Main idea: Wait on God who sees rather than putting your hope in false saviors.
Which promises of God are you waiting on Him to fulfill in your life?
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Good morning again. Faith, Bible Church, it's good to see all of you. My name is Nathan. I'm also one of the pastors here, and just want to add my welcome to John's welcome to all of you, and just to say that we, as your elders, we love to hear from you. We love to meet together with you. Maybe you're new here, and the idea of meeting together with another Christian isn't something you're super familiar with, but we'd love to spend time with you, whether you come in to the office and talk to one of us here, or whether we have coffee or even someone sitting around you. People that have been part of this church who are members here, would love to spend more time with you and get to know you and just see how we can encourage you. We really want to minister to you in this bigger context as we sing and teach, but also we want to more personally get to know you and minister to you. So just encourage you. That's our heart. And as much as you want to connect with us, we'd love to connect with you more. I just got back from Tenerife, my wife and I were able to go visit Nathaniel and the church there. And they send their greetings the elders of the church in santors, Jorge, David and Luis. I'll send their greetings to you and thank you. We as a church have been supporting not only Nathaniel, but also supporting the church, supporting David, their lead elder there. So they just send their thanks to us, not only for the finances, but for the prayer and the partnership, sending people to help on teams. So thank you. It was a joy to get to be there with them and to see how God's growing them. There's about 120 people coming every Sunday. Some of them are very new to Christianity, and so it's really a sweet opportunity for us as a for them as our partners, to proclaim Christ to that community. So I'm excited about that. We are going to read Scripture now. We're going to read Genesis 16 today, and so we'll stand together just because we want to show respect and honor to God's word. And after I finish reading, I'm going to say, this is the word of the Lord, and our tradition or our practice is to say thanks be to God, not because we're trying to earn something from him, but just because we want to be thankful that God speaks to us in the Bible. So let's read together. Genesis, 16, starting verse one. Now Sarai Abrams wife had borne him no children. She had a female Egyptian servant whose name was Hagar. And Sarai 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 Sarai. So after Abram had lived 10 years in the land of Canaan, Sarai, Abrams wife took Hagar, the Egyptian, her servant, and gave her to Abram, her husband as a wife, he went into Hagar and she conceived. When she saw that she had conceived, she looked with contempt on her mistress. And Sarai said to Abram, may the wrong done to me be on you. I gave my servant to your embrace. 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 Sarai, Behold, your servant is in your power. Do to her as you please. Then Sarai 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 Sure, and he said, Hagar, servant of Sarai, where have you come from? And where are you going? She said, I am fleeing from my mistress. Sarai. 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 they cannot be numbered for multitude. And the angel of the Lord said to her, behold, you are pregnant. 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, his hand against everyone, everyone's hand against him, and he shall dwell over against all his kinsmen. So she called the name of the Lord who spoke to her, You are a God of seeing. For she said, Truly, here I have seen him who looks after me. Therefore the well was called bir la Hi Roy. It lies between Kadesh and Beren and Hagar bore Abram, a son, and Abram called the name of his son, whom Hagar bore, Ishmael. Abram was 86 years old when Hagar bore Ishmael to Abram. This is the word of the Lord. Let's pray together our God. We thank you that you are a God who sees you. Saw Hagar in her state, in the wilderness, fleeing alone, needing help and protection. God, you saw her and you cared for her. You gave her wonderful promises. You showed up and ministered to her. You were with her. God. You saw too what she needed. And we thank you that you are a God who sees God. You saw the situation that Sarah and Abram were in. You had compassion on them and their 25 years of waiting. God, you are merciful and patient and forgiving. And this morning, God, we ask that You would help us to believe that you are a God who sees us no matter what situation we're going through, no matter what we're waiting on you for, we can trust you. You see us. Us. You see too what we need, and you care for us, and we praise you that you are a merciful, compassionate God. We bow before you. We thank you, Jesus. Please help us to further trust in you, to look to you and rather than to our circumstances as we wait. Help us to believe what's true about you when we don't know what's true about our lives. God, you are so good. We praise You. Please help us to be faithful disciples of you who know you and make you known with our lives. We pray that for our churches around the city, other other churches that are gathered. We pray for Princeton Avenue Church, for Aaron badly and Jess COVID and others there at that church that you would help them in the drisco boulevard area to proclaim Christ, help them to to grow together in maturity and to make you known to their community. We pray for three crosses church with Corey gage and Dave Hammond and their dear brothers and sisters there that you would help them to make you known over there by the VA hospital, God help them to faithfully proclaim you to that neighborhood and to each other. God help us. We pray for our global partners. We think especially of those in Tenerife and santorus and the day Hey, that you would strengthen those churches, help them to make you known, and I pray that you would establish them and enable them to Plant more churches there in cities that don't yet have a church or have the gospel. Help