The Struggles of Faith
The Story of the Old Testament: Genesis • Sermon • Submitted
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Prayer
Faith Is Hard
I shared a story last week about my time serving as part of summer staff at Young Life’s Frontier Ranch, on the Ropes Team. One of the things that sticks out about my time there was in one of our summer staff gatherings.
Summer staff was made up of college-aged volunteers, young men and women who had chosen to serve the kids at camp for six weeks, all volunteer, with a desire to see kids come to know and follow Jesus Christ.
Pete & Norma Bennett were our leaders, they were an older couple who had served on Young Life staff for years - a lot of well-earned wisdom. They were trying to instill in us the importance of nurturing spiritual disciplines in our lives - being connected in a church community, worship every Sunday, the habit of a daily quiet time, time every day, reading Scripture, reflecting, praying - being with Jesus through his word.
They emphasized the point by saying statistics show that the majority of us would no longer be following Jesus in 20 years. That came as a shock to me - there was no way, these were sharp young men and women, all here to serve Christ. Most of us would not be following him - how could that happen?!
But they were simply reflecting what the statistics showed. Statistics were revealing a basic truth that staying faithful to Jesus over the long haul, persevering in faith - is hard. It is challenging.
Let’s be honest, faith is hard, trusting God, sticking with that trust over long haul, is a challenge. Jesus himself speaks often about the reward simply for persevering in faith - that is the victory!
Perfect example of the difficulty of persisting in faith is in our Genesis story today, which is the story of Sarai and her maidservant, Hagar, in Genesis 16...
Since we’re skipping chapters (last week we covered Genesis 12), I want to catch us up with what’s happening, because our story takes place ten years later (if you’re doing the math, Abram is 85, Sarai is 75).
Last week, we began the story of people of the Israelites, the Jews, God’s chosen people (remember, the three layers of story - this is the second layer of story). The story of the Jews begins with God calling on Abram to go - to go from (his country, his family, his people) in order to go to - the land God would show him.
Then God made incredible promises to Abram, that he would make him the father of a great nation, a people that would be a blessing to all other nations. Part of what made these promises so amazing was Abram and Sarai’s current situation - they were already older (75 & 65), had no children because Sarai was barren. Not only did they not have children, but they had no land. Both of those are necessary if you’re going to have a great nation.
In the ten years after Abram and Sarai make their way to this new land, their nephew, Lot, separates from(flocks had grown too large), and makes his way toward Sodom and Gomorrah (more on that next week).
There’s a few other stories mixed in there: Abram and Sarai making their way down to Egypt - telling everyone there Sarai was his sister, Abram at one point has to rescue Lot and the kings of Sodom and Gomorrah (among others), from a group of kings who’d come against them. I encourage you to read through Genesis - really, the Old Testament, as we make our way through this series, so you get the full story.
Immediately preceding our story here in Genesis 16, God reiterates his promise to Abram, “Do not be afraid, Abram, I am your shield, your very great reward.”
Abram, understandably, asks God, how this is going to work - because they are still childless and they still don’t own any land.
God takes him outside so he can take a look up at the night sky and God reiterates his promise to them by saying that through his own flesh and blood son he and Sarai will have offspring as numerous as stars, and that he will give them all the land they see around them.
Side note, it’s also at this time that God gives Abram a little sneak peek into what’s going to happen with the nation he’s going to make through Abram - they will taken into slavery for 400 years.
But faith is hard, waiting is hard - so in spite of God reiterating his promises to Abram and Sarai, they decide to take matters into their own hands and make God’s promises happen themselves. And that brings us to our story this morning.
Trusting Ourselves, Trusting God
Genesis 16:1-16...Now Sarai, Abram’s wife, had borne him no children. But she had an Egyptian slave named Hagar; 2 so she said to Abram, “The Lord has kept me from having children. Go, sleep with my slave; perhaps I can build a family through her.” Abram agreed to what Sarai said. 3 So after Abram had been living in Canaan ten years, Sarai his wife took her Egyptian slave Hagar and gave her to her husband to be his wife. 4 He slept with Hagar, and she conceived. When she knew she was pregnant, she began to despise her mistress. 5 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.” 6 “Your slave is in your hands,” Abram said. “Do with her whatever you think best.” Then Sarai mistreated Hagar; so she fled from her. 7 The angel of the Lord found Hagar near a spring in the desert; it was the spring that is beside the road to Shur. 8 And he said, “Hagar, slave of Sarai, where have you come from, and where are you going?” “I’m running away from my mistress Sarai,” she answered. 9 Then the angel of the Lord told her, “Go back to your mistress and submit to her.” 10 The angel added, “I will increase your descendants so much that they will be too numerous to count.” 11 The angel of the Lord also said to her: “You are now pregnant and you will give birth to a son. You shall name him Ishmael, for the Lord has heard of your misery. 12 He will be a wild donkey of a man; his hand will be against everyone and everyone’s hand against him, and he will live in hostility toward all his brothers.” 13 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 the One who sees me.” 14 That is why the well was called Beer Lahai Roi; it is still there, between Kadesh and Bered. 15 So Hagar bore Abram a son, and Abram gave the name Ishmael to the son she had borne. 16 Abram was eighty-six years old when Hagar bore him Ishmael.
