Galatians 4 Verses 21-31 The Cost of Freedom March 3, 2024

Galatians 4 Verses 21-31 The Cost of Freedom March 3, 2024

Lesson 9 in A Cry for Freedom,

Class Presentation Notes AAAAA

Background Scripture:

· Genesis 16

Main Idea:

· Legalism lets you brag about how good you are. Grace humbles you to realize that only God’s mercy can save you.

Study Aim:

· To understand that when I replace God’s plan with mine, there are always unpleasant consequences.

Create Interest:

· Paul practiced an evangelistic strategy many Christians today reject—seeking common ground upon which we can construct an uncommon message.

· In today’s context, this might involve listening to people we utterly disagree with, reading books they’ve written or read, and taking the time to understand their perspective, as twisted and perplexing as it may be. The late Joe Aldrich’s thoughts on this issue are worth pondering:

o Frequently the unsaved are viewed as enemies rather than victims of the Enemy.

o Spirituality is viewed as separation from the unsaved. The new Christian is told he has nothing in common with his unsaved associates.

§ Frankly, I have a lot in common with them: a mortgage, car payments, kids who misbehave, a lawn to mow, a car to wash, a less-than-perfect marriage, a few too many pounds around my waist, and an interest in sports, hobbies, and other activities they enjoy. It is well to remember that Jesus was called a “friend of sinners.”

· Paul never compromised his convictions, but he never hesitated to forsake his comfort, to think outside the box, or to reach down (or up!) to the level where people were. So, here in Galatians 4:21–31, Paul engages in a method of argument rarely seen in the New Testament, but which would have been quite familiar to his audience: allegorical interpretation of Scripture.[1]

Lesson in Historical Context:

· The way to heaven is not by works nor by the law.

o By faith in the promise of God. God has promised heaven to those who believe on His Son—to those who genuinely trust Jesus Christ to save them because of God’s grace and not because of works!

· However, most people in the world do not believe the promise of God. They still think they have to earn and work their way into the favor of God—that they have to build up a long list of good worksthat will force God to accept them. They think that they have to make themselves righteous by being good and doing religious things in order to enter heaven.

o Therefore, they place themselves under the rules and regulations of the law and of religion, and they do the best they can to make it to heaven.

o This is the appeal of this passage; the person who approaches God through the works of religion and law must listen to what the law really says.[2]

· So, Paul must lead them back to the Bible, indeed to what the Scriptures actually say. For Paul doesn’t think the Galatians—despite their current allegiance to the inflated yet hollow teaching of the agitators—are being half as Biblical as they should be, and not a tenth as Biblical as they presume to be! In fact, from Paul’s perspective the Galatians have failed at the most basic level—namely, they are failing to listen to the Bible.

· Paul thus launches into this new section of the letter with a stinging rebuke in the form of a loaded rhetorical question: “Tell me, you who desire to be under the law, do you not hear the law?” (4:21). Ironic, isn’t it, that the Galatians are ready to embrace circumcision in order to be more faithful to Scripture, yet they fail to grasp the very heart of the Bible’s teaching.[3]

Bible Study: The Cost of Freedom

Galatians 4:21-23 (NKJV) 21 Tell me, you who desire to be under the law, do you not hear the law? 22 For it is written that Abraham had two sons: the one by a bondwoman, the other by a freewoman. 23 But he who was of the bondwoman was born according to the flesh, and he of the freewoman through promise,

· 4:21. The Galatians had not yet totally submitted to the bondage of the Law, but they desired to. Paul desperately wanted to stop them and turn them back to a life under grace. As a transition to what would immediately follow, he challenged the Galatians to be aware of and to understand what the Law really said.

· Vs. 22: By turning again to Abraham (Genesis, as one of the Books of Moses, was considered a part of the Law) Paul was appealing to the founder of the Jewish nation from whose physical descent the Jews traced their blessings.

o John the Baptist and Jesus declared that physical descent from Abraham was not enough, however, to guarantee spiritual blessing (cf. Matt. 3:9; John 8:37–44).

o Paul reminded his readers that Abraham had two sons(those born later are not important to his illustration), and that they should consider which of the two they were most like. One son, Isaac, was born of Sarah, the free woman; the other, Ishmael, was born of Hagar, the slave(bondwoman).

