Chapter 16
Every time we have a problem or a difficulty, or an adverse situation, we have to sit down and face an issue: Who is best qualified to handle this problem? Generally there are one or two answers which make the choice. God is qualified to handle it, and He can solve it; or I am qualified to handle it and I don’t try to solve it.
This becomes a very practical and wonderful passage in the life of Abraham. With all of the wonderful information he has received from God he still has a tremendous lesson to learn, and then he is going to have 13 wonderful years of operating on the lesson. So this is the story of the saint who didn’t wait.
In verses 1-3 we have the operation of human viewpoint, or Abram, with a lot of help from Sarai, trying to solve his problems. It isn’t going to work very well. When God promised Abram that he would have a son from his own loins all Abram had to do was to wait. And that is the one thing he didn’t do. By waiting is meant that all he has to do is to believe the Word (today), the promise (tomorrow), believe the promise the next day, and if nothing happens the fourth day to keep on believing, knowing that the battle is the Lord’s and that the Lord will take care of the whole situation. When we become impatient we try to solve our own problems.
Cf. Isaiah 30:18, “And therefore will the LORD wait, that he may be gracious unto you, and therefore will he be exalted, that he may have mercy upon you: for the LORD is a God of judgment: blessed are all they that wait for him.” The Lord is waiting to pour out His grace.
Isaiah 40:31, “But they that wait upon the LORD shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings as eagles; they shall run, and not be weary; and they shall walk, and not faint.” Keep on trusting (faith-rest) in a hopeless situation.
Psalm 37:34, “Wait on the LORD, and keep his way, and he shall exalt thee to inherit the land.”
Psalm 62:5, “My soul, wait thou only upon God; for my expectation is from him.”
Jeremiah 14:22, “Are there any among the vanities [idols] of the Gentiles that can cause rain? or can the heavens give showers? art not thou he, O LORD our God? therefore we will wait upon thee: for thou hast made all these things.”
Wherever this word wait is found it is referring to the faith-rest technique. This is Abram’s problem at this point: he didn’t wait. Instead of waiting for the Lord’s solution he jumped out ahead with his own. What does Abram need? A son from his own loins. God has promised him this in Genesis 13:14-17; 15:4,5. But Abram at this point is saying in effect, God needs some help!
Verse 1 – the barrenness of Sarai is a test to see whether Abram will believe the promises of God and wait on Him, or whether he will try to solve it himself. No matter how impossible the situation and how much pressure is on Abram in this situation all he has to do is to believe the Word of God. The real character of our faith in phase two is determined by how we wait on the Lord. In other words, by our patience. Patience is the ability, moment-by-moment and day-by-day, to know that the Lord is working on it and He will handle it in his way.
Verse 2 – “and Abram hearkened to the voice of Sarai.” When God says He is going to do something, God is going to do it—apart from human works. So many times believers are trying to help God! The person who came from the loins of Abram was to be the heir of Abram and the source of a great race. Such a person could not be born of a slave. This is one of the great points and analogies of Galatians. A slave girl cannot be the heir to the promises given by God. The son who was born of slavery will be the son of great nations, but not the nation that God has designated for the second dispensation.
There is another point: high motives do not justify wrong actions. Sarai was obviously motivated to help her husband, and to help God. You can be well motived as a believer and still, by legalism, be useless as far as God is concerned. The means does not justify the end. If the means is wrong the end is not right.
Another factor: In all of Sarai’s suggestion she did not once think of the character of God. Her suggestion shows failure to apply the doctrine of divine essence to the situation.
The word “hearkened” means he obeyed. Under divine institution #2 Abram is supposed to be the leader, and the leader is being led. He should have been listening to the promise of God instead of listening to the advice of his wife. So we know that Abram was looking at life from the human viewpoint—human activity and actions to solve the problem.
Verse 3 – “to be his wife.” Apparently there was a marriage. Now we have two wives, one was a slave and one was a free woman.
Verse 4 – she hated her mistress. She hasn’t been freed, she is still a slave, and that means that the free woman is still the head of the household as far as the women are concerned. But she despised in the sense of looking down on someone. She was a slave but she now looks at the free woman, Sarai, out of her pride.
Verse 5 – “My wrong be upon thee” …i.e. it is all your fault [Abram].
