Latest / Topeka Bible Church Audio Archive / September 29, 2019 | The Names Of God - El Roi

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September 29, 2019 | The Names Of God - El Roi · Topeka Bible Church Audio Archive

0:00
SPEAKER_00: So uh we're in a series called Names of God this fall, and just before I preach, I'm gonna ask for um Craig and Chris, would you guys come on up, grab uh microphones?
0:12
SPEAKER_00: As you know, we're involved a lot in missions home and abroad.
0:17
SPEAKER_00: Support about 50 individual missionaries and organizations, but one of two organizations that we really seriously get involved with, uh the former is Trash Mountain Project.
0:29
SPEAKER_00: We had them up uh a couple weeks ago, is Haiti Lifeline.
0:32
SPEAKER_00: So we're really involved in Haiti, Dominican Republic, back-to-back countries, Honduras, and so forth.
0:38
SPEAKER_00: Would you guys talk to us?
0:39
SPEAKER_00: So that's a Haiti Lifeline shirt.
0:42
SPEAKER_00: What does that say?
0:43
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, what does this say?
0:45
SPEAKER_02: Haiti my love.
0:46
SPEAKER_00: Haiti my love.
0:48
SPEAKER_00: And yours just says Haiti Lifeline.
0:50
SPEAKER_00: So this is Chris, and this is Craig.
0:52
SPEAKER_00: He happens to be related to me.
0:53
SPEAKER_00: And uh so would you tell us uh so we've got some big stuff coming up this fall, Haiti Lifeline, and you guys are here especially to talk about the branch of Haiti Lifeline called One Body, am I right?
1:04
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, okay.
1:04
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, we're talking about the One Body Project.
1:06
SPEAKER_01: Uh I was trying to make you say it in Creole, but he just decided to dodge that one.
1:11
SPEAKER_01: Uh yeah, we're talking about the One Body Project.
1:13
SPEAKER_01: So if you're not familiar with the One Body Body Project, uh who we are or what we do, uh our purpose, our whole mission, our plan is just to try to build up the body of Christ in Haiti.
1:24
SPEAKER_01: And so uh the reason it's called the One Body Project is because we're one body, not just Christians in a local church being one body, but we're a body uh one body all over the world.
1:33
SPEAKER_01: And so we believe that we should partner with and encourage and love on our Christian uh brothers and sisters in Haiti, just as they encourage and teach us lessons as well.
1:42
SPEAKER_01: It's the one body project.
1:43
SPEAKER_01: We want to build up the church in Haiti.
1:45
SPEAKER_01: We sort of have two ways of doing that.
1:47
SPEAKER_01: First is just building them up spiritually by really uh building up their pastors.
1:52
SPEAKER_01: And so every uh October, November, right at the end of October, uh, we send a team down to do a pastor's conference.
1:58
SPEAKER_01: And there are usually 70, 75 uh churches represented while we're down there, 75 pastors or so, and they bring their worship leaders and deacons and elders and Sunday school teachers, and so we come together and uh and just teach them uh whatever topics that that we can.
2:15
SPEAKER_01: Uh everything from how to prepare a sermon or interpret the Bible to how to lead your church.
2:19
SPEAKER_01: Uh and so the pastors' conferences are a big part of this, and TBC actually is sending uh, I figured out, six of the seven participants in this year's pastors' conference.
2:29
SPEAKER_01: Four of the five men and both of the females uh who go down and help lead the conference are all coming from TBC.
2:36
SPEAKER_01: So you have a huge role in this, uh, whether you know it or not.
2:39
SPEAKER_01: Uh and so uh we we try to build up the body of Christ in Haiti by building into their pastors.
2:44
SPEAKER_01: Build into them and they can build into their people.
2:47
SPEAKER_01: Uh so one part of it is the spiritual side, the other dimension is really the physical dimension of trying to build up churches in Haiti quite literally.
2:55
SPEAKER_01: Build them.
2:56
SPEAKER_01: Uh so the One Body Project is trying to build 25 churches in Haiti in 10 years.
3:01
SPEAKER_01: Uh we're about four years into the project right now, and we've completed 10 churches.
3:06
SPEAKER_01: Um, and we have three more that are under process right now, and that we're gonna complete come this January.
3:12
SPEAKER_01: Uh so we're looking at 13 in the first five years.
3:15
SPEAKER_01: Uh thanks be to God that that's happening.
3:17
SPEAKER_01: Certainly not by our work, but by his.
3:19
SPEAKER_01: So we're building churches in Haiti.
3:21
SPEAKER_01: We actually had some pictures for you so you can really see.
3:23
SPEAKER_01: Uh on the left, you've got one of our church buildings.
3:26
SPEAKER_01: On the right, you have uh the old church building beforehand.
3:30
SPEAKER_01: Uh as you can see, there's a real need for buildings.
3:33
SPEAKER_01: We got a picture of the inside of one of the Haitian churches.
3:37
SPEAKER_01: This is the interior of their structure.
3:39
SPEAKER_01: Uh and this, to be frank, this is a pretty good building for for Haiti and for the churches that they have there.
3:45
SPEAKER_01: Um we we go sort of all over the country of Haitian sea, and this is one of the strongest structures that you'll see for churches.
3:53
SPEAKER_01: Sometimes they just meet out in the open air, sometimes it's just some branches over a couple sticks.
3:58
SPEAKER_01: Uh, and so we're trying to build them uh church buildings.
4:02
SPEAKER_01: These buildings play a huge role in their community life as well.
4:05
SPEAKER_01: Once they're built, they become the schools and they become fallout shelters, they become a place for people to gather uh just for community events and weddings and everything.
4:15
SPEAKER_01: So we're trying to build 25 churches in Haiti in 10 years, and UTBC have been a huge part of this as well.
4:20
SPEAKER_01: Um, but we're also realizing a physical need of just clean water.
4:25
SPEAKER_01: Been over to Haiti, uh they just don't have ready access, easy access to clean water.
4:30
SPEAKER_01: And so we're putting either a well or a cistern at every one of these churches.
4:34
SPEAKER_01: We actually have uh uh a picture there of uh one of the wells.
