All right, let's go back there
to Genesis 16. Genesis chapter 16. Now, a sinner loves any religion
that tells him that he can do something that'll make God receive
him. That he can work a work that'll
make God receive him. And you and I who believe the
Gospel, we're still full of self-righteousness. Very much so. So when we see
the Lord Jesus Christ turn a sinner from their will and their works
and their wisdom to rest in Christ, it's a very great assurance to
us because Christ our Head is doing the same things in this
earth right now that we see Him doing in these Scriptures. Exact
same thing. Now, I want to look tonight at
two questions that the Lord asked Hagar. That was Sarah's handmaid. We find these questions in verses
7 and 8. We read there, the angel of the
Lord found her by a fountain of water in the wilderness, by
the fountain in the way to Shur, almost to Egypt. And he said,
Hagar, Sariah's maid, which camest thou? Where have you come from? And whither wilt thou go? Where
will you go? He said, from where have you
come? And where will you go? Now, I have possibly the longest
introduction I've ever had in a message tonight. I want you
to listen very closely. It's possible for a sinner to
come into the house of God where the gospel is preached in truth. We're looking tonight at somebody
in a house where the gospel was declared in truth. It's possible
for a person to come into the house where God's gospel is declared
in truth. They hear the salvation, the
gospel that salvation is through the eternal, everlasting covenant
of grace. that God made with His Son, Christ,
before the world was made. God purposed to save a people
for Himself, to make all His perfections known in the process,
and to save that people from their sins. And He gave them
to His Son for Him to come forth and to become a man. And so here
you have on one side these covenant promises God made would make
to them. And then you have on the other
side this one man who is the God-man who would fulfill all
the covenant obligations for that people. So that God and
his people can come together in one. And he would do it in
this one who's both God and man. That's beautiful in itself. That's
astounding in itself. He shows us what his work he
was to do by his very person. the God-man in one. That was the work he came to
do. And so Christ came forth and this law we had broken, this
law we had completely broken, all these elect children he's
going to save had broken this law. So Christ is made under
that law and under that law Christ goes forth first of all to honor
God, to magnify and maintain the righteousness of God, to
declare God's just, So that when He saves these sinners and shows
them mercy, God's done it in a way that's completely in harmony
with His just and holy character and His justice. He's just. And
so, Christ goes about and does all the work that's needed to
be done. He goes to the cross and He bears
the sins of that people in His own body on the tree that God
might be just in punishing Him. And then God punishes Him in
their place. And then he raises him from the
dead, so now God's just, his law's been satisfied, justice
has been satisfied. And because that's God in human
flesh, that's God there doing the justifying, God's also the
justifier. And as a man, because he completely,
thoroughly fulfilled the righteous precept of all the commands of
the law, the law says of the believer, That believer, the
law, the holy law of God says of that believer, he is as righteous
as God's own son. He's righteous. And the law says
to that believer, as far as penalty is concerned, as far as the justice
that he owed to the law of God, the law says of that sinner,
he's dead. He's made it. So God's own law,
his own law says of the believer, that law, that believer has completely
established the law. He's completely established it.
He's righteous in all its precepts and he's completely justified
from all offenses. He's dead to the law. And so
therefore Christ is all. He's all. Christ is the fullness
that we need. And in Him we are complete in
Him. And so Christ becomes to the
believer. Faith relies upon Christ and
sees Christ as being the end of the law for righteousness. He's my righteousness. He's my
sanctification. He's my redemption. He's my wisdom. He's my all. We are accepted
in the Beloved. That ought to end all discussion
about any works that we're going to do to be accepted of God or
any walking by the letter of the law. The just shall live
by faith. We walk by faith. And Paul said,
and the law's not of faith. We walk by faith. But we so desperately
want to have some hand in this thing. Some hand in this thing. Some hand in this thing of salvation.
Now, the believer comes in, hears this gospel, hears it in truth,
hears it. And then the believer, I mean
the sinner, makes a profession, professes to believe on Christ
publicly, will be baptized, join a church, change their life,
morally start living differently than they did before. But in
reality, in reality, What this one's doing is really looking,
not to Christ, but to these fruits that they've performed, that
they've brought forth, that they've done. They decided it was time
to make a change. It wasn't God's power that did
it. They just decided, you know, I'll not be living like this.
