This encounter of Christ, the pre-incarnate Christ, with Hagar is a type of his handiwork. If you preach or if you teach a special message to a group of young people or children, and you are looking for a subject, what about this? Here is a classic case of the gospel in the book of Genesis. You can work it out easily. The narrative almost prints your sermon headings for you, they are so obvious. Here is the handiwork of Christ, how Christ dealt with Hagar and it is how he deals with souls today. He is bringing her condition to her attention, her state and her direction in life, and he does it with these well-placed questions.
‘He said Hagar, Sarai’s maid, whence camest thou?’ He questions and opens her mind to her state and condition. He tells her state and condition: who she is, what she has done, where she is running from. That is what the evangelist does. That is our first heading in the sermon to people who are running from God. We open their minds to their condition and the hopelessness of their state. Who you are running from and why? We bring people to reality. ‘And she said I flee from the face of my mistress Sarai.’ So the pre-incarnate Christ brings her to awareness and convicts her.
‘And the angel of the Lord said unto her, Return to thy mistress, and submit thyself under her hands.’ So then, there is remonstrating and a command to submit and return, so that is what we do also. We show people the way back to Christ and to God and how they must return.
‘And the angel of the Lord said unto her, I will multiply thy seed exceedingly, that it shall not be numbered for multitude.’ There is the promise of Christ. So we make people aware of their state and condition. We remonstrate with them. We give them the instructions to return to the Lord, and then we promise them what God will do, and explain what conversion and reconciliation is, and heaven and glory, and we preach these things.
And the angel of the Lord gives this assurance. ‘Behold, thou art with child, and shalt bear a son, and shalt call his name Ishmael; because the LORD hath heard thy affliction.’ You can derive promises from that, and you can see repentance in it also. You can see a glimmer of repentance at the end of verse 8, from Hagar: ‘I flee from the face of my mistress, Sarai.’ She admits it. She confesses it. And down in verse 13, you can see a note of repentance. ‘She called the name of the Lord that spake unto her, Thou God seest me: for she said, Have I also here looked after [or looked at him] that seeth me?’ It is an acknowledgement. This was my case: God sees right into my heart and what he says is true; it is acknowledgement; it is repentance. The well is given this glorious name. So you have got the gospel in the Genesis there in the encounter with the Son of God pre-incarnate and Hagar.