I'll Do It Myself!

Good morning. We're going to be moving into this, I'll call it a dramatic passage, here this morning. I just wanted to make you aware, before we do that, we have a supplement on, it's called the Historicity of the Patriarchal Narratives, but don't let the big words fool you. It's about Genesis 12 through 50 and support for its being an actual historical account. And that's available as a supplement on the cabinet to the right as you exit this room. There are also two others addressing some things that people asked about last week.

One is this map here that shows during the coming reign of Christ on the earth, the land allotted to each of the tribes of Israel is shown on this map. And it goes all the way to the Euphrates River. It actually covers about a half dozen different countries. Anyway, that map is available and also this chart here that shows the timing that Abraham was told about of the Jews and their time in Egypt, etc. So, feel free to avail yourself of that. Those three supplements are available.

Now, we'll move on to the passage and one of the things I want to introduce this with is this is one really dramatic passage. We're going to see that here shortly. So far in Genesis, we've seen a very impressive creation account. We've seen men behaving badly. We have seen a watery natural disaster. I mean, this is the makings of a movie, right? We have seen a high-speed chase scene.

I want to qualify that as high speed as it can be when you're talking camels. So there's been a lot of excitement so far in the book of Genesis. This chapter is really tops when it comes to a lot of drama. There is historic nonfiction, but it is pure classic drama, believe me. We'll see that as we get into the passage here.

Let me introduce to you the key players in this drama. And we're going to start off with Abram or Abraham, as we'll begin calling him throughout the rest of this time. In the account, it's written as Abram. Next week's passage, we're going to see both Abraham and Sarah have their names changed from Abram and Sarai. So, the entire drama took place here in this chapter because of one thing. Abraham was most desperate for a male heir. He was really concerned about it and it was very high on his list of personal priorities. I'm sure it hardly left his mind.

The pressures of the culture dictated that you must have an heir. You absolutely must have an heir. He must do what? Whatever it takes to get this male heir. Whatever it takes. Even though God had promised an heir to Abraham, the patience of everyone in the tent hold was just running thin. Everybody is really getting pressed over this issue of, I've got to have an heir. I've got to have an heir. The weight of obligation was falling upon all of them. Everybody was feeling it. It was thick.

Now, we want to talk about Abraham's ages. You have this on page one of your handout, a slide that looks like this. Putting together the steps of information that we have, part of which we have already seen and part of which we have yet to get to, we see this.

Abraham leaves Haran, that's kind of the home of his forefathers here, at the age 75. We'll see this morning Ishmael is born when Abraham is 86. And getting down to the end, Abraham will die at 175. So proportionately, although it sounds like this is taking place when Abraham's an old guy, by comparison, it's sort of like he's in his late 30s, proportionately.

He's still a young buck. One of the other things that we showed you, this was a chart that we showed you some months back. Here is a chart of the various patriarchs before the flood. You see that mark there and then afterwards. One of the things we see here is Abraham way down here.

175 sounds like that's a lot of years and for us that certainly would be. My kids think I'm already that old. 175 compared to the decline in ages after the flood was actually a matter of lives becoming shorter until finally reaching lifetimes more like our own. So, things have to be kind of proportioned until lifetimes come down to more like what has become the norm.

Alright, now we have Sarai, or Sarah, as she will be called here by the next chapter. She is well aware of this cultural pressure that's on her man, Abraham. As a matter of fact, she is painfully aware that she has not born a child at all. painfully aware. She drew upon whatever resources she could, the best she could come up with, in order to try to fulfill that, to relieve this pressure that everybody was feeling. It wasn't certainly her first choice. She'd rather have had a child or more than one child.

But the pressure from the culture was going to dictate the outcome here. And she would be looked upon as resourceful and certainly compliant with everything that the culture demanded. Her man would comply. Her culture would approve it. Her heart, as we'll find out in this drama, will not approve. Now we have Hagar. She likely was an acquisition from Abraham's little adventure down into Egypt and back. And so here she is, this Egyptian handmaiden. Now think of this. In Egypt there were about 700 gods. Probably nobody but the priests would memorize who all the gods were. So she came out of this polytheistic mindset.

And we're going to see how that changes radically here in this very account. She was caught in the jaws of this drama, this pressure of, we'll say, biblical proportions. And it is incredible to have this kind of low-level servant, a maid, end up on the stage of history bringing about these momentous changes.

