genesis 16:1-16 el roi february 2, 2020pm roi.pdf · 2020-02-04 · genesis 16:1-16 el roi february...

Genesis 16:1-16 El Roi February 2, 2020pm

READ Psalm 33 Genesis 16:1-16

The most watched super bowl of all time was 39 back in 2015 when

the New England Patriots beat the Seattle Seahawks. 114.4 million people tuned into watch, and that number does not include streaming services to

the best of my knowledge. I cannot imagine the kind of pressure that comes with performing in front of that large of a crowd.

I can’t imagine being a referee in a game like that. You couldn’t pay me enough money to ref a rec league game in Pleasant View. So there’s no

way I would leave myself open to that much scrutiny. I used to have a really bad problem of yelling at referees (never

umpires for some reason…only refs). I coached for a number of years, and you could pretty much bank on it. If we were losing, I would find just about

every excuse under the sun to shift the blame outside of poor coaching, and more often than not, the nearest ref was the one who I would draw a

bead on. To this day, I look back on some of the dumb things that I have said to refs, and I am embarrassed.

Corey M. Minter Page of 1 10

www.newhopefwbc.com 1285 New Hope Road J o e l t o n , T N 3 7 0 8 0 6 1 5 . 7 4 6 . 6 4 0 3


Several years ago we were watching one of our students play basketball or volleyball, and I was getting frustrated at some calls. Under

my breath, I just said something weird like, “Somebody ought to pray for that guy’s eyes.” Well, I looked over at barely one year old Claire, and this

is what she was doing. Referees have one of the hardest jobs in the world because they are

supposed to see everything on the field no matter where they are or who is in the way. It is all but impossible to call a perfect game…whatever the

sport. They simply have their limitations as to what they see. But God doesn’t. In fact, one of the attributes that most astounds me

about God is that He is omnipresent. He is everywhere present. There is no place where God is not. Just listen to David as he describes this

attribute in Psalm 139. Psalm 139:7 Where can I go from Your Spirit?

Or where can I flee from Your presence? 8 If I ascend into heaven, You are there;

If I make my bed in hell, behold, You are there. 9 If I take the wings of the morning,

And dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea, 10 Even there Your hand shall lead me,

And Your right hand shall hold me. 11 If I say, “Surely the darkness shall fall on me,”

Even the night shall be light about me; 12 Indeed, the darkness shall not hide from You,

But the night shines as the day;



The darkness and the light are both alike to You. He is watching…always watching…which can be thought of in an

ominous or encouraging light. Tonight, we will be looking at a text and a name of God where His all-seeing is a very positive thing. It comes to us

as the majority of God’s names do in the book of Genesis. By the way, it wasn’t until this study that I realized how many of the

names of God do in fact have their first roots in Genesis and Exodus. That is not an accident or a coincidence. In the first couple books of the Bible,

God is setting the standard of Who He is so that we can interpret the rest of Scripture in that light. These are His introductions to humanity and

introductions come at the beginning of the relationship. He is telling us all that we need to know about Him up front.

God is not hiding Himself from us. He is not telling us to go deeper down a spiritual rabbit hole until we finally understand Who He is and how

He interacts with us in our last days. He is up front: I Am Elohim—-The Most High. I Am Jehovah (Yahweh)—The Self-Existent One. I Am Jehovah

Jireh—I Will See to Your Atonement. I Am El Shaddai—The One Who Gives You Sustenance, and I Am Jehovah Rapha—The One Who Makes Wrong

Things Right. We would not have known those things about God unless we

experienced those things or if He Himself told us those things. Even if we had experienced them, we probably would not have given Him credit for

them had we not known they were a part of His nature. El Roi is a name of God that only shows up once in all of the Bible.

More interesting than that, though, it is not a name that God attributes to



Himself, but rather a name that is assigned to Him from another. And this person is quite another.

Genesis 16:1 Now Sarai, Abram’s wife, had borne him no children. And she had an Egyptian maidservant whose name was Hagar.

2 So Sarai said to Abram, “See now, the Lord has restrained me from bearing children. Please, go in to my maid; perhaps I shall

obtain children by her.” And Abram heeded the voice of Sarai. Be careful when you read the Bible that it is not just hero worship

and “5 Ways to Live a Good Life.” The Bible is not a collection of hero stories but of scoundrels who have a Hero.

