Timothy Keller Sermons Podcast by Gospel in Life - Hagar and the Son

Episode Date: May 24, 2023

When people in the Bible have close encounters with God, in almost every situation they say, “I can’t believe I’m still alive,” and Hagar is one of them. In Genesis 16, we see the story of Hagar, the maidservant of Sarah. Sarah’s and Hagar’s experiences overlap. We’re told Sarah mistreats Hagar, and it’s so bad that Hagar, a pregnant woman, flees out into the desert. We have here a story that will tell you the gospel. This is the gospel according to Hagar. We’ll look at 1) how we can understand the narrative, and 2) a few important principles we can draw from here. This sermon was preached by Dr. Timothy Keller at Redeemer Presbyterian Church on December 1, 1996. Series: Daring to Draw Near. Scripture: Genesis 16:1-16. Today's podcast is brought to you by Gospel in Life, the site for all sermons, books, study guides and resources from Timothy Keller and Redeemer Presbyterian Church. If you've enjoyed listening to this podcast and would like to support the ongoing efforts of this ministry, you can do so by visiting https://gospelinlife.com/give and making a one-time or recurring donation.

Welcome to Gospel in Life. As you may have heard recently, it is with sadness that we share with you that our founder and friend Timothy J. Keller passed away in the morning of May 19, 2023 at the age of 72, trusting in the sure and certain hope of the resurrection. While our hearts are heavy with the news of Tim's death and our prayers are with his family as they go through the grieving process, our spirits are also lifted because we know that he has a new life and is with his Savior and that one day we will see him again. And so with that hope in mind, we want to honor Tim's wishes and continue ministering the gospel during this season.

Because as you have heard Tim say many times, the gospel changes everything. So listen now to his teaching and join us in praying for his family. Thank you. If you look in your bulletin, you'll find the passage that we're gonna be looking at tonight, it should be right where you are. If you're not asleep, if you're following along,

it's Genesis 16, verses 1 to 16. It's a story of Hagar and Sarah and Abraham. Let me read it to you. By the way, all the way through here, Sarah and Abraham are called Sarah-I and Abraham are called Sarai and Abraham. Their names were changed later. And just because I'm just going to get confused, I'm just going to start right out from the very beginning calling them Sarah and Abraham, okay?

And so let's read it that way. Now Sarah, Abraham's wife, had born him no children, but she had an Egyptian maid servant named Hegar, so she said to Abraham, the Lord has kept me from having children, go, sleep with my maid servant. Perhaps I can build a family through her. Abraham agreed to what Sarah said, so after Abraham had been living in Canaan 10 years,

Sarah his wife took her Egyptian-made servant Heagar and gave her to her husband to be his wife. He slept with Heagar, and she conceived, and when she knew she was pregnant, she began to despise her mistress. And Sarah came to Abraham. You are responsible for the wrong I am suffering. I put my servant in your arms, and now that she knows she is pregnant, she despises me. May the Lord judge between you and me."

Your servant is in your hands," Abraham said, do with her whatever you think best. Then Sarah mistreated Hegar, so she fled from her. The angel of the Lord found Hegar near a spring in the desert. It was the spring that is beside the road to shore. And he said, Hegar, servant of Sarah, where have you come from? And where are you going? I'm running away from my mistress, Sarah," she answered. Then the angel of the Lord told her, go back to your mistress and submit to her.

The angel added, I will so increase your descendants that they will be too numerous to count. And the angel of the Lord also said to her, you are now with child and you will have a son. You shall name him Ishmael. For the Lord has heard of your misery. He will be a wild donkey of a man. His hand will be against everyone and everyone's hand against him. And he will live in hostility toward all his brothers. She gave this name to the Lord.

She gave this name to the Lord who spoke to her, you are the God who sees me. For she said, I have now seen the one who sees me. That is why the well was named Beer La Hyroy. It is still there between Katesh and Bureth. So, Hagar bore Abraham a son. And Abraham gave the name Ishmael to the son she had born. Abraham was 86 years old when Hagar bore him Ishmael.

