The God Who Sees Me

Hello, hello. There it is. Sorry, guys, for the wait. I hid the microphone from myself. I'm not sure why.

So I noticed this was empty, so I'm just going to do that. Hang on. Branding. Salt Church. Welcome, everybody, and happy Mother's Day.

Thank you so much for letting me be here. Don't think I didn't notice Leon holding that adorable little baby, and I was like, don't get any ideas. He's really good with babies. He is wonderful with babies, and he was wonderful with our babies. Thank you for letting me be here.

I'm old school, so as you can see, I have actual papers. There's eight pages. That's a lot less than the 15 it was initially, but I remembered that I think I had brought 15 pages a few years ago, and Matt Smith was like, nuh-uh. You've got a set amount of time. Thank you for letting me be here.

Does anybody remember, anybody in here, you know, old enough to remember who Irma Bombeck was? Anyone? Some people? Okay. Well, I loved Irma Bombeck.

She was a strong Roman Catholic lady. She was a humorist. She was a writer, and she had a long-running syndicated column about basically suburban home life and motherhood. I feel like today she'd be run out of town, but she was super, super funny. She was a great lady, and she wrote for decades.

I think her last column was a few days before she died, but she had an amazing Mother's Day column in 1974 that's pretty famous, and it's called When God Created Mothers, and I wanted to just read from that. It's a pretty short little snippet. I condensed it just a tiny bit just to open up our talk today. So when the good Lord was creating mothers, he was into his sixth day of overtime when an angel appeared and said, you're doing a lot of fiddling around with this model. And the Lord said, have you read the specs on this one?

She has to be completely washable but not plastic, have 180 movable parts, all replaceable. She has to run on black coffee and leftovers. She needs a lap that disappears when she stands up, a kiss that can cure anything from a broken leg to a disappointed love affair, and six pairs of hands. Well, the angel slowly shook her head and said, six pairs of hands, no way. Well, that's not even what's causing me the problems, said the Lord.

It's the three pairs of eyes that the mothers have to have, and that's on the standard model, said the angel. The Lord nodded. One pair that sees through closed doors when she asks, what are you kids doing in there, when she already knows. Another here in the back of her head, when she sees what she shouldn't, but that she has to know. And, of course, the ones here in front that can look at a child when he goofs up and say, I understand and I love you, without ever uttering a word.

Lord, said the angel, touching his sleeve gently. I think you should go to bed. Try again tomorrow. But I can't. I'm so close.

Well, the angel bent over this model mother and ran her finger across the cheek. Like, there's a leak, she said. I told you, you were trying to push too much into this model. It's not a leak, said the Lord. It's a tear.

What's it for? It's for joy, sadness, disappointment, pain, loneliness, and pride. Well, you're a genius, said the angel. You can get all that in there. The Lord looked somber.

I didn't put it there, he said. Tears have existed for as long as mothers have existed. Pain has existed for as long as mothers have existed. I know, you thought it was going to be a happy Mother's Day message. And I'm talking about pain.

Pain and tears. But children can bring us so much overwhelming joy. And we love them. I love my kids. If you know me, you know I love my kids.

But they can bring a lot of pain. I love my kids. They can bring a lot of pain. And I'm not just talking about the acceptable pain. Right?

The pain when they are sick. The pain when they get hurt. The pain when they are bullied or mistreated. Or the pain you might experience with child loss. I'm talking about the other kinds of pain.

The pain of disappointment in your child. The pain of a child maybe walking away from you and your faith. The pain of a child abandoning you. The pain of maybe embarrassment over something that's going on. Those are the kinds of pains we don't like to talk about because it doesn't feel allowed.

Right? Because we're supposed to be unconditionally loving. But we have them anyway. Just in our small group this past Wednesday, one of our dear small group members was talking about something she's experiencing with one of her children. And you could just see just the tears that were threatening to fall.

Because she feels so hurt over how her child is currently living. And she said, you know, I gave this child everything. I was there for her. And it hurts so badly when maybe they don't seem to have that same love and care for you. So motherhood is hard.

Having children is hard. And pain is a reality of that. And perhaps no one knew that more than Hagar. Who, if you remember, was Abram and Sarai's Egyptian slave. And that is why the title of today's message, I don't think it's up there, but the title is The God Who Sees You.

