Jonathan, thank you so much. Well, please do keep your Bibles open in Genesis, chapter 16. One of the joys of my job here is I get to spend a lot of time in the coffee shop chatting with people. I love to meet up with folk, especially folk who are new and hear their storeys, hear how they came to be at church, what God’s doing in their lives. And over recent years, I’ve heard at least two types of storeys, two very different storeys. Even quite recently, I’ve met with folk and these are the storeys they’ve told me. So one person said to me, and perhaps this resonates with you a little bit. I’ve been following God for 10, 20, 30, 40 years, whatever it is for you, and it feels like nothing ever seems to change. It feels as though following God hasn’t really made a difference. And I’m starting to wonder whether he really cares. Perhaps now the time has come, well, frankly, to give up on following Him. He’s not given me the things that I thought he promised me in life. Perhaps my life is full of disappointment, loneliness, suffering. And if God’s not going to give me the things I think he’s promised, well, I’d better just go and get them myself. Perhaps that storey relates to you. I’ve heard some very different storeys even this week, folk who’ve not been in church at all, folk who’ve had no Christian upbringing, not a Christian, from a Christian family. And they’ve told me storeys of how God has met them in miraculous ways. They’d say, well, it’s as though I’ve been walking in the wilderness, in a desert, if you like, not even knowing that God was real, not even knowing that there was anyone out there. And then he came and met me. He showed himself to me, he brought me home. Even this week, quite a prominent young YouTuber, a chap called Joe Weller, shared his testimony online to millions of followers. He said, I found Jesus. Jesus has saved me, I’ve come home. Two very different storeys, two quite contemporary storeys. But as we’ll see, these are the two storeys In Genesis chapter 16, an account written thousands of years ago. And yet the storeys are so contemporary, so relevant for us. So let’s have a look. And as we have been doing in recent weeks, we’re looking at the life of Abraham and we’ve come to chapter 16. Now, I should say we’re at a little point before Abraham and Sarah’s names are changed. I find it really difficult to say Abram and Sarai. So if I slip into between the two, you know what? But we know who we’re talking about here, don’t we? And let’s have a look at their storey. So back in Genesis chapter 12, God gives a promise to Abraham. He says, I will make you into a great nation. But that was 10 years ago. From Genesis chapter 16. It’s been a long time in coming. It’s reasonable they might think, when is God going to deliver on what he’s promised? God repeated the promise in Genesis chapter 15. The previous chapter, God said to Abram, your descendants will be like the stars in the sky. What a promise. That’s how numerous, that’s how big your family will be. Like the stars in the sky. Look out on a clear night, you can’t even begin to count them. Abraham, that’s my promise to you. But that’s a problem. The problem comes in verse one of chapter 16. Now Sarai, Abram’s wife, had borne him no children. Here’s the promise. Loads of ascendants. More than the stars in the sky. But they had no children. At this point, Abram is 86 years old. We can infer from other bits of scripture that Sarai is 76, 10 years younger. Now given their ages, Abraham and Sarai would have been regulars at all sorts of clinics. But not the family planning clinic. That’s the one they wouldn’t have been at. Now when Abram first heard the promise In Genesis chapter 12, the promise that came to him, a 75 year old Iraqi nomads, that he transformed him into a great nation, that promise then was incredible, unbelievable. And yet Abram believed him. When Abram said to the Lord In Genesis chapter 15, a servant will become my heir, God said no, you will have a son. A natural heir will be born. And Abram believed him. When Isaac the heir is born in Genesis 21, Abraham and Sarah laugh. Because all of these promises all the way through have been unbelievable. They’re incredible. You’d laugh if I told you what God had promised. But we’ve now reached a point in Genesis chapter 16 where Abraham and Sarai start to wonder. This promise has been an awfully long time in coming. It was incredible 10 years ago, but now, will it ever happen? Does God need some help from us to deliver on his promise? We’d love God to keep his word, but we wonder if at this stage he needs a little bit of help. Wouldn’t it be easier if we just did this to help bring about the promise? Well, the storey of Abraham and Sarah, here is what I call the Bob the Builder storey. I don’t know if you remember the children’s TV show called Bob the Builder. You might have seen it. And they had a catchphrase. The catchphrase is, can we fix it? Yes, we can. And that’s what Abraham and Sarah think. Can we fix this problem? Yes, we can. Here’s the plan. God’s promise is too slow. I’m not sure how he’s going to keep it. Let’s fix it for him. Chapter 16, middle of