And this is God's word. And some of you are saying, and what's all this about? Why am I here listening to this story? And we're in these evening services, what we've been doing is we've been looking at people who have had close encounters with God, people who've actually met Him, people who have actually had face-to-face close encounters. In almost every situation, when they're all done, they say, I can't believe that I'm still

alive. And Hagar is one of them. We've actually had three, and this is the third, of, there's three very interesting narratives, accounts in the Bible of encounters with God. Abraham, remember, if you were here, met God on a dark and stormy night just like tonight. In Genesis 15, Sarah meets the Lord at high noon in the heat of the day in Genesis 18, excuse me. And now here in Genesis 16, we see the story of Hegar, the maid servant. And because Sarah and Hegar's experience is overlap, we made some reference to Hegar

and Sarah and the meaning of Sarah's Baroness at the end of the discussion we have of Genesis 18. But here tonight, we see it, the centerpiece. We have here a story that will tell you the gospel, this is the gospel according to Heygar. The gospel is in every single part of the Bible. There's no part without it. Now look, let's just work through it.

Verse 1, now Sarah had born no children. Let's look at that. What does that mean? What is the significance of that? And I'd like to look at it psychologically and theologically. You have to understand the psychological and theological significance of that statement while you're not going to understand the narrative.

First of all, psychologically, what it meant for Sarah was devastation. Because in that time and in that culture, that culture assigned a particular role to women. And in that culture, what was the role of a woman? And Sarah actually mentions it down here in verse 2 to build a family. That was your role. If you're a woman, that's what you were there for. You were there to bear children and build a family, period, full stop, that's it. And in that culture, that meant that children were a woman's capital. They were her significance. And if she didn't have them, she was disgraced.

And she felt worthless. And the fact that she had bored no children was psychologically devastating. It meant she was in tremendous pain and tremendous despair, but not only that. Theologically, God had come to Abraham and God had said to Abraham at least twice now, and we looked at one of these in Genesis 15. God had said in the clearest terms, he says, I'm going to save the world. Look around you, Abram. Look at death. Look at suffering. Look at war. Look at poverty. Look at disease. Look at the world the way it is. I'm going to save the world.

And I'm going to save the world through your family. I'm going to give you and Sarah a son. And out of that son will come a mighty family, out of that will come a great nation, and out of that great nation will come the hero, the Messiah, the one who's going to save the world from everything. Through you, all the families of the earth will be blessed. That's what he says, Debraem. That's the promise. And so now, he's never...at this point, God has never appeared to Sarah.

Sarah has never heard the voice of the Lord, but Abraham is coming told Sarah. Now, what Sarah thinks about it, I'm not sure. My guess is that at certain times, Sarah must have really thought, Abraham, he's crazy. His God is going to give us a son. But you know, whether she thought he was crazy or whether she really believed what he had said, it didn't matter because on top of the normal kind of shame and disgrace and pain that a woman in her time in place would have felt, on top of that you have Abraham saying, we're going to have a son, we're going to have a son, he was like twisting the knife.

It was just worse than ever because now I'm not just letting down Abraham. Now I'm not just letting down my people. Now I'm just letting down my culture. Now I'm letting down God. I'm letting down the world, you see. She was in despair. She was in a terrific amount of pain. And therefore, verse two, it says, so she said to Abraham,

the Lord has kept me from having children. Go sleep with my maid servant, Hey, Gar, perhaps I can build a family through her now. What's the significance of that? Again, it's twofold. First of all, what's Sarah doing? First of all, Sarah is proposing something that was not only a common practice, was almost a universal practice. Historians, archaeologists, all these people who understood something about ancient cultures would tell you, at that part of the world, at that time, this was the universal practice. And that is Sarah was the matriarch of that clan. Sarah

was the matriarch, and Abraham was the patriarch. Sarah could bring one of her servants and bring her to Abraham. Abraham could essentially take her as a wife but a sort of second-tier wife. If you look carefully, look, it says, down in verse 3, Sarah took his wife, apart me, Sarah his wife took her Egyptian-made servant Hegar and gave her to husband to be his wife. And yet, look at verse 4, she began to despise her mistress. In other words, she became Abraham's wife, but a second tear wife, she was still a slave. She was still a servant.

But most of all, and what's interesting is when she says, I can build a family through her, the fact is that the child that Hagar would bear would actually belong to Sarah. Sarah would take the child. It would be Sarah's child. Sarah in a sense would adopt the child. Sarah would have control over the child. And that's the way it's was done. Now we have a question and answer time afterwards.

