MEET YOUR MOTHER

INTRODUCTION

Story of Hagar and Sarah

The Woman who never Laughed

I would like to tell you the story of the woman who never laughed.

I. Setting: There once was a beautiful princess and a father of many.

Her name was Sarah. His name was Abraham. Sarah means princess. Abraham means the “father of many.” A beautiful princess and the father of many were married and lived happily ever after—well, not exactly. After Sarah and Abraham were married, the Lord appeared to Abraham. He gave them a promise. The Lord was going to make Abraham and Sarah into a great nation. He was going to bless them. He was going to make his name great. This couple would be so blessed that they wouldn’t know what to do with it. The blessing would extend to all the nations of the world. The tribes from rural India to the tribes of Boston, Massachusetts, would be blessed through the lineage of Sarah and Abraham.

II. Conflict: The beautiful princess is barren.

Abraham was not surprised—after all, his name meant the “father of many.” It made sense that the “father of many” would be the “father of many.” But for Sarah, this was overwhelming news. Sarah had no children of her own. She could not have children. She was barren. Sarah spent her whole life longing for a child. She lived many sad years believing that she would never have a child. But, the Lord delivers the impossible promise of a barren woman having a child.

In Sarah’s day, kids were an integral part of life.

In the ancient world, things were a little different. People lived in close-knit communities. Whole families—brothers, sisters, aunts, uncles, grandparents, and great-grandparents—lived in tents and traveled together as they cared for each other and their animals. It was the way of life. When a baby was born, there was a celebration because that meant there was another set of hands to help out on the farm. There would be one more person to share the workload. In our culture, we work to provide income for our children. In Sarah’s culture, children were inherently the income. Children held a special place in the ancient world.

Not only was this reality a strain on her family, but it was also an enormous source of shame for her emotionally. Many believed that barrenness was a curse from God. Sarah wondered if she was cursed by God. All her friends had growing families. Sarah watched by in despair. Every day she was reminded that the thing she longed for most would be the thing she could never have.

Shame follows us everywhere. It keeps us up at night. It keeps us in bed in the morning. We know what it’s like to carry this kind of shame.

This was Sarah’s plan. She gave Abraham her slave, Hagar. Hagar became pregnant and gave birth to a boy named Ishmael. His name means “may God hear.” Sarah tried to be happy. She tried to laugh. She just couldn’t. She knew something was not right. While culturally acceptable and even expected, she thought back to the promises the Lord told her husband—it would be through them that the promised son would be delivered.

Sarah’s lack of hope drove her to do something against what God had promised. Would God still follow through on His promise?

At this point in the story, Sarah is 89. Abraham is 99. Abraham was sitting outside under a tree and doing what most 99-year-olds do—sitting, waiting, thinking. As he was dozing off, he remembered when the Lord called him out of a life of idolatry and promised that he would make them into a great nation. That made him think back to the time he met the Pharaoh and almost lost Sarah. Oh, and how could he forget his wild nephew Lot?

All of a sudden, he was startled awake by the presence of three men standing in front of him. Abraham was a good host. He jumped up and offered them a place to rest. Abraham bolted into the tent. He asked Sarah to prepare a meal for these weary travelers.

Sarah fixed a beautiful meal. It wasn’t customary for Sarah as the wife to be with the men, so she had stayed in the tent while Abraham made sure to care for his special guests.

“They said to him, “Where is Sarah your wife?” And he said, “She is in the tent.” As the words slipped off his tongue, he thought to himself, “Strange, I haven’t introduced them to Sarah. Wait, how did they know I had a wife? How did they know her name was Sarah?”

In that moment, it clicked—the Lord was in their midst. The Lord said, “I will surely return to you about this time next year, and Sarah, your wife, shall have a son.” Sarah’s ear perked up as she listened “at the tent door behind him.”

