Genesis 16 - Beginning To Pursue My Way

Main Idea: We have to turn to God’s Word, not our wisdom, in our choices and relationships.

• When we rely on our own wisdom, others get hurt.

• When we rely on our own wisdom, we hurt ourselves.

• We experience healing and resilience by turning to God’s wisdom.

Sermon Transcript (Auto-Transcribed by Apple Podcasts)

We are today in sermon series New Beginnings in Genesis chapter 12 through 25. We've been looking at the life of Abraham. If you turn to almost any other portion of scripture, you're going to come across the name Abraham.

He's just one of those central figures. Even when you go to the New Testament and you're looking at the life of Jesus, you're going to see that Jesus is a descendant of this guy, Abraham. And so, we've been walking through looking at who was Abraham.

Why does it matter? He's a man that lived about 3, 4,000 years ago. What does that have to do with our life today in the 21st century?

And I pray that as we've been journeying through it, you have seen it has quite a lot to do. For summary for those that maybe haven't been with us yet, Abram was called by God to leave his homeland where he was kind of in modern day, Iran, Iraq.

He was called to leave his extended family and go to the land of Canaan, where God promised that Abram and his wife Sarai would have children finally after decades of praying and hoping.

And God promised that he would make them into a great nation and that all the nations of the earth would be blessed through Abram's descendants.

However, in the very first story that we walked through of Abram's life, after he got to the land of Canaan, he left Canaan behind in a famine. He went down to Egypt.

While in Egypt, fearful for his life, he told Sarai to tell any inquiring Egyptians that she was his sister so that they wouldn't kill Abram to get his wife. You know, we had Valentine's Day this past week.

I don't think any of you were like, honey, I love you so much. You're so beautiful. I think people would kill me to be able to be with you.

Would you lie and say that you're my sister? I don't think that's like on any, you know, Valentine's cards. This is like God's chosen person that's going to bring this nation that would eventually bring the Messiah, Jesus Christ, into the world.

And he is off to a terrible start. This is not a great guy. So he tells Sarai to tell this lie.

And Pharaoh himself, the king, the ruler of Egypt, brings Sarai into his harem. And he gave Abram lots of possessions. And even some servants.

Scripture would tell us both male and female servants as a dowry for her. So God says, okay, leave your homeland, go to this place, and you and your wife are going to become a great nation. He says, awesome.

I'm going to leave the land that you told me to go to, and I'm going to auction off the wife that I'm supposed to have this great nation with. He is off to an absolutely terrible start. And it doesn't get a whole lot better as we go on.

God, in defense of Sarai and his promise to Abram, he brings plagues on Pharaoh's household until he returned Sarai to Abram, and Pharaoh sent Abram and Sarai out of Egypt.

I'm thankful that God moves into even our mess when we screw up our life, when we screw up other people's lives, that the Lord is faithful to us. The fact that you're still sitting here today means God's not done with you. He has a plan for you.

And thankfully, his plan includes even your stupidity and my stupidity. Where we are now today in Genesis chapter 16, we are 11 years into the future. Abram is 86 years old and Sarai is 85.

He and Sarai are still in Canaan, but they haven't received a child yet. And it doesn't currently look as though their decades of no success are going to change.

Last week, we heard God restate his promise to Abram that he would give him more descendants than there are stars in the sky. And Abram believed him and God even sealed it with a covenant.

We talked last week, you know, you cut the animals in half and you walk through the path. And the implication is if you don't keep your end of the bargain, this is what's going to happen to you. What happened to these animals?

And we saw how God himself traveled through that medium. He knocked, if you will, Abram out. Abram was in a deep sleep, so he wouldn't have to assume any of the risk.

And God himself promised, I will make this happen. But this week, we'll see in Genesis 16 that the previously innocent and wronged Sarai does not yet believe in God's promise. And we'll see her try to take control of the situation in her own way.

That's why the title of the message today is Beginning to Pursue My Way. One of the most scathing indictments that the Bible lays out of specific nations or time periods is that the people in that place did what was right in their own eyes.

Just because you or I believe that something is good or the best choice or will work out the best for us, does not mean that it is right in God's estimation.