Abraham and Sarah’s sin of allowing a handmaid to play surrogate, while culturally acceptable in that day, is not God’s plan at all. It

completely denies the Genesis command of “leaving and cleaving only to your wife,” and it denies the promise of God to give them a child in His

time and in His way. The helpmeet who was supposed to guard and keep him from sin is

now encouraging her husband to take part in adultery. “And Abram heeded the voice of Sarai” could also be understood as “And Abram

denied the voice of God.” Genesis 16:3 Then Sarai, Abram’s wife, took Hagar her maid, the

Egyptian, and gave her to her husband Abram to be his wife, after Abram had dwelt ten years in the land of Canaan.

4 So he went in to Hagar, and she conceived. And when she saw that she had conceived, her mistress became despised in her

eyes.



The thing that Sarai had wanted to happen happened: Hagar conceives, but something happened that she did not account for. Hagar’s

attitude begins to change. No longer did she feel or act like the little girl who they brought out of Egypt a decade earlier. Now, in Sarai’s eyes

Hagar has become entitled, self-important, a threat. Hagar was able to give Abram what Sarai could not, and they both knew it.

We have no idea the details of the despising whether verbal or physical altercations, but the two do not get along at all.

Warning: we are about to go into a very dangerous place in verse 5. We are going to go into the home of the couple who has displaced God

with their own selfish ambitions and reasoning. There is no amount of money that you could pay me to referee this fight either. We are ringside,

and we’ll call the play-by-play. Some of you will say, “Sarai’s wrong.” Others, “Abram is wrong.” The

truth is that they both are. I am so glad that God has not led anyone to transcribe any of mine

and Rachel’s “discussions” into Holy Scripture. You would all see how often I am wrong. But the Lord thought it important to have this marital spat

recorded for us to evaluate, and it starts off with a doozy. Genesis 16:5 Then Sarai said to Abram, “My wrong be upon you! I

gave my maid into your embrace; and when she saw that she had conceived, I became despised in her eyes. The Lord judge

between you and me.” “My wrong be upon you, Abram!” What?! Is that some kind of

passive aggressive apology? “I’m wrong Abram, but this is all your fault!”



Actually, the ESV translators get it closer to the original, and it makes more sense the way they write it. “May the wrong done to me be on you!” Sarai

is not acknowledging any wrongdoing on her part. She isn’t blaming Abram for the pregnancy but Hagar’s attitude. It seems like she felt that

Abram had encouraged Hagar to think more highly of herself, and that made Sarai angry.

“The Lord judge between you and me.” The New English Translation renders this phrase as “God is going to get you for this, Abram.”

So Abram…Abram, Abram, Abram…he is so docile in all of this unwilling to take the lead in his family.

“Abram, sleep with my servant.” “Uh…ok.”

“Abram, all of this is your fault for doing what I told you to do.” And verse 6 is pretty much a “Yes, dear…”

6 So Abram said to Sarai, “Indeed your maid is in your hand; do to her as you please.” And when Sarai dealt harshly with her, she fled

from her presence. Abram is so spineless that he allows (almost encourages) a woman

who is carrying his baby to be dealt harshly with…mistreated. We are unsure if this involves physical abuse, but whatever it is, it is so severe that

Hagar cannot take it anymore. She runs, and this is not the kind of setting where you can just run to

a nearby town. Abram’s clan lives in tents, migrating where the livestock need to graze. There are no nearby towns.



7 Now the Angel of the Lord found her by a spring of water in the wilderness, by the spring on the way to Shur.

Interestingly enough, she runs to the same place where we looked last Sunday night n the book of Exodus, into the wilderness of Shur (Sin).

And there she is by a spring of water when The Angel of the Lord found her. This is what is called a Christophany: a revealing of pre-incarnate

Christ. This is Jesus before He is born in Bethlehem. 8 And He said, “Hagar, Sarai’s maid, where have you come from,

and where are you going?” She said, “I am fleeing from the presence of my mistress Sarai.”

Notice: she only answers one of the questions. Where have you come from? She is running from Sarai, but she is running to nothing. For

the first time in her whole life, probably, Hagar has liberty. She can go wherever she like, but she had no idea where to go.

