The God Who Sees in the Wilderness Text: Genesis 16:7-14
Introduction: The God of Messy Providence
We come now to a passage that is brimming with the kind of trouble that makes modern Christians uncomfortable. We like our stories of faith to be neat and tidy, with clear heroes and villains, and problems that can be solved with a three-point sermon and a prayer. But the Bible is not that kind of book, because God is not that kind of God. He is the God of history, the God of reality, and reality is frequently a tangled mess of sin, impatience, fear, and folly. And it is precisely into that kind of mess that God sovereignly and graciously intrudes.
The situation is a domestic disaster of their own making. Sarai, barren and impatient, decides to "help" God fulfill His promise by resorting to a common pagan custom. She gives her Egyptian slave, Hagar, to her husband Abram. This is not faith; it is fleshly calculation. It is an attempt to achieve a spiritual promise through carnal means. Abram, who ought to have known better, acquiesces. And as is always the case when we run ahead of God, the result is not blessing, but bitterness. Hagar conceives, and immediately despises her mistress. Sarai, reaping the whirlwind she herself had sown, deals harshly with Hagar. And Hagar, full of pride and misery, runs for it. She becomes a fugitive in the wilderness.
This is the backdrop. A faithless scheme, a passive husband, a bitter wife, and a proud slave girl, all caught in a web of their own sin. And it is here, in the middle of this self-inflicted chaos, in the barren wilderness, that God shows up. This should be a profound encouragement to all of us. God does not wait for us to clean up our lives before He intervenes. He meets us in the wilderness we have made for ourselves. He is not thwarted by our sin; He makes our sin the very stage upon which He displays His astonishing grace and sovereign purpose.
The Text
Now the angel of Yahweh found her by a spring of water in the wilderness, by the spring on the way to Shur. And he said, “Hagar, Sarai’s servant-woman, where have you come from and where are you going?” And she said, “I am fleeing from the presence of my mistress Sarai.” Then the angel of Yahweh said to her, “Return to your mistress and humble yourself under her hands.” Moreover, the angel of Yahweh said to her, “I will greatly multiply your seed so that they will be too many to be counted.” And the angel of Yahweh said to her further, “Behold, you are with child, And you will bear a son; And you shall call his name Ishmael, Because Yahweh has heard your affliction. And he will be a wild donkey of a man, His hand will be against everyone, And everyone’s hand will be against him; And he will dwell in the face of all his brothers.” Then she called the name of Yahweh who spoke to her, “You are a God who sees”; for she said, “Have I even remained alive here after seeing Him?” Therefore the well was called Beer-lahai-roi; behold, it is between Kadesh and Bered.
(Genesis 16:7-14 LSB)
The Divine Interrogation (v. 7-8)
The first thing we must establish is the identity of this "angel of Yahweh."
"Now the angel of Yahweh found her by a spring of water in the wilderness, by the spring on the way to Shur. And he said, 'Hagar, Sarai’s servant-woman, where have you come from and where are you going?' And she said, 'I am fleeing from the presence of my mistress Sarai.'" (Genesis 16:7-8 LSB)
Throughout the Old Testament, whenever we see this figure, the Angel of Yahweh, He speaks as God, is identified as God, and receives worship as God. This is no mere created messenger. This is a theophany, or more specifically, a Christophany. This is the pre-incarnate Son of God, the eternal Word, stepping into human history. Hagar is not having a conversation with Gabriel; she is having an encounter with the living God Himself.
And notice what He does. He finds her. Hagar was not seeking God; she was fleeing her mistress. But God was seeking her. This is the nature of grace. It is always prevenient. It comes to us when we are lost, running in the wrong direction. He finds her by a spring of water, a manifestation of His common grace. He provides for her physical thirst before He addresses her spiritual rebellion. He is on the way to Shur, which means "wall," a fortress in Egypt. She is running from one form of bondage back to another, from the house of Abram back to the land of slavery. This is what sin does; it promises freedom but only leads back to bondage.
The Angel's first words are a laser-guided missile to the heart of her situation. He calls her by name: "Hagar." God knows her personally. But then He identifies her by her station: "Sarai's servant-woman." This is a gentle but firm reminder of her identity and her duty. She may see herself as a wronged mother-to-be, but God sees her as a servant who has abandoned her post. Then come the two questions that every human soul must answer: "Where have you come from and where are you going?" These are not questions for information; God knows the answers. They are for Hagar's benefit, to force her to confront the reality of her choices. She is coming from a place of divinely appointed duty and she is going to a place of self-willed destruction. Her answer is telling: "I am fleeing from the presence of my mistress Sarai." She sees the problem as entirely horizontal. She is a victim of Sarai's harshness. She does not yet see that she is fleeing from the hard providence of God.
The Hard Command and the High Promise (v. 9-11)
God's response is not what our therapeutic age would expect. He does not affirm her feelings or validate her flight.
"Then the angel of Yahweh said to her, 'Return to your mistress and humble yourself under her hands.' Moreover, the angel of Yahweh said to her, 'I will greatly multiply your seed so that they will be too many to be counted.' And the angel of Yahweh said to her further, 'Behold, you are with child, And you will bear a son; And you shall call his name Ishmael, Because Yahweh has heard your affliction.'" (Genesis 16:9-11 LSB)
The command is stark: "Return... and humble yourself." This is the gospel in its raw form. It is a call to repentance, which means turning around and going back. And it is a call to submission. The path to blessing for Hagar is not through escape, but through humility. God's plan for her sanctification, and for the outworking of His purposes, was back in that difficult, dysfunctional household. We are often tempted to think that our spiritual growth requires a change in our circumstances. God frequently teaches that it requires a change in our own hearts, right where we are. This is a cruciform command. Die to your pride, die to your sense of grievance, and submit.
