Beth Moore — The God Who Sees

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Now I want you to see something. Where did we end the narrative? If you're just now coming in with us, we're in Genesis 16; we read verses 1-6. The big mess between Abram and Sarah and Hagar; Hagar is the maidservant and has now conceived a child by Abram because Sarah gave Abram to Hagar for that very purpose. Then Sarah is beside herself, angry, and then of course, Hagar has lost all respect for Sarah.

Picking up right there. Remember that it says in verse six that Sarah dealt harshly with her and so she, Hagar fled from her. So she is leaving now. She is fleeing from her. Let's pick up at seven and let's read to 15:

7. The angel of the LORD found her by a spring of water in the wilderness, the spring on the way to Shur.
8. 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.”
9. The angel of the LORD said to her, “Return to your mistress and submit to her.”
10. The angel of the LORD also said to her, “I will surely multiply your offspring so that they cannot be numbered for multitude.”
11. 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.
12. 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.”
13. So she called the name of the LORD who spoke to her “You are a God of seeing,” for she said, “Truly here I have seen him who looks after me.

Sure enough it tells us that she did bear Abram a son, called him Ishmael, and Abram was 86 years old, verse 16 says, when Hagar bore Ishmael to Abram. Look at this wording.

Notice that she is fleeing but that the Lord comes to her. She gets this theophany of the Lord, comes and reveals himself to her. He has found her, the scripture says, and the angel of the Lord found her.

Now the Lord, if you don't know much about him is completely all-knowing. He knows where every single one of us are at all times. So how in the world can the Lord find anyone because he never loses anyone?

When this kind of terminology is used, it means he is going to an extra effort to seek them out. And there is only one reason why we're told when it says that he went and found so-and-so, every time that happens it is for one purpose, so that they can find him. Anybody tracking in that with me?

Hold here for just a second and go with me, case in point to John chapter one; the gospel of John, chapter one. I want you to hear verses 43-45. It says:

43. The next day Jesus decided to go to Galilee. He found Phillip and said to him, “Follow me.”
44. Now Philip was from Bethsaida, the city of Andrew and Peter.
45. Philip found Nathanael and said to him, “We have found him of whom Moses in the Law and also the prophets wrote, Jesus of Nazareth, the son of Joseph.”

Now look at all of these founds with me and you will see the point jump out on that sacred page. Because Jesus found Phillip, Phillip found Nathaniel and he said to Nathaniel, "We have found Jesus." Isn't this beautiful? Because actually, no, Jesus found you, dude. But see, what he had learned is what we will see in every single narrative where it says that God found someone when he went and appeared to the burning bush in that glorious revelation on the backside of nowhere in that wilderness with Moses back in Exodus chapter three when he found him there. What was it for? So that Moses would find him -- that's the purpose every single time.

I want you to know Jesus found you so that you could find him. If you know him, if you know anything about him, you need to know he was the initiator. We are responding back to him. There are honestly people on this planet who think they love God more than God loves them; that they seek God more than God seeks them; that they are more aware, that he is more on their radar than they are on their radar. Listen. Everything initiates with God. He is the initiator of all things faith. The only reason you ever, the only reason I ever found Jesus was because he found us first.

Now turn back to Genesis 16 and I want to show you something. Notice that her name is Hagar. You see it up in 16:1, Egyptian servant whose name was Hagar. You see it again down there throughout the narrative. But when the angel of the Lord says to her, "Hagar," he calls her by name, "Servant of Sarah, where have you come from and where are you going?" -- Hagar. I want you to know, I've said before on our programming and I know you've heard it from pastors and teachers before perhaps, but I love that there's such beautiful narrative art, and such wordplays in the... you can see it often in the English but in the original languages in the scriptures. -- Just absolutely beautiful! And there's one right here because Hagar is a name that means stranger -- that she's a stranger.

Now I want you to please note that the angel of the Lord has sought out the stranger. This is making me think of Ephesians chapter two that says you are no longer foreigners and strangers but you are citizens with the saints of God, members of the household of God, that he seeks out strangers.

I thought to myself, see, some of you think you are not God's type. You might look at people, maybe you've got a co-worker who is a Christian, she's got a lot of joy. She doesn't seem to be near as irritable as everybody else. She doesn't talk about as many people. Listen. If she does do all that, that is something else to talk about. That may be something to ask her about. But maybe in all likelihood that man that you know is a godly man, he seems different than everybody else. You wish that you were more like him -- but you're not God's type. So many of us are just convinced, I'm not Christ's type. I'm not the type he would pick out.

Listen, there is no such thing as not being Jesus' type. Listen. You don't have to just take my word for it. You go study the gospels, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, and I just want you to look at all the kinds of people he seeks out and finds so that they can find him. And not just the downtrodden and those that are under a whole heap of sin, we see where he is ministering to Pharisees. There were Pharisees, there was so many ways that Pharisees got a bad rap and they earned it in a number of the gospel portions but there were those who were of the faith that believed. Across the board, you cannot be a person beyond the type that Jesus Christ is looking for.

Now I tell you something interesting happened last week in our sermon on Sunday. Our pastor, who is my son-in-law, he preached a message that was very, very people-oriented, people-topeople and how we show the love of Christ in our everyday walk. He challenged us to do something. He said, "In your going out and in this week, in whatever you're doing and where you're checking out groceries, and where you're getting your coffee, wherever you're interacting, make eye contact with people this week. I mean actually notice them -- notice them when you go into a really crowded place."

And I think so often about this in the airport because in the very crowded restrooms there will very often be a woman in the ladies room who is cleaning up. I always think to myself, I want to stop. I'm going to try to get her to make eye contact with me so I can say, "How are you doing today?
You're not invisible to us. You're not invisible to me." And just make eye contact. So people know, we know they're alive. We recognize them.