Note: I am especially indebted to Man of Faith, a commentary by the late Dr. Ray Stedman, for a portion of the flow of this sermon.

       A seminary student asked a professor, “Where was the Garden of Eden?”  The professor answered, “two-fifteen South Elm Street in Knoxville, Tennessee.”

       You’re kidding me,” said the student.  “It’s supposed to be in the Middle East.”

       “Well, you couldn’t prove it by me,” said the professor.  “It was on Elm Street, when I was a boy, that I stole a quarter our of my mama’s purse.  I went down to the store and bought some candy and ate it.  Then I was so ashamed that I came back home and hid in the closet.   It was there that mama found me and asked, ‘Why are you hiding? What have you done?’”

       Each of us has our own Garden of Eden.  Each of us has the place where we first individually took our own part in the sin of Adam and Eve.  That’s why the Bible is so important to us.  This record was not written to impart facts from a distant past.  It was written to give us life.  Preaching is superficial if it is more concerned with the mileage from Jerusalem to Jericho than with the distance between the lostness of people and the seeking Father heart of God.

       This summer we are focused on the life of Abraham.  Let me remind you again that Abraham is not a model for our discipleship.  He is a mirror of our discipleship.  Our walk is like his walk.  The temptations we face are the temptations He faced.  And, in looking at the way God deals with Abraham and Sarah in their sin, we see the ways in which God deals with us in our sin.  Their story is our story. 

       In Chapter 16, Abraham and Sarah’s sin is a result of impatience.  Impatience comes from a lack of faith that God will keep His promises.  They lack faith because it hasn’t happened according to their timetable.  Sound familiar?  Anyone? 

       Several times God has promised Abraham descendants who will inherit the land in which Abraham lives as a stranger.  In Chapter 15, God promises that Abraham will sire a son from his own aging body.

       Abraham hears the clear promise of God. But then time goes by and he doesn’t see the evidence to back up the promise.

       We live the same way.  We hear God’s promises.  But days come and days go and everything seems to stay the same.  Or we get an answer.  But the answer God gives is not the same as the fulfillment we want.  I can give you multiple examples -- success in business, the desire to be married, the desire to have children, the desire for our spouse to become a believer.

       In Chapter 16, Verse 1, we read: “Now Sarah, Abraham’s wife, bore him no children.”

       After all the lofty experiences of his visions, this is the heart-breaking hard fact in which Abraham and Sarah live.  For ten long years they have waited for the fulfillment of God’s promise.  Sarah is now almost seventy-five years old.  Her biological clock is ticking real loud.   Despite God’s promises, there is no son.

       When the problem of barrenness, whatever barrenness is for us, begins to haunt us, the next thing is almost inevitable -- the proposal of our human will to do something about it!

       The minister gets tired of tying to build a ministry based on the truth of God’s word.  So he becomes a showman and an ear tickler.  He becomes a house chaplain to the “me society.”

       The Christian businesswoman gets tired of doing it the right way while others cut corners left and right.  So, she starts cutting corners too.

       The Christian young person gets tired of waiting for that special, God-blessed relationship and gets himself or herself involved in situations that are destructive to the spirit.

       Sarah gets tired too.  She gets tired of waiting for God to keep His promises.  She decides to help God along.

       Sarah has an Egyptian slave girl named Hagar, a souvenir of the trip Abraham and Sarah took to Egypt during the famine back in Chapter 12.  Sarah looks at fresh, young Hagar and says to Abraham, “The Lord has prevented me from bearing children, this whole thing is God’s fault,  so go have sexual relations with Hagar.  It may be that I shall obtain children by her.”  And Abraham listens to the voice of Sarah.” 

       Yea, you bet he did!

       How do we understand Sarah’s action?

       I believe that the more clearly God’s promises are spelled out to Abraham, the more Sarah sees herself as a failure.  Each passing year diminishes her hopes of becoming a mother and of giving Abraham the son of the promise.  She comes to the conclusion that for some reason she has forfeited God’s favor.  She is wrong.  But it makes sense.  And reason, in conflict with faith, wins in Sarah.

       Sarah reasons like this: “God has promised my husband a son, through whom He means to fulfill all His promises.  But God never really said that the son must come through me.  Maybe He means to fulfill this promise another way.”  So she resolves (through what struggles we can only imagine) to give up her own rights in an act of courageous renunciation.  She gives up a person’s most precious possession, the right to have a spouse’s sole affection, and offers her maid to her husband.

