Whose Child are you?

Say title: Whose Child are you?

If you are one to take notes there is a question I want you to answer before you leave here today and its this.. Are you a child of the slave women or the free women. And as we unpack this text today I am confident you will be able to answer it. Because answering this question whose child are you is one of the most important questions you will ever answer.

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Main point is verse 31… Believers in Christ are children of Sarah the free women a child of the promise.x2

Paul in the start of this text is challenging the Judaizers and those who may be following them by asking the question, do you really understand the law? The people of Galatia, and Judaizers did not really understand the law or the scriptures, and Paul has over and over again drove home the point that you are saved not by works but by faith.

Paul is bringing to light an old testament story that we have already talked about some detail in our study of Galatians, but now he is doing it by adding 2 individuals that we dont know a whole lot about, but they serve us with a great illustration of the point Paul has been making in the book of Galatians.

Paul in this book has done a fantastic job of using the judaizers arguments against themselves. And Paul in verse 21 really emphasis that if you really want to follow the law, you are not doing a very good job following it. You are observing some of the law but not all of it. Now all the Galatian people haven’t commited full on apostacy,( which means leaving the faith ) but they have been headed that way, and Paul here in this text is going to remind them the scriptures are the law. And they are choosing to not listen to them.

Now to better understand the text today you need to better understand what happened in the book of Genesis. Now its time for the history lesson. Abraham had two sons, and eventually would have more a total of eight ( with another women once his wife Sarah died), but for the argument that Paul is making we must look at 2 sons . If you have been with us during our study of Galatians We know that scripture promised a son an heir for Abraham, but Abraham took the promise that was made by God into his own hands with his first son, the scripture in Galatians says that one of his sons was a slave women, and the other way a free women.

Lets unpack that a bit and look what scripture has to say. Turn with me to Genesis 16:1 Now Sarai, Abram’s wife, had borne him no children. She had a female Egyptian servant whose name was Hagar. 2 And Sarai said to Abram, “Behold now, the Lord has prevented me from bearing children. Go in to my servant; it may be that I shall obtain children by her.” And Abram listened to the voice of Sarai. 3 So, after Abram cad lived ten years in the land of Canaan, Sarai, Abram’s wife, took Hagar the Egyptian, her servant, and gave her to Abram her husband as a wife. 4 And he went in to Hagar, and she conceived. And when she saw that she had conceived, she looked with contempt on her mistress. 5 And Sarai said to Abram, “May the wrong done to me be on you! I gave my servant to your embrace, and when she saw that she had conceived, she looked on me with contempt. May the Lord judge between you and me!” 6 But Abram said to Sarai, “Behold, your servant is in your power; do to her as you please.” Then Sarai dealt harshly with her, and she fled from her.

The slave women was an Egyptian who had no rights, who had no promises, but the free women was Sarah who told her slave that its through you that I shall obtain children , the lawful wife of Abraham told the slave this is how its going to be.

This was not the promise that God had originally given to Abraham and his wife, they took it upon themselves to fulfill this promise.

We can’t help God fulfill a promise that he makes with himself. x2 Hear that this morning… repeat

But God didn’t waste this event. lets keep reading in Genesis 16:7-16 The angel of the Lord found her by a spring of water in the wilderness, the spring on the way to Shur. 8 And he said, “Hagar, servant of Sarai, where have you come from and where are you going?” She said, “I am fleeing from my mistress Sarai.” 9 The angel of the Lord said to her, “Return to your mistress and submit to her.” 10 The angel of the Lord also said to her, g“I will surely multiply your offspring so that they cannot be numbered for multitude.” 11 And the angel of the Lord said to her,“Behold, you are pregnant and shall bear a son.You shall call his name Ishmael, because the Lord has listened to your affliction.12  He shall be a wild donkey of a man, his hand against everyone and everyone’s hand against him, and he shall dwell over against all his kinsmen.” 13 So she called the name of the Lord who spoke to her, “You are a God of seeing,” for she said, “Truly here I have seen him who looks after me.” 14 Therefore the well was called Beer-lahai-roi; it lies between Kadesh and Bered. 15 And Hagar bore Abram a son, and Abram called the name of his son, whom Hagar bore, Ishmael. 16 Abram was eighty-six years old when Hagar bore Ishmael to Abram.

