Listen Up!

Good morning. I think we're probably going to spend the next three weeks getting through all of these verses. There's a lot to be talked about in there. So today, I really only have two or three verses, but we'll work through them as fast as we can. The allegory is kind of interesting. I'm leaving the allegory to Roger.

Just to kind of finish up from last week on verse 19. Verse 19, My little children to whom I am again in labor until Christ be formed in you. Do you ever think about this, that if you said to somebody, you know, I want to teach them, I want to have them grow in the knowledge and grace of the Lord Jesus, or I want them to comply with a legal system, or become a good denominational person, how would I describe that? Well, maybe we'll send them to seminary, to Bible college, and we'll discipline them and put them all together.

But Paul doesn't say that. He uses this term, until Christ be formed in you. That's a really amazing term because it can't be done academically. It can't be done by strict discipline. It can't be done by going to seminary. It has to be done through grace, by faith, vis-à-vis the work of the Holy Spirit. You have to learn, like we talked a lot about last week, you have to learn things like, how do I rest in Christ? How do I do that? How do I come to a full understanding that I have complete and total acceptance in the Father?

I have access to the Father anytime I want. I don't have to go through an intermediary. I don't have to do a ritual. I don't have to obey anything. I just have access. The Lord Jesus Christ is my very life. He's my life. I'm there in Him before the Father. I can rest, I have fellowship, I can worship Him, and He's in me here, and He lives and serves here.

You can't discipline somebody to that viewpoint, to that understanding. So Paul's writing to these Galatian believers, and he's telling them, I am travailing until Christ be formed in you. And we spent the whole time last week about what that meant. These people are truly believers. They have the Lord Jesus resident within them and within their hearts.

The problem was is that there was a little bit of Christ coming out to be visible by those that were around them. And you can't see that by discipline. Christ has to be formed in you and and added to that that there's a labor involved by the person who is going to do the Conforming or the or the formed in you and notice the word again It tells us that at one time These people were abundantly and clearly Evident that Christ was in them and Christ was being manifested through them, but now what's going on? They're not they're not The beauty of the Lord Jesus Christ is not being manifested through them. It's not being seen. What's the reason for this? What we've learned so far is in our study of Galatians, these group of guys that we call the Judaizers, they had come down and they had been teaching the law.

That's okay that believing in Christ is fine, but then you've got to keep the law. You've got to do cool things like get circumcised, you've got to learn the law system, and you've got to obey under it. You've got to substitute grace for self-effort, because that's the problem with the law. The law demands that you apply your effort in order to be pleasing to God.

And so they are saying to them, look, you guys have to obey this newly imposed law that we're going to put on you. And two was they were trying to substitute in their lives a previous dependence on the Holy Spirit that they didn't have now because they're depending on themselves. I don't know if we ever make that clear enough. If you and I live under grace, the dependency is on the grace. and on God's work and the Lord Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit to implement in a believer's life what he has already done positionally. Under a law system, I am virtually forced to look at myself and see how I'm doing. And of course, when you look at yourself and you start taking an assessment, an evaluation of how you're doing, you're not doing too well, so you better get busy.

So where does the focus stay? It stays on me, and how well I'm doing. Right? Where in grace, it focuses on the Lord Jesus Christ and how well He's doing. He's doing a lot better than I am. The Spirit of God is the only one who can implement this life. And here's another interesting thing. The be-formed that the Lord Jesus dwells in my heart of the believer is done in a passive way.

It isn't Christ who's doing Forming it's the Holy Spirit. That's his job. It's his ministry Because in John 16 the Lord Jesus told the disciples look when I'm going to send the Spirit and his job will be to glorify me in other words his job is going to be to make the attributes that I am glorified Manifested in and through you that's going to be his job. I And if you don't recognize the Holy Spirit and you're not dependent on Him to do that, then the default position is back to how you're doing it.

Consequently, the Spirit is not able to minister the Lord Jesus and through the Galatians so that in full measure Christ would be formed in them. Havoc. That's what it produces. Havoc. and that was really causing the Galatians not to function like Paul intended them to function as believers.

