Sermon: Does God Help Those Who Help Themselves?

Julius: The second reading, is the basis for the sermon this morning, Galatians chapter 4. Tell me, you who want to be under the law, are you really listening to the law? For it is written that Abraham had two sons, one by the slave woman and one by the free woman. However, the son by the slave woman was born according to the flesh, but the son by the free woman was born through a promise. These things can be used as an illustration, namely the women are two covenants. One is from Mount Sinai bearing children into slavery. This is Hagar. You see this Hagar is Mount Sinai in Arabia and she corresponds to present day Jerusalem because Jerusalem is in slavery along with her children. But the Jerusalem that is above is free. She is our mother. For it is written, rejoice barren woman who does not give birth. Break forth and shout for joy woman who does not suffer birth pains. because the barren woman has more children than the woman who has a husband. Now you brothers, like Isaac, are children of the promise. But just as back then, the one who was born according to the flesh persecuted the one who was born according to the spirit, so this is also the case now. But what does the scripture say? Throw out the slave woman and her son, because the son of the slave woman will certainly not receive the inheritance with the son of the free woman. For this same reason, brothers, we are not children of a slave woman, but of the free woman. The word of the Lord. Thanks be to God. Grace, mercy, and peace are yours from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen. We pray. Hence all fear and sadness, Jesus, bring gladness into our hearts. Amen. God helps those who help themselves. It's a common saying. Of course, with my little sermon theme, I phrased it as a question. What do you think? Does God help those who help themselves? And if you stood in a crowd today and you said those words, there would be lots of people who are nodding along. And the Apostle Paul would not be one of them. He asks us the question in the first verse of our reading, he says, tell me you who want to be under the law, are you really listening to the law? In other words, Paul would say, God helps those who help themselves. Are you really listening to that sentence? Are you sure that's how you want to operate? There were people in Paul's day who loved this sentence. We call them the Judaizers. They were people in Galatia to whom Paul was writing when he wrote the letter to the Galatians. They would say, absolutely. Of course, they wouldn't say it exactly like that. They would have said it this way. God helps those who keep His commands. And you might think, well, maybe these people just didn't know Jesus. Well, they did know Jesus. Paul had come to them and told them about Jesus, told them the gospel, how they're saved by grace through faith in Jesus alone. And they said, yes, absolutely. But then, if you want to stay saved, if you want to complete your salvation, then you have to keep God's commands. You have to make sure that happens through your effort and God will help those who help themselves. And so Paul used an example that they would know pretty well to say how God feels about this statement. He talked about Abraham. Now the Judah-Idesers, they thought Abraham was on this side. And people today would think that too. He's a perfect example of God helping those who help themselves. Sure, God called Abraham first and saved him, but after that, he was an example of faithfulness and obedience and following God's commands and earning God's blessings. But Paul says, actually, let me tell you about Abraham. He says this, tell me you who want to be under the law, are you really listening to the law? For it is written that Abraham had two sons, one by the slave woman and one by the free woman. However, the son by the slave woman was born according to the flesh, but the son of the free woman was born through a promise. Abraham had been given this promise that you're going to have a son and through that son the Lord is going to bless the world. Jesus will come through that son. And Abraham and Sarah thought great and then they waited. And nothing happened. And eventually they thought when Abraham was 86 and Sarah was 76, maybe God's waiting for us to take the initiative. Maybe God's gonna help. us if we help ourselves first. And so Sarah came up with a plan. She said, Abraham, I want you to use my maidservant Hagar so she can be a surrogate mother and we'll have a child through her. Pretty faithful plan, right? And so they do that. And Hagar gives birth to a son. The slave woman gives birth to a son named Ishmael. And Abraham and Sarah think, okay, we did it. God blessed our efforts he helped us because we helped ourselves. As Paul put it, the son by the slave woman was born according to the flesh. But God had other ideas. That child was born and God said, no, I'm not going to bless you through that son, the son of the slave woman, the son of your efforts. I'm going to bless you through the son that I promised. And then he made them wait. Another 14 years until Abraham was 100 years old and Sarah was 90 years old. And as the book of Hebrews tactfully puts it, they were as good as dead. That's when God said, I will fulfill my promise. When you have no ability at all to do anything to help yourselves, then I will make my promise come true. And that's exactly what happened. Sarah had a child at 90 years old and she laughed and everybody laughed with her. God has done the impossible. As Paul wrote, the son by the free woman was born through a