BETWEEN KADESH AND BERED

Transcription

1 BETWEEN KADESH AND BERED February 11, 2019 Welcome to the Bible study Evangelista show I m Sonia Corbitt, your Bible study Evangelista. I welcome you to the show. I am excited about this particular show. In fact, the whole series. I ve actually really loved this series. I loved it I think to begin with because it was so personal and how God really was using each of these lessons to teach me how to live in my promised land. And that particular show I love that particular show and as I said we have been using the chapters 3 and 4 of the Book of Hebrews as our main text for the whole study. We re going to return to that in a couple of weeks but until we do. I d like to just spend a little bit of time today and next week probably too in Genesis chapter 16. So far, we've learned that rest is uninterrupted spiritual peace. That was our first lesson. We learned that rest is not necessarily a lack of activity. It s actually more than that, it s rest in the emotions, and rest in our minds, and in our souls, and spirits. And then in the next lesson we looked at how in the Old Testament the people s unwillingness to rest in God s provision both in the timing of it and also in the content of it, that made them miss their promised land. So, he defined that unrest as 'evil unbelief'. And as I said we re going to return back to that in a couple of weeks. But last week then we looked in the New Testament and saw that if we trust in our own works especially as St Paul meant; the works of the Jewish Old Testament law that, that too is evil unbelief because it regresses back to a point in time when the defining salvation moment for the people in the Old Testament was the Exodus, but in the New Testament it s Christ and to try to revert back to those practices of the Old Testament then was also an enemy of rest because, Jesus is rest and if you discard him by doing away with the sacraments that Jesus gave and the power that he gives to live in those and you revert instead back to a time and an event, a salvation event that has little or nothing to do with us now because Jesus fulfilled all that, then and in those ways too, that practice keeping, or that ritual keeping, when it s done for any other reason except love, which is the new law, the law of love St Paul says in Romans chapter 13:10 and also even in The Sermon on the Mount, but to revert back to those things then is unrestful, because Jesus himself in his person is rest. So, all of that kind of leads up to where I d like to go today. Today we re going to look at, as I said Genesis chapter 16. And I want you to think of a time in your life that you felt that you were treated unfairly, that someone just did, they treated you unfairly for whatever reason and you felt that God did not see it or that he did see it and he just didn t care. So surely if God noticed and if he cared he wouldn t have allowed that to happen to you, right? Or maybe you did something to someone else and it came back to you and because you deserved it you were afraid to ask God possibly to remove the consequences or to help you because you feel responsible or you feel guilty, you feel that you deserve no help. I struggled with that actually a whole lot. I did a lot of acting out in my twenties, out of this father wound 1 P a g e

2 and the things that I was doing deserved the consequences that I incurred. And so, I felt that I deserved them. It was obvious that I did and so I was afraid to ask God to help me because I knew that I deserved it and it wasn t until I learned to know him better that I realized how backward that really was. But sometimes we serve in church for reasons that are more selfish than anything, or not even just church but even in our families, a lot of times we think we re doing the right thing and we are by being charitable but because we re not really doing it out of love for God or love maybe for the neighbor, we re really doing it for ourselves. When that happens that gets really unrestful because we feel that people are taking us for granted and then we begin to resent what we're doing because we feel cheated, or we feel that we re being treated unfairly. So, this is what s happening to Sarah in Genesis 16. Well not just Sarah but Hagar. We re going to look at the story of Sarah and Hagar and I think what I might actually do is read the whole chapter. It s not all that long and through this story you re going to see one of the ways that God provides rest for us. So, in Genesis chapter 16 verse 1 it says, Now Sarai, Abram s wife, had borne him no children and she had an Egyptian maidservant whose name was Hagar. So, Sarai said to Abram see now the Lord has restrained me from bearing children. Please go into my maid. Perhaps I shall obtain children by her and Abram heeded the voice of Sarai. Then Sarai, this is her name before God changed it to Sarah, so her name was Sarai, then Sarai Abraham s wife took Hagar, her maid the Egyptian, and gave her to her husband Abram to be his wife after Abram had dwelt 10 years in the land of Canaan. So, he went in to Hagar and she conceived and when she saw that she had conceived her mistress became despised in her eyes. Then Sarai said to Abram, 'My wrong be upon you. I gave my maid in to your embrace and when she saw that she had conceived I became despised in her eyes. The Lord judge between you and