And as we'll see today, when we follow our own way and not God's way, we will cause trouble for ourselves and for others in ways that we would never have intended.

So what we'll learn with Sarai and Abram and a new character we'll introduce today, Hagar, is that we have to turn to God's word, not our wisdom in our choices and relationships.

We have to turn to God's word, not our own wisdom in our choices and relationships. Would you pray with me this morning? And wherever you are in this seed, and we've got some people that view online as well, want to encourage you.

Ask the Lord to speak to your heart. Maybe you're a believer, and you need just this gentle reminder from the Lord to seek him to trust in his way and not your own.

Maybe today you are a person that does not know Christ as your savior, and you would need to pray this morning, God, would you show me why should I believe in you? Why should I follow you? Why should I accept you?

If you ask the Lord that today, I promise you, he will answer and he will show you. But let's pray together.

Dear Jesus, thank you for the gift of this place, Lord, for a roof over our heads, Lord, for brothers and sisters in the Lord to be able to worship alongside. God, we pray that you would speak to us today.

Lord, I pray that you would be with me, that you would help me to only say what you would have me to. And Lord, I pray that today, if there's someone here that does not know you as Savior, that today would be the day that they accept you.

Lord, we are so grateful for what Jesus has done for us, for the hope that we have, the certainty that we have of our future because of what you have accomplished for us on the cross.

And God, we pray that as we look into your word, that you would help us to be molded more into the image of Christ.

Lord, that we wouldn't leave today the exact same person that we were when we came, but that we would grow as a result of hearing from you. We ask that your spirit will work. And we ask all of this in the name of Christ.

Amen. We're going to walk through the passage today. So we often do it.

And then we'll look at some specific aspects of what it would mean to turn to God's word instead of our own wisdom. Genesis chapter 16 in verse number one says this.

Now, Sarai, Abram's wife, had not borne him a child, but she had an Egyptian slave woman whose name was Hagar. So here, we've just come off of like this amazing promise from God in chapter 15. I will accomplish everything that I promised for you.

You're going to have descendants as numerous as the stars. And Sarai doesn't believe it yet. And even worse than that, she has an Egyptian slave woman whose name was Hagar.

Okay, well, where in the world did this couple from Iran, Iraq area get an Egyptian slave woman? Well, it was part of Sarai's dowry price. So we're not starting off on a great step here.

Verse number two says this. So Sarai said to Abram, see now, the Lord has prevented me from bearing children. Please have relations with my slave woman.

Perhaps I will obtain children through her. And Abram listened to the voice of Sarai. If this shocks you, if this is appalling, it should be.

This is not something that the Bible's like, oh yes, like great job Abram, great faith. No, no, no. This is abusive in basically every way.

The logic here is sad and brutal. This slave woman belongs to me, so her children are mine like she is mine. God does not view people as property.

And though people throughout the years have tried to assert that and have tried to proclaim their own dominance over others, it's not how God views it. And as we journey through the story, we'll see God's point of view in this.

Instead of trusting God's promise that he would provide a child, Sarah here attempts to make what she wants to happen happen on her timetable. Have you done this? Hopefully not this.

But have you made a poor financial choice that you know God wouldn't have wanted for you because you wanted something now? Have you jumped into a relationship or actions that you shouldn't have because you just wanted to be happy and to be loved?

It's never a wise thing to take for ourselves what God hasn't given to us. Sarah here talks about God. So Abram, he has this relationship with God.

He's discussing, he's doubting, he's believing, he's engaging. Sarah here mentions the Lord, but it's only to blame God for the circumstances, instead of trusting him to be faithful to what he has said.

I want to ask you today, is God an impediment to your plans or the one who sets the plans for your life? When you think about the life that you have, are you saying, God, this is your fault that I'm not getting everything I want?

Or are you turning to the Lord and saying, God, what do you want for my life?

Abram here in this verse listens to Sarai's voice, not God's, just as we read in Genesis chapter 3, where Adam listened to the voice of Eve in eating the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, instead of listening to the voice of God.

There's actually a couple of different words here where Sarai says to Abram, see now the Lord's prevented me and Abram listens to her and then we'll see in this next verse.

