What name did she give Him? (16:13) In Hebrew, El Roi. Ours, Dear One, is the God who sees. Is there any particular reason why that name means something special to you right now? Hagar s next statement is equally moving. I have now seen the One who sees me. The sentence could more literally be translated from the Hebrew as a question: Have I really seen the back of Him who sees me? 4 A Hebrew word for back is articulated in the original language. Why might Hagar seeing God's back make sense in reference to Exodus 33:20-23? The divinely initiated encounter between God and Hagar began with these words: The angel of the LORD found Hagar near a spring in the desert. How like God to become her Spring in the desert. El Roi. He sees when no one else cares to look. He sees through the smile we wear when we re dying inside. He sees our hurt when we re mistreated. He sees us when we cry into our pillow because we feel unloved. He sees beyond our sin into the depth of our need. He sees when we re hiding. Running. He sees when we continue to sow the seed of His Word even in the fl oodplain of our grief. Sometimes we don t realize we ve encountered God until our vision clears. Maybe that s what seeing His back means. He is the God who sees you. Week Three Day Two Laughing Out Loud Nothing on earth rivals the ecstasy of experiencing a heavenly promise fulfi lled. God s appointment of time in between the word of promise and its fulfi llment can tempt us to ridiculous thoughts like, I m going to fool around and die before God remembers to bring this to pass. And as if waiting for God s time isn t hard enough, God fi lls the waiting with tests like a clerk who shoves grapefruits into a bulging grocery bag. Room for one more and maybe another and, look, there s a little space for another small one. When the bag grows heavy like time fully come (Gal. 4:4), the breakthrough erupts and fruit rolls. Sarah knew the feeling. Her wait, like ours, was about what God wanted to birth and maybe even what God wanted to kill (all other options). Today s Treasure Sarah said, God has brought me laughter, and everyone who hears about this will laugh with me. Genesis 21:6 Before I get too excited and teach the whole lesson in advance, hasten to Genesis 21:1-7 and record the promise God fulfi lled: 7
The Patriarchs Now the LORD was gracious to Sarah as he had said, and the Lord did for Sarah what he had promised. Genesis 21:1 The LORD visited Sarah as he had said, and the LORD did unto Sarah as he had spoken. Genesis 21:1, KJV (Emphasis added.) When the three visitors stopped near the great trees of Mamre for a divine appointment with Abram, the Lord announced that He d return to them at the appointed time next year and Sarah will have a son. The wording is rich in Genesis 21:1. Fill in the blanks according to the NIV: Now the LORD was to Sarah as he had said. The word gracious is translated from the Hebrew padaq meaning to number, count; to call into account; to look after. 3 The word has a wide range of meanings in the Old Testament and can be used in either a negative or positive context. The occurrence in today s passage is its first use in Scripture. A strong undercurrent in the meaning of padaq is a positive action by a superior in relation to his subordinates. 4 The King James Version translates padaq beautifully. Read it in the margin. Circle both the phrases beginning with the word as in this verse. What can you conclude from these two phrases? Nothing could be more gracious of God than to visit His child with His Presence. The divine visit referenced in Genesis 21:1 could relate either to the time of supernatural conception between Abraham and Sarah or the miracle of the child s birth. Though the miraculous nature of this pregnancy and birth is unarguable, please don t confuse it with the miracle of Christ s conception (Luke 1). Christ had no biological earthly father. God was and is His only Father. Abraham was undoubtedly the biological pater of Isaac, who was born out of a loving physical union that took place between Abraham and his elderly wife. God s visitation lent the supernatural power to conceive and deliver. Valentine s Day is just around the corner as I write. I won t kid you. I love love. Think about this for a moment: we tend to consider the best love stories in terms of how they began: romantically adventurously against all odds. Our society has proved we have no trouble beginning love. However, we are tragically deficient on enduring love and ending love well at the close of a lifetime. If you ll allow me room for a little extra boldness, God s plan necessitated Abraham and Sarah fanning those flames of passion again. We don t know that they didn t nearly laugh their heads off at the thought of God s marvelous plan. Isaac s name could encompass endless motivations for laughter. Loving couples who have been together a long time enjoy priceless moments of private joking not the least of which concern physical intimacy. I ve gotten tickled recently by a contest on our local Christian radio station. In honor of Valentine s Day, husbands or wives call in with their love handle or pet name by which their spouse calls them. If the mate hears the name on the radio broadcast, he or she is to call in and claim the name to win a weekend getaway. They d need to stay way more than a week to let their friends get over it. For all we know, Abraham and Sarah had pet names for each other and laughed all the way to their graves over the child God enabled them to conceive in their senior years. I can picture Abraham pretending to flex his muscles for Sarah while the skin hung down unenthusiastically from his upper arm. Then I can picture Sarah laughing until she cried 8
or had a coughing fit. Ways we uniquely communicate with one another are God-blessed dimensions of marriage. Marriage is often difficult, and sharing tender moments like these eases the difficult and mundane seasons with bouts of delight. Do you know a senior-adult couple who still seem to be in love? Describe something about them that makes you smile. With new romance infused late into their relationship, picture Abraham and Sarah somewhat like the couple you mentioned. We ll miss a tremendous blessing if we spiritualize the human aspect out of their story. Genesis 21:2 states, Sarah became pregnant and bore a son to Abraham in his old age, at the very time God had promised him. Any of us who have had children know good and well that plenty happens between conception and delivery. Had God inspired Moses wife to write Genesis instead of Moses, we might have been privy to significantly greater detail. This we know: God visited Sarah and enabled her to become pregnant and bear a child. We have no Scripture to support that she and Abraham knew they d had a visitation and that they were suddenly expecting a baby. In all likelihood, time had to