Galatians 4:21-31
Galatians • Sermon • Submitted • Presented
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· 27 viewsWe are finishing up Galatians 4 by looking at Paul’s illustrative use of Genesis 16 and 21
Notes
Transcript
Introduction:
Introduction:
For years, the world had been divided into two sides
-On one side was freedom and the prosperity and flourishing that accompanied that freedom
-On the other side was cruelty and oppression, and all of the suffering and despair that accompanies it
-but all that was about to change
-At 2pm on June 12th, 1987, tall, man with dark hair now flecked with gray strode to the podium to deliver a monumental speech
-The power of the Soviet Union was weakening
-The Iron Curtain, as it was called, was looking weaker and weaker
-Ronald Reagan stood there behind the podium and delivered one of the most memorable lines of a presidential speech in our country’s history:
“Mr. Gorbechev, tear down this wall!”
-Within 2 and 1/2 years, the Berlin wall came crumbling down, and the Soviet Union as we know it came to an end
-And although that wall was a real object, it came to symbolize and illustrate something far greater and more significant
-It came to illustrate the oppression and tyranny of the Soviet Union, and the images of that wall coming down still powerfully resonate because of the way it came to symbolize the end of that oppression
Here at the end of Galatians 4, we have one of the most unique passages in all of the Scripture
-As Paul wraps up his defense of justification by faith and then moves into his practical applications of these truths, he chooses to wrap up this section in a unique way
-Like any good preacher, Paul wants illustrate these truths that he’s just expounded for us, and he knows just the illustration to use
-So he goes back to the OT story of Abraham one more time and uses part of the story to illustrate the points he’s been making
-So like the Berlin wall was a real wall, this story is that he references is real and historical
-However, like the Berlin wall came to symbolize and illustrate the fall of the Soviet Union, Paul uses this account in Genesis to illustrate the whole point he’s been making about how salvation by grace through faith, and that the Law only enslaves us
-Now, my sermon this evening is going to be a little unique
-I think the best way for us to understand this text is for us to spend the majority of our time working through the OT story that Paul has in mind
-And as we work through it, I think we’ll see that Paul is not doing some odd, allegorizing of the text
-He’s actually reading it very carefully and contextually and using it to powerfully illustrate and then apply the point he’s been making about salvation through faith, not through Law
-So I want you to work through this passage with me and know that we’re going somewhere with it!
-I want you to be thinking: “what is Paul’s point in using this story?”
And, “how does this apply to my own life?”
OT Background
OT Background
**start with Genesis 3:15
And I will put enmity
Between you and the woman,
And between your seed and her Seed;
He shall bruise your head,
And you shall bruise His heel.”
**Next, move to Genesis 11:27-29 Genesis 12:1-3
Genesis 11:27–29 (NKJV)
. . . Terah begot Abram, Nahor, and Haran. Haran begot Lot. And Haran died before his father Terah in his native land, in Ur of the Chaldeans. Then Abram and Nahor took wives: the name of Abram’s wife was Sarai . . .
We are tracing this line of Eve, and we get to this man named Abram and his wife Sarai
-And the main thing that the Moses wants us to know about Abram (and specifically about Sarai) is that they are unable to have children
-Which then brings us to . . .
Now the Lord had said to Abram:
“Get out of your country,
From your family
And from your father’s house,
To a land that I will show you.
I will make you a great nation;
I will bless you
And make your name great;
And you shall be a blessing.
I will bless those who bless you,
And I will curse him who curses you;
And in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.”
-So this promised seed of the woman who will crush the Serpent’s head is now traced specifically to this man that God chooses named Abram, whom God promises to make into a great nation!
-And through Abraham’s descendents (of which he currently has zero), all the nations of the earth will be blessed!
-So Abram believes God and obeys Him by leaving His homeland
We pick up the story again in Genesis 15:1
After these things the word of the Lord came to Abram in a vision, saying, “Do not be afraid, Abram. I am your shield, your exceedingly great reward.”
Now, Abram is struggling with this, and so he brings his struggles to God
But Abram said, “Lord God, what will You give me, seeing I go childless, and the heir of my house is Eliezer of Damascus?” Then Abram said, “Look, You have given me no offspring; indeed one born in my house is my heir!”
“God, You promised me that you would make me into a great nation! And You promised that You would bless all the nations of the earth through me! That’s great and all, but the problem is that I still don’t have any children!”
