The Folly of Good Intentions: When Faith Takes a Detour Text: Genesis 16:1-6
Introduction: The Devil's Workshop
The Christian life is a long obedience in the same direction. But it is also a journey fraught with the temptation to take sanctified shortcuts. We are given glorious promises by God, promises that are as solid as the God who made them. But we are also given a stopwatch, and it seems to us that God's watch and our watch are not synchronized. The space between the promise and the fulfillment is the devil's workshop, and the primary tool he uses there is our own impatience.
We come now to a chapter in the life of Abram that is a master class in the folly of good intentions. Abram has received the covenant promise from God Himself. He has been told that his offspring will be as numerous as the stars. God has sealed this promise with a blood oath, walking through the pieces of the sacrifice, taking the entire curse of the covenant upon Himself. Abram believed God, and it was counted to him as righteousness. This is the high point. But faith must be tested, and the testing ground is often the waiting room of God's providence.
Ten years have passed in Canaan. Ten years is a long time to look at a barren womb. Ten years is a long time to rehearse a promise that has no visible signs of fulfillment. And so, a plan is hatched. It is a culturally acceptable plan. It is a logical plan. It is a plan born of a desire to "help God out." And like all such plans, it is a disaster. It introduces strife, jealousy, bitterness, and sorrow into the camp of the righteous, the effects of which are still being felt on the world stage today.
This story is not here to show us the quaint customs of ancient near-eastern surrogacy. It is here to warn us. It is here to show us that faith is not just believing that God can, but waiting until God does. When we grow impatient with God's timing, we are not displaying a more zealous faith; we are displaying a profound lack of it. We are seizing the divine prerogative, climbing onto God's throne, and attempting to drive the universe ourselves. And whenever man takes the wheel from God, the destination is always a ditch.
The Text
Now Sarai, Abram’s wife, had borne him no children, and she had an Egyptian servant-woman whose name was Hagar. So Sarai said to Abram, “Now behold, Yahweh has shut my womb from bearing children. Please go in to my servant-woman; perhaps I will obtain children through her.” And Abram listened to the voice of Sarai. And after Abram had lived ten years in the land of Canaan, Abram’s wife Sarai took Hagar the Egyptian, her servant-woman, and gave her to her husband Abram as his wife. So he went in to Hagar, and she conceived. Then she saw that she had conceived, so her mistress became contemptible in her sight. And Sarai said to Abram, “May the violence done to me be upon you. I gave my servant-woman into your embrace, but she saw that she had conceived, so I became contemptible in her sight. May Yahweh judge between you and me.” But Abram said to Sarai, “Behold, your servant-woman is in your hand; do to her what is good in your sight.” So Sarai afflicted her, and she fled from her presence.
(Genesis 16:1-6 LSB)
A Plausible, Faithless Plan (vv. 1-2)
We begin with the problem and the proposed solution.
"Now Sarai, Abram’s wife, had borne him no children, and she had an Egyptian servant-woman whose name was Hagar. So Sarai said to Abram, “Now behold, Yahweh has shut my womb from bearing children. Please go in to my servant-woman; perhaps I will obtain children through her.” And Abram listened to the voice of Sarai." (Genesis 16:1-2)
The problem is stated plainly: Sarai was barren. This was not just a personal sorrow; in that culture, it was a deep shame and, more importantly, a direct challenge to the promise of God. Notice Sarai's theology. She says, "Yahweh has shut my womb." She is not an atheist. She correctly attributes her condition to the sovereign hand of God. Her theology is half-right, which is the most dangerous kind. She sees God's sovereignty in the problem, but she fails to trust His sovereignty for the solution.
Her solution is a work of the flesh disguised as pious action. "Perhaps I will obtain children through her." The Hebrew says, "perhaps I will be built up through her." She wants to build the house of Abram, the very thing God promised to do. But she wants to do it with her own hands, using her own materials. The plan was not scandalous by the standards of the day. The Code of Hammurabi and other texts from that region show that this was a common practice. If a wife was barren, she could give her handmaid to her husband to produce an heir. The child would legally belong to the wife.
But God's people are not to be governed by the customs of the Canaanites or the Babylonians. They are to be governed by the Word of God. God had not just promised Abram a son; He had promised Abram a son from his own body (Gen. 15:4). The clear implication was that this son would also come from Sarai, his one wife. This plan was a deviation from God's creational standard of one man, one woman for life, and it was a deviation from faith in the specific promise.
And what of Abram, the great man of faith? "And Abram listened to the voice of Sarai." This is a chilling echo of another garden, another husband, and another disastrous decision. In Genesis 3:17, God says to Adam, "Because you have listened to the voice of your wife..." Abram, the head of his household, abdicated his spiritual leadership. He was responsible for guarding the promise. He should have gently corrected his wife, reminding her of what God had said, and called her back to a posture of patient faith. Instead, he went along with a plan that seemed reasonable but was rooted in unbelief. Passivity in a husband, especially when a faithless course of action is proposed, is not kindness; it is cowardice.
The Scheme in Motion (vv. 3-4)
The plan, once agreed upon, is executed swiftly.
