The God Who Sees: Hagar

Well, again, those of you who don't know me, my name is Brian, lead pastor here, and excited to get into our kind of summer series. Not kind of. It is our summer series that we're calling Cloud of Witnesses. And so Pastor Drew, he does a lot of our graphic stuff. He made this, which is just kind of to encapsulate, kind of just snapshots. And so we're gonna be kind of all over the book. And so Cloud of Witnesses, that is a phrase. And I'll look at here in Hebrews chapter 12, but in Hebrews 11, which has kind of just been called sometimes the hall of faith, if you will. And there's this list of individuals that are lifted up, and some of them are like, why is that name in the list? And so I kind of wanted to focus me in particular. Obviously, we have two other locations that are going to be doing this, and we all just kind of get to pick our. Choose your own adventure, if you will. And so I wanted to focus maybe on some characters that are often overlooked, at least myself, when I'm up here. And so maybe there's not a lot of text, but you gotta find a balance. You know, there can't be too little of a text because you gotta have something to go off of. And then maybe just not too much. You're like, oh, let's do the Apostle Paul. Even though we just walked through the Book of Acts, like, that doesn't make a whole lot of sense. And so anyways, when we look at this phrase From Hebrews chapter 12, it's really kind of why we're doing this. And it says, therefore, since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses. And that phrase, it might be confusing. I remember taking a Hebrews class, and there was someone in there who was like, I don't get it. Is it like this. Like these ghosts or like this cloud? What are we talking about? And it really has the idea of think of like this, like a stadium, right? That there is just a full group of people in this stadium that are surrounding us, that are cheering us on as we keep our eyes fixed on Jesus. Which is why the author of Hebrews there says, then let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles, and let us run with perseverance the race marked out before us, fixing our eyes on Jesus, the pioneer and perfecter of faith, the author and the finisher of our faith, the starter and the ender of our faith. For the joy set before him. He endured the cross scorning its shame and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God. Consider him. Keep your eyes on him who endured such opposition from sinners that you will not grow weary and lose heart. So that is kind of where we are at in this series. And so now let's go ahead and get into where we're gonna be this morning. I asked you that question about being lost because it is gut wrenching whether you've been yourself lost or you've seen some other child lost. It's terrifying, right? And as like a bigger guy, I'm not allowed to go up to a small child who's alone and crying like, hey, can I help you? That's just gonna freak him out even more. And so it's hey, can someone help them? I'm a guy, I don't know how to do. No, it's like, no, I just. That can be a little intimidating. I get that. But there's something about that child when they're in that moment and we can all, I would imagine all of us can in some way feel that. Like just the sheer panic and pain of I'm lost and everything's gone, everything that I know and that I'm comforted by, it's gone. But then there's that familiar voice that someone calls out and we hear our parents or someone who's watching us. And in that moment, you feel like, seen. Like that moment of being seen, of, of pain and abandonment and fear to that moment of joy and comfort of being seen. That's what we're going to be looking at today in the sermon that's called the God who Sees. We're going to be looking specifically, the person that we're going to be looking at is Hagar. Maybe someone that you're not familiar with or maybe it's just kind of been in passing as we read Genesis 16 and 21. And so we will be looking at that. This character of Hagar this morning. So first point, context is king. This is something you've heard me say a lot. I remember when I was teaching junior high Bible 15 years ago that this was like on the test, right? Context is king. And I would quote St. Augustine all the time. And he's like, there's three important rules when it comes to reading your Bible and biblical interpretation. Number one, context. Number two, context. Number three, context. Context is. And I remember I had this test and it was fill in the blank. And this was like number one on the first test, context is blank. And about half of them put key K E Y. And it was like. I mean, come on. You know what I mean? Like, I get it. I had to give him the point. Cause I'm like. I probably just didn't enunciate. All right? It's not key. It's king. It's the. I mean, I get it right? I get why they. I didn't count it wrong. I didn't count it wrong, but I should have. Now, in hindsight. No, no, no. King. Context is king. So what's going on? I don't want to