promise. So now Paul turns the question to us, whose son are you? How did you come to faith? How are you staying in faith? How are you going to ultimately be saved? Are you a son of the slave woman? A son of your own efforts? A son of those who help themselves? Or are you a son of the free woman? A son of God's efforts? A son of God's promise? The people in Paul's day, they were trying to mix these. And so Paul carries out some more illustrations here. He hops 500 years forward from Hagar to Mount Sinai, and he says this, these things can be used as an illustration, namely the women are two covenants. One from Mount Sinai bearing children into slavery, this is Hagar. You see this Hagar is Mount Sinai in Arabia, and she corresponds to present day Jerusalem because Jerusalem is in slavery along with her children. But the Jerusalem that is above is free. She is our mother." Fast forwarding those 500 years, Paul connects Hagar, the slave woman, to what happened on Mount Sinai. And you probably remember that after the Israelites were freed from Egypt, they come to Mount Sinai in Arabia and God gives them the Old Covenant, the Ten Commandments, and words like that. And God said, And instead of using those words the way God intended, as a mirror to show them that they couldn't help themselves, and as something that pointed ahead to the fact that they needed a Savior, instead, they used that covenant as something that could help them. They thought, okay, Jesus, piece of cake, we'll follow these commands, you will bless us. And that's why they were so mad when Jesus showed up. When Jesus showed up, he says, I'm here, I'm here to help the helpless. And they said, ⁓ no, no, no, no, no, no. We don't need that much help. We're doing pretty good on our own. Just give us a little boost and we'll be fine. They rejected him. Paul says, that's the old covenant. That's the slave attitude. I will slave away, do these things, and God will bless me. Are you a son of that? Is that how your world operates? Yeah, Jesus brought me in, but I gotta do these things, so God will keep blessing me and make my life well and I stay in the faith. It depends on me at least a little. Paul says no. What does he say about the people to whom he's writing in Galatia and about you? He says, but the Jerusalem that is above is free. She is our mother. She is our mother. The in physical Jerusalem in Paul's day, in other words, were as far away from the true spiritual Jerusalem as Mount Sinai is from Jerusalem. They thought they were physically in the promised land, but they weren't even close. But the people who are actually in Jerusalem, the true spiritual Jerusalem, are the free children born through God's promise. The Jerusalem that is above. You know, in the Bible, We talk a lot about God being our father, and I think we're comfortable with that. The church used to be a lot more comfortable talking about the church being our mother, and that's what the apostle Paul says here. It's a biblical thing. He says, the Jerusalem that is above is our mother. She is free. The Jerusalem that is above, and what is that? It's the church. The church which is all believers of all time. That is your mother. And how did she give birth to you? Not through effort, but through the promise. And to explain this, Paul quotes Isaiah chapter 54. He says this, for it is written, rejoice barren woman who does not give birth. Break forth and shout for joy, woman who does not suffer birth pains, because the barren woman has more children than the woman who has a husband. Now how does the world usually work? How do people have children? Well, they have to be with someone, they have to have a husband, and then they'll have children. Usually barren people don't have children. How does the world think that it works spiritually? Sure, if you want to be saved, you've got to put a lot of spiritual effort. You've got to go through some spiritual birth pains, some big experience. You've got to marry yourself off to a spiritual husband, some strict practices that will get you saved. But that's not how it works in God's kingdom. He says the barren woman, has more children than the woman who is married. In other words, the person who can't possibly have children is the one who has children through God's promise. And so the church, the church has children, children of the promise, children of Jerusalem, children who will be saved. How? Not through effort, only through the promise. Nobody has ever gotten into the kingdom of God through their own efforts. Nobody has ever been saved through their own efforts. This makes me think of my grandpa. He loves Hebrew. He loves touring the promised land, but he's also depressed when he goes there. Why? Because everybody in the physical Jerusalem today doesn't believe in Jesus. It's primarily atheist. It's primarily made up of people who think, I'll just do this, be enough, be good enough, and then maybe we'll get to some type of afterlife. The Jerusalem, the present day Jerusalem, the physical Jerusalem is in slavery. and its mindset has never produced any children of the kingdom of God. But the Jerusalem that's above, the Jerusalem that says, you can be a part of God's kingdom because God says so, because He promises so, that mother has had billions of spiritual children, including you. How did you come into the kingdom of God? You don't have to look far in Galatians to find it. Back up a chapter, Galatians chapter three says, You are all sons of God through faith in Christ Jesus. Indeed, as many of you as were baptized into Christ have been clothed with Christ. You are sons of the free woman