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Well, good morning again.
There we go.
That that was okay.
We'll let you slide by with it this morning.
If you have your Bible, and I hope you do, please join me in Genesis chapter 16.
That's where we are going to be this morning.
Well, today we've been talking about it for a long time, and we launched our new Discipleship Sunday Morning Model, and it was absolutely wonderful.
There are about 25 to 30 of you that this is the second time that you have to hear me this morning, and I apologize for that.
But I've forgotten what it feels like to do one teaching session and then come back and do another teaching session.
So here's what that means.
Forewarning.
I don't know if that means shorter or longer, but either way, right?
We'll get through this together.
I did have a moment of panic as I walked into my office and grabbed my iPad and realized that it was dead.
So we're dependent on the Holy Spirit and Joel Van Ham's battery pack for the teaching this morning.
Berger's challenged me with something recently to do, and it's taken me kind of out of my comfort zone a little bit in writing my messages.
And it's what he's doing with the website, with the podcast, with how you get our messages and just to give them a title.
And I've never really been a title guy.
My brain doesn't work that way.
My titles are usually like, Genesis Twelve.
It's in the Bible.
He's like, hey, for Genesis, what do.
You think about doing this?
I was like, all right, we'll play around with it.
And usually it's one of those things.
At the end of the week, I.
Send him my notes and for him.
To get them on the screen, he's.
Like, do you have that title by chance?
It's really stretched me.
Usually I don't put the title, though, on the screen.
We put them on the website so when you can download and listen or on the feed.
But this morning's message, I just felt impressed to put it on there.
And we're looking this morning in Genesis.
16, and I just entitled it The Work of God and the Dysfunction of Life.
Because when we read Scripture, scripture is perfect.
It's a perfect story about a perfect God working in the lives of imperfect.
People.
In our imperfect environments that we create, that we cause, that we bring on ourselves.
This word dysfunction fits.
It's this group of people, like, if we looked at us, it would be, get out of your way.
Why do you do this to yourself and then blame other people?
It's what we've seen since the fall in the garden.
God, the woman you gave me, it's her fault.
It's the beauty of Scripture, though, because what we see is God works and moves and uses this group of people like you and I to do miraculous things for his name and his glory.
And there's not a one in and of Himself that's worth it.
And in studying for Genesis 16, and as we've been walking through this, it's this journey with Abram where it's like.
You get it, you don't, you get it, you don't, you get it, you don't.
And reading this this past week.
I.
Found my spirit just frustrated with Abram.
Like, come on, man, how many times?
Why does it have to be like this?
And we're going to see in Genesis.
16, it gets heavy with the dysfunction.
And then God just reminded me of the mess that I can make and the miraculous work of God in it.
And so with grace, I felt led to entitle this message, the work of God and the dysfunction of life.
But I want to give you room for removing the word dysfunction, because that might not be the word that best describes where you find yourself.
I love the song that we just.
Sang, Graves to Gardens, for a couple of reasons.
I like the tune, I like the beat.
It's one of few songs that makes.
Me dance in my little weird, awkward.
Bob there, tap my foot kind of way, right?
We call it the Hawkins because that's.
What Brent can do as well, right?
In my mind, this is pretty cool.
But what I love about the song.
Is the imagery of hope.
You turn graves into gardens.
When I read this and I see this draw out of dysfunction, maybe you're looking at where your life is now.
And it's the mess, it's the hopeless, it's the frustrating, it's the persecution, it's.
Whatever word that describes for you.
But here's my point.
Here's what I don't want you to miss.
Whatever that word that you feel that.
You have right now to describe your life, what I don't want you to miss and what we can be capable of.
And what I was missing earlier this week was the work of God, and that he is working powerfully, miraculously, never ceasing work that is going on in your life.
And this story right here, it gets dysfunctional quick.
And if we allow ourselves, we can land there and miss the work of God.
So it's like Genesis 16.
We're going to read verses one and four.
Now, Sarai, Abram's wife, had bore him.
No children and 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 ten years in the land of Canaan, sarai, Abram's wife, took Hagar the Egyptian, her servant, and gave her to Abram, her husband, as a wife.