Born ones concerning who I again striving with intense effort in anguish of birth until Christ is formed in you. I think that you'll find anybody who teaches the Word of God That's really what his focus is, or her focus. Christ being formed in you. It's more important than any degree you would ever have, any compliance that you would ever achieve to Christian principles, every external exposure you would have to the public about who you are. It's Christ formed in you. It's a critical part of the Christian life.

He laments even more. He said, but I wish I could wish to be present with you and to change my tone, for I am really perplexed about you. He says that he's really unhappy with the situation in Galatia and the churches. Back in verse 11, he says, I fear for you that perhaps I've labored for you in vain, that all the work that I've put in depending on the Spirit for you, is all for nothing because of what you're doing. So he desired to be present with them so he could change his voice. He could change the way he had approached them. This phrase, change my tone, can be interpreted two ways, and I happen to think they both are right.

The first one would be that Paul regretted the severity of the language that he had used when he'd visited them on his second journey. And at that time, he warned them against these Judaizers, and he was really pretty stern with them. So he wanted to go there now and be with them so that he could probably talk to them in a more conciliatory, tender way, that he could review with them the reasons why he wanted them to stay away from legalism. He did the same kind of mentality in 2 Corinthians, when he wrote to the Corinthians, he said, 2 Corinthians 7, he said, for though I caused you sorrow by my letter, you read 1 Corinthians, and if Paul had written me that letter, it would have made me sorrowful.

I did not regret that I did it, though I do regret it. For I see that the letter caused you to have sorrow, though only for a while." Paul knew that that letter was stern, but it caused them to think about what they were doing and to have it changed, of course, because when you read 2 Corinthians, you find, oh, gee, they listened, and they complied, and they did turn away from the direction. The change of voice or the change of tone is regularly used, I think, in an act of changing someone's expression.

Longing to be with them means that he can talk to them personally Rather than sending them a message never think about that. How do you express? Emotion in a letter Or an email or a text, how do you express emotion? Well, they got these new things called emojis and Well, if you're like me, you don't know what an emoji is, so how can you express it? Right? So I'll send a sad face or a happy face or balloons going up in the air or something.

Paul knew that writing a letter to them, that what stood between him and their understanding was his pen. And he said, gee, I don't know if I can express to you what I want to express to you in the manner that I want to express to you by just writing you a letter. I don't know if I can do that.

I've got to talk against this heresy that's been taught to you, and you are kind of appropriating it in your life. And how do I talk you out of that? There are circumstances that you run into Courtney and I were talking about one this morning. I'm not going to tell you what it is, but how do we approach somebody and say, look, we don't think you should be going in this direction.

We think you should be going in that direction. How do you do that in such a way that you draw them rather than push them? How does the Spirit of God do it in such a way that you're drawn to Christ rather than the law pushing you? How do you do that? I'd like to know.

Anybody have an answer, let me know. So Paul was moved, though, by deep love for these Galatians. You can see here, he says the word now is from the word arti. And this word defines and particularizes the point of time referred to. He says, I want to be there right now. I wish I was there this very minute. I wanted to be there immediately, but I can't do it.

Distance is too far. We can't Skype. Sorry. And he wanted to change the nature of his voice. He wanted to he he was kind of puzzled, really, about what he was going to do when he says, I stand in doubt of you. I'm puzzled how to deal with you. I'm not quite sure how to do it. I would be much better off if I was with you. I could find entrance into your heart, but based on the circumstances I find myself in, I don't know if I can put it in words.

Let's assume that Paul was with them. What would change? If they were sitting in front of him and he was talking to him, he would change his tone, I think, from one of caution and warning to one of explaining and expanding the Scriptures for them. and the problems that they're going to encounter by putting themselves under a law system. He'd use more detail than he could do just by sending a letter. He'd be gentle, but he'd be firm with them. He desired to be with the Galatians personally so that he might speak to them face to face instead of writing a letter or speaking to them in any other way They could hear his tone. They could hear and understand.

Face-to-face is always better than texting. Face-to-face is always better than an email. Whenever you find yourself in a situation with somebody, what do you think? Gee, I've got to call them, or I've got to meet with them. I want to be right here in front of them, and I want to talk to them, or I want them to be right in front of me so that they can talk to me. Why?

