Bond - or free?

Good morning. As we take a look at this passage this morning, I'd like to just have a brief intro first. Believe it or not, the year is moving on. You may have noticed that, but it is. And we're actually looking ahead here in a few weeks to the last quarter of this year. What we're going to be doing is making a change in a couple of the electives. What we're going to be doing is continuing on with the principle and principles of grace that will continue to meet in here and continue with the teachers that are there through the end of this year. And then they'll be starting a new elective in First Thessalonians, and that will have four teachers, as you see listed here. First Thessalonians are a really neat book, and it's got a unique message. I've been amazed at the things that are in it. Next, we'll have How to Study the Bible. This will be a very concise, one-quarter look at all the details here.

And so then we'll have all three electives ending in December, all three electives then beginning new. We have to decide what those are. But all three electives beginning new in January of next year. Those who are in the Principles of Grace elective, you're encouraged to continue with it into the second quarter and finish out the course. Those who would like to take the First Thessalonians and how to study the Bible, we have a sign-up sheet in the lobby there, and we'd like for you to sign up for that so that we can plan on materials and accommodations for that. And if somehow you'd like to move into the Principle and Principles of Grace elective, you've got a little catching up to do, but that's an option open to you as well. For first Thessalonians and how to study the Bible, we'd like to have you sign up for that, though, just so we can stay ahead of it with materials and accommodation, seating, that kind of thing. Any questions on that, feel free to talk to me, and I'll direct you to someone else if they can answer it better than I. All right, we're in this Galatians 4, 21 through 31 that Wayne read for us here. Paul is continuing on addressing this issue. He's now going to finish up what we call the fourth chapter. He didn't know that there were chapters in it.

He just wrote the letter. But he's going to continue on with this theme because here are the believers in Galatia, and they're a young church, a couple years old in the Lord at most. They're a young church, and this young church has gotten snarled up, wrapped around the axle, if you will. with some teachers who have come in and said, you've got to follow the law if you expect to be saved. You've got to follow the law of Moses. And so he has a continuing message.

He's approaching an answer in various ways to what they have here. And so we start off here by asking this question. What's Paul saying here? What's Paul talking about? Paul in the last chapter, chapter 3, in the middle part of that, verses 6-18, had delivered this message.

Because the believers in Galatia, and we're in the same fold here, had believed God, they were all sons of Abraham, sons by faith. If you look at it from a spiritual standpoint, if you're a believer here this morning, you're on the genealogical chart that connects to Abraham. And by faith alone, Abraham was their spiritual father. That was the message that he had passed on to them in the middle of chapter 3. We're going to see a corresponding message here this morning, but more particular. Abraham is the spiritual father, but specifically and particularly, Sarah is the spiritual mother of those who believe. You are on this genealogical chart that shows Abraham and Sarah okay as father and mother.

Let's see how this works out here He starts off with verse 21 as Wayne read for us It goes like this tell me you who want to be under law. Do you not listen to the law? Now in this verse here, it's critical to get this clear and Paul is using the same word law with two different meanings and Now, we do this in English, so this isn't anything that's greeky geeky. We do it in English.

I'm going to say something that's hard to write, so don't try to write this. Well, you can if you want, but it's up to you. There are three twos in the English language. I can say it fairly easily. Writing it, well, that's a different matter. That's what Paul's doing here. He's using the word law in two different ways. Let me explain that. To be under law, that's the first use here, is living under the law of Moses, is what he's specifically talking about, which is a principle of law.

Now, the law of Moses, as they envisioned it, also included all the other things, I call them incrustations, the things that they added to the law of Moses to make sure that you didn't break the law that was given. Extra laws. One of the things, for example, is don't work on the Sabbath. And there was really, in the Law of Moses, very little definition of what that meant. Not much. And so the Jews would go about making extra laws that said, how long can you walk? How far can you walk on a Sabbath day?

How do you define work? This is work, this is not. And as technology has moved along in our own era, Orthodox Jews have continued to ask the question, What is work? It turns out that work is pulling the little toilet paper sheets off the roll. So you have to do that before the Sabbath. So, that's work. Now, that's principle of law.

