Children of Promise (Galatians 4:21-31)

Galatians chapter four, starting in verse twenty-one.

Tell me, you who want to be under the law, don't you hear the law?

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

But the one by the slave was born as a result of the flesh, while the one by the free woman was born through promise.

These things are being taken figuratively.

For the women represent two covenants.

One is from Mount Sinai and bears children into slavery.

This is Hagar.

Now Hagar represents Mount Sinai in Arabia and 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, childless woman, unable to give birth, burst into song and shout, You who are not in labor, for the children of the desolate woman will be many, more numerous than those of the women of the woman who has a husband.

Now, you too, brothers and sisters, like Isaac, are children of promise.

But just as then the child born as a result of the flesh persecuted the one born as a result of the spirit.

So also now.

But what does the scripture say?

Drive out the slave and her son, for the son of the slave will never be a co-heir with the son of the free woman.

Therefore, brothers and sisters, we are not children of a slave, but of the free woman.

Let's pray.

Lord, as we continue to go through this book of Galatians together, or we pray that your hand of favor would be upon us, Lord, upon our understanding of this as we go through it.

Just recognizing and understanding as Paul continues to repeat that it's about your grace and it's not about the law.

It's about the new covenant and not the old covenant, and that those two covenants cannot exist under the same roof together.

So, Lord, I pray that you would uh teach us exactly what you want us to as collectively as a church, but also individually.

Lord, that we would have hearts that are soft and that are open to your word and to the leading of your Holy Spirit.

So we pray that you would do the work that you desire to do inside each one of us as we go through these verses this morning.

We pray in Jesus' name, amen.

You may be seated.

So as we've been talking so much about Galatians is filled with repetition, but it's also filled with contrast.

Specifically, as we've been going through grace versus law, old covenant versus new covenant, flesh versus spirit, you know, things like that we've been seeing.

And today, Paul will use this illustration of what grace versus law is all about.

And really, yet another attempt to prove to the Galatians that trying to add works to salvation only leads to bondage and only leads to slavery.

You know, Paul's almost two-thirds of the way through this letter, and he's still building his case for this.

We're four chapters in, and he's still building this case.

That one, he has the right to address this issue as an apostle, but then two, telling him that he has a case, he's building this case, that he has a valid point in giving them this message.

And then next week in chapter five, we're finally going to get to the application of these first four chapters of Galatians.

And these verses this morning are probably the hardest in the whole book to dissect and to still keep in context.

So if you're visiting or you've missed the last couple weeks, hang in there, okay?

Because to keep this in context, you really need to understand all the way from the beginning of chapter three up until where we are right here at the end of chapter four.

Which, if you want to, you can always catch up on those things in our podcast that you can find on the website to kind of come up to speed with where we are.

So, in these 10 verses, as we're going through today, we could really go down a bunch of rabbit trails if we chose to.

A lot of rabbit trails that could really lead to a lot of fun facts, but in the end don't really help lead us to understanding God's heart to the Galatians here this morning, or Paul's heart in using this symbolism through the inspiration of the Holy Spirit to the Galatians.

You know, I think the hardest thing as far as sermon prep goes, just to give you a little insight into how we approach these things, I think the hardest thing is not what is going to be taught in the sermon.

The hardest thing is what is not going to be taught in the sermon.

Because if I were to include everything that I came across in the week in my own study, or everything that I cross-referenced, or all of the commentaries that I read through, these sermons would be like two or three hours long, you know, and I don't think any of you would still be awake at the end of them.

So I'm constantly asking God as I'm preparing sermons, like, okay, Lord, what do you have for your people this Sunday?

And I just, I'm constantly praying that as I'm deciding, am I gonna teach on this?

Am I gonna add this?

Am I gonna leave you know this thing out?

But just to reassure you that I'm gonna try and keep this all in context to the best of my ability to help us to understand what Paul's message was first to the Galatian church, and then we'll look at the application for ourselves.

So, with all of that, look at verse 21 with me, and we'll jump right in.

He says, Tell me, you who want to be under the law, don't you hear the law?

