A Promise Complicated: Sarah, Hagar, and the Birth of Ishmael

All right, Genesis chapter 16 and you can be seated and we're just going to read it once through and then we'll go through more carefully verse by verse in our Bible study. Now Sarah's 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 and it may be that I shall obtain children by her. And Abram listened to the voice of Sarah. So Abram, are you able to get it up there on screen? Abram, it's Genesis 16 and verse, verse, let's start with verse two again. 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 10 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 she, 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 be 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, due to her as you please. And Sarah dealt harshly with her and she fled from her. The angel of the Lord found her by a spring of water in the wilderness, the spring on the way to Shure. And he said, Hagar servant to 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 for multitude. And the angel of the Lord said to her, Behold, you are pregnant and you 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. That just makes me smile. I don't think Hagar smiled about it though. I'd hate to be described that way. You wild donkey of a man. His hand against everyone and everyone's hand against him. He shall dwell over against all of his kinsmen. So she called the name of the Lord who spoke to her, you're a God of seeing. For she said truly, here I have seen him who looks after me. Therefore the well was called Bir or Bi'er Lahore'ay. It lives between Kadesh and Barab. In Hagar bore Abram a

son and Abram called the name of the son whom Hagar bore Ishmael. Abram was 86 years old when Hagar bore Ishmael to Abram. That's the word of the Lord and we've finished a few weeks ago. We finished Genesis 15. So now we're on to 16 and Genesis 15 is a real high point for Abram. I'm for ease of use. I'm referring to him as Abram, not Abram. He hasn't had his name lengthened yet, but we know him as Abram. And Abram in chapter 15 receives a great promise. Chapter 14, he acted like a hero, a legend, taking on by himself, taking on five armies and defeating them. But there's a low point here. The hero of the Bible, it is not any one man. It's God's the hero of the Bible. He's the only one who's perfect in the Bible. And the Bible is not afraid, not for one minute, to show all of the problems that people have, even great men and

women of God. They have high points and low points. But God's the one consistent person throughout history. Everyone else, we're up and down. And so we get to see Abram at a particularly low point right here. All right, this chapter, really though, it's not just about Abram's failure. It's about Sarah's failure. Abram had a major failure at the end of chapter 12, just after having obeyed God and followed God's voice, getting up out of his father's country and leaving everything behind and following God's voice. You think it's going to be this great ascent higher and higher, but for Abram, even then, he has failures along the way. In fact, at one point, he ends up lying that Sarah is his sister. So he does this in order to spare himself, the Egyptians he's afraid. Once he goes into Egypt, he's afraid that the Egyptians are going to see how beautiful his wife is and then kill him and take her. And so he

makes up this story, or at least he tells a half truth. He says, when they ask, tell them that you're my brother. So they'll spare me. And they might take you, but they'll spare me. And they did. They spared him and they took her. And then God is extremely angry about that whole arrangement, that Abram didn't trust him enough to defend him. Instead, he resorted the lies. He took, instead of again trusting in God, he resorted to a very human measure, which was lying to spare himself. And so there's Abram's failure. And he has a couple more along the way. But this chapter really, it focuses upon the failure of Sarah. Okay. All right. So let's go verse by verse. Now, Sarah, Abraham's wife, bore him no children. She had a female Egyptian servant whose name was Hagar. It's possible that when Sarah and Abraham went down into Egypt on that first occasion, remember Pharaoh takes Sarah into his harem and then God

wakes him up in the middle of the night and says, you're a dead man. You better not touch her and send her back. So he wakes up in a sweat and he gets ahold of Abraham. He says, why did you lie to me? Do you hate me? Your God came after me last night. I would have preferred you tell me the truth. And then he's so scared that he weighs Abraham down with riches. So Abraham entered into Egypt, a vagabond starving, and he went down there for food and he leaves Egypt, having lost his wife at first, but given his wife back and then he's made a rich man. So probably Sarah acquired this maid servant as part of the compensation. And her name's Hagar. And verse two says, and Sarah said to Abraham, Behold now the Lord has prevented me from bearing children. Go into my servant, Hagar. It may be that I shall obtain children by her. Apparently this was a