4:37
SPEAKER_01: Uh that there is uh Pastor Jim pumping a well at one of the churches that we built this last year.
4:43
SPEAKER_01: And so uh you can imagine the need for for clean water just for basic health concerns.
4:49
SPEAKER_01: Um and so we're we're really excited about putting those into every church we build.
4:53
SPEAKER_01: Uh and so, like I said, you as a TBC congregation have been a huge part, not just of the pastors' conferences, but also of building these churches and wells.
5:01
SPEAKER_01: Uh Chris?
5:03
SPEAKER_02: Yes, that's uh one of the things that we wanted to share with you is of the ten churches that have been built, TBC Christmas projects in the past have funded four of those ten churches.
5:15
SPEAKER_02: So I want you to recognize that uh God has worked through you to influence and affect and impact the kingdom.
5:23
SPEAKER_02: There are measurable outcomes from your generosity to Haiti Lifeline and going out to build churches.
5:31
SPEAKER_01: Right now, at this exact minute, that means there are four congregations in Haiti meeting and worshiping in buildings that have been provided by this congregation.
5:39
SPEAKER_02: Absolutely.
5:40
SPEAKER_02: And of the three Thank you, guys.
5:46
SPEAKER_02: Of the three that are under construction right now, the TBC 2019 Christmas Project is funding two of those, and we'll fund two more next year.
5:56
SPEAKER_02: So what you guys are doing is building temples in Haiti.
6:00
SPEAKER_02: And I use that term very specifically because uh that's the term the Haitians pastor are using.
6:06
SPEAKER_02: In August, I got a chance to go visit five of the churches that are already constructed.
6:11
SPEAKER_02: I got a chance to be in three different worship services, and at the third one, the pastor turned and he looked at me and he said, Thank you.
6:19
SPEAKER_02: You gave us a temple.
6:21
SPEAKER_02: He said, When the sun burns down, we don't burn up.
6:25
SPEAKER_02: Thank you.
6:26
SPEAKER_02: When the rain pours down, we don't get wet.
6:30
SPEAKER_02: Thank you for this temple.
6:32
SPEAKER_02: And so what I want you to know is God has worked through you, and your generosity has made a glorious impact on the kingdom in Haiti.
6:42
SPEAKER_02: So thank you very much for that.
6:43
SPEAKER_02: Another thing that I want to point out, and if we could have the yes, you see the Thrive uh slide up here.
6:49
SPEAKER_02: We're gonna host an evening with Haiti Lifeline in February the 20th of 2020.
6:55
SPEAKER_02: So 220, 2020.
6:57
SPEAKER_02: We're gonna have an evening, it's a banquet.
6:59
SPEAKER_02: Uh I'll be honest with you, it's a fundraising banquet.
7:02
SPEAKER_02: We want to continue the work we're doing, and uh love you to put this on your calendar and attend with us.
7:07
SPEAKER_02: You'll hear more about the orphanage that we support, you'll hear more about the One Body Project, and you'll also hear about the OASIS project.
7:18
SPEAKER_02: And OASIS, there are 20 young men and women who have aged out of the orphanage system.
7:23
SPEAKER_02: Haiti Lifeline is coming alongside them and assisting them with continued spiritual development, completing their education, getting a vocational skill.
7:33
SPEAKER_02: What we want to do is create self-sufficiency so that these young men and women move from poverty to a place of being self-sufficient.
7:42
SPEAKER_02: And our hope is that they will break the cycle of economic orphans, poverty orphans, that is so prevalent in Haiti and that they uh were victims of this cycle.
7:54
SPEAKER_02: We want to break that.
7:56
SPEAKER_02: So stop out in the Mullivane lobby.
7:59
SPEAKER_02: Craig will be out there answer questions if you want to sign up for a trip.
8:02
SPEAKER_02: We got a little sign-up shape.
8:03
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, if February is just too long for you to wait to get involved in a Haiti thing, we'll send you in January to go build a church.
8:10
SPEAKER_01: So I believe Chris Potter is in this room somewhere and he's been on these trips, he knows what it's like.
8:15
SPEAKER_01: Uh so yeah, feel free to ask us about those teams.
8:18
SPEAKER_01: We're sending a group, and if if you have any building skill or if you don't have building skill but you're willing to stand there and lift heavy objects, uh then hey, we'll send you down in January.
8:28
SPEAKER_01: You can rough it, you can hike up the side of a mountain with a pack on your back, sleep under the stars, and put a roof on one of these churches that TBC has funded.
8:36
SPEAKER_01: So we'd love to send you too.
8:37
SPEAKER_02: Absolutely.
8:38
SPEAKER_02: And if you're in the cab building, we've got a table set up just inside the Kid Check Center.
8:43
SPEAKER_02: Stop in, say hi, and get some more information, ask any questions you want.
8:47
SPEAKER_02: And again, thank you very much for what you have done.
8:50
SPEAKER_02: Thanks.
8:51
SPEAKER_00: Thanks, guys.
8:58
SPEAKER_00: Topeka Bible Church is 80 years old this year, and missions and evangelism has always been a deep part of our DNA.
9:06
SPEAKER_00: Uh uh in a world, in a Christian world, where giving 10% of a church's income to missions is considered high.
9:15
SPEAKER_00: Uh, when you add in our Christmas project, TBC gives nearly 30% of our income to missions, and we're really happy for that.
9:23
SPEAKER_00: So this morning, you bet.
9:26
SPEAKER_00: Thanks, Judy.
9:28
SPEAKER_00: So I'm excited about, let's see, do I have any slides here?
9:32
SPEAKER_00: Can you give me the names of God up here?
9:34
SPEAKER_00: Is there a possibility we can do that?
9:36
SPEAKER_00: Thank you.
9:37
SPEAKER_00: So our name this morning is L Roe.
9:40
SPEAKER_00: Say that with me.
9:41
SPEAKER_00: El Roe.
9:43
SPEAKER_00: So it's pronounced R-O-E-E.
9:45
SPEAKER_00: And L means God, short for Elohim, right?
9:50
SPEAKER_00: Roe means Ra'a means to see.
9:52
SPEAKER_00: So this is the God who sees.
9:54
SPEAKER_00: We're in a series in which three weeks ago in week number one, we studied the name Elohim.
