SUMMARY:
·
Gen.12:1-9: God's covenant with Abraham. God would bless
him, make him a great nation; through
him all the families of the earth would be blessed. His descendants would
inherit the land of Canaan. God would bless those who blessed him, and curse
those who cursed him.
·
Gen.12:10-20:
Abram's faith is tested and he fails
because he does not trust God when he
goes to Egypt.
·
Gen. 13 &14,
by contrast reveals
the triumph of Abram’s faith.
·
Gen. 15:
Here God reaffirms His covenant with Abram in a most striking and picturesque
way. Here we also find that great declaration that Abram was justified by
faith. Genesis 15:6 is a fundamental text for Paul when he established the
doctrine of justification by faith. This covenant is more fundamental than Sinai, and its
basis was grace and not law. Here God does two important
things for Abram.
(i)
God reiterates
His covenant promises to Abram.
(ii)
God confirms that
covenant by a sacrifice of blood. God binds Himself with a strong oath to Abram.
That is the background which brings us to Genesis 16, and sadly here we find
another crisis in Abram’s faith. This chapter
teaches us something about the unhappy consequences of trying to force
God’s hand. It is the age old tragedy of taking the spiritual shortcut. Just
when we had thought that Abram had
learned all the vital spiritual lessons following his
previous lapse of faith, just
when we would have expected him to move on in spiritual victory, we find him
capitulating yet again to
faithlessness and unbelief.
Central to the story of Abram is the promise of a son. The
opening verse, “Now Sarai, Abram’s wife,
had borne him no children…” [16:1],
needs to be read in the context of the preceding chapter 15. In 15:2
Abram asks God, “What will you give me,
for I continue childless?” God answers him,“… your very own son shall be
your heir” [15:4]. And in 15:8 Abram presses God concerning the promise of
land again, “O Lord God, how am I to know
that I shall possess it?” Then, in 15:9-21 follows the making of a solemn
covenant of which God is the instigator. In this irrevocable covenant God binds
himself to giving Abram a promised land and an heir from his covenant wife
Sarai.
Now, back to 16: 1b-2
and these tragic words: ” (Sarai) had a
female Egyptian servant whose name was Hagar. And Sarai said to Abram. ‘Behold now, the LORD has prevented me from
bearing children (never mind the promise of 15:4). Go in to my servant; it may be that I shall obtain children by her.’
And Abram listened to the voice of
Sarai.”
You would
have thought that if you had had such a close encounter with God
and such strong reassurance from God as
Abram did, or from a NT perspective,
if you had
seen the miracles, works, wisdom
and weighty words of Jesus, you would have thought that you would never doubt God again. Think
again. All these experiences failed to
keep Abram from trusting in God’s promises.
And all this begs us
to ask those great questions again, “Who
then can be righteous? “Who can be
saved, if no one is righteous…if no one is faithful?”,[1]
and, “How can I be saved from this
corrupt and faithless mind and body?”[2]
The entire basis of
Abram’s justification and our justification becomes
a talking point for us , and we
know that it cannot be our personal righteousness or
faithfulness that justifies us before
this holy God. The Bible insists that our justification is by
grace through faith in God alone. Our works do follow, and in the main we see
that Abram loves and follows God, but he
would never meet the criteria of having
perfectly obeyed God in everything. Only Jesus would do that!
And so, the very
first insight from this passage is this: Our salvation and our life before God is all of grace and never on the basis of our
works. Our salvation is a miracle. God
sovereignly chose Abram out of a pagan society , and God eventually chooses to glorify
Himself in a miracle birth. Sarai’s eventual conception of Isaac, will be against
all human odds. God remains that God who brings
things out of nothing , and He shares His glory with no one!
The second insight is
this: We human beings, even we Christians
have a hard time trusting God for His promises. God has made a clear and strong commitment to Abram and Sarai in Chapter 15 , and yet according
to Abram and Sarai things are not
happening fast enough. And so Sarai began to scheme. The modern equivalent of
that scheme is called ‘surrogate motherhood’. Many
years ago a woman came to me and told me that she had been approached to be a surrogate mother. Having studied the ethics
and the emotional implications I advised her against it. Whether she went
ahead or not, I do not know.
From my
reading, I also learned that it was not an uncommon custom even in
that day for childless women
to obtain children through another woman. For instance, Hamurabi,a Babylonian king (c.1750 BC) produced a
code of laws. Law 146 refers to a childless wife giving
a female slave to her husband to
bear children[3]. In Genesis
30, in the family drama of Jacob we
also find this practise repeated as Rachel and Leah take turns in the baby race. So, the prevailing culture was sanctioning
this, but God did not.
Paul makes reference to this in Galatians 4:21-23 in which he makes a contrast between Hagar and
Sarah: "Tell me, you who desire to be under the law, do you not listen to
the law? For it is written that Abraham
had two sons, one by a slave woman and one by the free woman. But the son of
the slave was born according to the flesh, while the son of the free
woman was born through promise…". Paul’s plain point here is
that the slave woman’s son was the result of a fleshly act. The sinful will of
Abram and Sarai produced Ishmael- which
is essentially a failure to trust in the Lord . The will of God was to wait for
Isaac, the son of the promise. And here
is the problem. Patience and trust in God’s purposes! It has been 10 years
since Abram has arrived in Canaan, and still no offspring. And so, he buckles under the persistent pressure
of his wife, and the consequences are there for us to see. In many ways this story reminds us of the
Garden of Eden. That was exactly what
Sarai’s first parents, Adam and Eve, did.
