Archived Daily Manna | Rejoice Fellowship | A mission to release people to rejoice in the world.

Message: As we saw in the last Notes, Ishmael being born “according to the flesh” signifies more than simply a biological impregnation. Sarah and Abraham took matters into their own hands, rather than trusting in God to fulfill His promise. One might also find a disapproval of adultery in the sentence, but since God had not yet explicitly forbidden adultery, the idea is tenuous; the definite problem here is not that Abraham was taking a slave woman as a concubine or second wife, but that he and Sarah were taking matters into their own hands. The birth of Ishmael, and the lack of total faith it showed, came back to haunt Abraham and Sarah once God did fulfill His promise, as He had always intended to do. Isaac, not Ishmael, was the child God had promised to Abraham, the means by which his descendants would populate Canaan and be numbered “as stars in the sky.” The Bible does not tell us whether Isaac was the natural son of Abraham, or whether he was conceived by the Spirit of God without Abraham’s seed. Nor does it seem to matter very much; the miracle to which our eyes are pointed concerns the age of the parents. Sarah could no more have borne a child with Abraham than without him. Isaac’s birth is supernatural in either case, without doubt an act of God in fulfillment of His promise. hands in chains Hagar was a slave. Abraham asked God to treat Ishmael as his heir, but God refused, and required Abraham to banish Hagar and Ishmael into the wilderness, which is to say, the desert south of Canaan. Paul calls this area Arabia, and perhaps it was the area we know as Arabia today: for Christians, Jews and Muslims all believe that Ishmael was the patriarch of the people we call “Arabs”. But today’s Arabia is not co-extensive with Paul’s, for he also places Mount Sinai (in the Sinai Peninsula) in “Arabia”. The primary importance of the place names, however, is simply to establish that Hagar and Ismael left a hospitable place (Beersheba) and went south into a forlorn desert (the Negev). This desert is filled with symbolism. It was the land where the Law of Moses was given. Its greatest characteristic is the lack of water, and water itself symbolizes the spirit. Paul’s allegory is powerfully condemnatory of the continuation of Judaism after Christ’s resurrection. The Law of Moses, and its home in Jerusalem after the resurrection of Christ, is tied together with the desert, the flesh, and slavery. Judaism — or more precisely, trying to reconcile oneself with God by complying with the Law — no longer has any spiritual power. Its only excuse for existence has been proven illusory. Ultimately, of course, the “home” of the Law of Moses was the great capital of David, Jerusalem as it exists on earth. So Hagar, Ishmael, the Law of Moses, and Jerusalem represent the desert and slavery, which are all tied together in Paul’s allegory. If we look to Jerusalem as the center of salvation, we must look to a Jerusalem “above” — in Heaven — the holy city of God where we will dwell after Christ’s second coming. Note also that Paul is not anti-Semitic in the sense of ethnicity; it would be rather silly, since he was a full-blooded Jew, a Pharisee by birth. Nor does he single out religious Jews as any better or worse than any other unsaved person. His anger is entirely directed to “Christians” preaching that one must follow the Law to be saved by Christ.