Learning To Wait, Part 1

Today on Fellowship in the Word, Pastor Bill Gebhardt challenges you to become a fully functioning follower of Jesus Christ. You see what's happened to Abram and Sarai is what often happens to us. He's sick and tired of being sick and tired about a certain dilemma in his life. Whenever you're in that position, you are vulnerable to make enormous mistakes, just enormous mistakes. And that's exactly what they did.

Not only do they have these consequences to deal with, but it even gets much worse. Thank you for joining us today on this edition of Fellowship in the Word with Pastor Bill Gebhardt. Fellowship in the Word is the radio ministry of Fellowship Bible Church located in Metairie, Louisiana. Let's join Pastor Bill Gebhardt now as once again he shows us how God's Word meets our world. I'm sure you're not hearing this for the first time, but life can be messy. And none of us really like it that way at all. We all face predicaments in what appears to be no win scenarios. Often we find ourselves facing what we call a dilemma. There are occupational dilemmas. You have a job that you don't enjoy at all, but that job supports your family. And your family likes where they're living. And then the company comes and offers you another job, an interesting job, and a job that pays you a whole lot more money.

And the only part of the job that doesn't seem exactly right is that the job is in Nome, Alaska. You have a dilemma. You can have a relational dilemma. You're single.

And as you've been reminded, you're not getting any younger. And you finally start dating someone, and it appears to you that that person wants to marry you. But there are so many little signs and little inconsistencies that you find yourself very reluctant to spend the rest of your life with this person. So what do you do? Do you overcome your fears and just do it anyway, or do you break it off?

Only maybe to find that you won't find someone else in the future. You have a dilemma. Financially, you find yourself in a tight budget. And then all of a sudden, something comes along, a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to buy something that no one would ever not want to buy.

The problem, though, of course, is that it will stretch your budget to the limits, and it will also eat up the lion's share of your savings. You have a dilemma. All of us face dilemmas all our life. But today I want to talk about a particular kind of dilemma, one that I know that we all share. I want to talk about a spiritual dilemma.

You know what that means. That means this is one of those things that you've prayed about and prayed about and prayed about. It's one of those things where you find yourself waiting and waiting for the Lord to move. But all you do is wait, and nothing seems to be happening at all. When do you jump in?

When do you jump in and do something yourself? That's a dilemma. Open your Bibles to Genesis chapter 16. Genesis chapter 16, we're dealing with the life of Abraham, the friend of God. The context, by the way, for Abram and Sarai's dilemma is found in chapter 15, verses 2 and 3 and 4.

So I'll read that first. Abram said, O Lord God, what will you give me since I am childless? And the heir of my house is Eliezer of Damascus, one of his servants.

It's been 10 years since he's left Ur of the Chaldees. He says, Lord, what are we going to do about this, is Eliezer the heir? God says, behold, the word of the Lord came to him in verse 4 saying, this man will not be your heir, but one who shall come forth from your own body. He shall be your heir.

There's the context. God has told him. God reinforces the Abrahamic covenant.

This child will carry your DNA. That's what God says to him. But he and Sarai have been waiting 10 years. That's a dilemma. You see, you wait and you wait and you say, look, I don't think anything's going to happen.

He's 85, she is 75. So in chapter 16, they decide to do something about it. And the consequences of their decision are with us even today. Two major points are made in chapter 16. The first one is found in the first six verses, and it's this. Trying to accomplish God's plans by worldly methods inevitably leads to unwanted consequences. Trying to accomplish God's plans by worldly methods inevitably leads to unwanted consequences. Verse 1.

Now Sarai, Abram's wife, had borne him no children, and she had an Egyptian maid whose name was Hagar. By the way, that verse describes the very application of all of chapter 16. That verse is a consequence. If you remember when we studied this early on, there was a drought in the land then that Abram decided to go to Egypt.

And so he went. And when he went to Egypt, he said to Sarai, his wife, look, you're such a beautiful woman that the Egyptians are going to want you. They're going to put you in one of the royal family harems. And if they do that, they'll kill me because you're my wife.

So I want you to tell them, and I will tell them, that you're my sister. And so he did that. And she ended up, by the way, in sort of an incubation period in Pharaoh's household.

In other words, they put them away for about nine months to make sure that they're not with child. And then she would become part of Pharaoh's harem. Now, God then intervened and brought disease upon Pharaoh's household. Pharaoh then got really upset and let them go. But one of the things that happened is, apparently Hagar was a maiden in the royal household.

She became the servant of Sarai, and she had to leave with them when they left Egypt and went back into the land of Canaan. So that's the context. Now, what's the first solution? What seems like a good idea. So Sarai said to Abram, now behold, the Lord has prevented me from bearing children.

She could have meant that from anger, I can't tell by the verse, or she could have been sincere about it. I've just not had a child. So here comes the idea. Please go into my maid. Perhaps I shall obtain children through her. There's the idea.

And it seemed like a good idea. Let's look at the facts. She couldn't have children.

