Gods Sabbath

H OW A BRAMAND S ARAI BECAME A BRAHAMAND S ARAH

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God’s Way Unequivocal

It is not sufficient to exercise deep faith in God. Such faith must be accompanied by the intelligent application of correct procedures in a spirit of healthy self-distrust. This is the only way that God’s kingdom can be built God’s way. He has not ar bitrarily decreed that it shall be so, but there is simply no other way that will succeed. In His reply to Abraham’s pleas for Ishmael and the system which had produced him, God inflexibly refused to accord the promised inheritance to the patriarch’s first son. “‘No,’ God replied, ‘that isn’t what I said. Sarah shall bear you a son; and you are to name him Isaac (‘Laughter’), and I will sign my covenant with him forever, and with his descendants.’” Genesis 17:19. Living Bible. By refusing to accept Ishmael, God declared that He would have no part in any program which attempted to build His king dom by trusting in human planning and procedures. Because He alone had the power to fulfill His promises, any human effort to do so would result in dismal failure. As we need to be totally delivered from the thinking which led Abraham to plead for Ishmael, God has provided a record of His unequivocal responses for us to study carefully. Unfortunately we tend to prefer a message that leaves loopholes for trusting to our own sinful devising, over the one straight and narrow way that God gives us (compare Acts 4:12). But this is exactly the way God presented Himself to Abraham. When Abraham pleaded with God to accept Ishmael, God did not make the slightest concession in this direction. Instead, He said that Sarah would bear a son and that the covenant would be formed with Sarah’s son, and not with Hagar’s son. “Then God said ... I will establish my covenant with him as an everlasting covenant for his descendants after him.” Genesis 17:19. Nowhere in this entire conversation did God say that He would establish the covenant with Ishmael. This does not mean that Ishmael could not find personal sal vation, but that he could never be the promised child through whom the Lord would finally bring the Messiah. Yet in His