the filth and the mire of sin.

So that helps us understand this text and each of the people we meet in and through it.

God has spoken.

He had called Abram, He had promised Abram descendants, he had bound himself to Abram in covenant, he had declared that through Abram all the families of the earth would be blessed.

Yes, God has spoken.

But Sarai's, her arms were still empty.

There was no child.

And she was long, long past the age when women conceive.

Abram was getting older, his mortality was staring him in the face, the years kept passing by, and he kept clinging to the promise that frankly was becoming humanly absurd.

And there I think we find the crux of Genesis 16.

It's not merely will they become impatient.

It's not only will they make matter or take matters into their own hands.

It's not merely will they make bad decisions.

The question at the crux of this text is will they acknowledge and accept God as God?

Even, even when what God has promised seems ludicrous.

It's so easy, right?

It's so easy to say God is God when things are going the way I want them to go.

It's so easy to say God is God when his way is easy and agrees with my way.

It's easy to say God is God when it seems I just get to go along to get along, to blend seamlessly into the world around me and into the morals and the ethics of that world.

It's so easy to say God is God as the promise appears right on schedule, when obedience seems reasonable and sensible, when following him feels blessed and costs me almost nothing, when I can see how everything is going to work out for my good.

Yes, then God is God.

But what happens?

What happens when God has spoken and nothing is happening?

And nothing is going right, in my humble opinion, and nothing makes sense to me, and I am despised and I am persecuted and I am suffering, and obedience costs me dearly.

And nothing is nothing is going the way I think it should go.

When everything that I can see seems to contradict him.

What about then?

Is God still God?

That question is older than Abram.

It was there in Eden.

The crisis in Eden was never merely about a tree or a piece of fruit.

In Eden, the serpent lied.

He was manipulating the situation because he wanted to separate those whom God loved from God himself.

The lie?

You will be like God.

The serpent's coaxing was not merely towards breaking a rule.

It was to become the one who decides, the one who takes control, the one who judges, the one God answers to, the one who corrects God, and finally the one who replaces God.

Sure.

God has spoken.

But you know, perhaps I know better.

God has said, but surely he did not actually mean that for me, and at least not for me here and now.

God has instructed, but surely his way is just not practical.

It's just not real.

It's ridiculous.

It's naive.

It's just not right for me.

God has promised.

But let me, you know, just nudge him along if the promise does not materialize in my own time.

John Stott, an Anglican theologian, put it very, very bluntly.

The essence of sin is man substituting himself for God.

God has spoken.

But the question is, who gets to be God?

That is the echo of Eden sounding throughout and all over Genesis 16.

Sarai looks at what she can see.

She is barren.

The years have passed, the promise seems preposterous.

She feels shame and she blames God for letting her down.

She says through Scripture, the Lord has prevented me from bearing children.

She does not reject the promise of a child.

She just seems to reject God's right to determine when and how the promise will be kept.

So she nudges God a bit.

And as she nudges him, she nudges him aside.

She takes matters into her own hands.

She hatches a scheme to bring about that child that she so desires.

She decides how God's promise will be fulfilled.

Sarai covets and grasps and turns from God.

She turns to herself.

She trusts herself.

It's the echo of Eden again.

It's Eve all over again.

Hagar is not seen as a person made in the image of God.

She's not seen as a person to be loved.

She's seen merely as a means to an end.

And Abraham, Abram, accepts and takes.

It's Adam all over again.

The man whom God had spoken to abdicates the responsibility that God had entrusted to him.

He bears responsible for the well-being of Sarai and for Hager.

When God is distrusted and demeaned and dismissed by Sarai, what's Abram say?

Nothing.

Nothing.

He does not correct Sarai.

He does not point Sarai back to God.

He does not speak of the holy nature of the one who made the promise in the first place.

He does not defend the dignity of Hagar.

He does not affirm Sarai's place in the promise.

He does not uphold Hagar's place in his household.

How different Genesis 16 would have been if Abram had just said, Sarai, stop.

You are bone of my bone.

You are flesh of my flesh.

