Latest / Reformed Thinking / The God Who Hears and Sees: Mercy, Providence, and Promise (Genesis 16:7–16)

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The God Who Hears and Sees: Mercy, Providence, and Promise (Genesis 16:7–16) · Reformed Thinking

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  Welcome to Reformed Thinking. This is the deep dive, the place
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  where we take the sources you share with us and well, we get
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  right to the heart of it. That's right, we distill the key
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  insights, the main arguments, and give you what you need to be
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  truly well informed on a topic. And today we're looking at a
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  specific battage of Scripture. A listener wanted us to really
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  break down what's happening in Genesis chapter 16.
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  Specifically, we're zeroing in on verses 7 through 16.
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  Now. This is the story of Hagar, the
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  Egyptian servant. It can seem like a bit of a Side
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  Story in the life of Abraham. But the sources suggest it's
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  anything but. They frame it as one of the most
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  vital windows we get into the character of God in the entire
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  Old Testament. It really is.
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  So our mission today is pretty clear.
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  We're not just doing a Plot Summary of Hagar running into
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  the desert. We need to get at this huge
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  theological tension. Friction.
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  Yeah, the friction between our human plans and God's total,
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  sometimes really uncomfortable sovereignty.
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  And listeners core question was why does God seem to constantly
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  step in and disrupt our most basic human instinct which is to
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  run away from pain? To flee from hardship, from
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  injustice. Yeah.
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  What? Why does God stop us when we're
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  running? It's a great question.
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  So before we get to the we have to start with the context, the
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  grim facts of what's happening in Abram and Sarai's tent.
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  We. Have to the divine encounter
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  only makes sense when you understand the depth of the
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  spiritual failure that drove Hagar out in the first place.
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  And it is a failure. Abram and Sarai, the household
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  of promise, they take this this faithless shortcut.
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  They use Hagar, a vulnerable servant who's also an outsider,
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  to try and secure the air God promised.
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  They think it's practical. But the Bible calls it something
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  else. It calls it flesh, human effort,
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  and the result is chaos, it's bitterness, oppression, and
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  Hagar's desperate flight into the desert.
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  OK, so let's unpack that foundational context.
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  To really get what's happening when God meets Hagar by the
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  well, we have to start with the sin that pushed her there.
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  Right. This isn't just, you know, a
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  personal disagreement. This is a massive spiritual
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  failure at the very heart of the covenant household.
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  The one place that was supposed to display God's blessing to the
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  nation's. Exactly, and you have to feel
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  the whiplash from the previous chapter.
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  The textual contrast is just breathtaking.
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  Remind us of that. Where were we in Genesis 15?
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  Well, Genesis 15 ends on this incredible high.
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  It's Abram believing the Lord, and that faith, that trust, is
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  counted to him as righteousness. He's looking at the stars,
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  trusting an impossible promise. It's a peak moment of faith,
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  focused completely on God's own pledge to make it happen.
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  And then you turn the page to chapter 16.
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  And it all falls apart. You see just how quickly that
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  high trust can be thrown away for what looks like, you know,
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  just common sense. The sources label this the sin
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  of pragmatism, and it's it's really subtle, isn't?
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  It it is because it starts with Sarai getting impatient.
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  They've been waiting. God hasn't acted on their
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  timeline, so they focus on the goal of the air, but the
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  abandoned the method God prescribed.
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  Which was faith. Which was faith, and Sarai kicks
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  it off. She even uses religious language
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  to justify it. She says the Lord has prevented
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  me from bearing children. Which is technically true.
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  She's acknowledging God's Providence.
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  She is, but she uses that truth to justify her work around.
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  It's a deeply ironic statement. She sees God's hand in her
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  bareness, but then her next move is to try and fix it with a
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  human arrangement. To manage the promise herself
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  instead of waiting to receive it as a gift.
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  That's the definition of it. It's the classic temptation for
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  believers, isn't it? Trying to manufacture holy
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  results through our own restless, impatient means.