And this is Hagar's story. Well, if you know this story, you know that the background is that God had promised Abram at this point and Sarai that their descendants would be as numerous as the stars in the sky and the sand on the seashore. And that all families, all people would be blessed through them. He would multiply their descendants. He would be their God.

He would give them a specific piece of land forever. Big promises. He said, I will bless those who bless you. I will curse those who curse you. But at this point in our story, they're in their 80s.

They're still childless. So things aren't looking good. And in fact, in Genesis 16, 1, it says, Now Sarai, Abram's wife, had not borne him a child, but she did have an Egyptian slave woman whose name was Hagar. Now let's pause for a second and say, where did they get Hagar? Because I do think that's an interesting part of the story.

If you remember earlier, God commanded Abram and his family, I want you to go to this land I promised you. I want you to go to Canaan, the promised land. Well, they got mostly there. They got to Haran, stayed there for a while, and God said, pick up the pace, get on to Canaan. So he did, moved his family to Canaan.

Well, a famine hit. And as happens fairly frequently in the Bible, they ran away. And they ran to Egypt to escape the famine. Not what the Lord instructed him to do. And it all went downhill from there.

You know the story. Abram goes into Egypt. Apparently his wife, Sarai, was a supermodel. She was beautiful, and he was afraid that she'd get stolen or someone would kill him, I guess, and take her. So he came up with the brilliant idea of lying and saying, she's not my wife.

She's my sister. Pharaoh took them in because she was so beautiful, took them into his household, showered them with gifts. And things actually went well for them for a little while. So you could think, well, maybe this wasn't so bad. Maybe things are still going okay.

Okay, well, as happens, the Lord comes in, and he's not amused. And he said, this is not what I told you to do. And he visits a plague upon Pharaoh's house. Pharaoh learns that Sarai is actually, in fact, Abram's wife. And he is inappropriately and outside of God's commands, lied about who she is, and has essentially helped visit this plague upon the house of Pharaoh.

And he says, why would you do this? Why would you lie? Take your people and get out of here. And in the last verse in chapter 12, it's... And Pharaoh commanded his men concerning him, or Abram, and they escorted him away with his wife and all that belonged to him.

Most commentaries would agree that part of all that now belonged to him was Hagar. So at some point he acquired Hagar as a slave, took her away from her home and whatever family she may have had, and took him with her when they left. And Abram's wife Sarai took Hagar, the Egyptian, her slave woman, and gave her to her husband Abram as his wife. Now there are just so many things wrong with this, guys. Not the least of which is this really reminds me of another story where a man listened to something that was being proposed by his wife and it was foolish.

And instead of stepping up and saying, no, that's not what God told me to do. He said, okay, do what you want. That sounds fine. Reminds me of Adam. Anyone else?

This is a recurring theme, and it's a problem. But she also was talking to this woman, giving her to her husband Abraham. It's like, ma'am, you are already married to this man. He's married to, he's yours. He's married to you.

You don't have the authority to do this. Also, Hagar is a person, right? She's not a thing. She's not a thing to be bartered with and to be passed around. Also, lastly, Sarai was a woman.

It was not her place to give away a bride to a man, was it? That was not her job. That's the father's job. But just as Hagar had no choice in leaving her country and her home when she was taken as a slave 10 years before, neither does she have a choice here. Let's just think about it for a second.

This is a woman who would never know courtship. This is a woman who would never be romanced. This is a woman who would never have a man choose her above all other women to be his only and for him to be hers only. She'd never have the fairytale wedding. She'd never be walked down the aisle alongside her father.

She'd never have her dearest friends around to be there and to celebrate with her. She was robbed of that, just like she was robbed of her freedom when she was taken out of Egypt. So in Genesis 16, it says Abram did have sexual relations with Hagar and she became pregnant. But when Hagar knew she was pregnant, she began to treat her mistress, Sarai, with contempt. Then Sarai said to Abram, this is all your fault.

I put my servant into your arms, but now she's pregnant. I thought that was the point. I just back up this train. I thought that was the whole point. And now she's like, wait a minute.