“Now Abraham and Sarah were old, advanced in years. The way of women had ceased to be with Sarah.” So Sarah laughed to herself, saying, “After I am worn out and my lord is old, shall I have pleasure?” In that moment, those feelings of heartache and shame filled her body.

The Lord said to Abraham, “Why did Sarah laugh and say, ‘Shall I indeed bear a child, now that I am old?’ Is anything too hard for the Lord? At the appointed time I will return to you, about this time next year, and Sarah shall have a son.”

The woman who had never laughed, for the first time laughed. And this would not be the last.

The woman who never laughed could now laugh. God overcame Sarah’s barrenness and performed a miracle. It is how God has been doing things since the beginning. In , God looks at a barren cosmos and, though it is a formless void, speaks and creates life. After Sarah, God would continue the line of promise through barren women.

So the story is of two sons’ and two mothers - Ismael the son of a slave woman, Hagar; Issac the son og a free woman, Sarah. Basically Paul see’s two pictures in this story, a picture of spiritual slavery, and a picture of spiritual freedom.

By sleeping with Hagar, Abraham was choosing to rely on his own capabilities. He was opting to “work” and gain his son. He was acting in faith: but the faith he had was in himself, and his own “savior”.

The immediate result was disaster! Sarah became terribly jealous of Hagar and the family was wracked with division and sadness. (Not surprising since God condemns polygamy and concubines.)

Note: This is a prime example of what happens when we fail to rest in God's steady unchanging hand of grace and instead seek to be our own savior, the result is havoc and disintegration-spiritually, psychologically, and relationally.

Big Idea: Do you trust in the Steady Unchanging Hand of God?

Paul clearly point out that the false teachers are spiritually descendents of the slave woman, the gentile, the outcast. Their hearts approach to God are like Abraham with Hagar, and the fruit of their lives is like Ishmael.

They rely on their own ability rather than the supernatural grace of God.

The most religious people can be furthest from freedom.

Failure to trust in God’s steady unchanging hand leads us to.........

ILLUSTRATION: What Dietrich Bonhoeffer coined a term that has come to characterize much of evangelical Christianity — it's the term "cheap grace." Cheap grace is in reality a self-imparted grace, a pseudo-grace, and in the end the consequences of living by it are very, very costly.

Cheap grace is not at all a reference to God's grace; it's a contemptible counterfeit. It's a grace that is "cheap" in value, not cost. It is a bargain-basement, damaged-goods, washed-out, moth-eaten, second-hand grace. It is a man-made grace reminiscent of the indulgences Rome was peddling in Martin Luther's day. Cheap? The cost is actually far more than the buyer could possibly realize, though the "grace" is absolutely worthless.

1. The Gospel Reverses the Worlds Value’s bringing grace to our motives.

What are the worlds values? (the indoctrination process of our society)

Faith is a personal private thing. (with little or no bearing on our public life.)

All religions are valid paths to discovering ones own fulfillment. (Doctrine doesn’t matter)

The purpose of life is to enjoy yourself by finding what makes you happy (over against what family, church, or society tell you. )

People can reinvent or recreate themselves to whatever identity they choose.

verse 21 is designed to show those that rely on the law that their position undermines itself. Paul is saying that the very law that they say they follow contradicts them.

What is the motivation behind the worlds values? My enjoyment, my self identity, my personal pleasure, my fulfillment.................

4 Types of People

Law-obeying and law-relying: under the law; very smug; self-righteous, and superior. This makes them touchy, sensitive to criticism and devastated when their prayers aren’t answered. Have much in common with the Pharisees of Jesus day.

Law-disobeying and law relying: These people have a religious conscience of strong works righteousness, but they are not living consistently with it. More humble and tolerant of others. These people may go to church but they stay on the peripheral because they have a low spiritual self-esteem.

Law-disobeying and not law-relying: These people have thrown off the concept of the law of God. They are intellectually secular or Relativist. They choose their own moral standards and then insist that they are meeting them. Paul said in that on a subconscious level, they know there is a God who they should obey. These people are usually happier and more tolerant than either of the above groups. But usually there is a strong, liberal self-righteousness. They are earning their own salvation by feeling superior to everyone else.

