“Our Solutions” Genesis 16:1-16 May 24, 2009

SI: We’re studying the life of Abraham.

He is called, “The father of all those who believe.”

His life demonstrates the nature of the Christian life and faith.

There were times Abraham did well, and made the right decisions,

and trusted God, and there were times he didn’t.

The story we are about to read is about a time he didn’t.

And it’s a reminder to us that the Bible is not a book of virtues.

It’s not book of moral stories of men and women who earn God’s favor

by living upright lives.

The Bible is a book of grace.

It’s stories God’s grace enabling men and women to be obedient and good.

And God’s grace redeeming their failures and sins.

INTRO: Couple years ago we were driving back from NC on New Year’s Day.

It was late in the evening, we had gotten a late start, it was dark,

and we were on the outskirts of Knoxville when we hit a huge traffic jam.

It seems like there has been construction on the interstate in Knoxville

for the past 25 years, so that was part of the problem.

But there was also a game of some kind—

I don’t know if it was a bowl game or what, but we hit that traffic as well.

We were at a dead standstill and I was getting very antsy, very impatient—

so I got out the map and I said, Look—If we get off at the next exit,

can take this service road, will take us to downtown Knoxville.

We can work our way through downtown, get back on the interstate,

and we’ll be past all this mess and on the way to Cullman.

So I drove up the shoulder (don’t you love people who do that?) and got off exit.

As I was exiting, noticed four motorcycles, dead stopped on interstate.

At first my little plan worked well, service road was deserted.

Buzzed right into downtown Knoxville, I could occasionally glimpse the

interstate and it was a sea of red lights so I was feeling good.

But then things started to go wrong. I couldn’t get on the interstate on any of the

entrances marked on my map. They were all closed off. There were lots of one

way streets. So after wandering around I stopped some men going into a bar.

They said—Yeah, to get back on you take this street and turn at the third light.

So I headed out, turned, suddenly realized was going over a bridge, out of town,

wrong direction. That pushed me out on a divided road, so I couldn’t

make a U-turn. Took me forever to even get turned around.

Long and short of it is that finally, after much frustration I got back on the interstate

a little bit south of downtown, and as I eased into my lane,

I looked over and beside me were four very familiar-looking motorcycles.

That’s a kind of parable for the way we sometimes live the Christian life.

The Lord is sanctifying you, he’s interested in growing your faith—

so in his wisdom he starts to do something. He leads you into seasons of waiting.

Seasons of traffic jams, of dryness and barrenness, when things aren’t working out.

Sometimes you make the most of those times,

and you trust his promises and your faith and your patience grows.

But sometimes, you push back against the Lord.

He’s not coming through for you. You’re impatient.

You want to feel wind in your face.

So you come up with your solution—your easy way out of this tough place.

What you’re really doing is running from God.

You’re running from the path he has laid out for you.

We’ll see in this story, there are lots of different ways you can do that.

But whenever you do, there is frustration, and backsliding—

and a tangled mess.

Genesis 16 is an ugly chapter. Allison asked me, What’s Abraham up to this week?

And I said: You don’t want to know. This is a raw and chaotic story.

There is a hurting and manipulative wife—that’s Sarah.

There is a passive and irresponsible husband—that’s Abraham.

And there is an abused but haughty other women—that’s Hagar.

They’re all believers and they are all running from God in their own ways,

and things get very messed up.

But this is the awesome thing—

Sarah and Abraham and Hagar aren’t the main characters.

The Lord is. He’s the main character. He’s the hero.

He’s unseen, but he sees and he appears.

He comes into this tangled mess, comes to these believers

who are running from him—and he pours out his grace, redeems things.

And in your own story, your own time of barrenness and waiting and frustration,

you could certainly name the people involved—perhaps your parents,

your spouse, your children, your boss, a person in your past.

But none of them are the main characters in your story, and you aren’t either.

It’s the Lord. He’s unseen but he sees you and guides you back to his path.

Let’s look at this story in more detail, and apply it to ourselves.

Two points:

1. Our faithless solutions

2. God’s way back

MP#1 Our faithless solutions

We see this in Sarah and Abraham. Let’s start with Sarah.

By this time she and Abraham had spent 10 years in the Promised Land.

She knew God had told Abraham that he would be the father of a great nation.

Her spirits had been lifted by that promise, but 10 years had passed

and she had concluded this was who she was—a barren women.

She was struggling. Maybe Abraham knew, maybe he didn’t.

But finally she spoke out. She said: The Lord hasn’t come through for me.

I’m not going to ever have a baby.

That was immensely painful, because a woman’s identity in that culture,

her worth as a human being, tied to her ability to have children, build a house.

So she said: Abraham, I’ve decided, God’s not going to fulfill promise through me.

I want you to do something.

Take Hagar, my young Egyptian slave as secondary wife, and have a child with her.

I’ll build a family that way. This was a common practice in ancient world.

But even though this was culturally acceptable, it was wrong.

And Sarah soon discovered something very painful—

that it is absolutely futile to try to gain God’s blessings through human efforts.