I can see their expression, I can get the flavor of what they're saying, and I can tell some things about it that a writing can't do. So, I find it in our society with texting and emailing and messaging and all of that kind of thing, we have lost some of that. I know that if I want to give somebody bad news, the temptation is to text them, email them, because then I'm not there when they get angry, right?

It's the coward's way out. The stand and doubt of them is kind of an interesting word because it's the word Porous but it's got an a in front of it a porous and what it means is is that I can't I Porous means that I need to I need a path to you a porous means I can't find one. I can't find a way I don't know which way to turn I'm without resources. I'm really in straits. I'm perplexed. What am I going to do?

So And it's also in the middle voice. This is really interesting because the facts speak of inward distress in the mind and he's tossed to and fro in this conflict. The Greek has it, I'm perplexed in you. Paul's perplexity is conceived as being in the Galatians. He says, I'm puzzled on how to deal with you.

I can't find any entrance into your heart. That's a really hard thing. And to put that in language, if I wrote you an email and said, I'm looking for a place into your heart, it would be different than if I said it right to your face. I'd really like to find a place into your heart.

You might listen to me. If somebody said that to me, I would listen. I'll tell you a story. One time, Miles Stanford said to me, I need to talk to you. And I forget what the thing was, but he wanted to encourage me. Oh, I know what it was. When I first started teaching Bible studies, as you all know, I was one of those graduates from Marine Corps boot camp. And there's a language in Marine Corps boot camp that isn't accepted in most churches. Right? So every once in a while, At Bible study, I'd let one of those words out, not even thinking about it. And Miles got a complaint about it. So he came to me and he very gently and softly said, look, you can't talk that way. You just can't deal with the Word of God and put that little flowery language in there. You just can't do it.

So immediately, you know, my thought was, boy, I'm being instructed by the Master, I better change my ways. But then he paused for about a minute, and then he said to me, did I get by with that? Did I really pull that off? So that I didn't make you angry, but you understood, and I drew you more to Christ? You hear that? What a lesson that was for me. I just... Well, I was done. You know, I think those words still slip out now and then, but I was pretty much done that day, you know.

So, this is the real reason that he wants to be with them. He wants to find an entrance into their heart about the grace of God. So, an expanded translation is, moreover, I was wishing that I were present with you at this very moment. and could thus change my tone because I'm perplexed about you. I'm perplexed about how to deal with this circumstance. But he says, you know what? This perplexity has served its purpose.

It leads Paul to ask them a really pointed question. He says to them, tell me. You who want to be under the law, do you not listen to the law? Are you not paying attention to it? Do you know what it's saying to you? So he appeals to the law itself. He's appealed with his affections. He's appealed with his authority. He's appealed from scripture. But now he's going to say, you guys listening to the law?

Do you know what it really says? There's an unreasonableness that maybe you're not aware of if you turn back to it, and let's look at scripture and see what it has to say. You might not listen to me, but maybe you'll listen to what the law has to say. And he says, you that desire to be under the law, which indicates that maybe they hadn't gone all the way under the law yet, but they had a desire to go back there. They had a bent to maybe be under the law. We all have a bent to be under the law.

We all have this little saying in our hearts all the time, just tell me what to do and I'll do it. We'll make it real simple. Just tell me what to do and I'll do it. That's legalism. That's law. That's what they were hoping. Tell us what to do and we'll do it. Rather than, it's already been done. Your job is to live by faith.

And the word law here is really interesting. And some of the commentaries I read, they said, well, it doesn't have the definite article in front of it. So it's not the Mosaic law, but it has it's just a law principle. Others say, no, it's got to be the Mosaic law. It's really interesting. If you dig down a little deeper, it says you who desire to be under the law, do you not hear what the book of the law is saying, talking about the Mosaic law? that this, the early writings of the Bible back in Genesis where the law was given and then he uses the word law without the definite article and he says sometimes the word of God in general just talks about law as a principle the law of the Lord is perfect and converting the soul, Psalm 119 both of them are used in this verse both of them so he says The Galatians are bent on upholding the authority of the law, but are not heeding the full significance of the law.