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  A total lack of rest in God's timing and his sovereignty.
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  Right, and while using a handmaid to produce an heir was
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  a known cultural custom. You see it in other ancient
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  legal codes, that kind of thing. You do, but the sources are
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  clear that this was a rejection of the unique nature of the
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  Abrahamic covenant. That covenant was based on a
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  miracle. The birth had to come from Sarai
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  herself. That was the point.
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  That was the whole point. So by using Hagar, what they're
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  really saying is God's promise is good, but his methods are a
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  bit slow, a bit insufficient. We need to help him out.
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  They're relying on human strength, on the flesh, to do
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  what only God's power could do. Every single time we try to
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  force God's will through our own cleverness, we're walking right
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  down that same path. And Abraham's role in this is
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  it's just so disappointing after what we saw in chapter 15.
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  He goes from being a prophet to just a passive man.
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  The text says he listens to the voice of Sarai.
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  That phrase should set off alarm bells for anyone who knows their
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  Bible. It's an echo of the garden,
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  right? A direct echo.
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  Adam listened to Eve here. Abram the covenant leader just
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  completely abdicates his responsibility.
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  He doesn't ask God about it. He doesn't stand on the promise
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  he just received. He just passively agrees to a
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  plan that puts the whole covenant at risk.
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  His failure isn't that he was actively scheming, it's his
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  silence. His passivity is a morally
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  charged failure. He allows Hagar, a human being,
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  to be treated like an object. Reproductive tool.
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  Yes, and her well-being is sacrifice for what they see as
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  the greater good. That's what happens when God's
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  promise becomes a project managed by people.
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  The vulnerable always become collateral damage.
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  Always, the Covenant was meant to bring justice and blessing.
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  Instead, Abrams failure allows this system of exploitation to
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  take root right in his own home. And the result is immediate
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  chaos. As soon as Hagar conceives, the
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  power dynamic shifts. It does.
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  She looks on Sarai with contempt.
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  She now has the one thing Sarai wants more than anything.
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  And Sarai's reaction is not gracious.
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  Not at all. She retaliates.
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  The text says. She deals harshly with Hagar.
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  There's no sugar coating the cruelty here.
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  It's a cycle. Then the exploitation leads to
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  contempt from the victim. Which is then met with
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  punishment from the oppressor. Sarai, who should be showing
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  mercy as someone who has received mercy, becomes
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  merciless. She uses her power to inflict
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  pain. This really drives home the
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  point that unbelief is never a private matter.
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  Never. The second faith is set aside.
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  The fallout spills everywhere. It creates these structures of
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  injustice, and the house that was meant to be a beacon becomes
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  a theater of cruelty. And the powerless servant is the
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  one who bears the cost for the failure of the patriarch and
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  matriarch. Which leads, inevitably to her
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  flight. She runs.
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  And this isn't just about changing her location.
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  She is running away from the Covenant community itself
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  because it has become a place of unbearable pain.
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  So that spring in the wilderness where we find her next, it's the
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  desolate, logical endpoint of all this human sin and cruelty.
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  It is. It sets the stage perfectly for
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  God's next move, which is completely unexpected.
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  Human sin pushes Hagar out. But Divine Grace is about to go
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  pull her back in. The whole scene changes.
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  We leave the bitterness and the domestic warfare of Abram's
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  tent, and we find Hagar. She's alone.
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  She's exposed. And she's on her way to shore.
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  Right, which is on the border of Egypt.
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  Her goal is obvious. She's running back to her old
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  life, to her Pagan roots. She's trying to solve her
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  suffering by escaping it. She's looking.
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  For comfort in her past, even if it's the past of slavery.
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  But the text is about to show us a truth we can't get away from.
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  You can't outrun God's sovereign gaze.
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  It doesn't matter how fast you run or how isolated you become.
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  And who finds her? Verse 7 says the Angel of the
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  Lord found her. That is such a key theological
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  statement. The Hebrew verb used there,
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  matzo, isn't about stumbling upon something by chance.