just jump into Genesis chapter 16. So just to catch us all up to speed, whether you're familiar with the Bible or not, you've got this guy at this time named Abram. We're going to be introduced to Abram and Sarai. I'm probably just going to end up calling them Abraham and Sarah. God ends up changing their name. And he's going to do that even in between the two passages we look at. But in Genesis chapter 15, we're introduced. Well, not introduced, but there's this guy named Abraham. Abraham most likely was at the Tower of Babel when God confuses the language and then he goes out, he is a moon worshiper. And God shows up and says, abram, I want you to abandon everything, you know, that you're comfortable with, and I want you to follow me. I want you to do something that seems very counterintuitive to your gut instinct and your safety and your comfort, and I want you to follow me. And he says, okay. And so he goes and he follows. And God says, I want you to look at the stars of the sky. He makes this covenant with Abraham, and he says, do you see all the stars? Can you count the stars? It's wild. I know that we've all done this at some point, but we go outside and you look at the stars. We're just in awe, and we're in awe. And we live in a city, you know what I mean? Like, we don't even really see the stars. When there's like all these images now coming from Mars, you know, from the spacecraft that are up there taking images and the stars, it's like there's more stars than notness of the blackness, right? There's just. And that's what it would have been like for Abraham without maybe a different atmosphere. You get what I'm saying? Okay. But there's no light pollution. And so he goes out and he's trying to count these. Of course, I can't count the stars. And God says, this is what it's going to be like, you're going to have all these children. He's an old man. And so then it leads to then. Now where we're at in Genesis chapter 16, God makes a promise to Abraham. Abraham believes him. But then there's going to have. We're going to have some problems right off the bat. In Genesis, chapter 16 says this. Now, Sarah, Abraham's wife had borne him no children. That is a really big deal. I think in our maybe modern Western culture context, this isn't that big of a deal. But in that context, it was a big deal. Children were their capital. And especially as a woman, it was a woman's job to have children and keep them alive. Like that was her job. And it's easy. I think in our context, maybe look at that and go, that's a little antiquated. That's. That's a little backwards or whatever. It was a really big deal for them. It was like the deal to have a child for them. That's how they felt worth and value as a woman, was to have children. So why is that a big deal? Well, within Hebrew, within at least that culture, tracing your ancestral line was a really big deal. I don't know if you've ever done this, but this is what it would take to just go back 10 generations, which is approximately 400 years, that we all have two parents, right? Math checks out, okay? We have two parents, and then we have four grandparents, and then we have eight great grandparents, and it just keeps multiplying and multiplying. So when you go to 10 generations, there's 4,096 people that had to procreate and make a descendant in order for you to be here, okay, that's only going back 10, 10 generations. If one of those people on that list decides, nope, or I can't, or they die young before having kids, any litany of reasons why they don't have having children, you don't exist. That's just 400 years. This is a huge deal in their culture. I want to carry on the line and the lineage. So that's what's happening in this context. So what then goes on? Now? Sarah Abraham's wife had borne him no children, but she had an Egyptian slave named Hagar. Now we hear that word slavery, and obviously for good reasons, our, you know, red lights start flashing. Slavery bad. Yes, slavery bad. This is not chattel slavery the way that I think as Americans, we might think of slavery, but it's still slavery. Okay? It wasn't like she was living the dream Here she's Egyptian. She was either purchased by Abraham and Sarah to serve her, or some translations will even translate it as a maid servant. That could be the case. Either way, she's not able to live the way she wants to live. Very, very base that maybe she was in debt and that was like a debtor's servitude. Maybe her father owed Abraham some money and so that was what he had to pay was his daughter. We don't know. We just know that Sarah, or excuse me, Hagar, is a slave to Sarah. So she said to Abraham, Sarah says to Abraham, the Lord has kept me from having children. Go sleep with my slave. And perhaps listen what she says. I can build my family, build a family through her, right? Because she's not her own. She is my possession. And so that's what it was within multiple people and marriages and all these different things that she's the first lady, right? Sarah is top dog wife. And then anything subsequent