Futile to respond to your barrenness by taking things into your own hands.

Every journey of faith has periods of barrenness—

might be in area of romance or marriage, or work and vocation,

or any other area of life that really matters to you.

One of the greatest temptations as a Christian is to make something happen

to get God’s blessing, and to step out of the path he has for you.

There is a Christian who wants to get married.

Nothing wrong with that. Desire God has put in our hearts.

This Christian waits, waits, he starts to think—God’s not coming through for me.

She starts to think—this is going to be my identity—unmarried.

So he lowers his standards of purity, or she opens her heart to an unbeliever.

And ends up marrying the wrong person and regretting it.

There is a Christian becomes discontent with his standard of living.

He listens to the voice of our materialistic culture that says: You deserve it.

He wants to enjoy the finer things of life.

Maybe his wife plays a role in this. She wants a certain lifestyle.

It gives her a sense of security, or it makes her feel attractive.

She nags and manipulates him. So his focus becomes getting rich.

Not to serve God and people in his work. And the Bible’s words come true:

“People who want to get rich fall into temptation and a trap and into many foolish and harmful desires that plunge men into ruin and destruction. Some people, eager for money have wandered from the faith and pierced themselves with many griefs.”

Or maybe a Christian has been wronged and want justice.

Longer he waits and sees this person just flourishing, the more intolerable it is.

So he tries to bring about justice himself by sabotaging the person’s reputation.

And he becomes a gossip and uses his or her tongue to curse.

We could go on and on, it’s all variations of Sarah’s theme.

Her pain got the better of her, she could not trust God in her barrenness,

and she became impatient and came up with her own solution.

But it wasn’t just Sarah, let’s look now at Abraham.

Abraham responded to Sarah’s barrenness in a different but equally faithless way.

His panicked, unhappy wife came to him and said, what are you going to do?

We’re not going to have the life we wanted. What are you going to do?

Go sleep with my slave so I can build a family.

Abraham looked up from newspaper and said, whatever you want, honey.

And even though he was just sitting in his tent, he was running from God.

He was running from the difficult path the Lord had for him.

He didn’t build an altar, or go seek Melchizedek, high priest of God.

He didn’t make the effort go to another man and say—Pray for me.

He didn’t face his wife’s pain.

He didn’t hold Sarah say: I don’t know what it feels like as a woman to be

without a child year after year. And I don’t know why the Lord is so long in

keeping his promise. And I have doubts too, but let’s walk by faith together. ,

Instead, he appeased his wife, and let her lead him into spiritual failure.

It was so much easier to sleep with Hagar, than to seek spiritual counsel,

and to minister to his wife in her pain.

And how did it work? Abraham’s solution to the problem?

Hagar got pregnant and things got worse. Chaos. Craziness.

Sarah got out her claws and went after Abraham. You are responsible for this.

I put servant in your arms, now she’s expecting a baby,

she hates me, she laughs at me—this is intolerable.

And in that very painful moment, Abraham had another opportunity to do things

God’s way. To say, Sarah, you’re fearful and angry at God and at me.

We should never have gone down this path. But the Lord is good.

Forgive me and let’s seek him together and claim his promises.

But instead, Abraham did the same thing again. Buried his head in the sand.

She’s your slave. You do what you want to do to her.

So Sarah mistreated Hagar and she ran away into the desert.

Pregnant women didn’t make it in the desert, she was passively committing suicide.

And our father in the faith, was sitting in his tent hoping it would all go away.

Sarah’s solution failed, and Abraham’s failed.

He chose to appease his wife and keep her quiet rather than courageously

enter into a situation that had no easy answer and challenge her to trust God.

Abraham knew how to stand by faith. He had done it many times before.

Remember how he responded after victory in battle when rescued Lot?

Refused the honor of the King of Sodom and glorified God with his success.

But here in his own tent, with his wife and family, chose his own solution.

That’s what happens to men sometimes.

Your wife brings you something painful and difficult with no easy answers.

(Maybe, like Sarah, she’s nagging and pushing you.)

Or Your children bring you something painful and difficult with no easy answers,

and the great temptation of men, even Christian men, is to say—I’m out of here.

You don’t leave the house, but you disengage from the battle.

And all hell breaks loose when you do that.

Running from God always results in painful consequences—always.

Easy solutions do not produce the blessing of God, only the heartache of your

impatient choices. That’s how it works.

When you choose a shortcut for dealing with your barrenness (like Sarah did),

or to try to quickly and easily absolve yourself of your responsibility

and your failure (like Abraham)—

When you do that, you don’t get the blessing of God, but frustration and more pain.

Was this it for Abraham? Was God done with him?

We’ve looked at our faithless solutions, now let’s look at . . .

MP#2 God’s way back

We see it in the story of Hagar.

God’s dealings with her are a pattern for the way he deals with us

when we’ve been running from him and doing things our way.

So we need to look at this pattern and get in line with it. Three things:

1. He sees you and comes to you and makes himself known.

Hagar ran out into the desert with the thought of going back to Egypt.

But she was really running out there to die.

Angel of the Lord found Hagar by the spring in the desert.

He asked her what she was doing and she said: I’m running.

Abraham was running from God, Sarah was running from God.

They wouldn’t have called it that—but that’s what they were doing.

You have to admire Hagar. At least she had the courage to admit it.

She said, I’m running from my problems, from Sarah, from the whole mess.

The wonderful and amazing thing is that the Lord saw her,

cared about her and took the initiative to come to her and make himself known.

That’s what the Lord will do for you as well.

Might be though a memory or a longing, or Christian friend, pastor—

Lord will take the initiative and come to you and make himself known.

You have to be open to him. Yes, Lord, I’m running.

From responsibility, from pain, from the path you have for me.

2. He tells you to return and submit.

The Lord told Hagar, return to your mistress and submit to her.

This is a very disturbing command. Hagar was being mistreated by Sarah.

Was God telling her to submit to abuse?

No. He was saying: Return and submit to the calling I have placed on your life.

I’ve called you, at this point in your life, to be Sarah’s servant.

Hagar had been sinned against by Abraham and Sarah—no doubt.

But she had responded by sinning against them.

She despised Sarah, she mocked her for her barrenness.

Lord was saying, Go back to your calling, ask Sarah’s forgiveness,

treat your mistress with respect, and serve her as you are called. That’s hard.

James Montgomery Boice:

“When we have run away from something, we never want to go back to it. Who wants to admit failure? Who wants to go back to spouse and say, I’m sorry I hurt you? Who wants to go back to parents and say, I’m sorry I rebelled? Who want to go back to friend and say, I’m sorry I never forgave you? Who wants to go back to somebody that you’ve stolen something from and say, I’m sorry I stole it?

If you are running from God, chances are, you are running from one or more

of the callings he has put on your life—calling as a husband or wife, parent,

child, brother or sister, employee or boss. That’s where I have you now. Return.

3. He promises to bless you,

even though there might be consequences in this life for your faithless solution.

The Lord said, Hagar, I want to bless you.

I will increase descendants more numerous to count. Incredible blessing.

But there is a sad prophetic word about her son.

God says: He will be a wild donkey of a man. Live in hostility toward brothers.

Ishmael was the father of the Arab people, and to this day, living in hostility

toward the descendants of Isaac, the Jews.

This was the consequence of Abraham’s sin.

God doesn’t always remove consequences in this life.

We can ask him to. He often softens them.

But even in those consequences, he promises eternal blessing.

Here’s what God is asking this morning.

Husbands, have you been running from God?

You haven’t left home, but haven’t faced the difficulty your wife going through. Haven’t been with her and held her and pointed her to the promises of God,

even if she doesn’t want to hear them, even if she doesn’t like you.

God wants you to return, re-engage with wife.

Take her out to lunch, talk to her, pray with her and tell her—

I don’t have answers, but I’m not going to check out emotionally and spiritually.

We’re doing to trust God and move ahead.

Young people, are you running from God?

Are you like Hagar, despising the authority God has placed over you?

Are you running from parents authority, buying into world’s values?

He wants you to return to your calling—to obey your parents in the Lord.

Lord wants to bless you. And his blessing comes when return and submit to him.

But how can you know, how can you really know that if you return,

and wait for God and do things his way, and give up your precious

and comforting solutions, that you will be blessed?

You may be thinking:

God gave Abraham and Sarah a promise. He gave Hagar a promise.

He never promised me a child. Never promised me I’d get married or get well.

But that’s what I’m looking for. How can I know God will come through for me?

Here’s how you can know. Who met Hagar by that spring in the desert?

The Angel of the Lord. Who was the angel of the Lord?

Was he just an angel? A messenger of God.

No, because later Hagar called him Lord and God.

So who was the Angel of the Lord?

Earliest days of New Testament church, Christians explained it this way.

Jesus said: No man has seen the Father, except the Son who has made him known.

So the Angel of the Lord could not have been God the Father—

it must have been God the Son. His work is to make the Father known.

The Angel of the Lord was an Old Testament appearance of Jesus Christ,

even before he was Jesus.

It was Jesus who came to Hagar.

It is Jesus who comes to you when you are running and calls you back.

And that’s how you can be sure of God’s blessing.

The one who died for you is the one who comes to you.

Jesus died to make you righteous. Died to make you who you were created to be.

To give you life and a destiny that will be filled with inexpressible glory,

irrepressible joy for all eternity. His purposes and plans worked out in your life.

And if you call on the name of Jesus, that blessing is yours.

C.S. Lewis said we’re like children who get mad at parents who take us away from

making mudpies so we can go to the beach.

So often, things that make us not trust God,

things we worry he isn’t going to give us are our mudpies.

I can never get happy, never feel complete unless I get this.

But God in Christ offers and promises so much more.

All things in history woven together for God’s best in your life—

and in the cross of Christ, that’s what’s offered to you..

Husbands be courageous, wives surrender your hearts,

young people, discover word of God and submit to it.

We serve a God who sees us and hears us and comes to us and says:

Leave your faithless ways and plans.

Return to me and I will bless you.