Oh What a Change, What a difference Part 2
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This morning we saw that Paul was speaking to the Galatians here and was teaching them that they should not go back to what they left.
Jews were trying to tell the Galatians that they were not saved because they were not living like them. They needed to be circumsized and keep the law.
Paul uses an allegory to teach the Galatians what they need to understand. We too can learn from this and get a better understanding between grace and law. Also the difference between faith & works.
We talked the morning about the two sons, two moms, and a little about 2 covenants.
Tonight we will continue with this and add on two Jerusalems.
Pray - lead us, speak to us and through us we pray.
The descendants od Hagar - Ishmael - moved tp the desert eventually to the east and south of the Promised Land.
They became known as Arabs & the territory Arabia. Mount Sinai is located on the Arabia peninsula.
Between Hagar and Sarah’s sons that modern Arab-Israeli anamosity began 4000 years ago producing a continual conflict between the two peoples who both trace their lineage from Abraham.
Let’s look at the two Jerusalems concept.
And now Jerusalem is just like Mount Sinai in Arabia, because she and her children live in slavery to the law.
Mount Sinai in Arabia corresponds to present Jerusalem.
Hagar/Sinai correspond to “the present Jerusalem” this is a term not found anywhere else in the New Testament.
It corresponds to “stand in the same line” or “place in the same column”.
Throughout the passage Paul was establishing two columns for comparison for us to follow the allegory.
Hagar
Ishamel - son of slavery
according to the flesh
Old Covenant
Mount Sinai
Present Jerusalem
Sarah
Isaac - son of freedom
according to spirit
New covenant
Mount Zion
Heavenly Jerusalem
Both Sinai and Jerusalem are commonly associated with Jews and not Arabs. But the major emphasis throughout Galatians is historical, geographical, social, and all other superficial distinctions have no other spiritual significance.
Spiritual Significance
identity as a Jew, Gentile, or Arab makes no difference.
the only thing unbelievers of any of these groups have in common and damning is the fact that spiritually they are lost because they are not following God.
they are spiritual descendants of Haga/Ishmael - religious slaves who live by the futile power & for the sake of their struggling never attain freedom.
Paul says:
First Jerusalem - present - the earthly historical city by that name.
God chose Mount Sinai as the geographical location of the old covenant with Moses.
He chose Jerusalem as the geographical location of the old covenant would be upheld, propagated and exemplified.
Both locations represent the Old Covenant of the law and works and the bondage they produce.
The Holy City is also the location for the consumation of the New Covenant in the death and resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ.
It is also where the people rejected the New Testament in blood.
The present Jerusalem - like Mt. Sinai & in Arabia where Hagar still lives in slavery with her unbelieving children - self righteous, Christ rejecting, grace ignoring Jews.
Except for a few Jewish people Jerusalem in Paul’s time were in deep bondage of damning legalism.
Judaizers in Galatia were ntrying to convert believing Jews back into the bondage of law keeping. The slavery of the spiritual children of Hagar.
Heb. 12 and see what God has done for us for love!
But the other woman, Sarah, represents the heavenly Jerusalem. She is the free woman, and she is our mother.
The spiritual descendants of Sarah through Isaac - live in the Jerusalem above and are FREE because she is our mother.
That is those who live by faith in God’s gracious promise, given to Abraham were fulfilled in Jesus Christ.
This world is not my Home I’m just passing through...
Christian’s citizenship is in Heaven.
The Jerusalem above from which we await the Lord.
But we are citizens of heaven, where the Lord Jesus Christ lives. And we are eagerly waiting for him to return as our Savior.
You see citizenship is based on a person’s nation @ birth.
Our citizenship in the “Heavenly Jerusalem” as Children in God’s family will not be realized fully until the end of time.
Though we are not home yet we carry a heavenly passport called the Holy Spirit.
We need to live each day at true citizens of God.
This heavenly city which will one day come to earth is now the “city of the living God”.
No, you have come to Mount Zion, to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, and to countless thousands of angels in a joyful gathering.
This is the home of departed believers of all the ages.
Our citizenship in this city is now and this speaks to the reality of the law and grace.
In that bright city, Pearly white city, I’ve got a mansion, a harp and a crown, still I am watching, waiting and longing. For that white city that’s soon coming down.
Heavenly Jerusalem inhabitants are free from law, from works, from bondage, and from the flesh. They are also free to genuinely do good and to please God.
The Holy Spirit not only delievers the believer from the bondage to sin but enables them for the first time to do what is right.
The only way to be FREE is the be Biblical.
Fail to heed the teachings of scripture and you are enslaved.
Freedom comes to those who hear God’s Word and respond with obedient faith.
Jesus said to the people who believed in him, “You are truly my disciples if you remain faithful to my teachings. And you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.”
One day
heavenly Jerusalem will descend to earth (Rev. 21-22).
it already exists even more surely & eternally than the present earthly Jerusalem.
Jesus replied, “I tell you the truth, unless you are born again, you cannot see the Kingdom of God.”
only those born from above (those who have given their lives to Jesus) will ascend to the heavenlies to Jerusalem above.
This is all due to genuine faith
And it is impossible to please God without faith. Anyone who wants to come to him must believe that God exists and that he rewards those who sincerely seek him.
Jerusalem above - counterpart Sarah, the freeborn wife of Abraham.
Temporal Jerusalem - corresponds to Hagar the bond woman.
Paul wrote:
Present Jerusalem - to Hagar - city of servitude held in bondage by Rome.