And anybody who really has burning questions about this might want to come and stay for that because I can't answer all of them, I can just tell you this. There is no place in the Bible where this is condoned, nowhere, and whenever Abraham, wherever Moses, wherever David, and almost all the Old Testament dudes were doing this, whenever they got into the experience of polygamy, many wives or concubines, whenever the Bible lifts up and describes the experience, the experience is always a disaster. And it's a disaster here. It's a tremendous disaster. You have to give Sarah credit. She was trying. But boy, I'll tell you, you can see, and we will see in a second, she was tremendously vulnerable at a time like that.

I mean, polygamy was never condoned by the God of the Bible anywhere in the Bible because it's devastating for women. Not only is Sarah tremendously vulnerable at this point, and really kind of defenseless in many ways, but as we're going to see, there's tremendous division, tremendous jealousy, terrific strife, a disaster in the family. If you look down close near the end, and this is the only time I have a time to refer to this, remember when the angel of the Lord appears and says,

let me tell you about your son, he will be a wild donkey of a man. His hand will be against everyone, and everyone's hand against him, and he will live in hostility to it all his. Now you don't have to be Sigmund Freud to understand why that happened. Ishmael grew up and he was the older child but when Isaac comes along later on, the child of Asara, everybody from the word go, every day, every moment of every day, Ishmael, all he knew was Isaac is the favorite. Your second, your second class, your mother's a slave.

Now, it doesn't take segment for you to realize what kind of kid you'd turn into. If you grew up being told all your life, your second, you're inferior. You see, the abuse, the division, the anger, the hostility, the jealousy, the fragmentation, that always, always, always accompany this. And somebody says, well, then, you know, if polygamy was just such a devastating experience for families, why in the world did it go on? And the answer is men wanted it. And they had the power. And you can see right here, Abraham is the only one that's heard the voice of God, and Abraham is the one that says, okay, and Abraham is the one who basically just does it,

and both of these women are victims, in this case, of Abraham. It doesn't mean that they're not responsible, doesn't mean that they don't do anything wrong, but you see, he sets them up. Sarah's trying her best, but she's walking into an emotional minefield and she blows up. But to Abraham, the significance of what happens, look at verse 2, it says, the NIV translation

says, Abraham agreed to what Sarah said. Now, that's a little unfortunate, but I guess it's okay to translate it that way. Literally, it says, and Abraham harkened to the voice of Sarah. Now, that's the narrator. That is the writer's way of trying to point out that before this he had been listening to the voice of the Lord. Today, he listens to the voice of Sarah. In other words,

Abraham had in front of him two women, and Abraham wanted a family. And if he decided to go with Hegar, what he was really doing is saying, look, I know, I'm a man, I'm an old man, but I'm still fertile, I know. And she is a young woman and she's fertile. So here is Sarah.

She's Baron. She is old. If I try to have a family through Sarah, I will have to rely on divine supernatural grace. And if I try to have a family through Sarah, I will have to rely on divine supernatural grace. And if I try to have a family through Heagar, I, frankly, that's something within my human ability. And so in front of Abraham is whether he wants to save himself through grace or save himself through works, whether he wants to save himself through his own human ability or completely

rely on supernatural grace. And this is the reason why in Galatians chapter 4, Paul is speaking with Galatians and he's desperately trying to get them to see that you cannot be made right with God through your human efforts. You cannot be made right with God by living a good life. You cannot say, I will develop my own righteousness and I will give it to God then God will bless me. No, no, this is, say cannot say, I will develop my own righteousness and I will give it to God then God will bless me." No, no, it says, say, say, Paul, Paul says, the gospel is not that you develop a righteousness

and give it to God, the answer is, of the gospel is that God develops a righteousness and gives it to you. That's the gospel. And how does he develop a righteousness through the supernatural actions of God in history? God becomes flesh, incarnation. God on the cross, the Son of God dies, atonement. Then He's raised into dead resurrection through the supernatural grace of God. A righteousness comes to us.

And that's the reason why Paul, at the climax, some people would say, of the letter of the Galatians, when he's trying to say to the Galatians, do not believe that you can be saved through your own efforts. You must rely on the supernatural grace of God. What is he put in front of us, but heghar and Sarah? And in Galatians 4, this is exactly what Paul says. He says, listen to you who want to save yourselves by obeying the law. It is written that Abraham had two sons, one by the slave woman, the other by the free woman.