underneath that is a second class citizen. And they're looked down upon, but their children become the possession then of the first lady. So that's what's happening here. And this isn't like a weird thing. I mean, it is in our context, in our culture, but this happened all over the place back then. It's not excusing it. This is bad, which I'll talk about even more in a second. This isn't like we don't read about this in the Bible and say that seems like a good idea, right? No, no, no, of course not. Polygamy or anything like that is always frowned upon. And it maybe might not be explicitly condoned or condemned, but it definitely isn't looked at as a positive thing because every time we get an example of it in the Bible, there's always bad, negative things that are associated with this. And the reason why it happened was because the men that were there were in power and had the ability to say, I want to have multiple wives and that because they were in control and that was what happened. Doesn't make it right. It's just what the culture was at that time. And here in this phrase it says Abraham agreed to what Sarah said. It seems very passive, which it is. Maybe a more literal translation here though would be that Abraham hearkened to her. And there are other times where we see that Abraham hearkens to God. He listens to God. He listens to God. He listens to God. And here we see Abraham now listening to his wife. Guys, it's not bad to listen to your wives. That's not the point of this sermon. That's not what's happening here. But there's a shift. There's a shift here in the tone of what Moses is writing to us here, of saying he listened to God. He listened to God, but now there's a shift. He's no longer listening to God. God already made the promise that he was going to have children with Sarah. And now he says, I'm going to agree with Sarah. So after Abraham had been living in Canaan 10 years, Sarah, his wife, took her Egyptian slave Hagar and gave her to her husband to be his wife. But she's still going to be referred to from here on out, not as not his wife, but his slave. And he slept with Hagar, and she conceived. And when she knew she was pregnant, she began to despise her mistress. I'm really thankful for this. This phrase that she began to despise her mistress, literally is her mistress was small. She became small and insignificant. There's this new insult that athletes do where they put their hand down like this and they say, you're too small. Right. I'm so glad that was not a thing when I was playing sports, because I would have been doing that to everybody, and inevitably someone would have done it to me and I would have lost my mind. I mean, I would have lost it. So I'm glad that wasn't a thing. But this is what Hagar is saying, Sarah, you are puny, you are insignificant. You are too small. You don't matter. I am. What's a big deal because I'm pregnant. What's interesting is the Apostle Paul in the book of Galatians brings up this scenario between Hagar and Sarah. In Galatians, chapter 4, the apostle Paul says this. Tell me, you who want to live under the law, are you not aware of what the law says? For it is written that Abraham had two sons, one by the slave woman and the other by a free woman. His son by the slave woman was born according to the flesh, but his son by the free woman was born as the result of divine promise. What's going on here? Paul is looking at the situation between Hagar and Sarah and saying, hagar represents, law, represents. I'm going to work this out on my own. I can do this. I can fix this. Whereas Sarah represents the grace of God, obviously for us. And Paul makes it very clear this is an analogy between Sarah and Hagar, that this is a typology, if you will, of choosing law versus listening to God and trusting in his grace. And mercy and his divine appointment. Or I can try to take things into my own hand. For Abraham, this was real. This was tangible. This was not an analogy. This is not typology. He chose this. He chose the sin, and therefore he chose the suffering because of his weakness and sinfulness. So going back then to Genesis 16:5, it says, then Sarah said to Abraham, you are responsible for the wrong. I am suffering. I put my slave in your arms. And now that she knows that she is pregnant, she despises me. May the Lord judge between you and me and Abram, which Abraham here seems pretty par with. Abraham is a modus operandi of just. He's very passive, and he just seems to be this way. Just, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey. It's not my problem. It's not my slave. You don't. I don't. Hey, what did I have to do with this? Do with her whatever you think is best. And Sarah mistreated Hagar, so she fled from her. We don't know how she mistreated her, but I can only imagine a single pregnant woman who is so desperate is so mistreated that she decides, I'm going to flee to the desert. It had to have been pretty intense. So what's going on here again? In that culture, a woman's worth was having kids. It was raising a