me. So, Abram said to Sarai, Indeed your maid is in your hand. Do to her as you please. And when Sarah dealt harshly with her, she fled from her presence. Now the angel of the Lord found her by a spring of water in the wilderness by the spring on the way to Shur. And he said, Hagar, Sarai s maid, where have you come from, and where are you going? she said, I am fleeing from the presence of my mistress Sarai. The angel of the Lord said to her, Return to your mistress and submit yourself unto her hand. Then the angel of the Lord said to her, I will multiply your descendants exceedingly so that they shall not be counted multitude. And the angel of the Lord said to her, Behold you are with child and you shall bear a son. You shall call his name Ishmael because the Lord has heard your affliction. He shall be a wild man. His hand shall be against every man and every man s hand against him. And he shall dwell in the presence of all his brethren. Then she called the name of the Lord who spoke to her, You are the God who sees. for she said, Have I also here seen him who sees me? Therefore, the well was called Be'er-la'hai-roi. Observe it is between Kadesh and Bered. So, Hagar bore Abram a son and Abram named his son whom Hagar bore Ishmael. Abram was 86 years old when Hagar bore Ishmael to Abram.' Ishmael s name means God hears. Now let me give you some context here and explain a few things. First of all, Abram has been given a promise by God. He s been given a promise of a son and I just know that is probably the deepest desire of Abram s heart, 2 P a g e

3 is to have a son. Remember in this culture that not having children was seen as a curse from God. If you were barren as a woman, of course you know the woman was always to blame whether it was her or the man s fault. Now we have science. Now we can determine whose fault it is, and that practice stopped. But then it was always the woman s fault if she did not conceive. And it was seen as a curse from God if you did not have children. And so, Abram did not have a son in a culture that valued offspring more than anything else. And when God came to Abram and said he was going to bless him, that s what Abram says. That s actually comes up in chapter 11, God actually makes the Covenant with Abram and he tells him that he is his reward. I am your exceedingly great reward. he says in chapter 15 verse 1. And Abram says then well what do you give me seeing I go childless? And so, Abram, like I said I just know that was probably the deepest desire of his heart. Why do I think that? Well first of all that was the first thing that he asked God. You know if you re going to bless me, I don t even have a kid. And number two I know that God gives us the desires of our hearts. He implants those and when they as St Augustine said when that desire continues then that is prayer and as long as we have the desire then we continue to pray for it. Of course, you know we can be in error, and think that God has promised us something that maybe he hasn t, but time will tell, right? And so, he makes this promise with Abram, and this is of course before either of them has been renamed. Abram was, his name meant the exalted father Abram was, and then later he was named Abraham by God and that means; father of many. And so, Sarah, she also, her name both Sarai and Sarah mean princess. But God changes a person s name in the Bible, and the Old Testament. He does that often when there is a new relationship, he has established with them. And we also see in that chapter that Abraham and Sarai have been in Canaan for 10 years and that means then that they have been waiting for at least 10 years at this point for the promised child and they still don t have him, okay? So, there s the context and we are going to really delve into this more when we get back but right now, I have to take a break. This is Sonya Corbitt your Bible study Evangelista on Dew of Heaven God s rest. Welcome back so we left talking about Sarai and Abram and Hagar. So, we see then that Sarah before she was Sarah, but Sarah gave Hagar to Abraham after God's promise of a child, but it was before the child came. It was before Isaac was born. And so, she sent Hagar to Abram, Abraham in order to contrive the promise. So, if you look at what she did she was motivated by and patients, okay? And that s understandable. They have waited for 10 years. Now listen to me if you have been waiting for God to form you for something or if you ve been waiting on a promise of some sort oh, let me just tell you that it always takes, in the Bible it always takes at least a decade for the promises to come to fulfillment. Why? Because there is a lot of formation that happens in that time. And so, God is using that time to frustrate us and to grow us and to mature us so that we can become worthy of the promise that he wants to give us. And usually if you notice in the Bible there are usually more than one fulfillment. So, for instance Abram, he just wanted the one kid, right? But he went on to be the father of many. He went on to be the father of all who have faith Jesus said. So, God fulfilled the promise immediately and gave him the child that he 3 P a g e