Law says, I am going to do this and not do that in order to please God. I'm going to do this and not do that in order to be saved. I'm going to do this and not do that in order to be in God's good graces. And what I do and what I don't do defines my relationship with God. Alright, now here are all 613 laws. I think I've shown this to you before. I know some of you don't believe me. You think that that's just a bunch of gibberish and lines on the screen. It really is. All 613 laws on one slide.

Now, in case you don't believe me, here is 144, not to eat a worm found on the fruit, Leviticus 11.41. Not even if it's a little baby worm. Not even that. Don't do it. All right. Now, the second usage of the word law here is This is the part here that's listening to the law.

This is the five books of Moses. That's how we would say it in English. You may have heard the term Pentateuch. There's also Torah, which is the Hebrew term for that. Bottom line is, he specifically, and we know not because he says it, but because he refers to Abraham, and Sarah, and Hagar, and Ishmael, and Isaac.

We know that specifically the first book, Genesis. Oh, by the way, we're going to be starting Genesis in December. So we'll be taking a look at the book of Genesis and eventually we'll get there if the Lord allows us to remain all here. Next part here, listening to the law. This one verse brings forth an important point. And he's talking to Christians here, those in the church, right? Should we in the church be listening to the law? Should we? I've been telling you for weeks we're not under principle of law. Should we listen to it? Oh boy. We're not under the law of Moses, which is really good. You can go ahead and have lobster for lunch if you want. Because if you were a Jew, you couldn't. We're not even under any principle of law. You can even have shrimp.

But there is value in our reading and studying portions of the Bible that are not directly aimed at us. Got that? There's value in reading portions that are not directly aimed at us. So believe me, it's okay if you read Leviticus. Alright? It's alright. I won't get mad at neither anybody else. Well, anybody here. Okay. As we study scripture, we always have to ask, is this directed at me? Should I take this very personally, or is it meant to be understood in other ways and still be valuable? Here's a for instance.

In Luke 19.30, the Lord Jesus Christ spoke these words.

Okay? And matter of fact, if you look in a lot of your Bibles, this will be in red lettering. So that's that. Certainly you must do it, right? Here Jesus said, go into the village ahead of you there and as you enter you will find a colt tied on which no one has yet ever sat. Untie it and bring it here. All right. Now, is that for you? Well, of course. You know where a village is. We've got one right here. Greenwood Village. There it is. So go into Greenwood Village, look for a cult, and bring it right here. Anyway, you figure that out.

The point is, all scripture is inspired by God and profitable for teaching, even the law. For teaching, for reproof, for correction, training, and righteousness, so that every man of God, and that word is anthropos, so it doesn't mean just the males here, every man of God, may be adequate, equipped for every good work." Does it seem good to you to be adequate? You're adequate by the Lord's doing. You're adequate by the Lord's word. That's his provision for us. All right.

Back in this passage, verses 22 and 23. Now this one, Paul was writing about Abraham, that's why we know it's from Genesis, Hagar, Ishmael, Sarah, and Isaac. Those five personalities showing up here. Now, you have, and this is on page one of your handout as well, this illustration. Abraham had two sons from Hagar and Sarah, and those were correspondingly Ishmael and Isaac. Genesis 12 through 21 contains this account with a few other details thrown in. Hagar, it says, is the bond or bondwoman. Translate that, slave. She is a slave woman. As a matter of fact, scripture says, an Egyptian woman. The offspring of Hagar was Ishmael, according to the flesh.

Now, what we're telling you here not only has great application here, it's also the reason we're having a great snarled mess in the Middle East right now, believe it or not. One thing I told our church history electives several years back is There are people in the CIA right now and making military strategy who need to know what's in this section of Genesis. I'll tell you, a lot of the things we're going through, we don't understand because of what's in here. So this is critical stuff. But aside from military strategy, Sarah is the free woman. She is not a slave, okay? And she had Isaac through the promise.

That's the basic setup here for what we see in these chapters. There's more to follow. You have this chart on page two of your handout. And let's step our way through it. In Genesis 12, the first three verses, the Lord introduces his one-way promise, his covenant with Abraham.