I've been trying. I wonder if maybe in the back of her mind she thought maybe it's Abram's fault, right? Maybe he's the one who can't make the babies. Because I've tried for decade after decade after decade and I cannot get pregnant. And boom, it takes Hagar one time and here she is.

And I cannot just imagine what that would have created in this dynamic. The absolute pain and humiliation and shame Sarai would have felt. And Hagar, she's like, yeah. Because this gives her some power. This gives her some importance, finally, because she's had none.

Look, Abram said, she's your servant. You deal with it as you see fit. So then Sarai treated Hagar so harshly that Hagar finally ran away. Even in today's society, guys, this is not good. You know, a pregnant woman, she's basically, she's the other woman, right?

I mean, she's married to Abram in some sense, but not really in God's eyes. Because in God's eyes, it's one man, one woman. She's the other woman. She's the other woman. So she's the other woman.

She doesn't have because she thinks she's the middle elder Indonesia, She doesn't have a�� Dodgeport. This means you can wear a physician's doctor that kind of She's a slave. She has no skills. There's nothing she can do for herself. She has no money outside of what this family would have given her.

And now she is pregnant and alone in the wilderness. There is nothing. Her prospects are bleak. But, it says in Genesis 16, the angel of the Lord found Hagar beside a spring of water in the wilderness along the road to Shur. And the angel said to her, Hagar, Sarai's servant, where have you come from and where are you going?

I'm running away from my mistress, Sarai, she replied. And the angel of the Lord said to her, return to your mistress and submit to her authority. Then he added, I will give you more descendants than you can count. And the angel also said, you are now pregnant and you will give birth to a son. And you will name him Ishmael, which means God hears.

For the Lord has heard your cry of distress. So he also said after this, and I didn't put this on the screen, that Ishmael would be a wild donkey of a man. But I don't know what that means, really. And I didn't really want to touch it because it just seemed so extreme. So I'm going to let someone else preach on Ishmael being a wild donkey of a man at another time.

Because that's not the point here. Thereafter, Hagar used another name to refer to the Lord who had spoken to her. She said, you are the God who sees me. She also said, have I truly seen the one who sees me? So that well was named Be'er Lechai Roy, which means well of the living one who sees me.

And Hagar did give Abram a son and named him Ishmael. Now if we fast forward about 14 years, based on the ages they give us in the Bible, Abraham and Sarah received their new names and they also received the promised child, Isaac. The seed through which would come all of the descendants, the nation of Israel, and the lineage of Jesus, our Savior. Well, around about when Isaac was being weaned, so he was probably about two years old, apparently he was playing around with Ishmael. We don't really know what they were doing.

The word that is used there could mean mock, it could mean scoff, it could mean play, it could mean caress. It's used in a lot of different ways. Whatever happened, Sarah saw it. It triggered something in her. And she said, no, we're done.

I want her out of here. I want them gone. And she went to Abraham again and said, I want these people gone. Now think about it. Stop for a second.

Because legally, this is her child, right? She obtained this child through Abram. So this is Ishmael's a child of Abraham, legally a part of this family. And she's saying, no, I want him banished too. Well, the Lord told Abraham, just do what she says.

I'm going to take care of this. So Abraham gave her what I would say is the equivalent of a protein bar and a bottle of water, and sent her on out into the desert with her son, who's around about 16 years old. Again, this is even worse. Now there's two fully grown mouths to feed and to drink. And she's got very, very little.

And in Genesis 21, it says, when the water was gone, she put the boy in the shade of a bush. Then she went and sat down by herself about 100 yards away. And she said, I don't want to watch the boy die. And she burst into tears. So she's at the end, right?

She's at the end of her robe here. But God heard the boy crying, and the angel of the Lord called to Hagar from heaven. Hagar, what's wrong? I think he knows what's wrong. Don't be afraid, for God has heard the boy crying as he lies there.

Go to him and comfort him, for I will make a great nation from his descendants. He's saying it again. Then God opened Hagar's eyes. That's the key. He opened Hagar's eyes, and she saw a well full of water.

She quickly filled her water container and gave the boy a drink. And God was with the boy as he grew up in the wilderness. And they did. They were saved. They went on and they settled.

