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It doesn't happen eventually. Yeah, yeah. All right, yes. Solaris. Alright, that worked. Okay, it's time for our uh time together in God's Word. We're gonna be in Genesis chapter 16. This is a Grace and Peace 101. Um I felt uh I felt the need to do something encouraging today. Um as we've been going through John, that Jesus can be a little barbed, huh? Yeah. Um very kind, merciful, all that. He's the Lord. Um but uh we're gonna be in Genesis chapter 16. If you have a Bible, please turn there. If not, we do have the text on the screen. Let's pray before we begin. God, I pray that as we interact with the living word this morning, that the Holy Spirit would apply it to our hearts, attitudes, minds, sense of self, uh, how we see the world, how we treat others, how we understand who you are. I pray that you would be with me now, that I could make your word uh clear to your people and that you would bless us through it. In Jesus' name. Amen. Um, one night when I was uh 13 years old, firmly in my dirtbag phase, I uh I was headed out, I snuck out after bedtime, and uh as I often did, and headed to a rendezvous with my uh fellow dirtbag friends. And the place we would meet up, because we couldn't text each other or email or anything like that, you had to talk about it before. We would go to our our middle school, um, which we knew well and was kind of away from everything else, so we could um get high, yeah. Um and that was the purpose, and uh and as I I made my way there, I I showed up and I was there at the appointed time, I think. Didn't have a watch, but it was about that time, and no one else came. And I was just kind of wandering around and waiting on my friends, and uh I noticed, so uh at I went to middle school in Southern California and we had portable units, right? Because the they they couldn't build more buildings, so they just put up portable units, you all know what I'm talking about. So I was I was out by the portables, as they called them, and I noticed that the classroom of one particular teacher, and I apologize to all the teachers right now, I noticed that it was open just a little bit. And I said to myself, Self, I wonder if that window would just open all the way. Sure enough it did. And then I said, Well, I wonder if my skinny little 13-year-old self can climb up inside there and see what's in the classroom. Also was able to do that. And as I turned on the lights, I I looked around at the contents of the classroom and the teacher that nobody liked. And I saw learning materials and I saw a globe and I saw desks and chairs and some glass things. I saw computers and a fire extinguisher, and I I think I thought to myself the same thing that Pablo Picasso thought one day when he was looking at his blue paint. Bet you I could do a lot with that. And so I uh I outdid myself in mischief, mayhem, and destruction as as I was known to do at the time, and um by the time I was done, the thing was, I mean, it was unrecognizable as a classroom. Now, why did I do it? Is it just that I like destroying things? Well, I did. But there was a big motivation here, and I've I'll I'll tell you guys, and it'll it'll make more sense. I knew that this would be news, right? I knew I could get away with it, and I knew that everyone would be talking about it at the middle school as soon as school was back in. And then when I told my dirtbag friends it was me, I would become a legend. And I did. And I never got caught, and the statute of limitations is way run out on that. But the whole reason that I engaged in this malice and mayhem, and apparently the only place the grades were stored was on that computer, so everyone's grades had to start over. I apparently hit a sore spot. Um, so I realize your our teachers are thinking less of me. This is before I knew Jesus, guys. But here's the point. What was I doing? I was trying to be seen. I was putting on a performance so that my my fellow coterie of dirtbags would look at me and say, legend. You're awesome. You're our kind of guy. That's all it was. We work really hard to get people we care about to notice us. We want someone to see us. This is something that we're born with. I I know this because my youngest child, when she was two years old, and you know, we have we have five kids, and so it's always very loud, she would literally get to the highest point, whether it was a bunk bed or the counter. She'd stand up and say, I'm trying to get attention! She was just no, no, like indirect anything. Just attention over here. Because we all feel invisible at times, don't we? We all have been looked past. We've all thought to ourselves and felt I am of no consequence. I don't matter. I'm not worthy of noticing. For whatever reason. Sometimes people look at your demographics instead of you. In our culture, there's a huge something that actually boils my blood is we dismiss people because they're older. Okay, boomer. Right? Everyone thought that was funny. It enraged me because you're taking people and their life experience and just blanking them because they're older. Sometimes people see the color of your skin or or whatever, and they don't see you. Right? They they automatically make assumptions about where you're from, what what you do, what you're into, what you're good at, what you're bad at, what you like, what you don't like, all your experiences just because of your ethnicity or national background or whatever. They don't see you. Sometimes, if people don't see you, they see what you could do for them. When I was doing music, you know, I was in a pretty prominent band. I never knew, does this person actually want to know me, or are they interested in what I could do for their career? A lot of us have gotten passed over. You work so hard at your job, right? You bust in your butt, and the other person gets the promotion, the other person gets the recognition, and you feel invisible. For some of us, you just are in a place