Now, as Sarai's personal servant, Hagar had a couple of choices, either comply or die. That's a nice choice, right? So we'll see what that turns into. Hagar became both the hope, because she would be the one to bear this child, and also the hated one, as we'll soon see. God himself would intervene.

And finally, the last one, Ishmael. Ishmael has real easy lines to memorize for this one. He's a baby. He doesn't say anything. He would be the hoped-for outcome, oh boy, we're going to have a child, as well as the offspring of a despised woman. We'll see what that means here. He would be born into this drama and he would come to have this huge global impact. Let's begin the drama. I'll do it myself. Are you ready? Here we go.

Here's Genesis 16, first three verses. And I'm going to kind of break the pattern of usual here and read it. Now, Sarai, Abram's wife, had been born to him with no children. None. Zip. And she had an Egyptian maid whose name was Hagar. Well, Wayne had read these verses for us here, so I won't read through all, but just here's the setup. Here is the beginning of the tension that we see here. Notice the words that Sarah uses.

The Lord has prevented me from bearing children. Okay? The Lord has prevented me from bearing children. Okay? Do you see Sarai's perspective? Okay? It's not one of faith in God's promises. God has promised to Abraham. Okay? You will have a child. Okay? So what's her view of it? What's Sarai's view? She does not recognize that God will have a child through her in His own time. She says, I've had it.

I'm up to here. Okay? Enough of this. We've got to deal with this. So what does she say? She presents God as the One standing in the way. It's His fault. It's God's fault. God's the One that's the problem. He's prevented me from having a child. It's not my fault. It's His. God just isn't following through on His promise, and I'm tired of waiting. And besides, and I'm sure it went on and on. So, we've got to handle things our own way. Here's Sarai doing the best she can under very difficult circumstances. What would Sarah do? Okay? Alright.

Now, here we have Genesis 3 and a Genesis 16 comparison. You may find this surprising, but you'll also find it on page one of your handout. Here is a comparison between the temptation of Genesis chapter 3 and this passage we're reading here in Genesis chapter 16. Let's go step by step here.

Eve had spoken to her husband Adam. Sarai spoke to her husband Abraham. Next, we find Adam listen to the voice of his wife. And then we find Abram listen to the voice of his wife. You see that? Eve took the fruit. Sarah took Hagar. And then the next one. Eve gave the fruit to her husband. And Sarai gave Hagar to her husband.

You see the sequence there? What an amazing pattern between the two. Wow! We're about to see the fall all over again. Right? Almost. Everything in this account, and this is important to remember, everything in this account is according to the culture. Everything. Okay?

It was according to the culture of the Hurrians, that is, those who lived around the city of Haran in the northern Mesopotamian area. Here's Canaan where they were living. So they were living out the customs of the culture where Sarah and Abraham had come from, but not from right around them. So now, here's the deal. Here's one of the points of the culture.

A man shall have an heir. That's absolutely mandatory. You will have an heir. And his wife shall provide him with children. So far so good. Or bad, however you look at it. The barren wife must take the initiative, and they actually had this written down in contracts, like this clay tablet you see there, must take the initiative to find and offer a surrogate wife to bear children. That was actually written up into marriage contracts. It's the wife's responsibility in that culture to go out and find a surrogate mother if she can't have children. So Sarah's just doing what's legally required in the culture that she came from. Now in verses 4 through 6 that Wayne read for us here, we get into Act 2 of this drama. Are you ready? Here we go.

Another comparison with Genesis 3 and Genesis 16. Adam complies with the offer passively and without a word. Or, in Genesis chapter 16, Abram complies with the offer passively and without a word. Just, okay, that's exactly what we'll do. There are other points of this passage that roughly parallel. We won't go into them. I think the point is not to make an exact comparison, but just to see those things that do compare.

One of the things that we'll see before too long here is even the question that was asked of Adam, where are you, now comes up here of Hagar. Now, here is the problem. What is amazing is that Sarai, or Sarah, is not jealous per se. She is not jealous per se of Abram and Hagar having this relationship.

The problem comes in a class conflict. She is upset that Hagar no longer respected her because Hagar's thinking, I can get pregnant and you can, that kind of thing. And besides that, those tents, there's no walls in there. Everybody in the whole village is hearing this, I can get pregnant but you can't.

