Galatians: How Do I Relate Rightly to God? (4:21-31)

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The second lesson is from Galatians chapter 4, verses 21 to 31.

Galatians 4:21–31

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

For it is written that Abraham had two sons, one by a slave woman, and one by a free woman.

But the son of the slave was born according to the flesh, while the son of the free woman was born through promise.

Now this may be interpreted allegorically.

These women are two covenants.

One is from Mount Sinai, bearing children for slavery.

She is Hagar.

Now Hagar is Mount Sinai in Arabia.

She corresponds to the present Jerusalem, for she is in slavery with her children.

But the Jerusalem above is free, and she is our mother.

For it is written, Rejoice, O barren one who does not bear.

Break forth and cry aloud, you who are not in labor.

For the children of the desolate one will be more than those of the one who has a husband.

Now you brothers, like Isaac, are children of promise.

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

But what does the scripture say?

Cast out the slave woman and her son.

For the son of the slave woman shall not inherit with the son of the free woman.

So, brothers, we are not children of the slave, but of the free woman.

The word of the Lord.

You, brothers and sisters, like Isaac, are children of promise.

So let's pray.

Lord Jesus, we come here this morning, whatever week we may have had, whatever month we may have had, whatever season of life we are in, we come to you empty-handed.

We come to you looking for nourishment.

We come to you looking to be fit.

Would you give us this bread of life, Lord?

Give us this bread of life.

Would we receive your goodness and your grace through your word and at your table by faith?

And renew us and restore us, Lord, through your good news.

In Jesus' name we pray.

Well, I want to tell you about my favorite episode of Star Trek the Next Generation.

I should say it's one of my favorite episodes, because I have a hard time picking this one.

It is my grandmum Diane's favorite episode of Star Trek The Next Generation.

I know because we've talked about it a lot.

We'll talk about it when it comes on the TV if she watches it.

This is an episode, season five, episode two, of Darmuk.

In this episode, the uh Captain Picard and the crew of the Enterprise are tasked with opening up diplomatic relations with a new alien race.

They don't know much about this alien race, very unfamiliar to them.

The only thing they know about this alien race is that any attempt at communication with them has been unsuccessful.

Despite the best translation software in all the galaxy, the best technology, they haven't been able to understand or grasp each other's meaning.

So when they have their first encounter and one ship calls the other on the view screen there, the Enterprise extends an olive branch, invites them to further talks, but what they're hearing in response is a series of phrases that makes absolutely no sense to them.

They're saying things like one thing they're saying in particular over and over and over, one phrase is this Dharmak and Jalad at Tanagrah.

They keep repeating that.

And the look on the Enterprise crew, their faces, looks much like the confused look on your faces right now.

Although probably you're thinking, I think our pastor has truly lost his mind in this case.

Maybe, maybe, but uh bear with me and we can figure that out together.

It makes no sense to the enterprise, but over the course of the episode, uh crisis uh happens and tensions are escalating, and now these two great galactic powers are on the brink of war together.

It's absolutely crucial, it's absolutely imperative that these two people be able to communicate with one another.

And tensions continue to escalate until Captain Picard figures it out.

He figures out that whereas our language is premised on abstract meaning, this alien race communicates their meaning through imagery and metaphor.

Right?

So I might say something like, I'm in love, right?

That's self-identifying, that's love is a bit of an abstract, it's a word that corresponds to a concept, right?

This alien race instead draws from the mythology and stories of their culture to communicate an idea.

It would be as if I said to you, instead of saying, I'm in love, I say Juliet on her balcony.

We all know that story, right?

We know what's going on in that moment, and therefore we know the meaning that's being conveyed.

This alien race is trying to communicate their meaning to the enterprise, but because they don't know the stories of that culture, they can't grasp the meaning.

It's when they grasp the stories of this culture that they begin to grasp the meaning that's being conveyed, and suddenly they realize that Dharmac and Jalad are actually mythological heroes for this culture, and that Anagra is this island where they meet, and through adversity they form a lifelong friendship.

See, where the Enterprise thought this was a hostile alien race, actually, this alien race has been trying to express their goodwill to the Enterprise the whole time.

Catch the story, we catch the meaning.

You see what I mean?

Why am I talking about Star Trek the Next Generation?

That is a great question.