God's promise is for you, just as it is for me, because you are my wife.

You are loved.

You are valued.

God's promise would never require us to sin.

God's promise cannot mean your humiliation.

It can't mean Hagar's humiliation either, because she bears the image of God.

She is not a pawn for us to play on the game board of our future.

I don't know how God will work this out, but I know the one who spoke, and I trust him, and we will follow him because I love him.

If only Abram had spoken that.

But instead, Abram followed in the footstep of Adam.

He abdicates his place, his headship.

He fails to protect those entrusted to him.

And Sarai, she steps into the void that he created.

She grasped it, she takes control, and sin thrives.

Hagar conceives a child.

And then Scripture says, she looks on Sarai with contempt.

Genesis is the image of sin spinning out of control.

Sarai covets and grasps.

Abram abdicates and accepts.

Hagar exalts herself and despises one that she was created to love.

It's the echo of Eden ringing loud and clear in the mire of Canaan.

It's the sound of the self, clamoring for more, clinging to rights, and usurping the place of God.

And the result is exactly what we would expect when creatures try to usurp the place of the Creator, to take the place of God.

People around us become instruments used to achieve my objectives.

Relationships are weaponized for my gain.

Desire becomes justification, and the household of promise declines and falls into a place of contempt and accusation and humiliation and harshness and estrangement.

That is what happens when self is made your God.

If self is God, your worth is measured by what you can do for me.

If self is God, my desire becomes my justification for doing anything I want.

If self is God, my reasoning masquerades as wisdom.

If self is God, my motivations masquerade as faithfulness.

If self is God, my way is proclaimed as God's way.

If self is God, my will, not thy will be done.

We follow whom we love and whom we trust reveals whom we love.

So ask yourself, is it me, myself, and I?

Or is it a holy God?

The answer is made evident in how you live and what you give your life toward.

So it's there.

The Genesis 16 turns from those three sinners and it doubles back on us to confront us.

How do I pray?

Do I pray, here I am, Lord, send me?

But then quickly add over here on the side, just not, you know, there or there or there.

How about here?

That makes sense to me.

That would be easier.

That would be better for me.

Do I pray?

I surrender all and then quickly add, well, obviously not everything.

Do I pray, I will follow you, and then add, provided, provided it's safe and sensible and not too uncomfortable for me.

And provided that, you know, I still get to enjoy the stuff everyone else gets to enjoy.

Do I pray, I will give, and then quickly add after I've looked after myself and attained my financial goals?

I will obey at least when it you know it feels right for me.

I will obey when I wasn't going to do that anyways.

Right?

We really say I reject God.

We simply reserve the right to edit him, to correct his timing, to tweak his commands, to adjust his priorities, and to reroute his way so that it suits me better.

And then We call that being Christian.

But it's not Christian.

Christianity is not about God blessing and endorsing me and my ways.

It's about going His way and serving Him as Lord.

Being Christian is knowing that God is God.

The Christian confession.

Jesus Christ is Lord.

And that by definition means I am not.

I think you have Pew Bibles.

Turn to page nine hundred and twenty-one.

If I remember it right, that should bring you to Paul's letter to the Philippians.

Anybody just love to read scripture and be called on at the last minute?

Kathy.

My wife, my wife.

So you have to come up here and maybe the microphone will be will be turned on, but I I'd like you to read one one to eleven if you would.

So if there is any encouragement in Christ, any comfort from love, any participation in the spirit, any affection and sympathy, complete my joy by being of the same mind, having the same love, being in full accord and of one mind.

Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility count others more significant than yourselves.

Let each of you look not only to his own interests, but also to the interests of others.

Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus.

By taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men.

And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on promise.

Therefore, God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of God the Father.

Amen.

I found those verses remarkably helpful as I struggled with Genesis 16.

The ancient lie is you will be like God.

It's humanity coveting and grasping for what is not ours.

But then in this text, Paul says, look at him, look at God.

Jesus is truly God.

Yet he does not use his majesty for self-advantage.

He empties himself, he takes the form of a servant, he humbles himself, he becomes obedient, laying down his life, holding nothing back.