And so that kind of thing, that got Sarah ticked. She was mad. She was upset. Hagar was not showing her respect. Here she was a lower class woman in a very class conscious society. And now she's coming up and saying, hey, I can get pregnant and it doesn't take much. Easy, right? So now Hagar's ability to conceive suddenly placed Sarah at a class level below her. And Sarah didn't like it. Not at all. Sarah sensed this from Hager, and boy was she upset.

She had done everything according to the culture. She says, I've done everything that the culture said to do, but she was not liking the outcome. So, Sarah said to Abraham, Sarah brought this respect reversal problem directly to Abraham as a moral and spiritual offense that had been done to her. She says, I've got a problem and it is your fault. The way she says it is, may the wrong done me be upon you.

It's kind of a Hebrew way of saying what goes around comes around. What comes around goes around. And then, may the Lord judge between you and me. Which is another way of saying, watch out! I used to be watching your backside, but I'm not doing that anymore. We're going to see very shortly that things are going to get real complicated. For them, here in this tent hold, and for us. Complicated for us, yes.

Now, Adam didn't like being at fault. Okay? Excuse me, Abram did not like being at fault. Didn't like it at all. And in some ways you can't blame him. Abraham didn't like being at fault and he would essentially say, I'm not taking any blame for this. This isn't my problem.

What's amazing in this account is he had just gotten through chasing an enemy in the night vastly outnumbered and did it with great bravery. But when his wife is a man, suddenly his character changes drastically. The courage just goes away. He told Sarah, deal with it. You deal with it. I don't want to get in the midst of this thing. Well, Sarah did exactly what Abraham said to do. And she dealt with it.

She treated her servant Hagar harshly. Now what do I mean by harshly? This word harshly is used in the book of Exodus, the very first chapter, when it describes the Egyptians' treatment, harsh treatment of the Jewish slaves. And what did that look like? We have this from the Egyptians' own artwork. This is an Egyptian Slave master beating a slave with another one of the slaves pleading for mercy.

So that's the word that is used for how Sarah treated Hagar. Pretty severe. So now, here's Hagar even though she's got Abram's child. She's fleeing the scene. She says, I'm getting out of here. We'll see what happens next. Here's verses 7 through 10, and I'll read those.

Now the angel of the Lord found her by a spring of water in the wilderness, by the spring of water on the way to Shur. He said, Hagar, Sarai's maid, where have you come from and where are you going? And she said, I am fleeing from the presence of my mistress Sarai. And then the angel of the Lord said to her, return to your mistress and submit yourself to her authority. Moreover, the angel of the Lord said to her, I will greatly multiply your descendants so that they will be too many to count. So now we see that the Lord Himself intervenes. Hagar flees from Sarai, and the angel of the Lord comes to her.

We certainly want to take a look at that shortly. She's near a spring. There's the spring. That's not right. Okay. So she's near a spring. Now, the angel of the Lord, we need to take note, because we're going to run into this again. The angel of the Lord is not the same as an angel of the Lord. There are a number of places in scripture where there's talk about an angel, an angel of the Lord, but this is the angel of the Lord, definite article, okay? And you have on the next slide here, the angel of the Lord speaks, as we see in the Old Testament scriptures, speaks as God, doing things that God does. And one of the things that we'll see in this account, and it occurs in other accounts, and one of the reasons we have a little picture over in the corner in the account of the burning bush in Exodus 3, that is a similar one where the angel of the Lord, and it switches over to talking about God directly. And so there are a number of reasons, and that being one of them, to conclude that the angel of the Lord is a representation of God himself there on earth.

In this account with Hagar, we see that the angel of the Lord is one who is referred to as God, and Hagar sees, I have seen God. She says that. I have seen God. She expresses it that way. Since the appearances of the angel of the Lord end at Christ's birth, we take him to be the Son of God. His deity is God. And we see over 50 uses of this term, the angel of the Lord. It ends at Christ's birth.

None after that in the New Testament. Well, taking that back, so we take it that the pre-incarnate Son of God, that is Christ, appeared to Hagar. by calling her by name and then asked two questions. Where are you coming from and where are you going? Now, do you think the angel of the Lord did not know? Likely not. Likely not.

But it was to get Hagar to think. The angel of the Lord then told Hagar to return to Sarai and submit to her rather than run. And the angel of the Lord also gave Hagar a promise like the one that had already been given to Abraham. You'll have so many descendants that you can't even count them.