in life where you feel like there's not one person that knows you to your core and delights in you. And that can be a person who's surrounded by people. When we think about the performances that we put on to get seen, how how hard you work to get someone to notice you and say, legend! Maybe not even legend, just worthwhile. You know? And to be honest, I don't always see everybody. Neither do you. Right? Someone who is incarcerated, someone who is like I read a lot of history books, you know, and you never hear about like the villagers who live in the village where the battle is fought. You hear about the generals. There's just these nameless masses. It can also happen in the church. I have been told that if you are unmarried, especially an unmarried woman in the church, it's like you might as well be invisible. Or if you're introverted, you know, it it you have a hard time in places like this sometimes. We want to be known. We want to be delighted in. We want to be thought worthwhile, and when we feel invisible, when people look past us, when they don't see us for whatever reason, we feel worthless. Now, the the main character, the protagonist in Genesis chapter 16 is as invisible of a person as you could get in the ancient world. Take a look with me at Genesis chapter 16. It says, now Sarai, Abram's wife, had borne him no children. Now, to give you a little background here in the book of Genesis, there had been a promise made to Abram, who we know as Abraham, that he would be the father. His lineage would be, you know, so numerous that it was uncountable, like the stars of the sky, like the sand of the seashore, I should say. Although there's sand in the sea as well, that would work. But he was in an advanced age, and his wife hadn't given birth given birth to a single child. Right? So the whole massive lineage not looking too good. So what do they do? It says she had a female Egyptian servant whose name was Hagar. Let us count the ways in which this person is invisible. She's a woman, ancient Near East, uh, that made you partially invisible to begin with. She was a foreigner, she was Egyptian. Alright, so imagine the living situation. They are in the land of Canaan. Abram is sort of the chief head honcho of a traveling nomadic village of about a thousand people with soldiers. Okay, so think of it as a not a little family, but like a traveling town. Okay, in which the the chief guy, Abram, is from Samaria, and most everybody else is going to be Canaanite, and she's a foreigner from down in Egypt. So that's the second way in which she's invisible. And lastly, it says she was a servant, that is a slave. In terms of standing, in terms of people who get books written about them, Hagar is an unlikely person. She's one of the nameless, faceless people of history. Sarai said to Abram, Behold, now the Lord has prevented me from bearing children, by from bearing children. Go into my servant, it may be that I shall obtain children by her. Now, that was actually an ancient practice. If you were unable to bear children, if your slave could bear children, they were counted as your children. Now, real quick, uh, does the Bible countenance slavery and polygamy? The answer is no. Okay? Um, because I realize that the story's gonna, you're not hearing anything else right now because you're like, wait, is it is this okay? Like Abram is doing this, Sarai is doing this, aren't they heroes? There's no heroes in the Bible except God. In fact, you're gonna see the Abram and Sarai don't come out of this looking very good. Um, not to mention, the original audience of Genesis was the Exodus generation. Can you remember what their background was? They were enslaved people. So if you think about who the writer Moses wants you to have sympathy with, it's going to be Hagar, not Sarai and Abram. Alright? And also, as far as polygamy, anytime we see it in the Old Testament, it doesn't go, the Old Testament does not go very well. Alright? So it was a reality, but it's not something that gets approval in the Bible. Um, where was I? Oh yeah. It says, and Abram listened to the voice of Sarai. Did not take much persuading there, buddy. It's like, oh, okay, that sounds like a great idea. So after Abram had lived ten years in the land of Canaan, Sarai, Abram's wife, took Hagar the Egyptian, her servant, and gave her to Abram, her husband, as a wife. Now, how how powerless and invisible is this woman Hagar? She was taken, she took her servant and gave. She was taken and given without asking her. That's how invisible. Verse 4. He went into Hagar and she conceived, and when she saw that she had conceived, she looked with contempt on her mistress. Now, if you think about it, in this little traveling village of a thousand people, she just went from nameless slave to the mother of the heir of all of it. So that's a huge prestige boost, and she starts getting haughty. Sarai said to Abram, May the wrong done to me be on you. I gave my servant to your embrace. When she saw that she had conceived, she looked on me with contempt. May the Lord judge between you and me. It's not a nice thing to say, by the way. But Abram said to Sarai, Behold, your servant is in your power to do, do to her as you please. And Sarai dealt harshly with her, and she fled from her. Now, how what did she do exactly? We're not told, but we're told it's harsh, even by the standards of someone who is enslaved to the point where she flees. You know, sometimes someone can be in plain sight and be invisible. I once uh accidentally read the book The Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison. When I was like 18, I was I was looking for a good book to read. I went to a bookstore. I was like, The Invisible Man. I thought it was, you know, like Jekyll and Hyde or something. Like that invisible man. It wasn't. It was a lot cooler, but I'll read you just the opening because it it packs a punch. Says, I am an invisible man. No, I am not a spook like those who haunted Edgar