He doesn't come up to Abraham and say, Abraham, I tell you what, let's make a deal. If you do this, this, and this, then I'll do for you this, this, and this. Right? It wasn't that way, was it? He said, Abraham, let's make a deal. I'm going to promise this to you and no conditions. Yeah, no conditions. It's not if you do this, I'm just going to promise. That's it.

God made promises to Abraham about, it's called land. about the land of Israel, and seed, offspring, and blessing. This is about the second one of those that this particular passage is addressing. The offspring of Abraham. Abraham was promised offspring.

Now, here's what's amazing. Look at the number underneath. 75 years old. So it's all going to happen within the next year. It's all going to come out, right? No. Look at how the numbers progress. The Lord waited until it was absolutely a miracle. The Lord waited until it was absolutely a miracle. Now, I have to caution you about something. When I was a kid growing up, I was about nine years old, and our pastor taught on this passage here.

Within a year, there was a whole bunch of folks that were beyond having babies that had babies. Anyway, I don't know what's going to happen here. But anyway, what we've got here is that the Lord made a promise to Abraham. It was unilateral. It was not based on any conditions.

And the middle part of that promise in verse 2 of chapter 12 of Genesis, and I will make you a great nation, which means you've got to have some offspring to do that, right? And I will bless you and make your name great. All right. So far so good. But the next part.

Abraham and Sarah got tired of wait They said we need to help God here We need to help God out. And and so here's what we do. There was a custom in the day and it was we find in the records of Abraham's time and for a couple centuries after that it was common for Someone who did not have, particularly if they did not have offspring through the wife, to have offspring then through the wife's slave. That was common practice. We find it in those clay tablets. Boy, I'm glad books aren't written like that anymore. Anyway, we find it in the clay tablets by the hundreds. That was a common practice during the time.

And so what happened is Sarah and Abraham, they said, we're tired of waiting for God to answer this. And so let's make our own answer. We're going to help God. We're going to solve this. Instead of waiting for Sarah, we're going to pull in this custom from our culture and pull Hagar into the mix.

Hagar, the Egyptian slave woman. And so at age 86, here's 11 years have gone by. Over a decade has gone by. Ishmael is born, the son of Hagar. So that's in Genesis 16. All right. So in Genesis 16, 15, so Hagar bore Abram, later on called Abraham, a son. And Abram called the name of his son whom Hagar bore, Ishmael. All right.

Now, 17, 18, and 21, those chapters in Genesis spell out the next step. Isaac This was the one that God intended to be the fulfillment of his promise notice the difference 75 years when God made the promise. That's how old Abraham was hundred years of age Abraham was When God fulfilled that God not only took a while ever had to wait for God to take a while, okay? God not only took a while, a quarter of a century, to fulfill it, but He waited until both Abraham and Sarah had laughed about the possibility.

Okay? Chapter 17, Abraham laughs. Chapter 18, Sarah laughs. Chapter 21, they got a baby. Okay? Alright. Now, so here it is in verse 2. So, Sarah conceived and bore a son to Abraham in his old age. A hundred. The appointed time, the appointed time, okay? God's time. Which God had spoken to him.

So now, then we come to the final part immediately after in the Genesis account. Chapter 21, verses 8 through 14. Isaac was weaned at three years of age. Ishmael, then at about age 17, mocks little Isaac, and Sarah and Abraham come to a meeting of the minds, and Abraham casts out Hagar and Ishmael. Now, that's a quick summary of the biblical account. Here in verse 21, 9 and 10, verse 10 there, therefore she said to Abraham, this is Sarah, drive out this maid and her son, for the son of this maid shall not be an heir with my son Isaac. What does Paul do here in verses 24 and 25? Paul creates an allegory.

It is not to deny the historical reality, that's very important, of what originally occurred. So it wasn't just an allegory with nothing behind it. There was historical reality behind it. He created the allegory for an illustration for our benefit. Okay. So he starts off this verse, this is allegorically speaking, okay? He is writing this allegory here. He did so in order to make a point. The point is in line with other truths of scripture as well. But he's using these people's lives as an illustration. Isn't that something?

