God Sees the Forgotten

Transcript

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[0:00] Next is Genesis 21, 1 through 21, and we're reading from the New Revised Standard Version. A little bit of introduction before we go to our reading. We're more, even more, as we have been in the last few weeks, except for last week when we had a special update on the Unite trip. There's more about Abraham's family today, and this time it's about Hagar, the mother of his son Ishmael. And there's just one point that I want to start with. There's a description of a broken family and broken family relationships and cruel treatment in the Bible, in this passage here, and the Bible doesn't shy away from it. This is kind of a point that we're going to come back to. The Bible, if you read the Bible, it's not all sunshine and butterflies, okay? There's some really dark, painful, scary, terrifying, texts in the Bible that describe terrible treatment of other people, that describe family dynamics that are awful, dysfunctional, and toxic. And, you know, but there also are a few butterflies, you know, there's some great things. But the Bible speaks to real life. It reflects real life, because families are like this. Some families are like this. And that's the great thing about the Bible, is it speaks the truth about the human experience, and it doesn't shy

[1:24] away from it. What we're going to explore today is that God continues to be faithful to all his promises, despite our best efforts to mess everything up, despite our broken families and our broken lives. God remains faithful in that. And that's the great contrast between God and us. We're faithless, but he's always faithful. Now, chapter 21, interesting, is almost all about Hagar, which in itself we're going to spend some time on. And in this chapter, we hear how Hagar, who's, well, we'll get into a little bit of the background. Hagar is Sarah's servant girl or slave girl from Egypt. Hagar is expelled from Abraham's family out into the wilderness, and how God comes to her rescue. So that's what we'll be reading today. But we want to frame it completely, because it turns out we need to rewind all the way back to Genesis 16, which is also almost completely about Hagar. Genesis 16 is about Hagar. Genesis 21 is about Hagar. And in Genesis 16, we hear that Sarah and Abraham are doubting that God can actually give them the child that God has promised them. And so they go about trying to create a child, create this family with their own efforts. And instead of Sarah having this child, she tells Abraham that he should take her servant Hagar and start this plan without God's work,

[2:53] but purely by human effort. And so they go about trying to create a child, create this family with human effort. And so they're not waiting faithfully. They force Hagar into Abraham's tent. And I think the most fair way to understand this is that she was not consenting to this. And she becomes pregnant with the child who will be born as Ishmael. So this is in chapter 16. But in this classic sort of dysfunctional family way, Sarah gets angry that her plan succeeded. She gets angry because Hagar is pregnant. And Hagar, evidently, lords it over Sarah a little bit. And so Hagar is mistreated by Sarah. This is all in chapter 16. We're framing it. And so she runs away. Hagar runs away out into the wilderness because it's intolerable, her family situation as it is now. And out there in the wilderness, God finds her and persuades her to return to the family because there's still some promises that God needs to keep to her. And he shows her a spring of water to drink from. Because she's getting thirsty out there. The most unusual thing happens next in chapter 16, which is that Hagar names God. This is the first time that God is named by one of his creatures in the Bible. You would think of the story of Adam and how he's set in the garden and he's given

[4:14] dominion over the garden and he's told to name all the animals. You know this story from Genesis earlier on in Genesis. And so naming somebody is a sign that you have some sort of authority and a dominion over the garden. And so Hagar names God. And so Hagar names God. And so Hagar names God. How did he come up with the name for the porcupine? That's what I wonder. Like, it kind of looks like a porcupine. Although I don't think it's the same word that Adam used, right? But Hagar names God in Genesis 16. She names him El Roy, which means the God who sees because God had seen her distress out in the wilderness. And God permits this. That's the interesting thing in Genesis 16 is God permits him. himself to be named by one of his creatures. He doesn't object to it. He doesn't say, oh no, you can't do this. I'm the one who names you, not the other way around. God accepts this name that Hagar gives. And that's maybe perhaps more evidence, if there's a thread that's running through this, that when God enters the world for the sake of relationship, he limits some of his power and he allows himself to be named by a marginalized person like Hagar, maybe. Now, enough of that background. We're at the point where Hagar's son Ishmael is born and he's older