us today to know you and to trust you. We pray because of you. Christ amen. You may be seated waiting. Who likes to wait? Do you enjoy when you're stuck in a line of traffic and you're waiting when you don't know how long it's going to last? If you're on the highway and you didn't take that last exit, you need to go the restroom and you're waiting, or worse yet, you've gone to the doctor and you had a biopsy, and you're waiting what's it going to be or you're waiting on some situation with your kids, with your job, we all have to wait. Waiting is difficult. How can we wait? Well, we've seen this passage today, an example of how to wait and how not to wait. And I want to tell you about an example of a person in history who waited for God to fulfill his promises and was faithful. Adam Judson was a missionary to Burma earlier in the 20th century or no, I'm sorry. The 19th century, he proclaimed the gospel for 38 years in Burma before he died. 38 years he faithfully proclaimed the gospel. It was seven long years before he saw one person believe in Christ. And before that happened, he had to bury his first wife. Several of his children died of illnesses. He later ended up having to bury his second wife. He suffered immensely. He was in prison for 21 months. While he was in prison, he's in this camp where they were this prison, where they were tied. Their legs were tied four feet off the ground. Their ankles were tied up four feet off the ground. So they're only on their shoulders trying to sleep. Can you imagine sleeping on your shoulder, with your legs four feet up in the air, and the mosquitoes and the flies? It's a tropical area. It's there's lots of bugs, the suffering, the itching, the pain, and put on top of that, he doesn't know how his wife and his who's pregnant with one of their children, and how she's going to survive. She's sick and not not able to get enough food, terrible suffering. And yet he waited on God. He and his family waited on God to use his word to build up the church. He kept translating the Bible into their language, he kept proclaiming the gospel. And over time, it was slow, but God was faithfully doing his work as Adam Judson waited on the Lord. Today, hundreds of 1000s of people in Burma would trace their faith back to Judson. They would say, we believe in Christ because Judson and his family came and proclaimed the gospel to us, God is faithful as we wait on Him. Adam Judson said the future is as bright as the promises of God. And that's true. This morning for you, brother, sister, your future is as bright as the promises of God. What promise of God are you waiting on him to fulfill? What is the situation in your life where you're waiting on God? Do you have chronic pain, some kind of physical ailment, and you're waiting, you're waiting for that glorified body you're gonna get one day, and in the meantime, you're asking God for grace to endure this trial, to maybe heal you. Now are you waiting, wondering how your paychecks are gonna stretch to cover the increased cost of living? Maybe waiting on a better job, waiting on your employment, your employer to treat you better. We know Matthew six says, God will provide for our needs, but you're waiting and like, how do I wait well and not be anxious and stressed about how it's gonna work?
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Are you battling persistent sin, the temptations of the flesh coming at you day after day, moment after moment. How do you keep enduring the battle against your sin? How do you wait on God in the midst of those temptations? Are you seeking to be obedient and faithful in proclaiming the gospel to people, but they're not believing, they're not changing, they're not growing. How do you wait on the Lord for those situations where you want to see people come to Christ and you're you're waiting? Are you dealing with conflict and strife in your home from loved ones who don't yet know the Lord? Ie parenting. Not all kids don't know the Lord yet, but a lot of times, when they're when they're little, they're not they're not saved yet. And even when they get bigger, and it's hard, it can be hard or there's conflict with your spouse, with your relatives. We're waiting. When will there be peace? You. We're all waiting on God to fulfill His new covenant promises. We all want to live with the King of Kings on his throne. No more wicked rulers. We all want to live with perfect peace and righteousness on the earth. No more sinful nations. We all want to have hearts that perfectly, love God and love others. No more sin in us. We all want to have bodies that work perfectly, no more sickness, no more suffering. We all want to have relationships that perfectly reflect the love of Christ, no more sin and strife. Sounds bright, right? That's what we want. We're longing. We're waiting for that. How do we wait? Well, what does it look like to wait on the Lord, to trust in Him as we wait? Sarah and Abraham in Genesis 16 show us an example of not waiting on God, of looking to false saviors to bring salvation through human effort. This is not how we want to wait. And then we see through God's interaction with Hagar, that God is a God who sees us, who has compassion, he cares. That's why you can wait on Him, because He sees your suffering, he sees your need. He sees you and he sees too, giving you what you need through Christ, we're all waiting. How can we wait? Well, Mark rogop wrote a great book called Waiting isn't a waste. I encourage you to read it. It's really good. He defines waiting on God as living on what I know to be true about God when I don't know what's true about my life, living on what I know to be true about God when I don't know what's true about my life. I don't know how this situation is going to work out, but I know what's true about God, and I know I can trust him. That's what we do as we wait. Drogo identifies different aspects of waiting. He says we have to wait honestly, because it's hard. Waiting can be challenging, stressful, uncomfortable, cause, anxiety, anger. It's frequent because it's common. We're frequently waiting. It's a universal experience everyone faces. We need to wait thoughtfully, because waiting is biblical. We see all throughout the Bible. God calls us to wait.
