11 A BIG MISTAKE

The maker of this match amazingly was Sarai herself: she said to Abram, “Go, sleep with my slave.” Satan tempts us by our nearest and dearest relations, or those friends that we have an high opinion of and an affection for. The temptation is most dangerous when it is sent by a hand that is least suspected: it is our wisdom therefore to consider, not only who speaks but also to what is spoken. God’s commands bring us comfort and honor much better than our own maneuverings. It would have been much better for Sarai if Abram had kept to the rule of God’s law instead of being guided by her foolish projects; Let this remind us that some of our problems are of our own making.

Sarai was a beautiful, agreeable, dutiful wife, and a partner with him in his large possessions; and yet she was childless. God gives His gifts variously, loading us with benefits, but not overloading us: each heart experiences its own bitterness; some cross or other is appointed to be an alloy to great enjoyments. The joy of having children is sometimes given to the poor and denied to the rich, given to the wicked and denied to good people, though the rich have most to leave them and good people would take most care of their education. God does what He wants to and is answerable to no one.

Sarai recognized God’s providence in this affliction as she says, “The Lord has kept me from having children” Where children are, it is God that gives them as we learn from Jacob in Genesis 33:5 “Jacob answered, ‘They are the children God has graciously given your servant.,’” and where they are wanted but absent, it is He that withholds them as we also learn from Jacob in Genesis 30:2, “Jacob became angry with her and said, ‘Am I in the place of God, who has kept you from having children?’” It is good for us to recognize this so we may either bear it as an affliction of his ordering for wise and holy ends or prayerfully overcome it also for the fulfillment of His purpose.

She used this as the reason for Abram to marry his maid and he cooperated. Here is what seems to be a contradiction. God is the One who said Abram would have many children and here he and his wife are agreeing that God has withheld children from them. When our hearts are too much set upon any creature-comfort, we are easily tempted to use our own human methods to obtain it. Desires that are too strong may produce irregular efforts to fulfill them. If our wishes are not kept in submission to God’s plans, our pursuits will scarcely be kept under the restraints of his rules. It is for lack of a firm dependence upon God’s promise, and a patient waiting for God’s time, that we go out of the way of our duty to try to obtain an expected mercy. He that believes does not make haste.

Abram’s compliance with Sarai’s proposal, we have reason to think, was from an earnest desire for the promised seed through whom the covenant should be fulfilled. God had told him that his heir should be a son of his body. But God had not yet told him that it should be a son by Sarai, so possibly he therefore thought, “Why not by Hagar, since Sarai herself proposed it?” Temptations may have very fair pretenses, and be colored with believable rational. The power of such temptations would be happily prevented if we would ask counsel of God by the Word and by prayer before we attempt anything that is suspicious. Herein Abram erred greatly; he married without God’s consent.

There are immediate bad consequences of Abram’s unhappy marriage to Hagar. It quickly made a great deal of mischief. If we have hurried instead of waiting, we may thank only ourselves for the guilt and grief that follow us when we go out of the way of our duty.

Sarai is despised by Hagar, and an emotional competition and enmity begins, “When she (Hagar) knew she was pregnant, she began to despise her mistress” (4) and, Sarai understandably has a problem with that. Hagar no sooner perceives herself with child by her master than she looks scornfully on her mistress, upbraids her perhaps with her barrenness, insults her as she experienced the same thing Hannah experienced many years later: “Because the Lord had closed Hannah’s womb, her rival kept provoking her in order to irritate her” (6). Can you imagine Hagar boasting of the prospect she had of bringing an heir to Abram, to that good land, and to the promise. Perhaps she thinks herself a better woman than Sarai, more favored by Heaven, and likely to be better beloved by Abram; and therefore she will not submit as she had done before. Mean and unkind attitudes, when favored and advanced either by God or man, can grow prideful and forget their place and origin. Proverbs 29:21 says, “A servant pampered from youth will turn out to be insolent.” Insolent means “without regard for the rules of propriety or morality; impudently or brazenly. Proverbs 30:23 includes “a servant who displaces her mistress” among those under which the earth trembles and cannot bear. It is a hard thing to bear honor aright and Hagar was not able to display such grace in becoming pregnant when Sarai couldn’t either. This is certainly something a leader needs to understand. We want to be successful, but when we are, we need to be successful humbly and graciously.