Law-obeying and not law-relying: These are Christians who understand the gospel and are living out of the freedom of it. They obey the law of God out of a grateful joy that comes from the knowledge of their sonship, and out of freedom from the fear and selfishness that false idols had generated. They are more tolerant than number 3, more sympathetic than number 1, and more confident than number 2.

Most Christians struggles to live out number 4, and tend to see the world as a #1, #2, or even #3 person. But to the degree that they do, they are impoverished spiritually.

Slave (Hagar) => Freedom (Sarah)

Flesh (Ishmael) => Promise (Isaac)

Mt. Sinai (the law) => Jerusalem (The sacrifice)

Paul gives an amazing argument here. The basic point of the false teachers narrative was: “Yes it is good that you believe in Christ, but you will have to obey the whole law before you can be considered a child of Abraham.

Paul’s basic point is: The moment you believed in Christ, you are a child of Abraham, the heirs of all the promises of God!

And the moment you start to think you have to obey the whole law, you are not the children of Abraham at all!

*When do we rely on ourselves like Abraham did with Hagar to make God’s promises come to reality.

2. The Gospel Reverses the world’s nature bringing Grace to the Barren.

The Worlds nature relies on the survival of the fittest, the strong advance and the weak are cast aside. Whatever the world needs to survive has been provided by the natural world, food, water, shelter.

Paul shows that the gospel of “grace to the barren” does not spring only from his figurative reading of Hagar and Sarah; it is the thread of the gospel that runs right through the Old Testament Scriptures.

So in verse 27 he quotes : “More are the children of the desolate woman than of her who has a husband.” This prophecy was for the Jews who were in exile in Babylon, around 1200 years after Abraham’s time, and 600 years before Paul’s. The remaining Israelites thought there national lives were over and that they would never return home, or have their own country again.

But God say’s to them, through Isaiah: Now that you are helpless, you will see that it is the weak in whose lives my grace works! The strong are too busy relying on themselves. I will make you numerous and great.

illustration: Holding my granddaughter, Evelyn, so weak, so frail, so helpless and completely dependent for on us for everything. This can be one of the most helpless and eye opening experiences of a persons life. Going from taking care of ourselves and now be completely responsible for a helpless totally dependent new life.

God’s grace comes to the weak

The nature of the world thrives on it’s own strength and individuality where the grace of God see’s us as helpless and weak in need of a Savior.

NOTE: God looks down through time and space on two women, one beautiful and fertile, the other barren and old, and He chooses to save the world through the barren one.

Isn’t that how God works. He takes the week and helpless to shame the strong. He say’s the first shall be last and the last shall be first. “Come to me all you who are weary and labor and I will give you rest for your souls.

We serve the God of the weak not the strong.

God’s grace is not just for the fertile

If the gospel is true, it does not matter who you are or where you were. You may be a spiritual and moral outcast, as marginal as the single, barren woman was in those ancient days.

Paul is saying that the gospel of grace is especially for the barren. The able and the “fertile” think they can attain without God, and so they reject the gospel of grace. Paul is saying what Jesus says in the parable of the prodigal son about the elder brother. The gospel shows us that it is the “strong”, moral, good, religious, and self-righteous who, in the end, are the slaves.

God’s grace is for the disappointed Failures.

Sarah is a huge encouragement for those who see themselves and their lives as one big failure.

*NOTE: The bible teaches here that we should not make children our life and worth any more than we should make career or money or power or approval our worth. The gospel cries out that the people who have the most will find that their false strategies of self-worth collapse - and the barren, the poor, the marginalized” can be more fruitful, rich, and powerful than all the rest.

We begin to bear great fruit when we begin to live out the gospel and serve others.

Religion and philosophy in general say that God and salvation are only for those who are good. That’s an exclusive message. The gospel reverses that message turning the exclusive to inclusive.

