A Poor Decision

Introduction

Patience is a virtue it is said. But patience is difficult at best. Children are prone to be impatient. Trips are often highlighted with the question “how much longer?” Those with computer equipment have long since grown accustomed to the speed of your particular machine and are hurriedly clicking the mouse to push the machine to its limits. Microwaves are a routine part of life. But in a more serious vein, patience is difficult to exercise in life. We don’t like to be kept waiting by our doctor, our mechanic, or the cable repairman. Patience is indeed a virtue.

Consider Abraham and his wife Sarah. At age 75, Abraham had been promised a child. This was not an ordinary promise. This was a promise made by the God of this world. This promise was not begged for; it was offered graciously and freely. Sarah at age 65 would no longer be the recipient of the pity glances. She would have the child who would increase her status with her husband and with other women. With great hope they left their homeland and became wanderers in a foreign land. They had their ups and downs, but they held on to the promise. How long should they wait for the promise to be fulfilled? It is easy for us to say they should wait as long as necessary. Do you think 10 years is long enough? Is 10 years long enough to wait on God to fulfill his promise?

Let me put it another way. Can you wait 10 years for God to solve a problem before you wrestle it away from him so you can solve it? Can you wait 10 months? 10 hours? 10 minutes? Before we condemn Abraham and Sarah, and there is plenty to condemn, let’s make sure that we understand that this story is intended to not only show us something about God, but it is intended to show us something about human beings in general. For all of our faith we have a hard time being patient. Abraham and Sarah demonstrate their impatience, and by doing so reveal that we aren’t much different.

The Dilemma

Sarah is unable to have children. She and Abraham have been trying for a number of years to have a child. Furthermore, God’s promise has been their security for all those years. So Sarah decides that she needs a surrogate, someone who will take her place. This was a common practice among the nations. Women unable to have children used slave girls as surrogates. We might find this offensive, the people of this day and time did not. Sarah’s attitude in verse 2 is best described as “so much for promises.” Whatever God had promised before means nothing now. Have you ever given up on God? Have you ever wondered where was God’s presence when all hell was breaking loose around you?

In Sarah’s situation having children validated your life. There was nothing more important than having a child to carry on your husband’s family name. Nothing more important than giving birth to a child who would inherit the blessing of your family. God had failed to carry through with his promise. In Sarah’s situation we might have tried to fix things. Trying to fix things as she did is not the best solution, but this is a desperate woman. Desperate to have a child and desperate to fulfill her role.

Don’t be too hard on Sarah, at least at this point. Desperation makes us all a little strange. But in our desperation is when we must realign with God. In our desperation we can lose our focus and begin saying and doing things that we would never do. In desperation we can delude ourselves into wrong thinking. Wrong thinking corresponds to wrong actions.

So Sarah offers her slave girl as a surrogate mother. Abraham accepts Sarah’s plan and indeed impregnates Hagar. Hagar realizing that she is pregnant plays the role for all its worth. Sarah may be older, she may be mistress, she may be married to Abraham, but she is childless. Pregnant by Abraham makes Hagar feel superior. And her new attitude grows as the child grows inside of her. Sarah quickly senses the quick change in attitude and in her well devised plan had not factored in her emotional response to being in second place.

So Sarah does the only rational thing—she blames her husband for her discomfort. Abraham is caught in the middle. Trying to please his wife he agrees to let her have her way. He does what Sarah wanted him to do. Things are working well. A child is going to be born. But Sarah is still dissatisfied. Now Abraham is blamed for following the plan. So Abraham does the only rational thing—he takes no responsibility. God’s promises were always made to Abraham. For a man who heard the promises with his own ears he seems to have very little faith. He didn’t take a stand of faith. He took the path of least resistance and it cost him. Sarah blames him for being in such a situation and God quietly rebukes him for his lack of faith.

Where is Abraham’s faith? Where is his leadership? We are allowed to see Abraham’s weakness again. Trusting in God is a tall order. Instead of providing leadership and assurance to trust God to fulfill his promises in his time we have him giving all that up and turning everything over to Sarah. This is not chauvinistic. This is the matter of faith. Abraham displays a lack of faith. No clear direction and focus. 10 years is a long time to wait. He has let the earthly man take over the spiritual side. Sarah’s plan seems good to him, but the path of least resistance doesn’t demonstrate faith. As Ronald Wallace says, “sometimes God has to allow us to prove ourselves fools through our own mistakes.” Abraham substitutes that which is second best hoping that it will produce the real thing. Such a decision results in a real schism in his home.

