Robert McLaughlin Bible Ministries
How a man can lose his manhood.
Friday, November 30, 2001
Self-righteous people speak with a pious vocabulary of self-delusion. Sarai had the audacity to call in the Lord to judge this case.
Self-righteous people are always trying to intimidate their victims and Abram is thoroughly intimidated.
Cowardly men are always bullied by nagging women.
Qal imperfect – `amar = other things were unsaid; to reply, to say, to speak, to answer, to think.
Abram cannot stand up to the tantrums and the nagging of his wife.
Typical of so many males today – ignore the problem until it goes away.
Shiphchah – female slave
A few words do not reestablish authority nor does sin solve any problem in life.
Turn to PHI 4:1
Turn to GEN 16:5
Refusal to rebound and take responsibility for your own decisions always results in injustice to others.
Abram now functions on a principle of evil and he is wrong in turning Hagar over to Sarai.
When the motivation is evil, one wrong solution leads to another wrong solution – injustice is compounded and the problem intensified.
Abram, by this second decision, is running away from the problem.
She is self-righteous and jealous.
In your power – beyadhekh = in your hand, under your authority, in your custody.
When Abram took Hagar as his mistress and sex partner, he was not only committing fornication, but he was taking on a new responsibility.
He should have taken Hagar out from under the authority of Sarai and put her under his own authority, since she’d become one with him in sex.
Fornication plus irresponsibility is a double sin.
Abram delivered Hagar to persecution, affliction, adversity, suffering, to a self-righteous and implacable woman.
Up to this time, he’s only been sinful; now he is practicing evil.
Injustice demands injustice is the principle of evil under which he operates = cursing by association.
Abram rejects his authority, falls into sin, sin leads to evil, and it overflows to Sarai, Hagar, and eventually their children.
Man very easily turns cursing into cursing, but only God can turn cursing into blessing, DEU 23:5; GEN 50:20.
Do – qal imperative – asah = to manufacture, to make something out of something.
Commands which he gives to try to bury his own sinfulness; yet the only way he can bury his own sinfulness is through rebound.
When a man refuses to be responsible for the authority God has given him, he not only loses touch with reality, but his decisions hurt others as well.
“do to her what is good in your eyes” = do to her what is good in your thinking.
Once she gets Hagar out of Abram’s bedroom, Abram surrenders Hagar to Sarai, and once she gets Hagar into her own tent, Sarai is going to persecute her to the maximum.
Jealousy motivates revenge.
Self-righteousness plus jealousy equals cruelty.
A man is a fool who lets his wife get away with pettiness, vindictiveness, jealousy, and self-righteous cruelty toward others.
The divine order and the mind and thinking of TLJC 1CO 11:7-12; 1PE 3:7, EPH 5:22-33; COL 3:18-19; 1TI 3:4; TIT 2:5.