10:00
SPEAKER_00: Say that with me.
10:02
SPEAKER_00: Elohim, which means creator, the strong, powerful creator.
10:05
SPEAKER_00: Week number two is Adonai.
10:07
SPEAKER_00: Say that with me.
10:08
SPEAKER_00: Adonai, our Lord and Master.
10:11
SPEAKER_00: We obey him, we worship Elohim, we obey Adonai, and we love Yahweh.
10:17
SPEAKER_00: That's the most important name of God used nearly 7,000 times in the Old Testament.
10:23
SPEAKER_00: It's his personal name, and it means the God who is here for us.
10:28
SPEAKER_00: This morning, we move to a compound name with L.
10:32
SPEAKER_00: A number of our names will be compound names.
10:35
SPEAKER_00: This word's used, this name is used one time.
10:39
SPEAKER_00: This story, if you'll open your Bible, comes to us from Genesis chapter 16.
10:45
SPEAKER_00: It's a story of a passive man and a wild woman.
10:48
SPEAKER_00: It's a story of surrogate motherhood.
10:51
SPEAKER_00: It's a story of marriage conflict.
10:55
SPEAKER_00: It's a story that gives rise to the whole Arab-Israeli conflict.
11:01
SPEAKER_00: It's this really interesting, controversial story.
11:05
SPEAKER_00: We'll walk through the entire chapter.
11:07
SPEAKER_00: Many of the verses will be on the screen ahead of you, in front of you here.
11:11
SPEAKER_00: But it's a story that ends with someone giving God a name, someone not even of the chosen people, giving God a name that God decides to take to himself.
11:23
SPEAKER_00: All right?
11:24
SPEAKER_00: That name is L.
11:25
SPEAKER_00: Roe, the God who sees me.
11:28
SPEAKER_00: So let's jump right in.
11:30
SPEAKER_00: We've got a lot to cover.
11:31
SPEAKER_00: Let me ask you this question.
11:33
SPEAKER_00: Have you ever felt as though people did not see you?
11:39
SPEAKER_00: Have you ever hesitated to walk into a room, let's say at a party or let's say your first day of high school, something like this?
11:47
SPEAKER_00: And you just knew that once you walked in, nobody would care whether you were there or not.
11:54
SPEAKER_00: They wouldn't really look at you.
11:56
SPEAKER_00: They wouldn't see you.
11:57
SPEAKER_00: They would, as people always seem to with you, they would look at you and glance away.
12:04
SPEAKER_00: I think this is especially a feeling that young people have.
12:10
SPEAKER_00: Children have it in elementary school.
12:13
SPEAKER_00: Junior highs have it in middle school.
12:16
SPEAKER_00: High schoolers have it in high school.
12:18
SPEAKER_00: Collegians have it when they go to college.
12:21
SPEAKER_00: You just have this feeling there are other people, they're popular, they'll get looked at, they'll be seen, but I won't really be seen.
12:29
SPEAKER_00: And if I weren't there, no one would miss me.
12:32
SPEAKER_00: And if I walk out of the room, no one will even remember that I was there.
12:38
SPEAKER_00: Because I'm invisible.
12:40
SPEAKER_00: Because I don't get seen.
12:42
SPEAKER_00: I think we've all felt that.
12:43
SPEAKER_00: Even some of you who won, you know, awards for beauty or brains or whatever in high school know what that feeling is.
12:51
SPEAKER_00: Am I right?
12:52
SPEAKER_00: Am I the only one who felt this in spades when I was a kid?
12:56
SPEAKER_00: Earl, you and me.
12:57
SPEAKER_00: It's just us two this morning.
12:58
SPEAKER_00: Okay, thank you.
13:00
SPEAKER_00: So let's move right to this text because this is a story about someone who feels that way, someone who feels as though nobody sees her.
13:10
SPEAKER_00: The story starts in Genesis chapter 16, verse 1, and it starts with the three main characters: Abram, Sarai, and Hagar.
13:19
SPEAKER_00: We'll call her Hagar because that's what we do in English, though in Hebrew it's Hagar.
13:25
SPEAKER_00: Notice that Abram is the shortened, his original name.
13:30
SPEAKER_00: He's going to get called Abraham.
13:32
SPEAKER_00: God's going to rename him because Abraham means father of a multitude, but since he doesn't even have one child yet, he's still got his original name here, of means father.
13:45
SPEAKER_00: Sarai.
13:46
SPEAKER_00: Her name will get changed to Sarah, S-A-R-A-H, but as of this point, she's still called Sarai.
13:52
SPEAKER_00: And you remember the story that they lived way east, 600 miles east in Babylonia, great city called Ur of the Chaldees.
14:01
SPEAKER_00: And then back in Genesis chapter 11 and 12, God called Abram and said, I want you by faith to move a long ways away to Canaan, where I'm going to make you a great nation.
14:12
SPEAKER_00: Genesis 12, 2, I'm going to give you a lot of descendants.
14:16
SPEAKER_00: Okay?
14:16
SPEAKER_00: And so it's a little surprising that we read in this first sentence Abram's wife Sarai had not born any children for him.
14:26
SPEAKER_00: So when they moved from Babylonia, she was 65 approximately.
14:30
SPEAKER_00: He was 75.
14:32
SPEAKER_00: By the way, uh vitality and menopause and everything, you know, was later in those days.
14:38
SPEAKER_00: So she was really believed she could have a child back then.
14:43
SPEAKER_00: But now they've come to the crisis point.
14:45
SPEAKER_00: It's 10 years later.
14:46
SPEAKER_00: She's 75, either in menopause or maybe through menopause.
14:51
SPEAKER_00: And he's 85, but still we know in those days they lived longer and so forth.
14:59
SPEAKER_00: But she hasn't born any children.
15:02
SPEAKER_00: And if you had just read Genesis 15, the previous chapter, God had reiterated his promise of millions of descendants, you know, in Genesis 15, 5 in a vision.
15:14
SPEAKER_00: God had come to Abram and said, I promise you you're going to have offspring.
15:19
SPEAKER_00: So many you can't even count them all.
15:21
SPEAKER_00: Okay?