customer convention. It seemed to have been acceptable in the ancient Near East for a wife who can't bear a child to give over a servant of hers. And then that servant is a surrogate for children. And so that those children, surrogate children can be hers. Okay. So that's the arrangement that Sarah is going to go with. And Abraham listened to the voice of Sarah. So after Abraham had lived 10 years in the land of Canaan, Sarah, Abraham's wife took Hagar, the Egyptian, her servant and gave her to Abraham, Abraham, her husband as a wife. Okay. She has become impatient and she finally gives up. God had promised that she was going to bear children and that they were going to be numerous. And now she's approaching 80 and she's given up. Who wouldn't, right? Abraham was apparently content to wait for God at this point. But she takes matters into her own hands and turns to the customs of the surrounding nations. It's

okay, according to the customs of the nations, to have this kind of arrangement. Again, here's a servant. She's going to become your wife and she's going to be a surrogate for children. Okay. I think we have similar arrangements today, although they're of course very different. But we have artificial insemination. We have surrogacy going on today. So I guess we're coming full circle back to some of these things. And that's the arrangement that Sarah goes with. She's like, I'm not going to be able to do it. I'm not going to be able to have children. So here's my servant. She's going to give us children. Notice that she blames her maker for mismaking her. Look at verse two. Behold now the Lord has prevented me from bearing children. All right. So she really, she lays this at the Lord's feet. And of course it is, this is the Lord's doing. But she's basically saying, God has done this. He's promised me, but yet he

hasn't taken care of this. He's prevented me from getting pregnant. So I'm going to figure out, figure a way out of this problem myself. And then look at this verse, the end of verse two. Look what Abram, look what it says about Abram. And Abram listened to the voice of Sarah. Now, that doesn't sound like a big deal to you and me in the 21st century, but it's a really big deal going back 4,000 years. It's a deeply patriarchal society. And this is not the way families are conducted, the way business is done generally in the ancient Near East. The scripture says Abram listened to the voice of Sarah and that's a red flag. Here's why it's a red flag. It's a red flag because God had told him what he was going to do. But now he's listening to her, even when she opposes what he said. All right, so that's a big red flag. But I want you to also notice

that this is, this is from the perspective of the writer of Genesis. There's a pattern that's developing all through scripture. We've gone through this. If you've been at all these Wednesday night Bible studies, you've seen there's a pattern being established here. Watch this. In Genesis 3 and 17, if you pull that up real quick, remember this is the chapter in which Adam and Eve fell in the garden of Eden. They disobeyed God. Look at this. After they fell and they discovered they were naked and everything's wrong and God's going to kick them out of the garden. God has a conversation with Adam and Eve. And to Adam, he said, because you have listened to the voice of your wife and have eaten of the tree of which I commanded you, you shall not eat it. Cursed is the ground because of you and pain you shall eat of it all the days of your life. Same verbiage. Because you have listened to the

voice of your wife over and against what I said. All right, cursed is the ground. There's another word, a curse that comes from it. Thorns and thistles it shall bring forth the ground shall and you shall eat the plants of the field by the sweat of your face. You shall eat bread till you return to the ground for out of it you were taken. You are dust and to dust you shall return. Okay, all right, I want you also to notice the language that's used in verse three. Let's pull that up in chapter 16 verse three. Okay, so to wrap that little piece up right there, you have the moment where everything fell apart in the Garden of Eden. It had to do with Adam listening to his help meet over and against the voice of God. When they conflicted, he deferred to his wife's voice instead of God's voice. All right, so that happens again right here in Genesis 16, same pattern,