But with the hard command comes a high promise. Notice the covenantal language: "I will greatly multiply your seed." This is a staggering echo of the promise God had already made to Abram. God is not just dealing with Hagar as an individual; He is dealing with her as the mother of a nation. This is not the covenant of grace that will come through Isaac, but it is a massive, world-shaping promise of common grace. God's sovereignty is so vast that even this sinful, man-made plan becomes an occasion for Him to create a great people.
Then He gives the child a name. And in the Bible, when God names something, He is asserting His absolute authority over it and defining its essence. "You shall call his name Ishmael." And the reason is given: "Because Yahweh has heard your affliction." The name Ishmael means "God hears." In her deepest despair, when she felt most alone and unheard, God was listening. He did not hear her pride, but He heard her affliction. God has a special regard for the cry of the afflicted, the outcast, the one in distress. This name is to be a permanent memorial, for Hagar and for all of Ishmael's descendants, that their very existence is a testimony to the fact that God hears.
The Unflinching Prophecy (v. 12)
The Lord does not sugarcoat the future. The promise is great, but the prophecy concerning the character of this son is brutally honest.
"And he will be a wild donkey of a man, His hand will be against everyone, And everyone’s hand will be against him; And he will dwell in the face of all his brothers." (Genesis 16:12 LSB)
A "wild donkey of a man" is a picture of untamable freedom, fierce independence, and a life lived on the margins. The wild donkey roams the wilderness, scorning the city, unsubmissive to any master. This is the spirit of Ishmael. He will not be a covenant keeper, dwelling in tents and tilling the soil. He will be a man of the desert, a law unto himself.
And this character will result in a life of perpetual conflict. "His hand will be against everyone, and everyone's hand will be against him." This is a prophecy of strife that has echoed down through the centuries. But notice the final phrase: "he will dwell in the face of all his brothers." The Hebrew here means he will live alongside, or in defiance of, his kinsmen. He will not be conquered or assimilated. He will persist, a constant, often antagonistic, presence. This is not a curse in the formal sense, but it is a clear-eyed description of the hard road that lies ahead for this line, a life lived outside the special blessings of the covenant of grace.
The Fugitive's Confession (v. 13-14)
Hagar's response to this encounter is one of the great confessions of faith in all of Scripture.
"Then she called the name of Yahweh who spoke to her, 'You are a God who sees'; for she said, 'Have I even remained alive here after seeing Him?' Therefore the well was called Beer-lahai-roi; behold, it is between Kadesh and Bered." (Genesis 16:13-14 LSB)
An Egyptian slave girl, a pagan, does something astounding. She gives God a name. She calls Him El Roi, "the God who sees." She came into the wilderness feeling invisible, forgotten, and wronged. She leaves with the bedrock conviction that the living God has seen her in her misery. The God who hears (Ishmael) is also the God who sees. This is the foundation of all true comfort.
Her next statement reveals her grasp of the situation's gravity: "Have I even remained alive here after seeing Him?" She understands that to stand in the presence of the holy God is a terrifying, life-threatening event. Sinful man cannot see God and live. And yet, she has. She has not been met with righteous judgment, but with astonishing grace. She has been seen, spoken to, commanded, promised a future, and allowed to live. This is the gospel in the wilderness.
And so the place is transformed. What was a place of flight and despair becomes a memorial. The well is named Beer-lahai-roi, "the well of the Living One who sees me." The geography of her sin is re-baptized as a geography of grace. Every time she or anyone else would draw water from that well, they would be reminded of the Living God who seeks, finds, and sees the outcast in the wilderness.
Conclusion: The Gospel for Fugitives
This is far more than an ancient story about a dysfunctional family. This is our story. In our sin, we are all Hagar. We are fugitives from our created purpose, fleeing from the duties and stations that God has assigned us. We are running into a spiritual wilderness, heading for a Christless Egypt, thinking we are pursuing freedom when we are really running headlong into bondage.
And in that wilderness, the Angel of the Lord, the Lord Jesus Christ, comes to find us. He meets us at the well of our own spiritual thirst and exhaustion. He asks us the same penetrating questions: "Where have you come from? Where are you going?" He exposes our rebellion and our folly.
His command to us is the same: "Return and humble yourself." Repent. Turn around. Submit to the Lordship of Jesus Christ. This is the hard command of the gospel. But it is accompanied by a glorious promise. He promises not just a multitude of descendants, but eternal life. He promises to give us a new name, one written in the Lamb's Book of Life.
For He is the ultimate fulfillment of this story. He is the God who hears our affliction, and He is the God who sees us in our sin. On the cross, Jesus Christ became the ultimate outcast. He entered the ultimate wilderness of divine abandonment, crying out, "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" He did this so that we, who deserved to be cast out forever, could be brought near. He is the Living One who not only sees us, but who died for us, so that we might truly live after seeing God. Your wilderness of sin and failure is the very place He has come to meet you. And His message is clear: Turn, submit, and live.