And they made the change and they brought forth the fruit.
But the hypocrisy here will be made manifest this way. When
they really start hearing what the gospel is declaring. They've
sat there for a long time and then they begin to really hear
what the gospel is saying. And because they're proud of
their fruit. They're proud of their fruit. The gospel of the
covenant of grace comes to them as dealing very hard with them. dealing harshly with them. Because
if it's true what that gospel is saying, that sinners are saved
by Christ alone through the everlasting covenant of God's grace that
He's ordered and made sure in all things by Himself, then none
of these fruit that I'm so proud of will be accepted of God. And like Cain, the countenance
falls. And like Cain, they get angry.
And like Cain, they think, I'm going to kill Hey boy, I can't
stand the fact that his gifts are accepted and mine aren't.
But since they don't want to kill anybody, since they don't
want to literally do that, what they do instead is they turn
from the face of God. And they turn from the house
where he's preached. And they turn from those that
they once claimed were their brethren. And they flee into
the wilderness. That's what Hagar did. That's
how Hagar ended up where she is. Now Hagar here is an example
of a sinner who professed to believe on Christ, yet was mixing
law and grace. She's a picture of a believer
trying to mix law and grace. That's what she pictured. Paul
told us that in Galatians. But now in this latter portion
of this chapter, she's also a picture of a child saved by grace. Hard
for us to get that sometimes because we know Paul said as
an allegory she stands as Jerusalem that's in bondage with her children
trying to come to God by the works of the law. It's hard for
us to realize he's saying she stands like that as an allegory.
But she stands here, too, as a picture of a child who's saved
by grace. Let's go back to verse 1. Now,
Sarai, Abraham's wife, bare him no children. And she had a handmaid,
an Egyptian, whose name was Hagar. Now, what that just told us is
Hagar has been, she's come into the house of God, where God's
worshiped. Abraham's house was the only
place, or maybe the only place, I don't know. There wasn't many
places. I think it might have been the
only place in the world at that time where God had made Himself
known and where He was actually worshipped in His house. So she
came into the house of God, brought out of Egypt, brought out of
the world. She's come to the house of God where the Gospels
preach. There's where she sat. And Hagar had heard the truth
of the gospel declared. How do I know that? Because God
said of Abraham, he's faithful to teach his house. He's going
to teach everybody in his house. And when that says he'll teach
everybody in his house, it means his wife, and right this time
he didn't have any children, but his children and his servants
in his house and everybody in his house, he's going to teach
them the gospel. So I know Hagar had heard the word. She had heard
the truth in that house. Just like you sit here and you
hear the gospel preached. And the word she had heard that
God had told Abraham was, through Him, He's going to bring forth
a son. And this son is going to be one
in whom all the earth is going to be
blessed. Now that immediate son, as we know, is Isaac, but the
son that he's referring to, as Paul tells us in Genesis 3, is
Christ. Christ is that seed. He's that
son. So you've got a picture here
of through Abraham, through the promise of God, here's coming
Christ. Through Sarah, who's a picture
of the everlasting covenant of grace. Through the covenant of
grace, you've got a son that's going to come forth and he's
going to accomplish the salvation of his people and glorify God
in the process. And he's going to get all preeminence
and he's going to save all this elect people. that are the spiritual
seed of Abraham. So she heard the gospel. Here
she is out of Egypt in this house. She's heard the gospel. Now if
left right there, as being the handmaid of Sarah, being in submission
to the gospel of everlasting covenant of grace, being in submission
to Abraham, the father of the faithful, picture of Christ the
everlasting father. If she left right there in the
house of God, she's a beautiful picture of a believer brought
out of the world and made a willing servant of Christ Jesus, submitted
to Him, serving Him, worshiping Him from then on. But the next
thing that Hagar does, makes her a picture of a sinner mixing
law and grace. Verse 2, And Sarai said unto
Abram, Behold now the Lord hath restrained me from bearing. They
know that this child is going to come. This son is going to
be born. through them, the son of God's
promise. And they're both old. And Sarah
says here, the Lord's restrained me from bearing children. I'm
barren now and I can't have children. I pray thee, go in unto my maid,
to Hagar. It may be that I may obtain children
by her. It may be that God's going to
work this promise through her. Give us this son through her.