So God responds:
And behold, the word of the Lord came to him, saying, “This one shall not be your heir, but one who will come from your own body shall be your heir.” Then He brought him outside and said, “Look now toward heaven, and count the stars if you are able to number them.” And He said to him, “So shall your descendants be.”
And look how Abram responds:
And he believed in the Lord, and He accounted it to him for righteousness.
Now remember, Paul has discussed this already in Galatians:
-Paul preaches to his readers that this promise is really about Christ
-Christ is THE Descendant of Abraham who blesses all the nations of the earth
-And Paul has discussed 15:6, that Abraham believed the Promise about Christ and God justified Him (counted Him as righteous) based on his faith
-But we come down to chapter 16 and we read this:
Now Sarai, Abram’s wife, had borne him no children. And she had an Egyptian maidservant whose name was Hagar. So Sarai said to Abram, “See now, the Lord has restrained me from bearing children. Please, go in to my maid; perhaps I shall obtain children by her.” And Abram heeded the voice of Sarai.
Now, we look at these verses and are horrified and disgusted
-What on earth is going on?? Why would anyone do this?
-And there’s a definite sense in which those feelings are justified!
-Polygamy is a horrible thing that almost always breeds strife in the Bible
-However, there are few things we need to keep in mind as we read this passage:
This was a pretty common practice back in these times! Whenever a woman couldn’t bear children, she would often give one of her slaves to her husband in her place to bear children for them, which is why it was Sarai who was the one who suggested this in the first place
But second, one thing that people often miss, is that nowhere up to this point in the Genesis record does God ever promise Abram that Sarai will be the one to bear Abram children!
-The promise keeps getting reiterated to Abram that he’ll have descendants, but nowhere up to this point does God promise that the child will come through Sarai specifically!
-So for Abram and Sarai, on their part, this probably seemed like a very sane, reasonable way to see this promise come to fruition
-It may have even seemed like a faith-filled thing to do!
-After all, they believed this promise! And because they believed this promise, they were willing to resort to these kind of measures!
Understand this: They were doing their best to bring God’s promise to fulfillment through their efforts
-And that is going to be key in understanding the point that Paul makes in our passage in Galatians 4.
-But when this decision is made, it brings instant tension and conflict
Then Sarai, Abram’s wife, took Hagar her maid, the Egyptian, and gave her to her husband Abram to be his wife, after Abram had dwelt ten years in the land of Canaan. So he went in to Hagar, and she conceived. And when she saw that she had conceived, her mistress became despised in her eyes.
So almost instantly, there is unrest and tension between Sarah and Hagar
Then Sarai said to Abram, “My wrong be upon you! I gave my maid into your embrace; and when she saw that she had conceived, I became despised in her eyes. The Lord judge between you and me.”
So Abram said to Sarai, “Indeed your maid is in your hand; do to her as you please.” And when Sarai dealt harshly with her, she fled from her presence.
So, the story continues
Around 14 years later, we get this:
When Abram was ninety-nine years old, the Lord appeared to Abram and said to him, “I am Almighty God; walk before Me and be blameless. And I will make My covenant between Me and you, and will multiply you exceedingly.”
Same, promise, reconfirmed:
Genesis 17:3–7 (NKJV)
Then Abram fell on his face, and God talked with him, saying: “As for Me, behold, My covenant is with you, and you shall be a father of many nations. No longer shall your name be called Abram, but your name shall be Abraham; for I have made you a father of many nations. I will make you exceedingly fruitful; and I will make nations of you, and kings shall come from you.
So God changes Abraham’s name and reconfirms the promise to him
-But this time, he adds a clarification to the promise
Then God said to Abraham, “As for Sarai your wife, you shall not call her name Sarai, but Sarah shall be her name. And I will bless her and also give you a son by her; then I will bless her, and she shall be a mother of nations; kings of peoples shall be from her.”
God essentially says to him, “I know what you did with Hagar and Ishmael. But I’m going to make your descendants come through Sarai.” And He changes her name too
How does Abraham respond?
Then Abraham fell on his face and laughed, and said in his heart, “Shall a child be born to a man who is one hundred years old? And shall Sarah, who is ninety years old, bear a child?” And Abraham said to God, “Oh, that Ishmael might live before You!”
“It’s not possible! 90 year old women don’t have children! I’ve already got a son God! Just use Ishmael! He’s already here and ready to go!”
What does God say?
Genesis 17:19–22 (NKJV)
Then God said: “No, Sarah your wife shall bear you a son, and you shall call his name Isaac; I will establish My covenant with him for an everlasting covenant, and with his descendants after him. . . . But My covenant I will establish with Isaac, whom Sarah shall bear to you at this set time next year.”