With his wife Sarai suffering from contempt from Hagar Abram is put in a hard place. Sarai unfairly charges Abram when it was Sarai’s idea to begin with. “Then Sarai said to Abram, ‘You are responsible for the wrong I am suffering. I put my slave in your arms, and now that she knows she is pregnant, she despises me. May the Lord judge between you and me.’” We can see that Sarai really thought Abram was in the wrong since she said, “May the Lord judge between you and me,” and very unjustly charges him with the injury. The story of Abram and Sarai generally paints Sarai in a good light, for indeed she behaved herself well in the major issue of submission to Abram when he said call me your brother. But, here, we see another side of her. 

Sarai, in her passion, speaks as one of the foolish women speaks. It is absurd for passionate people to quarrel with others for what they themselves should bear the blame. Sarai could not escape the fact that she had given her maid to Abram, and yet she cries out, “The wrong you have done should be on you” when she should have said, “I was foolish to suggest you marry Hagar my servant.”  When pride, anger  and passion are on the throne, reason is out of doors, and is neither spoken nor heard. Just because she was loud and forward and appealed to God does not mean she was in the right. Rash and bold statements can sometimes hint of guilt and a bad cause.

Abram’s meekness is not truly a good solution. “‘Your slave is in your hands,’ Abram said. ‘Do with her whatever you think best.’ Then Sarai mistreated Hagar; so she fled from her’” (6). Abram took Sarai’s side, not Hagar’s. Though Hagar was his wife, he would not take her side nor protect her in any thing that was disrespectful to Sarai, for whom he still felt the same affection he ever had. Those who want to keep up peace and love must return soft answers to hard accusations. Husbands and wives particularly should agree, and strive, not against each other, but together not to be both angry with each other. Abraham yielded to Sarai. “A gentle answer turns away wrath, but a harsh word stirs up anger”  (Proverbs 15:1). Sarai’s passion was to be revenged on Hagar: She dealt hardly with her, not only confining her to her usual place and work as a servant, but possibly making her to serve with rigour. “Then Sarai mistreated Hagar; so she fled from her” (6). God can be on the side of two opposing persons at the same time. God is for all of His own. When Sarai was too hard on Hagar, God came to Hagar’s defense. God takes notice of, and is displeased with, the hardships which harsh masters unreasonably put on their servants. Employers, and those in high positions of authority should remember the wisdom of Job, who said, “Did not he who made me in the womb make them?  Did not the same one form us both within our mothers?“ (Job 31:15)

Now on Hagar’s side, her pride cannot bear Sarai’s confident position with Abram’s emotional support, her high spirit having become impatient with Sarai she now fled. She not only avoided Sarai’s anger for the present, as David did Saul’s, but she totally deserted her service, and ran away from the house forgetting what wrong she did to her mistress in running away, and whose servant she was, and to her master, whose wife she was. Pride blinds. It will hardly be restrained by any bonds of duty, or even of many bonds of duty. Hagar forgot that she herself had first given the provocation, by despising her mistress. If she had suffered for doing good that would be different, but here she is suffering because of her own mistake. 1 Peter 2:20 clearly distinguishes between these two issues. “But how is it to your credit if you receive a beating for doing wrong and endure it? But if you suffer for doing good and you endure it, this is commendable before God.” Those who suffer for their faults ought to bear their sufferings more patiently as being their just learning experience.

