Tempted To Get A Good Thing The Wrong Way: Sarai, Hagar, and Abram

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0:14Let's pray together. Father, please enlighten our minds and soften our hearts as we consider your words to us in Genesis 16. Amen. So you just heard the story of Genesis 16 read and you might be confused like, what did we just read? What? What is that? Why is this story in the Bible? It seems kind of strange. What are we supposed to do with it? Some of you might even be offended a little bit. You might have as many as four objections to the story. Like why does the Bible support a culture that is oppressive to women as if women have value, only if they can bear children. Or you might be thinking, why is the Bible condoning slavery?

1:17Or why is the Bible condoning polygamy? Or why does the angel of the Lord send the victimized Hagar back to her cruel slave master? So I'll attempt to respond to these four objections and some others along the way as we work through this story. Uh, but I just wanna remind us that God tells us in the Bible that all scripture is God breathed and is profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, for training and righteousness that the man of God may be complete equipped for every good work. Genesis 16 is God breathes scripture. So that means it's profitable. But how? How should you profit from this story?

2:06In order to answer that question, we first need to understand this story on its own terms. So we can't help but read this story from the standpoint of our own culture and our own experience. So let's try to read it as best we can in its literary context, the context of Genesis and in its historical cultural context. And then after we work through the story, I'll attempt to answer the question, what is a primary way that you should respond to this story? So let's begin by just identifying four main characters in the story. Verse one mentions three of them. Sarah, I is Abram's wife, Abram is, Sarah i's husband, and the patriarch to whom God has made these glorious grand promises in Genesis 12 and 15 later, by the way, in chapter 17, next week's text, God changes Sarah's name to Sarah and Abram's name to Abraham.

3:02This is very confusing to talk about these two people at this point. 'cause I keep wanting to say Abraham and Sarah, I'll probably mess up at some point, but I'll try to say Sarah and Abraham, uh, I did just did it. Don't do like a, a little beeping noise when I mess up this, it's gonna happen. Uh, third is Hagar. Hagar is Sarah's female Egyptian servant. She probably became Sarah's servant while she and Abraham were in Egypt back in chapter 12. And then the most important character is the Lord who appears in verses explicitly in verses 2, 5, 7, 9, 10, 11, 13. Very important character in the story.

3:40So those are the four main characters. Now let's just work through this story on its own terms. In six steps. We'll look at the problem and then S solution, Abram's failure, four repercussions of that, and then Hagar's encounter and Ishmael's birth. Then after we carefully listen to the story, we'll consider a primary way to respond to it. So let's begin with the problem. The problem is that Sarai is Baren. Look at the first sentence, first one. Now, Sarai Abram's wife had born him no children. So the problem that instigates this story is that Sarah had born Abram no children. She was barren. This repeats what Genesis 1130 says.

4:26Sarah was barren, she had no child. This was a big problem for Abram and Sarai. God promised that Abram and his descendants would be as numerous as the stars in the sky. Chapter 15 verse five. And God specifically promised that Abram's heir would not be an adopted son but would be a biological son. It's in chapter 15, verse four. So how could Abram be the father of a multitude if his wife was unable to conceive? And when God first promised to Abram that he would have many descendants, he was 75 years old. 12 verse four. Now it's 10 years later according to verse three of our text. So at this part of the story, Abram is about 85 years old and Sarah is about 75 years old.

5:2210 years is a long time for a husband and wife to wait for a baby when they're trying to have a baby 10 long years, especially when it's a baby that God promised would come. God's timetable doesn't always match our, and this was testing the faith of Abram and Sarah. So now let's deal with an objection. This story is happening in a context in which the cultural expectation for women was that they would marry and have children. Some people in our culture today, they hear this story and think the Bible is supporting a culture that oppresses women as if women have value only if they can bear children.

6:13But people who make that objection are part of a culture that places the individual above the family more than uh, a traditional culture that places the family above the individual. So our individualistic and feminist culture promises young ladies that they can be anything they want to be and that if they want to have value, they should be both drop dead gorgeous and successful at some impressive vocation like a doctor or a business person. To just be a wife and a mother would be embarrassing. That's our culture. That mindset has permeated and corrupted our culture like mold spreads in a basement and then into the rest of the house.