family. They were capital. It was an investment, it was a pride. It was an extension of ancestors. In our culture. Just the way our voices teach and the way we hear from our culture, a woman's worth is about being successful, about being independent. I want you to hear me out and be very clear what I'm saying here. It's not wrong to want to have children. It's not wrong to have children. It's not wrong to necessarily not want to have children. It's not wrong to pursue a career. What's wrong and what's happening in this text and what I think Paul is trying to make important to us is that when it becomes our idol, when that becomes our thing, and when we look at other people and say, you are smaller than me because all you want to do is stay home and have kids, you are smaller than me. And you don't really understand the Bible because all you want to do is pursue a career. When we build our tower, when we set ourselves up, and we think, look at this thing that I have and I've accomplished becomes an idol, we could tear people down. We call people too small because their goals are different. And that's the thing about goals, because Goals can so easily become our idols. And the problem with idols is that when you reach it, when you fulfill it, you then think you're better than somebody else. When you say, oh, my goal is to get married and have this white picket fence and to have all these children, or to have a wife and have these kids, you know, two cats in the yard and all the. What's the song? Two cats in life used to. And all these. Like, this is it. And I've reached it. I've succeeded in the way that I have always dreamt of. I'm better than you, you are smaller than me. Or to say, well, no, no, no, I've actually forsaken all of that so that I can be single, so that I can pursue my walk with Jesus, so that I can be on the front lines of the ministry. And I. I don't have to worry about anything other than pursuing Jesus. You're too small. It becomes an idol. It becomes a God. And when those things maybe get taken away from us, then our true colors come out and we're crushed. If you reach your goal, you look down on others. And if you don't reach your goals, you get mad. You take things into your own hand. You figure it out. Pull yourself up by your bootstraps. And maybe that's not what God wants you to do. He calls us to kill and tear down our idols. It's interesting if you go back to that Galatians passage that I read the apostle Paul quotes in Galatians 4. 27. He quotes Isaiah 54. 1. So he's talking about Hagar and Sarah. He's saying, One Sarah Grace, even though she's sinful, but just. That's what she represents. Hagar, innocent but represents works. He quotes Isaiah, though, and he says, sing, O barren one who did not bear. Break forth into singing and cry aloud. You who have not been in labor for the children of the desolate one will be more than the children of her who is married, says the Lord. Paul actually tells barren women to be glad. Why? What in the world does that have to do with the context of Sarah and Hagar? Paul, what are we talking about? He's saying here? Because children are not capital. They're not something to be desired, to make you look good. It's not about you. And he says, if Christ is your goal, if Christ is the one whom you pursue, then you can have more children than the one who's married. They might have physical descendants, but you might have eternal spiritual descendants. You. You can. You can treat and Love and care for people in a way that a mother who. Who had physical descendants might never be able to do. Said, because you don't have this idol of a child. The only way to be free is to rely on the grace of God. And that destroys our idols. If we look to Jesus, if he's our goal, if he is what we worship, then these other things that we might want and desire, safety, comfort, financial stability, when we get those things, do I then look down on people who aren't financially stable? If I get that thing or if I don't need those things, do I look down on somebody who. Who has those things? We need to rely on the grace of God. He is the only one that can fulfill. And that's what Paul is saying. And that's what Moses, at least God, through his infinite wisdom, is teaching us. Through the story of Hagar and Sarah, Going back to this passage, Genesis chapter 16 says, the angel of the Lord, angel of the Lord shows up. And a lot of people will. A lot of commentaries will say that this is kind of Christ being made manifest. A theophany, if you will, is what it's often called. That Christ is, in a way, this angel of the Lord, that it's God. When you see the phrase, not just an angel, it's an angel of the Lord. And usually that is God in some way. And what's interesting is up to this text up in Genesis chapter 15. The angel of the Lord will show up to Abraham and Jacob, and there's a couple other figures that pop up. And then. And then Moses eventually in the burning bush. And here we see the angel of the Lord showing up to a slave woman in the wilderness. And it says, the