Rev Scott Sauls - 10 July 2011
Genesis 16:1-16
1 Now Sarai, Abram's wife, had borne him no children. But she had an Egyptian maidservant named Hagar; 2 so she said to Abram, "The LORD has kept me free from having children. Go, sleep with my maidservant; perhaps I can build a family through her."
Abram agreed to what Sarai said. 3 So after Abram had been living in Canaan ten years, Sarai his wife took her Egyptian maidservant Hagar and gave her to her husband to be his wife. 4 He slept with Hagar, and she conceived.
When she knew she was preganant, she began to despise her mistress. 5 Then Sarai said to Abram, "You are responsible for the wrong I am suffering, I put my servant in your arms, and now she knows she is pregnant, she despises me. May the LORD judge between you and me."
6 "Your servant is in your hands," Abram said. "Do with her whatever you think best." Then Sarai mistreated Hagar, so she fled from her.
7 The angel of the LORD found Hagar near a spring in the desert; it was the spring that is beside the road to Shur. 8 And he said, "Hagar, servant of Sarai, where have you come from, and where are you going?"
"I'm running away from my mistress Sarai," she answered.
9 Then the angel of the LORD told her, "Go back to your mistress and submit to her." 10 The angel added, "I will also increase your descendants that they will be too numerous to count."
11 The angel of the LORD also said to her"
"You are now with child
and you will have a son.
You shall name him Ishmael,
for the LORD has heard of your misery.
12 He will be a wild donkey of a man;
his hand will be against everyone
and everyone's hand against him,
and he will live in hostility
toward all his brothers."
13 She gave this name to the LORD who spoke to her: "You are the God who sees me," for she said, "I have now seen the One who sees me." 14 That is why the well was galled Beer Lahai Roi; it is still there, betweem Kadesh and Bered.
15 So Hagar bore Abram a son, and Abram gave the name Ishamel to the sone she had borne. 16 Abram was eighty-six years old when Hagar bore him Ishmael.
- Polygamy is recognized in the Bible as an existing condition, but not condoned as the stories of polygamy throughout the Bible always end badly.
- Sarai--to be barren is a stigma as children were women's wealth similar to how we experience the cultural pressures asked upon us to fit in with society.
- Hagar is treated as a disposable asset.
- God sent Hagar back to endure the misery with her mistress.
- We need to shift our identity to a redemptive status, instead of deriving it from cultural status.
- Earth has no sorrow that heaven can't heal.