4 promised but then after that of course there s this long-term eschatological promise that came to fulfillment as well because he was the father of all of faith. It s important then, if that is really God s plan for you, or for your promise or whatever, it s important that we grow in to being good stewards of whatever that is. And so, for me that is exactly why God gave me this story. Because he was showing me first of all that Abraham waited 25 stinking years for that one child. And so, the fulfillment, it had to come way down the road, why? Because God was forming him into the father of faith. And why did that take so long because Abraham later on, I m getting way ahead of myself, but I love this story this is one of my favorite stories in the Bible and God used it over and over you can see over and over and over again to teach me to hold my horses and quit getting so in a hurry. That it was going to take a long time and he showed me through Abraham s story what happens when we get in a hurry. And that s really where we re going and I m kind of giving it away, but rest is not impatience. Impatience is unrest. Impatience and hurry dear one will make your own restful, why? Because you ll make really dumb decisions in those moments and we don t want to do that. So, we can t get head of God. We see then that God s spent 25 years forming Abraham because he wanted Abraham to be a father like himself. And in order to do that you see what happened that God asked Abraham to sacrifice him on the altar later on. And why? Because God was drawing out of Abraham the fact that Abraham's heart had become so like God's that he was willing to sacrifice his only son if God wanted it. I mean that story was just, this whole story just gets me man because that s exactly what God did to me, you know? He gave me what I thought I had it, you know? I had the promise. And then he snatched it away like over and over and over again and the final snatching, you know, was my becoming Catholic. Sonja do you love me, or do you love that promise? Sonja are you doing it because you love me or because you want what you think you re supposed to have? And during that time, I mean I really had to discern my motives and God made it very plain to me. That s what he does in these times of long-term formation. He is making your own motives very clear. That s the first thing and secondly, he's forming us into the eventuality of what he s really after. We think we know what he wants. And it s true that Abraham did know that God wanted him to have a son. He had promised it. But Abraham had no idea the plan that God had in store for him long-term. And so that s what makes our bewilderment in these times of formation especially when they stretch out for years and years and years as it did for them. That s what makes it so bewildering it makes it so painful because you just, it seems like it, first of all either you've heard wrong or you re never going to get it. And truly we'll see that s actually kind of what pushes God s people to continue the painful process of formation because they just I want the promise so badly. So if this is you dear one you are in good company I mean I ve done it, David did it, Moses did it, Abraham did it, Paul did it, I mean you name it every person in the Bible that God uses for a particular plan or purpose he spends a long time forming you so just don t 4 P a g e

5 get in a hurry. That s going to be what we take away from today s lesson don t get in a hurry. So, Sarah was motivated by impatience and that s why she gave Hagar over to Abram. She wanted to force the promise. And of course, you know Hagar she goes into Abram and she becomes pregnant. And then what happens? Well she gets haughty and she s conceited, and Sarah reacts to Hagar s attitude with this anger and she really should, you know? I mean of course it was her own fault, right? But it s funny; she actually blames Abraham. I mean this is just a classic story of men and women, is it not? So, Abram does what she says and then Sarah blames him. And so, you get the unvarnished truth of the whole story throughout the chapter. But when Sarah had the opportunity then she mistreated her. She probably beat her. She probably slapped her around and all that and so Hagar then runs away. And she s hiding out in this wilderness area and I didn t read chapter 17 but we will next week. We ll look at some of what happens in that but I ll just kind of give you kind of the breakdown. She goes out there and she is afraid they're going to die and yet God meets her there, does he not? So, God though tells her that he wants her to go back. She has run away from Sarah's nastiness and I know I m changing back to Sarah but that s just because I mean I can t help it really so just know that when I say Sarah I m talking about Sarai. And when I say Abraham I m talking about Abram. They just haven t been renamed yet, but they will be. But God tells her that he wants her to go back to Sarah and submit to her. Is that not interesting? And when I read that for the first time I thought, 'how rude Lord I mean why would you do that'? And so, it kind of felt, I would have felt hurt I would have felt angry I would have felt like God was being mean to me or that, you know, that he was marking me out to do the right thing but not making them do the right thing, right? So, it s unfair or whatever and it does seem that way. And I just wonder, I wonder would I go back, and would you go back? If you had been treated the way Sarah treated Hagar after Hagar was a maid. She had no choice about the matter. It was a