[5:26] now. And finally, Sarah has her son Isaac. And this is what unfolds next. We'll go to our reading. Genesis 21. The Lord dealt with Sarah as he had said, and the Lord did for Sarah as he had promised. Sarah conceived and bore Abraham a son in his old age, at the time of which God had spoken to him. Abraham was a son of Abraham. He was a son of Abraham. He was a son of Abraham. He was a son of Abraham. Abraham gave the name Isaac to his son, whom Sarah bore him. And Abraham circumcised his son Isaac when he was eight days old, as God had commanded him. Abraham was a hundred years old when his son Isaac was born to him. Now Sarah said, God has brought laughter for me. Everyone who hears will laugh with me. And she said, who would ever have said to Abraham that Sarah would nurse children? Yet I have borne him a son in his old age. The child grew and was weaned, and Abraham made a great feast on that day that Isaac was weaned. But Sarah saw the son of Hagar, the Egyptian, whom she had borne to Abraham, playing with her son Isaac. So she said to Abraham, cast out this slave woman with her son, for the son of this slave woman shall not inherit along with my son, Isaac. The matter was very distressing to Abraham on account of his son. But God said to Abraham,

[7:00] do not be distressed because of the boy and because of your slave woman. Whatever Sarah says to you, do as she tells you, for it is through Isaac that offspring shall be named for you. As for the son of the slave woman, I will make a nation of him also, because of the son of the slave woman. And I will make a nation of him also, because of the son of Isaac. So Abraham rose early in the morning and took bread and a skin of water and gave it to Hagar, putting it on her shoulder along with the child and sent her away. And she departed and wandered about in the wilderness of Beersheba. When the water and the skin was gone, she cast the child under one of the bushes. Then she went and sat down opposite him, a good way off, about the distance of a bow shot. For she said, do not let me look on the death of the child. And as she sat opposite him, she lifted up her voice and wept. And God heard the voice of the boy and the angel of God called to Hagar from heaven and said to her, what troubles you, Hagar? Do not be afraid for God has heard the voice of the boy where he is. Come, lift up the boy and hold him in your hand. And he said, hold him fast with your hand, for I will make a great nation of him. Then God opened her eyes and

[8:26] she saw a well of water. She went and filled the skin with water and gave the boy a drink. God was with the boy and he grew up. He lived in the wilderness and became an expert with the bow. He lived in the wilderness of Paran and his mother got a wife for him from the land of Egypt. Let's pray.

[8:49] Heavenly Father, thank you for your word. And we ask that you would add your blessing to it in Jesus name. Amen. Well, it's a difficult story, isn't it? As you were listening, you're like, wow, this family has problems. Okay. It really does. We're going to get into that, but let's start with this. We see that Hagar does not need to run away anymore. At first she wanted to run away in chapter 16. In chapter 21, she's done running away, but now she's kicked out. So she really can't catch a break. She's not running away. She's not running away. She's not running away. She's not running away. Either she's running away or getting kicked out. There's nothing really happens well for Hagar except for God's faithfulness. That's the truth. And this is really one of the most heart-wrenching stories in the Bible. As we read, as we get closer to the end of this chapter, that she was so broken by the thought that she would watch her own son die, that she separated herself from her own child to watch him die. And she was so broken by the thought that she would watch him die. And she was so broken by the thought that she would watch him die. And she was so from a distance. She was so broken up about this. Can you imagine a mother and a child out in the

[9:56] wilderness? They ran out of water. They may have a little bit of food left, but they ran out of water and there's nothing around. I mean, the world was really unpopulated back then. And she just breaks down and starts to give up and says, I can't even watch. I can't watch anymore. I can't do anything else. I'm just going to cry out to God. And the child cries out too. Ishmael cries out. And, um, finally, God hears Ishmael's cries and he comes to both of them and he rescues her again by showing her a well where there's some water. And there's a little bit of parallelism between the stories of the first time and the second time, but they are very different too. And once she runs away and once she's expelled, uh, and once she's told to go back and the other one, she's told to go on and go out into the world and live into this promise that God had made to Abraham, through her and her son. So in time, it says her son grew up and married and became the ancestor of a multitude of people himself. Now, here are some points I want us to take away from this. The first, and this is interesting, is how much of the book of Genesis, two chapters out of 50, two chapters out of 50 are devoted to Hagar. Let's think about that for