His son by the slave woman was born in the ordinary way, but the son of the free woman was the result of a promise." See what Paul's saying. For you and me, Hagar and Sarah are symbols. And Paul says they symbolized salvation by works and salvation by grace, but for Abraham, they were not symbols. And Paul says they symbolized salvation by works and salvation by grace. But for Abraham, they were not symbols. They were literally in front of him. And he could either decide to save himself on the basis of what he could humanly attain

with his own capabilities or to rely on the supernatural, miracle, and grace of God. And he went with Hegar. And because he decided to save himself, the immediate results were pain and disaster, and that's always true. Always. So he slept with Hegar, and she conceived, and now look, and when she knew she was pregnant, she began to despise her mistress. Literally, it says, her mistress looked

little to her. You know, the Hebrew, by the way, is an extremely graphic and concrete language. They don't have abstract names and words. And so what it said was, in her eyes, her mistress was small. She began to look down at her mistress. She began to get arrogant. And now look, Sarah comes to Abram and basically says, this is your fault. I put, you know, and you know, I feel here, don't you feel for? He says, I look what I did. I put my servant in your arms, my husband's arms, I gave another woman to you and now look at what I'm going through. She despises me. When he says, may the Lord does between you and me,

what she's saying is, I'm furious and I have a right to be. I'm the one, not the one to blame. You're the one to blame. I have a right to be furious. God judge that I'm not to blame. It's your fault. And what does Abram do?

The wimp, unbelievable. He's moving right along. Let me tell you something. One act of faithfulness leads to another. And he says, hey, she's your employee, you know? That's the other, that's not my department. And what we're told is, Sarah mistreated Hegar, and we're not really sure what that means. And people have suggested that he beat her, why not? She was a slave. I mean, you know, to mistreat slaves, it doesn't take a lot of imagination to know what that might mean.

And all we know of was so bad, that a pregnant woman fled out into the desert. And so out she goes. Now, there's a lot of ways to look at what Sarah and Hagar did. And when I read all the commentaries and I read what other people said about it, I really felt like to some degree they were missing the boat. One of the reasons is this. The first thing you notice about Hagar is that she was proud.

And so you could say, now let's talk about the sin of pride. It was very wrong of her to be proud. And then the trouble with Sarah was she was jealous. So let's talk about the sin of pride. It was very wrong of her to be proud. And then the trouble with Sarah was she was jealous. So let's talk about the sin of jealousy. It's very wrong to be jealous, but I think we're missing the point. Especially light of what Paul says in Galatians 4. Why is Hegar puffed up? And why is Sarah into spirit?

Why is Hegar got this incredible superiority complex, and now why does Sarah have this incredible inferiority complex? Well, let's go back to something. My guess is, you're modern people and you live in New York City, and I would think most of you, and especially the women who are present here, when you heard me describe what traditional culture assigned women and said, your capital, your significance, your worth is to build a family and to have children in a period. That's it. And most of you, I would think right away, would say, that was terrible.

To have a culture, assign you a role like that and say, this is what you have to have to have any value. How terrible. And many of you, I'm sure, have gone to Ivy League schools, very, very good schools, academically good schools, and over the last 10 or 20 years, if you're a woman at that school, you've been told this. You must throw off the remnant of the shackles of these traditional cultures that have assigned you a role and said, you've got to have children and a family. Otherwise, you're worthless. Oh, no, you were told.

What you need to do is go out and get a career. Decide what you want to be and go do it. Now, not for a minute, am I saying, that traditional culture was not oppressive to women, not for a minute am I denying that this is oppression. It was terrible for women to be bought and sold in this way, but I don't want you to overlook something. And that is, spiritually speaking,

every culture assigns women a role, and it has happened to you too. Because in the traditional cultures, it assigned you a role, says you have to be mothers and wives period. But when you go off to college and it says you got to go and get a job, do you realize that instead of traditional culture, our Western secular individualistic culture, and in college, your socialized into it, has assigned you a role too.

And it is saying there is something you must do. If you're at home with kids, it might be saying, if you're at home with kids, you're nothing. You've got to have a job. But don't you see, do you not see? Every culture, spiritually speaking, will assign you a role, and you will hear it. And it will say, this is what you've got to have. And if you don't have it, you're nothing.