And Abraham hearkened to the voice of Sarai. Saria Abraham's
wife. That's his true wife She took
Hagar her made the Egyptian after Abram had dwelt ten years in
the land of Canaan This wasn't just a spur-of-the-moment thing.
They they took some time and she gave Hagar To her gave her
to her husband. She gave Hagar to Abram to be
his wife Abraham married her now Hagar Sarah and Abraham were
wrong in what they were doing here. But Hagar wasn't innocent
in this thing. Hagar wasn't, she wasn't just
an innocent bystander, she participated in the whole thing. She had some
understanding of what God had told Abraham, and she joined
with Abraham, and she joined with Sarah, and what she was
doing, they were all mixing their works. with the work God said
he would perform, with the work God said he would do. They're
going to try to help God out in this thing. Now that's the
same as a sinner claiming to believe Christ, claiming to rest
in Christ, claiming to believe God, and mixing our works with
God's work, with Christ's work. Hagar's marriage to Abraham was
as unlawful a union as the false professing believer who's unlawfully
claiming that he's married to Christ, when in reality all along
he's looking to the works that he's performed himself. Just
that unlawful. All right, verse 4. And Abraham
went in to Hagar, and she conceived. And when Hagar saw that she had
conceived, her mistress was despised in her eyes. When Hagar saw,
when she saw that she had borne some fruit, that she had conceived,
it filled her with pride. And so she began to despise Sarah,
her mistress. Now, when a sinner's really looking
to their fruit, that fruit they think is the production of God's
grace, but that they've wrought themselves, and they're looking
to their fruit that they've done, calling it the fruit of grace.
Their act of faith, their act of repenting, their act of baptism,
their morality, their good deeds, their knowledge in the doctrine
of grace and how much they've taught themselves in this doctrine. Their pride makes them despise
Christ. And it makes them despise the
fact that no man produces any fruit in himself, by himself,
of himself, It makes them to despise the gospel that declares
salvation is of the Lord. And so they despise that gospel. They despise that Christ. They
despise that God. Just like Hagar, when she saw
she conceived, she despised Sarah. Drop down to verse 6. But Abram
said unto Sarah, Sarah came and she brought this matter to Abraham.
But Abram said unto Sarai, Behold, thy maid is in thy hand. Do to
her as it pleases thee. Here's what Abraham did. Abraham
honored Sarah as being his true wife. That's what he did right
there. He said to her, he honored her
to be his true wife over Hagar. And he said, that's your maid.
You have the authority over her. You do with her whatever pleases
you. Serap is a picture of the everlasting
covenant of grace. She's a picture of the gospel.
That's what she's a picture of, Paul tells us. So here you've
got to understand God will not share His glory with another. He will not share the truth with
lies. God will not do that. He honors
the gospel. He honors the truth. He honors
the gospel of His everlasting purpose of grace. That's what
He honors. Christ is the truth. Christ sends forth His gospel
in truth, just as Abraham sent Sarah there saying, saying, Hagar's
in your hand to do with her as you please. Christ sends forth
His Gospel to this one who's sitting there claiming to believe
God, claiming to trust God, in God's house, but really is looking
at their own fruits and full of pride, really doesn't like
the Gospel, really don't like what they're being told. And
Christ sends forth that Gospel and He says, they're in your
hand, you do with them as you will. You do with them as you
will. And the Word of God is sharper
than any two-edged sword. It pierces right to the heart
and discerns the thoughts and intents of the heart. So when
that self-righteous, professing believer begins to truly hear
the Gospel and truly hear what it's saying, he hears it as dealing
hard with Him. Just like Sarah dealt hard with
Hagar. Look at verse 6. And when Sarah
dealt hardly with her, she fled from her face. The gospel is
offensive to all and only to all who mixing their works with
the work of Christ. The gospel is not offensive to
a believer. The believer has submitted to God, by God's grace,
and delights in the word of God, delights in his gospel. The gospel's
offensive to somebody who's trusting in their word, who's filled with
pride by their fruit, and they're looking at this gospel and despising
it, and that gospel comes to them as unbearably offensive. And they flee. They flee. I'm sure that Hagar overlooked
all the good things that could be said about Abraham and about
Sarah and about being in that house. I'm sure she looked over
every one of them and magnified every fault she could find with
Abraham and Sarah and everybody in that house so that she could
justify herself for rebelling against Abraham and against Sarah
and against God and gleeving and going out into the wilderness.
