Word of Salvation – Vol.14 No.10 – March 1968
On The Doorstep Of The Church
Sermon by Rev. A.l. De Graaf, (B.D.) on Genesis 16.
Scripture Reading: Heb. 6:1-12 & Genesis 16.
Suggested Hymns: Psalter Hymnal: 222 (1,2,4,6); 94 (1,2); 387; 448; 493.
Brothers and sisters in Jesus Christ,
Hardly a day passes by, that in the newspaper or on radio and TV we do not hear of troubles in the Arab world.
Either it’s Egypt, or Jordan, or Lebanon, or Syria, where Arabs live; resenting Israel, and seeking to destroy it!
Age-old hatred that began in Abram’s tent. Hatred that began when Abram the saint sinned against Hagar, who lived on the doorstep of the Church.
Ask any missionary: who are the hardest-won for the Gospel; which is the toughest religion to cope with? They will all agree that it’s the religion that is ALMOST Christian, the religion of the ONE God and the ONE Prophet – Islam, Mohammedanism, the religion of the Arabs – that rose up against the Church in the East, and now rules where once churches stood, in bitter enmity against the Saviour of Abram.
And we realize: that this bitterness goes right back to the time when Abram the saint sinned against Hagar, who lived on the doorstep of God’s Church…!
Not for nothing do the Jews call Genesis the book of BEGINNINGS.
Here is another “beginning”. And we do well to take heed! We note in the chapter of our text today a theme:
“ON THE DOORSTEP OF THE CHURCH”
and there we see two things:
1. Man-made mess … and
2. God-given grace.
You see, it looks as if this chapter deals with HAGAR. But -though she plays a large part in it, this really is not true. The chapter deals with what ABRAM AND SARAI did to Hagar, and then… what GOD did to her.
When we look at Abram and Sarai here in this chapter, we might rub our eyes and wonder: is that the same Abram who believed God – and it was accounted to him for righteousness?
Where is Abram’s faith now?
Sarai was getting older…but still she had no child. Abram must have loved his wife dearly, because it was quite common in those days to take another wife, especially when the first one proves barren or just gets older. But: it is SARAI who finally must suggest this to Abram. And Abram accepts the deal!
Just see these two old people together, scheming and planning to make the promise of God come true their own way…!
Just helping the Lord a little…! Just jumping a step ahead of the Lord, who had said: “Your offspring shall be like the stars of heaven…!”
They don’t pray about this…! They don’t ask GOD’s opinion…! God is left OUT of this picture altogether.
Maybe it was mainly Sarai’s fault. After all, SHE had not received the visions from God that Abram had.
But what is Abram DOING about it? Why doesn’t he protest, and say: Look, let’s pray about it, and let’s trust and wait on the LORD!?! For I KNOW in Whom I have believed, and that He is able to do what He has promised in His own good time. ..
Why does Abram ALLOW Sarai to drag him down instead of SHOVING HER UP? I suppose that’s a question with an edge for many Christian husbands and wives.
Oh sure, our faith isn’t the same, one day after another, but what happens more often:
THAT THE STRONG ONE LIFTS THE WEAK ONE UP….
…OR THAT THE WEAK ONE DRAGS THE STRONG ONE DOWN?
Isn’t that, too, something we PROMISED when we married each other: that we would NOT LET THE OTHER ONE STAY DOWN IN THE DOLDRUMS, if ever we could help it, by the grace of God?
Abram knew better. But he did NOT lift Sarai up to where he was. He came down to her level.
No… that faith of Abram was nothing good in itself, nothing to write home about. Neither was his prayer life.
And the trouble is, that others see this. Others get involved, too…! Oh, if only we could keep our unbelief, our sin, our denial of God, our lack of prayer inside our own heart.
But we can’t. Because we have people living on our doorstep! Abram and Sarai had Hagar living on their doorstep. She was Sarai’s maid – a slave girl from Egypt. Maybe she was part of the present Pharaoh had given Abram when he thought he could take Sarai because she was only Abram’s sister. Then it was Abram’s UNBELIEF that got her into their tents.
Now she is going to have that unbelief affect her life again. She is given to her boss, Abram. By Sarai.