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  It means a successful, purposeful search, a discovery.
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  So this is not a coincidence. Not at all.
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  This is a targeted interception. The theology here is crystal
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  clear. The Sinner doesn't seek God.
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  God seeks the Sinner. Hagar didn't just happen upon a
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  divine being. The divine being tracked her
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  down. And this figure, the Angel of
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  the Lord, the Malak YHWH, is a huge deal in the Old Testament.
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  A huge deal, and it's significant that Hagar, an
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  Egyptian servant with no social standing, is the first person in
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  scripture to get a visit from this specific divine messenger.
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  So why is the identity of this Angel so critical for us to
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  understand? It's because the angel's
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  identity proves the divinity of the pursuit.
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  You have to look at what the Angel says.
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  He doesn't just say the Lord says this.
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  He doesn't relay a message. No, he speaks in the first
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  person. He he claims divine power for
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  himself. In verse 10 he says, I will
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  multiply your descendants exceedingly.
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  And the power to create nations to multiply descendants belongs
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  only to God. Only to Yahweh.
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  So this distinction, the Angel speaking as God, is what led the
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  early Church fathers, and later the Reformers to a very specific
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  conclusion. That this wasn't just any Angel.
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  Exactly. They concluded this was a
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  Christophany, a pre Incarnate appearance of the Son of God,
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  the eternal Word. Wow, so it's the living Christ
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  who is seeking this one lost sheep.
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  That's the implication, and it's staggering.
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  The very God who made the covenant promise to Abram
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  personally steps in on behalf of the victim of Abram's sin.
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  He finds her by that spring on the way to shore.
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  He stops her just before she can fully retreat back into that old
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  life in Egypt, a life that has no covenant hope.
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  Right. And the encounter starts with
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  this this piercing interrogation in verse 8, Hagar Sarai's made
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  Where have you come from? Where are you going?
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  It's a masterful question. He affirms her identity, her
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  personhood, by using her name, Hagar.
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  But then he immediately forces her to face the reality she's
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  running from. Sarai's made he doesn't let her
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  escape her situation. He confronts her with.
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  It God refuses to play along with the fantasy that we can
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  just be completely autonomous. He won't.
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  Hagar wants to be free, but she's still bound by her
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  position, by the consequences of her actions, by her flight
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  itself. Real spiritual health starts
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  when we confess the truth of who and where we are, even when it's
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  painful. And those two questions, where
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  have you come from and where are you going?
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  They're diagnostic. Deeply diagnostic, it echoes
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  God's question to Adam in the Garden.
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  Where are you? God knows the answer.
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  He's Elroy, the God who sees everything.
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  He's forcing Hagar to confess her own lostness and the
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  futility of her escape plan. And her answer tells us
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  everything. She knows where she came from.
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  She can name the oppression I am fleeing from the presence of my
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  mistress Sarai, but when asked where she's going, she has
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  nothing to say about a destination.
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  Because she doesn't have one. She doesn't have one.
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  She has to face the reality that just running away from your
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  problems, especially when God has sovereignly placed you
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  somewhere, leads you nowhere. Flight doesn't create a future.
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  So this encounter teaches us something really important about
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  the God of the wilderness. We tend to think God's presence
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  is confined to the right places, the church, the community, the
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  stable home. But Hagar was afflicted in the
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  household of Faith. And that's so important.
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  The angels pursuit proves that God isn't limited to our comfort
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  zones. He is the Lord of the
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  wilderness. He meets us in that fragile, in
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  between place of despair. When we're no longer where we
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  should be, but we're not yet back in the world we came from.
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  He steps in. He interrupts that cycle of
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  retreat and forces her to see that she doesn't need a change
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  of scenery. She's a change of theology.
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  She needs to recognize the one who sees her right where she is.
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  And this interception, this whole diagnosis, it prepares her
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  for what comes next, which is a very hard command.
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  It's a very hard command. The conversation moves from
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  diagnosis to directive, and what he says in verse 9 is, for many
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  of us today, probably the hardest part of the story.