God doesn’t need Abraham and Sarah’s help to fulfill His promise
-He doesn’t need their effort!
-He’s going to give them their child through a miraculous promise that is ENTIRELY dependent on Him
What does Sarah do when she hears this promise?
Then they said to him, “Where is Sarah your wife?”
So he said, “Here, in the tent.”
And He said, “I will certainly return to you according to the time of life, and behold, Sarah your wife shall have a son.”
(Sarah was listening in the tent door which was behind him.) Now Abraham and Sarah were old, well advanced in age; and Sarah had passed the age of childbearing. Therefore Sarah laughed within herself, saying, “After I have grown old, shall I have pleasure, my lord being old also?”
How does God respond?
Genesis 18:13–14 (NKJV)
And the Lord said to Abraham, “Why did Sarah laugh, saying, ‘Shall I surely bear a child, since I am old?’ Is anything too hard for the Lord?
“That seems impossible God! Surely you need our hard work and sweat and effort!”
No He doesn’t. Is anything impossible for the Lord?
So what happens?
And the Lord visited Sarah as He had said, and the Lord did for Sarah as He had spoken.
God fulfilled His promise
-Not through human effort or work or cunning or pulling yourself up by the bootstraps
-No, God fulfilled His promise because He’s powerful and He’s gracious
And Sarah said, “God has made me laugh, and all who hear will laugh with me.” She also said, “Who would have said to Abraham that Sarah would nurse children? For I have borne him a son in his old age.”
So what happens next?
So the child grew and was weaned. And Abraham made a great feast on the same day that Isaac was weaned.
And Sarah saw the son of Hagar the Egyptian, whom she had borne to Abraham, scoffing.
The tension has reached a boiling point
Sarah vs. Hagar
Isaac vs. Ishmael
Human effort vs. divine promise
So what does Sarah say?
Therefore she said to Abraham, “Cast out this bondwoman and her son; for the son of this bondwoman shall not be heir with my son, namely with Isaac.”
And God tells Abraham: do what Sarah says
-Drive out Hagar and Ishmael
-We know that God steps in and protects Hagar and Ishmael and provides for them
-Hagar grows up to be a mighty man and his people become a nation
-But whatever motivations Sarah might have had for her request, she was right: The child of the freewoman and the child of the slave woman could not coexist
-They could not be co-heirs of the Promise
And that is exactly the point Paul is making with his illustration
Let’s go back to our text in Galatians 4 and put it all together
Tell me, you who desire to be under the law, do you not hear the law? For it is written that Abraham had two sons: the one by a bondwoman, the other by a freewoman. But he who was of the bondwoman was born according to the flesh, and he of the freewoman through promise,
Notice that Paul is making the same connections from the Genesis story that we just made!
-Abraham had two sons
-One was the son of the slave-woman, Hagar
-The other was by the freewoman, Sarah
One of these sons was born according to the flesh:
-born according to human effort and devices
The other son was born through promise:
-through the miraculous working of God to fulfill His promise, without the need of Abraham and Sarah’s help to figure it out for him
He goes on:
But he who was of the bondwoman was born according to the flesh, and he of the freewoman through promise, which things are symbolic. For these are the two covenants: the one from Mount Sinai which gives birth to bondage, which is Hagar—for this Hagar is Mount Sinai in Arabia, and corresponds to Jerusalem which now is, and is in bondage with her children—
He’s laying out his illustration for us
One the one hand, those who are trying to keep the Mosaic Law to earn salvation are like Ishmael and Hagar
-These Judaizers are children of Abraham (like Ishmael)
-They’re circumcised (like Ishmael)
They’re trying to make things work through their own human effort:
-If only I get circumcised
-If only I get eat these foods
-If only I observe these rules
-If only I try hard enough and work hard enough, I’ll be saved and be right with God
-They are trying to make it happen through the effort of the flesh!
-They’re the ones who are holding to the Mosaic covenant, the covenant given by God to the Israelites at Sinai
-And in this way, they correspond to the city of Jerusalem in Paul’s day
-In what way?
-The city of Jerusalem, at this particular time, was filled with Jews who were circumcised, descendants of Abraham, who were still trying to be right with God based on their effort at keeping the Law
-And they thought that their circumcision, their being children of Abraham made them right with God, but actually, they were enslaved to the Law still and enslaved to sin
that’s almost exactly what Jesus told them
And you shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.”