And why did Abram not rebuke
Sarai for her unbelief and remind her of
the promises of God? Why did he not say
to her, “Sarai, God will provide a child.
He always keeps his promise. Let’s keep trusting him. We don’t need Hagar to get a child.” But he did not do that. And so they went
against God’s explicit command.
Now, it is clear that Sarai knew that her childlessness was
from the Lord - cf. 16:2, and as far as that was concerned she
understood the doctrine of the sovereignty of God. So what was the problem? Well, the doctrine of the
sovereignty of God was in conflict with
her desire! And so, even though Abram and Sarai knew good
theology , they weren’t good at
practical theology in terms of waiting
upon God’s fulfilment, and so they
began to think pragmatically , and they began to scheme as to how they
might help God out this matter – after all , as the oft quoted
Proverb says, “ God helps those that help themselves!” This is probably the most often quoted phrase that is not
found in the Bible. Whatever
the original source of this saying, the Bible teaches the opposite. God helps
the helpless!
From this impatience and this lack of trust in God flow all
the negative consequences in this decision and so in vv. 3-6 we see a string of consequences of Abram and Sarai's decision. It's a mess! And no one is happy.
Hagar,
as soon as she conceives, looks with contempt on her mistress (vv. 4,5).Sarai herself is filled with envy and with
bitterness, and that bitterness overflows into blaming Abram (v.5). Abram in return does what men do
so well. He throws the ball back into her court: ‘I thought this was your idea’, and he
takes the hands off approach … ‘Do as you please… I’m out of here!’ (v.6) The
next thing which happens is that Sarai
abuses Hagar to the point at which she can take it no longer and she
flees from her. Abram’s unhappy, Sarai
is unhappy, Hagar is unhappy. Nobody wins. This is the tragedy of the shortcut.
...AND AGAIN, GOD’S GRACE !
vv. 4-14 The results of Sarai's abuse. Hagar flees into the wilderness, where she
is comforted by an angel of the Lord at a spring of water in the wilderness. Here we see the next great see the
next great wonderful truth in terms of the character and the attributes of
God. God cares for the vulnerable. Although God’s great redemptive plan through Abram remains the central focus of
the Bible story, yet we learn also
that God cared for Hagar, and her
offspring even though she was
insignificant with regard to redemptive
history. We learn that even though God
has a particular love for His people , we can also truly say that God loves the world! Even though
Abram had been unfaithful in his dealings with Hagar, God was faithful to her. He gives her a son. Ishmael means, "God hears.” He reveals Himself to her, He blesses her, He promises
her protection, and promises that
her offspring would
also become a great nation. But the kind of blessing that is given to her and
the words that are spoken about Ishmael remind us of the difference between the
blessings upon Jacob and Esau. God blessed Esau, but all the blessings that He
gave him in Genesis 27 were earthly and temporal blessings. All the spiritual
blessings and eternal blessings
went to Jacob. So also, we will see that
the promises given to Ishmael were not spiritual but temporal blessings. Again
and again we see the distinction that God makes in His plan of redemption.
God gives this prophecy about her son, “He will be a wild donkey of a man; his hand will be against everyone
and everyone’s hand against him, and he will live in hostility towards all his
brothers” (v.12). That proves to
be the history of Ishmael. He wandered like a wild donkey, always on the move,
unable to put down roots, a divisive influence everywhere, even against his own
brothers. In Islam, Ishmael is regarded as a prophet and an ancestor to
Muhammad. He also became associated with Mecca and the construction of the
Kaaba, as well as equated with the term "Arab" by some.[4]
Vv. 15,16. The birth of Ishmael is recorded, but
in terms of the promises of the covenant, this
has not taken Abram forward
towards the fulfillment of God's promises towards him. In fact, he has
complicated things, and as a result of this there will be many troubles waiting
for Abram. In the mean-time God was still going to have to do a miracle
to bring the son of promise into the world through Sarai.
VITAL LESSONS
We say after so many sermons, “Thank you, Lord, for saying this to me, and now I’m going to do
something about it,” and that is good, but this passage reminds us again
that we need to be not only careful
listeners and theologians. We need to be careful and patient hearers who do
not chose the shortcut , but who wait upon the Lord.
We need to remember that God is not dependent on our scheming. And God will bring about His
purposes without our interference. We
must learn to trust God’s promises.
Perhaps
God has you in a place where all you can do is stand still. By nature we do not like that. But we
need to be careful not to be tempted to take the shortcut. Do not
grieve the Lord by your impatience. Do
not seek ways of accomplishing what God alone is able to do.
Nowhere can this be more challenging than
in the urgency we sometimes sense in getting kingdom work done. We must remember that men and women are born
of God alone into His family. The new birth is His work. Not ours! When it
doesn’t happen quickly enough in your children or in the church don’t try to
help God out. Pray and wait upon the genuine work of God. Abram didn’t need to
produce the promised Seed by his own strength. He needed God to come and do
what He had decided to do. He needed to believe God- and so do you! Amen .
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