Lord, thank you for loving us, for being to us a shelter in the storm, the storm of guilt that we cannot erase from failings in our lives and from breaches in the way we have not kept your commands. And so Lord Jesus, open up your arms to us now and draw us to yourself and help us to see the shelter that you are. In your name we pray. Amen. From Genesis chapter 16. Now Sarai, Abram's wife, had not born him a child, but she had an Egyptian slave woman whose name was Hagar. So Sarai said to Abram, see now, the Lord has prevented me from bearing children. Please have relations with my slave woman. Perhaps I will obtain children through her. And Abram listened to the voice of Sarai. And so, after Abram had lived 10 years in the land of Canaan, Abram's wife Sarai took Hagar the Egyptian, her slave woman, and gave her to her husband Abram as his wife. Then he had relations with Hagar and she conceived and when Hagar became aware that she had conceived, her mistress was insignificant in her sight. So Sarai said to Abram, may the wrong done to me be upon you. I put my slave woman into your arms, but when she saw that she had conceived, I was insignificant in her sight. May the Lord judge between you and me. But Abram said to Sarai, look, your slave woman is in your power. Do to her what is good in your sight. So Sarai treated her harshly, and she fled from her presence. Now the angel of the Lord found her by a spring of water in the wilderness, by the spring on the way to Shur. He said, Hagar, Sarai's slave woman, from where have you come? And where are you going? And she said, I am fleeing from the presence of my mistress, Sarai. So the angel of the Lord said to her, return to your mistress and submit to her authority. The angel of the Lord also said to her, I will greatly multiply your descendants so that they will be too many to count. The angel of the Lord said to her further, behold, you are pregnant. and you will give birth to a son, and you shall name him Ishmael, because the Lord has heard your affliction. But he will be a wild donkey of a man. His hand will be against everyone, and everyone's hand will be against him, and he will live in defiance of all his brothers. Then she called the name of the Lord who spoke to her, you are a God who sees me, For she said, I have seen him here and lived after he saw me. Therefore, the well called Bir Lahai Roy, behold, it is between Kadesh and Bered. So Hagar bore a son to Abram, and Abram named his son to whom Hagar gave birth, Ishmael. Hagar Abram was 86 years old when Hagar bore Ishmael to him the word of the Lord Could we have the children come forward at this time Come here guys We're not going upstairs today, but we'll at least have a little time here. You guys will understand this a lot faster than us adults. So you guys can sit down. I'll sit on the floor with you guys as well. Come on. If you have skirts, you can sit up here. It'll be better for you. But I want to see you guys, actually. You're talking to me, not to them. So you guys can come down here, and then I can look at the girls too. You can sit over there if you want to. Yeah, yeah. The thing is this. How many of you have had things like Maybe a show at school or a concert or something like that or a game or anything that you're doing and then you look to the stands or to the pews and all that to try to find the eyes of your parents. Have you ever done that? I remember I did that when I was a kid. In your games, Axel, do you look to the stands to see if your dad is there and where he is? How do you feel when you find his eyes? You feel bad or you feel, wow, he's here. I think you feel good because I remember when I was a kid ages ago and I would look and I would find my mom's eyes when I was playing handball or I was singing somewhere and I would look and she was there, I would get goosebumps. And I knew that in some way I was special because my mom was there looking and she was there seeing me. Today we're gonna talk about God seeing someone that really probably had never been seen before. Can you imagine someone going by their whole life and not being seen? but she was seen by God himself. And she called him El Roy. Can you say that word? El Roy, the God who sees. And that is the God we worship. We worship El Roy, that's one of his names. One God, but we worship the one who sees us. So, every single time that we think, We are alone, afraid, or we go into trouble. We have to know, and we know that God sees us. And that should also give us goosebumps, good ones, because God is with us, and God knows who we are. That's what we're gonna talk to them now, because they take a longer time to understand that, okay? But thank you so much for being here with me, okay? Now I'll need just a bit, maybe 25 minutes from you guys. Calm, okay? Not too noisy. Maybe Ben will be a little noisier today. I don't think so. Okay, I'll see you guys in a little bit, okay? Remember, God always sees us, okay? Thank you. You can walk slowly to your place. Oh guys, I love children. They sometimes understand things better than we do. I think we might have too much mileage to understand simple things like God sees us. And then like TJ sometimes says, we can go home now. That's all we have. God sees us. God sees us in our joyful moments. God sees us in our nakedness. God sees us. That's the deal. And a few years ago, I started noticing that I was really becoming an elder. not because of my