6:57Now of course, women in traditional cultures can overvalue being a wife and a mother in a way that's idolatrous. We can make idols out of anything, especially including good things. My sense is that in our culture today, a much bigger danger is devaluing God's good design for women. And in this case, traditional cultures are getting something right. God designed women to be mothers and it's good and natural when a wife wants to have children. It's tragic when a wife is unable to have children and our modern Western culture. Women often try to avoid getting pregnant. And if they do get pregnant, many women intentionally murder the child in their womb.

7:50But in more traditional cultures, it's a wife's glory and honor to be pregnant. Now, as I explained weeks ago in my sermon on Genesis three, God has designed females to procreate to get pregnant and give birth to babies. Filling the earth with God's image bearers is part of God's grand plan. Women are essential to this plan because men can't have babies. God designed women to be mothers and that includes nurturing life physically, but also nurturing every facet of life by caring comprehensively and intimately. And God's design is marvelous. It's brilliant. It's a design that women should gladly embrace and not be embarrassed of.

8:39So now back to the story. The problem is that Sarah is barren. Sarah's Sarah's solution is that she faithless and impatiently tells Abram to have a son through Hagar. Let's read starting in the middle of verse one. So she, that's Sarah had a female Egyptian servant whose name was Hagar. And Sarai said to Abram, behold now the Lord has prevented me from bearing children go into my servant. It may be that I shall obtain children by hurt. When Sarah says the Lord has prevented me from bearing children. I'm not sure if she is rightly acknowledging that God is sovereign or if she's blaming God for her barrenness.

9:31But she's so desperate to have children that she tells her husband to marry her servant Hagar and to sleep with Hagar. The plan was that Hagar would conceive and bear a child whom the family would consider to be Sarah's child. This is an ancient form of surrogacy. The womb of a servant was the oven for a baby who would belong to a woman with a higher status. And this practice was acceptable in the ancient near Eastern culture that is a wife would present her maid servant to her husband and the child born of the maid servant would be the wife's child. That's why Sarai says to Abram, go into my servant.

10:14It may be that I shall obtain children by her. So Hagar would become Abram's wife, but only a lower level wife. A concubine Abram would continue to consider Sarah, her, his his primary wife. So later in the in Genesis in chapter 30, uh, Abram's grandson, Jacob is married to Rachel and Leah and Jacob's wives follow this same custom. They encourage Jacob to sleep with their servants and some of those sons would become heads of Israel's 12 tribes. Those children of the maid servants were considered children of the primary wife. Now, some Bible interpreters think that here Sarah's solution may actually be commendable 'cause she's trying to fulfill God's promises in a creative way.

11:03And after all, God had not yet specified that Abram would have a son through s. Now, in contrast to that view, I think that that Sarai solution here is faithless and impatient because her solution does not honor the Lord. Her solution is for her husband to sleep with another woman. But God designed one man and one woman to covenant together as husband and wife. Listen to the plan from the beginning. This is Genesis 2 24. A man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife and they shall become one flesh. So God instituted marriage to be between one man and one woman. And God reserves the gift of sexual intimacy exclusively for marriage.

12:03And the marriage covenant is the only God-honoring relationship for procreation. Now let's deal with two objections here. Uh, polygamy and slavery. Let's start with polygamy. Is the Bible here condoning polygamy? It doesn't. The Old Testament portray God fearing men having multiple wives, men like Abraham, Jacob, Moses, David Solomon. And the answer is yes. But in the Old Testament, God tolerates polygamy, but he does not approve of polygamy. If you read the stories carefully, you'll see that when a man has multiple wives, it's always a mess. The situation is full of difficulties having multiple wives results in more problems because it's not God's ideal.

13:06The ideal is that marriage is for one man and one woman Marriage pictures the relationship between Christ and his bride. His bride singular his one bride the church. And that's why an elder must be the husband of one wife. It's one Timothy three, two. That means he must be a one woman man. A husband should be faithful to his one wife. So if you wanna study more about what the Bible teaches about polygamy, I commend to you an article on desiring God's website by Sam Amma titled, why Did God Allow Polygamy? Now let's deal with the objection about slavery. Is the Bible here condoning slavery? You look at verse two and Sarah calls Hagar my servant, you might have another translation open like the NASB or the NIV or the CSB.