And he went into Hagar and she conceived.
And when she saw that she had.
Conceived, she looked with contempt on her mistress.
You're like, Yep, that's how we work, right?
What we see in this now, remember where we've just been Genesis 15 that we looked at last week like there's this covenant and the reminder, the covenant made with Abraham of what God promises him.
God takes him out last week, what we saw, and has him look at the stars and he says, your descendants will be like the stars in the heavens.
Right?
Too many to count.
But yet what we know is that Abram and his wife are elderly.
They've passed that time in their life to conceive, to carry for Sarai, to raise up children.
They feel like there's the point of no return.
But we walked out of here last week with seeing that what God did and what God reminded Abram.
And the Bible tells us that Abram believed in Chapter 15, verse six, and that it was counted to him as righteousness.
And we see at the very end that God makes a covenant before Abram for the people where God passes through.
God leaves Abram out of the signing of the contract, of what's there.
And God signs it twice, twice confirming.
What he's going to do.
And we turn the page and it's.
Like, it didn't happen.
So what in the world is going on?
See, this is trusting a plan, but not a process.
Here's what I think as we read this.
Sarai and Abram believe God to a degree.
They believe that God will provide them with a son.
They believe that the problem is they do not trust the seemingly impossible task that it will take for them to have their own son.
They believe in what comes after the equal sign that they will have a son.
What they can't see is, Lord, how do we get there?
How do we make this happen?
Because it should have happened by now.
In verse two's, interesting, sarai either acknowledges or blames the sovereignty of God.
She says the Lord has prevented me.
She's either saying, God's in control of this or God's in control of this.
And I blame him.
But she sees her womb as God saying no instead of seeing her womb as God saying, not right now, not right now.
Trusting the end, but not the process.
And so what does she do?
She listens to her own head.
She listens to culture.
And she doesn't trust God.
And what does Abram do?
He listens to his wife.
He listens to his culture and he doesn't listen to God.
And so the question for us is this we have not been identically in this situation.
God has not made this promise to you.
But we've walked in a process, in a plan with God at different points in times where the path seems unclear or uncertain, right?
So the question that we have for us this morning is how do we walk on the path of the Lord when sometimes the path and the direction become a little foggy, become a little unclear, became a little uncertain.
This morning when I woke up.
It was extremely foggy on my drive from my house to here at the church to the point to where it was very difficult for me to see farther than 15ft in front of my car as I was driving.
And so, graciously, I don't know.
I've been making this drive in our house that we live in now for about six years.
So I kind of know that I don't need to see farther than 15ft in front of my car to know where I need to go.
But oftentimes when we walk with the Lord, we're just looking at our toes, and it's like.
I don't know yet.
So how do we do it?
How do we walk the path of.
The Lord in times where the path seems unclear?
And this is what I think we can learn from this situation of what we need to desire in those moments.
What we need to set our heart.
And positioning toward and the decisions that we make.
We need to seek obedience over control.
So let me explain a little bit about what Sarah proposes to her husband.
Okay?
There wasn't a fertility specialist to go to.
There wasn't tests to be run.
And so what was socially acceptable in their culture was for a wife to offer one of her servants as a form of surrogate, to be able to say, this is how we will have a child, and it comes with my blessing.
Which is why when you look at her words that she says, she says, and then we will have children.
And what was acceptable and what Sarai does is she claims for herself the womb of another woman.
And now that this agreement can be.
Made, she sought control.
Over obedience.
So what's the difference?
Obedience seeks to eliminate sin.
If you're saying, but what's it look like to be obedient?
To be obedient means this for me in its most simplistic form that my brain can understand is this.
When I know that it's sin, I don't choose that.
I might not always know what the best path might be, but I know that that ain't it.
And obedience seeks to eliminate sin, but yet control will do this.
Control will invite or justify sin.
Control says, Well, I'm just going to have to do this my way.
So that the end can happen and so that we can move toward this.
But God said, you will have an heir, but the reality of obedience means this.
You will have to wait.
And so Sarai and Abram said, well, God, we trust you that we're going to have this, but waiting on you is not what we're going to so they justify their sin.
They allowed culture.