Now this is amazing. God had graciously granted to Hagar a promise that she, so far as we have any record, didn't ask for, wasn't expecting, wasn't hoping for. And she didn't know him from any record we have. She didn't know the Lord prior to this moment. We'll talk about that in a minute. Here we are continuing in Act 3.

The angel of the Lord said to her further, Behold, you are with child. And she was very early in the pregnancy. So that's a revelation. And you will bear a son. Well, she didn't know that. You shall call his name Ishmael. Well, she didn't know that either. Because the Lord has given heed to your affliction. 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 to the east of all his brothers.

Well, Hagar has been told several things that she didn't know. She knew she was with child, of course, although it probably wasn't evident at this point. But she didn't know that it was a male child until now. The angel of the Lord told her to name this boy Ishmael. It means God hears. God hears. Ishmael's character is described.

He would be a wanderer in chronic opposition with others and living to the east of Israel. Now, when you say a wild donkey of a man, a lot of us have a kind of a, oh, I know what a wild donkey is. But let me tell you, this is an onager. is the species of donkey that is in this area, and it is very difficult to tame. Some have said it's untamable. So that's the description. Basically, he's going to be an untamable, difficult to get settled down kind of person. He will be in chronic opposition, and notice it's said both ways. He's going to be against everyone, everyone's going to be against him. and is going to be living to the east of Israel there. A lot of us are thinking of some critter like this, more domesticated, and that's not what it's talking about.

Alright? Now, this is also God's promise, because remember, here she is out in the middle of the desert, trying to run away, thinking, boy, I wonder if I'm going to live through this. This is also God's promise that she would live through this event, isn't it? Because after all, she would indeed go back to Sarah and would indeed bear this child and name the child this. So that's, God's telling her, you are going to live through this. It'll be alright. These were all things that Hagar didn't know, but because the Lord told her, she knows, and because the Lord had it written down, you know. Now we're into Act 4.

Then she called the name of the Lord who spoke to her, You are a God who sees. For she said, Have I even remained alive here after seeing Him? Therefore, the well was called Be'er Lahai Roi. Behold, it is between Kadesh and Bered." Now, the account referred here to the angel, the Lord. Verse 13 says just the Lord, right? She named Him the God who sees, or more literally, you God, see me. You God, see me. The spring was built into the well and the place there was called Be'er Lahai Roi.

Now there's something I need to explain about this name. A lot of people, they look at that and they're thinking something else. So, it translates as the well of the one who lives and sees me. Everything okay here? All right, just check. This Be-er is pronounced Bay-er. Just put them together fast, okay? Bay-er. And the word means well, okay? All right.

And that's why in the Bible, and we're going to see this again in Genesis, this same thing, Bay-er, comes as a preface to a number of different names, and in one case, actually, that's the name. This name is going to show up again in Genesis, plus other names that have this preface, so good idea to keep this in mind.

Now, here is a space eye view. At first I thought, boy, it sure would have been nice to take Hagar and show her this from space, but I think that would freak her out. So we'll just take a look at it here because you're more accustomed to that. Here's Jerusalem off in the one corner here and Egypt off on the other end. And you know Egypt, you know. Okay. And then in the middle there, here is the place where this well was found and located. So where was she headed, folks? Home. I'm going home. I don't like this, right? She was headed home. Back where she was used to everything.

Here is, earlier in the passage, it mentions the name Shur. And Shur means a fortress wall, the fortification wall. And it's because there were a string of Egyptian fortresses that went along the coastline there. And so that was called the Wilderness of Shur. And this path that she was going along was a caravan route called the Way of Shur.

So that's what she was doing. She was on the caravan route, headed home. What becomes apparent here is the Lord says, where are you going? And she never answered. At least not that's recorded here. But she was headed back home. Back to where she had come from. Back to Egypt. But it was this kind of land that she was going through. Real tough. And by the way, A single lady going along a caravan route? Very dangerous. Very dangerous. Yell for help? There's nobody there to listen. Okay. She is marveling. She says, have I remained alive here after seeing Him?

We have seen, as we go through various passages, and we'll see some more, We've seen a pattern as we go through scripture that where the angel of the Lord shows up and people see the angel of the Lord, they're often amazed or in shock that they've lived through it because it's been such an astounding experience. We have the instance of Hagar, of course, here in Genesis. There are also instances of Gideon, Manoah, the father of Samson.

