Genesis chapter 16, verses 1 through 6. Genesis 16, 1 through 6. And we'll read God's words together. Let's begin. Now Sarai, Abram's wife, had borne him no children, and she had an Egyptian maidservant whose name was Hagar. So Sarai said to Abram, See now, the Lord has restrained me from bearing children. "'Please go into my maid. Perhaps I shall obtain children by her.' And Abram heeded the voice of Sarai. Then Sarai, Abram's wife, took Hagar, her maid, the Egyptian, and gave her to her husband Abram to be his wife. after Abram had dwelt ten years in the land of Canaan. So he went into Hagar, and she conceived. And when she saw that she had conceived, her mistress became despised in her eyes. Then Sarai said to Abram, My wrong be upon you. I gave my maid into your embrace, and when she saw that she had conceived, I became despised in her eyes. The Lord judged between you and me. So Abram said to Sarai, indeed your maid is in your hand, do to her as you please. And when Sarai dealt harshly with her, she fled from her presence. The word of the Lord, Abram's test of his patience. Well, brothers and sisters, in the Lord Jesus Christ, God made a covenant with Abram, and verbally and then visually, that's what we saw last time, assured Abram that he would keep that covenant. The Lord Jesus would keep the covenant for him. And because Abram would break the covenant, the covenant keeper will die for him. And not only for Abram, but for Abram and his descendants. The Lord Jesus was the sacrifice on the ground and he was the flaming torch that went through. So Jesus was the keeper of the covenant and he was the sacrifice of the covenant as well. But a covenant always places responsibility on man. In fact, when a child is baptized, the obligation then goes on the parents and upon you, the members of the congregation. And Abram was no exception. He was required to have faith in the coming Christ, a faith that had to be seen in works. And one of those works that he had to do to show his faith in the coming Savior was to wait. for His coming. Wait for the child of promise. And today you will see the doubt that entered Abram's mind and Sarah's mind as well, and their lack of faith that resulted in poor choices with bad consequences. And those are headings, Sarah's bad choice, Abram's bad choice, and the consequences of their bad choices. Our goals are that you will thank the Lord that the child of promise came. and that you will then trust the Lord to take care of the issues of your life and wait for his timing in other things, knowing that God will always do what is best for his children and will do it at the right time. First, Sarah's bad choice, or Sarai's bad choice, Sarai suggested one of the worst things a woman could ever suggest to her husband, to take another wife and have a child with her. It was God's providence and plan that Sarai and Abram would have to wait for their children and get that child at the right time. But why would Sarai encourage her husband to take a second wife? Well, Sarai became impatient. Impatient, waiting for a son, so she wanted to help God out. Isn't that noble? She wants to help God out like if God needed her help to accomplish his purposes. Second, Sarai wanted to remove shame. And doing this, she would have a child of her own, a child that would remove her shame, because a servant's child would have been her child. That's why she said, maybe I shall obtain. I shall obtain children by her. That's what God promised in the end. Remember Isaiah 54, more will be the children of the barren woman. They will become the children of Israel by virtue of the work of Christ. So here she's saying, I want a son by her. That's the word banah, which means to build. She wants to build a family with the child of her servant who will be considered in that society to be her child. But look at what God had said earlier, or sorry, later. God said in Exodus 1, verse 21, dealing with the midwives and see what they wanted. And that's what really Sarah wanted as well. Verse 21, together, And so it was, because the midwives feared God, that he provided households for them. God built families for the midwives because of their act of faith. Later on, 2 Samuel chapter 7, verse 11 and 12, this is regarding David, together, Also, the Lord tells you that he will make you a house. When your days are fulfilled and you rest with your fathers, I will set up your seed after you, who will come from your body, and I will establish his kingdom." Now, this is speaking of an expanded family now. This house will be built that will spread all over the world, was God's promise. So, the idea of what Sarai wanted was good. But she made the compromise here and decided she was going to help God out and she was going to remove her shame. There's a third reason she did this. This was culturally acceptable. If a man were really rich, then his servant would bear children for his wife, so she didn't have to go through pregnancy. It was perfectly acceptable in that culture to do so. And Sarai then decided to ignore female jealousy, something that was very, is very strong. just for the sake