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We wait patiently, because it's slow, we wait and we wait and we wait it's slow. We need patience. We wait intentionally, because it's commanded that we wait on God, trusting his sovereignty and goodness. We wait collectively. It's relational. We should wait helping each other. It's part of what we do. We gather on Sunday morning. We want to encourage each other to keep waiting on the Lord, to keep trusting what we know is true about God, even when we don't know what's true about our lives. And it's relational with God. The purpose of waiting is to deepen our relationship with God, to learn to know Him moment by moment, we must focus on God's character, trust Him and be transformed by him. Our main idea today is wait on the God who sees rather than putting your hope in false saviors. Wait on the God who sees you rather than putting your hope in false saviors, what situation are you need to wait on God for today. Think about how Abraham and Sarah responded, how you might be looking to false saviors. And then think about how God responds to Hagar, and how you can learn from him how to trust in him. Let's look at our story in Genesis 16, don't put your hope in human efforts. Don't put your hope in false saviors. The Jeremiah 10 passes we read already shows how foolish it is to trust in anything but the Lord for salvation, for life. In Genesis, 16, we have Sarai and Abram 10 years in Genesis, 15 happened 10 years earlier. Now they've been waiting 10 years for God to answer to fulfill his promise. Listen what it says in verse one. Now Sarah Abrams wife had borne him no children. She had an Egyptian servant, woman whose name was Hagar. 10 years have gone by, and Sarah is still barren. God promised in Genesis, 15 Abram your descendants are gonna be as numerous as the stars in the heavens. That's a lot of descendants. And how many kids do they have? Now, 10 years later, zero. So Sarah is starting to wonder, like, Is there something wrong with me? In their ancient world, they didn't understand all the aspects of science that we understand now about infertility, about why sometimes people can have kids. So it was a lot of shame when a woman was barren, a lot of frustration people looking at her. She's the queen of the house Abrams, the king, this great household, great promises from God, and yet no children. And so she has this Egyptian servant named Hagar. And she thinks, well, maybe this is how I'll get kids. Look at verse two. So Sarah said to Abram, now, behold the Lord has shut my womb from bearing children. Please go into my servant woman, perhaps I will obtain children through her. Perhaps I will be built from her. And Abram listened to the voice of Sarah. So Sarah decides to help God through human effort. Rather than trusting God to open her womb and his timing, she decides to find a way that she can build her family. God has spoken to them and given them promises. Rather than Abram saying, let's call on the Lord as He should have as the leader of the family. He they try to find their own solution, apart from from prayer and from looking to God. This is not necessarily a critique of of this strategy, although we see in Genesis, two God created Adam and Eve, one man, one woman, right? What do we see in the New Testament? Be a one woman, man, God's design all throughout. The Bible is consistent. One man, one woman, married for life together, right? That's the design. And obviously what they're doing here is going against that. But the passage itself doesn't critique what they did. The bigger critique here is that they're not trusting in God to answer his promises. They're trusting in their own efforts to get their salvation, to get their fulfillment of God's promise. This was actually a very normal practice. If you were barren, the woman who's barren and her husband, they would oftentimes take a servant or someone, and they would give them to their husband as a concubine. And that would be kind of like a way of having surrogacy. That was their version of fertility treatment. So this was a very normal thing. Everybody around them was doing this, and their culture and society that was it was normal. So they were looking to the human tradition, the normal way that people solve their problem of infertility, and so they decide to try this option. It's which is not trusting God to do what he'd said, he'd said, he'd said, he'd said, and this is not what he said for them to do. So who is Hagar? Hagar was probably given to Abram when they went to Genesis to Egypt in Genesis 13. Remember, there was a famine. They went to Egypt, and Abrams like Sarah, you are a very beautiful woman, and I think you really believed it wasn't just trying to flatter her, like I'm afraid for my life they're going to kill me and take you into the Pharaoh harem. So rather than them killing me, why don't we just say you're my sister? Because you are my sister, sort of, I don't know. And so then the Pharaoh will not kill me. And so Sarah agrees. And when Abram gives Sarah to the Pharaoh to be his wife, to go into his harem, the pharaoh gives Abram a bunch of livestock and servants. So probably Hagar was part of that. I don't know what her background was. She was probably younger at that point, probably a teenage girl, and she was taken from her family. Or maybe she was really poor. Maybe their family was poor and she'd been given over to the pharaoh because of debts. Maybe her family was dead, she had and somehow she ends up being given to Abraham and Sarah. Her name Hagar means the stranger, so I don't even know if that was her name her parents gave her. That's just like she's the stranger, the sojourner, the the one that's not like us, the stranger like that's kind of that's her name. She's not, not someone who has gotten a lot of esteem in the household of Abraham and Sarah. But she is shown that she's a faithful servant. She's not just a servant. She's the maid servant, she's Sarah's right hand woman. So Sarah thinks of all of our servants in our household, this is the best one for me to give to Abram to bear a child for me was Sarah's thought. So, I mean, they lived in a tent in the desert. There wasn't running water, they didn't have flushing and toilets. They didn't have sinks and kitchens like we have, like there's a it took a lot to survive. So Sarah is relying on Hagar to help her survive life, to help her get through the day. And she's her her right hand woman there. And so Sarah recognizes God shut my womb. And so she thinks, maybe this is how I'll get a kid. Maybe this is how God will keep his word as he'll give us his child through Hagar. She's hoping that Hagar is going to build her family. So you see the key pronoun here, she is going to get for herself a child through Hagar and Abram listens to his wife's voice. He's not like, hold on a second. Sarah, you know, God talked to us before. Maybe we should check with him again and just make sure this is what he wants. Abraham doesn't do that. He's like, Okay, sure. He's being kind of passive here, just kind of going with it. And he really, I think, has the greater blame in this picture, because Sarah is just trying to be faithful in doing her duty as a wife, to try to have a child for her husband. And he doesn't say, let's call