position in church or anything like that. That is just, for me, a name. It's the work we do that is important and how we are with people that is very important. But I started waking up, and man, it was hard to see. I couldn't see my clock. You know those numbers, those big numbers, digital numbers on the clock? They were blurry. And I would rub my eyes and squint, and it was still blurry. And then I still refused to go to an eye doctor or to a pulmonatrist because I don't need glasses. Come on. I'm only 40. That was five years ago. And eventually, I got my wife's glasses. And I started using them because she needed glasses, not me. And I started using hers, and eventually it became my possession. It's still her property, but I am the one using it for good for the past three years. And presbyopia is my condition, this condition. this very difficult thing to go through in life. I'm sure I will go through other transitions as I get older, but presbyopia has made it very difficult to really focus on things. to read, my arm seems to get shorter and shorter by the day, and the little letters on the leaflet, the little leaflets, the prescription medication on the label, why do they print those things so small? You know, they could give us a little booklet. I would take a booklet, I wouldn't need glasses for that. We laugh, however, It's so interesting how disorders of our physical vision have the power to distort the image of what we see. The same way, distortions of our, or a disturbance or a disorder of our spiritual eyes or faith can also distort how we perceive God, other people, and even ourselves. Today in the narrative that we read, We see, I believe, that dynamic going on, a little disorder, not of a physical nature, but of a spiritual nature, and it seems that all the characters in that story today have some sort of a vision, or a spiritual vision, or a faith disorder. I will say that, Sarai herself suffers from myopia, but faith myopia, or spiritual nearsightedness. After 10 years wandering in the promised land that God had promised her husband after she left with her husband and his nephew from Ur, from her own clan and from where their comforts were, they were going to this promised land and were going to be father and mother of a great nation. And after 10 years, he's 85, she's 75, the only heir they have is Eliezer of Damascus, a slave. Maybe God has forgotten. Sometimes God seems slow. 10 years. No fulfillment. Have you been there? 10 years and no word from God. Up to this point, Sarai hasn't heard a word from God. She hears about these wonderful encounters that her husband had with God, and how her husband spoke to God and heard these promises, So far with her? Still buried. So far, she can't see anything. How could she see in the future? She sees no action from God, so Apparently God wasn't doing anything. And many times when that happens, we spring into action. We are proactive people. Pragmatical, pragmatic. So let's fix this. Maybe God needs a little help here. No? So Hagar offers. her slave to Abram, in order that through her, Hagar, Sarai might have a heir. And God's promise might be fulfilled. Because God helps who? Yes, who help, yes. God helps who help themselves. or so. Before we go further, I believe there is a little parenthesis that we need to open here because we might rush to some conclusions about Sarai's and Abraham's morality of having Sarai offer a slave for the patriarch to have a son with. Remember that Sarai and Abraham are coming from Ur, And they haven't received, centuries later, they will receive the law. So they are still before the law, and not only before the law, in their own... Clan, and in those regions around the Middle East at that time, this was a common practice. Surrogate mothers, in order for the clan to remain existing, they would use slaves in order to have their children when the matriarch was barren. That was commonplace in their time. We will not dive into that, but let us not come to conclusions about their morality here. That's not the issue. The issue here is one and one only, it's faith. The issue at hand is that Sarai's and Abraham have this disorder of the spiritual eye. They can't see too far. And there are consequences to spiritual nearsightedness. The decisions forged in their blurry vision of what God would do would change the way they saw not only God, but themselves as a couple. Hagar, it would change everything. Pregnant Hagar now looks down on barren Sarai. Sarai is insecure and hurt. She now blames Abram for the solution she proposed. And Abram cowardly steps back, opening the path for Sarai to abuse Hagar and treat Hagar harshly. And what can Hagar do? She has no one to blame. She's just a slave. So she rents. Doesn't all that cry redemption? Abraham needs redemption. Sarah needs redemption. Hagar screams redemption. Doubt, mistrust, fear, blame shifting, hurt, fleeing, hiding. Does that sound like any other couple in the Bible? Maybe the first. It seems that my optic faith might be a genetic trait in human race. It seems to be generalized even in us. Invariably, the way we see God and the way we perceive the way he sees us determines how we see ourselves and how we see others around us. That's why when now Hagar is with child, she is now special. And her mistress or her owner is diminished in her eyes. because now she has been ushered into the family of the patriarch and her owner doesn't have any