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  Return to your mistress and submit yourself under her hands.
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  I mean, that is just. It's jarring to read.
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  Our modern instinct, our Christian ethical instinct,
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  expects liberation. We want the Angel to condemn
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  Sarai and give Hagar asylum somewhere.
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  Of course. And instead God tells her to
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  walk right back into the House of oppression that she just fled
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  from. So why?
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  Why this incredibly difficult command?
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  There has to be more going on here.
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  There is. We have to look at the specific
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  Hebrew word here. The command is to submit
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  yourself. The word is Anna.
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  OK, Now that word has huge theological weight because if
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  you look back to verse 6 when it describes how Sarai afflicted
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  Hagar. It's the same word.
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  It's the exact same root word, Anna.
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  So Hagar fled because she was affected, and now God commands
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  her to return and willingly submit to affliction.
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  Wow, that parallelism is intentional.
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  It's stunning. It has to be.
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  It reveals something deep about God's command.
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  He's telling her that the way through this crisis is an
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  escape. It's faithful endurance,
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  trusting that He is sovereign even over the affliction itself.
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  This is the law part of the message then.
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  It's a demand for an obedience that runs completely opposite to
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  our instinct for self preservation.
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  It is. It demands that Hagar trust the
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  sovereign Eye of God more than her desire for immediate relief.
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  If she goes back, she goes back under a divine decree, not just
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  under Sarai's power. But let's be extremely clear on
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  this. The sources are unified on this
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  point. This command does not endorse
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  Sarai's cruelty. Not for a second.
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  The text already condemned Sarai's actions by calling them
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  harsh and showing the destructive result.
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  This is not God giving a stamp of approval to injustice.
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  So what is it? It's a lesson in divine
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  Providence, and it's for Hagar's sanctification.
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  God uses these painful obediences to work out higher
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  redemptive plans. Hagar is called to a temporary
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  submission, trusting that God is working out the future inside
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  Abraham's household, not outside of it.
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  It's that Reformed idea of costly obedience, faith that
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  trust God is in control, even when the path is incredibly
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  difficult. That's right.
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  True faith doesn't demand God change our circumstances before
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  we'll obey. It obeys right in the middle of
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  them. But you can't just do that on
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  sheer willpower. God doesn't just give her this
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  crushing command and leave her to it.
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  No, he never does. He immediately provides the fuel
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  for this obedience. He provides the promise, the
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  gospel indicative, the grounds, the hard imperative.
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  And that promise comes in verse 10.
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  It does, and it's a staggering promise.
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  I will multiply your descendants exceedingly so that they shall
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  not be counted for multitude. There's that, I will again, The
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  Angel speaking as Yahweh. He's not just giving a promise,
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  He's making one. And this changes everything for
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  Hagar. She's being elevated from a
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  fleeing slave to the matriarch of a huge nation.
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  She can face her eyes, harshness, her Anna, because she
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  is now carrying a divine future defining promise from God
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  Himself. So the command to return is
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  anchored completely in the promise of God's provision for
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  her future. Exactly.
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  She's not going back as a crushed servant.
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  She's going back as a woman who has been entrusted with a divine
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  decree. And then he tells her what to
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  name the sun Ishmael. The name itself is a piece of
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  theology she gets to carry with her.
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  It is Ushmael, it means God hears, it becomes this living,
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  breathing memorial. Not just that, Hagar cried out,
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  but the God paid specific, attentive regard to her misery.
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  Because the Lord has listened to your affliction.
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  For anyone who feels like an outcast, who feels unseen or
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  overlooked, that is one of the most powerful promises in all of
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  Scripture. The God who sees also hears the
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  groans of the unseen servant. Then there's the prophecy about
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  Ishmael in verse 12. He'll be a wild donkey of a man.
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  Now we need to clarify this because it's so often read as an
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  insult. And it absolutely is not an
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  insult. Yeah, that's our modern cultural
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  lens. In the ancient Near East, the
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  wild donkey was a symbol of untamed freedom, of rugged
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  self-reliance and solitary strength.