tell. Go with me here, Sister, because the woman in me finds this part fascinating. Just think: Sarah didn t have a monthly cycle to give her early signs that she was pregnant. How do we know? What does Genesis 18:11 explicitly tell you? That s a nice, biblically correct way to say that Sarah had already gone through menopause. I m blessed to know she never killed anyone. However, Hagar might say that Sarah didn t get to that point without considerable mood swings. How do you think Sarah finally figured out that God had fulfilled His promise and she was expecting Isaac? Share your thoughts. I d love to join your small group and get into the rich kind of discussions that we women like to have. We should be scholarly in our study of God s Word, but we should also enjoy meditating on Scripture from our gender perspective. The combination makes the process of studying the Bible all the more real and applicable. We probably answered the previous question with several of the same assumptions. Sarah was looking for the pregnancy, so she very likely jumped to accurate conclusions at the first sign. On the first morning or two she felt nauseated, she may have assumed it was Hagar s bad cooking ( I knew she was trying to poison me! ), but after a while, she would have figured out she had one of our least favorite symptoms of pregnancy: morning sickness. Weeks later she might have lain flat on her back to see if her tummy was changing. 9
The Patriarchs Can you imagine the care Sarah took of herself once she realized she was expecting? Even though she had a God-given guarantee that she d carry the baby to term and deliver a healthy bundle of boy, surely Sarah made some of the same careful adjustments that many of us did with our fi rst babies. Take a look at a similar pregnancy account in the fi rst chapter of Luke. Read Luke 1:5-7 and describe this couple. What happened in Luke 1:11-13? Read Luke 1:24-25. What did Elizabeth do according to verse 24? how long? Why do you think she did such a thing? We have no way of knowing for certain, but it s possible Sarah protected herself and remained under great care during the fi rst months of the pregnancy. (Or she was waiting until she had the nerve to tell her friends.) Sarah may have reacted in a manner similar to Elizabeth s. I never valued my own life more than when I was expecting my babies. In my thinking, the cargo I carried made me valuable. Oh, dear ones, if we who are believers could only grasp that we are vessels of the very indwelling of Christ s Spirit, we d realize some of our inestimable value! After being obsessively careful the fi rst several months, the second half of a normal pregnancy isn t as worrisome in at least one respect: you can feel the baby s activity inside of you. Imagine. About midway through Sarah s pregnancy she began to feel Isaac kick. At fi rst she wasn t sure. The feeling was like the fl utter of butterfl y wings or a tiny bubble popping. But after another month or two, her abdomen heaved with the swift kick of a lively baby boy practicing sports. Then Sarah bore a son (Gen. 21:2). Much like many of us, she may have been expecting the baby to arrive for weeks, but several false alarms taught her she d have to wait until the pains took a defi nitive pattern. Historical records of practicing midwives reach far into antiquity. We can accurately imagine at least one other woman right beside Sarah, coaching her through labor and delivery. What may be harder for us to imagine is a onehundred-year-old man pacing back and forth, kicking up the dust as the minutes stretched into hours. And there Isaac was, red face tightened into an angry knot and cord still attached, reminding Sarah that all babies are miracles. Her gray hair lay soaked with sweat while tears ran like tiny rivers through the crow s feet around her eyes. Those aging eyes had witnessed volumes of life but never a more precious moment than this. Slippery. Squirming. Screaming. The son of Abraham. The child of promise. The NIV says it perfectly: God has brought 10
me laughter (Gen. 21:6). Yes, with a capital L. And suddenly, the wait was worthwhile. Isn t that how it goes? I m amused at the lack of mention of Sarah s old age in the text. Abraham s alone is mentioned and twice, in fact, but who s counting (vv. 2,7)? After all, who could do anything but take his hat off to Sarah as she labored courageously and brought forth a son, nursing him like a twenty-year-old mother might do? Abraham was beside himself. He believed God, so he knew that he would have a son. But for the life of him, Abraham didn t know how he d feel.words are assigned to the smaller things, after all. Bigger matters are too sacred. You can t describe them. If you re wise, you just sit a spell and soak your weary, wandering feet in them. I am tender to those of you who may fi nd today s lesson bittersweet, even painful. Perhaps your marriage has long outlasted a sense of passion or your womb remains empty though you ve prayed and prayed for a child. Was there any reason this was a difficult lesson for you (beyond the annoying teacher)? Take heart, Dear One. This lesson may have been for you more than anyone. If Isaac s birth says anything at all, surely it says that nothing is too diffi cult for the Lord. Among thousands of other things, God can perform miracles in marriages long past their prime. He can give offspring (using doctors, physically, by adoption, spiritual children whatever the means) to the barren. What may be a little more unsettling is the thought that both marriage and birth miracles could happen to the same couple! That s what happened with our Abraham and Sarah. I feel as if we stopped by their home today. In fact, the thought occurred to me what kind of gift I might have brought. I think a fun ending to today s lesson is to muse over the gift we d bring for Sarah or baby Isaac if we were invited to a party in honor of Isaac s arrival. You re welcome to think in terms of today s kinds of gifts keepsakes or modern conveniences but conclude with a specifi c item that you d give for such a special occasion. Oh, lighten up and do it! I ll make sure to include my gift idea in the leader s guide so I can share mine at small group, too. You re such a good sport. Thanks for letting me study with you today. Week Four Day Three He Loved Her I so wish we could watch today s scenes on video together. I d personally pop the corn and pour the Coke, but you d have to keep the remote control or I d push pause every few seconds for discussion. The narratives in God s Word are as rich and captivating as any great novel. The authenticity of these stories makes them all the better and proves at least to me that God Himself is a romantic. Today s Treasure Isaac brought her into the tent of his mother Sarah, and he married Rebekah. So she became his wife, and he loved her. Genesis 24:67 11