So after Abram had lived 10 years in the land of Canaan, Abram's wife, Sarai, took Hagar the Egyptian, her slave woman, and gave her to her husband Abram as his wife. If you remember from Genesis 3, it's the exact same story played out another time.

Someone sees something that is good in their sight, they believe it's the right decision, they take and they give. And here, it's happening all over again. Just so we're clear on what this entails, this is sexual abuse and adultery.

If you are intimate with someone that is not your spouse, that is adultery, even with your spouse's consent. And this is abuse in that someone was sold as a possession and then was used as a pawn to create a child for a couple.

This is not God's direction or his way. Verse number four, Then he had relations with Hagar, and she conceived. And when Hagar became aware that she had conceived, her mistress was insignificant in her sight.

Hagar, which I forgot to mention this right at the beginning, her name literally means the immigrant.

So at the end of chapter 15, where God tells Abram, your descendants are going to be resident aliens, they are going to be immigrants in the land of Egypt for 400 years, then chapter 16 takes us to a person whose name is literally the immigrant.

Only instead of the Israelites being immigrants in the land of Egypt, here it's an Egyptian that is an immigrant in the land of Canaan. And Hagar was now able to do almost instantaneously what Sarai hadn't been able to do over the course of decades.

Sarai, through all the years that her and Abraham had been married, had never been able to conceive. And yet now Hagar does it instantly. And as a result, she views Sarai as cursed, insignificant, not worthy of respect and attention.

Which if you'll remember from a couple weeks ago, right as we started the story of Abraham, God said, those that bless you, I will bless.

And those that curse you, those that view you as insignificant, not worthy of respect or attention, he says, I will treat them that way. So now Hagar is in a very dangerous spot. She's been done wrong.

And now she is beginning to view others with scorn and with a lack of respect. Is insignificant, not worthy of attention, how you view other people in your life, your neighbors, the person in the row across from you, your customers.

God loves every person. He died for every person. And he calls you to love others just as he has.

So then verse number five, what's gonna be the result of now this enmity between, if you will, these sister wives? So Sarah, I said to Abram, may the wrong done to me be upon you.

I put my slave woman into your arms, but when she saw that she had conceived, I was insignificant in her sight. May the Lord judge between you and me. Sarah immediately complains about the consequences of her plan, that she did.

And then calls God to judge Abram for listening to her. This is not a good way to like live your marriage relationship. I know we've got a couple of dating couples in here.

This is not the way to go. This is not healthy dynamics in the course of a relationship.

Instead of taking ownership to say, I shouldn't have done that, I shouldn't have said that, I shouldn't have made this happen, there is just the blame game that's going on. This is often us as well. We go outside of God's will.

We treat others poorly. We act in ways that God would not want us to. We pursue careers or purchases or relationships that we don't consult God's wisdom for, and then we blame him or others for our choices.

This is not the way. And then there's one more bad thing that happens, and then I promise it's all relatively uphill from this point on. But Abram said to Sarai, Look, your slave woman is in your power.

Do to her what is good in your sight. So Sarai treated her harshly, and she fled from her presence. Okay.

She is treating people harshly, so much so that they book it out of there. Is that good or bad? Bad.

What is good in Sarai's sight, what is good in Abram's opinion to make Sarai happy, is not what's good. We look at this and we go, well, obviously, I would never do that to someone.

But the truth is, if we were to talk to our spouse, for to talk to our friends or our family members or our coworkers, all of us have had times when we have done what we thought would bring us happiness, we've done what we thought would bring us joy

or get us the promotion or make mom or dad like us the best, and we have not looked out for what is good for others. I want to caution you. I'll mention the verse later on.

Proverbs says, there is a way that seems right to a person, but the end thereof are the ways of death. Let's not follow our own wisdom. Then verse number seven.

Hagar is running away and it says, now the angel of the Lord found her by a spring of water in the wilderness by the spring on the way to shore. This is the first time that we have angels directly mentioned in Scripture.

So I want to take just a very quick summary of what an angel is. God is the ultimate spiritual being, the one who lives in a reality, the spiritual realm that is different than but connected to ours.