him the Lord and see what he says. So what happens after they do this? Look at verse three, and after Abraham had lived 10 years in the land of Canaan, Abraham's wife, Sarah took Hagar, the Egyptian her servant, woman gave her to her husband, Abram, as his wife. So he went into Hagar and she conceived. Then she saw that she had conceived. So her mistress became contemptible in her sight. They waited 10 years on the Lord. And now this solution seems to work, right. So Sarah takes Hagar and gives her to Abram. What do you see in Genesis three? What did Eve do with the fruit? She took the fruit and gave to her husband, Adam with her. So I think the language here is pointing against the similarities here. They're seeking their own solution, their own salvation, apart from God's action. There, Sarah it takes and she gives, not a good thing in the Genesis story to take and give outside of what God wants and what he plans and says. And then right away, Hagar conceives. So what happens? She looks at her, at her mate, at her mistress, Sarah, the queen of the house, with not as much regard. Now she's carrying Abraham's child. And Sarah is like, okay, take the chamber pot out, or go give me some water. And Hannah's like, Can I get a break here? I'm I'm carrying Abraham's child. Can I have some, some better treatment here? Like she's not maybe wanting to do the same thing she did before. She's not looking at Sarah as the big deal. Before Sarah was the queen of the house, the big deal all the ladies in the house looking to Sarah. She's the one in she's the top of the food chain in the house, right? And now Hagar is like, Can I get some recognition? I'm doing something important here too, right? So we don't know exactly what that looked like, but she is not giving Sarah the respect that Sarah wants. And so Sarah gets angry. She's angry at Hagar. And this is something that can happen as we're waiting on God, and we take things in our own hands. Rogov talks about when we're waiting we're tempted to seek control. We want control. Sarah wanted control of how she's going to have this kid and how it's going to go. Right? And there's uncertainty and vulnerability in the waiting that make it harder, and sometimes that can lead to anxiety. We see anxiety as a response that Sarah and Abram had. How's this gonna work out? What's gonna happen? How are we gonna have a kid? So they go for having a child through Hagar. Sometimes waiting can lead us to anger. Things don't go the way we want them to go. We see that with Sarah, she's angry. This woman has committed violence against me, and she starts to afflict her. Sometimes it can lead to apathy. We give up on hoping on God, hoping in God, because it's harder to keep hoping than to just give up. It's easier to give up. God hasn't fulfilled his promises. I have to keep waiting. This is too hard. I just give up. Maybe that's what Abraham did. Maybe he was being apathetic. So now we see Sarah says to Abram, may the violence done to me be upon you. I gave myself a woman into your embrace, but she saw that she had conceived so that I became of little account in her sight. Sarah is very concerned with how Sarah with how Hagar sees her. She's looking at what Hagar sees her. Where is her significance? It's in what Hagar sees and how Hagar is treating her. So what does she do? Abram tells her do what's right in your sight. There's a lot of emphasis in this passage, in verses one through six, on how Sarai sees and what she who's seeing her. It's all very much on the human level. When they talk about God in verses one through six, it's just God stopping her from having kids, and God BETTER DEAL WITH YOU Abraham, if you don't do what I think you should do with Hagar, right? So everything is very much focused on what they're doing, on their responses, their actions, what they need to do to make things right, not on what God's doing. And so Sarah turns to Hagar, and she mistreats her. We don't know what this look like. We don't know if Sarah started like beating her, if she was just verbally abusing her, if she was giving her extra chores. You know, this is kind of like a Cinderella with her step mom, kind of situation where she's just getting treated really terribly. But however Sarah I was treating Hagar was so bad that Hagar is willing to flee into the wilderness. She leaves the protection of Abraham's household, the provision of Abram's household. She goes out into the wilderness where there's nothing, there's no Walmart, there's no 711 there's nothing. She's out there vulnerable, all on her own. So that's how bad it was that she was she was being treated terribly in this household by Sarah. This is what happens when we turn to false saviors. We do what's right in our own eyes. We esteem the eyes of others as more important than the Lord. We're not fearing the Lord. We're fearing others and afflicting others. So what are the false saviors that they were looking to human salvation the efforts of the flesh. It may be that I shall obtain children by her, they wanted to see God's promise fulfilled through human efforts. And God is showing us in this passage, in next chapter, Genesis 17, he doesn't fulfill his promises through human effort. God is not going to make a promise to save you, and then you're going to do it yourself. Yes, we obey God, and we do stuff, but it's God. God is the one acting to save and they're looking to their own efforts to save human significance. We don't wait on God looking to others to make us significant. Sarah was concerned about how Hagar saw her. We should be looking to God and how He sees us for our significance and human solutions to injustice, revenge. This is not how God wants us to deal with waiting by taking our own justice in our own hands, through our own our own solutions to conflict. So what about you? What kinds of false saviors Are you looking to today? Where are you tempted to trust instead of the Lord? The most serious thing that you and I are dealing with are facing is not physical illness. It's not conflict with others. The most serious problem that everyone has in this room and in any anywhere in the United in the world, is being an enemy of God. If you haven't trusted in Christ, yet, if you haven't submitted to Christ, you are God's enemy. You're living under God's wrath. You have rebelled against Him, whether you realize it or not, you've broken His laws. You haven't loved him as he deserves to be loved. And I'm in the same way, all of us are guilty of this, and we deserve his wrath to be away from him forever. That's a serious problem. What is the answer to that problem? God made a promise through Jesus. If you will trust in Me, I will save you, I'll forgive you, right? Whoever believes in Jesus, that's the promise. It's not human effort. Being religious is not good enough to get your sins taken care of, being praying, doing good deeds, giving money to the church, becoming a better person, being true to yourself. None of that is enough. You need God to act through Jesus to save you, and then beyond that, all of us who know Christ, how are we gonna live the Christian life? What do you and I? What are we tempted to do when we're struggling with our sin, when we're struggling to obey? We're tempted to look to ourselves to try to get strength from