lot like Bathsheba going in with David. You know David was the king you can t just say no, right? And so, Hagar was a servant and so for her to try to say no to Sarah, I mean there s no way that can happen. So, Sarah used her position, she used her position against Hagar in a way that was oppressive, and it was wrong. And yet God told her to go back and in fact he gives her an incentive. He tells her that her son too will be a nation, Ishmael will be a nation. And then the Lord speaks to her and he has spoken to her and given her her own promise regarding her own son in the wilderness and she names the place 'a well of the living one who sees me'. That s really what the whole thing actually means. I mean I really don t know which is worse, God s judgment, or Sarah's you know? Because she s probably being sent back to face even worse consequences now that she s run away and to go back then it would have been tough, really tough for her because of the mistreatment and it was at the hands of someone who was in authority over her. So, some of you are thinking right now this is my situation; somebody who is in authority over me is mistreating me and it s unfair and what does God want me to stay in that situation? Well he might. That s actually part of what we re learning here. The whole story and both chapters 5 P a g e

6 16 and 17 are, it's basically about hurry and impatience but particularly in this particular lesson we are looking at the fact that doing God s will is what brings rest. So, God tells her what his will is for her. 'I want you to go back to Sarah.' And so, Hagar has to wrestle with that in this wilderness area and she is sitting by well and she s pregnant. She s sitting by the a well in the wilderness. Okay that s another point. She is spoken to by God at a place of refreshment. Now see how that works? and God tells her what his will is, and he refreshes her, why? Because he wants to prepare her for the difficulty of what she is probably going to face when she goes back, but the overarching principle is that doing God s will brings his rest. And we ll unpack that when we get back. This is Sonja Corbitt your Bible study Evangelista. All right so, Hagar has run away, she s run away from home, she s run away from her difficulties and God sent her right back to them, why? I don t know but I will say that I have had that happen to me and so have you and some of you are experiencing it right at this moment, through this podcast. You are hearing God say to you go back, why? I don t know, but God knows. He also knows that when we do his will, we rest even in the midst of difficulty and this is the whole point. God understands that we go through difficulties but if you know that you are in his will you can push through them. Not only that, but he will use them to your benefit. He will turn that mistreatment back on the other person and he will vindicate you. I have seen this happen so many times. It happened to me personally when I came into the Catholic Church. Some of you know this from my conversion story. When I came into the Catholic Church my pastor made me the religious education director immediately and it was a secret, he didn t tell anybody. Now I didn t know at the time that he was giving me a paid position, by usurping two people who had done it as volunteers for a long time. And both of them were beloved members of the parish. One was a woman and the other one was a seminarian. The seminarian also taught RCIA and some other things. The woman was the acting religious education teacher. Well I didn t know the dynamics of what was happening. I just knew that God was putting me in a place that he had told me he was going to. So, I thought that was the fulfillment of my promise, I really did, I thought that was part of it and so I was happy to be there. But what happened, right away, was the whole parish, first of all he didn t announce it at all, he just had me take over and he didn t tell them, and I didn t know that he hadn t told them. I assumed he had or that he would, but he didn t. So, they were confused why I was just taking over everything and why I was being paid and I had like this cell phone that the church was paying for, and how could this little Protestant girl just come right in here and try to tell us what to do, and who does she think she is, and this pastor; what I came to realize is that this pastor was doing it out of vindictiveness. He was getting back at the woman particularly, not so much the seminarian, but because of the injustice of it everybody in the parish hated my guts, everybody. It was hard for me to find teachers because they were all upset and they wanted to take her part so most of them quit, so I really had a hard time trying to fill those places, you know, where I needed help. I was experiencing; you 6 P a g e