However, God is not the only spiritual being that Scripture talks about. There are lesser spiritual beings that fill various roles that God has laid out for them. Some, the cherubim, are constantly in his presence, carrying the flying throne of God.

Others, the seraphim, they guard, they stand watch in the heavenly court and are described as flying fiery serpents.

Some spiritual beings are in charge of nations, such as Michael, the prince spiritual being over Israel, or the evil spiritual being over the nation of Persia that we would read about in the Book of Daniel.

Some spiritual beings are intentionally sent from the spiritual realm to the physical realm with a message from God. Hence why they were called Angelos, messengers in Greek.

In English, we just took the Greek letters, Angelos, messengers, and we made it its own thing. So now we think, you know, humanoid figure with some flappy wings, and that's an angel. But the word angel just means a messenger from the spiritual realm.

Actually, as we look at scripture, the angels themselves, the messengers from heaven that we read about, do not have wings unlike the cherubim and seraphim, and they often appear in the same form as humans.

And as it relates to this passage and many other passages that you can read about in the Old Testament, the angel of the Lord, you can see Lord there is in all lower caps.

This would be the Hebrew word, Yahweh, the angel of Yahweh or the messenger of Yahweh is one particular spiritual being that we do not have time to dig into entirely. So I'll just give you like the test answer for this one.

And if you want to talk about it more, I would love to have a conversation with you at any time you want about this. The angel of the Lord is Jesus appearing in the Old Testament. So Jesus himself appears to Hagar on the road.

And he said, Hagar, Sarai's slave woman from, where have you come and where are you going? And she said, I'm fleeing from the presence of my mistress, Sarai. I love this.

Right away, God knows her name. He knows what she's been through. And though he's asking where have you come from and where are you going, he's not asking because he needs information.

If you will, this is like when a teacher gives a pop quiz to the students, it's not because he doesn't know the answers. He is wanting them to talk. God knew where she needed to be.

So the angel of the Lord said to her, return to your mistress and submit to her authority. God knew what Hagar had endured already under Sarai, that she had been treated harshly. He knew what Hagar could endure.

He knew what she was able, capable of enduring. And he knew what she needed to endure. This is a tough verse for us.

God is far less concerned with our comfort than we are. And he is far more concerned with our holiness than we are. I want to ask you today here as Hagar is encouraged to go back to the place.

If you will, at least from the passage, she's going back to her husband Abram. She's going back to the place where the father of her child is.

And though it would not be a healthy environment right away, God says, I have a plan for you within this place with these people for a time.

Authority, human authority in particular, is one of those incredibly difficult topics when it comes to our lives today. We're Americans, bless God, and we hate authority. You know, we rebel against the King of England.

We rebel against our Congress. We rebel against this president or that president or this thing or that thing. Rebellion is just a part of who we are.

And yet, that's not the way that God encourages us to live our lives.

In Romans 13, scripture tells us that our authorities have been placed in our lives by God, and that we have a duty to listen to them and to follow the things that they say that do not disobey the word of God.

I'm aware this is an extremely countercultural thing. We say, I want to rebel against my boss, my parents, you know, this particular law. I don't want to go the speed limit.

I don't want to buckle my seatbelt. I don't want to listen to my pastor or this particular politician. We just rebel, we buck against everything.

But God says that He has placed the authorities that we have in our life for our good. Now, that doesn't mean that they always do good. You can look at the authorities that were in the life of Jesus.

We looked at the end of Luke chapter two, where Jesus was doing the thing that he was supposed to be doing. He was in the temple, he was teaching people about the word of God, and his parents came along and they're like, where were you?

We thought we lost you. And he says, didn't you know that I needed to be about my father's business? And they were like, no, you've got to come back home.

You're 12 years old. And he went with them. It says he submitted to them.

Our authorities aren't always right in everything that they say or do. They're not always just or correct in everything that they have.

But one thing that we can learn from what Christ here says to Hagar is to submit for a time in order to show that God is in control, in order to see God work in our lives.

This is something that is, it's tough if you're like, oh, I don't like any of this. This doesn't feel good. It's not necessarily supposed to.

