Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit · Sermon No. 3525
“And He [the Angel of the Lord] said, Hagar, Sarah’s maid, where have you come from? And where will you go? And she said, I flee from the face of my mistress Sarah.” Genesis 16:8.
“And she called the name of the Lord that spoke unto her, You-Are-the-God-Who-Sees, for she said, Have I also here seen Him who sees me?” Genesis 16:13.
HAGAR had lived for many years in Abraham’s family. This was no small advantage. While all the rest of the world was in heathendom, the Light of God shone brightly in Abraham’s tent. Not only was Abraham, himself, a worshipper of the Most High God, but he commanded his household after him. We may rest assured that there were family gatherings for devotion—that the Patriarch took occasion, both by precept and example, to teach the knowledge of the true God to all who were in his service. His was the central spot of the Light of God in the world—and all around him was the thick gloom of heathenism. Yet I do not find that Hager, during the years she lived with Abraham, even when she saw his faith in going forth from his kindred and his country, and dwelling in tents in the promised land—I do not find that she, herself, received any personal call from God, or had a word from the Angel of Mercy to her own soul. And truly in this she is like very many servants, yes, and sons and daughters, too, in godly families who are surrounded by the Light of God, but yet see not—who are where God speaks—and yet He has not spoken personally to them. Who enjoy the means of Grace, but have never yet got the Grace of the means—who are themselves strangers in the midst of Israel, foreigners, though they dwell in the land, itself! Now it would be a source of the greatest imaginable joy to many of us if some of these should be called as Hagar was—should hear the voice from Heaven and be enabled to make the double discovery which she made, namely, that God saw her, and that she might come into contact with God—might look to Him who had seen her!
Now Hagar at that time—at the time when the Angel called to her seemed to be in somewhat an unlikely state to be visited of God. She was, first of all, at that moment smarting under a sense of wrong. She felt that Sarah had not treated her well and in all probability Sarah had not. The Eastern mistress is often very tyrannical towards her servants, and Hagar stood very much in the position of a slave. We do not doubt but what the jealous wife had been very severe—unjustly severe towards the woman. There she sat by the well, feeling bitterness in her own soul, that in the house of good people where she had expected better things, she had been treated with injustice. It did not seem likely that the God of Abraham would call her when her heart was seething like a pot with indignation against the household where God was worshipped! At the same time, as she turned the matter over and her soul grew more and more bitter within her, I should not wonder but what she felt she had brought a good deal of it upon herself. She was but the servant and she had desired to play the mistress. She had despised the mistress—no doubt spoken to her very contemptuously—and now it had returned upon her and she was made to suffer for her own pride. Her proud, fierce spirit, perhaps, did not admit it, but yet she must have felt in her conscience that much of what was wrong about her she had, notwithstanding, brought upon
herself. Now when a person is under such a feeling as that, disturbed, tossed to and fro, vexed, distracted—it does not seem a likely time for them to hear the voice of God speaking to their souls!
Moreover, at that moment she was leaving all that was good. She had turned her back upon the household, the chosen household—left it, I will not say deliberately, but at any rate she had left it. She was going down into Egypt—going “anywhere, anywhere out of the world,” so that she could but get away from the place where her bondage had become irksome. She was going, she scarcely knew where, but she probably did know that she was going into heathendom, among heathen people. The best she could hope to meet with was separation from God. She could not but feel that it was black darkness which was before her and she was rushing madly into it because her high spirit would not bend—would not bow—would not yield before the majesty of the Most High. I think I see her there, her eyes red with weeping, her spirit broken down with the hunger of her journey, sitting a while and refreshed a moment, and resolved not to stoop and never to go back—and then, again, shuddering at the darkness that lay before her and afraid to go on. It was in such a state as that that God met with her! To all intents and purposes she was a friendless, outcast woman. She had left the only tents where she could claim a shelter. She had gone into the wilderness—no father, no mother, no brother, no sister to care for her. She turned her back upon those who had any interest in her and now she was left alone—alone, alone in a desert land without an eye to pity or a hand to help! It was then, under those peculiar circumstances of trial and of sin commingled, that God met with her!
I have been wondering in my soul, when I turned over this text, whether there would stray into this Tabernacle some kindred case, and whether, though no angel spoke, yet the voice of man might be tonight the voice of the Messenger of the Covenant to some poor soul? I know you not by name, nor face, yet I know well your feelings! It may be tonight you are sorely angry, greatly vexed, smarting, wrathful! You have made up your mind to choose the world and give up every semblance of that which is good. It may be tonight that you have lost everything that makes earth worth living in. You long for death—you would almost seek the place where the lamps quiver on the dark river, for your spirit is bitterness, itself, your lamp of hope is gone out! Oh, but it may be that this is the night when God’s mighty mercy is ordained to meet with you—the very evening in which the Lord shall call out your name and you shall feel that He knows you, your case, your circumstances and that He has come to call you to Himself and you never might have been called had not these extremities of yours brought God to your rescue and to your salvation! I do not suppose that there will be anyone whose case exactly resembles that of the text, but it has sometimes happened that the turning point of human life has been the point of great sorrow, great penury and distress of mind on account of some gigantic fault, or it has been the time of some dreadful alternative put before the soul in which it seemed as though it must be God or devil that night—Heaven or Hell that night—eternal joy or eternal misery that night! On some such strange occasion as this in your mental history you have come here tonight—may God, who is here, speak with you! A singular season for mercy! Now, secondly, let us look at—