Every culture assigns everybody, not just women, every culture assigns everybody that. And then you're bound. Thank you for listening to today's teaching here on Gospel and Life. As you process the news of Tim's passing, we recognize that you may be looking for a way to respond. To help with that, we have set up a page that gives you a way to share your condolences, submit a story of how Tim's teaching or writing has helped you, or simply how you can pray

for the Keller family in this ministry. For more information, please visit gospelunlife.com slash remembering. That's gospelunlife.com slash remembering. Now here's the remainder of today's teaching. You want to see what it means to be found? Here. Let's just take a look at this one case study. Here is one particular person, a woman, and here is one culture and ancient culture,

and they're told children, that's your significance. What happens to Hegar when she realizes she's going to have a child? Is she happy about having a child? To some degree, but she's not excited about the child. The child makes her feel like somebody. She's not rejoicing in the child for itself. She's rejoicing now. I mean, it's not about children, it's about her.

If your culture says, this is what you've got to have, then you're not bearing children for the joy of bearing children. And when you start to have children, you're puffed up and you say, look at me. I'm a woman. I'm really what I'm somebody and look at poor Sarah In other words, Hagar can't just enjoy having a child She's got a distorted ego. She's got an inflated self view now She's become overwining and proud, but look at Sarah. Because Sarah, for Sarah, children is her salvation. Children is her capital. Children is her significance. What happens to her? She can't just say,

hey, Gar, being so petty. Oh no, she is utterly vulnerable. She is completely defenseless. She has no emotional self-control. Because without children, she's nobody. and she can't take it and she's blowing up. Now here's what I want you to know. If your culture says oh no it's not children it's career. You're in the same boat. When you you won't work for the joy of doing a good job or being productive or producing something good for people you'll be working to be somebody. And if you get anywhere near your goals, you'll despise others, you will look down,

you'll become over-winning, you'll have an inflated view of yourself, and if you can't get it, you'll be like Sarah. You'll be emotionally defenseless, you'll be emotionally out of control, you'll be depressed, you'll be angry, You'll blow up. You'll hit people. That's where it's from. It's not just pride and jealousy in general. These women are victims of their culture and everybody in this room is a victim of his or her culture unless, as Paul says, unless you can understand the gospel, what is the gospel? This is the gospel. Near the end of Isaiah, near the end of this passage in Galatians 4,

where he's talking about Sarah and about Hegar, suddenly Paul turns to Isaiah and he quotes Isaiah, and this is what he quotes. This is an amazing passage to me. He quotes Isaiah for my Isaiah 54 verse 1 and it says, Be glad, O barren woman, you who bear no children, break forth and cry aloud, you who have no labor pains, because more are the children of the desolate woman than of her who has a husband. Now this, you see Paul is just reading this passage, are the children of the desolate woman than of her who has a husband.

Now, you see Paul is just reading this passage because when the angel of the Lord comes to Hegar, and we'll mop up here at the end and give a few statements about what the angel of the Lord does with the Hegar. At the end, what does he say to Hegar? He says, listen, I'm gonna protect you. The Lord will protect you, The Lord will protect you. The Lord will give you a son.

And you will turn, your son will turn into a great family and into a mighty nation. But there is no promise of salvation. And so Paul reads this passage. See? It says, look, he says, you are now with child, you will have a son. You shall name a mishmale for the Lord has heard of your misery. He will be a wild donkey of a man. His hand will be against everyone.

But you see, he says, I will so increase your descendants that they will be too numerous to count. That's a great blessing. But he does not say, and through you all the nations of the earth will be blessed. So Paul says, the children of the barren woman are greater than if she who has a husband. Now the thing that moves me so much is this. Paul is trying to say, do you want to be free from what your culture tells you is your significance?

The only way you'll be free from your culture and the only way you'll be free from continually being whipped back and forth between Heghar and Sarah, between superiority and inferiority, between overly inflated and underinflated views of yourself is if you understand that your righteousness is a supernatural gift of the grace of God. And when Christ is your life, not children, Christ is your life, not wealth, Christ is your life, not family. What's so amazing about Paul,

so amazing about the gospel, is it doesn't act we yes. Maybe there's somebody out there that thinks that my goodness, if I'm a pastor of a church that believes the Bible and all this sort of thing, that I'd be saying, yes, women, your place is in the home. By the way, one thing I won't say is women, it's stupid to stay at home. By no means, that would be just as culturally bound as to say, women, you need to stay at home because you've got to have children. And that's really