Abraham listened to his wife. Okay, and then we're going to see the trouble that arises out of all of this. Okay, now look at verse three. So after Abram had lived 10 years in the land of Canaan, Sarah Abram's wife took Hagar, the Egyptian, her servant, and gave her to Abram to be his wife. Look at the, look at the verb there. Abram's wife, or Sarah Abram's wife took Hagar and gave her to Abram, big deal. No big, what's, what's the big deal? Well, again, if you're reading the first 15 chapters of Genesis, you can see this is, this is the ominous Alfred Hitchcock music. The camera, you know, it's a bad scene. You know, bad things are gonna happen when the camera's following the character walking through a hallway and the camera's over his right shoulder from behind and the camera walks with him. You know what I'm talking about? You get this very eerie sense when the camera's over the character's

right shoulder walking down a hallway and then you're hearing this ominous music. Its tension is building. This is the writer's way of building tension and if you have paid attention to the first 15 chapters and all of the important events that have been described, you'll see that there's another pattern and there's that same music and camera angle, angle so to speak, to show you bad things are about to happen. Look at this. Sarah took Hagar and gave her to Abram. All right, look at, let's go back to Genesis chapter three again. Let's look at verse six. Again, we're in the Garden of Eden. So when the woman saw that the tree was good for food and that it was a delight to the eyes and that the tree was to be desired to make one wise, she took of its fruit and ate and she also gave some to her husband who was with her and he ate. You see the same two

important verbs, took and gave. And it also happens to be a woman taking and then giving to a husband in both cases. Again, we're at that really ominous music. I don't know who Alfred Hitchcock's musical composer was, but it's bad. It's really, really bad right now. Okay, in both cases, the wife given as a help meat makes a suggestion that directly contradicts a divine direction. For Adam, God said, don't eat the fruit. For Abraham, God said, I will give you a son from your own body, not an adopted son. In both cases, the wife is said to take what's forbidden and give it to her husband. In both cases, life ends up becoming very difficult for the families as a result. This is a pattern repeated several times through the first 15 chapters of the Bible, as I've already mentioned. There was Genesis chapter three, the fall of mankind. Now let's look at Genesis chapter six, verse one. When man began to multiply

on the face of the land and daughters were born to them, this is the prelude to the flood, by the way. All right. The sons of God saw that the daughters of men were attractive and they took as their wives any they chose. Next verse. Then the Lord said, my spirit shall not abide in man forever, for he is flesh, his days shall be 120 years. The Nephilim were on the earth in those days and also afterwards, when the sons of God came to the daughters of men and they bore children to them, they were the mighty men of old, the men of renown. Look at verse two again. Go back to verse two. The sons of God saw that the daughters of men were attractive and they took as their wives any they chose. There's some of that same action right here. Look at Genesis chapter 12 and verse 14. And Abram entered Egypt. This is the episode I've already alluded to

with Pharaoh. The Egyptians saw that the woman was very beautiful. Next verse. And when the princes of Pharaoh saw her, they praised her to Pharaoh and the woman was taken, took into Pharaoh's house. Next verse. I'm sorry. We've already have the took and gave. Now look at Genesis chapter nine. Here's a curious variation on the pattern. Verse 22. This is the strange episode after Noah's Ark, after the flood. You have this incident where Noah was drunk and apparently he's naked and one of the sons starts making fun of him. Okay, verse 22. And Ham the father of Cain and saw the nakedness of his father and told his two brothers outside. Then Shem and Japeth took a garment and laid it on both their shoulders and walked backwards and covered the nakedness of their father. Okay, this same verb keeps on showing up in all of these scenes. In this case, Shem and Japeth do something good with the taking. Okay, there's also

a curious turn of phrase back in chapter 16 in the story of Abraham and Hagar. Normally it's said that a woman's father gives her to be married to be married to a man, as we'll see is the case with Rebecca and Rachel later on. But here it's Sarah giving Abraham a wife. Again, normally that's the job of the woman's father, but here it's the wife taking this responsibility. Sarah's ideas seem to have been met with success. Her surrogate, Hagar, becomes pregnant and now Sarah would have her own child. Unfortunately, the only problem with the idea was that it worked. The plan succeeded. I've heard it said that there's only one thing worse than failure, success, getting exactly what she wanted. But this made everything way worse. Verse four says in chapter 16, Abraham went into Hagar, she conceived, and when she saw that she had conceived, Hagar looked with contempt on her mistress, Sarah. Can you imagine that? It doesn't take much to

