Totally: Getting to Know Our Knowing, Present, Capable, Caring GodSample

When Hagar’s son Ishmael was thirteen years old, God renewed the covenant He had made with Abram. This time, God required something of Abram. He told Abram to set his household apart from other people by requiring all the men to be circumcised.

When God sets someone apart for Himself, we call this sanctification. The physical mark that the men in Abram’s household wore on their bodies represented the fact that God had sanctified Abram’s household in a covenant relationship with Him. Abram’s cooperation with God’s requirement was proof of Abram’s willingness to be set apart by God in covenant relationship.

The Bible tells us that God doesn’t play favorites (see Romans 2:11). He loves the whole world the same (see John 3:16). God chose to enter into a covenant relationship with Abram for the same reason He does everything else—for His own glory. This choice also worked for our good. God’s covenant relationship with Abram gives us a specific family to focus on as we consider God’s character and nature and what He does in the lives of those who say yes when He invites them to belong to Him. The Abrahamic covenant is not favoritism because it is beneficial for everyone.

God chose to give Abram a son through his barren 90-year-old wife Sarai instead of working through Ishmael, the son of a younger woman with no history of infertility, to prove that the blessing was from God and not from man. God wanted the glory.

In Abram’s day, inheritance was traditionally passed down through the oldest son. God chose to ignore this tradition and make His special covenant with Isaac (the child He planned) instead of Ishmael (the child Sarai planned) to show that He controls what happens, not people.

Abram loved Ishmael, so God blessed him as well as Isaac. Ishmael was circumcised along with Abram even though God planned to honor His special covenant with Abram through Isaac. As a member of his father’s household, Ishmael remained under God’s protection even though God knew that he would grow up to be a man who looked for trouble. God eventually blessed Ishmael just as He had promised Abram He would.

God’s faithfulness and provision are not dependent upon the actions of people. They are the result of His own giving nature.