06: The Call of Abraham - Flesh Against the Spirit

The Present Truth : June 11, 1896

“Now Sarai Abram’s wife bare him no children; and she had an handmaid, an Egyptian, whose name was Hagar. And Sarai said unto Abram, behold now, the Lord hath restrained me from bearing; I pray thee go in unto my maid; it may be that I may obtain children by her.  And Abram hearkened unto the voice of Sarai.”

This was the great mistake of Abraham’s life; but he learned a lesson from his mistake, and it was recorded for the purpose of teaching that lesson to all. We will presume that the reader is acquainted with the sequel—how the Lord told Abraham that Ishmael, the son of Hagar was not the heir that He had promised, but that Sarah his wife should bear him a son, and how Hagar and Ishmael were sent away, after Isaac was born. So we may proceed at once to some of the important lessons that are suggested by this transaction.

In the first place, we should learn the folly of man’s trying to fulfill the promises of God. God had promised to Abraham an innumerable seed. When the promise was made, it was beyond all human possibility that Abraham should have a son by his wife, but he accepted the word of the Lord, and his faith was counted to him for righteousness. This in itself was evidence that the seed was not to be an ordinary seed, but that it was to be a seed of faith.

But his wife had not the faith that he had. Yet she thought that she had faith, and even Abraham doubtless thought that in carrying out her advice he was working in harmony with the word of the Lord. The mistake was in harkening to the voice of his wife, instead of to the Lord. They reasoned that God had promised them a large family, but that since it was impossible for her to have children, it was very evident that He intended that they should devise some other means of bringing it about. Thus it is that human reason deals with the promises of God.

Yet how shortsighted the whole thing was. God had made the promise; therefore He alone could fulfill it. If a man makes a promise, the thing promised may be performed by another, but in that case the one who made the promise fails to carry out his word. So even though that which the Lord had promised could have been gained by the device, which was adopted, the result would have been to shut the Lord out from fulfilling His word. They were therefore working against God. But His promises cannot be performed by man. In Christ alone can they be performed. It is easy enough for us all to see this in the case before us; yet how often, in our own experience, instead of waiting for the Lord to do what He has promised, we become tired of waiting, and try to do it for Him, and thus make failures.