The God Who Sees

Photo by Michaela Murphy on Unsplash
Sarai, from a human perspective, acts in a seemingly logical way. After all, what is the definition of insanity but trying the same thing over and over and expecting a different result? Sarai wants to have the child promised to her, but it has been ten years now, and nothing has changed. They've gone to the promised land, tithed to God's priest, even witnessed a full-blown covenant ceremony, but ten years later, still no child. Trusting God has only taken them so far, so now it must be time to try something different. 

The problem that this passage presents is not that it is bad to use logic. The problem this passage presents is that distrusting God is always illogical. Sarai and Abram are struggling with knowing that God sees them. It can seem that He doesn't when it has been a long time of waiting. This passage is going to proving in an overwhelming way, that God sees and hears and it is disastrous to not trust him. 

It is disastrous to not trust God

Our story starts by stating the big problem: Sarai still hasn't had a child. Chapter 15 told us that there would be as many children to outnumber the stars, but here we are, ten years later, with nothing to show for it. Sarai wants to be the solution to her problem. Sarai looks around and sees Hagar, her foreign servant, and sees opportunity. You see, where laws of nature fail, laws of man make up for. At that time, if a wife couldn't bear children, it was socially acceptable to substitute her servant in her place. Her husband could bear children with the servant, but legally the child would still be considered the wife's. 

At first, this seems to be a pretty reasonable calculation. You want a child, but biologically, it is impossible. There is an alternative legal means to have one, so why not pursue it? 

The problem here is that God was going to give the child through Sarai, and He doesn't approve of multiple wives. We will see what happens when things are not pursued God's way. Human planning against God's commands will always result in disaster.  

Sarai begins with the assertion that God has prevented her from having a child. The next sentence should have been, "But we know what He has promised us, so we will keep waiting." Instead, the next sentence is, in essence, "We can get around God by using someone else." Silly when it is put that way, huh? "God isn't letting me have this, so I will sin in order to outsmart God." It never works out. Even a good gift apart from the Giver is a grief. 

Genesis wants us to understand what is happening here as we get to the end of verse 2 and the rest of verse 3. Adam was punished for "listening to the voice of his wife" when they ate from the tree. Here, Abram is listening to the voice of Sarai in this sin. Notice also, as many commentators pointed out, that Sarai "takes" and "gives" Hagar, just as Eve took the fruit and gave it to Adam (Belcher, 126). It's a repeat of Genesis 3. Notice all the titles here in verse 3, "Sarai, Abram’s wife, took Hagar the Egyptian, her servant, and gave her to Abram her husband as a wife." None of this should be happening. 

Once this has happened, however, things have been set in motion, and no one is going to like the results. One scholar said, "...human assistance to the fulfillment of the divine promises only complicated the matter." (Ross, 316). Hagar has now succeed where Sarai has supposedly failed, so she is rubbing Sarai's face in it (Ross, 319). That word there means to "treat lightly." 

Sarai isn't happy, even though her plan went more or less how she wanted it to. She got the child she was looking for but lost the respect of her servant, and possibly the status of wife in the house (Matthews, 182)! However, Abram clarifies things by calling Hagar "your servant," but that's about all he does! He tells her that Hagar is her servant, so she can deal with her. And deal with her she does. She treats her so badly, that Hagar, newly pregnant, flees from the household towards the desert. 

It should be clear at this point that sin has caused problems at every turn. Sarai's impatience and Abram's passivity brought an illegitimate child here. Instead of stopping there, sin multiplied! Hagar got filled with pride, Sarai got filled with insecurity, and now, at the end of verse six, they lost their servant along with the baby they just got! They ended up worse than before from a sheer numbers standpoint. 

We serve a God who sees

Now, up to this point in the passage we have seen the mention of "seeing" and "eyes" a couple times in the Hebrew. In verse 4, Sarai was "despised in Hagar's eyes," and in verse 6, Abram tells Sarai to treat Hagar in whatever way is good in Sarai's "eyes." All of these eyes have despised each other, but there is about to be a new set of eyes on the scene. 

Our new section opens with the Lord finding Hagar by a spring of water (which, in Hebrew, uses the same word as "eye," fascinatingly). No one is beyond God's eye. He asks her questions similar to the ones asked of Adam and Eve, namely, "Where?" Yet instead of exile, God tells her to return to the master's house. This will come with a promise and a future that is spelled out in verses 10-12 (Matthews, 189). While this isn't the same promise that Abram is given, as that promise is for Isaac, but there is the promise that there will be many descendants. Sadly, Ishmael (meaning, "God hears") isn't going to get along with people very well, something we see played out in Middle Eastern politics to this day. 

Nevertheless, the Lord has seen and cared for the least thought of. Hagar was one servant in a large household, a foreigner, and a fugitive into a desert place. If there was ever a person who would be ignored or unnoticed, it would be Hagar. But she was not beyond God's eyes and ears. Hagar recognizes this and calls God "the God of seeing" and names the well there "he well of the Living One who sees me." 

No matter how forgotten you think you are, you are never beyond the eyes of God. No matter how despised you are in other people's eyes does not mean you are beyond God's. There is never a need to resort to sin to get what the Lord is going to give you. God hasn't forgotten about you.

For Sarai, she had to be reminded about that every time she saw Ishmael. She would be reminded of this again when she had to call her son Isaac (which means "laughter," a reference to Sarai's reaction when God told her she would have a child.) 

You and I don't have to have reminders like that. The only name we need to be reminded of is Jesus. Jesus coming to Earth is the deepest evidence that God does see and hear. We were far from God, but we were never beyond God's vision. He saw us in our sin, yet came to rescue us from our sin. 

So what does this passage teach us? As individuals, I think there are two. 

1) Please don't try to help God's plans by introducing your own. God is not a toddler. He doesn't need your brilliance. A preacher, Steve Lawson, once said that if his prayers changed God's mind, he would never pray again. God's plans are infinitely wise, so we don't pray to change God's mind. We pray so that God will change us to see that His plans are wise. The saying goes that if at first you don't succeed, do it the way mom told you to do it the first time. This applies to us all when it comes to God. Don't try to do things differently than God tells you. The worst case scenario is you succeed! Sarai got a child and near constant unrest in the middle east for thousands of years! Thankfully, not all of our sins have the same sort of effect, but some do. We sinned in legalizing abortion at the cost of millions of lives. 

2) Notice how your eyes work. How do you see people? Do you see people? I can go my whole day surrounded by people whom I never see. There will be plenty of times where I will see people just long enough to assign them to some sort of category in relation to me (better than me, worse than me) rather than in relation to how God sees them. My eye doesn't hold the gavel. Other's eyes don't hold the gavels. Christ's eye is the only one who truly sees. We need to see others the way He does.