I suspect that our first reading of our Galatians text this morning, just like my first reading of this Galatian text this morning, is as confusing as the as leaves us as confused as the crew of the Enterprise when they encounter this alien race, drawing from stories that seem unfamiliar, using expressions that seem totally foreign, totally alien to them.

But if we can enter into the story, we can grasp a deeper meaning here.

Paul is drawing very, very deeply from the cultural stories of his Jewish faith.

He's drawing deeply from these stories to convey the gospel meaning that he's been driving at now since chapter 3.

We've been exploring the book of Galatians together.

We've been exploring the gospel of grace that Paul presents in the book of Galatians, his letters of the Galatian church.

And we've discovered that God's grace is not delivered to us through obeying his law.

It's not a consequence of our performance.

It's rather a result of God's promise, which is freely given to us.

It's God's promise that makes us children of God, not our performance, right?

That frees us.

That frees us from being slaves to always have to perform God's commands.

It frees us to be sons and daughters, who are well loved by our Heavenly Father.

Right?

This is the gospel of grace.

And Paul wants to drive home this point through a well-known story in his cultural moment.

He wants to drive home this point by inviting us to enter into this story and to catch a deeper meaning that we might otherwise miss.

It might seem alien to us, but if we can enter into this story, we too can grasp the goodness, the beauty, the truth of the gospel.

So that's what I want us to do this morning is enter into this story as Paul presents it and grasp at the gospel.

Here's what we're going to find.

The only way we can be rightly related to God is by grace alone.

The only way we can be rightly related to God is by grace alone.

That is Paul's point here.

And to illustrate that, he gives us a story.

And through this story, we discover that there are two ways we try and relate ourselves to God.

And these two different ways have two different outcomes.

And both of these outcomes are exclusive of one another.

They can't coexist together.

The only way we can be rightly related to God is by grace alone.

But if we discover God's grace, we discover a comfort, an assurance, a confidence in Him that we would otherwise never have.

So let's open up Galatians chapter 4 together.

Galatians 4 · chapter mention

If you've got your order of service, if you've got your Bibles, let's open that up together and let's track with the story that Paul's telling so we can grasp at the meaning of the gospel.

The only way we can be rightly related to God is by his grace alone.

Here's Paul's first point, verses 21 to 23.

There are two ways that we try to relate ourselves to God.

Verse 21, Paul says, Tell me, you who desire to be under the law, do you not listen to the law?

So Paul's been addressing the Galatian Christians this whole time, Galatian Christians who've been taught by sort of self-appointed works righteousness teachers, saying that sure, your faith in Jesus is important, but really you've got to do what God wants you to do if God's going to be happy with you, right?

So Paul's been addressing Galatian Christians who've been sitting under this teaching.

Now Paul turns to direct uh address the teachers themselves.

You who desire to be under the law, which is to say, you who want to earn God's favor by performing all of God's requirements.

You know, you guys who've been teaching others to do the same.

He's asking them, don't you listen to the law that you teach?

If you go to the scriptures themselves, you will see that they make my point and not yours.

So let's do some Bible study together, is what Paul's saying.

Let's remember this story Abraham, Hagar, and Sarah.

Now, Hagar had, pardon me, it is written that Abraham had two sons.

One by a slave woman, one by a free woman.

But the son of the slave was born according to the flesh.

Well, the son of the free woman was born through the promise.

Abraham has two sons, Paul says.

Why is Paul singling this story out?

Well, I suspect, number one, that the Paul's opponents in the Galatian church, those who've been teaching, you know, sort of works, righteousness, is sort of legalism, they've been probably citing this story as biblical proof for their position.

See, it's not just faith that earns it with God.

You've got to do the right things too.

They're the point of this story and drawing that conclusion.

So Paul's going to cite this story that they've probably been, you know, citing in the life of this congregation.

He's saying, actually, this proves quite the opposite point.

Let's consider the story.

If we're going to understand Paul's point, we've got to understand something of this story.

We read a couple of verses from Genesis 16.

So we'll find the story of Hagar and Sarah and Abraham in Genesis 16 to 21.

The very brief synopsis would be this.

Let's remember that God gave his promise to Abraham.

He promised to bless Abraham, to cause Abraham and his offspring to be a blessing to the world.

He's going to be the conduit of God's grace and God's flourishing and God's renewal work in the world around him.

That's the promise God wants to fulfill through Abraham and through Abraham's offspring.

So the offspring of Abraham is a very big deal.