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  So for a slave woman to be told her son would be a free roaming
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  Chieftain that no one could control.
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  It's a promise of dignity. It's a promise of posterity.
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  It promises her son a life of freedom, a man who will live on
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  his own terms. And he will dwell in the
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  presence of all his brethren. He'll be recognized, respected.
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  Yes, this is God's common grace being extended beyond the
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  specific line of the covenant promise.
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  But. The prophecy is also very
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  realistic. It doesn't ignore the
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  consequences of sin. It's soberly realistic.
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  It also predicts conflict. His hand shall be against
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  everyone, and everyone's hand against him.
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  So even as God is showing mercy, he doesn't erase the temporal
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  fallout from Abram and Sarai's sin.
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  He doesn't. That initial failure has
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  generational consequences. The human attempt to force the
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  divine promise through the flesh leads to real, lasting conflict.
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  God comforts Hagar, but he doesn't lie to her about the
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  difficult future her son will face.
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  And that leads us to what many see as the absolute climax of
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  this story, the moment of theological revelation for
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  Hagar. It's a monumental moment.
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  Hagar, the Egyptian slave, the outsider, becomes the very first
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  person in the entire Bible to give a name to God.
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  Think about that. Not Abraham, Not Noah, Hagar.
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  And she calls him Elroy, the God who sees me, or the goddess
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  seeing. This just shatters the idea that
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  Yahweh is some kind of tribal deity who only cares about
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  Abraham's family. It completely shatters it.
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  Hagar realizes in that moment that she is the object of
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  Yahweh's personal attention of gaze.
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  And the sources are very strong on this point.
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  This isn't a deistic detached God just watching from a
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  distance. Absolutely not.
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  This isn't cold surveillance. Elroy is intensely personal.
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  He doesn't just notice Hagar exists.
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  He descends into her wilderness, into her specific geography of
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  pain, to lock eyes with her, to intervene, to act.
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  His seeing is tied directly to his compassion and his actions.
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  Yes. His omniscience is not separated
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  from his character. He sees, which means he regards,
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  he attends to, and he acts on behalf of the afflicted.
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  And Hagar's question in verse 13 just drips with astonishment.
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  Have I also here seen him who sees me?
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  She's amazed that she's still alive.
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  In the ancient world, the belief was that to see God was to die.
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  But Hagar lives. Her survival is proof that this
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  was a unique transformative encounter.
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  It is. She realizes in that moment that
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  she has gone from being the object of Sarai's wrath to being
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  the object of Yahweh's benevolent sustaining gaze.
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  She's alive, and she has a divine promise.
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  Her survival is the evidence of God's mercy toward her.
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  And this theological awakening is what allows her to identify
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  the Angel as Yahweh as the Lord. It confirms the Christophany
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  argument. She doesn't just say I met a
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  messenger, she says I have seen God.
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  And you can see the consistency of God's character through the
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  whole Bible. Here you really can.
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  The eternal Word meets the rejected woman in the desert.
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  Centuries later, Jesus meets the Samaritan woman by a well.
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  It's the same Christ, the one who seeks out the lost, the
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  marginalized, the suffering. It anchors our hope and the fact
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  that our God sees us right here in our specific localized
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  crisis. That's it, And the encounter
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  even leaves a physical mark on the landscape.
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  The well gets a new name, Beer Live Roy.
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  The well of the living one who sees me.
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  The wilderness itself is permanently changed.
• 18:46
  It's no longer just a place of death and escape.
• 18:48
  It's now holy ground. It's a monument to divine grace
• 18:52
  and. Place names in Genesis are never
• 18:54
  just trivia, they are theology written into the geography.
• 18:57
  They are, and it challenges our modern way of thinking where we
• 19:00
  just want to forget our trials as quickly as possible.