They don't get it all. And you'll look today in contemporary reformed churches. They want to pick and choose what laws they're going to obey and not obey. Don't they? They say, well, you know, maybe we'll do the ceremonial law part of the law and we'll forget the the worship part of the law. Or maybe we'll do the worship part and forget the moral part.

Or maybe we'll pick a little bit of this and a little bit of that and we'll form our own system. Well, the problem with the law is like it's tempered glass. If you break one little thing, it goes into a thousand pieces and you broke it all and you can't put it back together. And you have to keep every tenet, every single tenet, if you're going to put yourself under it. So, he's appealing to law and he's saying spoken of as that which the Christian is not under, it is the principle of the conscious being put under certain obligations in order to acquire a standing with God.

In other words, do you hear? Are you listening? Are you paying attention? And he says, tell me. That's a command. Tell me. Specifically, tell me. Are you listening? What do you think about the law? Answer my question. What do you think you're doing? Can you say, do you hear what the law is saying? Do you listen to it? Do you study it? Do you pay attention to it? What is it saying to you if you want to be under the law? You know, in my neighborhood, we've talked to you before.

There's still quite a few Hasidic Jews that live there. And like yesterday, you know, they're walking around the neighborhood in their black suits and fedoras, and the women are wearing wigs, and they have all these pushing their five kids in the stroller up to the synagogue, which is a lot more work than just driving up there, but you can't drive.

And you wonder sometimes, we notice that they're prideful people. And that's what the law does to you, it makes you prideful. Because look at me, look what a great job I'm doing. But what's funny about it from our perspective is that there's too many laws for them to obey.

Like they never saw a stop sign they didn't want to run. You know, you wonder sometimes, they're going to kill somebody in this neighborhood. They're studying the Torah, but they're going to kill somebody by running a stop sign. interesting to watch.

So anyway, so the point that Paul is making, are you hearing the law? Do you really know what it's saying to you? And then he says, let me help you with the answer. Listen to me as I read. I'm going to tell you a story now. And you tell me what you hear in this story. So it's a microcosm where Paul is laying bare. All of the verses that Jim read, all of it are a story, all the way to the end of the chapter.

I'm going to do this part, Roger will do the allegory part next week, and then I'll finish up the following week. But the history of Hagar and Sarah illustrate the present status between law and grace. The son of the bondwoman gave place to the son of the free woman. The law gives place to grace. So the idea is, if you want to be under the law, is it in harmony with the scripture? And here are the scriptures. So he's going to tell them a story. He says, for it's written. Now here we go. It's written that Abraham had two sons, the one by a bondwoman and the other by a free woman.

So he's saying to them, would you have discerned the difference between the law and Hagar and Ishmael and the flesh, striving with the promises of Sarah and Isaac? In other words, if you were reading the Old Testament, would you have thought that that's what he was really talking about? I'm not so sure. You would have seen that back then.

The Spirit of God not only saw it, but he intended to record the circumstances of the situation to foreshadow the two covenants that were coming. One was the covenant of promise, which was Abrahamic, which we've already talked about, and the other is the covenant of the law, which comes up with Moses. The law is designed only for the child of the flesh. The promises are designed in due time only for the child of promise, but also the child of the Holy Spirit.

So Paul starts to recall a time of Abraham and uses these facts as his history as an allegory, tells a story, to teach us the contrast between these principles. The bondage of a believer under law and the liberty of a believer under grace. He's going to use this Old Testament. Do you think those people in the Old Testament understood that You know, God is amazing. We've been studying, like I've said, Galatians. I'm just amazed at what he's already done in Galatians that he will use later in Paul's epistles that he set up for 5,000 years or 7,000 years ago in Genesis. So Abraham has two sons by two different women.

One's a bondwoman. In other words, she is a slave or a servant of Sarah. Hagar is. And Sarah is a free woman. She's the wife of Abraham. And I love the story. God promises Abraham that he's going to have a son. And he says it to him more than once. And Sarah laughs about it. And they get older, and they get older, and now Abraham is about 85 or 86 years old. So Sarah comes up with this great idea. The idea is that I've got this maid here, and we're going to fulfill God's promises. I've just figured out how to do it. You go in and lay with Hagar, and get her pregnant, and that will have a son. You'll have a son. God promised it to you. So he says, deal. I'll do it. So here is Hagar, who has a son Ishmael.