of having a family. And you know, of course, Hannah and how she cried out to the Lord because she wanted to have children as well. And so the urge was strong, but the action was wrong. And because of this, Sarah took a dangerous, pragmatic route and took her servant Hagar and gave her to Abram as his concubine. Now, who was Hagar? We're not really sure, the Jews believe that she was a daughter, some say servant, but the Jews believe that she was a daughter of Pharaoh. Remember when Abram went there to Egypt and Pharaoh said, you almost made me sin, take your wife and go. And apparently Pharaoh had given Abram many women, female servants. That you can read about in Genesis 12. But the Jews believed that she was one of Pharaoh's daughters. Because he said, according to the Jews, that it is better that my daughter should be a handmaid in Sarai's house than a mistress in another. Because he held Abram's family in such high regard. But in doing this, she was being an abusive wife. She was being an abusive wife. Sarah used Hagar to fan the flames of Abram's impatience. And in doing so, she attacked marriage and urged the defiling of the marriage bed. That's an abusive wife. We look at things differently because of our sinful nature. But in doing so, she was wicked. True love required that she did what was good for her husband. And this was not good. But she was also an abusive mistress to her servant. You see, God had given strict rules on how to protect your servants. While servants were tolerated at that time, or slaves even, God had given strict rules to protect them. They could not be treated in cruel ways. So she was doubly abusive. This otherwise godly woman, because of her impatience, abused her husband, the one closest to her, and the one who, in many ways, cared for her, abusive to her as well. What can we learn from this? First of all, impatience infected Abram with doubts, and doubts led to adultery. So, brothers and sisters in Jesus Christ, If God isn't giving you the job you want yet, don't take a shortcut. Don't compromise to get that job. Don't take a worse job that is more dangerous for you or will make you sin. Can't get the wife you want? Don't take a shortcut. You'll make a worse choice. So the choice is, let me marry someone who's not so serious as a Christian. Let me marry someone who's not a Christian. Bad choice. Wait on God's timing. There's a picture of the child who was told, if you eat your broccoli, you're going to grow. You are going to grow. The child says, I'm eating my broccoli, but I'm not growing. You're looking in the mirror. You want to see that as soon as you eat the broccoli, you get taller. It doesn't work like that. Patience is important. And you see doubt is a disease that spreads. It's very contagious. And if you have doubts and you're impatient, your children are going to be impatient, your husband, your wife will be impatient. People will feed off of you like a contagious disease if you can't learn to be patient and wait on the Lord. Second, Faith must make you trust. Faith is the opposite of doubt. So how do you have that faith? Well, you fill your mind with God's word so your faith can be strong. Nourish yourself with what God is feeding you. And when somebody's feeding you and taking care of you, you will trust them. They have your welfare in mind, and God does too. Third, impatience can lead to pragmatism. It doesn't matter what the culture says. If God says something is good, do it. If God says something is wrong, don't do it. Don't try to fit in with the world. Someone says that pragmatism is like the stealth bomber that sneaks in undercover and kills. So it doesn't matter that everyone's doing it. If everyone's sleeping around, it doesn't give you the right to do so. If everyone cheats on their taxes, it doesn't give you the right to do so. If everyone talks a certain way and takes God's name in vain, it doesn't give you the right to do so. Everyone doing it does not fit. You have to do what is right according to God's law. Others may see you, and this is the problem, others may see you as kind of backward. Well, you're not following the ways of the world. You're not acting like we are acting. And that can be a pressure. But obeying God is not backward. That's the only thing that will move you forward for that matter, God's Word. Fourth, even if your goal is good, do not resort to sinful means to achieve it. God always ordains the end and the means to that end. Five, no Christian ever had the right to abuse the body of other persons. And this is why prostitution is sinful. This is why abortion is wicked, because it's an abuse of the bodies of other people. That's why adultery. is wrong because it's an abuse of the body of someone else. Sarai didn't give too much thought to that. And six, age does not make one spiritually mature. I mean, how old was Sarai at this time? She was already 65, now 75 years old, and look at the foolish thing she did. Remember this when you're looking for a spouse. Age doesn't mean much. Look for maturity in the person you'd marry. Then seven, would you turn your children over like Sarah