And sure enough – it isn’t long before she is expecting a baby. And then the Bible tells us that she treats Sarai, her mistress, in a silly, proud sort of way, as if SHE could help it; as if this was HER doing, that she was now pregnant.
Sarai answers this by getting jealous and angry, and insisting that ABRAM do something about it… even BLAMING him… And Abram wriggles out of it. He says, “All right Sarai, she’s all yours..,” and then Sarai really lets her have it in the way only women can do to each other.
Well – isn’t it all disgusting? Or shall we not rather say: Isn’t this the normal way people behave? This was ALSO possible in Abram’s tent! This man-made mess… Hagar was wrong… of course she was. But she never had met the LORD, as Abram had.
And now these two BELIEVERS treat this human being like a piece of dirt…
first Sarai gives her to Abram,
then Abram takes her;
then Abram gives her back to Sarai,
and Sarai humiliates her like a slave again.
How unfair it all was! How carnal; how dishonouring to the LORD.
Here are a man and a woman who went away from their land for the sake of the LORD; who became strangers in a foreign land for the sake of the LORD; who were God’s children, in the midst of the world.
But what will he who gets inside, find out… in your church… in your home? What about the person living on the doorstep?
Hagar never saw much of the greatness and holiness of God in THESE dealings of Abram and Sarai with her. She saw what she might have seen ANYWHERE else… just normal, human, sinful behaviour, which was such that one day she couldn’t stand it any longer, and so, expecting and all, she flees away into the desert – home to Egypt if she can.
God is preparing the coming of His Son the Saviour into the world; here is a girl living almost on top of it… but these believers in their unbelief chase her away. In doing so, SHE, herself, WAS WRONG TOO. She is so browned off by the un-godly behaviour of these two weak believers that she chucks in their God as well, and chooses Egypt above the promises of Abram’s God. Oh, she had a reason for it… But it was stupid, nevertheless.
And so, there we are. What a mess. And that, so soon after the glorious appearance of God to Abram!
This might have happened in any old place. But – not in the Church…! Not in a Christian HOME… A CHRISTIAN HOME? That quarrelling… that jealousy… that scheming and worrying, as if there were no God?
You know, a few conclusions might come to hand here.
One: if we as Christians would like others to become Christians too, we might do well NOT TO INVITE THEM TO OUR HOMES. They might be frightened off! HUMANLY SPEAKING…!
Two: Even if you have a faith like Abram’s, that seems to be no guarantee against messing it all up in a hurry. HUMANLY SPEAKING.
Three: We cannot blame Hagar, so why blame the chap who turns his back on our church, too, when he is so awfully disappointed in the way you and I behave?
Yes… these conclusions are quite valid… HUMANLY SPEAKING. Do YOU too use that term a lot? HUMANLY SPEAKING?
In a way, I HATE it. For it really means: “Humanly speaking…. JUST LEAVING THE LORD OUT OF THE PICTURE”. Well then, you’ll get some picture!
But here in our text we find THAT THE LORD DIDN’T ALLOW HIMSELF TO BE LEFT OUT OF THE PICTURE… HE STEPPED RIGHT IN.
And He SHOWED HAGAR THAT THAT TENT OF ABRAM, THAT OLD TESTAMENT CHURCH, had MORE TO IT THAN THAT HUMAN SIDE…
and that you MAY NOT, just for human reasons -however valid – turn your back on it.
We may not just be speaking HUMANLY… GOD is speaking, too.
After having shown the man-made mess, THIS PART OF THE BIBLE, too, shows us again the wonder of the GOD-GIVEN GRACE.
Hear, first, that wonderful word: “THE ANGEL OF THE LORD FOUND HER.” We have sung it, too:
“‘Tis not that I have found, O Saviour true,
but I was found by Thee!”
The Angel of the Lord.. Not “an angel”, but THE Angel… the One Who spoke of Himself as if He were God Himself. Angel means “sent One”. The Sent One of the Lord. The Son Himself, preparing His own coming into the world. The One Who Himself was to say later that He came to seek what was lost… to seek… and to save!
Oh, what if this were NOT true! If JESUS had not HIS way of seeking those whom we send away by our stupid sins, there would be no Church to-day.
Hear how He does it, though! He asks Hagar: what are you doing here? And then He makes her say it herself.
