Hello and welcome to our broadcast. Today we're looking in Genesis chapter 16. It begins now, Sarah. Interesting chapter. Have your Bible ready if you can. I'm reading in Genesis chapter 16 beginning of verse number one it says now Sarah Abraham's wife bear him no children and she had a handmaid an Egyptian whose name was Hagar and Sarah said unto Abraham behold now the Lord has restrained me from bearing I pray thee go in unto my maid It may be that I may obtain children by her." And Abraham hearkened to the voice of Sarah. And Sarah, Abraham's wife, took Hagar, her maid, the Egyptian, after Abraham had dwelt ten years in the land of Canaan, and gave her to her husband Abraham to be his wife. And he went in unto Hagar, and she conceived, and when she saw that she had conceived, Her mistress was despised in her eyes. And Sarah said unto Abraham, My wrong be upon thee. I have given my maid unto thy bosom. And when she saw that she had conceived, I was despised in her eyes. The Lord judge between me and thee. But Abraham said unto Sarah, Behold, thy maid is in thy hand. Do to her as it pleases thee. And when Sarah dealt hardly with her, she fled from her face. Well, this chapter begins with the phrase, Now Sarah. It's interesting that back in Genesis 3 and 1 it says, Now the serpent. And then in 12 and 1 it says, Now the Lord. And here in Genesis 16 in verse number 1 we read, Now Sarah. Sarah. Well, Sarah, she's quite a lady. The Bible has quite a bit to say about her. In Genesis 11 and 29, she's called Abraham's wife. Then in 11 and 30, it says, but Sarah was barren. She had no child. In Genesis 11 and 31, she's called Tara's daughter-in-law. And then in Genesis 12 and 5, Abraham's wife. 1211 and 1217, Abraham's wife. And now we come down to chapter 16, where we read, Now Sarah, and the focus here, once again, is that Abraham's wife bear him no children. Abraham and Sarah, they're a picture of the faith and a picture of the flesh. Mostly, they lived by faith, but every once in a while, they got out of the will of God. You'll find, concerning their faith, there's ten verses in the New Testament that have the word faith and Abraham in the same verse. Then if you get into Hebrews chapter 11, there's about a dozen verses referring to the faith of Abraham and Sarah. But also the problem is with them, as with all of us, we can live by faith or we can live by the flesh. And in Romans chapter 4, you have an entire chapter there dealing with this question pertaining to the flesh of Abraham. He had that problem. I have that problem. Sarah had that problem. And boy, does she get in the flesh. And they both do in this chapter. Now, the problem with that is that the Bible is very plain about that. The Bible says they that sow to the flesh shall reap corruption. Well in chapter 12 they did some sowing to the flesh there, especially Abraham when he went down into Egypt. And now we find Abraham and Sarah both sowing to the flesh here in chapter number 16. How did two godly people like Abraham and Sarah get into a mess like this? Well, it's interesting that it all follows after a tremendous blessing in the previous chapter, and you'll find through the scriptures over and over again that that's how the devil works. Once you've had a tremendous blessing, the devil's not going to take that sitting down. He'll be coming to attack, and that's what he does here. Well, we find here that I think Sarah has a major desire to be accepted by her peers. I think we all do. In her situation, she has no children. Now, she has a desire. That's a strong feeling for wanting something. And she wanted children. Now, in that age in which she was living in, she was held in mockery by everyone, by her peers. because she didn't have any children. And not only that, in that age, much like today, multiple marriages were very acceptable. In fact, back then they even had concubines. And so one of the main reasons I think we all have for compromising, like they are compromising here, is the desire to be accepted by our peers. The second thing I think that we have here in Sarah is the doubting of the promise of the Lord and not only in Sarah but in Abraham as well. A doubt is a feeling of uncertainty or lack of believing what we once believed and now it's been about 10 years since his promise and nothing seems to be happening and they're getting older. Well, the Bible says very plainly in Hebrews chapter 6 and verse number 18, it is impossible for God to lie. God, it says in Romans 4 and 21, what He has promised, He is able to perform. All they need to do is relax. They don't have to do things on our timetable. God is never in a hurry, but He is never late, and His delays are not denials. And so we see here a basic desire to be accepted, and that desire then begins to turn into doubts, and the devil's looking on and saying, I can get involved in this. And so from the desires to the doubt to the devil influence, like in the Garden of Eden, the devil says to Eve, Yea, hath God said? And now basically he's putting the same thought here in the mind of Sarah. Yea, has God said? You're going to have a child. In the Garden of Eden, the devil put it in the mind of Eve that she couldn't trust God. And then you see the same thing here in this verse. It says, And Sarah said unto Abraham, verse 2, Behold, now the Lord hath restrained me. He said he was going to have a child, but he's not doing what he said he was going to do. And so we see, from the desire to be accepted to the doubts, the devil comes in, he's influencing, and so we read now Sarah. What did she do? She said unto Abraham, Behold, now the Lord has restrained me from bearing. I pray thee, go in unto my maid. It may be that I may obtain children by her. And Abraham hearkened to the voice. of Sarah. He hearkened to the voice of Sarah. When God charged Adam with his sin, he says, you have hearkened unto the voice of your wife. Here we have the same situation. The devil knows how to work here. And ladies, you have a tremendous influence. You can use it for good. You can use it for not good. This is not good. And so we go from the desires to the doubts to the devil's influence, and now we come down to some decisions that they're making