angel of the Lord found Hagar near a spring in the desert. It was the spring that was beside the road to Shur. And he said, hagar, slave of Sarah, where have you come from and where are you going? I'm running away from my mistress Sarah, she answered. And the angel of the Lord told her, go back to your mistress and submit to her. And the angel added, I will increase your descendants so much that you too, that they will be too numerous to count. Just like God calling Abraham, go and follow me. Leave. Everything you know seems counterintuitive. Same exact thing happens here. You have been mistreated in some way that was so intense that you fled. And I'm telling you to do the exact opposite of what I want, what you think is right. I want you to go back, and I want you to go back to your mistress. Who's been mistreating you? I'm gonna bless you. I'm gonna bless your descendants so much that they will be too numerous to count. Does God ask you to do things that don't make sense? Is God asking you to do something that just seems counterintuitive to what we would think is right or good or stable, a phrase that we use often, at least in ministry or any kind of counseling? Is your best thinking got you here? This is what happened. Your best thinking puts you here. And so don't keep trying to rely on yourself and your wisdom and your know it all because you're sitting here asking for help. This is where your best thinking got. Let's look at what God says, and maybe it seems the exact opposite of what you think is right. We need grace, and we need God to show up with his grace, not our works. Our best works got us in our predicament. Moving on. It says the angel of the Lord also said to her, you are now pregnant, and you will give birth to a son, and you shall name him Ishmael. For the Lord has heard of your misery. Your pain cries out to God. He hears your pain. He hears your suffering. Says, he will be a wild donkey of a man. His hand will be. That's like, what a great phrase. He'll be a wild donkey of a man, his hand. And whatever that means. We all know exactly what that means. You know what I mean? We all know a wild donkey of a man and his hand will be against everyone, and everyone's hand against him, and he will live in hostility towards his brothers. It's like you think. You think, could you imagine being Ishmael and his little baby brother Isaac is born. And every time Isaac walked in the. Walks in the room, everybody goes, wow, it's a good thing Isaac was born Ishmael. You're nothing. All right, we got to move here. The God who sees continuing again in this passage, verse 13. She gave this name to the Lord. Hagar is the first person in the Bible to give a name to God. I think that's significant. She gave this name to the Lord who spoke to her. Because now she realizes sometimes the angel Lord can be mysterious. Who am I talking with? Who am I wrestling with? Is this. Is this God? What's happening here? But she realizes now, oh, this is the Holy One. This is God. And she gives him this name. You are the God who sees me. Remember that feeling of being lost, being abandoned, being betrayed, and then hearing that voice. And now God shows up, and she says, you see me. And that feeling, that shift that happens. Hagar is lost. She's been betrayed. She's been abandoned in the wilderness. And God calls out her name. And she realizes he sees me. For she said, I have now seen the one who sees me. Derek Kidner, theologian, He says this. That phrase says, I have seen after the seer. Which is confusing, which is why it was translated the way it was and has been in a lot of our English translations. I have seen after the seer. I have seen behind the one who sees everything. It's the same language that we see of Moses when he is hidden by God in the cleft of the rock. The image over there that he's hidden in this cleft of the rock. You cannot look at me. But what I'm going to do is I'm going to pass by in front of you and you will see after me. You will see where I once was. You can't look at me, but. But you will see my afterburners. And then your face will glow. This is exactly what Hagar has seen, the after of the one who sees everything. Everything, every ounce and thought and betrayal of her own heart. God sees that in Hagar. And that's why she says, you are the God who sees, because you really see me, because you see everything. And she says, I have seen the one who sees everything. This is, in a sense, the gospel. As she comes face to face with a holy God and she knows she's sinful, but God lets her in. He says, I see everything that you are, everything you've ever thought, every sin you've ever committed, and I'm allowing you into my presence. I'm not going to kill you on the spot the way you deserve. I'm going to allow you in. That's, in a sense, the gospel. It's grace. Some would say it's also the same way we would look at the gospel in Christ, that he allows us to boldly approach the throne of grace. The seer, the one who sees me, allows me into his presence. That's the gospel I can approach