He takes up the cross, not my will, but your will be done.

He embraces and obeys God's will, not by force, not by fear, not by compulsion.

He obeys in love, even to death, even death on a cross.

Do you understand?

Do you see how that stands in such contrast to that remarkably difficult text in Genesis 16?

Paul is pointing us and he's saying, This is Christ.

He is, in fact, the precise inverse of who Eve grasped to be.

She didn't know him, she didn't love him, she didn't trust him, so she didn't follow him.

She grasped and coveted a lie of her own imagination, of her own creation.

We follow whom we trust, and we trust whom we love.

Paul describes the Christ, and so he describes those who follow the Christ, because those that follow Jesus know Jesus and they trust Jesus because they love Jesus.

It's really as simple and complicated as that.

But the question, the challenge is, is it you?

Are you a follower of Christ?

We look at the Christ as Paul describes him.

Do you see the reversal?

We who are not God in the beginning grasped for God's place.

Yet the one who is very God does not exploit for his own glory.

He does not elevate himself.

He stoops.

He stoops down to take the hand of sinners and draw them close to him.

We use others to preserve and to glorify ourselves.

He gives himself to raise and redeem others.

We grasp, he gives, we accumulate, he empties, we exalt ourselves, he humbles himself.

Remember that quote that I used a little bit earlier from John Stott, the quote that I hope resonates in us and confronts us.

It was the essence of sin is man substituting himself for God.

But Stott's quote actually doesn't end there.

He continues.

The essence of salvation is God substituting himself for us, taking on our place.

The very advent of sin is ironic.

The God we tried to replace in Christ takes our place.

That is the gospel.

The God we dared to judge bore the judgment that we earned and deserved.

The Lord became the servant of all.

The one against whom we sinned gave himself for sinners.

That's the cross.

And for those with ears to hear, it silences every echo from Eden.

It's the gospel.

It's the good news that has changed each person who is truly Christian.

It has changed who they are.

It has changed who they live for.

It has changed how they live.

It has changed the joy and the objective of their very life.

The Christian sets aside worldly goals and ambitions.

Their heart is fixed on eternity.

It is fixed on what brings glory to God and what brings joy in heaven.

If you are a Christian, the people out there in this community are your goal and your ambition.

If you are a Christian, your greatest hope and desire is that they come to know and love and trust and follow Jesus Christ.

No matter the cost, no matter the persecution or the ridicule or the suffering or the harm, no matter the inconvenience, no matter how unlovable or hateful or stubborn they are, no matter where they are, no matter when or how long it takes, you will go and persist and endure.

Why?

Because that's what love does.

Jesus is God.

This is what he has commissioned each of his followers to do.

Why would you go?

Why would you speak?

Because you know Jesus.

And because you know who you're not.

And now that sentence that sounds like humiliation comes back with astonishing freedom.

God is God.

I am not.

Perhaps the confession Genesis 16 requires of us is much simpler than I first imagined.

Holy God, you are God.

I am not.

You have spoken.

Bon, teach me to know you enough to love you, to love you enough to trust you, to trust you enough to follow you.

Where you send me, whatever it costs, I will go.

And I will love those who bear your image.

Because that is what love does.

Even when your way looks ridiculous, you remain God.

I am not.

Thanks be to God.

Will you pray with me?

Holy God, whose never failing providence orders all things both in heaven and on earth.

We humbly beseech thee to put away from us all hurtful things and to give us those things which are profitable for us.

Teach me your way, O Lord, that I may walk in your truth.

Unite my heart to you.

I give thanks to you, O Lord my God.

I love you with my whole heart, and I will glorify your name forever.

For great is your steadfast love.

Through Jesus Christ our Lord.

Amen.

We hope that you've been blessed by God's word today.

If you live in the area, we hope that you'll come and worship with us in person on Sunday at 10 a.m.

If you'd like to learn more about Newsong Church, we'd love to connect with you.

Please find our contact information at newsongportperry.ca and reach out to us.

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Go in peace to love and serve the Lord.