verse one. But she had an Egyptian slave named Hagar. So she said to Abram, the Lord has kept me from having children. Go sleep with my slave. Perhaps I can build a family through her. Abram agreed to what Sarai said. So after Abram had been living in Cana 10 years, Sarai, his wife, took her Egyptian slave Hagar and gave her to her husband to be his wife. He slept with Hagar and she conceived. Now, this series of events would have been surprisingly uncontroversial in Abraham’s world. Having a servant taking another wife, surrogacy, nothing in these events is going to make the curtains twitch from across the road or be the local gossip. It would have been quite normal in many ways. The real problem here is the spiritual issue, the spiritual issue at the core, and that’s their lack of belief, their unbelief in God’s promises. Sarai says, I’m old. God’s promised you an heir, Abraham. Here’s a way that we can make it happen. The language here is actually very reminiscent of the Garden of Eden of Adam and Eve. Just as Eve took and gave the fruit to Adam, so we’re told Sarai took and gave Hagar to Abram. Temptation works in the same way. They saw something, they took it, they gave it. And the consequences of sin, the consequences of unbelief, work in the same way. Abram and Sarai, they stop trusting God’s promise. They take matters into their own hands. And look what happens in the middle of verse four. When she knew that she was pregnant, she began to despise her mistress. And Sarai said to Abram, you are responsible for the wrong I’m suffering. I put my slave in your arms. And now that she knows she is pregnant, she despises me. May the Lord judge between you and me. Your slave is in your hands. Abram said, do with her whatever you think best. And Sarai mistreated Hagar, so she fled from her. The consequences of these sinful choices run deep. Hagar despises Sarai. Sarai and Abram blame each other. Sarai mistreats Hagar. Hagar runs away. Choices always have consequences. And the choice here to disobey God’s word, to disbelieve his promise, have generational impacts. And here’s the root of the issue. God doesn’t need your help to keep his promises. We saw that last week. Do you remember the covenant ceremony where the animals were divided and the parties of the covenant would walk through together to pledge their promise to the covenant? But it was just the Lord who walked through the flaming torch of the Lord to say, this is God’s promise, this is his covenant. He’s the one who’s going to keep it. He’s the one who’s going to keep his promise. And he doesn’t need your help. We see that most clearly at the cross, don’t we? Jesus loved us and died for us, gave himself to forgive our sins. God doesn’t need your help to rescue you. You’re in the pit. What help can you give? God will keep his promise. But so often we are like Bob the Builder, aren’t we? We want to fix it. How do we try and fix it? Well, one way we try and fix it is to demand the good life. Now we know that God promises wonderful things to his people. He promises eternal life, salvation, rescue, peace, joy, blessings. But I want it now. I know what he’s promised. I know what the future holds, but I want it now. And if I don’t feel like I’ve got the good life, like the storey I shared at the beginning, I feel disappointed. I feel like God’s let me down. I feel like I’m missing out. Then I’m going to take it. I want the good life now, so I will take it. Whether it’s an unwise relationship, a job that pays well, that destroys the soul, whatever it is, we think, here’s what I want, here’s what I think I deserve, I’m going to take it. And if I don’t, well, I’ll just resent God for not giving it to me. Now how do I fix it? I grab the good life now. I grab what I think I deserve. Now here’s the other way we try to fix it and it’s the more spiritual solution. We think to ourselves, well, I know what Jesus has done on the cross. I know he loved me. I know he died for me. I know that God wants to rescue me, but I want to secure that. I want to make sure I’ve earned it. I feel like I deserve that salvation, that rescue. If only I work a little bit harder, if I serve God a bit more, if I pray longer, then God will give me that life, won’t he? Because I’ll have deserved it. I’ll have earned it. As though God’s promised blessings become dependent on me. I want to earn it. I want to feel like I’ve deserved it. But God says, no, I don’t need your help to keep my promises. Abram and Sarai tried to fix what they thought was God’s broken promises, but it left them broken. Here’s the second storey we see. If Abraham and Sarah’s storey is the Bob the Builder, we can fix it. Hagar’s storey is very different. Hagar’s storey is a storey of being seen and loved. Seen and loved. Hagar’s storey is tragic in so many ways. She’s abused, mistreated, far from home, a single mum, cast out into the wilderness. And yet hers is a storey that resonates with many. A storey of being led home. Now, where is Hagar headed? She’s headed to Egypt, that’s where she’s from. Verse 7. The angel of the Lord found Hagar near a spring in the desert. It was the spring that is beside the