02-19-12 Slaves And Sons

For the past several months now

we have been studying Paul’s letter to the Galatians,

a letter in which we have seen him deeply emotionally involved

both with the people he’s writing to

and with the message he’s writing about.

The Galatians held a very special place in Paul’s heart

because it was in that trip to the Galatian region

that Paul made his first clear, public break

in his presentation of the Gospel to his fellow Jews

and turned instead to the non-Jewish world.

It was a break that would quickly and irreversibly change the course of Christianity forever.

For the first time

the message of God’s offer of redemption through Christ

was removed from its Jewish setting

and presented with clarity and simplicity

literally to any person, any background, any culture, anywhere.

And this turning point in Paul’s outreach

was all the more dramatic

because of the tremendous response he received from the Galatians.

They welcomed both Paul and his message with open arms

and responded in significant numbers.

It’s no wonder that Paul felt a deep affection for his Galatian brothers and sisters,

and also a deep sense of responsibility

and oversight.

And so, when he received the word

that these precious young Christians has been infiltrated with false teachers from the Jewish community,

teachers seeking to bring them into subjection to a law-based relationship with God,

Paul exploded with an energy and an urgency

that resulted in what we now know as the New Testament book of Galatians.

As we have walked with Paul through this letter so far

we’ve seen that his organization for the letter is easy to follow.

He simply, clearly shares with them a series of 9 reasons

designed to show his readers the stupidity of what they were believing.

We’ve looked at eight of those nine reasons,

and now this morning we’ll look at the 9^th.

It’s recorded for us In Galatians 4:21-31,

a section in which Paul takes us once again

back to the earliest days of the Jewish nation,

back to the time of Abraham.

And in the first verse of this section, verse 4:21,

he gives us his basic premise.

He says, Tell me, you who want to be under law, do you not listen to the law?

Paul’s basic premise, of course,

is that the very law system these Galatians are now turning to

powerfully illustrates the truth of the message Paul delivered to them.

The law itself proves the truth of the message of grace.

But with this statement

Paul is introducing the Galatians to a far more crucial

and far more extensive truth about the written Word of God.

He is showing them

that when we have understood any passage of Scripture correctly

it will always bring us back to Jesus Christ

and the message of the grace of God that comes through Him.

Maybe it will help if I state this a little differently.

The Bible is not one book with lots of different messages,

one of which is the message about Christ.

The Bible is one book with a single message,

the message of the love and grace of God poured out on the creation He loves,

the message that, when correctly understood,

always leads us ultimately to Jesus Christ.

It is certainly true that, through the history of the nation of Israel,

we are given a detailed picture

of what it looks like when we attempt to live with God on the basis of our performance.

But even those sometimes painful accounts

are given to us for the same purpose Paul wrote the first two and a half chapters of Romans -

to illustrate for us

the futility of our every trying to reach our God

or restore our relationship with Him

on the basis of our performance.

Sometimes the best example we can ever have

is the example of someone doing it wrong

because it arms us against making the same mistake.

And when Paul says to his readers,

Tell me, you who want to be under law, do you not listen to the law?

he is giving both the Galatians and, through them, all Christians

the perfect measure of whether or not we have correctly understood anything we encounter in Scripture.

If what we have read brings us hope,

if it points us to Christ,

if it fills us with the knowledge of His grace and love and forgiveness,

if it brings us into a deeper awareness

that our God loves us with an everlasting love,

that He seeks us relentlessly,

and that He is in every way what our spirits long for the most

then we know we have understood correctly what we have read.

But if it fills us with fear,

if it floods us with a sense of condemnation,

if it creates within us the concept of a God

who demands from us what we can never deliver

and then Who condemns us when we fall short

then we have not seen correctly

what is being said

or why its being said.

It is absolutely true

that, apart from the work of the Holy Spirit within us,

the Bible can be used to say anything you want it to say.

I remember back in my school days

a teacher who illustrated the truth of that statement

by sharing with the class three statements from the Bible.

They were all passages from the New Testament.

The first is from Matthew 27:5 where we are told that Judas ...went away and hanged himself.

The second is from Luke 10:37 where Jesus said to him, "Go and do the same.

And the third is also a direct command from Jesus, found in John 13:27 where He says, "What you do, do quickly."

Now obviously that’s a blatant abuse of the passages,

but there’s a principle tucked into that little bit of stupidity

that’s altogether true -

the Word of God simply cannot be correctly understood

apart from the active leadership of the Spirit of God.

And as Paul shared this 9^th proof with his Galatian brothers and sisters

at the heart of what he wanted them to know

is that any correct understanding of Scripture

will always lead us back to the grace and kindness and compassion and redemption of God through Christ.

OK, let’s take a look at what Paul does here.