As we get over the coming weeks further into the book, you'll see how this plays out. This is the tension introduced of, I don't really think they're supposed to be family fighting. Why is God telling Hagar to go back to this place?

God created us to need others. And not just those that are on the same plane as us, not just those that are under us or in our charge. God also created us to be under others.

And so we ought to have a respect for our authorities. Verse number 10, the angel of the Lord also said to her, so he says, go back to this place where it's been difficult for you.

Hagar had also made things difficult for Sarai as well, but that's not the point right now. He gives her this promise. He says, I will greatly multiply your descendants so that they will be too many to count.

Huh. This is the same promise that was given to Abram, like literally the chapter before. Abram's was because he believed God, and God fredded it to him as right standing with God.

And yet now it's given to a person that God hadn't said, you know, Hagar, leave your land, leave your people, go to this place, and I will make you a great nation. God's blessing isn't just restricted to Abram and Sarai.

It's now been extended to others as well. And this despite the fact that she had viewed Sarai as cursed or insignificant, not worthy of respect or attention, which from Genesis 12 should have meant that she was viewed as not worthy of attention.

And yet God paid attention to her, loved her, and blessed her. The angel of the Lord said to her further, Behold, you are pregnant, and you will give birth to a son, and you shall call his name Ishmael, because the Lord has heard your affliction.

That is, God has heard. Then verse number 12, But he will be a wild donkey of a man. His hand will be against everyone, and everyone's hand will be against him, and he will live in defiance of all his brothers.

Okay, we got some good things and bad things happening here. Why is he saying he's going to be a wild donkey of a man? And there's going to be this fighting.

What's happening here? God mentions to Hagar that the type of person that Abram was and the type of person that Hagar was being would also continue in Ishmael, that he would buck against others, he would cause fights.

Do you realize that the way that you interact with others will carry on in your kids, your grandkids, sometimes even your friends will begin to adopt the habits of how you treat and interact with and talk about others, that the way they see you live

your life will be the way that they begin to live theirs. Do you want your kids, your grandkids to do what you are currently doing right now?

You want your grandkids to talk about people the way that you're talking about people, to use the language to go to the places that you are, or are you saying, ah, better turn to God's way, not just go my own.

Then verse number 13, she called the name of the Lord who spoke to her. You are a God who sees me. This would be the Hebrew words, Elroy, for she said, have I even seen him here and lived after he saw me?

The assumption of almost everyone in the Old Testament was that to see God in his true nature was to die. This would be echoed by the New Testament writers like the Apostle John who said, no one has seen God at any time.

That is why Jesus had to come as a human. Because if God came in all of his glory and all of his perfection, we would be eradicated.

But that's why Jesus came in inhuman form so that he could experience everything that we do that he could go through our difficulties. He would be able to do it without sin so that when he died in our place on the cross, he was a perfect substitute.

That he gave us all of his righteousness and he took all of our sins, all of our failures, all of the bad things that we've ever thought or said or done. He took them on himself. He paid the price in full.

And now we can experience forgiveness. And I love here that Hagar is actually the first person in scripture that names God. Most of the time in scripture, you have God, he's declaring himself to other people.

He's like, hey, my name is, here in English, we've got the Lord, Hebrew, Y-H-W-H would kind of be the corresponding letters, the name Yahweh. Says, I am Yahweh. That's what he declares to Moses.

But Hagar, this woman far away from home, the recipient of abuse, the recipient of being a pawn in other people's intermarital spats and lack of belief in the Lord, this woman was the one that named God, one of his names anyway, to say, you are the

God who sees me. I love this truth. There are so many times in my life, I assume, in your life, where it doesn't feel like anyone notices what's happening. They don't see your difficulties.

They don't know the troubles that you are going through. But I want you to know that the God that 3000 years ago was Elroy, the God who sees, still sees you. And it doesn't matter your circumstances.

If you're coming from desperate, evil circumstances like Hagar was, God sees you. If God's been incredibly good to you and blessing you in your life, God sees you. And I want you to realize that if he sees you, it is not for no reason.

He's not just noticing that you exist. A lot of help that would be. If God sees you, he has a plan for your life.