15:22
SPEAKER_00: They're going to be the father and mother of Israel, and they are considered that today.
15:28
SPEAKER_00: But at this point, there's no children, and they're at a crisis point, and they're beginning to freak out.
15:33
SPEAKER_00: And the next word kind of is, you know, introduces a drama which is, shall we say, late night TV, okay?
15:43
SPEAKER_00: But she owned an Egyptian maidservant named Hagar.
15:47
SPEAKER_00: Hold it, hold it.
15:48
SPEAKER_00: Why did you throw that in there?
15:50
SPEAKER_00: We're not supposed to be looking at maidservants.
15:52
SPEAKER_00: We got a husband and a wife.
15:53
SPEAKER_00: We have a promise of God.
15:55
SPEAKER_00: Can you just wait a minute?
15:56
SPEAKER_00: Can you just relax a little bit?
15:58
SPEAKER_00: Can you wait for God to fulfill his promise?
16:01
SPEAKER_00: What's this?
16:01
SPEAKER_00: But she owned an Egyptian maidservant named Hagar.
16:05
SPEAKER_00: And we get this feeling, something's going to happen which we would rather not happen, which is going to cause all kinds of problems.
16:13
SPEAKER_00: You ask, where did this Egyptian maidservant come from?
16:17
SPEAKER_00: Chapter 12, you remember, is when Abram and Sarah, because of famine, went down into Egypt and they hunkered down in the capital city, and Pharaoh saw his beautiful wife and asked, Is this your wife or someone else?
16:32
SPEAKER_00: And Abram thought, Pharaoh's gonna kill me and steal my wife.
16:36
SPEAKER_00: So he said, She's my sister, which she was in a way, in a manner of speaking, like a second cousin type sister.
16:44
SPEAKER_00: So Pharaoh goes, Yeah.
16:46
SPEAKER_00: And so he takes her into his palace to become part of his harem.
16:50
SPEAKER_00: And then Abram's going to sleep at night, going, Oh no, what's happening?
16:54
SPEAKER_00: And fortunately, God kept Pharaoh away from Sarah.
16:58
SPEAKER_00: But Pharaoh was so thrilled, he gave Abram all sorts of gifts, including male and female servants.
17:04
SPEAKER_00: I'm expecting that in though in that time, in those nine months or whatever, of a sort of a lack of radical faith on Abram's part.
17:13
SPEAKER_00: This is where he got uh Hagar, Hagar, this female maidservant.
17:19
SPEAKER_00: And notice she's not a slave.
17:22
SPEAKER_00: The word used here is like uh, you know how um is it uh Cora Crawley?
17:29
SPEAKER_00: Is that her name in Downton Abbey, Lord Grantham's wife?
17:33
SPEAKER_00: So, you know, she has a special uh executive servant who dresses her and so forth.
17:39
SPEAKER_00: That's what Hagar is.
17:41
SPEAKER_00: She's not a slave, she's not stamped with a slave mark on her ear or anything.
17:46
SPEAKER_00: She's an official maidservant who's a maidservant for uh Lady Abraham, okay, for the lady of the house.
17:55
SPEAKER_00: All right.
17:56
SPEAKER_00: And by the way, uh they have uh a setup, Abram and Sarai, which is like uh Downton Abbey, even better because we know Abraham had 318 servants of his own.
18:09
SPEAKER_00: So it's a huge operation.
18:11
SPEAKER_00: They're the most powerful people in the country.
18:14
SPEAKER_00: Now, in verse 2, we see a lack of radical faith on Sarai's part.
18:18
SPEAKER_00: She's thinking, I'm 75, and you know what?
18:21
SPEAKER_00: God didn't actually specify the baby had to come through moah.
18:27
SPEAKER_00: So she says to Abram, and don't allow anybody to tell you differently, there are people that invent this whole way this went, which is not biblical.
18:36
SPEAKER_00: Sarah herself takes the initiative, and she says to Abram, Since Yahweh, or your text says the Lord, has prevented me from bearing children, go to my slave, perhaps through her, I can build a family.
18:50
SPEAKER_00: That's a metaphor for the rather explicit thing she says there.
18:53
SPEAKER_00: And Abram agreed to what Sarai said.
18:57
SPEAKER_00: So what's Sarah's issue here?
19:00
SPEAKER_00: Why isn't she showing the kind of radical faith that she should be showing?
19:06
SPEAKER_00: Well, she's got good theology.
19:08
SPEAKER_00: Oftentimes you see people, don't you, who are not living in faith, but the theology is just impeccable.
19:14
SPEAKER_00: I mean, God's sovereign and he's in control and so forth, but if he really knew my particular situation, he would allow me to sort of slightly disobey his word and go my own way and do what I want.
19:29
SPEAKER_00: So she's a little scared that Abram might take another wife, which he has the right to do.
19:35
SPEAKER_00: God's not stated anything against polygamy at this point, and being the most powerful man in the country, he can take wives and concubines.
19:43
SPEAKER_00: But if he takes a wife, another wife, and has a baby through that wife, then she will not be the mother of the descendants.
19:51
SPEAKER_00: But there is another option in that day, and that is sort of a secondary wife to her.
19:58
SPEAKER_00: If she gives her maidservant or a slave of her own to her husband, and he goes in to her and has a baby through her, that's still legally her child.
20:12
SPEAKER_00: In fact, in the ancient Near East, we don't know about this in Israel, but oftentimes the lady of the house would slide underneath the birthing woman, her maidservant, so that the baby would be born right on her belly, and that would just show to everyone that this was her child.
20:31
SPEAKER_00: Okay, so that's legal.
20:33
SPEAKER_00: There was nothing wrong with that legally.
20:36
SPEAKER_00: It was expected, but you and I know, since it keeps calling Sarai his wife, that that's not radical faith, and that's not what God wants.
20:46
SPEAKER_00: And so she's saying, okay, go to my slave.
20:50
SPEAKER_00: Perhaps through her I can build a family.
20:53
SPEAKER_00: And now we have Abram agreeing to what Sarai said.
20:57
SPEAKER_00: And I hope your response to that is, really?
21:01
SPEAKER_00: I mean, you're this amazing businessman.