§ According to ancient law and custom the status of a mother affected the status of her son.

· 4:23. A second contrast concerned the manner in which the sons were conceived.

o Ishmael was born in the ordinary way, that is, in the course of nature and requiring no miracle and no promise of God.

o Isaac, on the other hand, was born as the result of a promise. Abraham and Sarah were beyond the age of childbearing, but God miraculously fulfilled His promise in bringing life out of the deadness of Sarah’s womb (cf. Rom. 4:18–21).[4]

Let’s try to explain this in story form for ease of understanding

· To validate his argument, Paul appealed to Abraham, father of the Jewish race. God said to Abraham, “I’m going to bring you into a new land. I’m going to give you a new name. I’m going to make you great. And from you will come forth a people as innumerable as the stars in the heavens or the sand on the seashore.Genesis tells us that “Abraham believed God”.

o Don’t go away…I need to digress for a moment

· We need a quick explanation as this is the essence of how people in the Old Testament, following Abraham’s lead, were acceptable to go to Heaven.

o (Romans 4:3-5) The righteousness which is by faith. Verse 3 says, “Abraham believed God, and it was counted unto him for righteousness.” Verse 5 says, “To him that * * believes on Him that justifies the ungodly, his faith is counted for righteousness.”

o What was it, then, for which Abraham believed God? He believedthat God had found a way by which He could be just, and yet justify the ungodly. That was the underlying principle of Abraham’sfaith—

§ not merely that God had told Abrahamto go out to a country that he knew not of, and that Abrahamby faith went out;

§ not merely that God told Abraham to offer up his son, and that Abraham by faith had obeyed, and was in the process of sacrificing Isaac, accounting that God would raise him up—

§ not that alone……in summary……………….

o The faith that was counted unto Abrahamfor righteousness was the faith that believedthat God’s grace through his faith someday would provide the way to justify the ungodly who chose to believe as he did. Abraham believedthat God would do this and anything short of this kind of faith, God could not have counted unto him for righteousness[5].

§ Now we pick up the story and move on😊

· But when he was eighty-six years old, with the promise yet to be fulfilled, his wife said, “Honey, I realize God spoke to you, but let’s be practical. You’re eighty-six. I’m seventy-six. This promise isn’t going to come to pass the way we thought it would. Therefore, take my slave girl, Hagar, have relations with her, and the child you produce will be the promised seed from which will come the nation God promised you.”

· When God gives a promise, there is almost invariably a gap of time between the giving of the promise and the fulfillment of the promise. And it is in that gap of time that we get impatient. “Time is running out,” we say. “I’ve got to make something happen.”

· Abraham agreed to Sarah’s plan. The result was the conception and birth of a baby boy named Ishmael. Thirteen years went by. Then God spoke to Abraham again, saying, “I’m still going to give you a child.”

o “Let Ishmael live,” said Abraham. “He’ll do.”

o “No,” said God. “Ishmael is not the fulfillment of My promise. He’s only your fleshly attempt to help Me.”

We should pause for a moment and look for some application before moving on😊.

· As I look back over my life, I see that every time I got impatient and tried to help God, the result has always been trouble—Ishmael. Because God is so good, the promise still comes because He’s faithful to His Word.

o But the problem is, I have a bunch of Ishmaels to deal with.

o You see, to this day, blood is shed daily in the ongoing struggle between the children of Ishmael and the children of Israel.

o So, too, in my own life, whenever “Ishmael” is born as a result of my own fleshly efforts, strife, anxiety, and tension are also birthed in my life.

· Push God, rush God, help God out—and you’ll have an “Ishmael” on your hands. Abraham was a great man…………………

o Yet this friend of God, this father of faith, this incredible saint had a problem that God recorded as a lesson for each of us today:

§ He was impatient.

