God Sees and Rescues
Three Key Takeaways
Everyone in this passage is foolish—including God's people. Sarah tries to solve God's promise with a human solution. Abraham passively agrees. Hagar looks contemptuously at her mistress. The passage deliberately echoes the pattern of sin in the Garden of Eden, showing that God's people aren't heroes to imitate but flawed people who need God's grace.
God sees the vulnerable and comes to them with mercy. Hagar flees into the wilderness, mistreated and alone. But the Angel of the Lord finds her there and speaks to her. She calls God "El Roi"—the God who sees me. God doesn't just see our circumstances; He sees us personally and comes with rescue and blessing.
God calls us back into His people, even when they've hurt us. Hagar suffered real mistreatment at the hands of Abraham and Sarah. But God tells her to return, promising protection and blessing there despite the imperfection. Sometimes we leave God's people because of pain, but God, in His mercy, calls us back to where His protection and purposes lie.
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God Sees and Rescues
Genesis 16:1-6 tells a complicated story:
"Sarai, Abram's wife, had borne him no children. She had a female Egyptian servant named 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 her.' And Abram listened to the voice of Sarai.
"So, after Abram had lived ten 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 in to Hagar, and she conceived.
"And when she saw that she had conceived, she looked with contempt on her mistress. And Sarai said to Abram, 'May the wrong done to me be on you! 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; do to her as you please.' Then Sarai dealt harshly with her, and she fled from her."
We're halfway through the passage. There are kind of two scenes, and we're taking one at a time. We're going to do something done quite often here: look at it through the lens of what this passage teaches us about ourselves, and what it teaches us about God.
It's quite obvious that when we come to the Bible, we're expecting it to teach us about God—what He's like, who He is, what He does. But as much as it does that, the Bible also teaches us about ourselves. It reflects back on our hearts, our thinking. We see ourselves in these stories. God not only wants to show us what He is like; He also wants to help us understand what's going on with us.
We can't understand God properly without understanding ourselves. And we can't understand ourselves properly without understanding God. Every time we come to Scripture, we're asking God to show us not just Himself, but also our own hearts.
What This Teaches Us About Ourselves
Everyone Is Foolish
The first thing you notice is that everyone in this passage is foolish. You see patterns of behaviour that, as soon as you read them, you think, "This is not good."
Sarah is unable to have a baby. She's got a promise from God that they are going to have a child together. So her decision, her logic is, "Well, I know—I'll just get this servant that I've obtained. I'll give her to my husband. Maybe she will have a baby, and I'll get that child for myself."
Immediately, we're like, "This is terrible."
Culturally, it was actually okay. It was legally acceptable. You owned servants. You could have children by them, and then you could count the children as your own offspring. It was part of the wider culture of that day.
But the way the Bible tells the story wants us to see how problematic this actually is. You can see the foolishness in Sarah straightaway.
Then you see Abraham. He says, "Well, yeah, fine. If that's what you want to do, let's go with it."
When it works, and Sarah gets really annoyed with Abraham because Hagar looks with contempt on Sarah, Sarah's foolishness in bringing Hagar backfires. Hagar doesn't come off that well either, because when she gets pregnant, she realises, "Oh, I can get pregnant and you can't." So she starts looking down at Sarah, which winds Sarah up.
Sarah goes to Abraham, who (speaking for husbands generally) was thinking, "This was your idea!" The whole thing is just human foolishness on steroids.
The Problem Is Sin
The Bible uses the word "foolishness" frequently in the book of Proverbs. The fool is someone who lives as if there is no God. Foolishness is the right word for this. Sarah and Abraham are living as if they don't have God's promise that He will supernaturally give them a baby. They're trying to find a human solution to a divine problem.
They are being foolish. Hagar is being foolish. We use the word "foolish" sometimes because it's slightly nicer than "sinful." We don't really like the word "sinful." But it's legitimate to say that the problem here is sin.
When Sarah describes her proposition to Abraham, and Abraham's response, she uses the same language used in the beginning of the Bible in Genesis chapter 3, where Eve sees the fruit on the tree and takes some, and it says Adam, her husband, was there with her.
The original sin—the sin that brought sin into the world—was Eve taking this apple and Adam participating in it. They together sinned before God. She saw something and made a suggestion. He passively agreed to go along with it. They both sinned.
What you're seeing is Abraham and Sarah falling into the same pattern of behaviour that Adam and Eve had in the Garden of Eden. This passage deliberately shows us: this might have been okay culturally, but it is a sinful pattern repeating itself. God's people, Abraham and Sarah, are as messed up as the rest of humanity.
Not Heroes to Imitate
Often, when we come to the Bible expecting the Bible heroes to be examples that we follow, we think, "This is the way we should read the Bible. It tells us what we should do, and then we do it."
Actually, what we often find is that the people in the Bible are not that heroic. They're often foolish and do all kinds of silly things. This helps us understand that our goal is not just to imitate them, but to learn whatever God wants to teach us through their lessons and what's been written down.