In verses 22-28 he goes on to say,

For it is written that Abraham had two sons, one by the bondwoman and one by the free woman. But the son by the bondwoman was born according to the flesh, and the son by the free woman through the promise. This is allegorically speaking, for these women are two covenants: one proceeding from Mount Sinai bearing children who are to be slaves; she is Hagar. Now this Hagar is Mount Sinai in Arabia and corresponds to the present Jerusalem, for she is in slavery with her children. But the Jerusalem above is free; she is our mother. For it is written, "REJOICE, BARREN WOMAN WHO DOES NOT BEAR; BREAK FORTH AND SHOUT, YOU WHO ARE NOT IN LABOR; FOR MORE NUMEROUS ARE THE CHILDREN OF THE DESOLATE THAN OF THE ONE WHO HAS A HUSBAND." And you brethren, like Isaac, are children of promise.

And if you are not familiar with all of the events that surrounded the birth of Abraham and Sarah’s son, Isaac,

let me take just a few minutes to explain what happened.

We’ve seen already in our study of Galatians

the way in which God stepped into Abraham’s life

and promised him that he would become the father of a great nation,

a nation through whom the entire human race would be blessed.

At the time Abraham and Sarah had no children

yet at that point in his life we are told that Abraham believe God and it was reckoned to him as righteousness.

Abraham believed that God both could and would fulfill His promise.

And in response to Abraham’s choice to believe his God at this one point

God responded by declaring Abraham righteous.

It was a huge event in the history of the human race,

a point at which, for the first time since Adam and Eve refused to believe God,

a human being reversed that tragic stupidity

and did what Adam and Eve refused to do - chose to believe that God was good

and that He would do good to those who trusted Him.

But, following that event, years went by...lots of years,

and Sarah went through menopause

and both Abraham and Sarah decided that they might have to help God out,

seeing that something had apparently gone terribly wrong,

so the two of them come up with a plan.

Sarah brings Abraham her servant...her slave, Hagar,

and suggests that Abraham have a son through her,

a son that they would then claim as their legal heir.

Abraham agrees,

Hagar becomes pregnant

and gives birth to Ishmael.

But as so often happens when we try to do for God

what only He can do in and through us,

Abraham’s plan “B” was not even remotely what God had in mind.

And when Ishmael was 14 years old,

25 years after God first promised Abraham that he would have a son,

when Sarah was 95 years old and Abraham was 100,

Isaac, the son of the promise, was born to Sarah.

OK, it is this event, or series of events,

that Paul uses as his illustration for the Galatians.

He tells them that, from the earliest roots of the Nation of Israel

God carefully built into that history

yet another illustration of the offer He makes to everyone of us.

And here again the parallels are so simple and clear.

God sovereignly stepped into Abraham’s life

and, for no reason that was in any way tied to anything Abraham had done not done,

simply because God had chosen to pour out His kindness on Abraham,

God made him a promise that He would bless Abraham and give him a son.

That was it.

And all He asked from Abraham in return

was that Abraham would choose to believe what God had said.

It is this same pattern that God has duplicated in the life of everyone of us.

He sovereignly steps into our lives,

giving us an awareness of Him and a hunger for Him.

And if we respond to that Divine nudge

He makes us a very similar offer.

He offers us His grace, His kindness, His friendship forever

if we will simply choose to believe the promise He’s made to us -

the promise that His Son’s death truly has paid our total debt for all our sins forever.

All God asked Abraham to do was to believe God was telling him the truth.

All God asks us to do is to believe He’s telling us the truth.

That’s it...that’s faith.

But then Abraham’s doubt kicks in

and He decides that he is going to have to do for God

what God promised He would do for Abraham.

And so Abraham fathers Ishmael,

the child who was born according to the flesh.

And Paul uses this child,

this product of Abraham’s efforts to do for God what he thought needed to be done,

as an illustration of what the Galatians were trying to do in their own life.

God had already stepped into their lives

and poured out His forgiveness, and grace, and kindness, and redemption on them

simply on the basis of their simple faith.

But now they, just like Abraham,

were picking up the heavy burden of trying to please God through their own efforts

with the hope that it would then motivate God to be good to them.

And what Paul wants them to know

is that they are not Ishmael, the product of man’s efforts to try to do for God what needs to be done,

they are Isaac, the glorious child of promise,

the miracle that only God could have performed.

He gives them that wonderful promise from Isaiah 54:1,

"REJOICE, BARREN WOMAN WHO DOES NOT BEAR; BREAK FORTH AND SHOUT, YOU WHO ARE NOT IN LABOR; FOR MORE NUMEROUS ARE THE CHILDREN OF THE DESOLATE THAN OF THE ONE WHO HAS A HUSBAND."

He’s telling them that this is a perfect description of their lives.

He’s not talking about physical children, of course,

he’s talking about their ability to produce something of value with their lives,

to live lives that truly make a difference,

lives that impact this generation and future generations for good,

lives that truly give birth to good in this world.

And now that their spirits have been joined to the Spirit of their God

they are among the few who can truly celebrate

what He is bringing into being through them each day.