And he did become the head of a mighty nation. It wasn't the same nation that was promised to Isaac, but it was still something of importance. And God did pluck her out. So from this story, I just wanted to pull a few points. I had a small crisis as I was walking up here as I realized that my points, there are four.

And I really like odd numbers. And I wish I'd gone with three or five, but I did not. And so if it feels incomplete, that's why. And it's just going to teach me to live in the incompleteness and be okay with that. The more I think about it, the more I'm really bothered that there's only four points.

And I'm like, can somebody break one of those points into two? But I can't now. It's too late. All right. So the first point I'd love for us to talk about today, and this is really the big one.

God sees you in your pain. The first thing to grasp about this truth and this point is that God is a present tense deity. His name, as you know, is I am. We encounter him daily in the present. And a lot of us will go back to our past, not just to acknowledge it and to reconcile things and to move on, but we want to live there.

The problem is that's going to trigger shame, anger, bitterness, resentment. And because God is a present tense God, if you go back into the past and you insist on living there, you will live there alone because he's not there. He's here. He's now. Similarly, he's not a future tense God.

His name is not I was and his name is not I will be. His name is I am. I personally really struggle with living in the future. I don't know if anybody else does, but I struggle with the what ifs and what's going to happen. And all that brings up, all that triggers, it does not trigger anything useful.

All that triggers is fear and anxiety. That's it. That's really all you're going to get when you live in the future. And God's not there either. He says, I'm here.

I'm here with you now. I am present. So when the Lord, the angel of the Lord says to Hagar, where have you come from? And where are you going? It's not because he didn't know the answer.

And it's not because he wanted her to experience shame or fear. After all, we know he's omnipresent. He's omniscient. He knew exactly where she'd been. He knew where she was.

And he knew where she would ultimately end up. He's already at the end of the story. But it's meant to depict something else. I really think in this situation, just like in Genesis, when God sought out Adam and Eve, when they hid in the garden, and he said, where are you? I think this is meant to show God's sorrow over our brokenness.

I think that's why he's asking. He's like, where are you, Hagar? Where are you going? What are you doing? I think he's simply being present with her in her pain and her brokenness.

Even when we don't know that we need him, and even when we don't want him to be there, he's going to be there anyway. He's going to show up. He's going to be there. This really reminded me of one of my favorite passages, which is Isaiah 43. And I don't know if you've, I mean, we sing songs with this, and I think we pull snippets out of it.

But if you haven't really read it in its entirety, it's super powerful. The Lord is speaking to the nation of Israel and saying, Do not be afraid, for I have ransomed you. I have called you by name, just like he calls out Hagar's name immediately. You are mine. When you go through rivers of difficulty, you will not drown.

When you go through the fire of oppression, you will not be burned up, and the flames will not consume you. For I am the Lord, your God, the Holy One of Israel, your Savior. He said, I will give people and entire nations in exchange for you. Yes, I will trade their lives for your life. Because, and get this, you are precious to me.

Because you are honored and I love you. Do not be afraid, for I am with you. How many of us have moms or dads or people in our lives who speak to us that way? That's really intimate. Have you ever said those words to someone that you love?

I will trade nations for you. I love you. I honor you. You are precious to me. I feel like we'd almost be embarrassed by it.

Like those are not the words that would flow out of our mouths. But that is the way that God speaks to us. That is the way God speaks to every single one of his children. And that is the way that the angel of the Lord was intending to speak to Hagar. He was proving to her, I am not an absent father.

I am here. I am here with you. Even if I have to put boundaries down. Even if I have to tell you to go back to your mistress. Even if it feels like chastisement.

I am here. And I think any fatherless child would say, I would give anything for a dad who is going to give me a whooping. Because it means I have a dad. It means I have someone who cares. And who loves me.

And who is going to rein me in. And who is going to protect me. I don't think anybody would trade fatherlessness for lack of that. And that is what he had here. He was present with her.

He was with her. And I think this is really, really cool. He was asking her these rhetorical questions, right? There is no point. It is a one-sided conversation.

He knows exactly the answers to all of them. But he was asking them because he is engaging with her. He actually cares, guys. He wants to hear from her. In a time when women weren't spoken to, God himself was speaking to this woman.