Go forward about 14 or 15 years, and then God's promises. Abraham's 100 years old, Sarah's in her 90s, and they, I mean, how long has it been, you know? What's interesting about that is it was the pleasure of being together as a husband and wife in a sexual situation gone? Did God reinstate it so it was pleasurable to do it and give them the capacity to do it so that they would produce Isaac? I think, yeah, he did. So now Isaac shows up. Isaac is the son of promise. He's born as Abraham's son totally passed what logic and sense and reason would tell you is possible.

There was a thing this morning on this woman who gave birth in her 50s or 60s, that she's ill now or something, that she's, as far as they know, the oldest woman who's ever given birth, she's 66, something like that. Anyway, the father or she is just passing, saw it this morning. So Abraham has two sons, Two different women, one a bondwoman, the other a free woman. The son of the bondwoman was born after the flesh, you get that part, after the flesh, and born entirely to the will of man.

Whose will was it? It was Sarah's. And Abraham said, okay, I'm in, let's try that. The other, the free woman, was born by the sovereign intervention of God himself. That's how Isaac got on the planet. When our son John was born, Donna was 40 and I was 50. We thought he was the Immaculate Conception. What's interesting, this word for right here, the very first word, it connects verses 21 and 22. Paul says, let me tell you a story.

Can I, for it is written, Abraham had two sons, that's the four, and the previous verse says, tell me, are you bent upon being under the law or are you not hearing the law? Four connects them together. And the idea is, your desire to be under the law is not in harmony with Scripture. It isn't what Scripture would have you.

The bondwoman is a translation of the term that means female slave, and that's what Hagar was. So, Ford stands written. Now, talk a little bit. Verse 23, he begins to lay this out. But the son of the bondwoman was born according to the flesh and the son of the free woman promise. Ishmael was born of a bondwoman. He was born after the flesh and he was born after natural generation in the ordinary course of nature, like any of us were. But Isaac, born of the free woman, was born according to God's promise. through a miraculous interposition of God when the parents were too old to have children.

Now watch this next part. Was born is in the perfect tense. I love this for the Greek geeks. You would have thought that it would be in the heiress tense. Just was born in the past. Fact. Done. But it's not. It's in the perfect tense. You know why? Because not only did it happen in the past, but it has abiding results into the future. It's perfect tense. It has abiding results to 2019. It has abiding results for any situation where you want to contrast law and grace. All the way back from then. So God uses, and the writer uses, Paul uses, the perfect tense. There are existing results of this event. Ishmael's descendants don't belong to the covenant people. Israel. Isaac's descendants are those who have the promises. The promises are resident within them now.

We wanted a historical summary of the two women. So what we did is, Abraham's line, you start with the two mothers, Hagar and Sarah. You contrast them. And the allegory over the next couple of weeks The expansion of this story will make this chart a lot clearer.

There are two sons, Ishmael and Isaac. There are two positions, a bondwoman and a free woman. And there are two births, by the flesh and by promise. So these two offspring are coupled together with one father and two mothers. The mothers make a difference here, because they have the same father.

And that's why there's a contrast between law, one is law and flesh go together, and promise and grace go together. You can't mix them. The spirit has to do with promise, the law has to do with the flesh. The Holy Spirit has taken particular pains to lay hold of the facts in the Old Testament which might never have thought applicable in order to bring out the blessed truths in the New Testament. The expanded translation is, but on the one hand, the son of the maidservant was one born in the ordinary course of nature, but the other hand, the son of the free woman was born through promise. And I thought to close up here, I want to make a few comments about contemporary Christianity and how we should view and understand what the problem that this seed being planted then causes today. Are the people who live under law zealous? Are they rocking and rolling? Sure they are. Modern Christianity aligns more with Hagar than it does with Sarah, because they're legal. The law, even though the law is against them, they're zealous.

