The Spiritual Saga Of Ishmael And Isaac

Both Ishmael and Isaac had Abraham as their father. The Jews are very proud of their forefather, but the Apostle Paul argues that it wasn’t enough to claim Abraham’s ancestry. The real question concerned, in a spiritual sense, "who is our mother?" Paul is contrasting the story of Hagar and her son Ishmael with Sarah and her son Isaac. The point he’s making is that if our spiritual status is like Hagar and Ishmael, we’re still as slaves and rejected. But if we identify with Isaac, the son of God’s promise, having been born again by the Spirit of God, we’re true sons and daughters of God’s Kingdom. Paul makes a personal application from the story, saying that what was true of Isaac is true of his spiritual successors. So is it all happiness for the future?

Although Isaac was born the child of promise, his 1ife was not a bed of roses. O no, for we read that he was ridiculed by his half-brother, Ishmael. This symbolises the persecution of the true church. Christian believers have always had to face opposition and ridicule. I remember hearing one of my employers pouring scorn on one of his employees: "He’s a bit of a Methodist"! It was an unkind jibe, but one that he could wear as a badge of honour. I don’t know what the circumstances were but the words have remained with me over the years.

It’s not only the godless who despise the born-again believer; there are others who persecute the people of faith. As with Isaac it can be our half-brothers, religious people, the nominal believer. It has always been so. Jesus was bitterly opposed, rejected, mocked and condemned by his own nation. The fiercest opponents of the Apostle Paul were the officials of the Jewish religion. And so it has gone on down the centuries - the Protestant Reformers, the Bible translators, and the non-conformists have all suffered this way from church officialdom.

The last century has been a time of tolerance and freedom for the evangelical Christian in the English speaking countries but it certainly hasn’t been the case in many others. Although the people of Isaac can expect persecution, thank God, like Isaac they can expect to receive an inheritance. God told Abraham that it was only through Isaac that his covenant would be established, and this what we receive through faith in Christ.

In the Old Testament story Hagar and Ishmael were turned out into the desert. Paul interprets this as the exclusion of the unbeliever, whether Jew or Gentile, from those who would inherit God’s promises. The true inheritors of Abraham are the people born of faith, the Isaacs. We may have to suffer persecution and scorn for our faith, but on the other hand there’s the untold blessing of being the children of God. Paul wrote to the church at Rome, "and if children, then heirs, heirs of God and fellow heirs with Christ" (8:17).

The Old Covenant of itself was powerless to save but it did look forward to the New Covenant in Jesus. If we turn back to Genesis for a last glimpse of Ishmael and Isaac, we find that although Isaac had the blessing and inheritance, a gracious God didn’t forget Ishmael. He was a teenager now. The time was right for he and his mother to be separated from Sarah and Isaac and make their own way through the wilderness. It wasn’t long before their supplies were exhausted but then God stepped in on hearing the boy cry for help. It wasn’t in God’s purposes to give him the inheritance reserved for Isaac but God preserved him and made him the founder of the great Arab nation. We must pray that their eyes will be opened to see God’s provision for them in the Lord Jesus. His grace and mercy is open to all, whether Jews or Gentiles. We often pray for the Jews but do we also remember the Arabs?