[11:15] a while, right? That's 4%. That's kind of a lot, right? Uh, now some of the chapters are longer. So if you rule by verses, it might be less than 4%, but these are devoted to Hagar, who by every standard of that time is not worthy of attention, except for what could be taken from her. She, it was only, the only thing that was taken from her was her ability to have a child with Abraham, probably against her wishes, right? And in the literature of that time, and indeed for a lot of the historical narrative all throughout human history, most of the ink goes to the book of Genesis. So, uh, and so, uh, and so, uh, and so, to the hero, to the strong person, to the somebody who wins battles, very little goes to the weak people, to the powerless people, and so on. And yet here we have it, that two chapters out of 50 are for this one person. Isn't that interesting? Like, that's interesting. I think that's fascinating. Um, and not only that, these two chapters underline just how dysfunctional and faithless Abraham and Sarah are, but they're the heroes of the story. Technically, they're the heroes of the story. They're the protagonists in this section of Genesis. And all the stories about Hagar only underline

[12:32] how messed up Abraham and Sarah are. They're broken people. You look at the very beginning of this chapter, right? Sarah, she should be happy. She got this child with Abraham. She is happy. She's happy. And that quickly turns into something else. Rivalry, jealousy. This child that she can't even name by name, this child shall not inherit along with my son. And she kicks, she kicks her, her and her son out. And so you see these ebbs and flows of faithfulness in God's people. This high point where Abraham believes the promise, and is credited him as righteousness. Then he goes off and does some mistakes, right? Then they start a family with Hagar. That's a mistake. That's taking God, not waiting for God's promises to come true, but making it happen in our own way, in our own sort of, under our own control, not letting God have control of the situation. And then the child is born, but then, you know, the other family is kicked out. And so you have this ebb and flow that people of the Bible are, they have their great moments and they have their low moments. This is true. They're not, there's nobody in the scriptures. You look at David. The only other one, I mean, if you want to look for one person besides Jesus is,

[13:51] it's hard to find anywhere that Daniel makes a mistake, right? But aside from Daniel and Jesus, people like David, Solomon, Adam and Eve, obviously all these other people, even King Josiah, they make mistakes, right? They make mistakes. They make good choices, then they make mistakes.

[14:08] So it has to be said that the Bible is really different from other books and chapters. Chapter 16 and chapter 21 of Genesis are only two examples. There are many, many more. The Bible is willing to report with honesty, the failings of its so-called heroes and not shy away from the painful moments. And that's proof of its authenticity. The Bible is a book that reflects real life. It's amazing how it does so. It's so great. It's not all roses, right? It makes it useful to us in our broken relationships too. And that's where we would say, scripture can speak into our life. Because if God hangs in with people who are broken and dysfunctional in the scriptures, then you can count on God hanging in with us in our brokenness and in our dysfunction. And our families all have problems and our churches have problems and our nation has problems, right? But that doesn't mean God's going to give up on us or judge us forever for that, but that he's going to continue to be faithful to us in that. Now, this brings up another main point. So the first kind of the first big point was that the scripture can speak into our brokenness. The scriptures are authentic in the way they describe the brokenness of people. The

[15:20] scriptures then also highlight a marginalized person for a huge part of the book of Genesis. Now, another point that brings up, if humanity's faithlessness and dysfunction is on full display, then what that always does in the scriptures is it highlights the opposite in God. It highlights the opposite in God. But if we're going to be faithful to God, then we're going to be faithful to God. Both in Genesis 16 and 21, when God speaks to Hagar, he tells her that even though she did not consent to being the mother of Ishmael, Abraham's son, she herself would still inherit the promise he made to Abraham and that Ishmael would have more descendants than stars in the sky, right? So you think about that for a moment, and this is worth pausing to think about. We have to feel how painful and awkward this is, yet how much God loves us. And we have to feel how painful and awkward this is, yet how much God loves us. And we have to feel how painful and awkward this is, yet how much God loves us. And we have to feel how painful all his children, despite the way they treat each other. So we have a family that's really got a lot of problems. And if I were God, and I'm not, and you should all be thankful that I'm not,

