Galatians 4:21-31 A Story of Faith

Welcome to the podcast of Recast Church in Matawan, Michigan, where you can grow in faith, community and service. We're currently studying Galatians in a series called Off the Chain, Finding Freedom in Galatians.

Here's Pastor Don Filsack.

Keeping the Cross Central in Galatians

As we jump back into Galatians chapter 4 here, we're going to wrap up the end of this chapter. And again, on Sunday mornings, I like to talk through a little bit of the text, just kind of walk you through it and read it before we come to worship so that we can get our minds kind of settled down.

How many of you had a pretty busy week? A lot of things going on. Some of you maybe don't raise your hand on this one, you don't have to. Some of you have had rough weeks, got some bad news, had some difficulty.

So there's all kinds of things that swirl around in your mind when you sit there, right? Like right now, you've got things that have happened this week and things that happened in the car ride on the way here or out in the parking lot or whatever.

And so you've got all of this. So I like to focus us in on God's word. What we're going to see here in our text this morning is Paul is going to tell us a story. He's going to basically appeal to one of the Old Testament stories.

In reality, how many of you would admit storytelling can be a powerful tool that God has used in your life or that teachers can use in your life or they can paint a picture, a story picture, and sometimes that goes further than somebody just telling you to do something.

Paul is going to employ the use of an Old Testament story in order to drive home his point. And his main point has been that God's grace comes to us through faith. It is not by works of the law. So he's used rational arguments.

He's used a whole host of tools. What do you mean a teacher has all kinds of tools in their tool belt? He's used rational argumentation. He's used some of the Old Testament text. He has appealed to their emotions, ultimately to show that the life of a follower of Jesus Christ is not a life based on laws and rules and regulations, but it is based on the sacrifice of Jesus Christ.

The way we move forward in our walk with God is to keep the cross central in our life, to keep our eyes fixed on what Jesus Christ has done, and that's the pathway forward. Not to focus on our sin, not to focus on remedying ourselves or fixing ourselves, but to recognize what the remedy is.

What is it that has fixed us? And it is the cross of Jesus Christ, and it is that that seals it. It is the cross that guarantees it. And then not only that, but Paul has talked about throughout the book of Galatians the indwelling power of the Holy Spirit that lives within us.

If you are a follower of Jesus Christ, you have the power of God himself dwelling within you to help you along in this process of remembering the cross and living according to the grace and the awesome sacrifice that we've received.

And so, we've seen Paul use all of these different tools in order to try to communicate this primary point. And that's why often, have some of you felt like the point of most of these sermons have been kind of the same thing?

Not laws, live by grace. Not laws, live by grace. And yet you're still here, so that means you're still taking some of the sin. So I appreciate you guys hanging in there. Galatians is a book that is just Paul coming from all different kinds of angles trying to drive home this same point.

Trying to bring home this one point that we are saved by grace and therefore we live by grace, not by laws and rules. This week he turns to this story from the Old Testament, and although Paul uses what is a true historical account, I want to clarify that when I use the word story here, the story of Abraham and Sarah, Isaac, Ishmael, Hagar, the slave, all of these are real people.

This is a historical account and so I use the word story loosely because sometimes story in your mind will conjure up images of something that's false or something that you just tell the children or whatever.

These are true events. But he's going to identify in these Old Testament characters of Hagar and Sarah something fundamental about the way that faith works. Something about the way that faith operates in your life and in my life.

There's some reality to the way that we ought to view faith and the way we ought to view faith in God differently as we encounter the story of Abraham, Sarah, and Hagar. Now if we're honest, how many of you would raise your hand and be honest and say, I have a tendency to take things into my own hands.

Like I have a tendency to try to do things my own way. We are a self-sufficient people and we turn to God like faith is a plan B, often. You would admit that in your life. It's like, I got this one, I'll take care of this, I'll make this work, and then only if I fail will I turn to God in this circumstance.

Only if I'm not able to get it done, then I'll trust God. What it really amounts to is that we ascribe to the notion, the faulty notion, that God helps those who help themselves. Have any of you heard that phrase before?

God helps those who help themselves. As if God comes along and gives the assist. You're the point scorer, you're the champion on the team, but he's going to come in and just kind of help. He's good at feeding the ball into the post.

But you've got it, you've got this under control. As a matter of fact, I did some research this week, have any of you heard of George Barna? George Barna is kind of like a Christian poll, he gathers information, asks questions to large chunks of the population and then gets results.

He's like a Christian Gallup poll. George Barna did some research centered on this false phrase, God helps those who help themselves, which by the way, in my research, I couldn't quite figure out who said it.

Now Benjamin Franklin did say this phrase, so some of you are sitting there going, I think Ben Franklin said this. He did say it, but it didn't start with him, and so some people are saying it goes back all the way to ancient times.

But God helps those who help themselves. 68 of Americans who identify themselves as born again believers. Now how many of you know, if you call yourself born again and you're willing to identify yourself as born again in this culture, you probably are, right?