· “Impatient?” you say. “He waited how many years for God to keep His promise?”

o It was at least twelve years between the time Abraham was given the promise and the time he went in to Hagar. But it could have been as many as eighteen years.

o Some of us think, I’ve been waiting eighteen days, eighteen weeks, eighteen months. When is God going to fulfill His promise to me? Abraham waited eighteen yearsbefore he said, “I better help God.” But it was a disaster, nonetheless.[6]

· Galatians 4:24-31 (NKJV) 24 which things are symbolic. For these are the two covenants: the one from Mount Sinai which gives birth to bondage, which is Hagar-- 25 for this Hagar is Mount Sinai in Arabia, and corresponds to Jerusalem which now is, and is in bondage with her children-- 26 but the Jerusalem above is free, which is the mother of us all. 27 For it is written: "Rejoice, O barren, You who do not bear! Break forth and shout, You who are not in labor! For the desolate has many more children Than she who has a husband." 28 Now we, brethren, as Isaac was, are children of promise. 29 But, as he who was born according to the flesh then persecuted him who was born according to the Spirit, even so it is now. 30 Nevertheless what does the Scripture say? "Cast out the bondwoman and her son, for the son of the bondwoman shall not be heir with the son of the freewoman." 31 So then, brethren, we are not children of the bondwoman but of the free.

A picture of spiritual slavery

· Hagar the slave woman has a son who, by virtue of the fact that he is born of a slave, is a slave himself. It is a picture of spiritualslavery.

· In tracing out the details of the picture we begin with verse 25: ‘Hagar … corresponds to the present city of Jerusalem, because she is in slavery with her children.’ Here, as elsewhere, Jerusalem is a symbol of the nation of Israel as a whole.

o Paul is thinking about the Jews of his own day and is saying that they are in slavery. This had nothing to do with the Roman occupation. The slavery in question was a spiritual slavery and was to be traced to their gravely mistaken thinking about the Law of Moses given to them at Mount Sinai (vv. 24–25).

· For one thing, they believed that the old covenant remained in force and that they were still bound to observe the law—even though, with the coming of Christ, God’s way of relating to his covenant people had dramatically changed.

o More seriously, they were endeavoring by means of the law to attain to a justifying righteousness—a use to which God never intended it should be put. The result was a burdensome, lifelong, and yet ultimately futile pursuit of what the law could never give.

A picture of spiritual freedom

· Sarah, the free woman, also had a son. By virtue of the fact that he was born of a free woman, Isaac was free himself. Paul wants us to see in this a picture of spiritual freedom.

· In verse 26 mention is made of another Jerusalem, ‘but the Jerusalem is above is free’. The other covenant is associated with Jerusalem, with Mount Zion—but not the Mount Zion of this earth. Instead, it is associated with the Jerusalem above—God’s own New Jerusalem in heaven.[7]

· In contrast to the ‘present Jerusalem’ (the old-covenant community), this ‘Jerusalem that is above’ is the new-covenant community, that is, the New Testament church and her members.

o She is emphatically declared to be free (v. 26).

§ By grace, believers in Jesus have entered into the new-covenant relationship God promised that his people would one day enjoy with him.

§ God is now, in the highest sense of all, our God—the God who in entering into covenant with us has saved us from our sins and granted us righteousness, peace, and life through faith in his Son.

§ He has delivered us from the power of sin, from the demonic forces which kept our minds in spiritual darkness, from the curse of the law, from the notion that we can save ourselves by obedience to the law, and from all our futile attempts at such obedience. We are the Lord’s freed people.[8]

· Abraham’s marriage to Hagar was out of the will of God; it was the result of Sarah’s and Abraham’s unbelief and impatience. Hagar was trying to do what only Sarah could do, and it failed.

o The Law cannot give life (Gal. 3:21), or righteousness (Gal. 2:21), or the gift of the Spirit (Gal. 3:2), or a spiritual inheritance (Gal. 3:18).

o Isaac was born Abraham’s heir (Gen. 21:10), but Ishmael could not share in this inheritance.

o The Judaizers were trying to make Hagar a mother again, while Paul was in spiritual travail for his converts that they might become more like Christ.

o No amount of religion or legislation can give the dead sinner life.

§ Only Christ can do that through the Gospel.

· Hagar gave birth to a slave. Ishmael was “a wild man” (Gen. 16:12), and even though he was a slave, nobody could control him, including his mother. Like Ishmael, the old nature (the flesh) is at war with God, and the Law cannot change or control it.

o By nature, the Spirit and the flesh are “contrary the one to the other” (Gal. 5:17), and no amount of religious activity is going to change the picture.