21:04
SPEAKER_00: You solve problems every day in your huge plantations, and you are acting so passive at home.
21:13
SPEAKER_00: But the moment you say that, you know, you know, some of the most incredibly gifted businessmen that I know are such wimps at home, aren't they?
21:24
SPEAKER_00: They don't use their head, they don't use the same principles of conflict resolution, which they employ at work to solve problems.
21:31
SPEAKER_00: When they get home, it's just like backup, backup, backup, whatever you say, honey, and as a result, you have an inferior organization at home.
21:40
SPEAKER_00: And that's what he does.
21:41
SPEAKER_00: He just simply agrees to what she says instead of saying, Well, hold it, honey.
21:46
SPEAKER_00: God made us that promise.
21:48
SPEAKER_00: Remember when he came, made the promise to both of us.
21:52
SPEAKER_00: I don't think he meant your servant should be involved, or he would have said so.
21:58
SPEAKER_00: God wants from us.
22:00
SPEAKER_00: Radical faith that believes in him and a radical obedience which will wait on him to fulfill his promise.
22:07
SPEAKER_00: But that doesn't happen.
22:08
SPEAKER_00: And so as a result, Abram's wife Sarai took Hagar.
22:13
SPEAKER_00: Notice that word, Lachak, it's like Hagar now has no rights, like she is just a piece of property, her Egyptian maidservant, and gave her, gave her as if she's property to her husband Avram as a wife for him.
22:30
SPEAKER_00: This happened after Avram had lived in the land of Canaan ten years.
22:34
SPEAKER_00: Okay, so this is what's going on, and we don't like the way this sounds, because yes, Sarai's taking the initiative.
22:44
SPEAKER_00: Okay, so she's willing.
22:46
SPEAKER_00: This is what she wants.
22:48
SPEAKER_00: This will leave her in charge of the descendants.
22:50
SPEAKER_00: But we hate the fact that we know this isn't God's program, but we're not surprised at all to read he slept with Hagar and she became pregnant.
23:00
SPEAKER_00: Of course she did.
23:02
SPEAKER_00: Naturally, because this thing has got to turn into a mess, right?
23:06
SPEAKER_00: She immediately becomes pregnant.
23:10
SPEAKER_00: It's interesting as you listen to sermons on this.
23:12
SPEAKER_00: I'm a little uncomfortable because preachers and so forth are always conjecturing how much this old guy, Avram, must have enjoyed his wife, you know, shoving a girl in front of him and Hagar and so forth.
23:25
SPEAKER_00: But this is all conjecture, and these are people who are forgetting that Abram could have had as many wives and as many girls as he wanted anytime he wanted because of his power, because of his position, and because polygamy had not been declared a sin yet by God.
23:43
SPEAKER_00: So we can ask Abram how he felt when we get to heaven, you know, when his wife pushed Hagar there.
23:51
SPEAKER_00: We can go talk to Hagar, Hagar, and say, now, how did you feel when this happened?
23:56
SPEAKER_00: But it's all just conjecture until then.
23:58
SPEAKER_00: All right, so let's stick with the story as the Bible tells it.
24:02
SPEAKER_00: Alice Bach, who's a professor at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland and author of the book Women, Seduction and Betrayal in Biblical Narrative, writes this: what Abraham did was completely legal.
24:16
SPEAKER_00: If your wife cannot have children, you can have children by your wife's slaves, and the child becomes yours.
24:22
SPEAKER_00: Taking secondary wives was a common practice in ancient Israel.
24:26
SPEAKER_00: And of course, we know that because just a few years later, remember when Rachel and Leah both married to Jacob?
24:34
SPEAKER_00: And Jacob already had sons, but Rachel and Leah gave Jacob their slaves, right?
24:40
SPEAKER_00: Or their, I'm sorry, their maidservants, so that Jacob would have more children through them.
24:46
SPEAKER_00: Okay, and nothing was said about how that was evil or bad or whatever.
24:50
SPEAKER_00: And this was not Jacob's idea at all.
24:53
SPEAKER_00: This was for the sake of the women, so that they would have more children associated with them.
25:00
SPEAKER_00: Okay?
25:01
SPEAKER_00: So uh, but we know something is really wrong with this because of the wording used.
25:07
SPEAKER_00: If you've read your Bible carefully and you remember the story at this point of the Garden of Eden, you'll recognize a lot of the words used.
25:17
SPEAKER_00: Eve spoke to her husband Adam about the tree in the garden.
25:21
SPEAKER_00: Sarah spoke to her husband Abram.
25:24
SPEAKER_00: Adam listened to the voice of his wife.
25:26
SPEAKER_00: Abram listened to the voice of his wife.
25:29
SPEAKER_00: Eve took the fruit to Adam.
25:32
SPEAKER_00: Sarah took her slave to Abram.
25:35
SPEAKER_00: Eve gave the fruit to her husband.
25:37
SPEAKER_00: Sarah gave Hagar to her husband.
25:39
SPEAKER_00: We are meant to remember the story in the Garden of Eden and to recognize that this is not copacetic, this is not kosher, this is not what God wants, that nothing good can come of what's happening.
25:51
SPEAKER_00: All right?
25:51
SPEAKER_00: So he slept with Hagar, we read, and she became pregnant.
25:54
SPEAKER_00: And when she saw that she was pregnant, in other words, she's missed a few periods, her mistress became contemptible to her.
26:01
SPEAKER_00: This is the point in the story where she, that is Hagar, makes a critical error, where she makes a critical mistake.
26:14
SPEAKER_00: This was common, we know in the ancient Near East, that when this happened, when a wife would give her her maidservant to her husband, if the maidservant got pregnant when the wife couldn't, I mean, we have laws on the code of Amurabi and so forth that actually address this: that the maidservant must not be arrogant, must not try to displace her mistress, and so forth.
26:39
SPEAKER_00: And in fact, even in the book of Proverbs, we read in Proverbs chapter 30 three things make the earthquake, four things it can't bear.
26:47
SPEAKER_00: Four.
26:48
SPEAKER_00: One, a slave who becomes king, two, a fool gorged with food, three, a married woman who's unloved, and here we come, four, and a slave girl who displaces her mistress.