I know she did that because that's what happens anytime that self-righteousness
is ruling the heart. It's exactly what happens. Our
Lord walked this earth ministering to sinners in this earth and
the whole time he walked this earth, those men who thought
they were righteous by some deed they had done according to the
law, men who claimed to believe God, men who knew the doctrine
of election, men who knew the doctrine of sovereignty and predestination,
and men who had seen God do this work, Men who claimed to believe
God in truth, who were looking for the Messiah, who were waiting
on Christ to come, just like men today who claim to believe
on God, believe on Christ, claim to be resting in Him, waiting
on Christ to come again. But they, those men went about
their whole, the whole of his ministry trying to find something
wrong with Christ, something offensive in him, so, entangle
him in his words so they could justify themselves for leaving
and not hearing his gospel and not submitting to it. Senators
very rarely leave a place saying, I don't believe that's the gospel.
Very rarely do that. They had to find something else
to justify leaving, justify it. When the real issue, the real
issue is the heart before God. That's the real issue. Now, but
rather than repent from vain works and submit to Christ in
truth, a sinner will flee from God's presence, flee from his
house where the truth is preached, flee from those they counted
brethren, just like Hagar did. I can tell you this, it doesn't
do any good for a pastor to try to count sheep to get sleep.
Because when you start trying to count them, if there's one
missing, you'll lie there wide awake, begging God's mercy. begging Him to intervene in mercy.
And you just can't sleep. And sometimes you're able to
go to Him yourself and speak to Him. Sometimes that door is
open and you can do that. But it's usually very hard to
reason with a drowning man. Very hard. Most of the time,
God shuts you up to His sovereign hand. Just shuts you up to His
hand. You've got to trust God. And
Christ is in control of the whole situation. This whole situation,
Christ is in control of everything. You remember Gomer? Remember
Gomer? She had forsaken her husband
and gone back to her whoredoms, and she was saying, oh, my lovers
are good to me. And when it was Gomer laying
everything at her door every day, she'd open up that door
and see all these goodies laying there, and she'd say, oh, my
lovers brought me these things, when it was her husband doing
it. And he said of her, he said, behold, I will allure her and
bring her into the wilderness. And there I will speak comfortably
to her. So here's Ohagar. She's running away. She's running
away. She run out to the wilderness.
But if what we see here in her is if that one running away is
Christ's sheep, he's going to intervene. Look at verse seven.
And the angel of the Lord found her. The angel of the Lord found
her. I don't know if Hagar was a lost
sheep. I don't know if Christ saved her or not, but she sure
is a mighty good, mighty good picture of one, mighty good example
of one. Now here's my first point. That
was my introduction. Here's my first point. Christ
Jesus, the angel of the Lord, the messenger of the covenant,
always finds his lost sheep. Verse 7, the angel of the Lord
found her. This is one of those pre-incarnate
appearances of Christ before He came as a man. The angel of
the Lord. Hagar wasn't seeking Him. Hagar
was running. She wasn't seeking Him. But Christ
the Good Shepherd sought her and He found her. He always finds
His lost sheep. He came to seek and to save that
which is lost. The shepherd of the sheep goeth
after his sheep until he finds it. Why does He do it? Because
all of His sheep were given to Him by the Father in electing
grace to care for and to deliver them all to the Father, holy
and spotless and righteous, without blame. Because He went and laid
down His life for them and redeemed them by His blood and has perfected
them forever. Because He's calling them. He
must call them by His grace because if He doesn't call them all in,
His body, the church, is not going to be complete. And the
justice will be a miscarriage. And all of God's glory will be
tarnished. So He must find them. So He shall
find them. All power in heaven and earth
is given to Him to find them. And He will find them. He will
bring them to Him. And none shall be lost. Look
where He found her, verse 7. He found her by a fountain of
water, by the fountain in the way to Shur." Now, Shur is on
the border of Egypt. That's where, you know, when
Moses brought Israel out of Egypt, that's where they came into,
was right there into the wilderness of Shur. That's right there,
right out of Egypt. So that's where they came into. She's run
pretty good ways here. And she's almost got to Egypt.