And also we saw in Isaiah 6 when we were studying that as well. Now, on to Act 5, the last part. So, Hagar bore Abram a son, and Abram called the name of his son whom Hagar bore Ishmael. And Abram was 86 years old when Hagar bore Ishmael to him. So, what does that tell us? Yes, Hagar did go back. She returned back to Sarah, back to Abraham, just as the Lord had told her to do. She did bear a son just exactly as the Lord told her would take place.

And Abraham somehow went along with this name and did call this son Ishmael. Abraham, as we saw on your age chart there, was 86 when Ishmael was born. And again, we think of 86 as fairly old, just proportioned to his life. He's a young buck in his middle to late 30s. But, it was a son born of human efforts and strategies.

This was not God's intent that the promise be fulfilled in this way. But the story is far from over. Not this story of Abraham. Not the story of Sarah or Ishmael. That story's not over. That's not over for us either. Ishmael was born 14 years before Isaac, the intended heir. That's the one that God promised. Isaac. So here's Ishmael, who was 14 years old basically when Isaac was born. Sarah, or Sarai, as she's also known, would once again at that event, and we'll get to it pretty soon, be at odds with Hagar and her son Ishmael, both. Hagar and Ishmael are going to be sent off.

Guess what? Out into the desert again. And God would again appear to her. Isn't this amazing? She is just An Egyptian woman, probably originally a polytheist. She is a low-level servant, but the Lord appears to her twice. That is amazing. So we'll read that other account later. Ishmael would have twelve sons, just as Jacob would. And they would multiply, just as God promised to Hagar, right here. And remember this verse, verse 12, he will be a wild donkey of a man, untamable. His hand will be against everyone, and everyone's hand will be against him. That has actually turned out to be increasingly fulfilled as the time has gone on.

This map that we showed you last week is the distribution of Islam, which is the religion that was born out of the Ishmaelites. And what happened within the first century is Islam went with the sword in three different directions. Into Europe, into North Africa, and all the way over into Indonesia and even over into the Philippines. Islam went out with the sword.

Their hand was against everyone else and everyone else's hand was against Ishmael. It still is today. It still is today. And the Quran, the Quran says fight them at every turn. Fight against those who do not believe in Allah. So now they have a command to fulfill this prophecy.

Alright, we're at the end, almost. The drama is behind us. But now we want to say, what are the lessons learned here? What are the principles to be drawn out? One of them is beware the culture. We live in a culture that has a great many things that are neutral.

Culture, it's been said, is what we do without thinking. We don't necessarily sit there and ponder and contemplate everything in the culture. We do a great many things without thinking. And what is accepted in one culture is not necessarily what's accepted in another.

We have the pictures here of three ladies eating food, one with chopsticks, one with hands, one with a fork. And those are cultural things. While much of our culture is morally and spiritually neutral, we're called to measure everything by God's Word. Our culture has all sorts of things. As a matter of fact, we even have things in our culture dated by time. Oh, that's so 90s, right? And so we get slight nuances of culture become critical. One of the things when I saw this that immediately comes to mind because it's a sharp contrast, I mentioned in the past that my grandmother was a missionary to the cannibals in Fiji.

The cannibals would go out and get meat and have it for themselves, but they'd also sell it. She said you could go to the market in the capital city of Suva and find pig meat and chicken meat and people meat at the market. And so it's one of those things where it was fine according to the culture and they didn't know. But they didn't know it was wrong. Well, when they came to the Lord, some of the people would say to my grandmother, they would say, you know, I know the Lord saved me and he changed me because I used to eat people. But this is one of those things you look at and say, well, of course we recognize that.

The difficulty is we don't recognize everything in our culture. Something may be legal, entirely legal, but not biblical. Something may be a matter of everybody's doing it, but that still doesn't make it biblical. Everything is to be measured by God's Word. Everything.

Here we talk briefly about Eve being tempted to doubt and violate God's directive. And it was then that the tempter, Satan operating through the serpent, But the difference between these two accounts, Eve's and Sarah's, is that the problem was the culture.

The problem was the culture. The culture was saying, do something that is contrary to God's promises. In our own culture, we find that marriage is looked upon as something, it's looked down upon. Even in recent times, it's been very muddied and confused as to what is marriage. One of the other messages that is brought across in our culture is if a woman stays home to stay with her kids, many in our culture look down upon that instead of what Scripture looks upon as exceedingly valuable and a good choice. Our culture oftentimes says that that's less than the optimum choice. So there's a difference between the culture of the world and Scripture.

