What Happens When We Don’t Wait on God – Genesis Chapter 16
by Sabrina Dawkins
In Genesis 16:2 Abram listened to his wife, and in Genesis chapter 3 Adam listened to his wife instead of God. And when such an important patriarch fails to listen to God, it can have far-reaching consequences.
Convinced that God would not allow her to conceive, Sarai gave her Egyptian maid, Hagar, to Abram to be his wife. But when Hagar saw that she had become pregnant, she disregarded Sarai, treated her disrespectfully.
After Sarai had thought up the plan of giving Hagar to Abram in order to obtain children through her maid, she blamed Abram for Hagar’s treatment of her after she had conceived. So Abram allowed Sarai to deal with Hagar however she wanted to; after all, Hagar was her maid. And Sarai’s backlash caused Hagar to flee.
The angel of God approached Hagar in the wilderness by a fountain and told her to submit to Sarai. He said that her offspring would be countless. He told her to name her son Ishmael because God had heard her trouble and that Ishmael would be a wild man who would be against everyone and everyone would be against him. This is not a pleasant prophesy. It shows that Sarai’s decision to produce offspring her way and not God’s way will produce a wild man with countless offspring in the earth who will be at war with everyone, yet he will live among his brothers. Abram was 86 years old when Ishmael was born.
Sarai thought that in her old age God would not give her a child, so she took matters into her own hands. When Gabriel was sent to Mary, she too did not think it was possible for her to have a child since she was a virgin. But Gabriel told her that Elizabeth, her cousin, had conceived in her old age, who had previously been called barren. “For with God nothing shall be impossible” Luke 1:37.