I doubt very much that Abraham and Sarah had any idea that they were going to be a living illustration. But isn't it amazing how now 4,000 years have come and gone, and the Lord very much intends that we learn from it. I think that's something for us to keep in mind. The Lord may have us be a living illustration, and we don't even realize it, or maybe we do. But the Lord has things in mind for our very lives.

Very much is the intent on that. Okay, now. Paul is about to tell us what Hagar and Ishmael represent in these verses here, verses 24 and 25, and then the following, what Sarah and Isaac represent in verses 26 through 28. Let's step our way through that. You have on page 2 of your handout this chart, and you have Paul's allegory here. We'll go through it one step at a time.

Hagar is the bondwoman, or the slave woman. Sarah is the free woman. He makes that clear. Ishmael's birth is natural, not of promise. It's not the one God intended. Notice that we have a picture here. It looks like Abraham is really excited, holding up this baby. Ah, this is the baby. This is our baby. And you know, it's possible for people to be that way about living according to a principle of law. Ah, we've done it. We've accomplished it. See? Look what we did.

But it's not what God had in mind. Isaac's birth is the spiritual birth. It's the one God intended. It's the one that God promised about, I will make a great nation. It's the one that God had in mind to use. You have juxtaposed here the law of Moses against the grace gospel. Opposites. You also have earthly Jerusalem. The connection he makes there is earthly Jerusalem, where did it get its basis? And you add there all the sacrificial system, a kind of a concentration of the Jewish leaders and the law during that time. Where did it start? It started at Sinai. Moses received the initial, the down payment, if you will, of the law. the Ten Commandments, and more, starting at Mount Sinai. Sarah represents the heavenly Jerusalem, and we'll talk more about what that means. Hagar represents the principle of law and Sarah represents the principle of grace.

You have on the fourth page of your handout on the back side a listing, something we've made available before and I'm sure we'll make available again. It's something important for us to take a look at because it shows the contrasts and distinctions between the principle of law and the principle of grace. They're not something to be just sort of, hey, these are sort of close. They're not something for mix and match. It's the contrast that's to be looked at and understood.

And finally, Paul makes the point here that the Judaizers are standing by the law of Moses, Hagar, the one cast out, and that Paul is the one who stands by and represents here Sarah, and that the Judaizers are persecuting Paul. They are doing it verbally, although we have record in the book of Acts that the Jews also came after him with stones, even considering him dead and assuming that he was. All right, verses 26 through 28 here.

The Jerusalem, but the Jerusalem above is free. Jerusalem above is heavenly. That's what he's referring to. It's heavenly. That's where Paul elsewhere says, as he writes to the church in Philippi, that we have our heavenly citizenship. Philippians, as we studied through it several years back, the first chapter, he says, behave as citizens. And he means citizens of heaven. Chapter 3, he tells them, you are citizens of that place. And chapter 4, he says, your names are written in the book of life.

That's the book of living citizens who have their citizenship in heaven. This Jerusalem above is certainly heavenly. It's not just the place where we, the church saints, if you're a believer here this morning, that's where your citizenship is. The only place where we, the church saints, have our citizenship right now, okay?

But it's the place where Abraham was looking. He was looking for it, longing for it. Isn't that something? Looking for it, longing for it, wandering about. It's interesting that even though he was promised a land as an inheritance for the people following him, he was looking for that heavenly place.

The Jerusalem that will come down out of heaven, in the new heavens and the new earth, is also this heavenly Jerusalem. Now in the middle part of this passage, verse 27, Paul quotes from the first verse of Isaiah chapter 54 and it may be something you remember or not. We looked at that very briefly earlier this year and as we're studying through the book of Isaiah. Paul applied it here to Sarah specifically saying that she would be the one to produce numerous offspring.

And in verse 28, and you brethren like Isaac are children of promise. You brethren, you church saints in Galatia, like Isaac, are children of promise. The believers in the churches of Galatia, like us here this morning, are the offspring of the promise to Abraham. Children of Abraham. That's what Paul's point is in Galatians chapter 3.