This child was born according to the flesh, The son born according to the flesh happened not by faith, but really by sin. Sarah Abrahams wife the one who also recieved the promises told Abraham to sleep with her slave in order to achieve that promise the God made to Abraham.

Listen to what Martin Luther said , “the principal difference here was the absence of the word of God in the birth of Ishmael: “When Hagar conceived and gave birth to Ishmael, there was no voice or word of God that predicted this; but with Sarah’s permission Abraham went into Hagar the slave, whom Sarah, because she was barren, gave him as his wife as Genesis testifies.… Therefore Ishmael was born without the word, solely at the request of Sarah herself. Here there was no word of God that commanded or promised Abraham a son; but everything happened by chance, as Sarah’s words indicate: ‘It may be,’ she says, ‘that I shall obtain children by her.”

As i have already said before, Sarah and Abraham did not wait for the blessing of God to come they were going to take it into their own hands, and try to make it theirs.

Remember Sarah and Abraham were very old at this time, they had no true heir that wanted that heir so much that they were willing to go against God and his promises to get that child.

It would be 14 years later when God when deliver the promise that he made to them years ago.

In Genesis 21 we will finally see the promise come true. Look with me at Genesis 21:1-7 The Lord visited Sarah as he had said, and the Lord did to Sarah as he had promised. 2 And Sarah conceived and bore Abraham a son in his old age nat the time of which God had spoken to him. 3 Abraham called the name of his son who was born to him, whom Sarah bore him, Isaac.1 4 And Abraham circumcised his son Isaac when he was eight days old, as God had commanded him. 5 Abraham was a hundred years old when his son Isaac was born to him. 6 And Sarah said, “God has made laughter for me; everyone who hears will laugh over me.” 7 And she said, “Who would have said to Abraham that Sarah would nurse children? Yet I have borne him a son in his old age.”

Abraham, and Sarah would have a son, and his name would be Isaac, which means laughter. The promise of God finally fulfilled not by works, but through faith.

And I believe that History lesson was important this morning to help illustrate what Paul is trying to teach us.

Paul is using these two births/two relationships as an illustration of two different covenants.

What is a covenant? is usually is a chosen relationship in which two parties make a binding promise to each other, in scripture we see sometimes God makes a covenant with himself.

In this text the two covenants are law and grace.

In one covenant of the law we have examples. Hagar the slave women. Ishmael who was born naturally without a promise. We have a physical place Mount Sinai where Moses would originally get the law from God. And present day Jews, who are slaves to the law, we have the judaizers who are persecuting the church and getting these people to try and follow the law, and all these things represent the old covenant.

One man said its like an arrow Starting with Hagar → Ishmael → Mount Sinai’s law → Jerusalem → and would make Slave inhabitants!

But the other covenant is different. This is covenant of grace. Its Sarahs covenant, the one promised, with the promised son Isaac, the one that is being persecuted, the one whose children are free, whose inheritance is not this earth but in heaven. This is the New covenant.

Total opposites. One by the Law the other by grace. Even though Ishmael and Isaac were brothers and had the same dad they did not have the same promise.

The reality is you are either a slave or free. You are either a child of the slave women or a child of the free woman. No matter who your earthly mother is you belong to hagar or you belong to sarah.

In verse 27 Paul quotes Isaiah 54:1 and as one man notes, The verse is a prophecy of Jerusalem’s restoration following the years of Babylonian captivity and involves the thought that the blessing of the latter years will be greater than that enjoyed formerly. The pre-exilic Jerusalem and the post-exilic Jerusalem correspond, then, to Paul’s distinction between the earthly and heavenly Jerusalems and the promise itself to the blessings of God to Israel under the old covenant as contrasted with the greater blessings to the church under the new covenant. The one element common to these verses is the supernatural intervention of God in order to establish Christianity. The new element is the suggestion, soon to be fulfilled, that the numbers of Christians will outnumber those within Judaism.