Sarai and Abram appear to be getting anxious, concerned - this thing God promised us doesn’t seem to be happening. God is not doing what he promised - and we’re getting older and older. So they take matters into their own hands.
Sarai offers her maidservant, Hagar, an Egyptian, to Abram, as a wife, to bear children on her behalf.
Now this seems very strange to us - but this was a common practice in ancient Near East. The cultural mindset that stressed importance of being children - it was a source of shame for a woman not to be able to bear children. Another aspect that’s helpful to understand the dynamics of what happens is that though the maidservant might be considered a wife, it’s still in a secondary, lower status, she is not the equal of the first wife.
Which explains why the whole plan goes south so very quickly. Abram takes Hagar as his wife - and Hagar becomes pregnant. And here’s where the trouble starts - the text tells us that Hagar begins to despise her mistress. Literally translated, the Sarai grows small in Hagar’s eyes. In other words, Hagar starts to feel contempt for Sarai - after all, she is blessed and Sarai is cursed. Hagar begins to believe she has gained greater status in Abram’s household, so she looks down on Sarai - and Sarai does not like it.
So Sarai complains to Abram - well, not just complain, she blames Abram - “You are responsible for the wrong I am suffering.”
She goes so far as to invite God to prove her innocence - “May the Lord judge between you and me.” To be honest, I don’t think she really would have wanted God to judge either of them in that moment! Problem was, they had begun to doubt God, that he was going to fulfill his promises - so if he won’t, they will. They decided they were going to make it happen, the beginning of this great nation.
This is exactly the challenge of faith - God has a way of working in his own timing (which so often is so much slower than we want - we want instant solutions), doing things in his own way, often being silent for long periods of time. Remember, Abram and Sarai have already been waiting ten years (and - little teaser - the birth of their son is still years away). God does things in his way, in his time.
I was speaking just the other day to a friend who is having a lot of difficulties with his child, who recently graduated from high school - making a lot of poor choices, lying, wasting his money, won’t keep a job. And it was a hard conversation because I know that this won’t be resolved quickly or easily. He’s going to have to endure this for a long time.
For some of us it might be a physical struggle - a chronic illness, pain we’re experiencing - and we just want it to go away so that we can, in our own minds, “get back to our normal lives.” But this may be the new normal now.
C.S. Lewis here - Letter 28...
What happens? We give up. We quit praying. Slowly, anger and bitterness and disillusionment with God seep in. We feel beat down by life. We look for ways to numb our pain, fix the situation in our way and in our timing - and often - like in this story - make the situation worse by making bad decisions - which is exactly what happens here in our story:
Abram tells Sarai to do what she thinks is best. Apparently what Sarai thinks is best is to mistreat Hagar, so she does. Sarai is hurting, so she decides to hurt Hagar back. Abram is passive in the midst of it all.
So Hagar runs away. It appears she’s running back toward Egypt. That’s where God’s angel finds her, on the road to Shur.
I don’t want you to miss this, what this says about God - God comes after her. She’s not even part of the promise - that’s Abram and Sarai. But God’s love and care extends to all, so God pursues Hagar.
Angel asks Hagar, “Hagar, slave of Sarai, where have you come from and where are you going?” (Does that line of questioning ring a bell for you…remember Adam and Eve, after eating the forbidden fruit, realizing they were naked, and then hiding…God came after them - where are you?).
How often we just run, hide, flee, just trying to escape pain and difficulty, embarrassment and struggle.
And God, because he is so faithful. Because he knows how wavering we can be in our faithfulness, comes after us. He pursues, he seeks after us. He longs for us to come to him, surrender ourselves to him, to his love and goodness and rule in our lives.
C.S. Lewis knew that experience of God coming after him in spite of his unfaithfulness: You must picture me alone in that room in Magdalen, night after night, feeling, whenever my mind lifted even for a second from my work, the steady, unrelenting approach of Him whom I so earnestly desired not to meet. That which I greatly feared had at last come upon me. In the Trinity Term of 1929 I gave in, and admitted that God was God, and knelt and prayed: perhaps, that night, the most dejected and reluctant convert in all England. I did not then see what is now the most shining and obvious thing; the Divine humility which will accept a convert even on such terms. The Prodigal Son at least walked home on his own feet.