Very, very important if we want to see God's promise come to pass, right?

So by the time you get to Genesis 16, Abraham and Sarah are getting up there in age and they're looking at each other, going, boy, if we're going to see this promise happen, it ain't going to be between us.

So we better take matters into our own hands.

Abraham, you better marry my servant Hagar.

You better have a child with Hagar if we're going to continue, if we're going to see God's promise come to pass, right?

Now, totally strikes us as strange, totally a foreign idea.

Probably would never pop into our heads if we were in their position.

And that just points out part of the cultural distinctions here between Abraham's ancient Near Eastern context and ours.

This would be uh, this would be considered a reasonable solution to Abraham and Sarah's predicament, especially because offspring mean everything in the ancient Near East.

Who's gonna take care of you when you don't live in a welfare state, right?

You need offspring.

We need offspring.

If we want to see God's blessing happen, we need offspring.

It ain't gonna happen between us, Abraham.

So we better involve Hagar here.

Whenever the Bible presents polygamy or sexual union outside of the covenant context of marriage, it never leads to human flourishing.

And that's what we discover in our Genesis 16 reading.

It leads to the deterioration of this domestic order.

So, Abraham has two sons, one through Hagar.

Now, Paul, it's as if he takes a rope and he's wrapping around all these different concepts.

Nope, pardon me.

He, I'm getting ahead of myself.

Abraham has two sons, Ishmael and Isaac.

Paul is saying that Ishmael is an image of trying to fulfill God's promise through our own efforts.

Ishmael is us taking matters into our own hands and making it happen, right?

Isaac, instead, the son through Sarah, is an image of relying on God to do for us what we cannot do for ourselves.

Isaac comes only because of God's miraculous intervention in Sarah's life and allows her to conceive.

We look at Ishmael, we see an image of us doing our best to make it happen for ourselves.

We look at Isaac, we see an image of God's miraculous power at work, fulfilling his promise.

These are the images that we see.

So Paul's point is very clear.

We see here two ways to relate ourselves to God.

Either by effort or by grace.

Either by what we try to do for God or what God has already done for us by his promise.

These are two ways to relate ourselves to God.

Do you see the difference there?

And Paul is making the point that if we look at the story, this is what we start to see.

We start to see an image of this emerge.

Now, if there are two ways to try and relate ourselves to God, effort and grace, there are two outcomes, one to either of these approaches.

So verse 24.

Now, this may be interpreted allegorically, Paul says.

These two women are two covenants, Paul says.

Okay, allegorically.

So Paul's saying, let's look at it this way.

Let's look at it figuratively.

Paul's not denying the historical reality that lies behind this illustration.

But Paul is saying if we look at this episode of salvation history, we can see an image of the gospel at work.

These two women, Hagar and Sarah, represent two covenants.

The way God works in history.

Hagar, Paul says, who represents our human effort to do for us what or to see God's promise come to pass for ourselves.

It says if Paul takes a rope and wraps it around Hagar, and then takes a rope and wraps it around Mount Sinai, he cites.

Mount Sinai being the place where God delivered his law, gave the Ten Commandments to Moses, right?

And then wraps it around the present Jerusalem.

Did you notice that?

Verse 25?

The present Jerusalem.

So the temple and all of its ritual requirements, all the way, all the means by which the Jewish people relate themselves to God.

He's tying a rope from Hagar to Mount Sinai to the present Jerusalem, and he's saying, what all these things have in common is these are our human efforts.

They amount to our human efforts to earn it before God, to make it happen for ourselves.

They can be our own self-salvation projects.

That might not be what they're intended for, but that's what we make of them, right?

Whereas we look at our Sarah and we see a very different sort of image.

Verse 26.

The Jerusalem above is free, and she is our mother.

So Paul takes a rope and ties it around Sarah and then ties it around the heavenly Jerusalem, the real deal, where God's glory and grace are made manifest in their fullness.

And God says the real thing is delivered not through our efforts, but through God's work for us.

Freely given, His promise, His generosity, His grace.

Paul is saying there's two ways we try and relate ourselves to God: effort and grace.

But the outcome of our effort, the outcome of a Hagar approach, is slavery.

Whereas the outcome of a Sarah approach is freedom, gospel freedom.

What does Paul mean by that?

When Paul cites the reality of slavery, he's drawing something that goes very, very deep in the Jewish consciousness, coming out of the Exodus, right?