She was on her way back to the world, on her way back to her
people, to people like her. That's where we always run to.
We want to go to birds of a feather like to flock together. She's
headed back to Egypt. And she's almost there, but she
came to this fountain on the way. Now, you know us, you know
how we are. When we're rebelling and we're
fleeing, we find something good come our way, like she found
this fountain right here. You know what we always do? Oh,
we pat ourselves on the back. We justify ourselves. I knew
I was right in doing this. God's blessing me. He's blessing
me. Blessing me. Oh, if we flee from
the house of God, we may come across some fountains. We probably
will. We'll come across some fountains
in the wilderness, some false preacher who will tell us, oh,
you're right, you're right. Here, write me a check and I'll
tell you how right you are. Come across some friends, some
new friends, they'll tell you how right you are. Come across
some good increase in the world, some good increases in the world.
But Christ is the only fountain. He's the only fountain that'll
give us peace and true life and true comfort and truly sustain
us in everywhere that we go in this world. He's the only fountain.
You remember when Christ found the Samaritan woman at the well?
There at Jacob's well, she come there and she brought that bucket.
He started talking to her and she started telling him everything
she knew, you know. And he said to her, you keep drinking this
water right here out of this fountain, you gonna keep on being
thirsty. You'll keep thirsting drinking
water out of this fountain. And he said, with the water that
I give to you. The water that I give to those
that trust Me and believe on Me, the water I give, it's a
well of life. It's a river of life. A well
of water springing up within Him into everlasting life. It's
life. It's everlasting life. It's eternal
life. It's the abiding presence of
God the Holy Spirit keeping us. Teaching us that salvation's
been accomplished for us. Teaching us continually we're
complete in Christ. When we turn our hand and start
wanting to touch the ark, when we think it's about to fall,
He continually revives us and refreshes us and pulls us back
and says, I'm doing this work. And we continue to turn around
and think, well, oh, I hadn't kept the law. And I see my sin
because I haven't been keeping the law. And a preacher tells
me I got to keep the law. And he keeps beating me up with
that law and telling me if I don't keep the law, something bad's
going to happen to me. I got to keep the law. Christ comes
to you and he says, I'm the end of the law. Don't ever, ever in a thousand,
imagine that you have done anything remotely close to keeping the
law of God. Do you really think that? Do
we really think that? If we think that, you know, we
are deceiving ourselves. I mean, we're just lying to ourselves
if we think that. You never had a bad thought today?
You never had one bad thought in the past hour? Never had one
bad thought since you've been sitting here. Everything you've
thought has been holy enough since we've been sitting right
here in this amount of time that you'd be willing to come to God
and bank your whole salvation on it. We ain't kept the law. And Christ keeps reminding us
that this well of water, he keeps bringing that spirit to us and
telling us, you haven't, but I have. and keeps reminding us
over and over. It's his polluting of a sin for
you to try to turn back to Mount Sinai now that you've been brought
to Mount Zion and attempt to do something by your hand as
it is for that one that you're looking down your nose at out
there in the brothel and thinking you're better than them because
of something you've done. It's just as bad a sin. Read Romans
1, after Paul sat there and spoke, and he was doing it on purpose.
He was saying, look in the world, look at men, with men doing things
that aren't even natural to the flesh, sodomites. He said, God
has given them over to a reprobate mind. They didn't like to retain
God in their knowledge. He gave them over. And he turned
right around and there's, he's talking to the Pharisees and
there they are thinking, Oh, amen, brother. That's right.