This is the first mention in the Bible of Angels. Notice next how the angel stopped her in her flight. “The angel of the Lord found Hagar near a spring in the desert; it was the spring that is beside the road to Shur” (7).  She was evidently making her way towards her own country since she was on the way to Shur, which was towards Egypt. It is usually well if our afflictions would make us think of our home, the better country, but this situation was different. Hagar was now out of her place, out of the way of her duty and going further astray when the angel found her. Lord stop us too when we are going astray, wither by a donkey or an angel. It is a great mercy to be stopped in a sinful way either by conscience or by God. God allows those that are out of the way to wander awhile, that when they see their folly, and what a loss they have brought on themselves they may the more easily change directions and become more likely to return their duties. Hagar was not stopped till she was in the wilderness and had set down weary enough near a spring of clear water with which to refresh herself. God brings us into a barren wilderness to prepare our hearts to long for Him and there meets us. This is the way God speaks to Israel, “Therefore I am now going to allure her; I will lead her into the wilderness and speak tenderly to her” (Hosea 2:14).

The Angel called her “Hagar, slave of Sarai,” Perhaps this was a check to her pride. Though she was Abram’s wife, and, as such, was obliged to return, yet he calls her Sarai’s maid, to humble her. Though courtesy teaches us to call others by their highest titles, yet humility and wisdom teach us to call ourselves by the lowest. As a rebuke to her flight. Sarai’s maid ought to be in Sarai’s tent, and not wandering in the wilderness and lingering by a spring of water. It is good for us often to call to mind what our place and relation are to remember our station and not stray from it. “If a ruler’s anger rises against you, do not leave your post; calmness can lay great offenses to rest” (Ecclesiastes 10:4).

The angel put to her proper and very pertinent questions, “Where have your come from?” Consider that you are running away both from the duty to which you were bound and the privileges with which you were blessed in Abram’s tent. “Where are you going?” You are running yourself into sin, in Egypt because, if she return to that people, she will return to their gods. And you are running into danger, in the wilderness, through which you must travel. Moses tells us what the wilderness is like, “He led you through the vast and dreadful wilderness, that thirsty and waterless land, with its venomous snakes and scorpions. He brought you water out of hard rock” (Deuteronomy 8:15). Let us always consider where we are leaving from and where are we going to. From where are you falling and to where are you falling?

Hagar gave an honest and a fair confession: “I’m running away from my mistress Sarai”(8). She acknowledges her fault in fleeing from her mistress. Was this a morally neutral statement or was it a confession?

The big lesson from this story for Christian leaders is that Abram tried to help God fulfill His promise and this is unnecessary. It is wrong for us to try to do it in our power. With the passing of time, and with no apparent miracle child from God, Abraham and Sarah developed a human plan. God’s plan and Abraham and Sarah’s plan were so different from each other that centuries later, in the New Testament, the two are referred to in contrast. Galatians 4:21–31 tells of the two covenants and the children of the slave woman in contrast to the children of the free woman. Here is Paul’s conclusion:

“Now you, brothers, like Isaac, are children of promise. At that time the son born in the ordinary way persecuted the son born by the power of the Spirit. It is the same now. But what does the Scripture say? ‘Get rid of the slave woman and her son, for the slave woman’s son will never share in the inheritance with the free woman’s son.’ Therefore, brothers, we are not children of the slave woman, but of the free woman” (Galatians 4:28–31).

Every time we take matters into our own hands, not waiting for God’s miracle but trusting in the flesh and getting ahead of God, we are following Abraham and Sarah’s “We’ll do it our way” attitude. When we wait for God, experience His miracles, and do things in His timing, we have a “We’ll do it God’s way” attitude. Ishmael and Isaac—Hagar and Sarah—represent these two different principles.

This does not mean that all the physical descendants of Ishmael on earth today have an “I’ll do it my way” attitude. I have some fine Palestinian and Arab friends who are wonderful Christian people. Abraham’s attempt to help God keep His promise teaches us an important lesson. Wait for God’s miracles; don’t “help” Him with your own human plan.