Paul is saying when we are, we live in a spirit of slavery when who we are is determined by what we do.

Everything we do to earn it before God makes us slaves to the law.

If we want to earn God's love, we've got to first be slaves who do all the do's and don't all the don'ts, right?

But not so by the gospel.

If we're made children of God, not as an outcome of our performance, but as an outcome of God's promise, then we are freely made children.

We don't need to do everything perfectly to have the full assurance that God loves us, He cares for us, He invites us to be His own.

One is the Hagar way, the way that we try and learn it, the other is the Sarah way, where we receive this as a gift from God by grace.

Do you see the difference?

Either effort or grace, but with two outcomes.

One makes us a slave, one sets us up for gospel freedom.

I gotta think this pushes against maybe our general Canadian consensus on spirituality.

Here's what I mean by that.

I suspect if we talk to the average Canadian, maybe for us ourselves as we reflect on the topic of spirituality, we probably would hear, if we ask for folks to describe what spirituality is or represents, we'd probably hear things like, you know, spirituality is a very broad thing.

It's a very all-embracing kind of thing.

It's a, you know, it's a figure out what works for you sort of thing.

And we might make some superficial distinctions between different religions here and there, but it all basically amounts to the same thing.

Now, I do believe that uh spirituality is an all-embracing thing in the sense that God is always at work.

There is no one whom he is not calling to himself.

But Paul might be offering us a balancing perspective here to our tendency to swing a little too far in the broadness of spirituality.

Maybe we can make some helpful distinctions here that help us see the gospel with clarity and start to see what stands out in the good news of Jesus against any other alternate narrative here.

Paul is saying the line between religion and spirituality, well, the line is not so much between the religion or spirituality, not even between irreligion and religion or morality and immorality.

Rather, the thing all these spiritualities have in common is they amount to human efforts to earn it before God, to try and be the best kind of people we can be, to try and do the things that makes God pleased so that he'll do the things that we want him to do for us.

There's broad spirituality that amounts to our own human effort.

And then Paul says there's the gospel, which is not us relying on our ability to accomplish what we want to accomplish or to coax God into doing what we want him to do for us.

Rather, it's our simple reliance on his promise to us.

It's us receiving a gift rather than twisting his arm.

You see the difference there?

That can help us to see how the gospel stands out in our religious landscape of today.

Yes, God cares about each and every person we meet on the street.

Yes, God is calling them to himself, but only the gospel can be received like a gift.

We could go out into the street, we could proclaim here's all the things you have to do to make God happy.

You've got to start going to church on Sundays, gotta start reading your Bible, etc.

etc.

Hey, those are great things.

But if we go out and proclaim them like that's good news, then we confuse law for gospel, and we've done the same things that Paul's opponents are doing in Galatia.

You see?

If we go out and instead say God has reconciled the world to himself in Christ, place your faith in him, receive his grace like a gift, that's liberated.

Right?

That's liberated for us, too, isn't it?

Liberates us from our drive to do it all or to do it all perfectly.

It liberates us from fear that we haven't done it perfectly, liberates us from pride thinking we have done it perfectly.

It's a gift.

Two ways to relate ourselves to God, our effort or his grace.

One leads to slavery, one leads to freedom.

And the two cannot coexist.

That's what Paul wants us to see, verses 28 to 31 here.

Now, you brothers and sisters, like Isaac, are children of promise, Paul says, but just as at that time he who was born according to the flesh persecuted him who was born according to the spirit, so also it is now.

What's Paul saying here?

Isaac was born by God's promise.

That's analogous to the spiritual reality taking place in your midst, Galatians.

You are born anew by the power of God's Spirit.

It's not by something you've accomplished for yourself, it's by God's free and generous work towards you in Christ.

You are children of promise like Isaac.

You're a result of God's work, not a result of your work like Ishmael.

You see that?

We are children of promise, friends.

If we are in Christ, we are recipients of God's grace.

And no one can change that.

It has been freely given and it cannot be retracted.

That is who you are, that is who I am in Christ.

There's nothing we can do to change that status.

We can only receive it like a gift.

And Paul says this starts to make sense of what's happening in your church, Galatians.

You see, human effort to earn it before God and receiving God's grace like a gift cannot coexist together.

These two things do not get along.

So you've got false teachers in your midst who are proclaiming you've got to do more if you want to earn it before God.