That's right. And he says, and who are you
now that stands and says, and condemns them because you do
the same thing. You mean in the white hall of
Pharisee-ism, wearing our long coats and with all the law written
on our garments and quoting it left and right and praying all
the time and doing all these many wonderful works, you would
compare us to a sodomite? In fact, in Ezekiel, he said
it's worse. It's a worse form of sodomy. Well, that's the first point. Christ's going to find his lost
sheep. Here's the second point. When Christ comes, He speaks
effectually. First, He's going to wake us
up, convict us of our sin. Christ asked Hagar these two
questions. And you know that when He asks
a question, when God asks a question, He's not asking a question to
get some knowledge from us to teach Him something. He's asking
us a question to teach us something. He's asking us a question to
make us confess our sin. Or He's asking us a question
to make us acknowledge something about Him. Now look at what He
asked her right here, verse 8. He said, Hagar, can you imagine
that girl's thought? She's out in the middle of the
wilderness now. She's out there where nobody knows who she is.
And a man walks up to her, this angel of the Lord walks up to
her and says, Hagar. Calls her by her name, Hagar. Not only that, he says, Saria
is made. He knows her profession. He knows where she was, where
she came from. See, this word's personal. He
calls his sheep by name. He knows us. He knows where we've
been. He knows our heart. He knows
where we're thinking about going. He knows us. He says, whence
camest thou? The problem is we don't know
us. He's discovering to us what he knows about us. He says, from
where you got running? And he says, and whither wilt
thou go? From where have you come, and where will you go?
Let's look at the first one. From whence camest thou? Where
did you come from? First place you have to answer
is I came from Adam. I came from Adam. Guilty. Guilty. conceived in sin in my mother's
womb, came from my mother's womb speaking lies. I came from the
world, from Egypt, just like them. Just one with them, exactly
like them. That's where I've come from.
There's a worse thing for Hagar though. Worse for Hagar. She's running from God's house.
She's running from the truth. She's running from where she
had light given to her. The very place God had made himself
known. She's fleeing from the face of God. The house of God
was the place, the very best place in all of this whole world
for Hagar to have remained. And it's the best place for you
and me to be too. The best place for us to stay.
Jonah tried to run away. You remember that? Jonah tried
to run away from the face of God. And God took him down. It took him down to the bottom
of the ocean. And there he is in the belly of that fish and
he said this, he said, they that observe lying vanities forsake
their own mercy. Running away from your own mercy.
And then he asks this question, where will you go? Where will
you go? You've heard the gospel that
God saves through Christ Jesus alone. You've heard the gospel
that God's gonna save by His grace apart from any works of
righteousness you have done. You've heard that God saves according
to His mercy, according to His truth, so that Christ gets all
the glory and that no flesh glories in His presence. You've heard
the truth. Now, if you forsake mercy, Where
will you go? If you forsake Christ, if not
Christ, then who are you going to run to? Who will we run to
then? Acts 4.12 says, Neither is there
salvation in any other. For there is none other name
under heaven given among men whereby we must be saved. In
John the Lord said, I am the way and the truth and the life.
No man cometh unto the Father but by me. And you think about
this, he's saying to Hagar, your will, and your wisdom, and your
works, they have made you flee, and they brought you much affliction,
and they brought you right here to where you are right now. You
still gonna think you're wise? You still gonna keep looking
to you? You still gonna keep running to your wisdom, and to
your strength, and to your will, and to your works, and to all
the things that you keep calling goodness? Look where it's led
you! And the truth of the matter is,
brethren, for every sinner here, you can run. You can run and
run and run and run and run from God. And eventually, you're going
to run right into His arms. You're going to meet Him face
to face. And if you meet Him face to face without Christ,
the wrath of God will be abiding on you. You meet Him with the
wrath of God abiding on you. You ever seen those things in
the movies where the person's running from somebody that's
after them or something, and they keep looking back, keep
looking back, and they look up, and they run right into them? That's
what will happen. That's what's going to happen.
Look over at Hebrews chapter 10. Look at verse 23. Let us hold fast the profession
of our faith without wavering, for He's faithful that promised.