Isaac was the son who came by a miracle according to God's promise to Abraham. Isaac was a miraculous birth. I would say with Abraham being at 100 years old, yeah, that's kind of miraculous. But he was not the son born of a humanly devised scheme. God made a promise and I know how to fulfill it. I know how to make God's promise come true. We'll come up with a scheme. We'll make it happen. So it is with our own spiritual birth. We are born spiritually by belief in what God has done, is doing, and will do, not by anything that we concoct.

So we have these two things set side by side in the passage we've just read here. Now, verses 29 through 31 finishes off the passage there. In these verses, Paul's going to draw three conclusions here. And we'll want to take a look at them one verse at a time to see what those are. First one in verse 29.

In Abraham's day, 4,000 years ago, it was Ishmael, son of the bond or slave woman, this woman Hagar, who persecuted Isaac. You can imagine, here's Isaac, then three years old, persecuted by this 17-year-old. Boy, that's never happened before. This is a 17-year-old, persecuted Isaac, son of the free woman, Sarah.

Alright? From the allegory, what's Paul saying? What's his message here? The Judaizers were persecuting Paul and all others who proclaim themselves free in Christ. They were opposing anyone that says, What? You're free? You're under grace? You can't do that! Have you ever heard anyone say, oh, you've got to have some law, otherwise you'll just go hog wild. You've got to have some law, otherwise you'll live out just crazy. You'll be immoral. Well, Paul is saying, wait, whoa, hold it. This is something you don't understand. The law is not your salvation. The law is not your Savior. That is a part of the persecution, is simply saying, you haven't got it right. You don't understand.

You've got to have some law in there. And there are a great many places in Christendom, even throughout our own country, where some measure of law is being what's taught. You ever run across that? Oh, we don't need the whole law of Moses, just this part. In matter of fact, what typically happens is they pick and choose. You just got to follow these 10. Forget that one about the Sabbath, because we don't observe the Sabbath. We'll change that a little bit. And oh yeah, you got to give your 10%.

It's the passage right before that that says, don't eat lobster and shrimp. So they'll go and pick and choose, wherever they want, however they want. And that, in a sense, this is opposing. the freedom that we have in Christ. It's opposing the grace gospel that Paul has laid out. So now, here we have Ishmael, the son of the bond slave. Now, looking at these, excuse me. Alright. Now, in verse 30. Paul draws from Genesis 21 10 Paul drew a conclusion here from Sarah urging Abraham to cast out the bondwoman Hagar and her son and Now He's saying you can't have this law and grace thing mixed That's part of his message.

You can't have a mixed. Okay, and Have you ever heard somebody say what's like oil and water you can't mix them? Oil and water isn't a severe enough comparison. Because oil and water you don't mix real well but they'll sit together. It doesn't seem to be like usually a lot of impact. I think a better picture is this pollution. It kills. It's a killer. Mixing some law and some grace is not just sort of mixing something together that just doesn't mix. It's toxic. That's his reason for spending chapters opposing it. It's not just something that doesn't go together. It's something, when you put it together, has horrible consequences. And that's why he opposes so vigorously.

And in verse 31, Like our relationship with Abraham, in which we say Abraham is our spiritual father, we are sons by faith in Christ. Like Isaac, we are also the miraculously born people of the free woman, Sarah. By faith, all out of grace and by God's promise. Got that? The miraculously born. Born of Sarah, the free woman. all by faith, all out of grace, by God's promise. We've made this comparison side by side here. I'd like, however, for us to kind of step our way through in this chart that's on the second page here. For today, this will be instead of the expanded and explained. We'll get that to you later on here.

Paul equates this God's promise to Abraham to have offspring. Paul equates this to the believer's salvation entirely out of God's accomplishment, not conditioned upon whether we do or don't do something. Salvation is entirely by faith. It is entirely of God's grace.

All we can do and all we must do is believe it. That's it. You can't do anything more. So the question is, do you believe it? It's that simple. Faith isn't a work. You don't get credit for faith. You don't say, ah, you did something. Faith is not something that you get merit for. You don't get credit for it.