I feel for her. I really do. I don’t know how you can read this account and not think anything less than that Hagar is treated as property, used for

what she could do for Sarai, used for what she could do for Abram. The only time in her whole life she has ever experienced any kind of worth is

when she is carrying this child, and that certainly has not gone as she had hoped or planned.

Listen to the counsel that Christ gives her. It is hard for a modern-day, free person to hear, but it is for her safety and her benefit.

9 The Angel of the Lord said to her, “Return to your mistress, and submit yourself under her hand.” 10 Then the Angel of the Lord



said to her, “I will multiply your descendants exceedingly, so that they shall not be counted for multitude.”

The promise that was not originally for her but had been forced upon her by the evil choices of Abram and Sarai has now included her. God

knew what would happen. He knew that Abram would sin, that Hagar would conceive, and so He has now expanded the blessing of family to

her. But not just the blessing of family, but the blessing of freedom as

well. 11 And the Angel of the Lord said to her:

“Behold, you are with child, And you shall bear a son.

You shall call his name Ishmael, Because the Lord has heard your affliction.

12 He shall be a wild man; His hand shall be against every man,

And every man’s hand against him. And he shall dwell in the presence of all his brethren.”

Some of that may seem like a curse, especially verse 12. “A wild donkey of a man, his hand against everyone, their’s against him…” But

really all of that is just saying that Ishmael will be his own man. He will be free as a wild donkey. He will live as he wants to live even when it does not

fit within the social confines of those around him. “Hagar, the freedom that you have wished for but never enjoyed will

be extended to your son.” That is all that this young slave girl wants: a



family and freedom. God has just promised them both to her. How does she respond?

13 So she called the name of the Lord who spoke to her, “You are a God of seeing,” for she said, “Truly here I have seen him who looks

after me.” A stranger outside the blessing of God’s people has now been

grafted into a blessing of her own, and she cries, “El Roi…You see me.” She who had slipped unnoticed among the tents of power and influence

for so long…God takes notice of her. She names God El Roi. That is abnormal isn’t it? I do not suggest

that should be a part of your personal walk with God, that you give Him different names other than what He has revealed to you; so I think what is

happening here is that the Spirit of God is so moving in Hagar that she prophecies or proclaims the truth of Who God is…El Roi.

He sees her in her desperation. He sees her in her hopelessness. He sees her in her sin of rebellion. He sees her there, but He doesn’t leave her

there. He comes down and visits with her in such a way that it changes just about everything about her.

She even names the well Beer-lahai-roi (the well of the One Who lives and sees) wanting to remember this incident for all of her life (and maybe

show her son that location some day). Whether Ishmael ever sees it or not we do not know, but they return

to Sarai and Abram, but everything is not happily ever after. When Isaac (the son of promise) is born to Abraham and Sarah, they

find that their tents are not big enough for two families. Some joking of



Isaac by Ishmael (whether innocent or malicious we don’t know) seals the deal, Sarah makes Abraham turn them out.

So once again, over a decade later, Hagar finds herself wandering in another desert. This time, it is not her choice, and she can see no well, nor

can she see any God. Genesis 21:15 And the water in the skin (that Abraham had given

them before he banished the,) was used up, and she placed the boy under one of the shrubs.

16 Then she went and sat down across from him at a distance of about a bowshot; for she said to herself, “Let me not see the death

of the boy.” So she sat opposite him, and lifted her voice and wept. 17 And God heard the voice of the lad. Then the angel of God

called to Hagar out of heaven, and said to her, “What ails you, Hagar? Fear not, for God has heard the voice of the lad where he is.

18 Arise, lift up the lad and hold him with your hand, for I will make him a great nation.”

19 Then God opened her eyes, and she saw a well of water. And she went and filled the skin with water, and gave the lad a drink.

20 So God was with the lad; and he grew and dwelt in the wilderness, and became an archer.

21 He dwelt in the Wilderness of Paran; and his mother took a wife for him from the land of Egypt.

He is the God Who Sees you where you are, and He is the God Who hears You when you cry out to Him. You’re never too far or too empty. He

sees, and He saves.


genesis 16:1-16 el roi february 2, 2020pm roi.pdf · 2020-02-04 · genesis 16:1-16 el roi february...

Documents