Genesis 16
The Works of the Flesh

The Lord renewed his promises to Abram in chapter 15—the promise of a Seed to inherit the land and the promise of the land itself. Abram begged for confirmation, seeing that he was still childless and a household servant stood to inherit the land. And the Lord renewed his oath, swearing that Abram’s children would be as numerous as the stars. Abram believed God and it was counted to him as righteousness.

But what would this Seed inherit? Abram still owns not a square inch of the Promised Land. So God renews that promise as well. In an intensely dramatic moment, God makes a covenant with Abram, passing through the cut up pieces of the animals, in effect saying, "May this happen to me if I fail to keep my promise. May I be slaughtered like these beasts."

Paul tells us that the Seed promised to Abram is Christ and that the children of Abram — uncountable as the dust, numerous as the stars — are those who with Abram believe in Christ and entrust themselves wholly to him as their only salvation. So God, in passing through the slaughtered animals, pictured the slaughter of Christ on the cross, a picture of the extreme lengths to which he was committed that he might be Abram’s friend and bring him into the heavenly inheritance.

Yet for all the drama and all the assurance, in one sense Abram ends chapter 15 as he began it — childless and without a home. Being weak, he again falters in his faith.  

  1. Abram Doubts, Relying on the Flesh (1-6)
    1. Sarai Doubts
      1. Tension — Sarai, Abram’s wife, had borne him no children
        1. emphasis — we’re reminded that she’s Abram’s wife.
        2. Had we forgotten?
        3. No. The Holy Spirit wishes us to remember that it is through her that the promised seed most naturally should be expected.
        4. For God promised in 15 that the Seed would come from Abram’s body, so the one we look to to bear that seed is Sarai.
        5. But she is still barren.
        6. If she cannot bear a seed, there will be no Isaac. If there will be no Isaac there will be no Christ.
        7. No Christ = No seed of the woman to crush the serpent’s head, no one to reverse the curse, no one to inherit the heavenly Promised Land that we may enter with him.
        8. The stakes could not be higher.
      2. Further Tension — She had an Egyptian maidservant
        1. The word denotes not a slave girl but a personal attendant.
        2. Usually such were given as luxuries by husbands to their new brides as a wedding gift.
        3. But where had Sarai acquired such a gift?
          1. From Abram, who met her far away in Ur of the Chaldees or possibly Haran and married her there? Hardly.
          2. From PHARAOH in Egypt during Abram’s unbelief.
          3. Remember how Abram, unsettled by famine, had deserted the Promised Land and thus his faith in God to dwell in Egypt.
          4. Frightened, dependent on his own strength, he had urged Sarai to lie. "Say you are my sister," he said. "Then they will not kill me in order to take you."
          5. Abram was relying on his own flesh, his own ingenuity, his own plans.
          6. And those plans came to nothing. Pharaoh took Sarai as his wife. The promised Seed was threatened, for how would Abram regain his wife to produce that Seed? But God intervened, troubling Pharaoh’s household.
          7. Pharaoh had sent them away with all the lavish wedding gifts, for he was unwilling to further trouble anyone so favored by God.
        4. The mention of this Egyptian wedding gift strikes an ominous note, a warning that we may again see the promise of the Seed threatened as Abram relies on his own strength to care for himself rather than on God to provide all that he had promised.
      3. So Sarai offers this maidservant to Abram, saying that perhaps she may obtain children in that way.
      4. In so doing, Sarai puts the blame on God that she has not borne the Seed:
        1. "The Lord has restrained me from bearing children."
        2. The observation is actually correct
        3. Note how Abram makes the same statement in 15.3 "Look, You have given me no offspring."
        4. And God rewarded that statement with a renewal of his promise
        5. The difference?
          1. Abram is saying, please assure me that You will do it
          2. Sarai is saying, Since God isn’t doing it, looks like we’re going to have to.
          3. They have waited on the Lord long enough, she feels. If the promise is to come true, they’d better get up and do something. This sitting around trusting in the promises is obviously not sufficient.
      5. What she proposes is a perfectly legal transaction in the Ancient Near East
        1. Hagar will bear the child to Sarai and it will be Sarai’s child
        2. And there it will be, just as the Lord had promised, a child from Abram’s own body to inherit the promises
      6. Have some sympathy with Sarai
        1. She’s barren.
        2. She’s past child-bearing age even for the fruitful
        3. She’s a hopeless case.
        4. She feels guilty, upset, frustrated — such exceeding great and precious promises almost within their grasp if only they can produce an heir.
      7. Yet realize for all that sympathy, she pursues the wrong course.
    2. Abram Doubts as Well (2c-3)
      1. Abram heeded the voice of Sarai
        1. That ought to ring some ominous bells as well.