7 know how you walk into a room and people have been talking about you and they just, they're suddenly quiet and you realize that you were the topic of conversation, and then they glare at you, and then they snub you and they re, you know just rude, they re just rude. And it was really difficult for me, but I was willing to do it because I knew I was in God s will. I knew that I was doing what I was supposed to be doing. At the same time the seminarian began to stalk me, and I don t mean in the way that you know, 'oh, she s cute I like her', but in the way that 'I despise her I want to kill her', or at least I thought. You know, I didn t know. I didn t know what he might be capable of. But he began to stalk me. And he called my Parish cell phone over 250 times in one day. Now this occurred actually over one weekend that the straw that broke the camel s back was him calling like that, but up until that point I had a son that was disabled. He had had an accident and he was disabled. He couldn t walk. He couldn't, he wasn t even using a walker at that time, he was still scooting around on his rear end, because he had pins in his leg, in his left leg and he couldn't walk. He couldn t even get up. So, he was disabled, and I had an infant at the same time. I had just had my second son in September and hear this finally came to a head, it was around December, it wasn t Christmas, but it was in December. Well no it was actually after that because December was when Luke had his accident, so it had to be the first of the year. So, the seminarian would, if I placed a flyer anywhere in the church, he would rip them down. if I was in the school where our classes were held, our CCD classes were held, he would stand at the doorway of the school and just stand there silently and watch me. Now here I am with an infant and a disabled child and I m postpartum on top of that and my husband and I were not getting along because I had come into the Catholic church and he had no idea what all that meant. And it was really, it was the most difficult time in our marriage ever. So, I have no friends. I have no denomination. My Parish hates me. My husband and I aren t getting along. I m postpartum. I m being stalked and I m terrified and so with him standing there glaring at me you know I decorated for Vacation Bible School. We had this beautiful oh, we had a parishioner who had like national flags of different countries and he let us borrow them for Vacation Bible School and there were like 50 of them. And so, we hung them in the hallways of the school, and it was beautiful. And I came to work one day, and he had ripped them down and not to mention the fact that they weren t even my property, but you could see then how I was being mistreated. It wasn t my fault I was doing exactly what God wanted me to do and it was an injustice and I could not say anything because the people, these two volunteers were so beloved by the parish, I mean everybody hated my guts. Well I went to my pastor and I said the seminarian is doing this and he said, No, he s not. He would never do that. and nobody believed me. I actually didn t tell anybody except him except for one of their friends who was a convert. She was actually a member of my Baptist Sunday school class years before. So, we were friends from years before and she was in my corner. She was the only friend I had, and she knew everything that was going 7 P a g e

8 on and she believed me. And she just, you know some of the phone calls, when he started the phone call thing, he would call and he would burp or fart, or flush the toilet, or just be silent, you know and just laugh, you know? And she actually, she snatched the phone out of my hand one time, this all, the calling thing all happened, it transpired over one full weekend, so Friday, Saturday, Sunday and then Monday. Monday I finally got the proof that I needed oh, but she snatched the phone out of my hand that Friday afternoon knowing that it was him and she heard what he was doing, and she said I have never seen such immaturity in my life. You know she was just getting all over him. But you know until you can prove something like that the pastor just didn t believe it. I mean, and he was living in the rectory with the pastor so I had to go - I live in a County away from my Parish to this day and so I had to have the phone records subpoenaed by two 'DA's one from each County - and so I had to go through all of that and I did and it didn t take very long we actually got them between Friday and Monday and once Monday rolled around and, of course I had spent the whole weekend trying to keep my phone off because he'd called, and I had no idea if he might be driving by our house you know? He had access to all of the church information, all my employment, so he would have had Social Security numbers, he would have had phone numbers, he would have had my address, he would have had all that. And so, I was really scared. I mean I had no idea. My husband was livid. I mean you know how men get you know when their people are being threatened and so he was just crazy over it. So, eventually we got the phone records subpoenaed and the whole time God just kept saying, I will bring the darkness to light. You just do what you re supposed to do, and I will take care of it. And I was just thinking, Man, Lord I hope you will, I hope you re right.' And you know they kept the parish in this uproar all the time about me and so it never could really die down. It just took so, it was just the most miserable year of my entire life for so many reasons oh, but this was a big part of it. But I was, I was experiencing injustice and God made me stay there. And why? Well later I found out that that s why. He was using me to expose the fact that this seminarian had no business in the Seminary. That was really exactly what he was doing. And there was another little twist to it that was so beautiful. So, my husband and I right, we