to Hagar, to those who would lead them astray from the Lord and teach them lies? You have a responsibility. Hagar was under Sarah. She had a responsibility to care for her. Just like you have a responsibility of taking care of your children. Don't turn them over to be taught by those who have no regard for the things of God. Your children belong to the Lord and they are to be trained to work for the kingdom. And turn them over. And what you feed their minds. You know it's easy. Turn on television. Let the television babysit them. Filling their minds with filth. You will be responsible, you will be committing the same sin as Sarah did. That's Sarah's choice, a bad choice, giving her maidservant to her husband and abusing her husband and the maidservant at the same time. But Abram also made a bad choice, our second point. Abram, a man of great faith, to whom Jesus had just reaffirmed his promise on oath by walking through the sacrifice for him, did not survive this simple test. He had just been nourished by the word and by the illustration, and he ignored it. He chose to walk by sight, not by faith. And in doing this, he denied God's promise. The monogamist had become a polygamist just 10 years of waiting for a son. He became impatient. And Abram followed the foolish advice of his wife Sarai. And she offered what she offered. And she offered her maidservant. And he committed adultery with her. You know what was happening here? Abram was becoming Adam all over again. Just like he followed the advice of his wife Eve and Abe, so his descendant Abram followed the advice of his wife and destroyed her himself and her in the process. It was foolish behavior for an 86-year-old man. And by the way, old men can do foolish things too, so beware. He did not consider the advice, or if the advice was supported by God's law. He just went along. Maybe it was the lust of the flesh as well, but it was an impatience that gripped him. He didn't care. He had to get this matter resolved. And then Abram offered his body to the things of the world, ignoring what was right, ignoring God's call. Look at what we have in our sermon notes, passage you remember, I'm sure you've memorized this. Romans 12, 1, we say together, I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that you present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable to God, which is your reasonable service. Now it's true that God did work in Abram and Abram did learn the right lesson. We read in Hebrews 6, verse 15 together. And so after waiting patiently, Abram received what was promised. He did come back to patience after many failures. So there is hope because of God's promise. What can we learn from Abram's foolish choice, his bad choice? Well, again, even the strong can fall. Abram was a man of faith. I mean, he is the man who packed up his family and moved from where he lived into a hostile place because God said so. And God had told him that his son was going to be the one that will save the world, not just him. And he looked forward for that day and rejoiced, but even the strong can fall. So don't think you are beyond committing adultery. Don't think you are beyond murdering. Everyone here can commit those sins or worse. The devil will use even those close to you to tempt you to sin. And it might be a friend, it might be a fellow student, or it might be the one next to you in your bed who can tempt you and lure you away and make you sin. Guard yourselves always. One of the common reasons for falling into pragmatism is if you're not daily refreshed with God's promise. Now, it's true, Abraham did not have the Bible. And you can have some sympathy for him. But what excuse do you have, brothers and sisters, in Jesus Christ? You have the Word of God. You have it on your phone. You can play it in there. It's recorded. It's pictured for us in the Lord's Supper. The love of God is everywhere. The promises are real. You can talk to each other. You come to church, maybe you twice on Sundays. The access to sermons, go to sermon audio. There are millions of sermons available that you can listen to, to be reminded of God's promises. You have no excuse. not to be refreshed with the Word of God, so you will keep faithful to the Lord who has promised you life everlasting. When you're tempted and given, watch and see how your devotional life is, and you'll see that's where the weakness is. You're not refreshing yourself with the Word of God. You're not talking to God like you should in prayer. Fourth lesson, not everything that seems to make sense is sensible. I mean, it looked kind of reasonable. The culture allowed that. Sarah, I could have a child from her maidservant and claim that child is hers. Seems sensible thing to do. There's a delay. I'm getting older. Let's use this younger woman to have a child. But it was not sensible. It only made sense in man's mind, not in God. In God's mind, you must let God's word be your guide. So Abram made this foolish choice. Bad choice. His wife made bad choice as well. What were the consequences of this? That's from verse 4. Sarai, the originator of the plan, was the first to