70 AD - few years after Paul’s death the temple in the city of Jerusalem would be completely destroyed & Jewish people deprived of their national identity for nearly 2000 years.
Paul reminded the Galatians:
that their true spiritual identity was to be found above, not below, forward, not behind, precisely because he knew that believers who find their spiritual (focus on the present) world are “like a company of soldiers who are armed with the wrong weapons, and who are fighting on the wrong front.”
Our focus in this present age should not be to blindly support an earthy Jerusalem but do our part in living and promoting the principles of the Jerusalem above in justice and real peace, that only comes though faith in Christ.
In Gal. 4:27 Paul quotes
“Sing, O childless woman,
you who have never given birth!
Break into loud and joyful song, O Jerusalem,
you who have never been in labor.
For the desolate woman now has more children
than the woman who lives with her husband,”
says the Lord.
These words were written to cheer up the Jewish exiles in Babylon but here the words are applied to Sarah - the barren woman who’s barrenness stood as an impenetrable barrier to the fulfillment of God’s promise to her husband Abraham.
As freedom and fruitfulness came again to the nation. Babylonian captivity so tii it would come to the people in captivity to the law and its death penalty.
Sarah’s barrenness pictures the inability of human beings to bring themselves to life spiritually.
WE NEED GOD!
Paul sets forth the divine power on behalf of Sarah, the captive Jews, and the church.
The common element of all three is divine power of granting freedom and fruitfullness.
Paul read the Isa 54:1 as a celebration of the new state of affairs brought by the death and the resurrection of Christ.
Delight of Freedom
Delight of Freedom
Gal. 4:28-31 address the Galatian believers as brothers.
Paul tells them that like Isaac they are children of promise.
Every believer is like Isaac because:
Supernaturally conceived
Miraculously born
Offspring of God’s promise to Abraham fulfilled in Christ
Those who have begun to sink back into the trap of legalistic Judaism must remember that they are children of promise, who owe their life not to their own effort but to the miraculous power of God, just as Isaac did in the physical realm.
God’s sovereign power of grace gave them life, and to fall back under law was to deny that divine work and to dishonor God.
We have come too far to go back!
Why be a slave when you can be FREE???
The connection from Abraham’s actions to what Paul was directing the Galatians to is that the Galatians needed to cast out the Judaizers and their legalism right out of the church.
There is no room for the effort to earn favor with God.
This way, this idea must be CAST OUT of our minds and totally rejected in ALL that we do.
Conclusion:
Gal. 4:29-31 shows three results of a spiritual Isaac:
The spiritual descendants of Isaac can still expect persecution by the spiritual descendants of Ishamel - born according to the flesh. When Abraham had the feast to celebrate Isaac’s weaning Ishmael mocked the event. He hated Isaac just as Hagar hated Sarah.
The spiritual descendants of Hagar/Ishmael oppose and persecute the physical descendants of the spiritual descendants of Sarah/Isaac.
Salvation by works, trusting in your own performance, hating those who proclaim salvationby grace is no life, do not entertain it!
Legalists have always been persecutors. Those who trust in God have always been persecuted by those who trust in themselves.
Legalism - It is the false religious system of Revelation 17:6 that is “drunk with the blood of the saints.”
2. Spiritual children of Sarah/Isaac will receive an inheritance that the spiritual children of Hagar/Ishmael will not.
But what do the Scriptures say about that? “Get rid of the slave and her son, for the son of the slave woman will not share the inheritance with the free woman’s son.”
Paul sites words of Sarah in Gen. 21:10 to show how those who are trying to keep the law and earn justificatoin will be cast out of God’s presence FOREVER!
The command to “Cast out the slave woman and her son “is an AORIST ACTIVE IMPERATIVE (Past tense action is able to take action in the present) meaning to “drive off the slave girl” and in the context of Galatians would mean “kick the Judaizers out!”
Sarah had Hagar and Ishmael cast outof Abraham’s household so will the unbelieving descendants by cast out of God’s household.
For those who think they are good people and trying their best to do good things and will stand before God on judgement day relying on these things Jesus gives a chilling warning.
Many will say to me on that day, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name and in your name drive out demons and in your name perform many miracles?’ Then I will tell them plainly, ‘I never knew you. Away from me, you evildoers!’
3. Paints a clear picture of Obedience
Galatians 4:31 specifies: although believers are brothers in Jesus Christ and therefore not children of a slave, but of the free woman, they are nevertheless under obligation to live faithfully for their Lord.
Therefore, brothers and sisters, we are not children of the slave woman, but of the free woman.
People expect to get to heaven by being good people—Muslims by obeying the Qur’an, Some people by going to church, Freemasons by being on the square, theological liberals by just existing.
The evangelical Christian must never give the impression that we are all saying the same thing. ‘Draw the line in the sand,’ says Paul. ‘Make clear the differences.’
We are free from sin and shame and we are also called to holiness!
This is the song we need to sing:
Into your presence we come.
Not by the works we have done,
But by your grace and your grace alone,
Into your presence we come.
Tonight I stand here not to say I am worthy or perfect. Because I am not at all any of these on my own. But I stand here before you as an example of an miracle of God. I am covered by His blood. I am worthy because of Him!
Do you have that assurance?
Why not make sure you don’t hear the dreadful words depart from me I never knew you.
Let’s rejoice in the work that has been done because of Jesus Christ!
There is coming a day!
We have no other argument