They allowed what everyone else would have justified for them.
They took control of the situation.
They invited and justified adultery on the basis of surrender to culture and on the basis of surrender to self.
Now.
If you've ever consciously spent a.
Lot of time waiting on the Lord, let me say it's not often fun or it's easy.
It's been at least ten years for them.
If you've ever waited on the Lord in the moment, it's not always fun.
Or easy, but it is always worth it.
It's always worth it.
God does so much in the waiting that when it happens, it's worth it.
Because waiting on God produces something.
It produces a deeper depth of maturity.
But they follow through on their plan of what they want to do, of what they want to accomplish.
And a baby is conceived.
Let's look at verse five.
And Sarai said to Abram, may the.
Wrong done to me be on you.
I gave my servant to your embrace.
And when she saw that she had.
Conceived, she looked on me with contempt.
May the Lord judge between you and me.
But Abram said to Sarah, behold, your servant is in your power due to her as you please.
Then Sarai dealt harshly with her, and she fled from her.
And what we see here is this culpability of sin.
When we sin, we always like to instantly admit that we've done wrong.
Right?
No.
You're like, yeah, that's how I know you don't.
And I don't do that either.
Right?
One of our defenses, often sinful defenses when we sin is we like to blame others.
We like to pass out blame blame our parents, blame our spouse, blame our neighbors, blame our coworkers, blame our kids, blame our grandparents, blame people we don't know.
We like to blame that's what we see.
We like to blame culture, we like to blame circumstances, and we like to blame God.
God, if you hadn't done this, if you haven't given me this, if you hadn't trusted me with this, if you would have made me different, if you would have bent me this way as.
Opposed to that way, if there had been these pieces, then, God, I wouldn't.
Find myself in these situations where I find myself.
And that's what we see here.
Sarah blames Abram.
You did this.
She blames Hagar.
She looks at me with contempt.
Yes.
Nothing in this passage of Scripture points to a conversation where Hagar says, sure, sign me up for this.
Nothing that we've seen points to that this is what happened.
And what we begin to see in this in Sarai is an ability that she has, that we often have as well in our sin, to say, it's not my fault and I'm the victim of the circumstance.
And then Abram, in leadership failure after leadership failure, sees Hagar as what society would have seen her as, as well, an outcast servant.
It says in the second verse that we read that when Sarah offers her to Abram is that she's a servant girl, she's an Egyptian servant girl.
So she was probably someone in the interactions when Abram would flee back to Egypt and go there and they had all those dynamics that happened, would be offered to him as payment.
She's of little value.
And Abram, who sees her as an outcast and as a womb, and that's it, looks at his wife and says, do as you please.
Do as you please with her.
And what we see in this, in the life of Sarai and in the life of Abram, what we see is the sin of I value my life over all else.
I value my convenience, I value my feelings, I value my direction.
I value what I want above all.
Do as you please.
So verse six says that Sarai dealt with her harshly, harshly, and she fled from her.
Verse seven the angel of the Lord found her by a spring of water in the wilderness, the spring on the way to shore.
And he said, Hagar, servant of Sarai, where have you come from and where are you going?
And she said, I am fleeing from my mistress Sarai.
And 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 and shall bear a son.
You shall call his name Ishmael, because the Lord has listened to your affliction.
I love this description.
Any of you that's had that son, you get this.
He shall be wild.
He shall be a wild donkey of a man.
Right?
All right, girls, single teenage girls.
When a boy asks you out and they say, describe him to us.
Tell us about him.
Like bad illustration, right?
She'll be a wild donkey of a man.
I just love that his hand against everyone and everyone's hand against him.
And he shall dwell over all his kinsmen.
Verse 13 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 shall be called Beer lai Hiroi.
It lies between Kadesh and Beread and Hagar bore abram a son.
And Abram called the name of his son who Hagar bore ishmael.
Abram was 86 years old when Hagar bore ishmael to Abram.
What we see here is this god's plan is bigger than your sin and God's plan is bigger than my sin.
With ishmael conceived in a God honoring manner.
No, there's culturally acceptable God honoring absolutely not.