here. And her problem, she has no children. She's looking around, she's, well, I have this Egyptian handmaid. Yeah, that came from the last time Abraham sowed to the flesh. He brought this Egyptian handmaid out with him, and now the devil's going to use her as well. And so Sarah's decision is to influence her husband to do her will. Well, how did that work out for Sarah? We read in verse 4, and he, that is Abraham, went in unto Hagar, and she conceived, and when she saw that she had conceived, Her mistress was despised in her eyes. And Sarah said unto Abraham, My wrong be upon thee. I have given my maid unto thy bosom, and when she saw that she had conceived, I was despised in her eyes. The Lord judge between me and thee. But Abraham said unto Sarah, Behold, thy maid is in thy hand. Do to her as it pleases thee. And when Sarah dealt hardly with her, she fled from her face. Now, this is not working out too good for you here, Sarah. You're not doing things right, and you're going to pay the price. First thing we see here is she is despised. She is despised. Well, we reap what we sow. The Bible says in Proverbs 1.30, they would none of my counsel they despised all my reproof." Yeah, that's exactly what they're doing here. They would none of his counsel. They despised his reproof or his direction. Well now, she reaps what she sows. She is despised. Also we see here that her relationship with her husband is It is not what it used to be. It's been damaged. Her relationship with Hagar has been destroyed. And so what we have here is the outcome of some people who, well, they live in the flesh, they live by faith, they make their choices, and they make their consequences. If they're going to live by faith, they're living according to the Word. If you're going to live by the flesh, you're living according to the world. And they decided that that's what they would do. Well, I think Abraham has some blame here, too. He's very impatient. He's been getting restless. He's getting anxious. He's been waiting 10 years. He's now 85 years old. His wife is influencing him to do wrong, and the Bible says he hearkened unto the voice. of Sarah. Now there's a lot of voices out there. You need to be careful. We've seen that Adam hearken unto the voice of his wife. There's many other voices today and they're all going to lead you somewhere if you let them. Influence is a very powerful thing. Well, we see that they got into this trouble as the result of their reasoning together. They're thinking about something in a logical way. That's what reasoning is. And Jesus said over and over again to his disciples, Why reason ye among yourselves? Why reason ye among yourselves? I mean, there's the Son of God standing right in front of them. Maybe you could check with Him. No, they're just reasoning among themselves. Maybe Abraham and Sarah had spent a little more time checking with God. Obviously, they wouldn't have been doing what they were doing. Well, Paul said in Acts chapter 17 and 2, we read concerning him, Paul, as his manner was, reasoned with them out of the scriptures. Well, there's the disciples reasoning among themselves, leaving the Lord out. Here is Abraham and Sarah reasoning among themselves and leaving the Lord out. No, what we need to do is reason out of the scriptures. Well, we see the reasoning problem. And we see a responsibility problem. What happens here in verse 6 is Abraham ignores his responsibility. Abraham said unto Sarah, Behold thy maid is in thy hand, do to her as it pleases thee. And when Sarah dealt hardly with her, she fled from her face. Yeah, just ignore your responsibility Abraham, that's the idea. And so we see here the desires, the doubts, the devil, the decisions. But there's one more person in this story, and that's Hagar. Hagar, we find her in a difficult situation. Now, we read concerning her in verse number 6, But Abraham said unto Sarah, Behold, thy maid is in thy hand. Do to her as it pleases thee. She dealt hardly with her, it says, and she fled from her face. And then we get to verse 7, we find her out there in the wilderness. alone and very discouraged. Well, Hagar, she's in a difficult situation, but she could have said no. Well, that might have caused her a lot of heartache, absolutely, but she could have said no, I'm not doing this with Abraham. All she had to do was say no. Well, what might cost her? Doesn't matter what it costs. It's never right to do wrong in order to get a chance to do right. No. She could have said no. She didn't say no. Well, the next thing we see here is that she ran away from the problem. It says in verse 6, she fled from her face and the angel of the Lord found her by a fountain of water in the wilderness by the fountain in the way to Shur, and he said, Hagar, Sarah's maid, whence camest thou, and whither wilt thou go? Two very important and very interesting questions. But we see here, she could have said no, she didn't say no. Now when she gets this problem with Sarah and her, she ran away from the problem. That is a very common response today. If you don't like the way things are going on in the church and you have a problem there with somebody, find another church. Just run away. If things aren't going right in your marriage, well, find another mate. If you don't like what's happening in your job, don't try to fix it. Just find another job. And that's exactly how things are being done today. Hagar needed to face the situation and deal with her problem. Well, in this next portion of scripture, in this chapter, we find God dealing with this Gentile, and then we find the Lord's directions for Hagar and what she needs to do. Well, we read, first of all, verse number 7, the Lord found her. The Lord found her. That's exactly what happened to me on October the 7th, 1955. I wasn't looking for God, and in His mercy, He came to me. He found her by the fountain that represents the Word of God, and he gives her these two very important questions. Her questions were, where'd you come from, and where are you going? That's basically the question. Those are good questions. Well, we'll pick it up from here in our next broadcast. Be sure and tune in. We'll try to make it plain, and we will try to make it simple. you