14:00It translates that my slave, so Abram and Sarah owned Hagar. Hagar was their property. Is the Bible saying that slavery is okay? And the short answer is it depends how you define slavery. Now, it's challenging for modern Americans to understand slavery in the ancient world because we typically think of only one kind of slavery, the sinful ethnic-based slavery practice in early America. It's also difficult for understand for us to understand slavery in the ancient world because our experience now is a western, industrialized, individualistic, democratic, egalitarian, educated, wealthy culture. That's not normal in the history of the world.

14:59Nearly every culture has had slavery in one form or another. And the key is that not all forms of slavery are alike. Certain forms of slavery are sinful in all times and all cultures. And there are more benevolent forms of slavery that the Old Testament regulates since we live in a fallen world. For example, in some cultures, inden, uh, indentured servitude was like a form of social security. So you could sell yourself into slavery so that you would have shelter and food and work and you could buy your freedom at a later date. And bible stories like Genesis 16 are accurately recounting what really happened, warts and all.

15:47So just remember, uh, just because God describes what what happened doesn't mean he's prescribing. This is what should happen. So if you wanna study more about what the Bible teaches about slavery, I commend to you an online video by Peter Williams titled, does The Bible Support Slavery? So Peter Williams argues that if we use the most common definition of slavery today, the Bible does not support slavery. So now back to our story, Sarah's solution is that she faithless and impatiently tells Abram to have a son through Hagar. Next is Abram's failure. Abram listens to the voice of Sarai. Let's read it starting in the middle of verse two.

16:30And Abram listened to the voice of Sarai. So after Abram had lived 10 years in the land of Canaan, Sarai, Abram's wife took Hagar, the Egyptian her servant, and gave her to Abram, her husband as a wife. And he went into Hagar and she conceived, I'll stop there. Look at that first line again. Middle of verse two. Abram listened to the voice of Sarai. Does that make you think of an earlier passage in Genesis? Does it ring a bell? You should be thinking of Genesis three 17. That's when God says to a, to to Adam because you have listened to the voice of your wife. And then God goes on to punish mankind with pain.

17:21The very same Hebrew words there in three 17 appear here in verse two, Abram listened to the voice of Sarah and there are also some key words that connect Genesis three, six With Genesis 16, three and four, see if you can hear it. Eve took and gave fruit to her husband, and here Sarah took and gave Hagar to her husband. Now of course there's a sense in which a husband should listen to the voice of his wife. A husband should listen to the voice of his wife to understand her, to gain wisdom from her perspective. Later in Genesis 21, 12, God tells Abraham to listen to Sarah in a particular situation.

18:12He says, whatever Sarah says to you, do as she tells you, it's Genesis 2112. So a godly wife is a gift to her husband and she can help her husband with wise insights that her husband lacks. But there's another sense in which a husband should not listen to the voice of his wife. A husband should not listen to the voice of his wife if she's encouraging him to sin against God, to not trust God. The husband as the head of his home is responsible as the authority over his family. And that means that a husband must stand up to his wife if she's encouraging him to sin against God, to not trust God. That's what Adam should have done to Eve in Genesis three.

19:00And he failed. And that's what Abram should have done to Sarai here in Genesis 16. Instead here Abram lazily abdicates his authority over Sarai by giving up and giving in. He chooses the easy path of superficially keeping the peace that makes things worse. So Abram values keeping his wife temporarily happy more than he values trusting and obeying God. If Abram really wanted his wife to be happy, he would not have listened to her. In this instance, he would not have followed her in her rash unbelief. Now Abraham is not a weak man. Remember the story from last week In Genesis 14, he, he just led 318 of his men to accomplish a dangerous rescue mission.

19:56He's a tough guy. Sometimes the same men who courageously fight end dangerous battles act cowardly with an unhappy wife. And this passage not only compares Abram's failure here to Adam's failure in the garden in Genesis three, it also compares Abrams failure here to when the Egyptian Pharaoh wickedly takes Sarai into his harem. In Genesis 12, 10 to 20, Pharaoh takes Sarai. And here in Genesis 16, Abram takes Hagar. So instead of refusing to listen to the voice of his wife, Abram marries Hagar and sleeps with her and Hagar gets pregnant. So Abram and Sarah choose not to patiently trust God, to fulfill his promises in his way and his time.