§ Whoever chooses Hagar (Law) for his mother is going to experience bondage (Gal. 4:8–11, 22–25, 30–31; 5:1).

§ But whoever chooses Sarah (grace) for his mother is going to enjoy liberty in Christ. God wants His children to be free.

📷 Galatians 5:1 (NKJV) 1 Stand fast therefore in the liberty by which Christ has made us free, and do not be entangled again with a yoke of bondage.

· Hagar was cast out. It was Sarah who gave the order: “Cast out this bondwoman and her son” (Gen. 21:9–10), and God subsequently approved it (Gen. 21:12).

o Ishmael had been in the home for at least seventeen years, but his stay was not to be permanent; eventually he had to be cast out.

o There was not room in the household for Hagar and Ishmael with Sarah and Isaac; one pair had to go.

Note to Soak on

· It is impossible for Law and grace, the flesh and the Spirit, to compromise and stay together. God did not ask Hagar and Ishmael to make occasional visits to the home; the break was permanent.

· The Judaizers in Paul’s day—and in our own day—are trying to reconcile Sarah and Hagar, and Isaac and Ishmael; such reconciliation is contrary to the Word of God.

· It is impossible to mix Law and grace, faith and works with God’s gift of righteousness and man’s attempts to earn righteousness.

A note on History

· Hagar was not married again. God never gave the Law to any other nation or people, including His church. For the Judaizers to impose the Law on the Galatian Christians was to oppose the very plan of God.

· In Paul’s day, the nation of Israel was under bondage to the Law, while the church was enjoying liberty under the gracious rule of the “Jerusalem which is above” (Gal. 4:26). The Judaizers wanted to “wed” Mt. Sinai and the heavenly Mt. Zion (Heb. 12:22), but to do this would be to deny what Jesus did on Mt. Calvary (Gal. 2:21). Hagar is not to be married again.

· From the human point of view, it might seem cruel that God should command Abraham to send away his own son Ishmael, whom he loved very much.

o But it was the only solution to the problem, for “the wild man” could never live with the child of promise.

o In a deeper sense, however, think of what it cost God when He gave His Son to bear the curse of the Law to set us free.

o Abraham’s broken heart meant Isaac’s liberty.

§ God’s giving of His Son means our liberty in Christ.[9]

Let’s move on

· Vs. 30-31: the spiritual children of Sarah and Isaac will receive an inheritance that the spiritual children of Hagar and Ishmael will not. Just as the Scripturesays, “Cast out the bondwoman and her son, for the son of the bondwoman shall not be an heir with the son of the free woman.” The persecutors are going to be thrown out, and the persecuted will receive their promised and rightful inheritance. As Sarah had Hagar and Ishmael cast out of Abraham’s household (Gen. 21:10–14), so will their unbelieving descendants, those who live by works of the flesh, be cast out of God’s household (cf. Matt. 7:22–23; 25:41). No one outside the covenant of grace will receive anything from God.

· Although believers are brethren in Jesus Christ and therefore not children of a bondwoman, but of the free woman, they are neverthelessunder obligation to live faithfully for their Lord.

o It was for freedomthat Christ set us free, Paul says. Therefore, keep standing firm and do not be subject again to a yoke of slaveryto the law and its impotence.

· Considering what Paul has been saying throughout the letter, he also here implies a disturbing question:

o “Why, then, do some of you want to go back to being like Ishmael, who was a slave, an outcast, and separated from God?” It made no sense at all.

o “Thanks be to God,” Paul exclaimed to the Roman church, “that though you were slaves of sin, you became obedient from the heart to that form of teaching to which you were committed, and having been freed from sin, you became slaves of righteousness. I am speaking in human terms because of the weakness of your flesh. For just as you presented your members as slaves to impurity and to lawlessness, resulting in further lawlessness, so now present your members as slaves to righteousness, resulting in sanctification” (Rom. 6:17–19).

· Paul says emphatically that God’s stated purpose for redemption was for freedom of the believer. Christ set us free from the “guilt-establishing and deadening power of the law” through His death and resurrection. Going back into a yoke of slavery is absurd.

o Yet the believers in Galatia were being duped by the Judaizers into considering doing just that.