face the consequences of hers and Abram's sinful, foolish choices. Hagar, who became pregnant, started to despise Sarah. Despise literally means to curse. And this bothered Sarah now. Why would Hagar despise Sarai? Oh, Hagar saw that she was blessed with a child and her barren mistress would take her child and even name the child. Which woman would like that, for your child to be taken away and named by some other woman? More than that, the fact that she was pregnant and she was going to lose her child, also meant that her life was ruined. Because she would not be able to marry anyone else. She was considered married to Abram. And the fact of her having her own family, and especially if she were a daughter of Pharaoh, it would have been a hard thing to deal with. she would have lost her future. So she spoke bad things about Sarai to other people. The text suggests that she even asked God to curse Sarai for her wickedness. Now, That's the first problem. Now unbelievably, Sarai blamed her husband for the result of her sins. And even more unbelievably, Sarai wanted the curses that Hagar pronounced on her to be put upon Abram. Sarai called Covenant God to condemn Abram for what happened to her. This was not just an abuse anymore of Hagar, this was not an abuse of Abram, this was now an abuse of God. She was calling God's name, calling God, it was an abuse of God's name. Curse this man because of what has happened to me. Now it's true that Abram failed as a covenant head. He failed to fulfill his duty to protect his wife. His sin exposed his wife to hatred. And God had just sworn to him and to Sarai that they would have sons, one of whom would save the world. But he abandoned the protection of his wife by his sin. And he thinks that was the end of it. The wife praying to God, abusing God's name, praying that God would curse Abram for what she did. And then Abram added to the sin and the consequences. Abram committed more wrongs to cover his adultery by giving Sarai full power to act, giving up his headship over the family and over his wife. More, he abandoned his new wife, failing to protect her and turning her over to the authority of the first wife. He ruined her life. And in this way, we say Sarai was doing what Eve did, but what Abram did was worse than what Adam did. He failed two women. He failed Hagar and he failed his wife. And by the way, he is the ground for the perennial war that's going on in the Middle East. We read about the fall of the Syrian government, we don't know what that will lead to. Who do you think was responsible there? It's the consequences of this same action. How many lives have been harmed on account of that? But the most significant consequences of what Abram did is that he could have interrupted the line of promise. The line from which Christ would come to die for the sins of the world. And God then had to intervene to save this line. See the consequences of impatience? Abuse of his wife. The abuse of Hagar. The danger to the world. The hindrance to the work of Jesus Christ. Look at the trouble. When he did this, then Sarai, the princess of God, who had faith in Christ and experienced His miraculous provision and was promised more, she ignored that and treated Hagar cruelly. You see, her sin led to more sin, and you can imagine Sarai telling the others not to talk to Hagar, to isolate her, not even giving her enough food to eat because she was so angry with what had happened. In general, she made Hagar's life very uncomfortable. As a result, Abram lost his child and the child's mother as Hagar was forced to flee from Sarai's cruelty. How hard it must have been for a father, a good and godly father otherwise, to turn out the pregnant mother and his first child and her first child, which is often more difficult for a mother, and to send them out. They had to go into the desert. Who would do that to a pregnant woman? But she fled with Ishmael still in her womb. Father Abraham did this. And by the way, the name Hagar means flight. She had to act out her name. What can we learn then from all these consequences? First of all, walking out of God's laws always brings trouble. You have a single man in history who had multiple wives, who ended up with a remarkable family. It doesn't work. What Abram chose to do was horrendous before God. So make good choices, choices that please God. Let your choices be guided by God's wisdom and God's promises. Second, don't abdicate the responsibility of the family by refusing to properly instruct your wife and ignoring the discipline of your children, and so bring judgment upon them." You see, the sins of the father do come upon the wife and the children. We, as society, don't punish the child for the sins of the father. That's just the system God regulates. But He will put the curses upon the children that come from the father. Isn't this what we constantly hear in our society? You blame others for the problems that we have. You sin and then attack the person to avoid personal responsibility. That's what Eve did. Go back to the story. Adam, what have you done? The woman. The woman, what have you done? The