Just as he had for Hagar, just as he had for Abram and for Sarai, God's noticing of you means that he has a call on you. For Christians, you know that your mission is to know Jesus and to make him known to others.

That you would shine out the light of the Holy Spirit from your life, that you would allow God's presence in you to shine out, to love others, that to encounter you is to encounter the love of God himself.

If you don't know Christ, then God's call for your life is that you would accept him as your Savior and your Lord.

That you would turn from, if you will, in your entire life, going about through your own wisdom and your own way, and you would turn to Jesus as your Lord. You would repent from your sin.

What the Bible says is anything we think or say or do that goes against the Word of God, we would turn from our sin and turn in faith solely to the Lord.

And as we do that, I'm thankful that scripture says, whoever calls on the name of the Lord will be saved. You might say, well, I don't know if I can give enough money in order to get into a relationship with God. No amount of money required.

Might say, I don't know if I can maintain enough perfection in my life in order to be in right standing before God.

As we learned last week, all that is required is belief in the righteousness of Christ, that he offers freely forever forgiveness to you for all of your sins, that you would never experience condemnation, that you would never experience alienation

from God's presence, but that you would have the Holy Spirit living inside of you, God's own presence living in your life, that you would have anticipation of when you die or when the Lord returns, that you will be with him forever. And that is

accomplished not through human works, not through human righteousness, but by trusting that what Jesus did for me on the cross is sufficient and enough, that the price that he paid was a price paid in full. That is the God who sees you, who has a

plan for you. Verse 14, Therefore the well was called Beer Lehi Roy. Behold, it is between Kadesh and Bered. This is the well of the God who sees.

This doesn't do as much for us right now. Back when this was penned in Israel, you could go to the well and you could be like, wow, this is amazing. This is the spot where it happened.

Today, you can look on Google Maps or something, and I'm sure you can find it. So, verse 15, Hagar bore a son to Abram, and Abram named his son to whom Hagar gave birth, Ishmael. God has heard.

Abram was 86 years old when Hagar bore Ishmael to him. Okay. I think we've established some things that we probably shouldn't do in our own marriages and relationships.

I think we're all really clear on that by now, Lord willing. But I want to take this one step further.

How do we not rely on our own wisdom, but how do we rely on God's Word, God's wisdom, for our choices and relationships, so that we don't make the the havoc, the dysfunction that Abram and Sarai created? How do we avoid that for our own life?

I want us to notice first, when we rely on our own wisdom, others get hurt. This was obvious from the story.

We can look back even at Genesis 3, Adam and Eve's choice to do what was right in their own eyes, plunged all of humanity out of Eden and into the land of death and separation from God.

Today, your insistence on your own way without consulting God's word and his wisdom can affect your spouse as it did with Sarah. It can affect your kids as it did with Ishmael. It can affect your coworkers.

It can affect your friends and it can affect everyone around you.

When we don't look to the word of God for how we talk about others, when we don't look to the word of God for our work ethic, when we don't look to the word of God for what our word means to others, if you will, if we're kind of hedging a little bit

of our statements, we're not saying the whole truth, it can affect every single relationship that we have. Even things like our tone. You can look at Sarah speaking harshly to Hagar. Even that can affect relationships.

And when we turn to the word of God to look how we should behave, then we will not have this occur that when we rely on our own wisdom, others get hurt. But then secondly, when we rely on our own wisdom, we hurt ourselves.

I mentioned it earlier, the verse in Proverbs. There's a way that seems right to a person, but the end of it are the ways of death. Or you can look at Galatians 6.

Whatever a person sows, that is what they reap. For many of us, we reap, we sow half truths, and we expect others to be truthful with us. We sow gossip, and yet we expect others to be straightforward with us.

We sow, if you will, immorality into our relationships. We don't sow fidelity and loyalty into our relationships. And then we're shocked when we do not receive that.

But the truth is, when we do what's right in our own sight, we hurt ourselves. We can even damage our own thought patterns when we do not seek God's word for our decisions and our interactions.

That's why the Apostle Paul would tell us in 2 Corinthians 10 to cast down every thought and every imagination that exalts itself against the power of Christ.