couldn t talk about Catholicism at all. He didn t like the tide come into the church and now I ve been stalked and he s mad, you know? But when I got the information from the phone companies and I could prove that it was him doing it my pastor got on the phone to our Bishop and he said, the bishop asked me oh, he said what do you want us to do and I said I don t care what you do. He said I need you to be here in the hour. I said yes sir and of course it was an hour away, so I left immediately. I went to the diocese. We sat down with the chancellor and the attorneys for the diocese and all that and they wanted to know, what do we do with him, and I said, 'I don t care what you do, just make him stop', and they removed him immediately. They removed him from the rectory, they removed him from the Seminary, they removed him completely. He actually went on to become, to try to become an Episcopal priest and then now he s gay. So, I have no idea, but the other thing that was, well I don t have time to tell you but when I come back, I ll tell you 8 P a g e

9 the other really cool thing that happened at the end of that. We ll be back in a moment. And now the rest of the story. So, my Bishop called me to the diocese. I went into his office. We talked about what to do. I didn t really care as long as they made him stop. And they didn t even tell me what they were going to do. I think they probably didn t decide until I left. But I can and told my husband all that had happened and when he was gone within the day, now this happened in the afternoon of Monday. This was like at 4 pm and then by 5 pm I was already in Nashville and then of course I got home, and he was already - he had been removed from the rectory right then. And when we found out that they had done that, that the bishop had stepped in the way he had, I m telling you it really rattled my husband because what happened was, we came from all these Church splits, you know? As Baptist we saw over and over because people rose up against the pastor and, and his authority and so to see what proper authority is supposed to do and how it s supposed to operate and what it looks like through our Bishop, to see him step in and take care of this situation like he should have. Of course, you know they ve learned their lessons now because of all of the Scandal and so now they don t, they can t afford to tolerate anything whatsoever and so I mean it was immediate. And when my husband saw that it suddenly made, it suddenly opened his eyes to what proper authority should look like in the church and only the Catholic church has a real hierarchy that has actual power to do something. And it was amazing, it was just enough to get us over this hump of not being able to communicate about Catholicism at all. We, in fact and it was years later it was years after that that he finally came into the church and he s Catholic now but it took a long time but that was the beginning. That was the turning point of his softening towards the church was saying that. So, you see how so many things happened at one time? Now the really sweet part of the story is: Look at me now. They hated my guts when I went to that parish and I was the religious ed director and the pastor made me so because he knew my background. He knew that I was a teacher, a Bible teacher. He knew that I was about to be published when I came into the church. He knew all that. They didn t know that, and I wasn t going to tell them, right? But eventually you know 10 years later well it wasn t that long. A couple years later here I am and look what I m doing and look at my Ministry and it was a couple of years ago that someone from that Parish whom I do business with, she said to me you know I couldn t stand you. We are gossiped about you all the time when we just were, we couldn t understand why this pastor was so terrible, you know and what he did and how he did it. That was actually another darkness that came to light. That Pastor, you know it was terrible for him to have been so vindictive. And when I saw, when I finally realized, that s what was happening, it was after the seminarian was gone, but there were red flags all oven, and I started to pray against this pastor. Well not against him in the sense that, you know 'I hate him Lord', or whatever, but I started to pray that God would remove him. Because I started to see things that were just not right and that was one of them. 9 P a g e

10 That was only one, but there were many and it bothered me a lot you know? - the Injustices that I saw and even some other things that were worrisome. And so, I started to pray because the Bible says when you see someone in that kind of send you don t gossip, you keep your mouth shut. You keep your mouth shut and don t gossip. If you have to go above them to but don t gossip about it to anyone under any circumstances or else, you are in sin. But pray for them, pray and it s okay that they re removed. It s okay to pray that Justice Ginsburg be removed. It s okay to pray that Nancy Pelosi be removed you know from her seat of power, because she abuses it. It s okay. We re not praying that they die, you know? But if they need to be removed, that s what we pray, and I saw that. And so that also came to light and I began to pray with other people who already knew it. I didn t know it until I d been in that position for a while, and then I started