       Now strange as it may seem to us, Sarah’s proposal grows out of the culture in which she lives.  Many of the Canaanite leaders had more than one wife.  There is nothing immoral about it in the eyes of the surrounding community.  Neither Abraham nor Sarah will be criticized if they have the same arrangement.

       Up until this point Abraham is a monogamist.  That is not the same as monotonous!  He has only one wife, and he’s fine with that.  But to give him a son, Sarah is willing to sacrifice that relationship.  It is not only an act of real sacrifice, but also one of deep sincerity.  She does not hope that he will talk her out of it.  She is quite prepared to go through with it.  She takes the initiative.

       Now Sarah’s act is noble, but not completely.  Few human actions come only from pure motives.  Aside from her impatience toward God, Sarah also sins by dehumanizing her slave girl, Hagar.  She treats a person as a commodity to be disposed of as Sarah wishes --  which is what slavery is all about.

       Sarah spells out her motives in Verse 2: “The Lord has prevented me from bearing children.  Go have sexual relations with Hagar.  It may be that I shall obtain children by her.”

       “I will have children through her.”  In Sarah’s mind the children will not belong to Hagar.  Hagar is simply a mechanism for Sarah to get what she wants.

        How about Abraham?  What is his problem?  The Bible simply says that Abraham listens to the voice of his wife.  Men don’t always do that very well.  But you know,  men, that’s a pretty easy thing to do if your wife is suggesting that you do something that you would like to do anyway – like “why don’t you go play 18 holes tomorrow.”  It’s amazing how agreeable Abraham becomes when Sarah suggests sleeping with her maid.  Hagar is hot.  She has that Egyptian way of walking.  Abraham responds, “You may have had a real spiritual breakthrough her, darling.  I think this is God’s will.  It will be a sacrifice but I’ll do it, I’ll do it for us.”

       There are three obvious mistakes behind Abraham’s agreement -- completely aside from whatever lust he may feel.

       First, Abraham takes spiritual advice from a person who is not as far along in the spiritual life as he is.  That is not a criticism of Sarah.  It’s just that Sarah simply has not had the experience with God Abraham has had.

       We need to be careful of taking guidance from someone who is younger in spiritual things than ourselves.  This is why scripture warns against placing people in church leadership who are new believers.  It is not enough to have the gifts which equip a person for leadership.  There must also be the cumulative experience of time and spiritual growth that makes wise direction with humility possible.

       Abraham’s second mistake is that he agrees to something that especially harmonizes with his own desires.  Abraham longs for a son.  This longing, though perfectly proper, makes him too ready to find ways to satisfy it.

       Now God is not a cosmic killjoy.  He desires our happiness and fulfillment.  We must never assume that our desire to do something is a sign that God doesn’t want us to do it.  But we also can’t assume that our desire to do something is a sign that God does want us to do it.  We need to be careful and very aware of our motives.

       Abraham’s third mistake, the one he shares with Sarah, is his readiness to do the will of God without seeking to discover the way of God.  This is the heart of the whole problem.

       When I first came to Moorpark to be the organizing Pastor of this church, I went to a large “How to do it conference” on church planting.  One of the people I talked to was the pastor of a large church that had outgrown its facilities.  He was there to get insights on how to start, not a new church, but a second church under his leadership.  His idea was to plant a new church in a neighboring community by splitting off some of the people from his own church, kind of like Great Britain planting colonies in the new world.  And like Britain, it was his intention that this colony should never gain its independence.  No matter how strong the daughter church became, it was this pastor’s intention that all of the decisions would always be made by the board of the mother church under the wise guidance of their beloved pastor.

       Sensing a certain similarity of attitude between this man and King George the Third of England, I couldn’t help but ask in my usual gentle way, “What happens when your children start feeling their oats and want to make decisions for themselves?”  His face clouded over, he clenched his fist tightly and he muttered, “They’d better not!”

       I would sure be curious to know what ever happened.  People have a way of not accepting the roles we assign to them.  And all of our best-laid plans tend to develop unintended consequences.  That’s the theme of the book and movie Jurassic Park.  This certainly happens with Sarah and Abraham.  Hagar won’t stay down on the farm.  She refuses to accept her assigned role as Sarah’s brood mare.

       Look at the turmoil that follows:  “Sarah gave Abraham Hagar as a wife.  He went in to Hagar, and she conceived; and when she saw that she had conceived, she looked with contempt on her mistress.  Then Sarah said to Abraham, “May the wrong done to me be on you!  I gave my slave girl 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!”