even after he sees me. Third point here is that God, he is the God who hears. Let me just read through this. Genesis, chapter 21, starting verse 8. The child grew and was weaned. And on the day Isaac was weaned, so he's a small child, seven or eight. Here Abraham held a great feast. But Sarah saw the son whom Hagar the Egyptian had borne. Abraham was mocking and said to Abraham, get rid of that slave woman and her son for that woman's son will never share in the inheritance with my son Isaac. The matter distressed Abraham greatly because it concerned his son. Polygamy bad. This is not. It's not a good choice. It's never served anyone well. But God said to him, do not be so distressed about the boy and the slave woman. Listen to whatever Sarah is telling you, because it is through Isaac that your offspring will be reckoned. I will make the son, the slave into a nation also because he is your offspring. It's interesting that when we. Well, let me keep going here. Early the next morning, Abraham took the son, took him some food and a skin of water and gave them to Hagar and sent them on the shoulders and sent them off with the boy. And she went her way and wandered in the desert of Beersheba. And when the water and the skin were gone, she put the boy under the bushes and she. She went off and sat down about a bow shot away. For she thought, I cannot watch the boy die. And as she sat there, she began to sob. I can't imagine. I can't imagine seeing my child in that light and in that condition and saying, I now need to walk away from my own child because they're in such agony and I can do nothing. But again, God hears. He hears the boy crying. And the angel of God called to Hagar from heaven and said to her, what is the matter, Hagar? Do not be afraid. God again has heard the boy crying as he lies there. Lift the boy up and take him by the hand. He will make him into a great nation. I think there's something interesting that was also maybe a narrative that we can pull out of this, a principle that we can pull out of this, that Ishmael here is not the son of promise. He's going to be multiplied. He's going to be turned into a great nation. But he's not going to be blessed by God in the sense that Isaac is. He's not the guess. He was by works, not by grace and not by faith. And I think there are times that we can do something under our own power, by works, pull ourselves up, get it together, and it might look good, it might even be successful, but it might not be what God actually wants for us. Because we ignored his grace. We ignored what might have been counterintuitive. We took it into our own hands. And he says, yeah, it might work. It's not what I want, says the boy. God was with the boy and he grew up and he lived in the desert and became. He became an archer last point here. We have this God who sees, we have a God who hears, but we have a God who knows. Last verse. I want to read Hebrews, chapter four. It says, for we do not have a high priest who is unable to empathize with our weaknesses. This is so important because we worship a God who knows what it's like. And a matter of fact, I would say he fully knows what it's like to be human in ways that we can't even begin to comprehend. Because I know me. I know that when I'm tempted, there's a lot of times I give in and I get crushed underneath the weight of that temptation where he successfully lifts it every time. I know I've shared this illustration before, but I remember in college when I was playing football, because I was, like, a really big deal. I was a super athlete, and I was D3. It wasn't a big deal. This is not about me. Promise. And I remember I would work out with guys who were bigger, faster, and stronger than me to try to look like I was like them, but I wasn't. And so what happened? We get in the bench press, and I'd start lifting the weight, but I couldn't lift the weight because they were lifting a lot more weight. And so they would, like, hold the bar on each side and kind of just help me out a lot, right? And so. But there was that time where if I take that bar and I get crushed by that weight and I can't, hey, guys, help me out. And they get it up and then they get on the bench and they lift it and they're repping it, no problem. Who really fully understands how heavy that weight is? It's the one who can lift it every time without fail. But we as humans constantly get crushed by our sins and our failures and our desires. We give into temptation. Jesus knows, he knows better than we do what it's like to be human, because he was tempted in every way. But he says, but I'm going to lift. I know what it's like. I actually can experience the full weight of that temptation every single time because I never give in. We don't have a high priest, some God who's just holy and unethicable and unapproachable and untouchable. He's not just that. He's able to empathize with our weakness. We have one who has been tempted in every way, just as we are. Yet he did not sin. And because of who Christ is, then let us approach God's throne