· The spiritual descendants of Sarah and Isaac should live as they lived, by faith.

o “By faith even Sarah herself received ability to conceive, even beyond the proper time of life, since she considered Him faithful who had promised” (Heb. 11:11)

o “by faith Isaac blessed Jacob and Esau, even regarding things to come” (Heb. 11:20)[10]

· Vs. 31: This verse provides an answer to the central question of Gal 3–4: Who are the true members of the family of Abraham? Somehow the Galatians had become confused, “bewitched,” about their own spiritual identity despite the fact that the Spirit had been abundantly poured out upon them when they were first converted to Christ (3:1–5). The false teachers who had led them astray were prolific Bible quoters and thus Paul announced a series of scriptural arguments in order to counter their heretical views.[11]” Discuss among your group how this approach has clarified your beliefs😊.

To wrap up this little lesson in difficult to understand history, I turned to William Barclay to post his thoughts

· Paul takes that old story and allegorizes it.

o Hagar stands for the old covenant of the law, made on Mount Sinai, which is in fact in Arabia, the land of Hagar’s descendants.

o Hagar herself was a slave and all her children were born into slavery; and that covenant whose basis is the law turns men into slaves of the law.

o Hagar’s child was born from merely human impulses; and legalism is the best that man can do.

§ As the child of the slave girl persecuted the child of the free woman, the children of law now persecute the children of grace and promise.

§ In the end the child of the slave girl was cast out and had no share in the inheritance,

📷 Also, in the end those who are legalists will be cast out from God and have no share in the inheritance of grace.

o Sarah stands for the new covenant in Jesus Christ, God’s new way of dealing with men not by law but by grace.

§ Her child was born free—and according to God’s promise—and all his descendants must be free.

· Strange as all this may seem to us, it enshrines one great truth.

o The man who makes law the principle of his life is in the position of a slave.

o The man who makes gracethe principle of his life is free, for, as a great saint put it, the Christian’s maxim is, “Love God and do what you like.”

§ It is the power of that love, and not the constraint of law, that will keep us right; for love is always more powerful than law.[12]

Grace and Peace as you go your way

[1]Charles R. Swindoll, Galatians, Ephesians, Swindoll’s Living Insights New Testament Commentary (Carol Stream, IL: Tyndale House Publishers, Inc., 2015), 104. [2]Leadership Ministries Worldwide, Galatians–Colossians, The Preacher’s Outline & Sermon Bible (Chattanooga, TN: Leadership Ministries Worldwide, 1996), 66. [3]Todd Wilson, Galatians: Gospel-Rooted Living, ed. R. Kent Hughes, Preaching the Word (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2013), 164. [4]Donald K. Campbell, “Galatians,” in The Bible Knowledge Commentary: An Exposition of the Scriptures, ed. J. F. Walvoord and R. B. Zuck, vol. 2 (Wheaton, IL: Victor Books, 1985), 603. [5]R. E. Neighbour, Wells of Living Water: New Testament, vol. 11, Wells of Living Water (Union Gospel Press, 1940), 49. [6]Jon Courson, Jon Courson’s Application Commentary (Nashville, TN: Thomas Nelson, 2003), 1197–1198. [7]David Guzik, Galatians, David Guzik’s Commentaries on the Bible (Santa Barbara, CA: David Guzik, 2013), Ga 4:24–27. [8]David Campbell, Opening Up Galatians, Opening Up Commentary (Leominster: Day One Publications, 2009), 78–80. [9]Warren W. Wiersbe, The Bible Exposition Commentary, vol. 1 (Wheaton, IL: Victor Books, 1996), 711. [10]John F. MacArthur Jr., Galatians, MacArthur New Testament Commentary (Chicago: Moody Press, 1983), 128–129. [11]Timothy George, Galatians, vol. 30, The New American Commentary (Nashville: Broadman & Holman Publishers, 1994), 348. [12]William Barclay, ed., The Letters to the Galatians and Ephesians, The Daily Study Bible Series (Philadelphia, PA: The Westminster John Knox Press, 1976), 42.