Lesser known parable of two son’s

One is told by his father to work in the vineyard, refuses, but later changes his mind (v 28-29). The other says he will, but never actually goes to the vineyard (v 30). It’s the first son, not the second, who actually does what the father wanted. The point? “The tax collectors and the prostitutes are entering the kingdom of God ahead of you” (v.31). Why?

This is why everyone from the most Religious to the most non-religious, needs the gospel of grace.

So in our natural state, the motives for both serving God and rejecting God are identical.

In both cases we seek to maintain independence from God by denying we are so sinful that we need to be saved totally by grace. We seek to earn our own value. We are “Ishmael’s”; and Ishmael’s are always in bondage.

The children of the slave - those seeking salvation through law-obedience-will always persecute the children of the free woman, those enjoying salvation-by-grace. Ishmael’s will persecute Isaacs.

History of the Ishmaelite People

In the wilderness the Angel of the Lord also predicted that Ishmael—and therefore the Ishmaelites—would be stubborn, untamable, and warlike: “He will be a wild donkey of a man; / his hand will be against everyone / and everyone’s hand against him, / and he will live in hostility / toward all his brothers” (). After hearing the angel’s words, Hagar returned to her mistress and eventually gave birth to Ishmael.

Later, God changed the names of Sarai and Abram to Sarah and Abraham and established a covenant with Abraham’s son Isaac. But Ishmael also had a promise from God: he would be blessed, too, and he would be the father of a great nation, beginning with twelve sons, the first of the Ishmaelites (). The names of the twelve are listed in ; it is from the Ishmaelites that the Arab nations descended.

As Ishmael grew to adulthood the dissension between

v. 28 Christians should be prepared for persecution. If what we really want is to be liked, then we will never make very good Christians. This should make us wonder if any of us can really be Christians at all?

Martin Luther said, “If someone does not want to endure persecution from Ishmael, let him not claim to be a Christian.”

One reason that true believers are more willing to put themselves out there and face persecution is because they know what God has in store for them.

NOTE: Reminder that those who do not have such a promise:

“But what does the Scripture say? ‘Cast out the slave woman and her son, for the son of the slave woman shall not inherit with the son of the free woman.’” ()

*God casts out the imposter, the imperfect, the counterfeit. The one who is seeking their own power and fame.

Ishmael never received his father’s inheritance even though Abraham asked God to give it to him. God blessed Ishmael in many ways but never gave him Salvation.

3. The gospel reverses the world’s Fears bringing grace to our Freedom

“For Freedom Christ Freed You”

Freedom is both the means and ends of the Christian life.

Everything about the Gospel is freedom. Jesus’ whole mission was an operation of liberation. The verb translated “has set us free” is in the AORIST TENSE (something that happened in the past, at a particular point in time) a single past action that is now completed.

NOTE: some might say: Boy! If I believe that, I’d be able to live any way I wanted!

ILLUSTRATION:

Freedom does not mean the absence of constraints or moral absolutes. Suppose a skydiver at 10,000 feet announces to the rest of the group, "I'm not using a parachute this time. I want freedom!" The fact is that a skydiver is constrained by a greater law--the law of gravity. But when the skydiver chooses the "constraint" of the parachute, she is free to enjoy the exhilaration.

God's moral laws act the same way: they restrain, but they are absolutely necessary to enjoy the exhilaration of real freedom

In that case the Gospel then would seem to remove the incentive to live a holy life. This is why, over the centuries, churches have felt the need to tone down the radical claims of the gospel, trading gospel freedom for a message which aims to stop people living “any way they want”.

Paul wants to show us that the gospel is freedom from fear and condemnation which leads us to obey God, not to please ourselves.

There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. For the law of the spirit of life has set you free in Christ Jesus from the law of sin and death. For God has done what the law weakened by the flesh could not do. By sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and for sin, he condemned sin in the flesh.