In the case of Sarah and Abraham both in their old age it was going to take God to intervene to give a women who has spend years waiting for a child, a true child she could call her own, not one that was born of another women, but one that was born according to the promise. For Abraham and Sarah the wait. Would be worth it!

Believers in Christ are children of Abraham yes!, but also children of Sarah not children of Hagar. Believers are Children of the free women, not the slave, Children of the promise, not of the law. Not of works. You can only be a true Child of Abraham and Sarah if you put your faith in Christ alone for salvation. There is no other way, you can’t take it into your own hands, you cant say to God I know what your word says, yet I am going to make my own path, because Paul has shown not just the people of Galatia, and the Judaizers that this is not possible, but also to us as believers in Christ.

There is only one way to God and that is by faith, and as I said earlier today We can’t help God fulfill a promise that he makes with himself. And the promise that he made to Abraham did not end with the physical birth of a child for him and Sarah, but was ultimately fulfilled in Christ. The one you put your faith in for salvation, the one through you become a child of Abraham, and a child of the amazing promise that all your sins can be forgiven through him.

Now I want you to answer the question are you a child of the slave women, or the free women. If you answer I am there is some application for you if not hold tight, and I will come back to you at the end.

All believers in Christ will be persecuted. Persecution is not a new thing, nor was it new to the people of Galatia, Paul himself has been at both ends of persecution. Both Persecuting Christians, and being persecuted as a Christian. Paul goes all the way back Genesis 21 to make his point. In Genesis 21:8 and 9 we see what happens, “And the child grew and was weaned. And Abraham made a great feast on the day that Isaac was weaned. 9 But Sarah saw the son of Hagar the Egyptian, whom she had borne to Abraham, laughing.” The term laughing in Hebrew can mean laughing in mockery. He was making fun of his brother.

While it might not seem like the worst persecution ever. It was still persecution.

Jesus himself said persecution would happen. Matthew 5:10-12 says, “Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness’ sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.11 “Blessed are you when others revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account. 12 Rejoice and be glad, for your reward is great in heaven, for so they persecuted the prophets who were before you.

Jesus himself says its a blessing to be persecuted, being persecuted for being a Christian is not fun, but the reward is great.

Think about today believers in Christ who are in Afghanistan. The country at large follows Islam, but there are some believers in Christ there, and reports have already came that the leaders that are in charge are going to go after them, and possibly kill them for their faith. WE have it so easy over here compared to them, even when people de-friend us, or persecute us it doesn’t compare to what is going on in must of the world.

2. The church must cast out those who are legalizers. The example Paul gives is clear he uses the example of Sarah after the exchange she had about Isaac being mocked, which says Genesis 21:10, So she said to Abraham, “Cast out this slave woman with her son, for the son of this slave woman shall not be heir with my son Isaac.”

Anyone can come to church, but not everyone is the church x2 That means that we want to be inviting welcoming, loving on those who do not think like we do, who dont have a personal relationship with Christ by faith alone. While we want to love on them we can’t except other teachings outside of Scripture, because we are Children of God, and children of the slave.

Even though the story happened thousands of years ago, is has so much meaning to this day. Because it makes us answer the question are we a child of the slave or are we a child of freedom. Naturally in the flesh we are in fact children of the slave women, under the law, not children of the promise. BUT through faith in Christ we are children of the promise we are like Isaac, we are going to be in heaven, we can live with freedom, and we get all the promises of God. What an incredible powerful truth, that only comes to believers in Christ.

I said i would come back to where I left off earlier, and this is the time. If you are not a child of freedom you can be, by trusting in Christ alone for salvation, and you can become a child of God. There is no hoops to jump through, no test to take, no twelve step process, its repent, and believe. If the Lord is convicting you of your sin today, and you believe that you can be a child of Freedom by trusting in Christ alone for salvation come to the Lord lay it all down at the cross, and become a child of God.

If you have any other decisions i will be up here and would love to talk with you about them, let us pray!