serpent. What are they doing here? Abram, what have you done? It was the woman. The woman, what have you done? It was the man. blame others for it. You know, we talk about projection, a very common idea in our society that liberals are very prone to use. They accuse you of doing the things that they are doing. Well, it didn't start in modern day. Sarah was a master, a mistress of it. She blamed other people for what she did. So it really started with Christian people. projecting our wrongs upon others. Don't do that. Take responsibility. Repent. One sin is never alone. I used to hear that from my father. I never really believed it. And he said, you tell one lie, then you have to tell another lie to cover that up and another lie to cover that up. And lies are terrible. But sometimes it leads to murder. Sometimes it leads to adultery. It leads to other sins. One sin never, ever is alone. It just multiplies if we leave it. And the only solution to that is to plead the blood of Christ for your sins. Go to Him and say, what can wash away my sins? Nothing but the blood of Jesus. Otherwise, you will start this cycle. Five, worst of all, if you compromise, and this is really where it comes in. You can learn that sometimes you compromise and you can hurt your family, you can hurt your children, but compromise above all else hurts the cause of Christ. Why are we here? For the glory of God. We're here to build a church of Jesus Christ. And when there's sin within the family or starting in the individual heart that spreads to the family, it spreads to the church. It hinders the work of the cross. How can we build God's kingdom? Well, we have to have clean hearts. We have to have willing hands. We have to work together. Matthew Henry said, you can't fight in detached parties. You have to be united if you are going to fight and win the world for Jesus Christ. What can we conclude with? First of all, With good intentions, Sarai made a bad choice, conniving with her husband who joined her in her bad choices and committing adultery with Hagar. But sin always has consequences. And so they ended up treating Hagar with cruelty, forcing her to flee to protect herself. Beloved in the Lord Jesus Christ, not because everyone is doing it means it's a good thing to do. God's word must be your guide. Even if you don't feel that something is bad, let God's word be your guide. You know why? Because your conscience isn't always right. You know, people would say, go with your conscience. Unless your conscience is guided by the Word of God, your conscience will mislead you and make you believe that something is true that isn't. So you have to go back to the Word of God. You see, sometimes people would say, oh, there's one song by Debbie Boone way back when. She talked about how can this thing be wrong if it feels so right, and people sing it in churches. We don't go by feelings, we go by truth. And there are severe consequences for bypassing God's standards. You forget God's words, you fall into sin. So what will make you strong and do what is right regardless of the pressures? Well, you have to know you're a child of the King. You have to know that the King purchased you by His blood. And you have to know that that King promised you heaven. He promised you eternal life. rich in the presence of Christ. Your future is secured with everything you need. Here's the thing. What happened to Abram's relationship with Hagar? They're both, as Matthew Henry would say, were meat. They both died and they fell apart. The marriage didn't last. What lasted was the hope that Abram had in eternal life, where the treasures that he accumulated are stored. Not the treasures of this earth, but the treasures in heaven. Money, what happens to money? Well, the government prints more and steals from you and by inflation rip you off. Or money is stolen, or money is used up. The things that you have are much more. And that's what God is reminding you. That's why you come to church every week. That's why we have the Lord's Supper every month. So you're reminded of God's promises. So you will stay faithful. So you will not grow impatient and try to short-circuit God's law and compromise. Because those things will hurt your ability to do what you should right now. And finally, if you have tried in vain to find salvation, ask God to count Christ's work. His life and His death. The sacrifices on the ground, His death. His life walking in between the animal cut in two for you. If you ask God for Christ's life and Christ's death, you will get it. It's free for you. It cost Him, but He will give it to you. And then you can faithfully wait, wait for the completion of your salvation, doing the work of the Lord. Amen. Let's pray. Lord, teach us temperance, learning to wait, for we have so much already. that we don't react in a way that will push us to disregard the work you have, the promises you've given to us, and we will do the work you've called us to do. But what a good thing to be called by your name. Help us not to be easily distracted and take our eyes off the great work that is before us. We ask in Jesus' name, amen.