Every religious system which takes a stand upon the law invariably is Jewish in content, and you don't need to look around very far to see it. When you see a church that's a magnificent building, the splendor of a ritual, in the service of God, what model is that formed after? It's formed after the Jewish system. It's interesting, coming out of Catholicism like I did, the church building usually was in the shape of a cross, but the setup inside was just like a Jewish temple.

There was this little gold thing up on the altar that was where the bread was held, that they believe in the doctrine of transubstantiation, that the bread is really Christ. So they got him all wrapped up in a gold little box with a key. That's the Holy of Holies. And then there's the altar where the priests serve. And now we have a clergy, just like the Jews did. And that's the holy place.

And then there's a rail And then there's the rest of you, which is the outer court. It's exactly the same system. Exactly the same system. Nobody in these denominations ever had an original idea. They copied what God did back with Moses. How did God have the early church gathered together? They were in cool places like the upper room, somebody's house, down by a river. They just got together.

They didn't need a building. They didn't need a temple. They didn't have a class of people called clergy. They didn't have those. They didn't have a very formalized service with adornment and wonderful music, nothing against the music. They didn't have imposing ceremonies. They didn't have trying to draw as multitudes together, but they didn't do it by the truth of grace.

So I'm led to conclude that maybe grace in the truth is not the most attractive thing there is to people in the flesh. It can be seen, it can be heard, it can be enjoyed by the natural man, but the spiritual man, the natural man would be drawn to it. Maybe you could call it the worldly sanctuary. The true sanctuary is where? For us. Where is the true sanctuary? It's in heaven. The Lord Jesus Christ is in heaven. And the New Testament is, does, may I put it this way, the Old Testament connects us with earthly people and with the temple. The New Testament connects us with the Lord Jesus, where He is.

So He even says to his disciples, if there's two or three of you gathered together, I'm there. I'm there. If there ever was so few true to that, we would reap blessings. If people would understand what God has done for the church today, the body of believers today, that Bob Eccles' favorite saying is that we're not from here, we're heavenly people. You know? Our citizenship is in heaven. That's right. And so is our worship. And so is our gathering. And so is everything we do. We are heavenly people.

Do you realize that we are all strangers around here? And sojourners. You know the difference between a stranger and a sojourner? A stranger just passes through your town and keeps on going. A sojourner passes through, buys a house and sticks around a while. But he still isn't from around here.

That's us. We're heavenly people. So when the Apostle writes to the Galatians, he's trying to show them the germ that they were planting of legalism then. In 2019, it's come to fruition. Look around. It's everywhere. You can see it everywhere. So the gradual inroads that have been made into Christianity by professing bodies of believers is everywhere today. and the mischief started in Galatia. So, what's the problem? If you fall into that, based on the story that we're going to look at the next couple of weeks, you really are a son of Ishmael and not of Isaac. You're not a son of promise. You're a son of sense and reason. You're a son of experience.

You're identified with law. You're not identified with grace. you forfeit the promises that God makes to us, or the facts that God says is true of us today. So, this is the argument I think that Paul uses to deal with the Galatians. He's using scripture to show them that you can flatter yourself about the zeal of legalism from Jerusalem, and it's making progress, but this isn't who you are. You're doing something that doesn't fit who you are. You really are slipping out of the freedom you have back into bondage. You might as well hold your hands out and let them put the handcuffs on you right now because you're going back into slavery.

And you see that everywhere. So although grace Lewis Barry Chafer said that grace is the most hated thing on the planet. I think he is right. It is. Why? Because it doesn't leave anything for us to do. God has done it all. We have exercised faith in the work and person of Christ and the position that he's given us and we're to rest there. We get to rest. You know that we're the only people in the world that get to rest. You know that, don't you? We're the only ones that even know how to rest. There is no rest outside of Christ.

So, let's close. Dear Father, how we thank you. How we thank you for all that you've done through your dear Son, the Lord Jesus Christ, and all that you continue to do to cause us to be conformed for Christ to be conformed or formed in us, that we may be able to represent Him as you would have us represent Him in this world. We thank you. We pray in your Son's precious name. Amen.