And your translation might say, Are you not aware of what the law says?

Again, he's speaking to the Galatians that are going backwards, that are going from grace, and now they're heading toward law.

So he says, Do you even know what the law says?

You know, for the Gentiles that have not come out of Judaism, as far as the law goes, they probably only know what they've learned from Paul, and they probably only know what they've learned from these Judaizers, these people that are trying to pull them back into a Jewish faith plus Jesus.

And of course, you know, there's Jews in Galatia as well that probably know this stuff really well, but they're not the majority of who Paul is writing to in Galatia.

So he asks the Galatians, these Gentile Galatians, do you even know what you're getting yourself into by trying to go back to the law?

And if they don't, or maybe the law has been taught to them by the Judaizers incorrectly, Paul's going to give them a little history lesson here this morning to help them understand it correctly.

By going back again, as he did in chapter 3, to Abraham and talking about Abraham and Sarah and Hagar and Ishmael.

And it's important for us to remember the purpose of why he brought this up in chapter 3 in the first place.

And that was to prove that the true seeds of Abraham are those that have faith in God, not those that can trace their bloodline back to Abraham, or those that are adopting the Jewish faith, or are placing themselves under the law now.

So Paul kind of really in a sly way will say, Yeah, you know, you're the seed of Abraham, all right, but seeds of the slave Ishmael.

You're seeds of the one that was cast out and had no inheritance.

And if you were Jewish and you were hearing this from Paul, those are fighting words.

They really are.

If you're hearing that and saying, no, you're not the seed really of Isaac, you're the seed of the slave.

Those are fighting words.

This is very, a very different message that Paul's giving to them than the Judaizers were giving to the Galatians.

They were saying, you know, seeds of Abraham are those that follow the Jewish faith, the law, and have the Jewish bloodline.

It had nothing to do with faith in Jesus Christ.

It was all about the works of the law and including Jesus into that, like this hybrid between Christianity and Judaism.

And as Paul will get to, those two cannot dwell in the same house together.

And in this, we'll see yet another contrast here in Galatians.

There's gonna be a lot this morning.

So chat see uh verse 22.

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

But the one by the slave was born as a result of the flesh, while the one by the free woman was born through promise.

So if you're an underliner or a highlighter, underline slave and free woman, and then underline flesh and promise.

That's the whole point here.

Something being born of the flesh and something being born of promise.

That's the contrast.

Slave versus free, flesh versus promise.

And there's so many contrasts this morning that we're gonna be keeping two columns of what Paul is contrasting behind me today.

So let's talk about slavery.

You know, slavery is a concept that Galatia would understand really well.

Slavery was very common in the Roman Empire at this time, and they're a part of this Roman Empire at this time, and there's probably a good number of slaves and bondservants in the church in Galatia that could really, I think, understand and appreciate that they may be in slavery on this earth, but are free in Christ for all of eternity.

You know, think from a slave's perspective that knew they would be a slave for the rest of their life, but had the promise of freedom in Christ for all of eternity.

I think that probably provided a lot of hope to these slaves.

Probably has something to do with why the Holy Spirit inspired Paul to use this illustration of Abraham in the first place.

Now, a little background.

In the story of Abraham, and if you're following along in your yearly reading plan, you probably just went through this.

But God promised Abraham a son and descendants as many as the stars in the sky.

But God wasn't moving as fast as Abraham and Sarah thought that he should.

So he and his wife Sarah decided out of their flesh that they were gonna help God out.

Have you ever tried that before?

I have, and it's never turned out well.

So they decided that Abraham would sleep with Sarah's slave Hagar and have a son and through their flesh help God out.

So, side question.

Was Abraham declared righteous because he was such a good person?

Okay, you guys are paying attention.

Good.

If he didn't have that, then I don't know what we're doing here.

No, he had some major sin issues, didn't he?

Just like you and me.

But he was declared righteous because of his faith in God.

That's it.

So in their flesh, Abraham and Sarah go along with their plan, and Hagar has a son, and his name is Ishmael.