ourselves to obey. And we see from Sarah and Abram, don't look to yourself. Look to God. Look to Christ to give you power to obey Him, to love him. If you're single, are you tempted to trust in your own efforts to get a spouse, maybe being compromised by dating an unbeliever or looking to some form of sexual immorality? Parents? What are we trusting in to get our kids to behave? Are we trusting in our angry words? Maybe if I yell a louder, they'll obey this time. Are we trusting in the Gospel, changing our kids and God's word, shaping them and discipline and wisdom, transforming them employees? What are you tempted? Are you tempted to make compromises, to make your job easier? To. Do things in an unethical way to try to make more money. We are all tempted to come up with our own solutions instead of looking to God. God wants us to wait on Him, to actively anticipate him doing something to rescue us, to save us. God is the one who wants to be our Savior, and he is the only one who can save us. How does it work out when we trust ourselves? It doesn't work out. Every day, I'm reminded of that. I wake up and think I can do this. I got this, and then as I fail throughout the day, I realize, oh, I needed to trust God to help me be a good husband, a good dad, a good employee, a good friend, a good worshiper of Jesus. Like I need his help. You need his help. We shouldn't trust in ourselves. But secondly, in this passage, we see that God is the God who sees. Wait on a God who sees instead of trusting in yourself, instead of trusting in other saviors. Look to God. He is a wonderful Savior in this mess of a situation with Abraham. Abraham being passive, watching his household fall apart. Sarah lashing out when she doesn't go she wants from her own solution. Hag, our fleeing into the wilderness, pregnant without resources, God shows up. God speaks. God sees. Why can you wait on the Lord? Because he shows up, he speaks in His Word, and he sees you. He is able to help us, and wants to help us. Imagine the Israelites wandering in the in the desert. When Moses wrote this and gave it to them, they were somewhere out in the desert close to where Hagar was. Hagar ended up at the well of Sure, which is kind of on the edge of the Arabian Peninsula. So she wasn't that far away from where the Israelites would have been. They were wandering around hungry, at times thirsty, waiting, wondering, how is God going to fulfill this promise to give us this amazing land, when here we are out in the desert, God is showing them through his interaction with Hagar, I see you, I will see too, keeping my promises to you, you can trust me. What about us? What are you going through right now? Does God see? Does God know? Does God care? We're gonna see here in this passage, the answer is yes, God sees, and he cares, and he is able to help. If the Lord cares about an Egyptian woman who's a servant, does he care about the Israelites in the wilderness? Does he care about you, a child of God through Christ? Nothing against Egyptians, but how would the Israelites have felt about Egyptians after being there for 400 years? For 400 years, the Egyptians afflicted the Israelites and enslaved them, right? And now they've just been delivered, and they're out in the wilderness, and God gives them through Moses, this account of Hagar, this Egyptian woman, they would have been like, yeah, Sarah, I afflicted her. No, that's not, that's not that right attitude, right? God cares about this Egyptian woman. He shows up and talks to her, and she's a woman, right? And we see in the Bible, all throughout the Bible, God esteems men and women. They're both of equally. In the image of God, equal value. The Bible is very much pro treat women well, but that's not the way the culture was necessarily back then. And God's talking to this Egyptian woman who's a servant. Does God care about the Israelites in the wilderness? Does he care about you? The answer is yes, waiting on God is trusting what's true about God when I don't know what's true about my life, actively looking to God to do what He promised to do while we wait. It's hope, confidence that God will do what he said he will do. How can we trust that we look at God's character, look at God's character in this passage, and be encouraged today, as you wait on God for whatever you're waiting for him to do in your life, he understands and he knows. How can we wait? We look, we listen. We lean look to Jesus. He shows up. We listen to God's promises in His word. He speaks. We lean on the God who sees and hears. He sees us. He shows up. He speaks. He sees you can trust him. Look at verse seven. The Angel of the Lord found her by a spring of water in the wilderness, the spring on the way to Sure. What is Hagar doing at this spring? She probably didn't leave with a big camel full of supplies, right? She probably just left. And so here she is getting water. She might not have had any food. She's at this well this spring in a similar area to where the Israelites would have been. What is she doing? She probably left Egypt when she was a teenager. She's a young lady now pregnant, and she's heading back, maybe back, to see if her family, her friends, are still there. Maybe she doesn't have any family. We don't know she Where is she going? She's probably trying to head back to Egypt, but we don't really know for sure. And who finds her? The angel of the Lord finds her. When you read through the Old Testament and you see the angel of the Lord, the angel of the Lord speaks. And then people say, Oh, God spoke. And then the angel of the Lord is there. And they say, Oh, this is God's presence. We see all throughout the Old Testament that the angel of the Lord is God showing up. We believe that it's probably Jesus pre incarnate showing up, taking on human form, meeting with people, talking to them, who was in the furnace with me, shock Shadrach and Abednego. That was probably the angel of the Lord Jesus. Right there with him. Right? Who is it that talked to Balaam through his donkey? The angel of the Lord is there. We see all these times when the angel Lord, in Genesis, 18, the angel of the Lord is God showing up. What does he do? He finds her. Did Hagar even know who the angel of the Lord was? Did she know God? Very well? Yeah, she might have known a little bit about him from Abram, but not very much. He finds her. By this spring, he looks for her and finds her. He's a God who finds we don't find him. He finds us, right? What happened with Jesus in John four, he chooses to go through Samaria, and he finds this woman at the well, a woman who had a very sinful past, and he finds her and reveals himself to her, who finds Zacchaeus, a wicked tax collector. Jesus finds him, and he says, The Son of Man came to seek and to save those who are lost. The Lord Angel. Lord finds Hagar. He talks to her. He shows up,