27:00
SPEAKER_00: And that's what's happening here, because in a day when the most important thing for a wife is that she have children, so the family can keep the property under her husband's name and not have to hand it over to a stranger, then if that mistress can't have children, and if her servant can have children, you can see how there's going to be envy and there's going to be arrogance, and that's what happens here.
27:30
SPEAKER_00: There's arrogance on the part of Hagar.
27:33
SPEAKER_00: Okay?
27:34
SPEAKER_00: So then Sarai says to Abram Avram, you are responsible for my suffering.
27:40
SPEAKER_00: So what happens is that as you can imagine, Sarah is just getting angrier and angrier, but she's stuck.
27:49
SPEAKER_00: She cannot kick her maidservant away because she sees the look in her husband's face as he sees this swelling belly and thinks, I'm gonna finally have a child.
28:00
SPEAKER_00: I'm gonna have a hopefully a son, and and this is gonna be great.
28:05
SPEAKER_00: And by the way, legally, in the code of armorabi, she can't send her away.
28:10
SPEAKER_00: She can demote her from being a maidservant down to a slave, stamp her forehead and so forth.
28:16
SPEAKER_00: She can treat her any way she wants, but she can't send her away.
28:20
SPEAKER_00: So Sarah is Sarah is stuck, right?
28:24
SPEAKER_00: And so she finally explodes, not able to explode against her servant, so she explodes at her husband in the same way this mama lion's exploding at her passive male consort.
28:37
SPEAKER_00: And she says, You are responsible for my suffering.
28:40
SPEAKER_00: This is my passive men wild women.
28:43
SPEAKER_00: I put my slave in your arms, and when she saw that she was pregnant, I became contemptible to her.
28:51
SPEAKER_00: Notice that God has a lot of sympathy for Sarah here.
28:56
SPEAKER_00: You can tell because the same words are repeated by the narrator as are repeated by Sarah.
29:01
SPEAKER_00: So right now, for just a moment, Abram's wife is thought of by heaven as being oppressed and being unfairly treated.
29:12
SPEAKER_00: May Yahweh, may the Lord judge between, she doesn't say between me and her, she says between me and you, it's you that are at fault.
29:20
SPEAKER_00: And if you know, uh, you know, and of course Abram's gonna go, no, it's not me, it's not me.
29:26
SPEAKER_00: Passive, passive, passive.
29:27
SPEAKER_00: But the truth is he has all the power in this situation.
29:31
SPEAKER_00: He could work to reconcile this, he could lay down laws which would make this thing work, but notice what he does.
29:39
SPEAKER_00: He's he's like these businessmen today who rather than when they go home, become so passive if there's any conflict, they backpedal as fast as they can, and Ivan's going, you know, into the den, and he's he's gonna turn on his hometown, you know, Hebron uh hamsters fighting the beersheba buckaroos, and you know, he just wants to watch TV and says, here, your slave is in your hands.
30:04
SPEAKER_00: Do whatever you want with her.
30:06
SPEAKER_00: It's a little embarrassing, isn't it?
30:08
SPEAKER_00: For a man who's as great and brilliant as Abram is.
30:11
SPEAKER_00: So then Sarai mistreated her so much that she ran away from her.
30:17
SPEAKER_00: And all of a sudden, the sympathy of heaven switches from Sarai to Hagar, who is now getting abused and is now getting mistreated, probably physically.
30:26
SPEAKER_00: And then so Hagar runs away, and she runs, we know, southwest toward her homeland, which is Egypt.
30:36
SPEAKER_00: And you and I know this is not good.
30:38
SPEAKER_00: Her deliverance does not reside in her homeland of Egypt, it resides in returning to her mistress.
30:44
SPEAKER_00: But we find that the angel of Yahweh found her by a spring in the wilderness, the spring on the way to Shur.
30:51
SPEAKER_00: This one word here is so modern because this word means wall, you know, and I know you're gonna think of the wall, because this happened to be a wall that the Egyptians built.
31:03
SPEAKER_00: There was a, we found it now, archaeologists, the last 15 years, in the desert, close to Suez, and all up the coast, it was a wall to keep illegal aliens out of Egypt.
31:13
SPEAKER_00: Okay?
31:13
SPEAKER_00: And so she's heading back home, and this is where she camps at a spring before she crosses back over into Egypt by this uh, it's a low wall that they found, but there were forts all along to keep uh illegal aliens uh out of Egypt from from because Egypt was the America of those days, very wealthy.
31:34
SPEAKER_00: So the angel of Yahweh finds her.
31:36
SPEAKER_00: Now, the angel in the Old Testament is any sort of any heavenly creature who serves in the heavenly court and is sent down as uh to do something on earth.
31:45
SPEAKER_00: And sometimes these angels, especially when the phrase is the angel of the Lord, sometimes they're divine.
31:52
SPEAKER_00: In fact, I can't don't think you can find any place in the Old Testament where the angel of the Lord isn't either definitely the second person of the Trinity, God the Son, the future the Lord Jesus Christ, or whether it's not, that's not a possibility.
32:08
SPEAKER_00: And in this case, uh the angel of the Lord is later called Yahweh, and so definitely can't be God the Father, must be what we call the pre-incarnate Christ.
32:20
SPEAKER_00: It's very interesting that there is a stained glass window in an Eastern Orthodox church that dates from uh well over a thousand years ago that is uh shows the angel of the Lord and then has in Greek the letters Jesus here, Jesus Christ.
32:36
SPEAKER_00: And that seems to be what we have here, which is really interesting that the pre-incarnate, that it means before the incarnation, when he became a baby in Bethlehem, this is Jesus Christ visiting the same world where he will later live as a human being, a perfect life, and he'll die on the cross for us.
32:58
SPEAKER_00: But now he is visiting an oppressed and abused woman, he has seen her, heaven has seen her, and he is coming down to give her comfort.
33:06
SPEAKER_00: The angel of Yahweh finds her by a spring in the wilderness, and he said, Hagar, maidservant of Sarah, where have you come from and where are you going?
33:17
SPEAKER_00: As if he didn't know.
33:19
SPEAKER_00: It reminds you of Jesus with the woman at the well, where he says, Why are you here and who is your husband and so forth?