• 19:02
  This passage suggests that sometimes our wilderness becomes
• 19:05
  our beer lot. I Roy The very place where God
• 19:08
  broke into our despair in a way that our times of comfort never
• 19:11
  could have allowed. The memory of the affliction
• 19:14
  becomes tied forever to the memory of the divine vision.
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  Exactly. And the story closes out
• 19:19
  quietly, verses 15 and 16. Hagar returned, and Abram named
• 19:23
  the child Ishmael. And that quiet report has
• 19:26
  massive theological weight. It does.
• 19:29
  Hagar the servant effectively returns to the covenant
• 19:32
  household as a prophetess to the patriarch.
• 19:35
  She had to have told him what happened.
• 19:37
  She had to convey the divine decree.
• 19:39
  And Abram listened. He submitted to the revelation
• 19:42
  that God gave through his servant.
• 19:43
  He did. By naming the boy Ishmael, God
• 19:46
  hears. He's acknowledging the truth of
• 19:48
  her testimony. The household has been chastened
• 19:51
  and instructed by the God who pursued the victim of their own
• 19:54
  sin. The promise moves forward, but
• 19:56
  the cost of trying to secure it through fleshly means has been
• 19:59
  made painfully clear. OK, we've tracked God's
• 20:02
  sovereignty, His pursuit, His promise.
• 20:04
  Now let's synthesize this for you listening.
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  What does this all mean for faith today, especially for
• 20:09
  those of us in a covenant community?
• 20:11
  I think the first huge lesson comes from Abram and Sorai.
• 20:14
  It's the absolute necessity of distinguishing between God's
• 20:17
  promise and our human technique. That pragmatic unbelief, yes.
• 20:22
  The danger is always trying to secure good promised ends by our
• 20:26
  own fleshly expedient means. We can say all the right
• 20:30
  theological things, but then act as if God's plan really depends
• 20:33
  on our cleverness or our impatience.
• 20:35
  And the message of Genesis 16 is a sharp corrective to that.
• 20:38
  God's promises are received by faith and patience.
• 20:42
  They are engineered by our shortcuts.
• 20:44
  Faith waits. The flesh rushes in.
• 20:47
  The second point has to be a warning about the misuse of
• 20:49
  authority. A severe warning.
• 20:52
  Sarai's harshness and Abrams passivity show us that
• 20:55
  leadership without righteousness becomes oppressive instantly.
• 20:59
  So for anyone in a position of authority, a leader, a parent, a
• 21:02
  husband, this is a powerful lesson.
• 21:04
  Covenant privilege is never a license for cruelty.
• 21:07
  And passive refusal to act justly is moral complicity.
• 21:11
  It lets injustice grow under the cover of, you know, keeping
• 21:14
  order. Then on the other side of that,
• 21:15
  there's incredible comfort here for those who have been harmed
• 21:18
  by other sins, especially within a church or a religious setting.
• 21:21
  Immense comfort. Hagar's story insist that God is
• 21:24
  not blind to the abuse of power. The Lord himself actively seeks
• 21:28
  out the victim. And his mercy is so specific.
• 21:31
  God hears affliction. God sees the unseen.
• 21:34
  His attention is not just reserved for the powerful or the
• 21:37
  prominent. Right.
• 21:38
  But now we have to talk about that command to return and
• 21:40
  submit from verse 9. We have to handle this with
• 21:43
  extreme pastoral care because it can be and has been horribly
• 21:47
  misused. Let's be very clear, the text
• 21:50
  does not sanctify or condone psoriasis oppression.
• 21:53
  Not for one second. Hagar's return is commanded by
• 21:56
  God, yes, but it is predicated entirely on the unique, specific
• 22:01
  divine promise that God gave only to her.
• 22:03
  That's the crucial distinction. This specific command to Hagar
• 22:06
  does not create a universal rule that all victims must return to
• 22:09
  situations of ongoing harm, No. It absolutely does not.