20:46Instead, they choose to attempt to fulfill God's promises in their way, in their time. And before we move on in the story, I wanna ask a a question. Should we esteem Abraham and Sarah? Should we respect them? The Bible tells us about some of their sins and we should learn from their failures in trying to help us do that in this sermon. At the same time, Abraham and Sarah are great heroes of the faith and we should honor them. So if we should honor our physical father and mother, how much more should we honor our spiritual father and mother Abraham. Abraham is our spiritual patriarch. So Romans four 16 says that Abraham is the father of us all and as he's the father of all those who share his faith.

21:40Now in Genesis 16, Abraham and Sarah seem unimpressive, and we shouldn't follow their example here, but in the larger story of Genesis, Abraham and Sarah trust God. That's actually an encouraging thought, isn't it? If you trip or stumble, don't despair that Godly may trip seven times, but they'll get up again. Though they stumble, they'll never fall. For the Lord holds them by his hand. So that's Abram's failure. Here he listens to the voice of Sarai. Next, there are four repercussions. Hagar despises, Sarai, Sarai blames Abram, Abram capitulates, the Sarai and Sarai mistreats Hagar. Let's read it. Look at the middle of verse four.

22:28And when she, that is Hagar saw that she had conceived, she looked with contempt on her mistress that is on Sarai. And Sarai said to Abram, may the wrong done to me be on you. And that word wrong there translates a Hebrew word that is often in the news Hamas that means violence. So she says, I gave my servant to your embrace. And when she saw that she had conceived, she looked on me with contempt. May the Lord judge between you and me. But Abram said to Sarai, behold your servant is in your power due to her as you please. Then Sarai dealt harshly with her and she fled from her. This passage mentions four repercussions of Abrams and Sarah's sins.

23:20First repercussion, Hagar despises Sarah Sarai expected that her servant Hagar would continue to be her servant. But when Hagar becomes Abrams pregnant wife, Hagar treats Sarah with contempt. And this illustrates the final line of Proverbs 30 21 to 23. Listen to this. Under three things, the earth trembles under four. It cannot bear up a slave when he becomes king and a fool when he is filled with food, an unloved woman when she gets a husband. And here it is a maid servant when she displaces her mistress. So this situation is unbearable for Sarai. That's what happens here in Genesis 16, the plan that Sarai schemed was supposed to solve the problem, but it just makes the problem worse.

24:20Second repercussion, Sarai blames Abram, here's how the NIV translates. Verse five, you are responsible for the wrong. I am suffering. I put my slave in your arms. And now that she knows she's pregnant, she despises me. May the Lord judge between you and me. So this whole scheme was Sarah's idea. And now she blames Abram for listening to her. And in one sense, she's not wrong because Abram is responsible, but Abram is not the only one who's wrong. Sarai is also wrong. She has moral agency. So when you sin against God, you are responsible for your sin and authority over you may bear greater responsibility, but that does not remove your moral agency under God.

25:07And it's remarkable that after disobeying God's design for sex to occur only in marriage between one man and one woman, Sarah says to Abram, may the Lord judge between you and me, you could paraphrase that the Lord will get you for this. Sarah is asking God for justice, but does she really want justice? If God were to give instantaneous justice, she would be begging for mercy and forgiveness, not justice. Third repercussion, Abram capitulates to Sarah again. So Abram takes Sarah's side against Hagar. He tells Sarai to do whatever she wants with Hagar. This is an injustice against Hagar. So Abram is once again listening to the voice of his wife and lazily, abdicating rather than leading with courage and conviction.

26:04And the fourth repercussion, Sarah Mistreats Hagar, the end of verse six says, Sarah dealt harshly with her. Those words dealt harshly translate a Hebrew word that Moses later uses to describe how the Egyptians oppressed the Israelite slaves in Exodus one 12. So Sarah, I oppresses Hagar so harshly that Hagar runs away. So this is, this is one big mess. Everybody is sinning. Hagar is sinning against Sarah by treating her with contempt. Sarah is sinning against Hagar by eventually mistreating her. Abram is sinning against both Sarah and Hagar by allowing Sarah to eventually mistreat Hagar. So let's pause for a moment and briefly reflect on all these sins.

26:51As you think about this story in Genesis 16, you might be tempted to self righteously look down on these characters, but this story should lead you to acknowledge that you also deserve God's undeserved kindness. How would you like it if God wrote stories about your worst sins in a book that everyone else reads? So as great as Abraham and Sarah were, they were sinners, and the story in Genesis 16 highlights some of their sinful failures. They needed God's undeserved kindness and so do you. The Bible teaches that all of us are sinners, Jews and Gentiles, men and women, rich and poor, free and slave.