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you can trust God. This is his character. He finds us. He comes to us. Has he come to us here? Yes. Jesus has come to earth, God in the flesh, fully God, fully man. He showed up. He came to earth to seek Him, to find us, so we could know him. But you might say, well, now he's God. He's not here anymore. He went back to heaven, but he gave his spirit. So if you trust in Christ, he's with you all the time. You're his temple. He's living in you, living with you. He is there, just like the angel Lord found Hagar by the well as you're going through your day, suffering, physically, relationally, battling sin, seeking to obey, looking for God, waiting on the Lord. He's there. What did Jesus say in Matthew 2820 I'm with you always. I'm with you when things are going great, but not when it's bad. No, I'm with you always. He is with us, if we trust in Christ. And so he shows up, and then what does he say? And he said, Hagar, servant of Sarai, where have you come from? And where are you going? The Lord shows up and talks to her. He knows hagar's name. Nobody has addressed her by name yet. In this passage, they talked about her, but they haven't. Her, but they haven't talked to her. He knows that she's a servant of Sarai, and he asked her two important questions. She only answers. The first one, maybe she didn't know where she was going, right? He says, Where are you going, or where did you come from? Where are you going? And this is a these are questions you should think about. Where did you come from? Where are you going? If you know Christ, you came from being lost, dead in your sins, away from God, under his wrath, in the dominion of darkness. Where are you going? You are belonging to God's Kingdom Now, part of his church. You're heading to live with Christ forever on the new heavens and new earth, where he's gonna reign in all of his glory, where righteousness will reign forever. That's where you're going as you go through trials and you wait, remember, where did I come from? Where am I going? You may not know this point right now where you are, how it fits into everything else, and God may not ever show that to you, but you can trust where you came from and where you're going. You can trust the truth of the gospel there. So she talks to the angel of the Lord, and she says, I'm fleeing from my mistress, Sarai. And the angel of the Lord said to her, return to your mistress and submit to her. Literally, the angel is saying, return and afflict yourself by here, go back to that situation of affliction that and be humble, submit to her. And you might have wondered, like, you might wonder like Hagar might have been like, well, hold on time out. Like, do you know how she was treating me? You want me to go back to her. Well, we don't get to hear Hagar questions like that. It seems like this angel of the Lord, His presence is so intimidating, so inspiring, and everything he says after this is she's just like, Okay, I'll do what he says, even if it's gonna be rough. I know that he's with me. He saw me. He's talked to me. So she is willing to go back, we see an end of the chapter, and submit to Sarai, willing to go back and be afflicted still, if that's what happens, because of this encounter with the Lord. And as you meet with the Lord, as you know him personally through Jesus, and you meet with him day after day, through His Word, by His Spirit, He empowers us to continue waiting, to continue suffering, to continue battling our sin, to continue trusting him in difficulty. He is with us through Christ, by His Spirit. What else do we see? Not only should we look to him to show up, we listen to God's promises. He speaks the angel of the Lord talks to her three times, four times, even this passage, it says the angel of the Lord said, Moses could have written that one time. But he emphasizes, in this story, the angel of the Lord was talking to Hagar, this Egyptian servant woman. He's talking to her just like you talked to Moses, like you talked to the prophets and the apostles. He's talking to her. He is loving her by speaking to her, giving her this massive promise. He says, I will surely multiply your offspring so they cannot be numbered for the multitude, he's giving her part of that blessing that God gave Abraham, that her descendants would be many. There would be a multitude. What happened to Ishmael? We know, if you look at history, a lot of people believe that that the Arab nations who are mostly Muslim now came from Ishmael. So, I mean, there's like a billion people in the world right now who are Muslim, and a lot of them who are Arabs, would say their descendancy comes from Ishmael. Maybe it was also other other people groups besides Ishmael. We're not sure that it's 100% from Ishmael, but he was part of that. And now you see, there's a lot of them, a lot of people in the world, who descended from Ishmael. God blessed her. He promised you're not going to die at Sarah's hand. Your child is not going to die at Sarah's hand. He's you're going to. You're gonna prosper. God's gonna cause this child to become numerous. That was encouraging to her. What else did the angel of the Lord say besides that? The blessing of Abraham, part of that would be to her as well, and multiplying. He said, You are pregnant, and you shall bear a son. She knew she was pregnant, but she didn't know she was gonna have a son. That would have been good news. Like, having a daughter is good too, right? But having a son was like, that was like, a big deal back then have a son to carry on the family name, to be the heir. So that would have been really exciting to her, that she's having a son. And to Abram, and then he says, You shall call his name Ishmael, because the Lord has listened to your affliction. The names mean so much. And then in this story, the names carry the story Ishmael, because the Lord has heard your affliction. God hears. He heard her there at the well, even though she didn't really know him, necessarily, very well. He hears her affliction and he meets her. He cares for her. God is a God who hears. What does Romans 1013, say, if you call on the name of the Lord, you'll be saved. Does God hear? Is his arm short? Is he hard of hearing? No. God hears when you call out to Him in faith. He hears when you need he hears. God hears. And that's what we see with Ishmael. It says he will be a wild donkey of a man. His hand will be against everyone, everyone's hand against him. He shall dwell over against his kinsman. I don't know about you, but if someone told me my kid was gonna be a wild donkey of a man, I'm not sure I'd be super excited, like, whoo, okay, Bucha, a wild donkey of a man. But to Hagar, this was encouraging, right? That God has a future for her son. He's gonna He's gonna be independent, he's gonna live in the wild, in the wilderness, and his brothers will be against him, and he'll be against them, and there'll be this whole there'll be this whole thing, but God's gonna keep giving him life and blessing him. He's not gonna be extinguished and wiped out. You read some of the prophecies about God wiping out Edom and Moab and all the other some of the other nations around there because of their sin, even though Ishmael descendants weren't necessarily righteous, God's gonna prosper them. God sees and hears and he speaks to Hagar. He speaks to her. Is God going to show up to you when you're having a hard time at home this week and just start blasting something in your ear or send you a text message? No, but God has spoken to us in His word. His word is his word to us as we understand it. It's context, and the Holy Spirit helps us to believe it. This is his word. He speaks. His Word. He's speaking to us. Jesus