       The immediate results of acting in the flesh are always the same. We display enmity, strife, jealousy, anger, selfishness, and other ugly emotions which lie near the surface of the fallen human heart.  Wherever these appear, they are the thermometer which tells us we are being ruled by the flesh and not by the Spirit.  In Galatians Paul calls these the deeds of the flesh.  They show up in this ancient story.  But they are as modern as this morning’s newspaper.

       The first unintended consequence of Sarah’s bright idea is contempt.  When Abraham places Hagar into rivalry with his wife, Hagar becomes insolent and impertinent.  She taunts her about her barrenness, you couldn’t cut the mustard, could you old lady?”

       The next consequence is unreasonableness.  Sarah says to Abraham, “May the wrong done to me be on you.”

       Think about this!  She initiates the idea to Abraham; she urges it on him.  But when he agrees, she turns and throws it back in his face.  “It’s all your fault!  Why did you do this to me?  May the Lord judge between you and me.”  That is what Laban said to Jacob when they parted from each other in anger in Genesis 31:53.  What it means is, “The Lord keep you from sticking a dagger in my back, and keep me from sticking one in yours, while we are unable to keep our eyes on each other.”  That is what it means here.  This woman is mad clear through!  “May the Lord keep his eye on you, you jerk!  Look what you’ve done.”

       Sarah clearly feels that she had a cause for grievance against Abraham.  She expects him to put Hagar firmly in her place.  “You are responsible for the wrong I am suffering.”  Sarah looks for Abraham’s support in her just resentment against Hagar, forgetting that she had first suggested the whole idea.  What had seemed to be reasonable, permissible by law, and expedient, now disrupts the family and causes a rift between husband and wife.  In hindsight, it is obvious to Sarah that this attempt to remedy their childlessness was not part of God’s plan.  This realization only adds to her bitterness.  It causes her to blame Abraham rather that to admit that she has been wrong.  It is always easier to put the blame on someone else than to face up to our own faults.

        Then the next consequence is irresponsibility.  Abraham says to Sarah, “Your slave girls is in your power; do to her as you please.”  He dodges his responsibility.  He passes the buck.  “Don’t’ bother me with this.  I’m in policy, not in management.  It is your problem, you settle it.”  The result is harshness and rebellion.  “Sarah dealt harshly with Hagar, and she ran away from her.”

       Do you know this pattern?  The whole household is in an uproar.  Yet every person in this triangle can say piously, “I was only trying to do the will of the Lord.”  Each one is sure the others are wholly to blame.  No one is willing to face the evil of his or her own heart.  Talk about your dysfunctional families.

       All this mess is a result of trying to help God when it seemed that perhaps God had tackled a job too hard for Him, or that time would run out before it could be accomplished.  “We know the will of God; let us also decide his timing and his method.”

       Now look at what happens.

        (Read 7-16)

       God sends Hagar back to submit herself to Sarah.  But He also makes Hagar a promise.  She goes back and tells Abraham what God has promised her about the son she will bear, including the fact that she has named God “El-roi”, the God who sees what I do, and the command from this seeing God to name the boy Ishmael, “God hears.”  Abraham and Sarah are brought to recognize the depths of their own capability for sin.  And if they ever start to forget, they have a living object lesson named “God hears” to remind them.  Later, in Genesis 17:20, we find that God blesses this boy Ishmael for Abraham’s sake.

       This whole story is a living example of the truth declared over and over again in scripture, that where sin abounds, God causes His grace to abound all the more.  Here we see God step in to pick up the pieces caused by Abraham and Sarah’s impatience.  But, and this is vital for our growth, He also spells out his expectation that they not use their dysfunctional history as an excuse for future sin.  In Chapter 17 verse one God says to Abraham, “I am God Almighty.  Walk before me and be blameless.  Don’t repeat chapter 16.”

       In other words, “Abraham, I am God Almighty.”  That means that I know what I’m doing.  I know what I’m doing even if it doesn’t match your expectations or your timetable.  Start to do it my way.”

       And what is God’s way?  Jesus tells us that it is the way of patience, the way of gentleness, the way of the mustard seed that starts small but gets big.  It is the way of unseen but very real growth.  We must continue to expect something to happen in our church and in our lives that requires more than our good planning and strategizing.  And we are called to commit ourselves to God’s way, even when we get impatient with the progress we see in ourselves, in our loved ones, in our society, and in our church.  We must continue to expect the Holy Spirit to act.  We need to trust God for the certain and total keeping of His promises, even when they seemed delayed.