And he said, I want to hear it from your lips. I want to hear you talk to me. I want to hear your voice. I want to hear you say it. Remember that Hagar was Egyptian, right?

She was not Hebrew. So she was not brought up in this tradition. She was not brought up to follow and worship the one true God. She was probably brought up in an idolatrous home. And it wasn't until she came with Sarah and Abraham that she was exposed to the God of the universe, to Yahweh.

And at this point, we now have two separate occasions in her life, the other woman, the concubine, the slave, the nobody, that the angel of the Lord himself sought out and had a conversation with her face-to-face and called her by name. There is something deeply important about that. There is something deeply powerful, I think, about whatever Hagar's spiritual awareness was and her openness and her ability to converse with the Lord. That is just amazing, amazing to me. And in just those two sentences, he shut down the past.

He said, forget it. He said, this is who you are now. I'm telling you the gender of your child. I'm telling you his name. I'm telling you who he will be.

And he gave her a future. And she could not possibly have anticipated that future, folks, she was a nobody. She was a slave. In no universe would she have thought, yes, I'm going to have a baby and he's going to become the leader of a mighty nation. No man could have given her that.

No woman, only God could have given her that. So God sees you in your pain. Thank goodness. I'm glad that he sees and that his seeing is ongoing. He is a present tense God.

She called him the God of seeing. That's a present participle. It's something that's happening literally right now live. He is seeing you right now in this very room. Just like he saw you this morning in your home.

Just like he'll see you in your car when you're driving home. It never stops. Our second point, possibly the best point, because it came from my husband. I stole it from him. He's really impressed with this point.

And that is that God is completely trustworthy when everyone else in the world isn't. When nobody else, nobody else in the world is in your corner. Because this might happen to you folks. You might live exactly how you're supposed to live and do everything you're supposed to do. You might live exactly where you're supposed to live, but understand yourself.

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. And nobody's there.

And everyone fails you. We feel a lot of pity for Hagar in this story, yet God was not actually cruel to her when he said, return to your mistress. I feel like the knee-jerk reaction is, what? What are you talking about? Go back to this situation?

He's actually instructing her here, though, how to achieve the greatest blessing, despite seemingly impossible circumstances. And here's where the story gets a little bit hard, and I would just ask you not to shut down and, like, shut your ears, because I do feel like this is very, very hard to swallow. It's hard for me to swallow. Maybe it's not hard for you. But if you remember, it said that before Hagar ran away, it said she had treated her mistress with contempt.

And if you actually look at what that word means, it's the same word that was used earlier in Genesis 3 when God said, I will curse those who curse you. It's the same word for curse. So it was bad enough that it was something God said, I'm going to visit my own justice down if this happens to you, Abraham. And this is what transpired between Hagar and Sarai. Now, this is a real-life story.

We believe that this is real, that the Bible is the inspired word of God. And I think this is what makes this a real-life story. Because in real-life stories, there is no Mary Sue. In real-life stories, there's no perfect person. There's no one person who deserves all the good things, and one person who's just the villain, who deserves all the bad things.

And I think we also have to remember that these are snippets from a very, very long life, right? These are snippets from a life that is decades long. We're seeing Sarah at her worst. We're seeing some of these people at their absolute lowest point. And it's really, really easy to say, well, of course Hagar treated Sarai with contempt.

She deserved it. She stole me from my home. She treated me horribly when what happened was exactly what she wanted to happen. And she kicked me out of her house. She deserves it.

But that's not for us to decide. We don't get to do that. As much as we want it to happen, we're not the judge. And sometimes really crappy things are going to happen to you. And the person who did them to you is going to succeed anyway, and maybe have a great life and make a ton of money.

And it looks like everything's great. And you're going to go, it's not fair. And it's not. Guess what? It's not.

It's not fair. But every single one of us deserves nothing but death and separation from the Lord. We were born that way, guys. We were born that way, and there's nothing we can do good enough to get past that. And I think what God was trying to say to Hagar is this isn't about Sarai.

This isn't about Abram. This is about me and you. This is only about me and you, little girl, right now. This is you. You're my baby.

You're my child. I'm talking to you. And I've got something from you. And I need you to forget this other stuff that's going on. Let me deal with it.

I am the Lord. I am the Lord, your God, the Savior. This is our relationship. Because at the end of the day, moms or non-moms, our kids aren't going to get us there. We can't put our identity in our children.

We can't put our identity in our husbands. We can't put our identities in anything except Jesus Christ. That's an up and down relationship. And guys, you know, if you're alone and you're lonely or you have a huge family, it doesn't matter. You are the same.

It is the great equalizer. It is the leveler. God came to Hagar, a nobody, the other woman. This is not. This is someone today we would shun too.

Let's be real. We're not that enlightened. And he went up to her and he's like, this is about me and you. When you are in the desert of doubt, the Lord is the trustworthy one. He can open your eyes.

He can open your eyes. Just, you have to have enough faith to say, do I trust Jesus? Do I trust Jesus? Do I trust Jesus? Do I trust Jesus?

Do I trust Jesus? Do I trust Jesus? Do I trust you, even though you're telling me to do the unthinkable? And that takes huge faith, guys, and Hagar did it. She did it without question.

She said, yes, you are the God who sees me. I will go back. And she turned around and she went back. It's amazing. She didn't persist in her course.

She said yes. Third point, God seeks out the lost and hears the cries of the suffering. This one should be apparent. Guys, if you have not read the Bible, you may not know that God actively goes out and seeks. The marginalized, the poor, the needy.

It doesn't matter who you are. It doesn't matter who your parents are. It doesn't matter what you look like. Maybe you don't smell good. He comes after you, too.

Jew, Gentile, doesn't matter. Rich, poor, he loves you rich people, too. I know. When you suffer, he is there. He heard her cry, and immediately, when the boy started crying, he said, I hear you.

I hear him. I am with you. I hear you, and I hear him, and I'm going to show you a way out of this. And he opened her eyes. I think it's actually really important that everybody who suffers feels seen by the Lord, because I think we have certain ways of suffering that are more acceptable than others, right?

We feel more empathy for certain people who suffer in a certain way versus people who suffer in another way. But I've got to tell you guys, there are moms out there today who have all the children they could want, and they have a handsome husband with a great job and who takes care of them, and they have a great car and a great home, and they look like they have it all together. And guys, they go home, and they sit in their closets, and they cry, and they're sad, and they don't know why, and they don't feel like they can tell that to anybody, because they say, well, I've got all these things. I don't have any right to be sad. I don't have any right to suffer.

Yes, you do. You don't need a right. You're just who you are, and God sees you. God sees the Sarah who can't conceive. God sees the woman who doesn't want to conceive, and she feels like, am I still feminine?

Am I still a woman? Because I don't want children? He sees you, too. He sees all of us, and I just don't want us to paint suffering as this templated thing that only looks one way, because no matter who you encounter, I guarantee they've suffered at some point. Maybe they're suffering now, but the present God is with them, and this just goes back to the fact that Hagar may have called him the God who sees, but ultimately what happened is that God was calling her to see.

He said, open your eyes and look at this well. Open your eyes. The problem is we're just not often ready to see what God has for us, so he's asking, the God of seeing is asking you to open your eyes, and that just leads me to my last point, trying to bring it home. Sorry, guys. This is point four, not five.

The father is seeking the woman at the well. What I love about this story is that God is not only calling Hagar to return to Sarai and Abram. To demonstrate his love for her, he makes an additional promise to her son, to a foreign woman. He extends a portion of the blessing that was promised to Abram. And to explain why this interaction between the angel of the Lord and Hagar is so important, we have to talk about who exactly that angel is.

The angel of the Lord, the translation of that, is a messenger of Yahweh. It's the only angel, the only messenger in the Bible who has that title. And the story of Hagar illustrates the complex way that the angel of the Lord is portrayed. Because you see, in those verses, if you remember, at various points, the angel speaks in a... Now, Hagar knew immediately that she was talking to God, but I think if we read this, especially if we're ready to find holes, right, and we're ready, we want to poke holes in things, we say, well, that's a discrepancy.

Is it Yahweh, or is it distinct from Yahweh? Which is it? Is it God, or is it a messenger of God? Well, we've seen this somewhere else in the Bible, haven't we? When Jesus Christ says, I am one with the Father, and I am the Son.