• 22:13
  While God can certainly call someone to faithfully endure a
• 22:15
  temporary hardship, righteous obedience today often requires
• 22:18
  seeking safety, involving authorities, and removing
• 22:22
  oneself from structural abuse. The Church has to refuse any
• 22:25
  theology that tries to spiritualize cruelty under a
• 22:27
  banner of submission. If God is Elroy, the God who
• 22:30
  sees, then his people, the church, must also see and hear
• 22:34
  and act with real justice to protect the vulnerable.
• 22:36
  Hagar's return was validated by a divine promise of a future
• 22:40
  blessing. Forced submission without that
• 22:43
  divine intervention and promise is just oppression.
• 22:47
  OK, finally, let's look at the canonical trajectory.
• 22:49
  How does this story fit into the bigger picture of the Bible?
• 22:52
  It acts as a critical hinge. It clearly sets up the theme of
• 22:56
  promise versus flesh that the rest of the Bible builds on.
• 22:59
  It shows that the redemptive inheritance, the line that leads
• 23:02
  to Isaac and then to Christ, is based completely on God's
• 23:05
  sovereign choice, not on human effort or biology.
• 23:09
  Right. And the Apostle Paul leans on
• 23:11
  this story heavily in Romans 9 and Galatians 4.
• 23:14
  He uses Hagar and Sarai. The slave woman and the free
• 23:17
  woman. Exactly.
• 23:19
  He uses them to illustrate the difference between trying to
• 23:21
  achieve righteousness by the law and receiving it as a gift
• 23:25
  through the gospel. So Ishmael, the son born of the
• 23:27
  flesh, represents human effort which leads to bondage.
• 23:30
  And Isaac, the son born of the miraculous promise, represents
• 23:34
  the gift received by faith which leads to freedom.
• 23:37
  It confirms that the saving covenant moves forward only by
• 23:39
  God's sovereign word, not by our manipulation.
• 23:43
  And yet. God still gives real tangible
• 23:46
  mercies to Ishmael. Life a nation.
• 23:49
  Dignity. Which shows His common grace is
• 23:52
  for everyone, but he keeps the saving covenant distinct.
• 23:57
  The attempt to manufacture the promise only created a crisis
• 24:00
  that God himself had to step in and fix.
• 24:02
  It really forces you to ask where am I trying to use human
• 24:06
  technique to get a result that God has already promised to give
• 24:09
  by faith alone? That's the question.
• 24:12
  That really was a deep dive. We started with a servant
• 24:15
  running away from the explosion of covenant failure, and we
• 24:18
  ended with her making one of the greatest confessions of God's
• 24:20
  character in all of Scripture. The mission is accomplished.
• 24:23
  We've seen that God's promise is upheld by His sovereign Word,
• 24:27
  not our sin. God is active even in the
• 24:29
  painful messes that are faithlessness creates.
• 24:32
  And the story leaves us with this foundational truth from
• 24:34
  Hagar. You can stop running.
• 24:36
  You don't need a change of scenery to find peace.
• 24:38
  You need a vision of the God who sees you.
• 24:40
  Your obedience, no matter how hard, flows from a settled
• 24:43
  theology and His promise. A concise summary of Genesis 16
• 24:47
  God hears affliction, God sees the unseen, and God's sovereign
• 24:51
  word is the only thing that advances His plan.
• 24:54
  Our expediency just makes a mess.
• 24:56
  And as you think about all this, here's a final thought to Mull
• 24:59
  over, building on the name of that well, Beulahi Roy.
• 25:02
  This story teaches us to interpret our lives by God's
• 25:05
  character, not by our temporary pain.
• 25:08
  So what specific wells of remembrance do you have?
• 25:11
  Those painful seasons, those places of despair you might be
• 25:14
  tempted to just forget? What if God wants you to revisit
• 25:17
  them as the holy ground where you met the living One who saw
• 25:19
  you? How might your affliction become
• 25:21
  your most personal memorial of divine grace?
• 25:24
  We encourage you to continue seeking truth.
• 25:25
  It's anchored and Scripture and the confession of God's
• 25:28
  sovereignty until our next discussion.