I mean, would you agree with me on that? I mean, the word born again is not necessarily a great term on the political scene and the way that our culture, are you guys in agreement with that for the most part?

So if 68 of those who identified themselves as born again in a recent poll thought that the statement, God helps those who help themselves, was a quotation from the Bible. They thought that it came straight from scripture.

But what's more troubling is that 75%, in the same poll, 75 of teenagers that were polled about this topic identified, choosing between multiple options, identified that God helps those who help themselves is the primary message of scripture.

That's the primary thing that the Bible teaches. 75 of children raised in the church thought that that was the primary message that we have to offer the world as Christians. God will help you if you help yourself.

Something wrong with this message? Is there something counter to the book of Galatians that's in this message? God helps those who help themselves? You do it and then God will come along and assist you.

He'll shore up your plans and make you succeed because God will come along and help you as long as you're helping yourself. I think there's something in my history, something in my past that leads very counter to that.

I was helpless.

I was hopeless. I was lost and I was condemned and bound for hell and God rescued me. I didn't help myself.

I did.

I helped myself to a little sin here and a little sin there. That's the way I helped myself, right? I didn't pull myself up by the bootstraps and plunge my way into heaven and barge my way into the kingdom.

It was God saving me. God helps those who help themselves, false, untrue. In our text, we're going to see a couple, in the Old Testament, reflecting on the Old Testament, we're going to see a couple who try to help themselves, literally, actually try to help God fulfill a promise.

God makes them a promise and they're like, we'll get this one, God. You promise us something? We'll make it happen. You sit back, God, and watch, be dazzled at our intellect and our ability to get this.

Done.

It's not going to go well for them, as you might imagine. But when God, in His great mercy, so He makes a promise to them, and when God is ready to fulfill the promise, He does it. Because He is the one who is faithful.

And so, despite their attempts, lack of faith, despite their paltry attempts at trying to fulfill this promise on their own, God says, no, I'm going to step back and watch what I'm going to accomplish.

And the promise is going to look like a 99-year-old woman giving birth. It's going to be a woman who you could just never in your mind, you just couldn't conceive of her conceiving. And she's going to have a baby.

And the promise is fulfilled when God is ready. We come together this morning and as we come to worship, we are worshiping the God who promises, and has promised things to humanity. And not only does He promise, but praise God, He is a God who fulfills His promises.

Despite how impossible the situation might seem. And I recognize, as I'm looking out, there are some, there's some sense in which you feel like your situation, where you live right now is impossible. God couldn't reconcile that relationship.

God couldn't fix that. God couldn't heal that disease. God couldn't do this. And yet, He proves that He is able, He is powerful. And I'm convinced that He often waits until all hope seems lost to prove that it is He who is fulfilling His promises, it is He who is accomplishing it.

So I want you to open your Bibles, please, to Galatians 4, and we're going to be looking at 21 through 31. You're going to find that on page 834 in the Bible in the seat back in front of you. So if you take that Bible out, you can turn to 834 and find it right there.

Verse 21 of Galatians chapter 4 through the end of the chapter. If you don't own a Bible, take that one with you. By the way, we want everybody to have a copy of the Word of God, so take the one that's in the seat back.

But follow along as I read God's word for us this morning. 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 the 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. And what does 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.

Let's pray.

Fathers, we have an opportunity to come and offer praise to you. I ask that you would allow our hearts to be transformed and changed as we hear your word, as we get an opportunity to interact with it, that we would recognize that we have an issue in our hearts and in our lives with self-sufficiency.

We have an issue in our heart of trying to make things happen. I can't even do that here, standing up here and trying to preach for a result, trying to preach to really grab people's attention, or, Father, it's going to be your work or nothing is going to be accomplished here this morning, and so we ask that you would be honored and glorified and that you would be pleased by your Spirit to move among us this morning.

Father, that as we sing these songs, we would bring honor and glory to you, because you are awesome and you are the Great One, the Holy One, who gives promises and then keeps those promises to your people.

I praise you in Jesus' name.

Amen.

Children of the Promise, Not Children of the Flesh

Hopefully, you were able to praise God, and are you guys rejoicing that there's a remedy for us? Our sickness, our illness, our brokenness is ourselves, and God has fixed it. He's taken care of it. And that's what we're going to be looking at.

I mean, in essence, that's the message of the Gospel. That's the message of the entire Bible, and it's just a matter of looking at this part of Scripture to get down to that point. I want to point out, we're in Galatians 4, 21 through 31, for those of you who maybe came in a little bit late after we saw that, page 834 in the Bible, there's a seat back in front of you, and it'd be great to have that open there so you can refer to it throughout the message.

Right away in verse 21, you see the first two words there, tell me. I think Paul begins a bit sarcastic in verse 21. It's like, tell me, answer me, give me a reply here, he says, you who claim to want to be under the law.

He's speaking to the Galatians, a people who were a group of churches, a cluster of churches that he started in what's now modern-day Turkey in the south-central area, a Roman province. He had traveled through there, planting churches, and some had embraced the Gospel, and churches were started there.