33:28
SPEAKER_00: God loves to ask questions that he knows the answer to, because it provokes us to think, right?
33:36
SPEAKER_00: And she replies humbly and honestly, I'm running away from my mistress, Sarai.
33:44
SPEAKER_00: And the angel of the Lord said to her, Go back to your mistress and submit to her authority.
33:50
SPEAKER_00: And immediately we say, Wow, if I did that, if I told someone who was abused to go back home and submit to the abuser, I mean I would lose my job and I should.
34:03
SPEAKER_00: This is a horrible thing for the angel of the Lord to do.
34:06
SPEAKER_00: Except that then we see that the angel of the Lord is omnipotent and says, I will greatly multiply your offspring, and they will be too many to count.
34:15
SPEAKER_00: In other words, I can promise you that baby will be born.
34:19
SPEAKER_00: By the way, what we know from the Bible is that for the next 14 years, God had her back, and there were no serious problems between her and her mistress.
34:29
SPEAKER_00: She apparently treated Sarai finally with respect, so that Lady Crawley had no reason to kick her out of the home anymore.
34:37
SPEAKER_00: They got along.
34:38
SPEAKER_00: Now in chapter 21, her son Ishmael, when he became 13, started mistreating Isaac, and then they got kicked out for keeps.
34:47
SPEAKER_00: But that's another story.
34:49
SPEAKER_00: Here we have the angel of the Lord making a promise.
34:52
SPEAKER_00: I've got your back.
34:53
SPEAKER_00: The deliverance for you does not come in going back to your old homeland of Egypt.
34:59
SPEAKER_00: You need to go back.
35:00
SPEAKER_00: And then he makes her this incredible promise you've conceived, and you will have a son.
35:06
SPEAKER_00: You will name him Ishmael.
35:08
SPEAKER_00: Shema means to hear.
35:10
SPEAKER_00: God hears, for Yahweh has heard your cry of affliction.
35:16
SPEAKER_00: And the interesting thing is when you consider that she's not Jewish, that she's not part of the chosen people, this is a hint that God sees the cries of oppressed people and abused people all over the world.
35:30
SPEAKER_00: Whether or not they are what we would call Christians, whether or not they are chosen people, God is sympathetic to the cries of abused and needy and crying people.
35:44
SPEAKER_00: This man, and then he says, Then he says, your son will be like a wild donkey.
35:49
SPEAKER_00: Can we just stop and celebrate that phrase for a moment?
35:53
SPEAKER_00: I mean, can we just enjoy that?
35:55
SPEAKER_00: He'll be a wild donkey.
35:56
SPEAKER_00: Isn't that an awesome?
35:57
SPEAKER_00: Isn't that just an awesome thing for God to say?
36:00
SPEAKER_00: I don't know.
36:01
SPEAKER_00: I just love the Old Testament for stuff like this.
36:04
SPEAKER_00: But the wild donkey in the ancient, in the Near East, even today, is the Syrian onager, and it is extremely independent, and it doesn't let you drag it, you know, wherever you want it to go, and it loves its own freedom.
36:16
SPEAKER_00: And basically the point is: I'm taking away your freedom, Hagar, you go back home and submit.
36:23
SPEAKER_00: But I am telling you, your son is not going to let anybody take away his freedom.
36:27
SPEAKER_00: And that's going to result in hostility.
36:30
SPEAKER_00: His independent spirit is going to cause all kinds of problems for him.
36:34
SPEAKER_00: His hand will be against everyone, and everyone's hand will be against him, and he will settle near all his relatives.
36:41
SPEAKER_00: And this is, of course, a prediction that certainly does apply well to the father of the Arabs today, because Ishmael is, even by them, considered he is their forefather.
36:55
SPEAKER_00: They believe, by the way, that Ishmael was the one that Abraham sacrificed on the mountain, not Isaac.
37:01
SPEAKER_00: So Isaac, the Jewish people come from Isaac, Arabs come from Israel.
37:06
SPEAKER_00: This is why the U.S.
37:06
SPEAKER_00: News World Report ran an article, why scholars just can't talk, keep stop talking about Sarah and Hagar, subtitled Dueling Mothers and Surrogate Motherhood, okay, and the Arab-Israeli conflict, which is really what it's about.
37:21
SPEAKER_00: And what we have is this is the passage from which the whole Arab-Israeli conflict comes from, and the predictions made about Ishmael, as you can tell, still apply in many ways to the Arabs today.
37:34
SPEAKER_00: They would say, yeah, we don't get along with each other very well.
37:36
SPEAKER_00: If you look at the battles today between Saudi Arabia and Iran and so forth.
37:42
SPEAKER_00: So, except it's not fair to call Iran the Arabs.
37:45
SPEAKER_00: I take that back.
37:45
SPEAKER_00: Any uh, I know we have Iranians here, and those are the those are Persians.
37:49
SPEAKER_00: So forget that.
37:50
SPEAKER_00: And that's why that just shut off.
37:52
SPEAKER_00: It's penalizing me.
37:53
SPEAKER_00: So, U.S.
37:54
SPEAKER_00: News report.
37:55
SPEAKER_00: So she named Yahweh.
37:56
SPEAKER_00: Here we come, here's our verse.
37:58
SPEAKER_00: So she named the Lord who spoke to her.
38:01
SPEAKER_00: You are El Roe.
38:03
SPEAKER_00: For she said, In this place, have I actually seen the one who sees me?
38:11
SPEAKER_00: This is the only time in the Bible that a human being gives God a name.
38:16
SPEAKER_00: The only time.
38:18
SPEAKER_00: And who gives it to him?
38:21
SPEAKER_00: A woman.
38:22
SPEAKER_00: A woman who's not even Jewish, who's not even Israeli, not even one of the chosen people.
38:28
SPEAKER_00: And she gives him a name, which he tells you, wouldn't it be great to name somebody famous?
38:32
SPEAKER_00: I think I put in your bulletin.
38:34
SPEAKER_00: NASA's always running naming contests.
38:36
SPEAKER_00: Right now you can name a Mars rover.
38:38
SPEAKER_00: You don't get anything for it.
38:40
SPEAKER_00: Last year, to name the Tiger Cubs over at the zoo, 2,000 names.