way. The gospel undermines all, the gospel is so incredibly subversive. It undermines every culture there's ever been. It smashes every single idol. And it says, it's amazing for Isaiah to say this and for Paul to say this because those were traditional cultures. It says, women, your children, is not your capital. If Christ is your life, you will bear fruit. And your fruit will be greater than anything you can imagine. This is a particularly great for people, for women who do want to have children and are

not going to be able to have children, maybe because they don't have a husband. What is it saying? It's saying, if Christ is your life, you will have so many children. It's because more of the children of the desolate woman who has Christ than of her who has a husband. Do you realize the people you can affect? Do you realize the people that your children, how many children you will have all around you for all eternity? Men and women that you have loved, men and women that you have shepherded, men and women in a sense that you have mothered. And the saint, see, what about, now let's turn around.

What about the man who has a particular goal and you haven't attained your goal? Let's just say you wanted to make a dent, you know, as this or that in the world. Let's say something like that. The gospel comes and says, because that's not your salvation, you can work and realize you will bear fruit.

You will bear enormous fruit no matter what. You're free from what the culture says. You don't have to whip back and forth between being Hagar and Sarah. No more. This is amazing. The gospel is everywhere. Now, we need to momb up.

Finally, let's just take a book and see what happens. She runs off into the desert. And let me just draw two or three very important practical principles from here. It says, the angel of the Lord found haggar near a spring in the desert. Who's the angel of the Lord? All we know is that when the angel of the Lord shows up in the burning bush, Moses says, I have seen the Lord. When the angel of the Lord shows up in wrestles with Jacob, Jacob says, I have seen the Lord.

When the angel of the Lord shows up before Joshua, remember, rest is a military general. Afterwards, Joshua says, I have seen the Lord. You see, whenever the angel of the Lord shows up and he can be a burning bush or he can be a military general, or he could just show up like he did in Genesis 18 and had lunch. And it took a whole long time for Abraham and everybody else around to figure this is the Lord.

You never know. The Lord doesn't have just one way. You know, he may descend with drama into somebody's life over here and then you look and say, I guess that's what it means to be converted. You have to have this incredible experience. And over there, you know, he's a still small voice. You don't know. And for what we can tell is the way he comes to Hegar is it doesn't look like she knew who he was yet either. And he says, and secondly, he says, hey, our servant of Sarah, where have you come from and where you're going? You see, she realizes later on, this is the Lord, this

is the Lord. And you know what? Do you realize how many times God shows up? He shows up when he talks to Jonah, he shows up and he talks to Elijah, we spend some time with a lot. How many times God does not show up and say anything, but starts to ask questions? It happens so often that God shows up, and the first thing He does is He starts asking questions. Instead of reclaiming, instead of proclaiming, instead of declaring, He asked questions. I don't know. Quite what I'm supposed to learn from that, but I know I've got to learn something.

And I think we've got to look and say, if God who knows everything shows up and asks questions gently, maybe we need to be better listeners, maybe, maybe. And then I'm running for my mistress Sarah. And the angel of the Lord said, go back to your mistress and submit to her now. Somebody says, oh my gosh, that seems like the very

worst possible thing. Go back into an abusive situation, but here he says, I will increase you, and I have heard your misery. And so what he's saying is, I want you to know that I'm here because you're miserable, and I want to do something about it, and if you, the best place for you to be is back there. Sometimes God will call you into a situation that doesn't seem very good. But you see, he hears your misery. And very often, from my perspective, her going back to Egypt, where she's from.

She's on her way back to Egypt from what we can tell. It's a good idea. Get away from an abusive mistress like that. Yet the Lord shows up and says, I have to tell you something that's counterintuitive. I want you back there. And it was the best place for all things worked together for good to them that love God and are called according to his purpose, Romans 8.28.

But here's maybe the last thing. The Lord has heard of your misery. And a couple of the people who I was reading commentator said that it's pretty interesting that he doesn't say the Lord has heard your prayer. In fact, literally, it says, the Lord has heard your distress. It doesn't say, of, come on. God's up, what is he doing? Watching the news, you know, somebody says, have you heard about Hegar? Oh no, no, it's nothing like that. God doesn't hear of anything. He hears, heard a stress,

and you know that really comforts me tremendously, because down he comes and says, not, you were praying and you prayed so well that I had to come. Thank goodness he doesn't say that. He'd never come to me. And he doesn't say, I saw that you were really living a very good in Godly life so I came.