He's a slave.

And it was Hagar the slave having a son born into slavery.

And then in God's timing, Sarah has Isaac.

When everybody thought it was too late, that God didn't come through, or that Sarah was too old to have a baby.

God gives them Isaac, the son that God had promised.

So we have Hagar and Ishmael, and we have Sarah and Isaac to add to our columns behind me.

Look at verse 24 with me.

These things are being taken figuratively, for the women represent two covenants.

Your translation may say to take these things as symbolic or allegorically.

One translation even says as an illustration.

So he's just letting them know that he's not that he is now speaking in a metaphor.

He's not telling them that Genesis is an allegory.

He's telling them that there is this picture in Genesis of these two covenants that they can draw from.

And Paul draws this picture from the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, obviously.

He wasn't just grasping for straws, he wasn't just making things up through this symbolism.

So in the second half of verse 24, he lays out the terms of this allegory that he's about to jump into.

So look at the second half of verse 24 with me.

One, this is referring to the old covenant, is from Mount Sinai and bears children into slavery.

This is Hagar.

Now Hagar represents Mount Sinai in Arabia and corresponds to the present Jerusalem.

For she is in slavery with her children.

So Hagar equals slavery.

Got it?

And Paul wants to correlate that with the law.

Hagar was a slave and bore Ishmael into slavery.

The law came from God on Mount Sinai and bore Israel into slavery to the law.

And he mentions that Jerusalem, a symbol of present Israel at the time of Paul's writing, is living under slavery as well.

You know, I think proof of that, that current Israel at the time of this writing was living under slavery, is that Jesus wept over Jerusalem in Luke 13.

And that same Jerusalem didn't recognize their Messiah and actually killed their own Messiah.

They were living under the law, which Paul already established is a cursed existence.

And he knows this first hand, doesn't he?

Because he spent the whole first part of his life living under that cursed existence.

Now, Paul will contrast this with those that are following Jesus.

Okay?

So look at verse 26.

He says, but the Jerusalem above, your translation might say, heavenly Jerusalem is free.

And she is our mother.

So Paul continues to give us the key to this allegory and how we're supposed to understand it.

Now, Jerusalem above is one of those trails we could head down and do a whole sermon on, which we're not going to be heading down this morning.

But if you want to do further study on your own, you can look at Hebrews 11.10 or Hebrews 12.22 if you want to start going down that path about what that's all about.

But the point of this is when we come to Christ, our citizenship is no longer on this earth.

In slavery to the elementary principles of this earth, as we talked so much about last week, our citizenship is in heaven.

So Sarah equals the Jerusalem above, the heavenly Jerusalem.

And she represents the covenant of grace that is based on promise.

And we as Christians are adopted into that covenant, that family of God, becoming Abraham's spiritual seed through belief in Christ.

I told you there's a lot to unwrap this morning, didn't I?

There's a lot of technical things that he has wrapped in here.

So we're gonna have to be a little technical as we unwrap these things.

And now, as we get into verse 27, Paul's going to quote from the Old Testament, from Isaiah 54, 1, where God likens Israel in Babylonian captivity to a barren woman, filled with shame and dishonor.

But God also gives them a picture of the future as well.

So look at verse 27 with me.

For it is written, so this is from Isaiah 54, rejoice, childless woman, unable to give birth, birth, burst into song and shout, You who are not in labor, for the children of the desolate woman will be many, more numerous than those of the woman who has a husband.

You know, when it says childless woman here, it's the same exact word that's used to describe Sarah in Genesis 11:30, when it says she was unable to conceive.

Genesis 11:30

Same word.

And many believe that Paul is pointing to the second half of verse 27 here as predicting that there will be more people under the new covenant than there will be under the old covenant, or ever was under the old covenant.

Which would make sense because that is exactly what has happened since then.

You see, the new covenant was not able to be birthed from the desolate woman until Jesus made a way for it.

Jesus was the seed that was promised to Abraham.

And when Jesus made a way for the new covenant through his perfect life, death, and resurrection, he made a way for the desolate woman to give birth to the new covenant.