is God's Word, God's speech. Who Jesus is, and what he's done is God speaking, saying, I hear you, I see you, I know what you need. I am your God. I am the Savior. He's showing us that he is a God who sees and hears and knows and cares. So what does Hagar do? As God shows up and as Angel Lord shows up and talks to her, says in verse 13, here, so she called the name of the Lord who spoke to her, You are a God of seeing. For she said, Truly, here, I have seen him who looks after me. Therefore the well was called bir la Hi Roy, which means the living one has the living God who sees, who sees me. Sorry. So these three names here are her showing us what she learns about God. First, God sees. Hagar gives him this name, a God who sees a seeing God. This isn't a normal thing. As you read through Genesis, how many people name God? Typically, God's giving us his names, right? Hagar gives God a name. She's knows something about God, and she gives him a name, el ROI. I don't know if anybody's name or Roy in here, el ROI in Hebrew means God who sees. He sees. So when you think about Roy, I think about God sees me. God sees. He doesn't just see and like, Oh, that's nice. He sees to it. He sees and does something. He cares, he understands. He knows what we need, and he is the God who does what we need. He loves us in that way. God sees, she said, and she's amazed. She says, Truly, here I have seen him who looks after me. She's saying, I have seen you who see me and I've lived she's amazed. God didn't necessarily relieve her of all of her affliction. He didn't take away all of her problems. He showed her himself. That's what God does in our waiting. Did God take away Job's problems right away? No. I mean, he still had all those losses. But God shows Job himself, and as you wait on God, you're not necessarily gonna take away your suffering, your affliction, not yet anyway, but he will show you himself that's what you need. Knowing God is more than enough in the midst of our suffering, seeing that he's a God who sees you, who sees to it, who answers, who does what is best, who fulfills His will. That is enough. As we wait on God,
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she names as well beer. La, hi, Roy, that word beer is not what we drink or what people might drink. It means well, so there is liquid involved. La, hi, Roy LaHai, the living one who sees me, the well is called. This is the well. The living one who sees me, she realizes this is a living God. He's not up. Is a rock or a piece of metal or gold. He's a God who lives and breathes and talks. He sees me. She says, he sees me and he cares. Have you ever wanted someone to notice you? Like, maybe you're a teenager and you want this boy or this girl that you think is cute to see you like, oh, do they even know that I exist? Do they see me? Or maybe you go to a concert and someone that's famous gives you a knuckle bump and they saw me. Famous, wealthy, powerful people don't necessarily see us. They don't even know that we exist, right? This is the creator of the universe, an Egyptian servant woman, and he has seen her, he recognizes her, he knows her. He cares for her. He meets her in her need, and loves her. This Egyptian servant woman is important to God. If she's important to God, is the nation of Israel important to God? Are you important to God? God loves people of all nations, tongues and tribes, right? He wants us to come to him through Christ. Listen to Exodus 223, 25 we see the same message that God wants His people Israel to understand during those many days, the king of Egypt died, and the people of Israel groan because of their slavery, and cried out for help, their cry for rescue from slavery, came up to God, and God heard their groaning, and God remembered his covenant with Abraham, with Isaac and with Jacob. God saw the people of Israel, and God knew the same God who sees Hagar and hears her in affliction and answers her and cares for her. Is also seeing the Israelites in Egypt. He sees their suffering. He knows and he cares for them. He answers, he helps them. Is that true for you? If you've trusted in Christ, does God see you? Does he know you, as you battle that sin that you're battling day in, day out? Does God see you? Yes, he knows he cares. He's given you Christ. He's given you a spirit. He's given you everything you need in Christ to battle that sin and to put it to death and to have obedience as you suffer with that physical ailment. Does God see you? Does he have the grace to sustain you in that, whether it be to heal you or to help you to continue to suffer until the day you see him face to face, and you get perfect healing, like everyone else who sees him face to face, God sees as you wait on Him for for marriage, for a child and for your children to know him, whatever it is you're waiting on him for. Does God see you? He does, and he knows. He knows what you're going through. Does he care? Yes, he wants you to have the best thing, the very best thing, which is not necessarily the thing you're waiting for. The very best, is to know Him, to know the God who sees, who has compassion. God sees. This is what David says in Psalm 56 verse eight, you have kept counting my tossings. You put my tears in your bottle. Are they not in your book, God knows all of David's tears. He's kept them in a bottle. He knows how David has suffered, the nights where David was up crying about his situation with Saul trying to kill him, and what was happening with Jonathan and Saul. God knew how David suffered. He kept his tears in a bottle. Does God know about your tears? Does he care? He does. He's not indifferent. He doesn't watch you suffer and think he cares. Has he done something about our suffering? Yeah. Jesus came to earth. He lived in our shoes. He lived a perfect life. He died to take away all of our sin. He rose again to give us assuredness of resurrection, living with him forever, reigning forever with Him. He knows and he sees and he cares. He is God full of compassion. Listen to Jesus in Matthew 10, verse 29 Are not two sparrows sold for a penny, and not one of them will fall to the ground apart from your father. But even the hairs on your head. Are all numbered, Fear not. Therefore you are of more value than many sparrows. How valuable is a sparrow? I was sitting in the connection room on Wednesday during the Wednesday night activities, and this bird kept flying into the window. And I thought, well, maybe I need to put the blinds down so he doesn't think it's a open thing. That didn't help. He kept flying into the window. I opened the blinds. He kept flying the window. Eventually, I think you probably hit the window and died. So if kids, if you see a bird out there, don't touch it. It's dirty. But if you went and collected that Sparrow, maybe it was a sparrow. I don't know. How much could you get for it? Did you get anything for it? Put that on Facebook marketplace. I've got a sparrow. It's dead. How valuable is that gonna be? Are you gonna get somebody to give you a 20 for that? Probably not, right? How valuable are sparrows? Not that valuable. But when that Sparrow fell to the ground Wednesday night, did God know? He knows? Does God know about your suffering? Does he care you who are made in the image of God, you who are purchased