When we look at this interaction and we're going to talk about this angel of the Lord here in a moment, while not all children are conceived in a God honoring manner, no child, not one child is an accident or mistake.
And while a pregnancy may be a surprise to you or to me, no.
Pregnancy is a surprise to God.
This is the first time in scripture that we see the angel of the Lord.
Look at the interaction, though, that she that we have.
He proclaims, this is what's going to happen.
The angel of the Lord said, this is what I'm going to make.
The angel of the Lord said, this is what I'm going to do.
And what does she say?
You are a God of seeing in this moment what I believe in, the angel of the Lord, who would later appear to Abraham, who would later appear to Moses, to Israel, to David and Elijah.
What we have happening right here for the first time is the angel of the Lord, who would appear to all of these great men of faith, who would appear to God's chosen people, the angel of the Lord, which, by the way, we can argue and talk about this later.
I believe she's seeing Jesus.
He comes to an impregnated servant girl.
For the first time.
This is what we see.
And it just shows the heart of the Lord for the unborn, the heart of the Lord for the outcast.
And what we see here is he gives her something.
He gives her something.
God gives hagar instruction.
Not the instruction that she wanted, not the instruction that she hoped for, but.
God gave her the instruction, return.
Return and submit.
Return and obey and I will protect oftentimes.
Can you imagine what was going through her head?
I didn't ask for this, I didn't choose this, I didn't desire this.
And this is what happened to me.
And she chooses this path and God says, Turn and return.
He asks her the question, where are you coming from?
And where are you going?
Return to it.
Oftentimes.
We are walking on a path that we think is right.
We are walking on a path that we think is justified.
We are walking on a path that we have made the choice to take in spite of what we feel like has pushed us there.
And it's not the path that God has for us.
And very simply, it's the same call to just make the turn and return.
I know what hindered me.
For years before I understood the grace of God, before I could begin to.
Comprehend his great love for me, my opposition of turning.
Was that I'd gone too far.
I'd made it too far down the path.
I'd burned too many bridges, I'd done too much damage.
I'd seen nothing but a trail of destruction and hopelessness.
And God just said, you're not too far gone to turn around and come to me.
So God gives hagar instruction, but God also gives hagar a promise.
Verse ten.
The angel of the Lord also said to her, I will surely multiply your offspring so that they cannot be numbered for multitude.
That sounds really similar, right?
And the angel of the Lord said to her, behold, you are pregnant and shall bear a son and 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 and everyone's hand against him, and he shall dwell over against all kinsmen.
And so he says, if you turn here, here's what I need you to do.
I need you to turn here and I'm going to make you a promise of who your son's going to be.
Well, history moment and a little foretelling of what we'll see.
Abraham and Sarai will have a son named Isaac and from him what we will see is the lineage of Christ.
We will see that this great generation of faith that will come, but we will also see what comes from this lineage of what we will see in God's people we just talked about, it is Israel, the Jewish people.
And what we hear from this is that Hagar will bear a son and his name shall be Ishmael.
Well, to give you a little world.
Religion study, this will be the father of what Muslims will claim to their.
Heritage back to Abraham.
And so from Ishmael.
Will come Islam.
But also from Ishmael will come as the Jewish people, ethnic people will come from Isaac, from Ishmael will come the Arab people.
Now from this one man, two sons will be born.
Now go home today and cut on.
The news and tell me if conflict from Genesis 16 isn't still ringing true today.
And I want you to think about.
This.
In this moment.
God could have chosen to erase this woman.
He could have chosen to erase this unborn baby from the earth and he didn't.
God had.
While he had chosen for Himself the Jewish people, from Him will come the blessing of the nations, of what we saw in Genesis twelve.
From here.
What we begin to continue to see, of what we've been seeing take place since Babel, when man decides I'm going to do things in my own way is the creation of the nations, of what we'll continue to see and what we find in this story.
That when we see this situations as we look at people as problems, when we look at people as enemies, what God sees are his people, whom he loves.
And so that's why when we read this and we wonder, god, why would you do this in this very first book of the Bible that you've given us?
And to understand it though, we've got to jump to the last book of the Bible in Revelation 79 where John rises.