Abram’s first sin was unbelief and human expediency. Instead of waiting on the Lord he stopped trusting. So he is out of fellowship. The blessing of Isaac is going to be postponed now, it will be thirteen years after the birth of Ishmael before Isaac comes along. Abram suffered in another way, from which he never recovered apparently; he lost control of his household. Sarai ruled him. Later on he is going to suffer a broken heart because he loves Ishmael, and Ishmael is going to be rejected by the Lord. Sarai reaps in a very difficult way too. She has to take a lot of snobbery and hatred from her handmaid or slave girl. This arouses the antagonism of Sarai. She becomes miserable and in turn becomes jealous and envious of her handmaid. Now there is a strong antagonism between the two women.
That isn’t all. Sarai tries to justify herself. The only way she could think of doing this was to pass the blame on to Abram. Abram is to be blamed in part because he acquiesced to the whole situation but Sarai used operation patsy and blamed Abram. Then she lost the character of grace because that weak-kneed spineless Abram actually turned his second wife over to his first wife, and anyone with or without imagination knows that when the first wife had any control over the second wife the second wife has had it. This is exactly what happened. This “dealt hardly” is a pitiful translation. She bullied, she afflicted, she tortured, she made life miserable for the slave girl. So Sarai no longer operates under the principle of grace. Another principle: Sarai, you can’t solve a problem by adding sin to sin.
Verse 6 – Sarai isn’t going to be happy because she finally got rid of the slave girl. She drove her out, persecuted her, made life miserable for her. You don’t build happiness by making life miserable for other people.
Verses 7-16, God is going to remedy the situation in spite of all of the mistakes, failures and sins that are involved.
Verse 7 – introducing the Lord Jesus Christ. “The angel of the LORD[1] found Hagar…” She didn’t find Him; He went to her. That is grace. In grace God always comes to us; we don’t go to Him. That is the way it started in the garden. (Notice verse 13, “…she called the name of the LORD [Jehovah] that spoke unto her.” In other words, the angel of the Lord is Jehovah.) There are also many passages where the angel of Jehovah is distinct from Jehovah—Genesis 24:7; Zechariah 1:12,13; 1 Chronicles 21:15ff. This tells us that while the angel of Jehovah is God [the Son] He is sometimes distinguished from Jehovah, and when He is, Jehovah is the Father. The angel of Jehovah is the second person of the Trinity. There are two reasons for this. One is the distinction between Jehovah and the angel of Jehovah. The other is the fact that only the second person of the Trinity is the visible God.
“…near a spring in the desert; it was the spring that is beside the road to Shur.” Hagar was trying to get to Egypt.
Verse 8 – if you are running away from some problem, where can you go to solve it? Nowhere. The only solution is to wait on the Lord, claim His promises, use His Word. If the Lord wants to change the situation, that’s in His hands. The Lord tells us to separate ourselves from certain things but He never tells us to run from anything.
Verse 9 – “Return.” That sounds cruel. “… to thy mistress, and submit thyself under her hands.” That just means more persecution, but when the Lord wants us to stay in a situation let Him handle the other people too. See what the Lord can do!
Verse 10 – “…I will multiply thy seed exceedingly, that it shall not be numbered for multitude.”
Verse 11 – “Ishmael” means ‘the Lord has heard.’
Verse 12 – “And he will be a wild man; his hand will be against every man.” This is till true. The Hebrew says literally, he shall be a wild ass of a man. One of the great signs of prophecy of coming things is, when the Arabs can get together we are close to the Tribulation. The Arabs are getting together today for the first time in their history, and so perhaps the Rapture of the Church is close.
Verse 13 – here is salvation. “And she called the name of the LORD that spake unto her, Thou God seest me: for she said, Have I also here looked after him that seeth me?” She is saved as of this moment: Whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved.
“Have I also looked after him that seeth me?” The Hebrew says: “I have seen the one who saw me.” When she says I have seen, she means that she has received Him. She has responded; she has already called Him “Thou God.”
Verse 14 – “Beerlahairoi” simply means “the well of him who liveth and seeth me.”
So she went back. Sarai came to her sense and realised that you don’t solve a problem by adding sin to sin, so she received her back, apparently graciously. She did not persecute her any more. In other words, Hagar went back to what appeared to be “into the mess.” But she went back saved and believing that God would take care of the problem.
Verse 16 – Abram
is now 86. There is a silence between this and the next chapter, between 86 and
99. What happened in the next 13 years? Peace reigned in the household of
Abram. God had put all of the pieces back together.