#DailyDevotion Christians Are Isaac While Jews In Their Unbelief Are Ishmael
Gal. 4:27-31 27It is written: Be glad, barren woman, you who don’t have any children; break into shouting, you who have no pains of childbirth, because the deserted woman has many more children than the one who has the husband. 28Now you, my fellow Christians, like Isaac, are children born by a promise. 29At that time the son born like other children persecuted the son born by the Spirit. And so it is now. 30But what does the Bible say? “Put away the slave and her son, because the son of the slave must not get any of the inheritance of the son of the free woman.” 31Now, then, fellow Christians, we are not children of a slave but of a free woman.
I think these must have been pretty tough words for Paul to write. Over in Romans he says he wished he could be accursed if all the Jews would come to faith in Jesus. You see, he is basically saying here that the Jews who are the physical decedents of Israel, because of their rejection of Jesus are spiritually the children of Hagar, the servant of Sarah. He himself being a Jew must have winced a bit writing this.
Paul is saying the barren woman here is Sarah, for while she actually had a husband, because she was barren, it was like she had none, while Hagar who did not have a husband did have one because she bore Abraham’s first-born. Christians he says are like Isaac because we are born by a promise. Abraham being a hundred years old and Sarah being ninety, there was no natural way they were going to have a child. It was the promise of the LORD that caused Sarah to conceive and bear Isaac. We too, through the promise of eternal life through faith in Jesus and baptism into his name are born of God. Ishmael was born out of unbelief, when Sarah and Abraham didn’t trust God and had Abraham going into Hagar the slave. The Jews who don’t believe the promise of eternal life in Jesus’ name are not born of God. They, like Ishmael are the offspring of unbelief. But the door is still open to any who would repent of their unbelief and turn to Jesus of Nazareth as their Savior.
The unbelieving Jews during the time of the early Church persecuted their believing brethren just like Ishmael persecuted Isaac. They chased Paul from town to town causing trouble. They turned the Roman Empire against them. Their ability to do this over time petered out. Those who called themselves Christian turned the tables and started persecuting the unbelieving Jews instead. This was not and is not a good thing. God has called us children of Abraham, children of the promise, to make the unbelieving Jews jealous so perhaps they might repent and become children of the promise also.
As it is, unbelieving Jews, that is, Jews who do not believe Jesus of Nazareth, crucified by Pontus Pilate, risen on the third day and ascended to the right hand of the Father have no inheritance with us Christians in the kingdom of God. We still appeal to them, as the Church, to repent and believe Jesus is the Messiah, their Messiah, promised by the Torah, the Prophets and the Psalms as we do. We pray the good news of Jesus is preached to them, they turn (shuv), and confess Jesus is LORD, their God. Christians are the children of promise being born of the promise. Jews, in their unbelief, are children of the slave.
Heavenly Father, we give you thanks you have caused us to be born of you, born of the promise of Jesus Christ. We pray the Jews through whom the promises came would repent and believe in Jesus as their Savior and you would preserve us in this faith unto life everlasting. In Jesus’ name we pray. Amen.