After this I looked and behold a great multitude that no one could number.
As he looks up and he sees heaven from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages, standing before the throne and before the lamb, clothed in white robes with palm branches in their hands and crying out with a loud voice, Salvation belongs to our God who sits on the throne and to the Lamb.
Because it's not just going to be one group, but it's going to be.
The gathering of the nations.
And so we see.
God, lastly here gives Hagar a blessing.
Verse 13 through 16 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 Beerleharoi.
It lies between Kadesh and Barrett, and Hagar Bore abram a son, and Abram called the name of his son who Hagar Bore ishmael.
Abram was 86 years old when Hagar Bore ishmael to Abram.
Hagar's response in verse 13 I love this.
You are a God of seeing.
Look at what is happening.
What does Hagar experience?
God, you're with me and you know, and you see what's been done, what has happened, what has taken place, you know, and you see.
And she doesn't blame that it happened to her.
She instead says, I know that you are with me.
Jesus gives us the great commission.
We oftentimes forget to talk about the end of it.
I know that I do.
So let me reread to you matthew 20 819 through 20 says, and Jesus came and said to them, all authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me.
We know that part, right?
Verse 19, go therefore, and make disciples.
Of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit.
We know that too.
Verse 20, teaching them to observe all.
That I've commanded you.
And there's a period there in scripture.
But Jesus continues and he says this and behold, I am with you always, to the end of the ages.
Jesus says, go and live and do and be obedient, but I am with you always.
Last week, and we'll conclude with this, we looked about this faith journey of Abram, and we talked about what it looked like to follow God, especially in these moments of uncertainty, in these moments of fear.
And if you weren't here, what we.
Talked about is that most teaching talks.
About in the secular world, that when you face a moment of fear, you choose one of two responses, you choose to fight or you choose to flight.
And we countered that last week by saying, no, there's two other reactions that we can have.
We can end that moment of fear, of an uncertainty of what we're to do.
We can freeze, we can fight, we can flight, or we can have faith.
And if you're in that spot, imagine being where Hagar is in this moment.
Go back.
She's been dealt with harshly, she's been abused, she's been taken advantage of.
Go back.
She'S going to freeze.
Freeze.
She's going to fight, she'll flight.
And you're sitting there and you're looking.
At your situation, it's like it's too much.
And you're frozen.
This morning, God's saying to you, hey, I'm with you, I'm.
With you.
Don't be afraid.
If you're finding within.
Yourself the desire to fight.
I'm going to take this on myself.
This is what I'm going to do.
You've got Jesus this morning that says, I'm with you.
You've already won.
If you're here this morning and the.
Situation is more that you can take and you just want to run and run and run, you've got Jesus saying, I'm with you.
You can stand firm because we have faith, and our faith is the reminder that God is not far off.
But is Jesus saying, hey, I'm right there with you.
I'm right there with you to the end of the age.
I'm not going to leave you.
I'm not going to forsake you.
I'm here.
Would you pray with me?
God, we come to you this morning got such a complicated.
Layered.
Passage of scripture.
It's one where we can see, lord, the depth of depravity that we are.
Capable of.
Lord, the hurt and the suffering that we can impose onto others.
Lord, we can look at it and.
See the dysfunction that we create.
And God.
And if if we stop there, lord, it's a sad story.
But it doesn't stop there.
Because what we have, lord, is the promise that you are a God who sees.
You are a God who knows you are a God who is with us.
You are a God who loves us.
And no matter what path we've chosen, it's never too late to turn around.
It's never too late to return back.
It's never too late to come to you.
God, my prayer this morning.
Is there someone or some people who are here.
And they just feel war, like they're too far gone.
They're in a situation that is without hope, lord, may they know that you are right there with them.
You see, you know, and you're working in it and you're moving in it.
We can trust you.
God.
As we close in worship, Lord, I pray that our response will be a response we sing because of the faith of who we are in Christ.
May we sing as the redeemed children of the living God, and it's in Jesus name we pray.
Amen.
Thanks again for listening and be sure to check back next week for another episode.
In the meantime, you can visit us@willowridgechurch.org or by searching for Willowridge Church on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter.