Abraham Off the Rails: When Faith Can No Longer Wait

Introduction

In Korean, you can accuse someone of saying or doing a "ttungttanji," something that fits neither the situation nor the way they usually act. Pastor Moon Bong-joo admits he did not know where the word came from until he prepared this message. It refers to the Jerusalem artichoke, "kikuimo" in Japanese: a flower as lovely as a chrysanthemum or a sunflower, attached to a very ugly root. According to him, the word comes from a chamber pot that people used to keep in the bedroom, back when the toilet was outside, in the cold and the dark.

In Genesis 16, Abraham does something of that kind, completely at odds with what we know of him. Hence the title of the message preached at Onnuri Church Osaka: the derailment of Abraham. The verse the congregation memorized that day, the church's verse of the year, gives the key: "Then Jesus said to his disciples, 'If anyone desires to come after me, let him deny himself, take up his cross, and follow me'" (Matthew 16:24).

Between the promise of chapter 15 and the one in chapter 17, Abraham veers off course. The pastor draws three lessons: do not condemn the one who falls, take the narrow way, and know that God restores those who have fallen and uses them again.

Outline of the Message

1. When God Pushes Faith Beyond Its Limits

• Abraham entered Canaan in obedience. Ten years later, at 85, he still has no child. For the pastor, this is a twenty-five-year training: God shapes Abraham until he has the faith to offer Isaac, who was born when his father was one hundred.
• God led them beyond the limits of their faith. "Past that limit, nobody holds up." Their confidence in the promise, firm at the start, begins to waver.
• The preacher quotes Matthew 7:7, which his English teacher had him memorize in middle school, at a Christian school: ask, seek, knock. He prayed for the door of his life to open, and it did not open. "It can happen to anyone, even to Abraham, the father of faith."
• In chapter 15, God makes a covenant with Abraham. In chapter 17, he promises Isaac. Between the two, Genesis 16 tells of the crash. When you let go of the promise to solve the problem the world's way, you pay a very high and unexpected price.

2. Sarai: The Human Shortcut

• The text stresses it: Sarai is Abraham's wife, but a barren woman. Terah's genealogy had already said so: "Sarai was barren. She had no child" (Genesis 11:30).
• Hagar carries two labels: servant and Egyptian. The pastor thinks she was probably among the slaves Abraham received from Pharaoh when he went down to Egypt to escape the famine (Genesis 12). A young and beautiful woman.
• There is the promise, descendants like the stars of the sky, and there is the reality: not a single child. "Faith is filling the gap between the promise and the reality." In a word, faith is waiting. Many cannot do it.
• Sarai is even more impatient than her husband. She wants to act before Abraham's strength fades. Under the law of the time, a child given to the husband by a servant legally became the son of the mistress.
• Her sentence, "Yahweh has restrained me from bearing," betrays a heart resentful toward God: you promised, so why are you giving nothing? It also serves to justify her plan: there is no other solution.
• Why did God allow this pain? To show that he is the Creator, for whom nothing is impossible, by giving a child at one hundred. "Behold, Yahweh's hand is not shortened, that it can't save; neither his ear heavy, that it can't hear" (Isaiah 59:1). The pastor, who wears a hearing aid himself, points it out: God is not hard of hearing.
• "When you knock and nothing opens, do not be discouraged. God is making you wait to turn you into a great vessel, as he did with Abraham."

3. Abraham Listened to the Voice of Sarai

• "Abram listened to the voice of Sarai" (Genesis 16:2). The preacher points out that the same Hebrew word appears when Adam listens to his wife's voice in Eden (Genesis 3:17).
• Common sense would have had him answer: "No, not yet. This is not God's way. Let's wait a little longer." He walked right in without hesitation.
• What a contrast with chapter 14, where Abraham risked his life to rescue Lot! Ten years earlier, in Egypt, he had lied by passing his wife off as his sister, and God had stepped in by grace: instead of dying, he left with riches.
• That grace does not last a lifetime. "Even filled with the Holy Spirit, even after a revival, it does not hold for ten years. Look at it after one year."
• Returning to Acts 1:8, preached recently by a guest pastor, he reminds us that to reach the ends of the earth, you have to cross Samaria. In each of us there is a Samaria, the old self, that "me" with its ideas and plans. Abraham ran into it: "I need a child, and fast."
• First lesson: before asking how such a man could be the father of faith, put yourself in his place. Anyone falls when pushed beyond their limits. "Never say you will not forgive. That is why God tells us to forgive one another."

4. Despised by Her Servant: The School of Self-Denial

• Sarai had waited ten years. Hagar, for her part, becomes pregnant right away. "If you were Sarai, what would you say? That it is unfair." And as soon as Hagar knows she is pregnant, she forgets her station and despises her mistress.
• The pastor cites Proverbs 30:23: among the things the earth cannot bear is a servant who is heir to her mistress, who takes her place.
• Why does this happen? Because Sarai did not deny herself. To deny yourself is to bring your thoughts and plans down, obey the Word, and let Jesus be the master. Sarai acted as the mistress of her own life. So God used Hagar to break her.
• In New York, after a series of Bible teachings, some elders invited him to a very fancy restaurant. It was a Sunday, the place was packed, and the reserved room was not ready. The elder who had made the reservation, a very wealthy and well-known man, lost his temper in front of the owner: "Who did this? Do you know who I am? Do you know who I am in New York?" The pastor told him: "Elder, you cannot do this. I taught you to deny yourself." Those were exactly Sarai's words.
• If Sarai had been mature in faith, she would have said to Hagar: "I set the Word aside to follow my own plan. I could not deny myself, and you are forcing me to. Thank you."
• "When you are ignored or insulted somewhere, do not get angry. It is God at work. What happens to you is no accident, if you have confessed that he is your master." Receive it with humility: this is how a person of faith is formed.

5. Shifting the Blame: Suffering Falls on the Innocent

• "I was despised in her eyes. Yahweh judge between me and you" (Genesis 16:5). Who had come up with this plan? Sarai herself. Yet she puts all the responsibility on her husband, like Adam and Eve in Eden.
• For the pastor, this is "the face of the sinner, which never changes." So do not turn Abraham and Sarah into beings from another world. In chapter 17, God will change Sarai's name to Sarah: she will become the mother of nations. Being despised by her servant was part of this training in self-denial.
• Under the law of the time, Abraham could not drive away a servant who had given him a child. But he steps back: "Behold, your maid is in your hand. Do to her that which is good in your eyes" (Genesis 16:6). Sarai mistreats her, and Hagar, pregnant, flees into the desert.
• When the first button is fastened wrong, everything after it is thrown off. The guilty ones were the couple. The one who suffers is the servant, who had only obeyed.
• The pastor sees in this a picture of current events: a war involving Iran, started by others, whose consequences fall back on Korea, Japan and the countries of Europe because of oil.
• He also sees in Ishmael the ancestor of the Arab peoples, and in the conflict between Arabs and Israel, a pain that has lasted four thousand years and will end only when Jesus returns. "It would have been better for Abraham to keep bearing the pain of having no child."
• Jesus, after forty days of fasting, pushed back with the Word the temptation to turn stones into bread (Matthew 4:3-4). The pastor tells of fasting three days in a prayer house: he hoped to hear the voice of God and saw only the woman selling mung bean pancakes set up at the entrance.
• Second lesson, the most important of the day: "Enter in by the narrow gate" (Matthew 7:13-14). We have no other way.

6. God Restores and Still Uses Those Who Fall

• In chapter 15, God promises the land and descendants. In chapter 16, Abraham breaks away. In chapter 17, God promises Isaac again: only the child born of you and Sarah will be your heir. Abraham, for his part, wanted to make Ishmael his heir before God.
• If the initiative of faith were ours, we would all have perished under God's wrath. "You didn't choose me, but I chose you" (John 15:16). Without the Holy Spirit, no one can believe, and the pastor invites us to give thanks for that.
• "Faith has no shortcut." It always goes through waiting. If you are not standing on the rock of faith, waiting becomes suffocating, and you end up committing this kind of absurd act.
• Last lesson: man falls, but God restores him and uses him again. He made Abraham an instrument of humanity's salvation.
• You too, Christian, can fail badly, be discouraged, be struck by terminal cancer, see your family suffer because of you. "Never despair. God knows we are beings who fall."
• The pastor testifies that God has restored him several times in his life: when he prays, gratitude for that grace brings tears to his eyes.

Key Takeaways

• Faith means filling, through waiting, the gap between God's promise and reality. It has no shortcut.
• When God pushes your faith beyond its limits, anyone can waver. Do not condemn the one who falls, forgive.
• To deny yourself is to bring your thoughts and plans down so that Jesus can be the master. Humiliations can serve this school.
• A human method makes the innocent suffer and can have very long consequences: choose the narrow gate.
• God restores those who have fallen and uses them again, as he did for Abraham.

Personal Application

1. Which promise of God have you been waiting on for a long time, and where are you tempted to take a human shortcut?
2. Is there someone you judge or refuse to forgive, when in their place you might have done the same thing?
3. How do you react when you are ignored or looked down on: with anger, or by seeing it as a chance to deny yourself?
4. Who around you could suffer from decisions you make without waiting on God?
5. After a failure, do you believe God can restore you and still use you?

Verses Cited

• Genesis 16:1-6
• Matthew 16:24
• Matthew 7:7
• Genesis 11:30
• Genesis 12:10-20
• Isaiah 59:1
• Genesis 3:17
• Genesis 14:14-16
• Acts 1:8
• Proverbs 30:21-23
• Genesis 17:15-21
• Matthew 4:1-4
• Matthew 7:13-14
• John 15:16

Frequently Asked Questions

Why did Sarai give Hagar to Abraham?

After ten years in Canaan, Abraham was 85 and the couple still had no child. Under the law of the time, a child born to the servant legally became the child of her mistress. For Moon Bong-joo, the gap between the promise and reality had grown too wide: Sarai could not wait and chose her own method, her own plan, over God's promise.

What was Abraham's mistake in Genesis 16?

Abram listened to the voice of Sarai, the same expression used of Adam in Eden. The preacher stresses that he should have answered: "No, not yet, this is not God's way, let's wait." Then, when the conflict broke out, he stepped back and left Hagar in Sarai's hands, and it was the innocent servant who suffered.

What should you do when God is slow to answer prayer?

Moon Bong-joo reminds us that the Lord's hand is not shortened (Isaiah 59:1). If God makes you wait, it is to show that he is the Creator for whom nothing is impossible and to turn you into a great vessel, as with Abraham. Faith has no shortcut: it goes through waiting, standing on the rock of faith.