imagine that. I can understand. That this is a very human thing happening right here. She's been a servant all of this time to Sarah. And she's the lowly one and Sarah's the mistress of the house. And now she is the one that's going to conceive the child and suddenly the relationship changes. Sarah tries to boss her around, tries to tell her what to do. And one of those times, Hagar was like, I don't think so. I don't think you understand the situation anymore. You see, the valuable one between us is the one that gives the sun. You see, that's what Sarah was thinking and that's what Hagar must have been thinking. She looked with contempt at Sarah. The word contempt there is the Hebrew word underneath that is the Hebrew word Kallel. That's really important. Looked with Kallel on her mistress. All right. Now, Hagar disdains Sarah. It's really bad. Do you remember in Genesis chapter 12 and 3 when God said to

Abraham, I will bless those who bless you and the one who dishonors you, I will curse. But the word, the Hebrew word that God uses there is and him or the one who Kallels you, I will curse. Here is Hagar Kalleling or cursing Sarah. Bad things are going to happen. Okay. They're supposed to be though a blessing on Abraham's children, but the mother has done something to bring a curse upon her in her offspring. To use a modern phrase you might say of this child that has come into the world or is coming into the world, star crossed as a blessing and a curse upon him. All right. Verse five and Abram said to and Sarah said to Abram, May the wrong done to me be on you. I gave my servant to your embrace. And when she saw that she had conceived, she looked on me with contempt. Kallel, may the Lord judge between you and me. You can hear this. You

can hear the shouting in the household. Can't you? I gave her to you. And now she's looking at me this way. Now she's giving me lip. Now she's, now she's got her nose up at me. You did this. I think probably to give Sarah the benefit of the doubt, I think she's probably blaming Abraham for not, for not reminding Hagar. She's still, Sarah's still my wife. She's the one I married. She's the one I cherish most. I think that's probably what Sarah is probably blaming Abraham for here. All right. 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. I need to introduce you to one more Hebrew word. The word that's translated harshly here is the Hebrew word anay. That is Sarah dealt harshly with her in the sense that she humiliated her. And Hagar takes off running. She flees. Sarah blames Abraham.

Remember that when God questioned Adam, he blamed his spouse. Okay. Now Sarah's blaming Abraham and blame always happens after there's somebody crosses God's word trespasses against God's word. Sarah humiliates Hagar in return and she fled, which is the same term used in the book of Exodus to describe Israel fleeing from Egypt. And there are several instances of men running from a would be murderer in first and second Samuel. Flee. All right. Hagar took off running, running, presumably for her life in some sense. Sarah is so angry with her. And then it looks like she's out of the picture. Hagar is gone and Sarah is probably thinking good riddance. And Abraham, he's probably relieved in some sense too that there's not going to be tension, but he also knows that he's now lost the son or a child at least. And verse seven, God hasn't forgotten about her though. Might be out of the picture for Abraham and Sarah, but not out of God's

picture. The angel of the Lord found her by a spring of water in the wilderness. The spring on the way to shore. All right. Let me talk to you for a few minutes about the angel of the Lord. It's not just referred to here as an angel or one of God's angels. It's very specific. An angel of the Lord. Can you pull that up, Stephen, on in King James? Same verse, the angel of the Lord found her by a spring. King James keeps the tradition of capitalizing L-O-R-N-D when there's a reference to the divine name of God Yahweh underneath. Okay. So it's literally me in Hebrew. It's an angel of Yahweh found her by a fountain. Okay. This in Hebrew is Melech Yahweh, the angel of Yahweh. Very special figure we're dealing with here. It's mentioned 58 times in the Old Testament. And in most instances, the angel is taken for a man at first, but by the end of the encounter, he's