Now, this next portion I'm going to be talking about here, it may seem like a rabbit trail as we go down it, but I think it really adds value to what Paul is conveying to the Galatian church here.

So in the Old Testament times, in the Jewish faith, if a Gentile wanted to become Jewish, so this is before Jesus ever came along, and if they wanted to start worshiping the one true God and place themselves under the law and place themselves under the sacrificial system, they would baptize that person into the Jewish faith.

It was called a ceremonial cleansing, signifying the washing away of their past Gentileness, I guess you could say, if that's even a word.

And this was a practice when somebody wanted to become Jewish.

You know, and I wouldn't be surprised, we don't know this for sure, but I wouldn't be surprised if these Judaizers that are trying to influence the Galatians were trying to baptize them into Judaism in order to become the seed of Abraham.

And here's why.

Remember, these false teachers are promoting legalism, and they were really concerned with bloodlines.

You know, thinking you're favored and you are blessed and you're saved if you are the bloodline of Abraham and no longer a Gentile.

Which may be why Paul already told them in chapter 3, for those of you who are baptized into Christ have been clothed with Christ.

There is no Jew or Greek, slave or free, male and female, since you are all one in Christ Jesus.

And if you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham's seed, heirs according to the promise.

In other words, baptism into Christ puts us all on the same playing field, whether you're a Jew or you're a Gentile.

You know, you don't need to be baptized into anything else.

You don't need to become anything else in order to be saved.

We are all one in Christ was his point of writing this.

And what Paul is doing here in these verses in chapter 4 is he's letting them know that Ishmael also has the bloodline of Abraham.

And that their bloodline alone and their faith that they have in works actually makes them more like Ishmael than it does like Isaac.

Which, like I said, would be infuriating to any Jewish person that's reading this letter.

Look at verse 28.

Now you too, brothers and sisters, like Isaac, are children of promise.

The promise made with Abraham about the nation of Israel coming from him, then the promise of the Messiah coming through Abraham's seed, as we talked about in chapter 3, made Abraham's spiritual descendants children of promise.

So in verse 28, Paul turns his attention to the Galatians and says, You too, brothers and sisters, like Isaac, are children of promise.

You're under the new covenant that Christ set in motion that's based on grace through faith.

So you are now like Isaac, even as Gentiles.

So his heart is stop trying to be like Ishmael by willingly going into that slavery that is the law.

And think about those that were slaves that were reading this or hearing this in Galatia.

Think of how poignant this statement would be, realizing that they were choosing spiritual slavery over spiritual freedom.

Now look at verse 29 with me.

But just as then.

The child born as a result of the flesh persecuted the one born as a result of the spirit, so also now.

Ishmael persecuted Isaac.

Ishmael was the older half-brother of Isaac.

You know, we see an instance of this in Genesis 21, of Ishmael making fun of Isaac, and this leading to when him and Hagar were actually driven out from Abraham's household.

And then we see that the angel of the Lord tells Hagar in Genesis 16, 12, this man, speaking of Ishmael, will be like a wild donkey.

His hand will be against everyone, and everyone's hand will be against him.

He will settle near all his relatives.

He's going to be against everyone, it says, and he's going to live right next to Abraham and his descendants.

You know, a good portion of Ishmael's descendants settled in the area that we know as Arabia.

You know, Muhammad, the father of Islam, claimed that he could trace his lineage all the way back to Ishmael.

And that's another rabbit trail that we're not going to be going down here this morning, because that's not the point of Paul's message here.

The whole point of what Paul is saying here, though, is that those born under the law are now persecuting those born into this new covenant.

In Galatia, these Judaizers are persecuting the Christians by trying to convince them that they need to go back into the slavery of the law.

So what should the Galatians do about this?

I'm glad you asked because verse 30 tells us.

But what does the scripture say?

Drive out the slave and her son, for the son of the slave will never be a co-heir with the son of the free woman.

So Paul's basically saying, Galatia, drive out the Judaizers.