Increasingly, we're seeing male and female as God created them. From the very first chapter of Genesis, He created them male and female. We're seeing that confused. Our sociologists say that we now have 11 different genders in our society. I won't go through what all those are, but eleven different genders when God intended male and female.

So that's getting foggy and confused. Our culture says that we're a highly evolved animal. That's what our culture says. Something else that our culture can easily get confused, as human beings we can get facts and faith and feelings in different orders. Feelings of various kinds can be very intense. There's no question about it. But the world has been screaming at us through the culture to trust our feelings since World War II. That's been a very prominent message. The biblical sequence is this.

One, spiritual facts spelled out in God's Word. The second, faith in those revealed facts. And third, feelings that follow, not feelings that lead. Facts are the tracks. The facts are like the train tracks. This is what defines where we're headed, where we're going. Our faith is like the driving engine for the train, riding on the tracks, and pulling the train. Feelings are the caboose. We're not saying here that, not to have feelings, we're not saying that you ignore the feelings. It just doesn't drive the train. So, facts, faith, feelings. Another thing that the culture will spell out to us here is this is what a woman is. This is what a man is. The message from this passage here is to Sarah, be God's woman in his life.

So I had to have been aware of God's promise to Abraham. I'm sure Abraham was not quiet about it. And yet, what did she do? Even in spite of the promise, her place was not to go out and look for the world's answer, but to support and encourage Abraham's faith in the Lord's promise. That would have been her place, and not the dictates of the culture. God's woman supports His walk by faith. Abraham, be God's man in her life.

Instead, Abraham did what he felt like doing. Because it felt so right. And he went with the flow. And got along. And didn't ruffle any feathers. And just basically walked by this world's principles. Very quietly went along, just like Adam did. Oh yeah. Crunch, eat the fruit. Passively compliant. He wasn't being a man. Just like Adam had done, he just wimped out.

When Sarah offered to do it, it was perfectly acceptable culturally. It would have been no problem from the culture. Instead of saying, yes, but God said, Abraham instead just did the culturally accepted thing. He didn't lead in love by pointing her to God's promise and God's provision and saying, God will provide. He wimped out instead.

One of the things we've said here is men are to lead by loving and love by leading. Another principle here that comes out, if we mess things up, God will provide a way back. God already intervened with Hagar and had her go back. Fourteen years later, God provided Abraham with the heir that he in fact had promised. He did just what he said. And there were consequences, however, for the errors.

And I think as we look at it, if we stumble, if we head off track, the Lord will indeed have consequences. If we stumble and head off track, the Lord, however, does provide us a path to return to fellowship. He provides us a way back to fellowship with Him. God doesn't forget us and dump us. He doesn't cut us off from intimate fellowship with Him.

Hagar was surprised to see the Lord, but in contrast we are called to behold the Lord. What she saw was exactly what we're called to every minute. She was stunned and shocked, marveling that she lived through it, but God calls us indeed to do every moment exactly what Hagar did, to behold the Lord. Hebrews 12, 2 starts off with fixing our eyes on Jesus. Where is my attention centered? Rather than Hagar's wonder that she had seen the Lord, we can be filled with wonder every minute as we behold the Lord. He is our life. Hagar was wondering that she still had life. The Lord Jesus, the one whom we behold, the one with whom we have fellowship, He is our life.

Ever have an experience you don't like God's way of doing things? You don't like His timing? But God, I wanted it sooner or later, depending on what your preference in the situation is. We see here that God is both merciful and gracious even when we take off with our own human strategies. And there may be consequences, in fact, when we take the I-did-it-my-way approach. But God calls us to walk by faith and not by sight, feelings, etc. Ever get mad at God? Ever do that? Yeah.

The Lord says, I want you back in fellowship. The Lord says, I want you to behold My Son. I want you to walk in fellowship with Me. This relationship is what this is all about. The Lord calls us to behold Him. Let's pray. Lord, as we look at this passage, it is indeed dramatic. And it is indeed one full of messages for us. And Lord, we do ask that you would teach us. We ask, Lord, that you would draw these principles home in our hearts and that we would see them and that we would see that you are ever faithful and that we can trust you and rest in you. And even when we blow it, that you provide a way back. We thank you, Lord. In Jesus' name, Amen.