That's clear. Secondly, Abraham is still to be the father of a nation. And that Abraham, this heir of Abraham has to come from him.

It has to be his DNA. Waiting longer, by the way, may even jeopardize Abram's ability to have a child. So she said, I think I've come up with a good idea. And she's backed up completely by culture. Bob Diffenbaugh writes this, the culture of that day provided the means to accomplish Sarai's intentions. Ancient documents reveal that when a woman could not provide her husband with a child, she could give her female servant as a wife and claim the child of the union as her own. And the Code of Hammurabi talks about that. There are several ancient documents that talk about this practice. So she said the child will be mine and certainly the child will be yours.

Sounds like a good idea. I give her a B plus for creativity, but I give her an F for theology. This is not God's will at all. This is something else. Then the saddest part of that verse, the last sentence.

And Abram listened to the voice of Sarai. Wow. One of the messages that I had heard on this was entitled, Would a Real Man Stand Up?

What are you doing? By the way, don't think for a moment that he's a very wimpy guy because of the two episodes we looked at. In a chapter that I skipped over, Lot was taken captive by several armies and Abram pursued them, got Lot back. He's a man's man when it comes to the battlefield, but it's like a lot of men. He's all men outside the home, but not a man inside the home. And that's his problem. He just holds up. He just listens to her voice.

That sounds like a pretty good idea to him. And as soon as that happens, the consequences begin. Trying to accomplish God's plans by worldly methods inevitably lead to unwanted consequences.

Now they begin. After Abram had lived 10 years in the land of Canaan, Abram's wife Sarai took Hagar, the Egyptian, her maid, and gave her to her husband as his wife. He went into Hagar and she conceived.

And when she saw that she had conceived, her mistress was despised in her sight. So what are the consequences in just a couple of verses there? One is Abram is now an immoral man. He's an adulterer. He's practicing polygamy.

There's something else, though. Hagar conceives the child. And now it says at the end of verse four, when she saw that she had conceived, her mistress was despised in her sight. Hagar now hates Sarai.

In fact, that word despise is an interesting word. The Hebrew word that's used there means small or little. In other words, Hagar belittled Sarai. She saw Sarai as insignificant. Or we would say she saw Sarai as nothing. Now, of all the things you could be in the world, it wouldn't be good to be a slave.

That's for sure. But I'll tell you what the worst thing you could be. A woman who's barren.

Of all the different things that could happen on the totem pole of their society, a woman who can't bear children would be the lowest. And so she despises her. She makes her little in her eyes.

I would imagine she even sees herself as better now than Sarai. The consequences begin. Verse five, and Sarai said to Abraham, may the wrong done me be upon you.

You might have heard this before. It's all your fault. That's what she's saying. It's all your fault. And she's partially right.

You see, she's partially right. She's saying to him, look, it's all your fault. May the wrong done to me be done upon you.

I gave my maid into your arms. But when she saw that she had conceived, I was despised in her sight. May the Lord judge between you and me. By the way, don't ever say that to someone. Normally you're jointly responsible for problems. And if you want the Lord to judge, you might not really like the Lord's judgment when it comes out. But she's upset.

She's very emotional. But understand the consequences here. What has Sarai given up for this man? Remember, he came home one day. They were in Ur of the Chaldeans.

They were typical pagans. And he said, oh, the God who is, not the gods we worship, but the God who is has told me he wants me to leave. And she said, what do you mean leave? Where are we going?

He said, well, he didn't tell me where. So what did she do? She left with him. You see, she left with him. She goes nearly a thousand miles. Ends up in the land of Canaan.

Now a drought comes. They have to go to Egypt. So what does he say to her?

You see, you have to tell them you're my sister. She gave up her family. She gave up her friends. She gave up her home. She gave up her dignity for this man. So then she comes up with this idea. So you can see she's emotionally. And that's part of the problem, by the way, when we have dilemmas.

We try to make emotional choices instead of spiritual choices. And that's always deadly. You've got to love Abram, though. Verse 6. And Abram said to Sarai, behold, your mate is in your power. Do to her what is good in your sight.

Hey, it's your idea, wasn't it? You deal with it. You can always count in the context of a marriage the passivity of men. Look, I don't want to deal with that. You deal with it. You made the decision. She's your servant.

Now think of this. For her, that's a license. She was worried because, remember, they think the heir will be with Hagar. She thought Abram will not let me do anything but treat Hagar as well as possible because the heir is there.

But he says, look, she's your servant. So Sarai treated her harshly. That word there, harshly, is the same word Moses uses of how the Egyptians treated the slaves from Israel for 400 years.

When God says, I hear their cry coming up before me because they have been treated so harshly in Egypt. Same word. She made her life miserable. How miserable? Notice the next statement. She made her life so miserable that she fled from her presence.

Think of that. You say, well, I don't know exactly what that means. Well, we're going to find out the context. She decides to leave and she's going to go back to Egypt. Pregnant girl who's a slave by herself, land of Canaan, wants to go and is going to leave and go back to Egypt. The chances of her survival is zero. She has no chance.