Allen Poe. Nor am I one of your Hollywood movie ectoplasm. I am a man of substance, of flesh and bone, fiber and liquids. I might even be said to possess a mind. I am invisible simply because people refuse to see me. And the reason is he was a black man in the 1930s in the United States. He wasn't seen, even though he was right there. If we think about the original audience, these were invisible people. Okay? These were former slaves and the children of slaves wandering with no nation of their own, no land of their own. Hagar is like them. Invisible. Now, I want you guys to start paying attention. We've already heard a lot of the verb to see, or things about using your eyes. Right? Hagar saw that she conceived, that sort of thing. I want you to pay close attention for where those verbs come up. Look what happens next to this invisible woman. Verse 7. The angel of the Lord found her by a spring of water in the wilderness of the spring, in the wilderness, the spring on the way to Shur. And he said, Hagar, servant of Sarai, where have you come from and where are you going? She said, I am fleeing from my mistress Sarai. The angel of the Lord said to her, Return to your mistress and submit to her. Now, I want you to notice something. The angel of the Lord shows up. What is the angel of the Lord? It's a bit mysterious. It's not just a garden variety angel, it's an angel that is equivalent to God Himself. Think of it as if you picked up your phone on FaceTime or whatever you Android people have, and God's on the other end. To speak with the angel of the Lord is to speak with Yahweh, the one true God. Now let me ask you who gets a visit from the angel of the Lord in the Bible? Not many. David didn't. Most of the prophets did not that I could think of. It is a rare few that you can count on half a hand, probably. So this is an honor accorded to the most highly honored in the Bible. Not only that, he calls her by name. Doesn't just say servant. Now, okay. This would have been incredibly shocking to an ancient audience because we're not used to this, but in the ancient world, all the way through the New Testament period, the way deities, like deities operated by social caste. You couldn't just go worship Ra in Egypt. You had to be of the highest caste. You couldn't just go worship Zeus in ancient uh Greece and Rome. You had to be of the highest caste. For a god to associate with a slave, and oh, by the way, yeah, God chose a nation of slaves. This was shocking. This was mind-blowing. This was against type, so to speak. And so this invisible woman gets a personal visit from God's presence, and he knows her name, and he speaks to her. And then look at what he says. It says, the angel of the Lord also said to her, I will surely multiply your offspring so they cannot be numbered for multitude. And the angel of the Lord said to her, Behold, you are pregnant and shall bear a son, you shall call his name Ishmael, because the Lord has listened to your affliction. He shall be a wild donkey of a man, his hand against everyone, and everyone's hand against him, and he shall dwell over against all his kinsmen. Okay, so this blessing that the angel of the Lord pronounces to Hagar, like if you were an ancient woman, top of your list of things that you would dream of being is the mother of a nation. Okay, that is about as good as it gets, in the same way that the highest blessing is to be a father of a nation. Right? You can't top that. That's it. Whatever you're gonna name, I want a beach house. No, mother of a nation. Okay, they're like, keep the beach house, I'll be the mother of a nation. And not only that, that her son is gonna be free, not a slave. You notice that, he's gonna fight everybody, which that is the history of the Ishmaelites. This is not lost on Hagar. It says, so she called the name of the Lord who spoke to her. You are a God of seeing. By the way, Ishmael, her son's name, means God hears. Who is God seeing and hearing this invisible woman? And by the way, who gives names to God? Anybody walk around in the Old Testament just naming God? Here's a new one for you. And it's mentioned as a positive. This is exceedingly rare. For she said, Truly here, I have seen him who looks after me. I have seen him who sees me. Therefore, the well was called Birlahi Roy. It lies between Kadesh and Baret. So she gives a name to a well. And do you know what Birlah Roy means? The living God who sees me. Question: Who names places for God in the Old Testament? Patriarchs, that's who. And one other person, Hagar. When we think about what was the intended message to the original audience, these sons of slaves, daughters of slaves and slaves, these people without a land of their own, these people who don't have prestige, right? Like, think about it. God could have chosen the Egyptians. They were oppressive. The Assyrians, the Sumerians, who Very impressive. But what does he choose? He chooses a nation of invisible people. For all those who were not, like, there is no nameless mass to God. You see that? And whenever, like, this is a pattern throughout that God is consistent with throughout the Bible. Who is David? Is David a big deal before God said, that one? That's my king. No, he was a working shepherd boy. Mary. What was she? Was she a princess or something? Daughter of a high priest? No, she was a virtual nobody, yet chosen by God for great honor. He saw her. Jesus Himself doesn't come from an impressive lineage of any kind. He was not the son of the high priest or a king or anything like that, or even a wealthy person. What we see in this text. And what is hammered home by the repeated use of that seeing verb is that God sees the unseen. And God is revealed as Jesus. Jesus sees the unseen. And what that means is for those of us who often, or sometimes or all the time, feel invisible, feel unseen, feel unworthy, feel unimportant, that God sees you. But not only it's not just that he notices you, right? The point of it is that he