And let us consider one another to provoke unto love and to good
works. That's what I'm trying to do
tonight. That's what you do to me when you show up here. We
provoke one another to love Christ, and these good works of continuing
steadfast in Him. These good works of repenting
from ourselves and continuing by faith in Him. These good works
of following after Him, forgiving one another's trespasses and
looking to Him. These good works of verse 25, not forsaking the
assembling of ourselves together as the manner of some is, but
exhorting one another so much the more as you see the day approaching.
For if we sin willfully, if we leave the place of mercy, if
we leave the Christ of mercy, if we leave God, we leave Him,
we leave the one hope of salvation, after that we've received the
knowledge of the truth, there remains no more sacrifice for
sin, but a certain fearful looking for of judgment and fiery indignation
which shall devour the adversaries. So first Christ awakened her.
He woke her up and He made her see her sins. She'd never seen
Him, but He saw her. He knew her whole case. And His
words went to the depths of her heart and laid her heart open.
And she answered Him. She acknowledged, verse 8, she
said, I flee from the face of my mistress Saria. In spiritual
language, if we look at that spiritually, that's when Christ
has brought you to the place where you say, I'm leaving. the
face of God. I've been running from the gospel
of my salvation. Is there anyone here who he's
speaking to now? If so, listen up, because here's
what happened next. Look, then he gives her command
of repentance and faith. Here's repentance, verse 9. The
angel of the Lord said unto her, return to thy mistress. You see,
Christ grants repentance by commanding it in the heart that he's made
new. That's how he does it. And he
says, return to thy mistress. You know what repentance is?
Repentance is turning, it's forsaking you, trying to save yourself. That's repentance. Repentance
is forsaking you, trying to save yourself. Paul forsook all, everything. Let's read Philippians 3. And
then he gives this command of faith, verse 9, "...and submit
thyself unto her hands." Sarai represents the Gospel. True faith
is submitting to Christ, to the Gospel of His free grace. As
Peter said, "...submit thyself unto the mighty hand of God,
that He may exalt you in due time." Not we ourselves. We submit
our hands unto Him, believe in Him, and He's going to exalt
us. He's going to bring us to Heaven's glory, to the right
hand of the Father, in due time. Not we ourselves. And then look,
He accompanied it with covenant promise. A covenant promise.
Look at verse 10. And the angel of the Lord said
unto her, I will multiply thy seed exceedingly, that it shall
not be numbered for multitude. When you come to Christ, you're
going to find out you've got a host of brethren that can't
be numbered for multitude. a host of brethren. And it says,
And the angel of the Lord said unto her, Behold, thou art with
child, and shalt bear a son, and shalt call his name Ishmael. That name means the Lord hath
heard. He says, Because the Lord hath
heard your affliction. Spurgeon said, Grief has an eloquent
voice when mercy is the listener. Grief has an eloquent voice when
mercy is the listener. He said, I've heard your affliction.
She didn't pray. We didn't read here she was praying.
We didn't read here she was seeking him at all. Her affliction was
in her heart running from God, running away, trying to get away. And he heard it. He heard it.
And he did said something else too. He promised her this, that
that fruit she'd been so proud of, he promised her it's going
to come to nothing. Look at this, verse 12. And he
will be a wild man, and his hand will be against every man, and
every man's hand against him, and you should dwell in the presence
of all his brethren. I think that's spiritually the
same as saying all those works you've been looking at, they're
vain and they're nothing. They ain't coming to anything.
That's what she'd been proud of, that child she was with.