27:35None is righteous. No not one. And like Abram and Sarai and Hagar, we are sinners. We deserve God's wrath and we need God's undeserved kindness, his grace. In the Book of Genesis, God shows undeserved kindness to Abram and Sara, I and Hagar. And in the whole Bible, God shows undeserved kindness to you. Thank God for that because we need it. We'd be hopeless without it. Now back to the story. There are four repercussions in Genesis 16. Next is Hagar's encounter. The angel of the Lord compassionately sees Hagar. Let's read verses seven to 14.

28:25The angel of the Lord found her, found Hagar by a spring of water in the wilderness the spring on the way to shore. And he said, Hagar, servant of Sarah, where have you come from and where are you going? She said, I'm fleeing from my mistress. Sarah, the angel of the Lord said to her, return to your mistress and submit to her. The angel of the Lord also said to her, I will surely multiply your offspring so that they cannot be numbered for multitude. And the angel of the Lord said to her, behold, you are pregnant and you shall bear son and shall call his name Ishmael because the Lord has listened to your affliction.

29:14He shall be a wild donkey of a man, his hand against everyone and everyone's hand against him and he shall dwell over against all his kinsmen. So she called the name of the Lord who spoke to her, you are a God of seeing for she said, truly. Here I have seen him who looks after me. Therefore the well was called beer laja Roy. It lies between Kadish and Barrett.

29:46Hagar is likely fleeing toward Egypt. That's her native home. She's a vulnerable woman, pregnant, poor, and alone. And while she's felling from Sarah, the angel of the Lord talks to her, who is the angel of the Lord? At least two options. Is he an angel who belongs to the Lord or is he an angel who is the Lord? And verse 13 suggests that this angel is the Lord himself. She called the name of the Lord who spoke to her. You are a God of seeing for she said, truly Here I have seen him who looks after me. So if this angel is the Lord himself, then that means that the Lord appears to Hagar in the form of an angel and the angel of the Lord tells Hagar to return to Sarah and to be a submissive mistress.

30:54So let's deal with an objection here. Why would the angel of the Lord send the victimized Hagar back to her cruel slave master? I don't know the answer, but here are three truths to consider to help us as we think about it. One, Hagar is both a victim of Sarai and guilty of sin. Remember verse four, second half When Hagar saw that she had conceived, she looked with contempt on her mistress, she looked down on Sarai, she despised Sarai. Hagar's sin does not excuse Sarai for sinfully responding with vengeance against Hagar. But my point here is that it's wrong to say that Sarai is the oppressor and Hagar is the oppressed.

31:46And that therefore Hagar can't be guilty of sin at all. That's the wrong conclusion. It's wrong to say that Sarah oppressed Hagar in that instance and that therefore Hagar can't be guilty of sin at all. Second, when God tells a person to submit to an authority, that does not mean that God fully approves of how that authority is acting. I'll give you some examples. God commands citizens to submit to ungodly governmental authorities and to pay taxes to them In one Peter two in Romans 13, and God commands wives to submit to husbands who do not obey the word in one Peter three, one and then third.

32:35This is one that helps me most. God doesn't tell us all the reasons for his actions. Here's my favorite tweet by our, our previous pastor, John Piper. He says, God never does only one thing and everything he does, he's doing thousands of things. Of these we know perhaps half a dozen isn't that good in this case. In Genesis 16, one of the reasons God sends Hagar back to Abram is that God has ordained that the path of honor and blessing for Hagar and and her descendants would be for her to return to the home of Abram. Unlike us, God knows all things past, present, future simultaneously and eternally.

33:23Whether actual or possible, maybe, I don't know, maybe God tells Hagar to return to Sarah because he knows that if she keeps fleeing, she will die of hunger or she'll miscarry Ishmael or she'll be captured by a much worse slave master. We don't know. But here's what we do know, God knows all things God compassionately sees us in our pain. God's plan for us is best and we are responsible to trust and obey God even when we don't fully understand his plan. So the angel of the Lord promises that he will greatly multiply hagar's descendants through her son Ishmael. As you can see in the ESV note on verse 11, as Ishmael means God hears he's gonna have the freedom of a wild donkey.