        2. A woman, tempting a man, her husband, who like a fool falls into the same sin
        3. And God came to that man, Adam, and cursed him with a curse that began, "Because you have heeded the voice of your wife…."
        4. This is Abram’s fall
      2. Should he not have rebuked her for her unbelief and then tenderly preached the gospel to her that God had preached to him, that God would provide the Seed, that he had sworn so by his own life?
      3. Should he not tell her what Christ would later affirm: God can raise up children to Abram even from the stones.
      4. No such faith. Abram falls, doubting the Lord
      5. As the woman took the fruit and gave some to her husband
      6. So Sarai takes a woman and gives her to her husband
      7. And he accepts.
      8. He accepts the need to fulfill the promise of God by the strength of his own flesh
      9. He forgets what happened the last time he relied on that strength and it turned to weakness.
      10. He preaches by his actions a doctrine of salvation in which God does his part and we do ours. God promises the seed, and Abram works hard to produce him.
      11. But God has given him a gospel of free and pure grace; this is not the right way to produce the offspring who will be the visible proclamation of that gospel.
      12. Have some sympathy with Abram
        1. It’s been 10 years; he’s 85.
        2. What is God thinking? When will he get with his own program?
        3. Perhaps having a child by Hagar will force God’s hand and God will be satisfied and make that child the Promised Seed.
      13. But again, as understandable as this weakness of the flesh is, it is exactly that.
    3. Unhappiness Results
      1. Hagar conceives and immediately despises Sarai
        1. In a society where childbirth is everything, the fertile women look down upon the barren with great scorn
        2. So for an act over which she had no control, Hagar lords it over her mistress for a condition over which her mistress has no control.
      2. This is Hagar joining the party, boasting in her own flesh.
        1. As surely as God has prevented Sarai’s conception, so surely has he granted Hagar’s
        2. Yet she immediately takes credit for this divine and sovereign act and boasts as though her own body has done the work and her pregnancy speaks of her superiority.
      3. Some suggest that we are saved by faith and works
        1. They say, well of course we believe God, but we also work as hard as we can for him, and he is good to us and blesses those works and allows us to earn salvation by them.
        2. If this were so then Hagar would bear the child of promise.
        3. Abram and Hagar are a fitting symbol for this kind of salvation
        4. Believe the promise of God and work as hard as you can to fulfill it yourself. And God blesses those works and uses them to fulfill his promises.
        5. You acknowledge of course that you couldn’t do it without God
        6. But you see what happens?
          1. Even if it were possible, if somehow God could grant to us works by which we might be saved
          2. We would take credit for them and believe we had earned our salvation
          3. Even as Hagar takes credit for this divine conception
      4. That’s why Paul says Hagar is a symbol of salvation by works, not grace.
      5. We must wait for a later child, born when Abram and Sarai are entirely too old to have children, when God must do it all and they have no contribution to make. This, Paul says, will be the fitting picture of our salvation.
      6. So Sarai becomes angry when she sees the consequences of her actions
      7. And rather than repenting she blames her husband.
      8. And rather than repenting he again forfeits his headship and does not protect the mother of his unborn child but hands her over to his wife to be treated cruelly
      9. Hagar flees.
  2. God’s Rebuke and Promise
    1. The Rebuke to Hagar
      1. On her way back to Egypt, the angel of the Lord appears to her.
      2. He calls her "Hagar, Sarai’s maid," reminding her of her obligations from which she is fleeing.
      3. And he asks her "where have you come from, and where are you going?"
        1. Like God asking Adam "where are you?" The angel doesn’t need this information.
        2. Rather the question is a rebuke.
        3. For Adam, the correct answer is "hiding from you, God." And that answer contains his rebuke, that he has done something so shameful that he must hide from God.
        4. So Hagar’s rebuke is twofold:
          1. Where have you come from?
            1. From Abram’s household, the household of promise, the place that God will bless.
            2. I have left all that behind simply because I was persecuted.
            3. I have stolen myself, for I am Sarai’s property, even though the Lord has promised that those who curse Abram he will curse.
            4. I have invited this curse upon myself
          2. Where are you going?
            1. To Egypt. To a land that for Abram spoke of trusting in the flesh rather than relying on God
            2. Fleeing the Promised Land of the inheritance
          3. Can this woman be bearing in her womb the promised Seed when she herself is fleeing the Promised Land?
      4. So the angel of the Lord rebukes her and tells her to return and submit to her mistress