You've got others who are pointing to the gospel.

He says, these two things have never sat well with one another.

And he's kind of alluding to a common interpretation of Genesis 21 where Ishmael kind of tyrannizes Isaac.

It's like these two ideas don't sit together, it has to be one or the other.

You can't have a single church that proclaims both a gospel of earn it before God and a gospel of God's grace alone.

You can't have a church that says we need to do all the right things, and the same church saying God has already done it for us.

You can't have both.

I can't get up on one Sunday and proclaim, you gotta really pull up your bootstraps if you want God to be happy.

And then Matt gets up the next Sunday and says, God's already reconciled you in grace.

It's like that's just which one is it?

That's what's happening in Galatia.

See, if we're going to be a gospel-centered church, we always need to come back to this reality that our focus not in what we do for God, but what God has done for us in Christ.

We come back to the cross, we come back to the resurrection, and we remember that he has done everything that needs doing for us to be reconciled with him.

That's the reality of the gospel here.

It's God's doing, it's not ours.

And therefore, Paul says, what do we do with all this?

Paul says, cast out, verse 30, cast out the slave woman and her son, for the son of the slave woman shall not inherit with the son of the free woman.

It's quoted from Genesis here.

Now here's what Paul's not doing.

Paul is not trying to denigrate Hagar or Ishmael.

Paul knows very well that God cared for them particularly, providentially.

God entered into their situation and provided for them in really powerful ways.

See, God has not disregarded Hagar or Ishmael, and neither should we.

But Paul is saying, let's remember, based on this allegory, these two things can't exist, coexist.

We need to either choose to go about it by grace or struggle, strive.

Never quite make it through our own effort.

See, whether it's the life of an individual soul or whether it's the life of the church, we cannot exchange the gospel of God's grace, which leads to spiritual freedom, for a false gospel of human effort, which leads to slavery.

That's just as true in the life of the church, for Galatia, for our church, as it is in our own hearts.

We are not a gospel-centered church if we are proclaiming that it's all up to you.

But the good news that we proclaim is that God has already done it for us in Christ.

We need to be reminded of that in the quiet of our own hearts, don't we?

We need to preach the gospel to ourselves often, daily, hourly.

Why?

Because it's like our default setting is what do I gotta do to make God happy?

And I need to keep my eyes fixed on Jesus.

If I look inwards, I will not find any assurance there.

I will only find the law pointing out all of my flaws and all of my shortcomings.

But if I look to Jesus, I see the one who's already done it for my sake.

If I look to the cross, I see my sins nailed there.

If I look to his resurrection, I see the hope of my new life.

See, we look to Jesus and we find our reassurance, we do that as a church family, we do that as individual Christians, and if we miss that, then we find ourselves in the exact same predicament as the Galatians.

Confusing human effort for God's grace.

So even though Paul is sort of laying out two ways to relate ourselves to God, Paul is not saying these two things are equivalent things, you know, pick which one suits you.

Paul is saying at the end of the day, one way is really no way to relate to God.

Human effort, which leads to our slavery to what we need to do, does not lead to rightly relating to God.

If we think, if I can be good enough, or at least more good than bad, then that should be sufficient for God.

Then we have missed the gospel.

The gospel is that we have all fallen short of the glory of God, and yet God in Christ has done for us what we cannot do for ourselves.

Just like God did for Abraham and Sarah what they couldn't do for themselves, so has God and Christ done for us what we cannot do for ourselves.

So, friends, where's our trust?

What do we trust in before God?

Do we trust that we're good enough?

Or do we trust that only Christ can be good enough for us?

But he gives himself to us.

That's the gift we kind of remember at the table week for week.

We need to be reminded over and over and over and over again.

God gives himself to us like a gift.

Sometimes our religion can be our greatest barrier to the grace of God, can't it?

If our religion is a religion of works, what I need to do, then we've put up the biggest barrier between us and God that we can put up.

Arguably a bigger barrier between religion is a bigger barrier between us and God, perhaps, and irreligion in some circumstances.

We can come to church and miss the gospel.

If we miss God loves you and died for you and offers you new life in heaven.

That's the gospel.

Remember, Christ your Savior is not found in the outcome of your effort, but in the outcome of his free and generous promise by grace.

We understand the story, we understand the meaning.

Grace and grace alone makes his children not of the slave, but of the free.ca giving.

God bless you and keep you today and every day.