So the answer is, it's both. It is Yahweh, and it is distinct from Yahweh. Anyway, it's a really purposeful illustration, guys, to show us that God is a diverse, yet unified community of love. That is who He is, at His core. A diverse, yet unified community of love.

It's why we're meant to live in community, and we're not meant to be alone. But we have to understand that to understand the Trinity. So what we see in the angel of the Lord is ultimately brought to fruition and beautiful reality in the person of Jesus, who draws near to us in order to draw us back to God. So just as the angel of the Lord found an Egyptian woman, a foreign slave, at a well in the wilderness on the way to Shur, so Jesus sought out and found a different foreign woman at a well in Samaria. I think the parallels are supposed to be very obvious here.

Just as the angel of the Lord went up to Hagar and said, I know who you are, I know where you've been, Jesus went up to the Samaritan woman and said, I know exactly everything you've ever done. I know you. He asked her leading questions, right, and he just sat down. He was like, hey, can I have a drink? Yeah, we're just going to chill, just like a cup of water.

And then he proceeds to blow her mind, tell her everything she's ever known. And this was huge. Just as it was a big deal for the angel of the Lord to speak to Hagar, it was a big deal for Jesus to speak to a woman, any woman. Jewish men did not speak to women in public. It was not done.

It wasn't appropriate. Jesus did it all the time. He sought out women all the time, and he talked to them. His disciples, it says they were amazed. You're talking to this woman.

We don't know how to talk to ladies. Yeah, it's your problem. So, Jesus, and he spoke to women with affection. He called them daughter. He called them mother.

He called them woman. He spoke to them with affection. But the most important connection here to Hagar's story is that Jesus was calling that Samaritan woman back to salvation. The salvation that God had promised to the offspring of Abraham because salvation comes from the Jews. So, just as the angel of the Lord was drawing Hagar back to the line of Abraham, to the salvation that would come from the Jews, Jesus was calling this foreign woman, this Samaritan, to come back to this salvation.

But that's not all he did. Then he turned around, and he dropped a huge truth bomb on this woman. This was a woman who, again, not the kind people probably spoke kindly about. She'd had five husbands and was working on her sixth. I mean, that's, we'd blink at that now.

Who has the time? I mean, and back then, can you imagine? And he said, I got something for you. I'm going to change your world. I'm going to rock your world right now.

And he said, I want you to be a true worshiper. I'm calling you to something specific. And John 4, 21 and 24 says, But the hour is coming and is now here when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth. For the Father is seeking such people to worship him. God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and in truth.

He was telling her that it doesn't matter who you are, and it doesn't matter where you've been. It doesn't matter who your parents are. It doesn't matter who your kids are, or even if you had kids. Mothers, non-mothers. Jesus and the angel of the Lord was calling us to a deep and affectionate...

worship of our Father. Just you. You specifically. You. He's talking to you and no one else.

Charles Spurgeon once said that you are looked at by God as much as if throughout space there were not another creature but yourself. This is the grace of our God. That his heart beats for the outsider, for the poor, for the foreign, for the woman who is covered in shame and disappointment and anger and resentment. He's talking to the slave. Whether you are a slave by circumstance or you are a slave to your own choices in your own mind, he's talking to you.

Jesus sees you and he's calling you. And just as the angel asked Hagar to return to her mistress, Jesus asked you to return to your master. He's waiting and he's watching with open arms. So if you see or if you hear nothing else today, I just want you to know that God sees you. He sees you now.

He's not going to close his eyes. All he wants, I think, is for you to see him too. Thank you. Thank you, Father, so much for the gift of Mother's Day. Thank you for our mothers.

Thank you for all the women in our lives who, even if they were not our biological mothers, they're our spiritual mothers. God, I thank you for the women who have always wanted to be mothers and could not, but they still live in that motherhood nature and other ways to bring you glory. I thank you, God, for every man, woman and child who wants to be seen in their pain and their suffering. And I thank you for seeing them when no one else sees them. And God, I ask that you would miraculously open up the eyes of their heart so that they could see you too and they could see the plan that you have for them.

Because it might be something so different, but so much bigger and so much better than the plan they have for themselves. Give them the faith and the strength and the courage to see that.