understood to be God himself. All right. So whenever you see angel of the Lord, capital L-O-R-N-D, you might well be dealing here with God in human form. Okay. There are instances where that's not the case, and I'll talk about that here. Genesis chapter 18 and 2, you don't have to pull that up. Judges chapter 6, it's angel of God, angel of Yahweh and then angel of God. It's mentioned eight times. The angel of Yahweh should be understood to mean God himself appearing in human form to Hagar here. In Genesis 18, God appears as a man to Abraham near the oaks of Mamre, and Abraham serves him a meal. In Genesis 21, the angel of Yahweh appears again to Hagar, but this time from heaven, and she finally gets kicked out for good, but God again comes to her rescue. Then in Genesis chapter 31, the angel of Yahweh appears to Jacob in a dream to help him turn the tables on Laban. And

most famously, in Exodus chapter 3, it's the angel of Yahweh that appears to Moses in the burning bush. Here's what the text says. Moses was keeping the flock of his father in law Jethro, the priest of Midian. He led his flock beyond the wilderness and came to Horeb, the Mount of God. Then the angel of Yahweh appeared to him in a flame of fire out of a bush, and he looked and the bush was blazing, yet it was not consumed. Then Moses said, I must turn aside and look at this great sight and see why the bush isn't burned up. And when the Lord saw that he turned aside to see, God called him out of the bush. Moses, Moses, and he said, here I am. So we were introduced to it. It's an angel of Yahweh in the burning bush. And then a few verses later, it's God speaking out of the burning bush. All right. The angel of Yahweh brings a

cloud down from the sky to protect the fleeing Israelites from the Egyptian armies later on in the book of Exodus. Okay. The angel of Yahweh appears to Gideon in Judges chapter 6, and in 2 Samuel chapter 24. In this case, the angel of Yahweh seems to be distinct from Yahweh himself. The angel here in 2 Samuel 24 stretches a rod over Jerusalem. And as long as that rod is outstretched over Jerusalem, the city is being destroyed as a punishment for King David's sin. In Zechariah 1, there's a clear distinction made between the angel of Yahweh and Yahweh himself. But in Zechariah 3, just two chapters later, the angel of Yahweh is clearly identified with God himself. But by the time we get to the New Testament, the angel of the Lord is no longer identified with God. In Luke's Gospel and in Acts, the angel of the Lord is Gabriel. All right. So in the beginning, when we hear about the angel of

Yahweh, it's God himself in human form. But as we go through the passage of time, through the Old Testament, the more we go on and years the more clear that there's a distinction between the angel of Yahweh and Yahweh himself. Why that is, I don't know. I have no idea. And again, by the time we get to the New Testament, the angel of the Lord is Gabriel. It's a distinct person and God is not the angel of Yahweh. Okay. All right. So the angel of the Lord, it's God himself, has appeared in human form to Hagar. She's pretty special. She's fleeing from Canaan to Egypt, and she's in the same region as the Israelites would later wander after fleeing from Egypt. Isn't that interesting? All right. The angel of the Lord and Hagar meet at a well. Now, again, if you know the Old Testament really, really well and you look for patterns frequently, you see, oh, that's really interesting. They're meeting at

a well. Because in the literature of the Old Testament, meeting at a man meeting, somebody in human form meeting a woman at a well is usually indicative of a much closer relationship that's going to develop over time. All right. Abraham found, Abraham's servant found a wife for Isaac at a well. Jacob finds Rachel at a well. Moses found Sappora at a well. And in each of these three cases, they got married, and they had children and, in fact, gave birth to nations. At first, Hagar probably thought the angel of the Lord that she was meeting was just a man. But she's going to walk away from that well with a divine promise that she'll be the mother of nations. So big things always happen when women go to a well in the Old Testament. Big things every single time. And then you get to the New Testament. In John's Gospel, Jesus is thirsty. He goes into a foreign country, Samaria, and he sits