No, he doesn't say that. Why is he come? God has got a heart that our very pain and distress cries out to him. God has got a heart that our very pain and distress cries out to him. God has got a heart, so it shows up always on his own heart. He hears our distress and he comes. Actually, I told a fib, there is one more thing that we need to see. We need to be listeners.

We need to realize God very often calls us in the situation as their best force, it doesn't feel like it. We need to see also, of course, that God is of such compassion that He actually hears not our prayer, but He comes not because we pray well, not because we're living well, but simply because we hurt. But then last of all,

if you go to 10 translations, every one of them will translate this verse differently. It says in verse 13, she gave this name to the Lord who spoke to her, you are the God who sees me, for she said, I have now seen the one who sees me. Now, this second part, it says, for she said, it's a question, in Hebrew it's a question.

And literally it says, have I seen after the seer? Similarly it says, have I seen after the seer? Literally in Hebrew it says, have I, it's, first of all, it's a question, it's a question, and the question is very important to see that it's a question. It's a statement of wonder. And she says, have I seen after the seer? Now there's a man named Derek Kidner who's written commentary on Genesis, a commentary on Proverbs, a commentary on Psalms. And I have lived off these commentaries for years and years, they're like food to me.

And he's a tremendous commentator. And he says, when she says, I have I seen after the one, have I seen after the seer. The word after must mean have I seen the back parts of the one who sees everything. That's the best way to translate it. Here's what's going on. She does get the gospel here because on the one hand she realizes that God is the one who sees everyone. God is the one who sees everyone. God is the one who sees everything.

God is the seer. Not just the one who sees me, but the one who sees absolutely everything. He's the holy one. He's the majestic one. He sees everything at once. But she says, have I seen the seer? Have I been allowed to see the seer and live? She understands the gospel because the gospel is this.

Holiness, greatness, sees everything. Yet grace, I'm allowed to come near and not die. She understood that. And the reason that I think she was able to go back is, if you just believe in a seer, see, if you just believe in a loving God who loves everybody, but you don't see that you're a sinner and you shouldn't come near him, or if you only see that you're a sinner and shouldn't come near him and you don't realize

his grace, either way, you're not going to be a transformed person. But hey, Garth saying, if a God is great as that, let's me in. If a God like that, let's me like that. What do I have to be afraid of? If a God like that, as great as that, let's me in. If a God like that, loves me like that. What do I have to be afraid of? If a God like that, as great as that, loves me like that, as kindly and loving as that. I don't have anything to be afraid of. In a primitive way, in a primordial way, in a very, very rudimentary and fundamental way, she grasped the gospel when she said, have I seen the back parts of the seer? Have I been allowed

to see the one who sees everything and still live? And when that happens, she was able to go back. If you've seen God and you know that God loves you anyway, if you've seen the holy one and yet you've been accepted, you're going to be scared of Sarah? Come on. And she goes back. How should we escape if we neglect so great a salvation? Let's pray. Thank you, Father, for providing for us this picture of the gospel. It's everywhere. We thank you for showing it to us here in the life of Sarah, Abraham, and Hagar. Help us to be so freed from the whiplash of superiority and inferiority. Help us to be so free from our culture.

Help us to be so free from all these things that we, we, also, like Hagar, freed by the gospel, can go back into our world with all the problems that are there, smiling, free, powerful, at peace. So Father, we ask that it says we get near and near to Christmas, as we get near and nearer to the great supernatural act of grace when your son came to earth becoming human. We pray that we might more and more, not like Abraham in this case, more and more, we might trust in the supernatural grace of God. So Father, now grant all the prayers that we just made for Jesus' sake and His name, we pray them. Amen. Thank you for listening to today's teaching. We recognize that many of you will want to respond to the news of Tim's passing.

If you would like to know more about how to share your condolences, or to share a story of how Tim's writing or teaching helped you, or if you just want to know how you can pray, please visit gospelandlife.com slash remembering. This month's sermons were recorded in 1996 and 2009. The sermons and talks you hear on the Gospel and Life podcast were preached from 1989 to 2017, while Dr. Keller was senior pastor at Redeemer Presbyterian Church.

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