They answered Him, “We are Abraham’s descendants, and have never been in bondage to anyone. How can You say, ‘You will be made free’?”
Jesus answered them, “Most assuredly, I say to you, whoever commits sin is a slave of sin. And a slave does not abide in the house forever, but a son abides forever. Therefore if the Son makes you free, you shall be free indeed.
In that way, the city of Jerusalem is a fitting symbol for all these people who, though they were circumcised children of Abraham, were actually still in slavery
But . . .
but the Jerusalem above is free, which is the mother of us all.
Those of us who know the Lord are symbolized by a different city
-A city who’s inhabitants are free
-the New Jerusalem, the heavenly Jerusalem, which is the home of all the true people of God, Jew and Gentile
At this point, Paul quotes Isaiah 54:1.
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.”
Now, we don’t have time to go into all the background and the intricacies of this passage in Isaiah, but let me explain it briefly
Isaiah 49-55 makes up a 7 chapter section in Isaiah about the restoration of Jerusalem
-Interestingly, the only place in the OT outside of Genesis where Sarah is ever mentioned again is in this section of Scripture
-But Jerusalem had been abandoned and punished by God during the Exile, but in these chapters, God promises that He would restore her and bless her
-And right in the middle of these chapters, Isaiah shows us how this restoration is going to take place
-He lays it out in Isaiah 53, the most rich passage in all of the OT about the suffering of the Messiah to bear the sins of His people
-And right after he finishes that beautiful passage in Psalm 53, the very next verse is this verse right here:
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.”
God was going to bring about the salvation of both Jew and Gentile through the suffering of Jesus the Messiah
-And Jesus was going to make His people citizens of the heavenly Jerusalem
-We are children of that heavenly Jerusalem who has given birth to all these people who are now the children of God
-So that’s why Paul can say to the Christians in Galatia, Jew and Gentile:
Now we, brethren, as Isaac was, are children of promise.
-Brothers and sisters, just like Isaac, we are not saved through human effort
-We are saved through a divine promise
-Those who are the true people of God, Jew or Gentile, are saved not through human effort in trying to keep the Law, which only leads to slavery
-We are saved by trusting in the gracious provision of God who gave His Son to save us from our sin in fulfillment of the Abrahamic Covenant
-Isn’t that an awesome truth?
So now what?
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.
To this day, there is constantly a battle between the flesh and the Spirit
-There is a battle between human effort and resting in the divine promise
-There are so many people out there who tell you that you’re saved through human effort:
-Catholics
-Mormons
-Jehovah’s Witnesses
-7th Day Adventists
-Churches of Christ
There one born according to the flesh is trying to persecute the one born according to the Spirit
-Even within us, there is a battle between resting in the finished work of Christ, or trying to earn and secure it through my efforts
-my performance
-my witnessing
-my church attendance
-my giving
-my being a good enough husband, wife, father, mother, church member
and so what does Paul say? What’s the application?
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.”
Just as Sarah realized that Ishmael and Isaac could never coexist together, fighting for the same inheritance
-Even so, works-based righteousness and human effort can NEVER coexist with faith in the promise of God
Drive it out!!!!
-Have a zero toleration policy for trusting in your works
**For the longest time, the US had a policy when it came to foreign terrorist threats:
WE DON’T NEGOTIATE WITH TERRORISTS
And brothers and sisters, much more important than that, Paul is saying: we don’t negotiate with legalism
-We drive it out!
-That means that while we can be thankful when Mormons, Catholics, Jehovah’s Witnesses, and others share our conservative values and stand for some of our morals or vote like we do, we do not blur the true Gospel by throwing our arms around them and just agreeing to disagree
-That means that don’t go around propagating the false idea that there are a lot of Catholics out there who are true, born again Christians
-If they hold to traditional Catholic teaching, then they are not! Because they’re trusting their effort and the effort of dead saints and the effort of Mary to get them into heaven!
-this doesn’t mean we’re unkind to people. But it does mean that we do not waver on the distinction of salvation by grace through faith, and working for your salvation
-We don’t tolerate the legalism that can spring up within our own heart, whereby we think that God will love me more if I just obey enough and try harder
-Brothers and sisters, drive out the bondwoman and her son!
-You’re not right with God because you of how you vote, because of how you dress, because of how faithfully you come to church, because of which preachers you like, because of what movies and shows you watch or don’t watch
-You’re saved because God graciously saved you through His miraculous promise that was all of Him and not at ALL through your own effort or performance
So then, brethren, we are not children of the bondwoman but of the free.
Amen?
Let’s pray