cares. He looks past your labels to you. God interested in what you could do for him? Not really. More the other way around. He sees you. He doesn't get hung up on the things that make you invisible. He knows you, delights in you. There was once a woman named Wilhelmina Fleming. And Wilhelmina Fleming in her society was pretty darn invisible. She was born in Scotland and immigrated in the 1870s sometime to America. She was pregnant as she came and abandoned by her husband on the wall. Single woman mother immigrant in 19th century America. You know, not too many people are giving her a second look. She went to work as a housemaid for a guy named Edward Charles Pickering. And it just so happened that Edward Charles Pickering was the head of astronomy at Harvard, right? They were observing and classifying stars and other heavenly bodies and that sort of thing with new the new instruments that were available. And he got so frustrated with the people working for him. One day he said, You know, you're all fired. I bet my Scottish man could do a better job than you. And he fired them and he hired her. He put her in charge of inventing a new way to classify stars by spectrum, and she did it. It's still in use today. What Wilhelmina Fleming invented to classify stars is still in use right now. Do you know who holds the Guinness World Record for discovering and classifying stars? Wilhelmina Fleming does. She holds the record at 310. Do you know who holds the record for discovering and classifying nebula? Wilhelmina Fleming does with 60. And uh and you know uh Nova, which apparently the annoying plural to that is Novae. You know who the record holder is for that? Willowina Fleming is with 10. And do you know who's discovered the horse head nebula? You got it, Wilhelmina Fleming, right? She is an she became this absolute legend. How? She was a maid with no training. The answer is that Charles Pickering saw her. He had talked to her enough and gotten to know her enough to see this is a really smart lady with great attention to detail. She has what it takes for this job. And just so, in case you were wondering, if she if it was lost on her that he saw her, do you know what she named her son? Edward Charles Pickering Fleming. So not only did he see her, but she looks back. He sees, she sees him seeing her. We need to look back at the one who sees us. We want to perform to get people to see us, right? And the whole time that we're desperately trying to be seen, sometimes by doing incredibly foolish things like I did and have done, probably still do, there is one who sees us the whole time. There was one who sees the true you, sees to your depths, and says, I love you, I care for you, I accept you as is, you're my child. And it's Jesus. How much time do you think about how you're not being seen by these folks, whoever they are? At work, your friend group, your family, whoever. Decent amount? Some? How much time do we spend looking back at the one who does see us? When we look back at God, when we see that we are seen and delighted in, all of a sudden these folks over here become a lot less important, don't they? The feelings of unworthiness, the feelings of worthlessness, the feelings of I've got to do something to get noticed, those start to fade when we see God seeing us. How do we do it? God has given us two ways. Right? Because probably you won't get a visit from the angel of the Lord. If you do, please let me know. I would love to hear about it. So theologians talk about how God is revealed, how God is made known to us. It's two ways. There's something called general revelation. And what general revelation is, is the created order. The ways in which God is revealed through what He has made. That includes other people, it includes what Wilhelmina Fleming was doing, you know, the heavens, the whatever. Those of you who are in the sciences or interested in the sciences, you know, this is your jam. You know, there's a reason why we have a fascination with it, and we can we can experience and know God and look back at God through engagement with the created world. Those of you who aren't scientists but do like a good hike, or uh in Kevin's case, climbing an ice thing, an ice mountain, then I think he leaps off at a squirrel suit and meet him sooner probably than later. Anyway. No, he doesn't do squirrel suit. Right? You're a dad now. Can't be doing that. All right. But then also there's something called special revelation. Special revelation refers to what God has done, like how he's shown up inside of our world in history. For instance, Jesus. Jesus is God coming and showing up on our side of the barrier and and acting. Right? The way that he had the the Exodus, for instance, is God doing things. Uh the prophets, they said all of his acts in history to redeem. And the scripture is how we know about that. The scripture is God's inspired witness to all that he has done. And so when we look at scripture, we believe that scripture isn't just words on the page, but it's it's actually a window to seeing God. Even the books like Esther, where God isn't necessarily mentioned, all of that, when we engage from the heart, when we engage by the Spirit, we can actually experience and look back at the God who sees us through Scripture. We're so concerned with not being seen. It's devastating, actually. But there is one who sees us and invites us to look back. That's what we do here as a church. That's what we do at community group. That's what we do at communion, that's what we do at worship. We are looking back at God. God sees you. Look back at the one who sees you. Please pray with me. God, we want to see you. We want to see you seeing us, and we know that you do. I pray that the discouraged, the forlorn, the isolated, the alienated, those who feel worthless, would look back at you this morning, would see how you see us, that it would suffice for our heart. That the one true God thinks it worth delighting in us. In Jesus' name, amen.