Daily Devotional for Thursday, January 23

Ishmael Was of the Flesh

"Which things are an allegory: for these are the two covenants; the one from the mount Sinai, which gendereth to bondage, which is Agar;' Galatians 4:24.

There is a lot of farming mentioned in your Bible. My experience being raised on a small farm in rural southwest Arkansas taught me lessons from the land that I still use today. Take for example what I call the laws of the harvest. Law number one: you will never bring in a harvest from a field in which no seed has been sown. Law number two: you will never plant seeds in a field and then harvest that crop in a different field. Law number three: you only harvest according to the kind of seed you plant. In short, you harvest if you planted and where you planted.

The laws of the farm share common ground with the principles of the Word. Paul employed this imagery when he taught, "Be not deceived; God is not mocked: for whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap. For he that soweth to his flesh shall of the flesh reap corruption, but he that soweth to the Spirit shall of the Spirit reap life everlasting" (Galatians 6: 7, 8). This truth is simple and yet, so many think they can sow cockleburrs and harvest strawberries.

In today's passage, Paul reminds us that the Law, descending from Mount Sinai, cannot produce righteousness nor life, but can only gender or produce bondage. Ishmael's conception and birth was accomplished according to the laws of nature. His mother was Hagar, the bondmaid; his father was Abraham. These two human beings, Hagar and Abraham, could produce only after their kind. Flesh begets flesh; kind begets kind. When Abraham and Sarah chose to shortcut God's plan of redemption, the result was predictable: the seed they sowed produced a result after its own kind.

A FINAL THOUGHT

Are you looking forward to your harvest? If not, perhaps it is time to be honest about the seeds you are planting. Good seed sown in the right field brings a joyful harvest!

John Nations