And I think of that other meeting which the Son of God had – also on a hot day, and also by a well… a meeting with a woman who was thirsty, too… thirsting for LIVING water. HE made her see her real thirst. HE first made her see her sin.
The same with Hagar. She had to say it, that she was running away from Sarai. She had to CONFESS the state she was in.
And you know – when you’re saying what bothers you in other people… when you are saying that TO HIM – TO THE LORD, WHO KNOWS THE HEART… somehow it already becomes different. You cannot hold before Jesus the grudge you have against people.
“I am fleeing”, Hagar said, “from Sarai MY MISTRESS… MY MISTRESS”. No use pretending. I am fleeing from where I MAY NOT flee… I have sinned… I too, I first… I… I… against Thee…!
And then there is the obvious way: THE WAY BACK: “Go back to your mistress AND SUBMIT YOURSELF TO HER…!”
This is said by the LORD, who was later to say: “MY YOKE is easy…” – but it’s still a YOKE all right!
The Lord wants us to BEND our neck… to SUBMIT. Then – and only then, shall there be the blessing… when we esteem the other better than ourselves, and follow in His footsteps – not by any more “HUMANLY SPEAKING,” but by becoming small… yes, also under people, under people whom the Lord, has placed above us.. people like Sarai, who are sinful and wrong themselves.
FOR IT IS BETTER TO BE HUMBLE IN THE TENT OF THE COVENANT OF GOD WHERE HE IS DOING HIS MIGHTY WORK AND WHERE HE DWELLS IN WORD, BREAD AND WINE, than being proud and upright in the splendid isolation of our fleeing self. Where that love and submission to HIM and to one another is, THERE He has commanded the blessing.
That blessing is given to Hagar, too, IN SPITE OF HER REBELLION AND PRIDE… As Abram and Sarai also – in the next chapter – have the blessing pronounced again, in spite of their HUMAN scheming and sly planning.
Then God tells Hagar that she must call her son ISHMA-EL: which means the same as Shamu-el: GOD HEARS. Yes, God hears and answers prayer – and even when we can NOT pray… He still hears the cry of the lonely ones, who get caught in the maze of their own sin.
And He brings Hagar to see, to acknowledge in amazement and wonder: The LIVING GOD meets ME, TOO! I, who lived on the doorstep of the Church, may ALSO meet Him; He hears my voice, my cry and supplication.
And so she goes back… back to where GOD gives His blessing. Back… a warned woman. Back home… where there’s not just HUMAN SPEAKING AND SINNING, but the GRACE and MERCY of GOD.
Has Hagar learned her lesson? Has she told it to her boy, when he was born, and grew up in Abram’s tent? That is the last question we cannot refrain from asking.
We know that, later, Hagar again was to travel this desert road. Again she was to look for water in this thirsty land.
But then it would be a different story. Then, ABRAM will have SENT her away. Then ISHMAEL – as the disobedient and disrespectful, the one teasing the child of the Promise, the one who only knows of ‘HUMANLY SPEAKING’, of who is the biggest and who has the most rights… he shall be EXCLUDED from the tents where God’s grace will dwell.
Then they shall go out.. and the Arab nation shall be born… SO CLOSE to the Promise, and yet missing it. The Arab nation which was to give rise to the Mohammedan religion. SO CLOSE to the Christian faith in the One God, but the hardest against it.
And you and I are reminded of the stern words in Hebrews 6: There DOES come an end to the patience of God when we HAVE tasted the heavenly gifts, and when we HAVE known the powers of the age to come; and yet willingly and consciously CRUCIFY THE CHRIST AGAIN. Run away again, because we only WANT to know of “humanly speaking”, and make ourselves BLIND to the promises of God.
Oh to do that, after having SEEN THE LORD… after having been SO CLOSE to His grace!
Brothers and sisters, radio and newspapers resound today with the consequences of SUCH denial.
The beginnings were in Abram’s tent. And Abram and Sarai, too, had to bear THEIR share of this guilt, as we have seen. But THEY stayed with Him, who took our loads and carried them, all alone, onto that hill of Calvary.
In spite of what people may do, we have to heed the voice of God, and humble ourselves, rather than run away from where THIS LORD gives His blessing, and His life eternal.
“TODAY, IF YE HEAR HIS VOICE, HARDEN NOT YOUR HEART!”
Amen.