road to Shur. A spring in the desert is a sign of hope and she’s on the road to Shur. That means that she’s very much on the way to Egypt. Now, just as an aside here, I think it’s helpful context to remember that the book of Genesis is first written down by Moses to God’s people in the wilderness, having just escaped from Egypt in the Exodus. So the storey here of someone heading back to Egypt would have been very pertinent. Now the angel of the Lord comes to Hagar and after asking where she’s from and where she’s going, says three things. Verse 9. The angel gives her a command. Go back to your mistress and submit to her. Verse 10. The promise I will increase your descendants so much that they will be too numerous to count. And there’s a prophecy about her son. Verse 11. You shall name him Ishmael, for the Lord has heard of your misery. Now, there’s many more things that we could look at in these words. We’ve not got time to look at them all. But I’d love us just to see two remarkable things. First, it’s Jesus, the son of God, who meets Hagar, described here in the text as the angel of the Lord. But we see clearly more than an angel, more than simply an angelic messenger. Verse 10. Look at what the messenger says. I will surely multiply your offspring. The angel doesn’t say, the Lord says, here’s a message from God for me to share with you. No. The words come with direct authority. I will surely multiply your offspring. The promise is coming from the horse’s mouth, as it were. And look on to verse 13. Who was it who spoke to her? She gave this name to the Lord. Capital letters. That’s Yahweh, the Lord who spoke to her. You are the God who sees me. She doesn’t consider herself having been visited by an angel. She says, no, I’ve seen the Lord. I’ve heard from the Lord. We could talk more about theophanies and Old Testament appearances of Jesus, but I think from the text here, it’s pointing us towards that conclusion. Not simply an angelic messenger, but the Son of God coming to meet with Hagar in the wilderness. Second, Hagar gives a unique, wonderful name for the Lord Jesus. It’s a unique name for God only given once in the whole Bible. And it describes to us the richness of his loving character. And it comes from the testimony of a destitute foreign slave girl. How wonderful is that? That through Hagar’s life and experience, we get to know something more of God’s character. The name. There, it’s in verse 13. It’s the name. El Roy Elroy. You are the God who sees me. I have now seen the one who sees me. We sometimes say that, don’t we? I feel seen. I feel seen. What we mean by that is, I feel exposed. I feel that my motives have been laid bare. I feel like you’ve looked right into me and seen what I’m really like. And if I say I feel seen, I feel ashamed. Found out. To be seen is to be exposed. But when Hagar says, you are the God who sees me, it comes only with an experience of love and grace and blessing. I feel seen and loved. In John chapter 4, Jesus meets another woman at a well in the wilderness. She’s seen. Jesus knows everything about her, doesn’t he? She’s completely seen. Jesus gives her a prophecy about her life, and yet she’s love. And what does Jesus do in John chapter four? He says to the woman, have this water. Have living water. Living water that will give you eternal life. Living water that won’t run dry. Living water that will quench your soul. And isn’t that what Hagar’s just experienced? Because what does she call this place? This place is Bear Lahay Roy. It’s the well of the living one. Hagar has met the living one, the one who gives living water. The one who has given her life and hope. Now, I don’t know which storey resonates with you more. The storey of Abraham and Sarah who waited so long but they gave up trusting the promise? Or Hagar, who find herself lost and alone in the wilderness. The message to both of them is the same. The message is come back home. It’s not just home as the place of security, the place of family, the place that feels like home because home is the place of God’s promise. You know, you could read the angel’s words quite harshly, couldn’t you? Go back to your mistress and submit to her. It’s not saying go home and do as you’re told. It’s saying, go back to that place. Go back to that household. Go back to that family. Why? Because that’s where you find God’s promises. That’s where God has been and will be faithful to his people. Don’t head off to Egypt. That’s nowhere to go. Don’t head back to the garden, that place of taking and eating as we like. Come home to the place of God’s promise. And in a moment we’re going to share this meal, this family meal, this homely meal. A place where we’re reminded of God’s promises that Jesus saw us. He met us in the wilderness and he loved us and called us home. Let’s pray. Father, thank you so much. That the Lord Jesus met us in our sin. He met us in the wilderness. He saw us. He saw what we’re really like to the core and loved us and died for us. Help us, whether for the first time or again and again, to come home, to return afresh to the place of God’s promise. The cross of Christ, in his name we pray. Amen.