to see it. And once I started to see it, I was able to pray what, I think, what the other people in the parish we re praying too, but I wouldn t have known it because nobody would speak to me, but anyway later on this woman told me, I just could not stand you, none of us could. I could not understand what was happening and it was just so awful, and she said, But I want you to know I am so sorry for that, because now I know you, I know you, and she cried and I cried, you know because it was the most painful thing I had ever been through. When everybody hates you, you know? Even my family they didn t hate me, but they didn t understand, and I was shunned, you know? It was just so awful. But do you see how many wonderful things came out of that? And God kept showing me through this story with Hagar and Sarah and Abraham, Just do what I m asking you to do and I promise it will work out. And I just look back at that now, I look back at all of that and I cannot believe how economical God is with our suffering. I mean he accomplished a whole lot of stuff in that one situation. So many directions and so many things came to light and so many vindications for me, you know later, and it is just, I can t encourage you enough to just do what God says if that s what he s asking you to do; to bear up under mistreatment and injustice. It s not that you can t say that it s unjust, it s not that you can t say it s unfair, or anything like that, and in fact one of the things that I learned from Mary through that time is, 'well what do we do'? You know when we see this kind of injustice, what do we do? We do everything we can possibly do. For me you know if it s a priest that you re having an issue with then go to the bishop. If the bishop doesn t do anything and you think that s unfair go to the Pope. You know, whatever. But once the pope has answered you better be quiet. You better be quiet because once that happens if you will not submit when God has asked you to, you are working against God himself. The Book of Romans chapter 13 verse 1 says that all authority is given by God for a certain reason. You know even bad presidents, even bad priests, even bad leaders, God allows them for certain purposes. We don t know what those are. It doesn t mean we turned a blind eye to sin. It doesn t mean that we don t call them out, because we have a duty to do that too. But it does mean that once we have done everything the chain of command allows us to do, we submit to God s will in that situation and we 10 P a g e

11 keep our mouths closed. And we wait to see how God is going to work. That s what Mary did. Mary of course people thought sideways of her and she never said a word and God vindicated her. First to Joseph in that dream and then now look at her! She s the queen of Heaven, all saints, all angels, all apostles, she s the queen of Heaven. And so, it may just be that God is using those difficulties to form you in a way that you never dreamed. That s really the point that we get from Hagar, but not only that, when you are doing God s will dear one, you are at rest, because all of this turmoil can be happening around you and it won t phase you. This is why the scandals in the church have freaked people out so bad. They re not really in God s will. They don t understand that God has this, you know? We have a duty to call it out, we have a duty to put them in jail oh, we have a duty to make them incur the consequences of their injustice and their sin, we do. But we can only do what we can do, and the rest has to be left to God. Now listen, this is so interesting; the name - I entitled this lesson between Kadesh and Bered because that s where the spring was that Hagar rested at, and she was refreshed there at that spring - the name Kadesh means sanctuary, and Bered means hail, as in hail that falls from the sky and hail is a biblical symbol of judgment. So, Hagar was running from the place that God wanted her; Kadesh and going to the place that he did not want her; hail, which is the place of judgement. So, when we re running and we re in good company as I said, Hagar did it, Moses did it, Elijah did it, Jonah did it, Paul did, people run from God s will, people run from difficulty. It s just natural to want to get away from the pain. But if God sends you back, you better go back because you don t want to be running toward judgement, you want to be running toward sanctuary and that s where he sent her back to sanctuary. He sent her away from hail, away from judgement. Hail meaning as I said that hail that falls from the sky, but you might as well even say hell. He sent her away from Hell back to sanctuary and it s because she was hurt. She ran because she was hurt and so it s justified but he s preparing her for the hard times ahead and he s helping her endure, by refreshing her at this spring in the wilderness. The name Ishmael we know means God will hear and he s instructing Hagar to give her this name because God heard her. God heard her heart, he heard her pain and yet he sent her back anyway because he knew it was the best thing for her. God wants to give us the good things even when we don t deserve them, he wants us to be prepared for a difficulty so that we can endure, and he wants to refresh us and that's what we find. God s will dear one, is rest. Until next time in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen. 11 P a g e