"And after Abram had lived ten years in the land of Canaan, Abram’s wife Sarai took Hagar the Egyptian, her servant-woman, and gave her to her husband Abram as his wife. So he went in to Hagar, and she conceived. Then she saw that she had conceived, so her mistress became contemptible in her sight." (Genesis 16:3-4 LSB)
The mention of "ten years" is significant. It is a marker of their long patience, but also the breaking point of that patience. Sarai is the prime mover here. She "took" Hagar and "gave" her to Abram. The language is again a sad parody of the Fall, where Eve "took" the fruit and "gave" it to her husband. Whenever we step outside of God's revealed will to accomplish His promises, we are re-enacting the original sin.
The plan "works," in a manner of speaking. The fleshly means produce a fleshly result. Hagar conceives. And immediately, the poison of this sin begins to infect the household. The first fruit of this union is not joy, but contempt. Hagar, now pregnant with the heir, looks down on her barren mistress. And why wouldn't she? In the economy of the ancient world, she has just been elevated from a mere servant to the mother of the master's son. She has accomplished what the true wife could not. Her pride swells, and her contempt for Sarai becomes obvious.
This is always the result of sin. We think our clever plans will solve our problems, but they only create new and more complicated ones. They thought this would build up their family, but it immediately begins to tear it apart. Pride, jealousy, bitterness, and rivalry enter the tent of the patriarch. This is not the blessed family God promised; it is a dysfunctional mess of their own making.
The Blame Game Begins (vv. 5-6)
When the consequences of sin arrive, the next step is always to shift the blame.
"And Sarai said to Abram, “May the violence done to me be upon you. I gave my servant-woman into your embrace, but she saw that she had conceived, so I became contemptible in her sight. May Yahweh judge between you and me.” But Abram said to Sarai, “Behold, your servant-woman is in your hand; do to her what is good in your sight.” So Sarai afflicted her, and she fled from her presence." (Genesis 16:5-6 LSB)
Sarai, the architect of the entire scheme, now turns on her husband with venom. "May the violence done to me be upon you." This is remarkable. It was her idea from start to finish. But now that the plan has backfired, creating a rival in her own home, she blames Abram. Like Eve blaming the serpent, and Adam blaming Eve, Sarai refuses to take responsibility for her own faithless suggestion. She even invokes the name of Yahweh, calling on Him to judge between them, as though she were the innocent, wronged party.
And how does Abram respond? Does he finally step up and exercise godly leadership? Does he rebuke Sarai for her foolishness and Hagar for her pride, and call the whole household to repentance? No. He continues in his passivity. "Behold, your servant-woman is in your hand; do to her what is good in your sight." He washes his hands of the whole affair. He essentially tells Sarai, "You made this mess, you clean it up." This is a catastrophic failure of headship. He is responsible for the welfare of everyone in his household, including Hagar. By handing her over to the whims of a jealous and angry Sarai, he fails to protect her and fails to lead his house in righteousness.
The result is predictable. Sarai, given free rein, "afflicted" Hagar. The Hebrew word implies harsh, oppressive treatment. She makes Hagar's life so miserable that the pregnant servant flees into the wilderness. The plan that was meant to secure an heir has resulted in the heir fleeing for his life. The attempt to "build up" the family has led to its fracture. This is the fruit of impatience. This is the harvest of unbelief.
Conclusion: Works vs. Faith
This entire episode is a living parable of the conflict between works and faith, a theme the Apostle Paul will pick up and expound upon with direct reference to this story in Galatians 4. Hagar and Ishmael represent the covenant of works, the attempt to secure God's blessing through human effort, through the flesh. Sarai and Isaac represent the covenant of grace, the blessing that comes as a sheer gift from God, received by faith alone.
Paul tells us that these two are at war with one another. "But as at that time he who was born according to the flesh persecuted him who was born according to the Spirit, so also it is now" (Galatians 4:29). The spirit of Ishmael, the spirit of self-righteous works, always persecutes the spirit of Isaac, the spirit of grace through faith.
We are constantly tempted to be like Abram and Sarai. God gives us promises in His Word, promises for our salvation, for our sanctification, for our families, for His church. And then He makes us wait. And in the waiting, we get nervous. We start to think that maybe God needs a little help. We devise our own Hagars. We try to secure our salvation through our own religious efforts. We try to fix our spouses or our children through manipulation and control instead of prayer and patient faithfulness. We try to build the church through worldly marketing schemes and pragmatic compromises instead of the simple preaching of the Word and the administration of the sacraments.
Every time we do this, we introduce conflict and misery into our lives. Our clever plans always blow up in our faces. The lesson of Genesis 16 is stark and simple: do not try to help God. His promises are not enabled by our cleverness, but they can be greatly complicated by our unbelief. Our job is not to figure out the "how" but to trust the "Who." Faith does not take matters into its own hands. Faith puts matters into God's hands and leaves them there. Let us learn from the folly of Abram and Sarai. Let us cast away our fleshly schemes, our impatient ambitions, and our anxious unbelief. Let us resolve to simply trust the promise, and to wait, with patience, for the God who is always faithful to perform His Word.