The Bible is honest about the people of God. They're foolish. They're sinful. They make terrible decisions. If you come to the Bible thinking you're going to find perfect role models, you're going to be disappointed.
But if you come to the Bible thinking you're going to find honest stories about real people who need God's grace, you're in the right place.
What This Teaches Us About God
The second half of the passage shifts focus. Hagar has fled into the wilderness.
"The angel of the Lord found her by a spring of water in the wilderness, the spring on the way to Shur. And he said, 'Hagar, servant of Sarai, where have you come from and where are you going?' She said, 'I am fleeing from my mistress Sarai.'
"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 shall bear a son. You shall call his name Ishmael, because the Lord has listened to your affliction.'"
God Sees the Vulnerable
Hagar is in the wilderness. She's alone. She's pregnant. She's been mistreated. She's vulnerable. And the Angel of the Lord finds her there.
He asks her, "Where have you come from and where are you going?" He already knows the answer. But He's inviting her into conversation. He's giving her space to tell her story.
Hagar responds. She tells Him she's fleeing from her mistress.
The Angel of the Lord speaks to her. He tells her to return. He promises to multiply her offspring. He tells her she'll have a son and what to name him. He says, "The Lord has listened to your affliction."
Then comes verse 13: "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 sees me.'"
She calls God "El Roi"—the God who sees me.
This is the first time in the Bible that someone gives God a name. And it's not Abraham. It's not Sarah. It's Hagar, the Egyptian servant, alone in the wilderness.
She encounters God. And what strikes her most is this: God sees her.
Not Just Circumstances, But Us
God doesn't just see Hagar's circumstances. He doesn't just see that she's pregnant, that she's in the wilderness, that she's been mistreated. He sees her.
He knows her name. He knows where she's come from. He knows where she's going. He cares about her story. He has plans for her future.
God sees the vulnerable. God sees the mistreated. God sees the alone. And He comes to them with mercy.
God Calls Us Back
But notice what God tells Hagar to do. He doesn't say, "Stay out here in the wilderness, away from those terrible people." He says, "Return to your mistress and submit to her."
Why? Because that's where the blessing is. That's where God's purposes are being worked out. It's not perfect. There are definitely problems there. But that is where God is going to work out His purposes for the whole earth in this family.
Hagar suffered real mistreatment at the hands of Abraham and Sarah. She's not blameless—she looked with contempt on Sarah. But her experience of the people of God was that these people had actually mistreated her. So she's leaving. She's cutting herself off from the people of God.
And God, in His mercy, goes and says, "No, no, come back. It's not perfect. But that is where blessing lies. There are definitely problems there, but that is where I'm going to work out my purposes."
A Word for Today
Almost everyone has a story where they've experienced challenges with God's people—pastors, friends, leaders. They've experienced mistreatment in the church where they thought it should be handled well, and it hasn't been.
Sometimes it's right to leave a certain church. It's absolutely right sometimes to get out of situations.
But sometimes, because we've experienced pain in the people of God, we leave. And actually, what that does is it leaves us vulnerable, it leaves us unprotected. God, in His wisdom and kindness and mercy, sees and comes to people and says, "Come back into the people of God. There's actually protection for you there, and there's blessing for you there."
It won't be perfect. People will sin against you. People will make mistakes. They have all kinds of issues. But there is protection and there is blessing there.
If you feel like you're limping on the inside because of experiences of being mistreated in the people of God, today is the day that God wants to come and speak mercy into hearts and say, "I've seen it. I see you. I know you. I love you. I've got plans for you and plans to work through you."
Repentance: Turning Towards Blessing
The Bible word for turning is repentance. We don't use it that often because it sounds like a bad word. But actually, repentance is the flip side of faith. Repentance is: I'm going this way, but there's loads more blessing that way, so I'm going to turn around and go there.
I'm going this way, but God says the blessing is over there. So I'm turning. That really is what repentance is about. Instead of trying to find my own way, instead of staying in the pickle I've got myself into, God's promise says there's life and blessing over there. So I'm turning, and I'm following Him because I believe and trust Him. He's the God who sees me. So I'm going to go and do what He says.
Sometimes we try not to look God in the eyes because it's too vulnerable for us, because we know we're not actually following Him at the moment. We don't actually want to catch His gaze.
But what Hagar found is a God of mercy. A God who's not waiting to judge us for our mistakes. A God who's looking after us and trying to lead us back into a place of health and safety.
The Shepherd Who Seeks the Lost
This week, reading this passage, what it sounds like is Jesus's parable of the lost sheep. There's one sheep that goes off. Jesus says the shepherd will leave the ninety-nine and go after the one.
That's what we see here. That is what God is like. He's gone after the one who wandered off into the wilderness to pull them back into the people of God.
At Redemption
At Redemption, we come to our Father in heaven, who comes after us, who knows us and loves us. We can lift our eyes and look directly at Him and receive His forgiveness, favour and love towards us.
When we remember the cross of Jesus, we remember that God sees us in our vulnerability, our foolishness, our sin. And He comes to us with mercy, calling us back into His people, into His purposes, into His blessing.