Drive out those that are legalists, those that are claiming the bloodline of Abraham without having the faith of Abraham.

Root out those that are trying to lead you into slavery and bondage, the same slavery and bondage that Jesus died on the cross to get you out of.

You know, when, if you think about this story of Abraham and of Isaac and of Sarah and of Hagar and Ishmael and all of them, when did God agree with Sarah to tell Abraham to send Hagar and Ishmael away?

It was when the Son of Promise came.

It was when Isaac was weaned that all of this happened.

When the son of promise came, it was when finally Sarah says, I can't live in this situation anymore.

We gotta do something about this.

And the tensions were so high in Abraham's household that the slave was to be driven out.

Because Sarah and Hagar could not exist together in the same way that grace and law cannot exist together.

You know, like the slide behind me, those two columns that we have, they cannot exist together in our Christian faith.

So Paul tells Galatia, drive out the left column.

Drive out the sons of Ishmael, because you are the true spiritual seed of Abraham through your faith in Jesus Christ.

And all of that that we just went through is to say this in verse 31.

Therefore, brothers and sisters, we are not children of a slave, but of the free woman.

And don't tell anybody, but we're going to steal one verse from next week.

Chapter 5, verse 1.

For freedom Christ set us free.

Stand firm then, and don't submit against again to a yoke of slavery.

Paul's basically saying, Galatia, in case you missed everything that I just said, it's kind of like when Jesus would tell the parables, and then later the disciples were like, What does that mean?

You know, he's like giving them the answer here.

He's saying, we as followers of Christ are born of Sarah.

We're born of promise.

We're born into freedom, into grace, in Christ Jesus.

And why did Christ do this for us?

It says right here, for freedom.

For freedom from the law, for freedom from the penalty of sin.

For freedom from our flesh, for freedom from the current Jerusalem, you know, this earth and its elements, for freedom from the curse that we're living in right now.

This is why Jesus came, died, and rose again for freedom.

So Paul tells them in chapter 5, verse 1, so stand firm in that freedom.

Drive out legalism and stand in freedom.

You know, I want us all to look back to the first part of chapter 4, starting in verse 4.

This is why Abraham used this allegory to help them understand what he said in verses 4 through 7 of chapter 4.

And this is one more way to help us keep this in context.

He says, When the time came to completion, God sent his son, born of a woman, born under the law, to redeem those under the law, so that we might receive adoption as sons.

And because you are sons, God sent the Spirit of His Son into our hearts, crying, Abba, Father, so you are no longer a slave, but a son.

And if a son, then God has made you an heir.

If you're sitting here today and you have not accepted Christ as your Lord and Savior, He made it a free gift for you that you simply need to accept as your own.

To confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead for your sins, and because he loved you that much.

If you do that, then you will get to experience freedom in a way that you never have before.

And if you're sitting here today and you have experienced that freedom, but you've gone from that freedom, like the Galatians, and you're leaning back into that slavery that is the law, that is legalism, because you want to feel better about yourself, better about earning your salvation, or you want to feel elevated above other Christians in your life.

It's about grace.

It's by grace that we have been saved and not of our works, lest anyone should boast.

Jesus died to take us out of slavery, to give us freedom so we can stand firm in that freedom.

You please pray with me.

Lord, we thank you for all that you've done for us.

We thank you that we are free from all of those things that we just listed.

Lord, before we were saved, we may have thought we were free.

But we were in bondage to sin.

We were in bondage to the things of this earth.

And we may have thought we weren't worshiping anything, Lord, but we're probably worshiping everything but you in that time.

So, Lord, I pray that we would crave and desire that freedom that Jesus Christ has brought, this new covenant of grace that only comes by faith in you.

So would you help us to trust in you deeper and to have that faith in you and you alone and to realize that the temptations of this world, the temptations that our flesh may be craving, they only lead to destruction, they only lead to further into slavery.

So, Lord, help us to see those temptations and those desires of the flesh as just that of longing for those shackles and those chains once again.

Lord, help us to stand firm in freedom.

We pray in Jesus' name.

Amen.