of Grace with confidence so that we may receive mercy, to find grace, to help in a time of need. When Jesus is dying on the cross, he cries out, eli, eli lama sabachthanai, which means, my God, my God, why have you forsaken me? And he's quoting there, Psalm 22, and he's saying, God, it sure feels like in this moment, you've abandoned me. I don't know if there's ever been a moment in your life where you felt like God abandoned you, but if you continue and read Psalm 22, he says, but I will continue to trust in God anytime. There have been times in my life where I felt like God. You're not here. You don't care. My instinct is to curse God. Who do you think you are? I know better. I'm the one who's right. You've wronged me. Jesus doesn't do that. Jesus is abandoned by his friends. As I'm sure every single one of you at some point in your life has been hurt by some friend who's walked away. He knows what that's like. He sees you in your pain. He hears your crying and hears your pain crying out. And then he gets next to you and he says, I know. I know what it's like. He's abandoned and betrayed by his friends. He's betrayed by Judas. One of his closest friends betrays him with a kiss. He's tortured and killed. I don't know if you've ever been wrongly accused of something, but my first response isn't, wow, praise God. Thank you for letting me go through this the way Jesus was. It's anger. It's madness. Why? Because I have an idol. I have a goal of my own works. That is comfort, that is freedom. That's peace. It's prosperity. When I don't get those things that I think, well, God, you must not really love me. You must not love me the way that you love Jesus. I don't know what all of you are going through right now, but I'm talking to myself. He sees you. He sees me. He hears you. He hears our pain, and he knows us. He gets it. He knows what it's like. So in Gospel application this morning, I want you to look to the one who knows you. I mean, really, you're in the mall and you are lost, you're terrified, and he calls you out by name. And we get to look to him and say, you are the God who sees everything. And you still see me. You still hear me. You know me, and you want me to commune with you maybe finally, again, I don't know, maybe something landed today, maybe it didn't. But is God calling you to a difficult place? Is God calling you to do something that might be counterintuitive? Is God calling you to do something that the world would look at and say, that's foolish, it's foolish. Or is it saying, I want you to do something? Is it calling you to do something that might be counterintuitive? I might. Let me pray. We're going to have communion like we do every week here at Hope Lowertown. So we've got the juice that represents the blood of Christ that was shed for us. The cracker. We got gluten free on this side, my left, your right. If that's a need. They have that wafer that represents the body of Christ that was broken for you. That we get to remember the finished work of Christ. We get to remember the God who sees us, who hears us, who knows he died on the cross so that we could boldly approach the throne. He gets it. He wants that. He's inviting you. So if you're a follower of Jesus, I'd love for you to take these elements with us. You don't need to be a member of this church or any church. But if you say, yes, I love Jesus because he first loved me, then I would love for you to take these elements with us. Let me pray. The worship team is going to sing two songs and then we'll be dismissed. Let me pray. Father, thank you again just for our time together this morning. To look at a text that can be difficult, can be confusing. Cause, God, you called Hagar to go do something that was painful, that was difficult. God, I don't know what we're going through. I don't know what people specifically, individually are going through. I don't know what we corporately might be going through as a church, might be calling us to go through something difficult. I don't know. So, God, I pray you'd give us wisdom. Pray that we would just be in community with one another to talk through some things and that we would rely on your grace. We'd rely on the gospel, not our own wisdom, not our own idols, not our own comfort, not our own joy. But maybe, like Paul, you're calling us to see how many ways we might need to suffer for your namesake. How can we make much of you? And then, just like Paul quotes in Isaiah, in our barrenness and our emptiness and our destruction, we might have even more joy, more glory, more children than we could ever imagine because you're God and you're good and you have a plan for us. So I just pray that we would seek after you and know that you see us, you hear us, you know us. So, God, we love you. And it's the name of Jesus that I pray that I'm able to approach you, Holy God, seated on your holy throne as a cherubim flyer. Preach to each other and sing to each other. Holy, holy, holy is the God of hosts. The whole earth is full of his glory. Thank you. For Jesus, it's in his name. Amen.