That we would not allow anything into our life that fights against the will and word of God. But then lastly, as we can see with Hagar, we experience healing and resilience by turning to God's wisdom.

That Hagar had been treated so harshly that she fled away, even from a person that was in that culture, her husband in Abram. And yet she experienced healing as she returned.

And the Bible doesn't again tell us that she experienced those things that she had before. When she listened to the voice of God, she found healing.

Today for many of us, when we've gone through things, when people have hurt and harmed us, we can choose to harbor bitterness and anger and desire for vengeance in our life. Or we can turn to the word of God.

We can find the forgiveness that Christ has given us on the cross freely. And we can extend that to others. We can find healing.

Hebrews 13 would tell us that the author there cautions, I don't want a root of bitterness to spring up in you and for it to defile many other people. For your life, if you listen to God's word, you can find healing. You can find hope in sorrow.

You can find purpose for life when it seems like there is no way forward. And we see that Hagar experiences resilience.

That though her and Sarai are not now just buddy-buddy, as we see through the coming weeks, that is not going to be the case, but she experienced resilience.

I think of James chapter one, where it says, the trying of your faith produces endurance, but let endurance have its maturing work so that you can be complete and whole in need of nothing. Our world is broken. Other people are broken.

I was talking with Owen the other day, and we were talking about in church in particular, church is a hospital. This is not a place full of perfect people.

This is a place full of broken, sinful people that desperately need Jesus' transformation in our lives. I'm the pastor here. That is true for me.

I promise you it's true for you.

When people come into the hospital, for some reason, we always think, okay, maybe I've got some wounds, but everyone else that's here, they're supposed to be the nurses and doctors, and they will take care of all of my wounds.

And the truth is, all of us are walking around, and we've all got problems and broken bones and wounds, and we tend to actually harm each other, because we are not perfect. And so we continue to inflict harm on others.

And in this broken world, we need the healing of God, because we are going to experience wound after wound. Jesus told his disciples, in this world, you will have trouble, but be of good cheer, I have overcome the world. This world is not the end.

When you die, you will enter eternity. If you have believed and trusted in Jesus Christ as your Savior, you will spend eternity with him, or like I mentioned earlier, where he makes everything right. That is what we are looking forward to.

We are not anticipating that right here in the here and now that we will experience perfect lives, where we get all the money, have perfect relationships, get the best house, and everything goes according to our plan.

It's not gonna happen for any of you. It's not gonna happen for me. And so we need the healing of God.

But then not only do we need healing, we need resilience to go through.

So that when people say unkind things, when they do unkind things, that we are able to press on through, not just because we have steeled ourselves off to any relationships and we're completely unfeeling and we'll never open up to anyone again, but

because if Jesus himself endured the mocking and the pain of his beating and crucifixion and he did that for my sake and for your sake, then I can endure someone saying something about me. May God help us to experience his healing.

That's the great physician. And may we experience the same resilience. 11 Hebrews chapter 12, it says, Jesus, for the joy that was set before him, he endured the cross, despising the shame, and he has sat on the right hand of God.

For many of us, that might be where you are this week. You might be one that you're trying to pursue God's wisdom, and this week you just need to go, okay, I know what's ahead of me. I know what my eternity entails.

And so I'm going to, if you will, have a thick skin, thick hide, and a soft heart. I'm not going to make the difficulties and the hurts from people make me calloused to them, but I won't allow it to hurt me because I know who I am in Jesus.

I know that He loves me. I know that He has a plan for me. I know that He is Elroy, that He sees me.

And so as a result, I'm going to plunge on ahead. This week, you've got a choice. Same choice Adam and Eve had.

Same choice Cain and Abel had. Same choice that Abram and Sarai and Hagar had. You can choose to follow God's word in His wisdom, or you can choose to follow your own wisdom in your own way this week.

What will you choose? If you're wondering, how do I figure out what God wants me to do? Spend time in the word.

This is the fount of wisdom that we find. This is that well that we encounter Jesus in, much like Hagar encountered the angel of the Lord there at that well of Beer LeHai Roy. This week, what do you choose?

Your way or God's?