34:17Verse 12. Now Ishmael is the father of the Arabs. The Arabs would not always exist peacefully with Abraham's descendants. The descendants of Abram's two sons, Ishmael and Isaac would repeatedly clash. And we regularly hear about this continuing conflict between Jews and Israel and Palestinian Arabs. It's an old conflict that goes all the way back to Genesis 16, to the distrustful and disobedient shortcut that Sarah convinced Abram to take with Hagar. Hagar is comforted here that God compassionately sees her. She names the Lord. Elroy verse thirteens uh, explains in the ESV note that means you are a God who sees me.

35:11And that's why the name of the well she was at was called be Laja Roy, the well of a living one who sees me. Now let's just pause for a moment and take comfort that in our pain, God compassionately sees us. So God compassionately sees a pregnant outcast, maid servant and she is seen and loved and God cares about her sufferings and God cares about your sufferings. God cares about you when you experience injustice. And we can argue from Genesis 16 to our situation, from the lesser to the greater. So here's what I mean when I say argue from the lesser to the greater. If you would be comforted if a man kindly gave you $100, how much more would you be comforted if that same man gave you $1 million?

36:04That's argued from the lesser to the greater. The same logic applies here. If God compassionately sees a pregnant outcast maid servant and she rightly takes comfort in that, how much more should you take comfort in the fact that this same God compassionately sees you in your sin and sent his son to die for sinners like you and offers you eternal life with him if you turn from your sins and trust Jesus? Now back to the story. Hagar encounters the angel of the Lord who compassionately sees Hagar. And finally is Ishmael's birth Hagar bears Abraham, a son. Let's read it verses 15 and 16. And Hagar bore Abram a son and Abram called the name of his son whom Hagar bore Ishmael.

37:01Abram was 86 years old when Hagar bore Ishmael to Abram. So this means that Hagar listens to the angel of the Lord, she returns to Abram and Sarah and a Abraham names the child. I think that signals that Abram considers Ishmael to be his own son. In Genesis 17 verse 18, Abraham says to God, oh that Ishmael might live before you. And that seems to indicate that Abraham believes that God will fulfill his promise to give Abraham innumerable descendants through Ishmael. That's what he's thinking at this point. Now, the story about Ishmael's birth in Genesis 16 ends on a cliffhanger. It's like, is this how God is going to fulfill his promise to Abram through Ishmael?

37:57Does this mean that Sarai will never bear a son to Abram? Does this mean that this impatient faithless attempt by Abram and Sarai to to fulfill God's promises will succeed? And we'll see as the story continues in the rest of Genesis, that this attempt by Abraham and Sarah does not succeed and that God will fulfill his promises in his way and in his time. Maybe that's part of the sermon for next week, but for now we've worked through this story in Genesis 16 and we're ready to conclude the sermon by answering the main application question, which is how should you respond to this story? I've already mentioned two ways to respond to the story.

38:39One is acknowledge that you need God's undeserved kindness. Two, take comfort that God compassionately sees you. But here's a primary way that I think you should respond to this story. When you are tempted to get a good thing the wrong way, trust and obey the Lord and wait on him. That's a positive way to put it. Just say it negatively. You'd say, uh, when you're tempted to get a good thing the wrong way, don't be faithless and impatient. You may want a good thing, but it's wrong to get it by sinning. Here are four brief examples to illustrate that principle number one is surrogacy. So imagine a married couple don't have any biological children of their own.

39:36They deeply want children. That's good. So they go the route of surrogacy not good. So in a recent article for world opinions, Daniel Strand explains why that's a problem and gonna quote him. Surrogacy is the medical procedure where a female egg, often from a donor is fertilized with sperm from a male seeking a child of their own. Gay couples make up a large portion of those who use surrogacy. The fertilized egg is then gestated and birthed by a surrogate who is paid for her services. Upon delivering the child, the birthing mother retains no legal rights to the child she carries in births that birthing mother sounds a lot like Hagar, doesn't she?

40:22Daniel Strand continues. In addition to fundamental moral objections, surrogacy is legally questionable, treats children like commodities to be purchased and produced and inflicts serious health and psychological maladies upon the woman who donates, donates the eggs, carries the pregnancy and births the child. Whatever your conclusions about surrogacy, it cannot be a morally defensible position by any Christian. The God-ordained structure of male and female union within the covenant of marriage with children, as the fruit of that union has been and still is the normative biblical standard for all Christians.