And then he offers them the mental picture he wants them to hold onto,

the point of identity

that will stand in sharp contrast

to what their false teachers are offering them.

He says,

And you brethren, like Isaac, are children of promise.

It’s a statement of fact -

they truly are children of God

brought into a Father/child relationship with God

simply through their faith in the promise of God.

But there’s something else happening here as well.

Because implied in that statement of truth

is a question, “Do you really want to be an Ishmael?”

Do you really want to be the pathetic result

of man’s efforts to accomplish the work of God?

And even then they knew their history well enough

to know what became of Ishmael.

He did become the father of a great nation,

but it was not the Nation through whom the Messiah would come,

and it was certainly not the Nation that would inherit the promise God made to Abraham.

It was the Arabs

and the tension and hostility between the Arabs and the Jews

trace back literally to the day of Isaac’s birth.

In fact that’s the next thing Paul says to his Galatian friends.

But as at that time he who was born according to the flesh persecuted him who was born according to the Spirit, so it is now also.

So it was the day Isaac was born,

so it was nearly 2000 years ago when Paul wrote these words,

and so it is today.

And in the context of Paul’s comments to the Galatians,

so it was between those who were seeking God through the flesh

and those who were seeking Him through the promise.

The false teachers who were seeking to corrupt the message of grace through faith in Christ

viewed that message as the great enemy

to be destroyed at any cost.

Because, you see, the flesh can and often does reach out to God,

but it does not and cannot hunger for God.

The flesh wants control.

The flesh wants to stay in control.

The flesh has no problem whatsoever

with using religion to gain power over others,

or to gain status, prominence, recognition from others,

or with using religion to attempt to gain some feeling of security with God.

But the flesh cannot know the peace, and the true security, and the joy

that comes from giving up,

and from bowing before our Creator,

and from acknowledging our desperate need for Him and dependance upon Him.

The flesh cannot know the healing

that can only come through brokenness.

The flesh cannot know the hope

that comes from kneeling in helplessness before our God.

The children of the flesh stand before their world

and proclaim, “See what I have done for my God.”

But the children of promise stand before their world

and proclaim, “See what my God has done for me.”

This was the enemy against which Paul fought in Galatia 2000 years ago -

the flesh-driven pursuit of God.

And it is the same enemy

that infiltrates so much of our religious world today.

Our Church world is addicted to religion.

The scent of religion fills our churches like incense.

We know its sound, its feel, its call.

We know it so well

we have long since ceased to question its voice.

When it calls to the masses they respond.

Where it leads they follow.

When it reprimands them they hang they heads in shame,

and repent of their negligence,

their apathy,

their indifference.

The awesome force of religion

fuels and lubricates our nation’s massive Christian industry,

sucking its life-blood from the hearts of God’s people.

It takes a thousand different forms

in a thousand different settings,

but the underlying message is always the same:

‟Come, my child. Let me show you the way.

I have a system guaranteed to improve your standing with God.

These are the duties you must fulfill.

These are the proofs of faithfulness,

the signs of the truly committed.

Do not be afraid.

If you will just try harder,

and do more,

and be better God will be pleased, and He will smile on you.”

But Paul will have none of it.

And as he ends this 9^th and final attack against the lies infiltrating the Galatian church

he quotes Sarah’s words in Genesis 21:10,

calling her words “Scripture”,

and with that term confirming that Sarah was not only speaking her own mind,

she was also speaking the mind of God Himself.

And with these words

Paul was calling his fellow Christians to war,

calling them to fight against lies that were stripping them of their freedom.

In Galatians 4:30-31 he says,

But what does the Scripture say? "CAST OUT THE BONDWOMAN AND HER SON, FOR THE SON OF THE BONDWOMAN SHALL NOT BE AN HEIR WITH THE SON OF THE FREE WOMAN." So then, brethren, we are not children of a bondwoman, but of the free woman.

So there they are -

Paul’s nine attacks against those who were attempting to replace the life of Christ

with a flesh-driven religious form.

#1. 1:11-24 The good news of salvation by grace alone came from God, not man.

#2. 2:1-10 Paul’s message of salvation by grace was accepted and approved by the Apostles.

#3. 2:11-21 Paul’s grace message overcame Peter’s error.

#4. 3:1-5 Their own Christian lives prove the gospel of grace.

#5. 3:6-14 The Old Testament proves salvation by grace.

#6. 3:15-29 The promise made to Abraham is not affected or altered by the law.

#7. 4:1-11 Christians are sons and daughters, not slaves and thus free from law-based walk with God.

#8. 4:12-20 For the sake of Paul and his love for them, he calls them to return to the truth of grace.

#9. 4:21-31 The Law itself proves salvation by grace.

And don’t you find it fascinating

that so much of the writing in the New Testament

was targeted not at attacking fleshly immorality,

but rather at attacking the hideous power of religion.

It’s all so different than we so often think it is.