of God's effort through baptism. You're connected to Jesus. Go ahead a little bit in Galatians chapter four and it talks about that promise. Mary, a descendant of Sarah, also could not have children. She wasn't with her husband Joseph, she was a virgin and yet through the miracle of God's promise, Jesus was born. God sent his son to be born of a woman, born under law, to redeem those under law so that we would be adopted as sons. So you are no longer a slave but a son. And if you are a son, then you are also an heir of God through Christ. You are a son, you are an heir, how? Through what Jesus has done. If anybody could have gotten to heaven by his own efforts, was a man named Bernard of Clairvaux. He lived a thousand years ago. He was a monk of monks, a very good person, helped a lot of people. And yet when he got very sick, this is what he said on his deathbed. He said, I have lived a life worthy of condemnation, but you Lord Jesus Christ have a double right to the kingdom of heaven. First, because you are the son of God. And second, because you have won it by your suffering and death. the first right you keep for yourself as your birthright, the second you give to me so that I can inherit heaven. Bernard knew how he came into the family of God and he also knew how he stayed in the family of God and would stay in the family of God forever through the right that Jesus had won for him, the right of being a son. And that's how we've come into the family of God too. So that's also how we stay in the family of God. We live as children of God, sons of God, not slaves. It wouldn't work anyways to try to slave away for God and earn blessings. Think about it. As one commentary put it, it would sound like this. You'd come to God and say, Lord bless me because I pray a lot. And he would say, big deal. Muslims pray more five times a day. You come to the Lord and say, Lord bless me. I just went to worship. And he would say, big deal. Hindus worship and they have all day church services. So what are you doing? You'd come to God and say, Lord, I study the Bible, so bless me. And he would say, big deal. Jehovah's Witnesses study the Bible too, and they can probably quote it better than you can. You'd come to the Lord and say, Lord, I went on a mission trip, so bless me. And he'd say, big deal. Mormons go on mission trips. They spend years of their lives doing mission trips. Now if we came to God like slaves trying to earn His blessings, it wouldn't earn us anything at all. But we don't come as slaves. We come as sons. You think about that language of having a mother, of Jerusalem being our mother. When you're growing up, ideally dad forces you to make a Mother's Day card, right? You love your mother, make her a card. Fine, and you do it. When you grow up, what should you do? Make her a card on Mother's Day. And not because you're forced to. And not to earn her love. That would be insulting. She loves you. She's your mother. No, you make the card because you've grown to appreciate the love that she has for you. And you want to show that you love her. You're not making a card for her like a slave. You're making it like a son. If I can use a strange illustration. I also like the end of Toy Story 2. Toy Story 2, Buzz Lightyear versus the bad guy Zerg. And the bad guy Zerg has this gun that shoots these projectiles like these little tennis balls at Buzz Lightyear and they are fighting. Bam bam bam bam bam bam bam! And Buzz is dodging, dodging, dodging, I have to defeat Zerg! But then what does Zerg say? Buzz, I am your father. No! First Buzz says no, but if you cut back just a couple minutes later, you see Buzz Lightyear running happy as can be and he catches one of those balls in his hand. And they say, Buzz, are you coming with us? And he says, no, I have some catching up to do with my dad. And Zerg is there not shooting these projectiles at him, but shooting them up in the air so they can play catch together. When we are trying to do things that God tells us to do, to earn blessings from him, it's like he's Zerg, firing the law at us. Bam, bam, bam, bam, bam. And we realize we can't do it, we can't do it. We're dodging, we're fighting him. But when he says, no, I am your father, oh. Then he tells us what we want to do. And it's not something we have to do, it's something we get to do because we're catching up with my dad. Do you see how that changes the things in that list of things you could do for God? You're not doing it for God, you're doing it because you have this relationship with Him. In other words, you say, I'm going to go to worship. Why? Not to earn blessings from God, but because Jesus says, two or three gather together in My name, there I am with them. I'm going there because Jesus is there and He is my priceless treasure. He's my friend. You say, I pray to God. Not because I'm saying, me, me blessings. No, I pray to God because he's my father and I love him and I love to speak to him and I know that he's listening to me. You say, I study the Bible. Why? Because God speaks to me and I love to hear his voice. I'm going on a mission trip. Why? Because that's what my mother did. Jerusalem, the church. She did a mission trip to me and she made me her child through the means of grace, so I wanna go out and share God's word with other people. You're not a slave. You're a son of God who inherits all of these good things from him and so you live like it. So does God help those who help themselves? No, God helps the helpless. He promises. And when we believe that, yeah, that helps us live for Him. Amen.

Galatians 4 · chapter mention Isaiah 54 · chapter mention