41:05Here's a second example, marrying a non-Christian. So imagine a Christian lady is unmarried, she deeply wants to be married. That's a good desire. So she dates and marries a non-Christian man, not good one. Corinthians 7 39 says that if the husband of a Christian woman dies, she's free to be remarried to whom she wishes only in the Lord. The principle is that a Christian May marry a fellow Christian, it's sinful to be unequally yoked with an unbeliever. Here's a third example, sexual immorality. So imagine a young man is unmarried.

41:53He has a strong desire to have sex and that's a good desire. So he indulges in pornography and masturbates not good and he seeks to have sex with women he's not married to. It's even worse. God reserves the gift of sexual intimacy exclusively for marriage. And one last example, we could have dozens of examples, but just one more. A man wants to become wealthier so that he can provide wealth for his family and be generous to others. That's a good desire. So he seeks to become wealthier by gambling, not good. So being wealthy and generous is a good thing, but it's wrong to achieve wealth by immoral means.

42:38So what do those four examples have in common? In each case, a person wants a good thing but is not getting it. And that person is tempted to get a good thing the wrong way. Each person is scheming to solve his or her problem in a culturally accepted way that distrusts and disobeys God notice all these sins are culturally acceptable and the solution then does not successfully solve the problem, but it actually makes the problem worse. So when you aren't getting a good thing that you want, when you want it, the solution is not to take a shortcut by disobeying God. The solution is to trust and obey God and to wait on him.

43:23When you take a sinful shortcut, it ends up not being a shortcut at all, but a counterproductive path that makes the right path longer and more painful. And when you sinfully scheme to get what you want and then you actually get it, does that ultimately satisfy you? No. The only thing that ultimately satisfies you is God and his ways. And there's one more way to state this lesson from Genesis 16, and it it goes with Genesis 17 as well, when God promises Abraham that he will have a son through Sarah, the son Isaac. So here's the lesson, the son of the slave was born according to the flesh while the son of the free woman was born through promise.

44:14That sentence is one that Paul writes. Galatians 4 23, the story of Hagar and Sarah is picture prophecy Paul and Pax it in Galatians 4 21 to 31. I won't go into all that detail now because we're only in Genesis 16, but I'll highlight this sentence. Listen to it again. The son of the slave was born according to the flesh. So that's Ishmael son of Abraham and Hagar, while the son of the free woman was born through promise. That's Isaac, son of Abraham and Sarah. Paul is saying that the way Abram acts with Hagar produces Ishmael's birth according to the flesh. And the way Abraham later acts with Sarah produces Isaac's birth through promise.

45:08So the union with Hagar is according to the flesh because Abram will be thinking something like this. And my wife Sarah is barren and she's getting older. She's passed childbearing years. I just can't see how she'll ever get pregnant. But Hagar, she's young, probably fertile. I could have a child with her. I mean, I don't think I'll ever have a child with Sarahi, but I I could have one with Hagar. If I try to have a child with Sarahi, I'd have to, I'd have to rely on God. But if I try to have one with Hagar, that's something I could actually do. That's the thinking that is wrong, that Paul's highlighting here.

45:49It's a contrast. That's why the births of Ishmael and Isaac illustrate two different approaches to salvation. So, uh, in the first case born, according to the flesh, Ishmael, that's relying on human ability as opposed to relying on God. It's earning the promise by works as opposed to receiving the promise by grace through faith, it's earning God's favor as opposed to trusting God. It's making your own rebellious plans as opposed to waiting on the Lord. So when you are tempted to get a good thing the wrong way, what should you do? And the answer is trust and obey God. Wait on the Lord as Psalm 27 14, exhorts us.

46:32Wait for the Lord. Be strong and let your heart take courage and wait for the Lord. Let's pray. Father, we come to you on the basis of Jesus's work on our behalf, and we acknowledge that we need your undeserved kindness. Thank you that you compassionately see us and when we are tempted to get a good thing the wrong way, would you please help us to trust and obey you and wait on you. Amen.

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Christ Has Come, He Will Come Again

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Tempted To Get A Good Thing The Wrong Way: Sarai, Hagar, and Abram

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Christ Has Come, He Will Come Again

The End Is Not Yet

Woe To Hypocrites!

Tempted To Get A Good Thing The Wrong Way: Sarai, Hagar, and Abram

Surpassing Worth Of Christ

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