And then here's the third thing. Christ produces fruit of righteousness,
not we ourselves. He produces fruit in His children,
not we ourselves. She's proud of fruit she thought
she produced. Now here's the fruit He produces. Look at verse
13. And she called the name of the Lord that spake unto her,
Thou God seest me. Thou God seest me. You see what
she said? Thou God seest me. For she said,
Have I also here looked after him that seeth me? When a son
of God speaks in spirit and in truth, in the heart, his word
will convince us he's God. His Word will convince us that
God sees us, not just in omniscience, not just bare omniscience, but
that He sees me in that He cares for me. He sees me in that He's
seen me in His Son since before He made the world. He's seen
me when He was walking this earth establishing righteousness for
me. He saw me when He went to the cross and bore my sins on
the tree. He saw me when I was in my rebellion and came to me
and sought me in the wilderness. He saw me, and cared for me,
and preserved me, and protected me, and now He's brought me to
Himself, to myself and Himself. He sees me, and thereby when
He makes you to hear His voice like that, all along you've been
thinking, how do I know the Word of God's true? When the Word
of God speaks into the heart, He proves Himself that the Word
of God is true. and you believe for the first
time, God is God, and Christ is Christ, and He's all your
salvation, and for the first time you have communion with
God. The psalmist said, When thou
saidest, Seek ye my face, my heart said unto thee, Thy face,
Lord, will I seek. Remember Saul of Tarsus after
the Lord arrested him on the road to Damascus and put him
down in the dirt. He said, behold, for the first time ever, he's
praying. He's got communion with God for
the first time in his life. And for the first time, you'll
marvel at God's amazing grace. Look what she said. Verse 13,
have I also here looked after him that seeth me, after God
that seeth me? Have I looked and seen him? After all the enmity I am against
God, you mean to tell me that He's been so gracious to me to
give me this sight of Him? After how much I've hated the
Word of His grace and hated Christ and hated His Gospel, never a
man saw God and lived, and yet He's given me a view of His glory
in the face of the angel of the Lord in Christ Jesus? You mean
He's done this to me? That's what you just start marveling.
I think this song applies wonderfully to Hagar. Amazing grace, how
sweet to sound, that saved a wretch like me. I once was lost, but
now am found. Was blind, but now I see. That's when our theology stops
being a system. That's when we stop coming to
the service and sitting down and listening to a sermon, trying
to listen for the letters. T-U-L-I-P. Well, there's total depravity.
There it is. I heard him say it. There's unconditional
election. I heard him say it. There's limited atonement. I
heard him say it. I'm not going to say the rest. That's when it stops being a
letter and it stops being a person. That's when it stops being a
letter and it stops being Christ standing right there in front
of you, embracing you in His arms and making this Word, letting
you to know this Word in your heart. That's when you stop,
after checking off that list, go home and feel so proud about
yourself because I went again and I made myself sit there and
drudgery and listened to that sermon and did my duty. Then
it becomes a joy to come and hear your master speak, to come
and hear God speak into your heart. You pray every time you
come in, Lord, I just hope tonight you'll talk to me. Oh, Lord,
please talk to me. And you go home, instead of feeling
proud about yourself, you go home not looking at yourself
at all, but looking at him and saying, behold, I am my beloved's,
and my beloved is mine. That's what happens. Look at
verse 14, Wherefore the well was called Be'er-le-Hororai. It means the well of him that
liveth and seeth me. The well of him that liveth and
seeth me. Every time folks walk by that well and got well and
asked the name of it, they'd say, where'd that name come from?
And somebody'd say, well, a long time ago this maid that served
Abraham was running away from him and the angel of the Lord
supposedly came to it right here called her, turned her, and saved
her from running back into the wilderness in Egypt. Every time
somebody sat there and drank water from that well, they spoke
the truth, the gospel about what happened. You know what happens
after he saves us? He said, we become a well, and
we keep telling everybody about the God who saw us, and heard
us, and came to us, and saved us, and did this wonderful work
for us. We become a well of living water, a testimony and a witness
to His grace and what He's done. I got one more verse, verse 15. And Hagar bare Abram a son, and
Abram called his son's name which Hagar bare Ishmael. You know
what that means? She went home. That means she
turned around and went back to Abraham's house, just like the
Lord told her to do. Now I won't press it upon you,
I don't know if it means it or not, but I'll tell you what I
think it means. I think it means God saved Hagar. That's what
I think it means. I think she was a lost sheep.
He found her and saved her and brought her home. That's what
I think it means. Oh, if you're running, I hope the Lord will
sweetly force you to answer those two questions. From whence camest
thou, and whither wilt thou go? And I hope he'll make you return
and submit to him, and you then will rejoice, and you'll delight
in his goodness forevermore. Amen.