by Jesus's blood, you who are a child of God? Does he know when you suffer? It says that he knows how many hairs are in our head. For some of us, that's easier than for others, right? But either way, he knows. He knows how many hairs are on our head. He knows everything about us. There's nothing he doesn't know. And he loves us. He cares. He's given us Christ. If you wonder, Does God love me, even though I'm going through this horrible thing, look at Jesus. Yeah. Yes, if God has sent Jesus, his only son, to die in your place, he loves you, He wants you to have what's best for you, and he's with you, and he will keep his promises, every single one of them. Doesn't mean he'll take away the suffering. Doesn't mean the waiting will stop tomorrow, but God will be with you, the God who sees do you go through your parenting as one who knows that God sees you. God sees me as I parent this child, your child, maybe, is estranged from you and an adult. Do you know that God sees that? He sees you in that he sees your heart longing, that something happened in the life of your child, God sees you in that as you wait for God to give you children. Does God see you? Yes, he's with you, whether he gives you the cry of your heart or not. He sees you in that in that pain that he knows. What does Jesus say? Matthew six. Verse six, your Father, who sees you in secret, will reward you. He sees He hears your cry. To him, your Father knows what you need before you ask him he knows. What did the psalmist say in 139 verse five, you hem me, in behind before me. You lay your hand upon me. Such knowledge is too wonderful for me. As high I cannot attain it. Where shall I go from your spirit? Where shall I flee from your presence? Verse 13, for you for me. In my inward parts, you knitted me together in my mother's womb. I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made wonderful. Are your works. My soul knows it very well. My frame was not hidden from you when I was being made in secret, intricately woven in the depths of the earth, your eyes saw my unformed substance in your book were written every one of them, the days that were yet formed for me, when, as yet there was none of them. God knows us perfectly. He's with us. He knows us. And what is his desire, his desires that we would know him? What is the greatest suffering, the greatest thing that God sees you in? It's your sin, like we talked about before. What has God done about our sin? He sent the Lord Jesus to live the perfect life, to die in our place, to raise from the dead, so that we could be with Him forever. He has seen too what we needed by giving us Christ. If you haven't trusted in Christ, yet come to Jesus, trust in Him. He sees what you need, he's done what was necessary to save you, and he offers himself to you. Take him, trust in Him, only Him. He will make you his own. He will forgive you and whatever else we need. Can we look to God? Is he enough? If you need endurance to keep fighting your sin, does his resurrection power have enough power for you if you need grace for that conflict you're living in, that trial, that longing in your heart for for marriage or for kids or for your something to happen your kids lives or for your job?
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Is he enough? Yes, he sees you, and he's with you. He sees
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what does Romans eight say, If God did not spare His own Son, will he not with Him freely give us all things? What can separate us from the love of God? God has given you Jesus. He's not gonna be like, Okay, well, I saved you, I gave you Jesus, but now that's too much to ask. I can't give you that. No, he wants to give us everything we need for life and godliness, and he has in Christ, Mark Brock says that as we go through waiting, we need to focus on God. Look at who God is. Don't look at your circumstances that are difficult you don't understand. Look at God. Look at his who he is. Trust in what you know is true about God, and then adore him. Worship Him, thank him for being who he is, and then seek His help. He wants to help you. And then trust him fast. Focus on God. Adore God, seek His help, trust him fast. Look to Him. What does Hagar do in our story? In Genesis 16, she returns back to Sarai and submits to her. She has Ishmael. She bore Abram a son. It doesn't say that she bore Sarai a son. And we see in Genesis 17, God still had plans for Sarai. God's merciful even to Abram and Sarai. Here they go off script and do some stuff, but God, God is faithful. 15 years later, God shows up and talks to them in Genesis 17, which we'll talk about in a couple weeks, God is faithful. We see God's heart, His mercy to Abram and Sarah and to all the nations. God has a heart for this Egyptian woman. He has a heart for all the nations. What did Jesus say? Matthew 18, make disciples of all the nations. Genesis. 12 three, the blessing to Abram was to bless all the families of the earth, even some of our friends who are Muslim Now, who are from these Arabic, Arabian nations that Ishmael, that proceeded from Ishmael. God's saving some of them. He has a heart for people. All of us were bad sinners. Jesus has a heart to save us. What is he calling you to do? What promise do you need to believe as you wait? God sees you in your trial. He sees you in your suffering. He sees you in your battle against sin, your battle for obedience, and he wants to give you the grace to wait, to wait on Him. Hebrews 416 says, because Jesus is our Great High Priest, he says, Draw near to the throne of grace, to receive grace and mercy, to help in time of need, go to the throne. Go God's like I've got so much. Come, come to me. Come to me and get grace. Don't hold back. Go to him. He sees you and He loves you in Christ, and He wants to give you exactly what you need for this trial, for this season, for this waiting that you're in. Remember what Judson said, The future is as bright as the promises of God. It's a beautiful blooms day today, right? Sun's shining. The flowers are blooming, the trees are all coming together. But in your heart, it may feel like a dark, cloudy day. You may be going through stuff that makes you feel like Man, where is my hope? If you're in Christ, I encourage you, brother Sister, you have hope. You have a bright, shining sun who has risen from the dead, and He is your hope. Look to Him, trust in what he is, who he is, and continue waiting on him. Let's pray God. Thank you so much for giving us hope in Christ. Thank you for giving giving us the the truth that we need about you that enables us to keep waiting on you. Thank you that you see us. Thank you that you see too what we need. Thank You that You love us and care for us through Christ. Thank you for showing us that through Hagar and your compassion you had on her. God. Help us to be compassionate people, to be like you. Help us to trust in your compassion and grace and to go to you frequently throughout the day, because we need you so much and you're so gracious. Amen.
Nathan Thiry is the Growth Groups & Outreach Pastor at Faith Bible Church. He enjoys biking and outdoor activities, and has a passion to see the gospel spread throughout our community and the whole world!
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