Sarah does what seems right to her. She mistreats Hagar. While we are not told specifically what form this mistreatment takes, we do know that it was severe. Hagar flees from Abraham’s camp. She is headed back home. This Egyptian will escape Hebrew oppression and return to the promised land. But the story doesn’t end here. Abraham and Sarah have clearly demonstrated their lack of faith. They have taken matters into their own hands and as a result the man of faith has shown himself to be faithless. How long are you supposed to wait for God to fulfill his promises? How long would you wait?

God Sees

Hagar is out in the desert. She doesn’t know what could have gone wrong. She was just a pawn in Abraham’s camp. A slave to Sarah. Slept with a man she had little regard for. Knowing that to stay might result in her losing her baby. And it is hers. It is abundantly clear that Abraham as the father doesn’t intend to take care of this child. Sarah for whom Hagar was the surrogate doesn’t want the child. It is her child. How alone and isolated Hagar must feel. Left to fend for herself in the wilderness. No support. She will return to Egypt with not much hope of anything better than being a slave to someone else.

But the one person who has been forgotten has seen all that has happened. The one person who was never consulted; the one person who has been ignored is still very much aware of Hagar’s stop at a lonely deserted well in the middle of the desert. God appears to Hagar on the road to Shur. And although Hagar is afraid, alone, forgotten, and abused, God hasn’t left her. In fact, God gives to Hagar some pretty unbelievable promises. She is to go back to Sarah and have her baby there. Like Abraham her descendants will be too numerous to count. She will name the boy Ishmael which means “God hears.” He will be a vigorous man living in constant conflict.

Hagar hears these words and is so overwhelmed that she gives God the name, El Roi, which means “God sees.” By naming God, Hagar is making a pronouncement of faith and dependence. She is committing her life to this God who has seen her affliction and answered her. What the Bible doesn’t explicitly tell us and yet must be true is that Hagar goes back to Sarah. Verse 15 tells us that Abraham named the boy Ishmael. We might assume that he just thought that name up. But more than likely Abraham knows the name because of Hagar’s story.

Imagine the scene, Hagar comes walking back into camp several days after leaving. When she arrives, Sarah is still angry, but this time she comes with a story of faith in El Roi. Abraham listens to the story and is convinced that his God has appeared to Hagar. Two things happen. First, Abraham is assured. Second, Abraham is shamed. He had forgotten God and he acted in ways that demonstrated that he had forgotten God. It is the slave girl who reminds him of what he thought was the truth. According to 21:11, Ishmael is accepted as his son. It took a slave girl to help Abraham regain his focus.

So What?

So what are we to learn from this? First, when we want something in the worst way, our thinking and actions can be messed up. Sometimes we get fixated on a goal. The goal may or may not be good for us, but eventually it isn’t the goal which matters it is the having something. This is what Sarah and Abraham did. They wanted a son. A good thing. But they got so caught up in having the son that they quit thinking right. They quit trusting God and took matters into their own hands. Such messed up thinking resulted in disappointment, confusion, shame, and heartache. All of which could have been avoided if they had maintained their focus.

Sometimes we are just like that. We get so concerned about thinking what we are supposed to have that we lose focus. Our thinking gets skewed. We begin to tell ourselves that we deserve and should have the goal. But all the while it suddenly becomes a matter of what we want and not what God wants. God wanted Sarah to have a child. She wanted a child in the worst possible way. She paid a terrible price to have the child. But the child was to be a result of God’s initiative. Sarah forgot that and traded her faith in God for what she could do.

Second, this story teaches us something about patience. It is hard to know sometimes when we are supposed to wait and when we are supposed to get up and act. Looking back on Abraham and Sarah it becomes easy for us to say they should have waited; after all, God had promised them a child. But what about God’s promises to us? Are we any different in learning to wait?

God promises to never leave us or forsake us; therefore, we are to be content with what we have (Hebrews 13:5). That is easy to read and say but difficult to act upon. Faith learns to wait on God. God promises that he sees all things and will deal with injustices; therefore, we are to leave it to God to deal with (Romans 12:19). That is easy to read and say but difficult to act upon. Faith learns to wait on God. When we jump ahead of God the result will be disastrous.

The final lesson is that God is sovereign. The whole story of Abraham is a story of learning that very lesson. For most of us we have to spend a lifetime learning that lesson as well. In this case, God blessed Hagar in spite of Abraham’s foolishness and lack of faith. Such is not always the case. But notice that the blessing did not come away from the faithless Abraham and the vicious Sarah. Hagar’s blessing came back in the midst of trial and suffering. Perhaps that is the hardest lesson of all. Faith learns to trust God who sees all and deals with all things in his time.

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