down at a well and a woman comes up to the well. And if you, again, if you're sensitive to these patterns that are developing, see the scriptures are like, it's like, it's like a jazz, a jazz, like a John Coltrane song. There's one Coltrane song that's like 12 minutes long or something like that. And I can't remember the name of it. And I can't even hardly remember the tune. I just remember it starts out really, really simple, really, really simple, basic. And then it replays that same basic set of chords the second time through, but there's a slight variation. And then the third time, there's another variation. The fourth time, another variation until you finally get to the 10th or 11th iteration. And it's this really complex piece built on this one structure, this one simple structure. All right, the Bible's like that. It'll give you, it'll give you a story and it has this bare structure to it. Man and woman meeting

at a well and giving birth to children who end up becoming the fathers of nations. And that keeps on repeating itself and there are variations along the way. And then by the time you get to the New Testament and you see Jesus walking to a well and meeting a woman there, like you're hearing that. And here's another variation on it. And it makes you think of all those other times. So what is the right, the writer who wrote this is obviously sensitive to these, to this structure. And so it's trying to remind the readers, oh, this is what's happening. Oh, there's going to be a great invite. Sure enough, by the end of that episode, Jesus meets the woman of Samaria at the well by the end of the episode. Jesus, the woman goes back to her family and says, I got to tell you about this one I met. He's the Messiah. Come and meet him. And so pretty soon, all of

Samaria is coming out to meet Jesus and they all receive him as their Messiah. In other words, you don't have a physical marriage here. You have a spiritual marriage. Between Jesus and his people. That's amazing. That's why we're doing this, by the way. So when we finally, when we get to the New Testament, like, oh, yeah, I understand that pattern. And it just, it really hits different when you're sensitive to all these patterns. Okay. So verse eight of chapter 16, and the angel of the Lord said to Hagar, Hagar, servant of Sarah, where have you come from and where are you going? And she said, I'm fleeing from my mistress, Sarah. Okay. So what did God say when he came to the garden and called for Adam? He said, where are you? Right? What did he say when he went looking for Cain, who had killed his brother? Where's your brother? God asks the where's. Where are you? And here, God is asking

in the form of the angel of the Lord, Hagar, where are you going? Like, what's your plan? The angel tells her, go back and submit yourself to Sarah again. Here's that word. Go back and submit an A. Allow for there to be the humiliation again. Sarah's not going to be any nicer to you, but go back. And that's a surprising set of instructions. Why would you send her back if you care about her to this woman that just humiliates her and oppresses her? Well, the angel seems as harsh as Sarah herself, but the harshness makes more sense when you see what comes next. Verse 10, the angel of the Lord also said to her, I will surely multiply your offspring so that they cannot be numbered from multitude. Remember that when God promised that Abraham's offspring would be too great to count, he also told Abraham about the 400 years of suffering that would be involved for Abraham's descendants at the same time.

This seems to be the case here. Suffering is going to be involved, but you're going to be the mother of many nations. I'm going to bless you in the middle of your suffering. In other words, Sarah, go back to her, but she doesn't get the last word in your life. I do. A lot of people feel stuck, stuck in their job, stuck in homes, stuck in situations they don't want to be in. And they just want to tear it apart, go. But the person oppressing you and making your life miserable doesn't have the last say in your life. God has the last word, and when he sees you suffering and being oppressed, he doesn't overlook it. He blesses, he blesses. All right, angels are most often the prophetic voices announcing the birth of a promised child like Isaac in Genesis 18, Samson in Judges 13, and Jesus in Luke chapter one. The angel, the Lord said to her, Behold, you're pregnant. You shall

bear a son. You'll call his name Ishmael because the Lord has listened to your affliction, your anay, your oppression, your humiliation. The Lord has heard it. Ishmael means the Lord has heard. And after giving birth to a boy later on in the stories of Genesis, Leah says, the Lord has seen my anay, oppression or humiliation. So she named her firstborn son Reuben. Remember, Leah was the overlooked wife, the plain wife compared to her sister Rachel. And but God sent her a son and she named him Reuben because the Lord saw her affliction. Hannah prayed at the altar for a child. She was childless too. And in her prayer, she said, Lord, look down upon my anay, my humiliation. And God did. In Exodus chapter three, we're told that the Lord looked down upon the anay of the Israelites, the humiliation of the Israelites. And then he decided to set them free. Okay, verse 12, we're getting close to the end here. Ishmael, here's