      5. And then the angel blesses her, although he does not promise that her child will be the Seed.
    2. The Promise Concerning Her Son
      1. The angel gives her the same promise concerning this seed that Abram received concerning his
        1. I will multiply your descendants exceedingly, so that they shall not be counted for multitude.
        2. Might this be, after all, the promised seed of Abram? The same promise comes to him.
      2. The angel gives a name to the son — Ishmael
        1. "God hears"
        2. A testimony that Hagar cried out to the Lord in her distress and he is answering her
        3. Again, this would be fitting for the true seed of Abram
        4. Will Ishmael perhaps after all be that seed?
      3. But the Lord does not offer the inheritance to Ishmael
        1. Ishmael is to be a wild, wandering man
        2. Abram wanders about in tents because he’s waiting for the inheritance
        3. Ishmael will just wander
        4. Ishmael will be a fighter, at odds with every one,
          1. v. 12 is wrong in NKJV
          2. Go with NIV "He will live in hostility to all his brothers"
        5. He will not be a picture of that the true Seed, Christ, who will make war against the serpent, but will make peace between God and those who trust in him.
      4. But still, Hagar has been greatly honored
        1. She recognizes that this "angel" is no mere created being. It is the Lord himself who has appeared to her (13)
        2. She names God, the God who sees
        3. And she marvels that she has seen him and yet has lived.
    3. The Rebuke to Abram and Sarai
      1. Sarai, whose name began the narrative, finds no place in its conclusion
        1. She thought to have a son by Hagar
        2. But this is not her son at all, she has no part in any promise or blessing made to Hagar’s child.
        3. It is God’s rebuke to her for believing she could devise a way to fulfill the amazing promise of God.
      2. The Lord appeared out of their presence
        1. The Lord has appeared several times in the Abram story, always to Abram
        2. Abram’s unbelief ultimately led to Hagar’s being driven away.
        3. So it was far from Abram, on the way to Egypt, that Hagar saw the Lord. Abram has been denied this blessing, a rebuke to his unbelief.
      3. The name of the son
        1. Ishmael — God hears
        2. Would God not have heard their cries if they had cried out and come again and assured them of his promises?
      4. This is our rebuke as well.
        1. Wen God seems slow to fulfill his promises, do we not waver in our faith?
        2. When he delays in answering our prayer, we suppose that he is not the God who hears and sees; we wonder if he cares.
        3. When he seems slow in sanctifying us, we become impatient
          1. We seek for ways to sanctify ourselves by putting ourselves in bondage to regulations that have no power to make us righteous
          2. We try to force ourselves to be godly by sheer effort
          3. God promised to conform us to the image of Christ, but like Abram our faith wavers when we don’t see it happening fast enough, and we try to make our own contribution, to give the Spirit a running start by at least producing what outwardly looks like godliness
          4. We are like Abram. when God won’t give him the Seed, he tries to produce it on his own.
          5. How Paul yearned for the Galatians that Christ should be formed in them, like a Seed being formed in the womb
          6. When God won’t form Christ the Seed of Abraham in us quickly enough, we take over
        4. When Christ delays his appearing at last, we become anxious
          1. Do we not go off and say, then we must build his kingdom here on earth
          2. We must bring him back somehow by our own efforts at building the church
      5. What did Abram need as a "cure"?
        1. He didn’t need to produce the promised Seed by his own strength
        2. He needed God to come again and speak assurance into him, preaching the gospel (as Paul calls it) that his faith might be strengthened.
        3. He needed to be reminded of God passing through those slaughtered animals, swearing on his own life that he would fulfill his promises
        4. Then his faith would have been strengthened and he would have known how to rely on the Lord for all things.
        5. Then his works would be those works that spring from faith, patiently waiting on the Lord to bring the Seed.
      6. Abram’s cure is yours
        1. God passed through those pieces for you!
        2. Christ has been publicly set before you as crucified?
        3. God took upon himself all the covenant curse, not even sparing his only-begotten Son
        4. The Seed has come and you can be blessed with believing Abraham by trusting that Seed.
        5. Your sins are taken away! You’re dead to them! They have no power over you! Go and sin no more.
        6. Though Christ seem absent, yet he is present by his Spirit!
          1. How can we doubt it?
          2. In times of trouble that Spirit cries out to the Father and we yearn for the comfort of Christ
          3. In that way even our troubles are sanctified to us and testify to us of God’s presence
        7. Christ has been raised from the dead, and so shall you be!
        8. Oh, children, how can we doubt?

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