38:44
SPEAKER_00: They solicited names, 2,000 names.
38:46
SPEAKER_00: In fact, one year ago, this month, Kentucky Fried Chicken ran a contest and said, we'll give$11,000 to, I forget what the birth, it's like the 100th birthday of Colonel Harlan Sanders, and said, if you have a baby on September the 11th and you name your baby Harlan, we'll give you$11,000 to the first person.
39:07
SPEAKER_00: And then all people started getting excited and said, we'll give$11,000 to the first person who does it.
39:11
SPEAKER_00: Well, it turned out that, yeah, a number of people had babies on that day and named their babies Harlan, and they ended up giving eleven thousand dollars to each one of them.
39:19
SPEAKER_00: I mean, this is you know, naming is such an interesting thing, but can you imagine giving God a name that God would accept as his own?
39:29
SPEAKER_00: And yet she does this, and God accepts that name.
39:33
SPEAKER_00: And we conclude that is why the well there is called Birlahi Roy Roe, the well of the living one who sees me.
39:42
SPEAKER_00: It's between, this is a significant sentence to say, hey, this really happened.
39:48
SPEAKER_00: The Bible is historical, right?
39:50
SPEAKER_00: It's between Kadesh and Bared.
39:53
SPEAKER_00: And we don't know where it is today.
39:54
SPEAKER_00: I mean, we know where this place is, but we don't have a sign of that well today.
39:58
SPEAKER_00: But that's just to remind you, these things really happened in the day that this was written.
40:03
SPEAKER_00: You could go check out that well, and that well was named after the God who sees.
40:08
SPEAKER_00: Wow.
40:08
SPEAKER_00: Four lessons from this, and I'll let you go.
40:11
SPEAKER_00: Right?
40:11
SPEAKER_00: Number one, God sees me even if no one else does.
40:16
SPEAKER_00: Right?
40:17
SPEAKER_00: No one else saw her, no one else cared for Hagar.
40:22
SPEAKER_00: You realize that he calls her by name.
40:26
SPEAKER_00: This is the only time, this is the only known instance in all the literature of the ancient Near East where the deity addresses a woman by name.
40:38
SPEAKER_00: No one else saw her, because she's a woman, she's a servant, she's Egyptian in Israel, but God sees her.
40:47
SPEAKER_00: And even if no one else notices you, even if no one else pays attention to you, this text tells us God sees you.
40:58
SPEAKER_00: Even if no one else does.
40:59
SPEAKER_00: Number two, God sees me when I'm being oppressed.
41:02
SPEAKER_00: We had this prayer meeting tonight downstairs for people who are oppressed.
41:06
SPEAKER_00: There's people oppressed all over the world, but we have sex trafficked women.
41:09
SPEAKER_00: Can you imagine the pain and agony and oppression and abuse involved in that?
41:15
SPEAKER_00: God sees every one of those people.
41:18
SPEAKER_00: God sees me when I'm oppressed and abused.
41:20
SPEAKER_00: Number three, God sees me when I'm hiding from others.
41:24
SPEAKER_00: She's running away.
41:26
SPEAKER_00: She's hiding.
41:26
SPEAKER_00: And sometimes we hide from people, don't we?
41:30
SPEAKER_00: By the way, we have a very parallel story in the New Testament.
41:33
SPEAKER_00: Hagar at the well, woman at the well.
41:35
SPEAKER_00: Remember that story in John chapter 4?
41:37
SPEAKER_00: A woman who so hides from others that she goes to get water when no other women go to the well.
41:43
SPEAKER_00: Neither one of them was a Jew.
41:44
SPEAKER_00: You have an Egyptian and a Samaritan.
41:46
SPEAKER_00: Both of them are outcasts running away, both of them with marriage issues.
41:50
SPEAKER_00: Both of them meet God's son at the well.
41:53
SPEAKER_00: Both of them receive a promise which sends them away with joy.
41:59
SPEAKER_00: The God's son that the Samaritan woman meets, Yeshua, is living in the flesh.
42:07
SPEAKER_00: Hagar meets God's son, has a preincarnate angel, the pre-incarnate Christ.
42:14
SPEAKER_00: Yahweh, Yeshua.
42:18
SPEAKER_00: See us, even when we're hiding from others.
42:22
SPEAKER_00: And finally, when I see that God sees me, that's when everything changes.
42:28
SPEAKER_00: Did you notice this line in here?
42:30
SPEAKER_00: She said in this place, have I actually seen the one who sees me?
42:35
SPEAKER_00: One of the first songs we sang today was about, I want to see you, God.
42:39
SPEAKER_00: Lord Jesus Christ says in the Sermon on the Mount, those who long to see God will one day see his face.
42:47
SPEAKER_00: By faith, this is the question I'll leave you with.
42:50
SPEAKER_00: Do you see God?
42:53
SPEAKER_00: By faith, do you see Him seeing you in your moment of loneliness and oppression and invisibility?
43:03
SPEAKER_00: It's a wonderful, wonderful name of God.
43:07
SPEAKER_00: When I see that God sees me, everything changes.
43:11
SPEAKER_00: Listen, if you're an Abraham or a Sarah, or if you're in that role, you need to wait up.
43:17
SPEAKER_00: Wait on God to keep his promises.
43:19
SPEAKER_00: If you're a Hagar, if you're hiding, if you're invisible, then you need to look up.
43:25
SPEAKER_00: You need to see El Roe, the God who sees you.
43:30
SPEAKER_00: Let me pray for us before we close with a song.
43:33
SPEAKER_00: Heavenly Father, there's so many of us here who at times feel as though we're invisible, that other people don't see us, and if they do see us even for a moment, they don't care about us.
43:45
SPEAKER_00: They don't care to look at us for any longer than a glance.
43:50
SPEAKER_00: We're so grateful that one of your names is that you're a God who sees us, no matter whether you're we are your chosen people or not, no matter you know how well we're doing or how poorly.
44:02
SPEAKER_00: In fact, you pay special attention to us when we're oppressed and abused.
44:08
SPEAKER_00: Enable us today, by faith, to look up and see you, see your kind face seeing us in Jesus' name.
44:17
SPEAKER_00: Amen.