She'll never make it back. But her life was so miserable with Sarai, she decided to do it. So think of all of the consequences here that have already happened because somebody had a good idea and said, I think I know how to solve this dilemma. Look at the mistakes that Abraham made. He failed by not taking God at his word. He failed by not taking God. God told him, I'm going to do this.

I will do this. He failed. Why? He was tired waiting. Why? He waited 10 years.

I'm tired of waiting. Secondly, he failed by listening to his wife's ungodly advice. You see, and I'm sure she could have got a couple of other people together and said, this makes sense. A lot of people do that.

There are people all over the place that do this. He also failed to test Sarai's advice against what he knew about God. He never interacts with it at all. And lastly and most tragically, he failed to go to God for wisdom and guidance. There's no prayer here.

He doesn't pray or anything. You see, what's happened to Abraham and Sarai is what often happens to us. He's sick and tired of being sick and tired about a certain dilemma in his life. Whenever you're in that position, you are vulnerable to make enormous mistakes, just enormous mistakes. And that's exactly what they did.

Not only do they have these consequences to deal with, but it even gets much worse. Trying to accomplish God's plans by worldly methods inevitably leads to unwanted consequences. And now for the rest of the chapter.

God requires faith that waits when it comes to his promises and his plans. By the way, the poor girl's in a dilemma in verse 7. And now the angel of the Lord found her by a spring of water in the wilderness by the spring on the way to Shur.

Now if you would look at a map, you would find out that Shur is part of the caravan trail that leads all the way from Syria down through Canaan and goes to Egypt. She's trying to hook up with a caravan if she can and find her way, but she's completely alone and pregnant. Look who takes the initiative here. This is divine intervention. It says here that the angel of the Lord found her. The angel of the Lord. Not an angel of the Lord. This is the angel of the Lord. This is the second person of the Trinity.

This is the Son of God who becomes our Lord Jesus Christ. Shows up all the way through Genesis. The angel of the Lord. You see it in Exodus. You see it in 2 Samuel.

You see it in Zechariah. Once Jesus Christ comes on the scene, never in the New Testament is there ever a reference again to the angel of the Lord. This is a theophany. And notice that the Lord takes the initiative here. And by the way, you can see the authority of God because the Son of God is God the whole way through this narrative now.

The angel of the Lord found her by a spring of water in the wilderness, by the spring on the way to Shur, and he said, Hagar, Sarai's maid, where have you come from and where are you going? Isn't it interesting how he comes and asks questions? Remember Genesis 2, Adam, where are you? By the way, these are rhetorical questions. God already knows the answers. And I gotta believe she's stunned. He asked her two questions. Where have you come from?

Where are you going? She only answers one question. And that's sufficient to him. She only answers one question. She says where she's from. Just imagine how she feels. She has to be stunned. Remember, she's an Egyptian. So she's in Pharaoh's court. Everything's going well. Another lady's being added to the harem.

Nothing unusual there. You're assigned to her. All of a sudden, everybody in Pharaoh's court's getting sick. Pharaoh's representatives come in and say to this one woman, this Sarai woman, you gotta leave. Take this handmaiden with you. So instead of being in the palace, she's in tents in the land of Canaan. Now she comes up part of the deal because she has no rights.

My husband is going to conceive a child with you. She does. Then they start hitting heads between her and Sarai. Now she's on her way to Egypt. And out of it all, this god that Abram talked about that I'm sure she was very skeptical of shows up and begins to talk to her.

I'm sure she's just stunned by this whole thing. But it does say something about the Lord, doesn't it? It really showed us that God really does care, even in the middle of our dilemmas. You've been listening to Pastor Bill Gebhardt on the Radio Ministry of Fellowship in the Word. If you ever miss one of our broadcasts or maybe you would just like to listen to the message one more time, remember that you can go to a great website called OnePlace.com. That's OnePlace.com and you can listen to Fellowship in the Word online.

At that website you will find not only today's broadcast but also many of our previous audio programs as well. At Fellowship in the Word, we are thankful for those who financially support our ministry and make this broadcast possible. We ask all of our listeners to prayerfully consider how you might help this radio ministry continue its broadcast on this radio station by supporting us monthly or with just a one-time gift. Support for our ministry can be sent to Fellowship in the Word 4600 Clearview Parkway, Metairie, Louisiana 7006. If you would be interested in hearing today's message in its original format, that is as a sermon that Pastor Bill delivered during a Sunday morning service at Fellowship Bible Church, then you should visit our website, fbcnola.org. That's F-B-C-N-O-L-A dot O-R-G. At our website you will find hundreds of Pastor Bill's sermons. You can browse through our sermon archives to find the sermon series you are looking for or you can search by title. Once you find the message you are looking for, you can listen online or if you prefer, you can download the sermon and listen at your own convenience. And remember, you can do all of this absolutely free of charge. Once again, our website is fbcnola.org. For Pastor Bill Gebhardt, I'm Jason Gebhardt, thanking you for listening to Fellowship in the Word. ... ... ...