God, through his angel, tells Hagar to return and submit to Sarai - which is a hard word. God is really asking Hagar to submit and surrender to him. Trust me by going back and doing what I ask of you.
In other words, swallow your pride. Go back to that difficult situation - which you helped create.
God always offers a word of hope, he’s so good - makes promises to Hagar, that through her son, God will increase her descendants, too numerous to count.
I’m not sure how Hagar took the rest of the news, the fact that her son would be a “wild donkey of a man,” his hand against everyone - which essentially means he’s going to be in hostile relationship with neighboring peoples.
Here again, God’s word comes true - just another reason why we can trust God. Ishmael, Abram’s son through Hagar, becomes father of the Arabs. And there’s been no shortage of hostility between the Jews and the Arabs, even to this day.
But what I really want you to see is what this story reveals about God, and his goodness and faithfulness to us, even in the midst of our weak faith, our struggles to persevere, to wait - when we fail to trust God and try to take matters into our own hands. Two things about God:
First, what God commands Hagar to name her son - Ishmael, which means, “God hears.” God hears. He knows what you’re saying - when you cry out. When you don’t even have the words to say. When you’re confused, when the waiting feels to hard, when you can’t see the way through. God hears.
Think about that for a moment, every time Hagar - and Abram - and Sarai - say his name, it is a reminder to them about the faithfulness of God. God hears. God hears us.
Second, Hagar’s own response, her recognition of God - “You are the God who sees me.” I have seen the God who sees me. She’s so blown away by her experience of God, of having gotten a glimpse of the tender care and watchful eye of God that she names the well after her experience with God - Beer Lahai Roi - You are the God who sees me.
How alone and forgotten Hagar must have felt, running away - pregnant, no resources, no money, at the mercy of others, hurting over everything that had happened. But now she knows - I’m not alone. I’m not forgotten. God sees me. He sees my pain and difficulty, he sees my foolish mistakes and he still comes after me. And he’s made himself known to me, so I can see him, too. So I can know he is with me.
God hears. And God sees. God knows. He absolutely knows what’s happening in your life - and in you. He knows the struggles you’re enduring. He knows how foolishly you may have acted. He knows the pain you’re in. He hears your sighs and cries and your ramblings and your laughter and your thoughts and musings - even when they’re not directed toward him. He knows us. And he is with us, always has been, always will be.
Spiritual Direction - Nurture faith, especially over the long haul, in the ups and downs, through all the difficulties of life, in periods of waiting. Last week we talked about small acts of obedience. This week, some spiritual practices that involve prayer and reflection:
Pray the The Lord’s Prayer daily. The disciples had seen Jesus praying, and they wanted to pray like he did - so they asked him to teach them how to pray. He taught them the Lord’s Prayer.
I want to call your attention especially to the very first part of the prayer, Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed by thy name.
Pray with our minds (mindfully) and with our spirits - we’re praying to our Father, to our Abba, and affirming our faith that he is right here with us, as we come to him…who art in heaven. That can be translated “in the heavens” - and it doesn’t connote God way up there, but rather, right here in our midst.
…Our Father, who are in heaven…Abba Father, you’re right here with me
We have a short memory often when it comes to God, we want to build up our memory muscle about God and his faithfulness in all things, to trust him in moments of doubt or struggle or long periods of waiting - worship every Sunday, Communion (do this in remembrance of me, the season of Lent - culminating in Maundy Thursday, Good Friday and Easter Sunday.
Matthew 28:20, And lo I am with you always, even to the end of time. Psalm 23, the whole passage…The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want. Romans 8:28, God works all things for the good of those who love him.
That’s just a small sampling - idea is to move from this just being an idea in our mind, to a reality that we trust about who God is, we know it in our hearts. We are convinced that this is who God is.
Inspiration - If you go to the book of Revelation, to the seven letters that Jesus sends to seven different churches, it’s noteworthy to see how often Jesus speaks to them of simply staying faithful, of persevering in faith.
He commends several churches for exactly that: To the church in Ephesus, he writes, “I know your deeds, your hard work and your perseverance.” To the church in Pergamum Jesus writes, “I know where you live—where Satan has his throne. Yet you remain true to my name. You did not renounce your faith in me, not even in the days of Antipas, my faithful witness, who was put to death in your city—where Satan lives.” And finally, to the church in Thyatira, he writes, “I know your deeds, your love and faith, your service and perseverance, and that you are now doing more than you did at first.”
Jesus loves when we trust in him, through and through.
Revelation 2:26-29...To the one who is victorious and does my will to the end, I will give authority over the nations...just as I have received authority from my Father. I will also give that one the morning star.
This is the victory, doing his will to the end (not taking matters into his own hands). Persisting in faith. Persevering. May we trust in the faithfulness of God.