It is depending not on my work, but on God's work through Christ. It's His work. It's all out of God's infinite grace. Where does that come from? His character, who He is. Just like the song that Chrissy sang for it. Because of who you are, that's where grace comes from. That's why we can praise Him. We're the offspring of Abraham by faith. And then this next part, Ishmael, child of the flesh, born of Hagar. If, instead of depending upon God's work through Christ, If we get a little impatient and say, no, I don't like the way God's doing it. His timing isn't quite what I had in mind.

I'm going to pull this off on my own. I'm going to do God's work by myself because God's not doing this quite like I'd prefer. That's law. I'm going to accomplish it my way. I think there's a song by that name. Instead of depending on God's promise, Our efforts through the law are like Abraham's fleshly concocted solution. Schemes that we come up with. This is how I'll make God happy. As if we could come up with something that would make God happy other than what he came up with. Can you imagine that? Telling the creator of the universe that we've come up with a better idea. Wow. Okay.

Isaac, child of the Spirit, born from Sarah. What's that message? Isaac was the one God had promised. And like the 100% grace solution, notice it's 100% grace, all of grace, that God had in mind for each of us. If Abraham was the spiritual father of all who were saved by faith, then Sarah is our spiritual mother. That's where we've come from spiritually. And finally, Isaac weaned, Ishmael mocks, and is cast out.

When we see how God has done the work for us through Christ, got that? God has done the work for us through Christ. When we see that, then we realize that our own solutions must go. Oh, I thought I was going to do this, this, and this, and that would make God happy.

Oh, what was I thinking? Our own concoctions have to go. Enough of it. Enough of how I'm going to dream up a way that I'm going to please God. It's not a matter of faith in God's provision through Christ so that we can do the works through the law system. We didn't believe in order to go the rest of the way by works.

We didn't say, OK, now I'm saved, and that gives me the right or the privilege to work by my own system the rest of the way. I'll come up with the rules. I'll come up with the work. I'll come up with the efforts. And in the end, I know God will be happy. No, that's not how it works.

You see, the way Paul lays it out in this passage, we've come to a fork in the road. But it's a very clear fork. Ever come to a fork in the road and wish there was a sign? He's leaving a sign real clearly here. Here's what he's saying. The left fork in the road is the law. Yep. You know exactly where that leads. The other fork is grace. He's saying God very much intended one and not the other. The law fork is not for you to take. Don't take that one. Grace. Pick that one. That's the only viable one. We're saved entirely by grace, completely 100%. That's all God ever had in mind, was that we believe Him. Believe Him for salvation. Believe Him forever. It was by God's intent that Christ died for our sins, all by grace. He died instead of us.

You say, I should have been the one there on the cross. And I'm sure you'll agree. I should have been the one there. By all rights, it should have been me that took the nails. And more than that, took the wrath of God. I should have been the one there. But He died instead of me. Then He was buried and rose again.

All we can do is believe it. I can't do anything to enhance that, improve upon it, add to it, make it better? Nah. Can't do it. Salvation is by grace, pure and simple. That's it. All by grace. All of His doing. All I can do is believe it. Now, this isn't a condition of salvation. But we who believe were identified with Christ in His death, burial, and resurrection. If you believe that Christ died for your sins and was buried and rose again, this is something that God also accomplished. We who believe, who have already believed in what is necessary for salvation, were identified with Christ in His death, in His burial, in His resurrection and ascension, and seating in the heavenlies, and all you can do is believe it.

I can't improve on those things, can I? It's all by grace. But believing it is exactly what he had in mind. That spiritual growth by him, all by grace, pure and simple. He did it. I can't enhance it. I can't add to it. I can't improve upon it. I don't need to. It doesn't need improvement. It doesn't need my solutions.

He wants me to believe it. Let's pray. Lord, as we look at your word, you have laid out, pure and simple, this fork in the road. And you've said, take the grace fork. Go that route. Believe me. I've done it all. All you have to do is believe me. Believe me in order to be saved. Believe me in order to grow. He says, until we see each other face-to-face, thank you for that marvelous grace. In Jesus' name, amen.