“God Hears the Cry of the Oppressed Immigrant”
Genesis 16:7-16
Last week, our leading couple, Abram and Sarai came up with their own plan to produce a seed by having Sarai offer her Egyptian slave girl to Abram as a wife. It wasn’t the best of plans. Not only did they not consult Yahweh with their thoughts, or today we would say, “They didn’t pray about it,” their plan went against God’s design for marriage which established that one man and one woman would join together and become the image of God. Abram didn’t seem to mind and once Hagar was pregnant, relationships began to break down. Hagar began to despise her mistress and Sarai was beside herself. Sarai blamed Abram and Abram told her to do whatever she felt best. Sarai responded by mistreating Hagar and Hagar fled.
This brings us to the de-creation/re-creation mode of our literary design. In today’s Scripture God finds Hagar out in the desert, near death, and He will provide her with a promise of new life. Next week, we will read how God meets Abram and Sarai and deals with their de-creation and re-creation. Their re-creation is so profound they will receive new names. All the main characters have hurt each other and will need to go through their own transformation.
We begin today’s Scripture with an angel finding Hagar. The word angel has some translation difficulties. The English word “angel” is the English spelling of the Greek word that was used to translate the Hebrew word, “messenger.” The Greek word is “angelos” which in Greek means, “messenger” but when we read the English word, “angel” we miss out on the concept of messenger all together.
This angelic being was on a mission to bring a message to Hagar, and he happened to find her by a spring of water, which is usually found in a garden, but not in this case. Hagar was alone in the wilderness. We are told that the particular spring was on the way to Shur. If you remember from Genesis 10, this spring is halfway to Egypt. She was running home.
The messenger asked Hagar where she was coming from? And where she was going? Like he didn’t know? But God has done this before. Remember when God came to Adam and Eve? Asking where they were? What about the time God came down to talk with Cain, after he killed his brother? He asked the question that would get directly to the point.
God has a way of coming down to people when they are in their largest moment of distress and asking the most direct question in order to get the dialogue going. At this point the messenger has a threefold speech that seems rather troubling.
- Hagar was to go back and allow herself to be oppressed
- God would provide a blessing in the birth of Ishmael
- Ultimately, her son would separate from his brothers
Just as He did in Genesis 3, 4 and 6 God comes looking, He asks questions, and He provides a prediction of both blessing and separation of family.
The story concludes with Hagar calling on the name of Yahweh, in verse 13 and 14,
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[c] the One who sees me.” That is why the well was called Beer Lahai Roi[d]; it is still there, between Kadesh and Bered.
The NIV translation has a footnote just after the word “seen” that reads, “seen the back of” the One who sees me.”
Okay, check in time, Does this sound slightly familiar? God is meeting someone in the wilderness and they proclaim, “I’ve seen the back of the one who sees me?” Remember Moses when he asked God if he could see His glory? God answers, “No, if you do, you’ll die. However, you can see my back and live.”
Hagar names the well, which our footnote tells us,
“Beer Lahai Roi means well of the Living One who sees me,” or the “well of life.”
And God does indeed provide life because we read that she went back and gave birth to a son and they called him Ishmael.
Here God goes again, providing life in a moment of tragedy and in a place of desolation and death. Thus far, God has demonstrated two modes that He uses to create. He does this using water. He either:
- Provides too much water, or
- Provides water where there was no water
At this point, Abram and Sarai’s violence has killed their relationship with Hagar. It has brought death and tragedy. But, God comes and re-creates Hagar and provides her with a blessing. But not without some sacrifice. God could have blessed her and sent her back to Egypt. Instead, God tells her to go back and live among the oppression. But it won’t be forever, because when we get to chapter 21, she will finally be allowed to leave.
We have just read another story, of a family, where people do things that result in division. The first story of division was with Adam and Eve, and then we read about Noah and his family. Abram and Sarai follow right along.
It’s the sin of misdirected desire
coupled with bad building plans
that manages to break everything apart.
Then God has to come in and put things back together.
It’s like He is in triage mode trying to find a way to insert His blessing. How many of us in this room can totally relate?
Notice what God doesn’t do. He doesn’t undo what everyone has done. Abram and Sarai are His partners and He allows the consequences of their choices because that’s how God works with humans.
If we make a mess of things, well, He lets us.
He might not undo,
but what He will always do
is meet people where they’re at and take what evil has been done and transform it into blessings.
In fact, that is what God does best.
Eugene Peterson puts it this way in “The Message” Romans 8:26-28,
Meanwhile, the moment we get tired in the waiting, God’s Spirit is right alongside helping us along. If we don’t know how or what to pray, it doesn’t matter. He does our praying in and for us, making prayer out of our wordless sighs, our aching groans. He knows us far better than we know ourselves, knows our pregnant condition, and keeps us present before God. That’s why we can be so sure that every detail in our lives of love for God is worked into something good.
This is the first time God comes and re-creates in a place where there is no water, in the wilderness. But it’s not the last. Check this out.
We have an oppressed Egyptian who flees her oppressors into the wilderness. God meets the oppressed one in the wilderness and provides water.
That should ring some bells.
This all gets inverted in the book of Exodus, where the Egyptians were the oppressors and all the springs in the wilderness, found in Exodus and Numbers, become inversions of this story, right here.
There is something else that gets inverted in this story. Previously, in Genesis 12, God told Abram that He would bless those who bless him and curse those who curse him. Hasn’t Hagar just cursed the chosen couple?
That’s not good.
Notice God doesn’t do to Hagar what He did to Pharaoh, another Egyptian that cursed Him. In this story, rather than put a curse on Hagar, God meets her in her pain. Hagar had treated Sarai as if she was insignificant and cursed, yet God showed Hagar mercy. Instead of cursing Hagar, God does the opposite of what you think He would do, He blesses her. He did the same thing with Cain who had murdered his brother.
You would think God would have let Cain have it, but instead, God offers Cain forgiveness and protection from being murdered.
How ironic!
We have a woman from Egypt, who was in the desert calling on the name of the Lord. The only person that has done this so far is Abram. Then to add to the irony, this immigrant receives a blessing!
The motif that God hears the cry of the oppressed begins right here. The oppressed immigrant, to whom violence has been done, is heard by God. Not only does He hear the oppressed, He bends over backwards and plays both the role of the creator and of the judge in order to meet them in the moment.
This sounds so much like the cross. God desires to reach down and assist all of humanity. God will deal with this slave girl just as He does with all humans, because she is created in the image of God. She doesn’t have to do or be anything else, God goes where she is and does for her, what He wants to do for all humans, which is
- to bless them
- to multiply them.
What an amazing story of the love of God. Hagar had made mistakes, but in the midst of living as a slave girl for Abram and Sarai she had learned about Yahweh. So when His messenger met her at her lowest point she recognized and listened.
That’s it!
I would like to encourage you
that even before you get to your lowest point
that you reach out,
recognize God and listen.
Let’s pray.