children. Jesus teaches us about this very disorder of the soul related to spiritual vision in the Sermon on the Mount, in Matthew chapter six, 22 and 23, and he says, the eye is the lamp of the body, so then if your eye is clear, your whole body will be full of light, but if your eye is bad, your whole body will be full of darkness, so if light That is, if the light that is in you is darkness, how great is the darkness? How great is our darkness as humans? Our perception of God, of who God is, and how he moves and he works, is the ruler by which we will always measure everything around us. So, If God is this magnanimous being, full of grace and love, has took me in as his slave, and I have a place in his family, I might look at other people with that grace as well, with that mercy, with that compassion. However, if God is this forgetful Lord that promise and does not follow through. I might have doubt in my heart about the other ones. Let's switch a little from Sarai to Hagar. She's now fleeing from her mistress, and I can only imagine and wonder about the conflicted feelings that she has. that are going through her mind and her heart, the slave's heart. The thoughts that rush through her mind when her owner before that called her and ordered her to sleep with her husband as his wife in order to bear a child for her owner. She might have thought, I'm finally sane now. Finally, I will have significance now. Of course, now I will have a place at the table. I will be the mother of the promised seed. They see me now. But shortly after that, Those sweet feelings turn bitter. She's now, she's now looking at her mistress. And once meek, now her eyes are defiant and arrogant. The short-lived joy and pride gives place to abuse and to pain and confusion and Hagar flees. and she flees in the direction of Egypt, actually. The text says she goes to her, sure, but that is the direction from where the clan of Abraham was, straight line, pretty much, to Egypt. Maybe in an attempt to go back to her roots, to her own people, to where she had comfort, to where she knew who she was. Everything cries redemption. But there is a God who sees. And God sees the slave in her desert. And because God sees and hears her, She says, El Roy, this is the God who sees me. And El Roy comes to her saying that he found her, as if he was looking for her. Maybe something close to the experience that I just told the kids, when a parent is anxious at an elementary school to see her kid sing in that choir, and the parents can't see the kid through all these faces, and sometimes they all look the same, especially when you don't have your glasses on. And finally, your eyes lock into your kid's eyes. And there that child finds significance, finds comfort. And that is what happens with Hagar. Elroi, the god who sees, assures her of her significance. Though she is not carrying a child of promise, She's not the mother of Isaac. She is the mother of Ishmael. And she will be reminded for her entire life with Ishmael that God hears. Not only God sees El Roy, but God hears Ishmael. I don't know if you paid attention last year during the commercial break for the Super Bowl when the advertisement for He Gets Us came up. Did you notice that? I noticed as well, and at first that really shocked me, and I thought it was something about Christ, and then it got a little weird. because God gets you and it's okay. God gets you exactly where you are and just stay there. Everything's good. God gets you. And that's not what El Roy or Ishmael, the God who hears and the God who sees, was telling Hagar by finding her. It wasn't all okay. it would be okay. Because from the seed of her mistress, there would come Emmanuel, God with us. And in Emmanuel, the seed of Ishmael, the son of the slave, could be free. And because of that, everything now has significance. Ultimately, the root of Sarai's short-sightedness and Hagar's misplaced thirst for significance was one and the same, and we share it. Ultimately, it's thirst and hunger for his sight, for his eyes. That's where we find significance. And that is what the Lord himself says, repeating Isaiah 55.1 in John. And to the thirsty and hungry, he says, come. Everyone who thirsts come to the waters, and he who has no money come buy and eat. Come buy wine and milk without money and without price. And we are the ones that feed upon the bread of life. And the bread has come down from heaven and nourishes our souls and fills our human spirit. bringing us healing from this ailment, bringing us significance and redemption. Poetry has power, and I believe that this poet that wrote this hymn was able to put in very few words a good summation of what this text brings to us this morning. And this is what it says. Why should I feel discouraged? Why should shadows come? Why should my heart be lonely and log for heaven and home? When Jesus is my portion, my constant friend is he, his eye is on the sparrow and I know he watches me. And the chorus goes, ♪ I sing because I'm happy ♪ ♪ I sing because I'm free ♪ His eye is on the sparrow, and I know He watches me. Will you pray with me? Heavenly Father, the assurance of your sight on us gives us the significance that we church all over the world. By your eyes, we are healed. By your presence, we are comforted. By your son, Jesus Christ, we are redeemed. We thank you for this blessed assurance. I'm going to do this in the name of our Redeemer, Jesus Christ. Amen.