a prophecy of him. He shall be a wild donkey of a man is hand against everyone and everyone's hand against him. And he shall dwell over against all his kinsmen. So she called the name of the Lord. She called that she, so she called the name of the Lord who spoke to her. You are a God of seeing verse 13. For she said, truly here I have seen him who looks after me. Therefore the, the well was called Be'er, Lehi, Roi. It, it lies between Cadish and Barrett. Okay. The Hebrew is in the form of a question. Hagar says, literally, have I lived after seeing God? There's a recognition of God's care for her and her son right here. She gives God a new name. Hagar gives God a name. She calls in the God who sees me. And she names a well, which is a very important thing to do. The well is everything in the ancient world. The well of the

God who cares for me. This reminds me of Psalm 139. Hagar is out there. She feels like she's been completely overlooked. She's been done wrong. She made a mistake. She probably regrets it. And now she's going to be done. She's going to die out in the middle of the desert. And then God shows up. God shows up. And Trump's everything that Sarah had planned for her. And she says, I have seen the one who cares for me. He cares for me. Psalm 139. Oh Lord, you searched me and known me. You know when I sit down and when I rise up, you discern my thoughts from a far away. You search out my path and my lying down and you're acquainted with all my ways. Even before a word is on my tongue, oh Lord, you know it completely. You hem me in behind and before and you lay your hand upon me. Such knowledge is too wonderful for me. Where can I

go from your spirit? Where could I ever flee from your presence? If I ascend to heaven, you're there. If I make my bed in the grave, you're there. If I take the wings of the morning and settle at the farthest limits of the sea, even there your hand shall lead me. And your right hand shall hold me fast. If I say surely the darkness shall cover me and the light around me become night. Even the darkness is not dark to you. The night is as bright as the day to you. For darkness is as light to you. For it was you who formed my inward parts. You knit me together in my mother's womb. Knit, knit. Is your mother ever knit? You knit me together in my mother's womb. I praise you. I am fearfully and wonderfully made. Wonderful are your works and that I know very well. My frame was not hidden from you. When I was being made in secret and

intricately woven in the depths of the earth, your eyes beheld my unformed substance in your book were written all the days that were formed for me when none of them as yet existed. How weighty to me are your thoughts, oh God. How vast is the sum of them. I try to count them sometimes, but they're more than the sand. When I get to the end, you're still there. Oh, that might have been, those might have been the very words of Hagar. You didn't forget me. What I love about this story is people make these great big mistakes. They commit these sins. Sarah commits a sin by sending Hagar over to Abraham and ignoring God's word. She gets impatient. She, she loses trust in God. And in Abraham, he sends in listening to her voice instead of God's voice. And then Hagar sends because she shows contempt and she lets her flesh get the better of her and she starts getting, she starts giving

it back to Sarah. And then Sarah sins again and sends her away, deals harshly with her. And it's just a big old viper's tangle. How do you fix this? You try to talk to this person over here, but they've got this problem. You talk to this person over here and fix it, but they've got this problem. They're pointing the finger over here. And then you talk to this person over here and they're pointing the, so you got this. You got everybody pointing their guns at each other. You can't fix this problem. Nothing good could come from it, right? You think God's done. Everybody messed up. God's out of here. No, he's not. No, he's not. Boy and a girl, man and a woman make terrible mistake, fornication. And then there's a child. They're not married. It's directly against the voice of God. Does God abandon the child? Oh, no, he doesn't. No, he doesn't. The angel of the Lord appeared to her by

a fountain. You think God's done once there's been a mistake and he doesn't care anymore, but he does. You see, and then he makes, he fixes things. He makes things better. Marvelous. Thank you not for not leaving us to our own devices. Thank you for not abandoning me when I've sinned. When I've done foolish things, you didn't heap scorn upon me. You forgave and then you helped me. And you do this all the time. You're faithful and we thank you. We love you. Amen.