[16:27] because I would mess it up, okay? But if I were God, I would go, oh, this looks like one of the bad reality TV shows on Fox, right? Like somebody's on an island and they're just all terrible to each other. And if I were God, I'd be like, I'm either going to destroy this island or I'm going to cut off all the ships and all the ships. Traffic to this island so that the people on this island can just stay there and we can forget about them. Because I'm sick of these people. I'm sick of the way they're treating each other. These people are all messed up. God doesn't do that. He says, yes, this island is really messed up. There's a lot of weird drama on this island. There's a lot of dysfunctional things going on. There's a lot of toxic relationships in this family. That doesn't mean that I'm not going to keep my promises to them. My promise remains. And so even though, Abraham, even though you goofed up, goofed up is light. That's not the right word. Even though you transgressed by starting a family with Hagar when you should have waited for the son to be born to Sarah, even though you were not faithful in that moment, I'm going to be faithful even through Ishmael. Do you see that? That's really important. This is the difference between God and us. He

[17:40] keeps his promises even to the mistakes that we make, which is a lot of work. And so I'm going to keep my promises to them. And so I'm going to keep my promises to them. And so I'm going to keep my promises to them. And so I'm going to keep my completely different sort of her location in the story is very different and I will tell you how she is of a different race. So she's Egyptian. She's from Africa, right? She's of a different class. She's a slave. She's a woman in a man's world, right? She's only valued for what she can give Abraham and Sarah. She's their servant. Not only that, she's a woman alone in a man's world. So that's dangerous, right? And later she's a single mother, right? She's got every strike against her. She's in the weaker end of the power dynamic in that family. She has no rights and she's mistreated with impunity. There's no punishment for those who mistreat her. She's despised for achieving the thing that she did not want to achieve in the first place. She can't win. Can you imagine what it's like to be Hagar? This is tough. She's been put into a corner, right? And we cannot say that how she was treated was good. It was horrible. It was unjust on so many levels. But what we can say is that she was treated with impunity. She's despised for achieving the thing that she did not

[19:13] say is that God saw her. That's what happens out in the wilderness the first time. He sees her and she names her El Roy, the God who sees. And we can say that God heard her because she says that, it says that in our text too, that he heard her cries. He heard the cries of Ishmael. And we can say that God was faithful to her. So God cares about the vulnerable.

[19:42] She was able to set her free. She was able to set her free. She was able to set her free. She was able to separate from this dysfunctional family, which was the best thing for her. And she was able to start a new life with her son and be present as his future unfolded as part of the promise that God made to Abraham. Astounding. Now, what does all this mean for us today?

[20:02] One is that we can never underestimate how much of a heart God has for the marginalized, the ones without power, the ones at the weaker end of the power dynamic. And this shows up over and over in scripture here in the prophets. The prophets are always speaking about taking care of the weak. And even in Leviticus, Deuteronomy, we talk about taking care of the stranger and the widow and the orphan and the land, the widow, the orphan, and the stranger in the land, the immigrants. But especially in the incarnation of Jesus, he shared a table fellowship with sinners of all stripes. Jesus cares about the vulnerable and the low. And we know that God sees us and hears us when we cry out to him. And sometimes he counsels patients and that we should return to difficult circumstances. And sometimes he sets us off on new ventures, but he hears us and he sees us in our brokenness, in our sadness, and in our persecution even. And we know that our scriptures are vastly different. We don't celebrate our heroes as if they're perfect. We see them with all their flaws and it shows God's faithfulness in this perfect relationship. And we know that God sees us and hears us when we cry out out. And we know that God sees us and hears us in our brokenness. And we know that God sees us

[21:14] of the broken characters in the scriptures. And finally, there's hope for us in our messed up families. Your family's not perfect. I know a lot of you have really wonderful families, but they're not perfect. We all know this. My family's not perfect. I didn't grow up in a perfect family. You know what? Our church isn't perfect. We have a messed up church. We're doing pretty good compared to some other churches I've seen. I'll be honest with you because some of the other churches are kind of exploding right now.

[21:45] But we have a messed up church, and there's a lot of messed up churches out there. And have you noticed that our country is a little messed up? I mean, it only gets worse. I don't understand. How much worse can it get before there's no country left? I don't know. But we have messed up families. We have messed up churches. We have messed up countries. We have a messed up world.

[22:07] No doubt about it. But somehow, in some way, through all the brokenness and all the injustice and all the toxicity and all the dysfunction, God will remain faithful. God will keep his promises, not only to rescue us, but to have us flourish in the promises that he made to us. We are a broken people, but God is a good God, a faithful God. Amen. Let's pray. Father, thank you again for your word to us. Thank you that you care for us. Thank you that you care for the weak. Thank you that you put up with our dysfunction. Thank you that your promises are always true for us, and you're faithful to fulfill them.