So in the most definitive way, Paul tells us that Christians have been set free. Paul warns us that the freedom that we have in the gospel can be lost. It is important that Paul mentions this, because the emphatic, triumphant declaration of the first half of verse 1 might lead us to believe this gospel freedom is so great and strong that it can’t be lost.

Freedom despite it’s divine source is Fragile.

Freedom despite it’s divine source is fragile and can slip from our grasp.

2 Implications

1) To keep our freedom free we must “stand firm”.

There is a parallel here with political freedom. It is well observed that it takes vigilance and responsibility for a nation or group of people to maintain their political independence.

The whole reason the first colonist came to the the America’s was for political and religious freedom. People were willing to go to war and die for freedom. Are you willing to go to war and die for the freedom you have in Christ.

“Be watchful, stand firm in the faith, act like men, be strong”

“Only let your manner be worthy of the gospel of Christ, so that whether I come and see you or am absent I may her of you that you are standing firm in one spirit, with one mind, striving side by side for the faith of the Gospel.

Despite the fact that we already have been saved in Christ, we must be continually diligent to remember, preserve, rejoice in and live in one accord with our salvation. We cannot lose our salvation, but we can lose our freedom from enslavement to fear.

2) To keep our freedom free we must “avoid the Yoke”.

we already talked about how the law keeping religion is slavery. Paul exhorts them to not become “burdened...by a YOKE! It was common in Judaism to talk about taking on the study and practice of the whole law of Moses as coming under the, “yoke”.

The Galatians were in danger of going under this yoke.

NOTE: The shocking word in all of this is “again”. The Galatian Christians had come out of a pagan culture and slavery to idolatry - “the elementary principles of the world.”

Paul is saying that pagan immorality and religious moral-ism are basically the same thing.

These people are never sure they have worth (ie: righteousness).

CLOSING

There are two mothers (Hagar and Sarah), two sons (Ishmael and Isaac), two covenants (old and new), and two cities (the “now” and “new” Jerusalem). The question is, to which of these two do you belong?

By the great promise of God we are free sons and daughters of Sarah: “Now you, brothers, like Isaac, are children of promise”.

“From now on, therefore, we regard no one according to the flesh, even though we once regarded Christ according to the flesh we regard him thus no longer. Therefore, if anyone is in Christ he is a new creation , the old has passed away, behold the new has come.”

He exchanges our sin nature for His righteousness (). We cannot remain as we were and enter into the presence of a holy God. We must “die” to self and be “hidden” in the righteousness of Christ.  says, "For as many of you as were baptized into Christ have put on Christ." Here the purity of Christ is presented as a garment we wear when we repent and accept God's offer of salvation.

Imagine this scenario:

A powerful king sits on his throne, judging the people. Guards attend him, and commoners wait in long lines for an audience. Suddenly, the doors of the throne room burst open. Heads turn, and everyone gasps. There stand two little boys. One is clean, but one is covered in mud and crying. With brazen boldness the unsullied boy tugs the other down the red carpet toward the throne. The guards pull their swords, waiting for a nod from the king to get rid of the intrusion. But the king holds up a hand, and his face softens into a smile.

The first little boy stops at the king's knee and pulls his buddy into the circle of his arm. "Dad, this is my friend. He's scared and hurt. I told him you could help." The king opens his arms to envelop both boys, not caring that mud is smeared on his royal robe. He looks into the frightened eyes of the muddy waif and says, "Any friend of my son's is welcome here. How can I help you?"

We cannot come to God on our own merit, we must be escorted by His Son. The Bible says that in our natural, sinful state we are enemies of God (). But, escorted by the Son, we are welcomed into His presence.

When we trust in the STEADY unchanging hand of God we are escorted by Jesus into the presence of the Father, just like the helpless boy, weak, and barren, covered in mud, full of shame and crying out for help. The father now covers us with his steady unchanging hand he changes our motives, He changes our very nature, and he changes our fears. Do you truly trust in the steady unchanging hands of God?