But then some false teachers came in behind Paul and began to say, well, you started with this whole Jesus thing, but what you really need is you need the Old Testament law to be acceptable to God. You really need something else.

You need something more to inform your life and something else to refine your life before God so that you'll really be acceptable to God. You need some laws, you need some rules, you need to follow the Old Testament.

And so he says to them, do you really? Do you really want to be under the law? You who claim to want to be under the law, how well do you even know the Torah? How well do you even know the law? He's challenging them.

He says, don't you even, do you listen to it? You see, his audience in context is a bunch of Gentiles, people who were not raised under.

The law.

They didn't understand it. They weren't raised to know the law. They were raised to worship idols and the Roman and Greek gods and goddesses. And so in context, you may understand how Paul would be letting them have it.

Do you really even get what you're signing up for by suggesting that you want to come under the rules and regulations? People had come in and convinced them that they needed to keep the law of Moses in order to be acceptable to God, but they didn't even know the law of Moses.

And remember, in context, Paul was an expert in the Old Testament. He had studied under one of the preeminent rabbis of the day, Gamaliel. We have records of this dude and how he was one of the highest standing rabbis of the.

Era.

Everybody wanted to study under Gamaliel. So Paul himself studied under Gamaliel. He knew the law in and out. So he has the right to challenge these Gentiles' understanding of the law and that's what he's going to do.

And he's going to do so by telling a story. Now I can't help but apply this real quick to us. If you think about what he's challenging them, he's saying, you want to be under the law, but you don't even know it.

Well let me ask you here at Recast Church this morning, tell me, all of you here at Recast who claim to love the Word of God, do you listen to it? Do you believe it? Do you take it in? Are you letting it saturate your life?

Do you walk in it? Do you breathe it in? Is it your life source? Is it your source of power? Is it the place where you turn? The New Testament author James admonishes us, urges us, encourages us to not be hearers only, but to be doers of the Word.

Not that we would, you know, not that I'm suggesting to you that you just go out and again like based on rules and regulations that now you come up with a checklist of reading and how much, and you're closer to God because you read it and you're, you know, on days that you forgot to read your Bible or you didn't get around to it, then God is further from you and doesn't like you that day or something like that.

Are you understanding what I'm saying? This is the life source. This is the place where we go for relationship with God, to know Him, to understand how He moves and works and what He desires of us. Is that making sense?

What about us? He's saying to the Gentiles who are coming under the law in Galatia, do you really even understand what you're saying you believe in? Are you even sent? What about us? Do we understand that?

And now in verse 22, Paul launches into an Old Testament narrative about the life of Abraham, the father of the Jews, and his wife, Sarah, and their slave, Hagar. Now that history can be found in Genesis chapter 16 through 17 and chapter 21.

I'd encourage you to read that sometime, maybe even the next week to go back and read that account, Genesis 16 and 17 and chapter 21, where you're going to get the gist of the stories that he is talking about here.

But right off the bat, Paul is going to identify in verse 22 that Abraham had two sons. There's this contrast, and he's going to draw it out between these two sons. Now, how many of you already knew that Abraham had two sons?

Okay, he had Ishmael and Isaac, Ishmael being his firstborn. And he says the firstborn, Ishmael, was born of a slave woman named Hagar, and his secondborn son was born of a free woman, that is, his wife, Sarah.

Well, we already know there's some intrigue here. Something's going on in this family for him to have a child with their slave and a child with him. How many of you know something's already messed up?

Are you seeing where this is going? And some of you already know the story, but Paul here is not taking for granted that his original audience may well not have been very well informed about this story.

They might have been hearing this for the first time. It's unclear what all they understood about Abraham. But to make sense of this, I feel compelled to kind of explain to you the Abrahamic covenant again, that God met with a guy named Abraham, and this is the centerpiece of the Old Testament, so bear with me.

I think it's very important that we understand why Paul is bringing up Abraham in this context. What's this got to do with anything? Well, God met with a dude named Abraham back in ancient times, even before Paul.

Paul was centuries ago, right? And centuries before Paul was a guy named Abraham who was a pagan idol worshiper who lived in ancient Babylon. And God met with him and made an agreement with him, made a covenant with him, basically agreed to a contract, made some promises.

And have any of you ever thought about this? How many of you would take for granted that you believe that God met with Abraham? You believe that? Scripture says it, so you believe it. Have any of you thought about what that meeting looked like?

What was that? Did God appear to him in a human form? Was there like a big bright light? Was there a cloud and God speaking out of the cloud or whatever? God met with Abraham. Okay, we take that for granted.

It's here.

It's in the text. He met with him and he made a three-part promise. All of these promises are tied in and wrapped up into this one thing called covenant, but there's three distinct parts to it. The first part was God said, I'm going to make you into a great nation.

In other words, you're going to have kids and your kids are going to have kids and your kids are going to have kids and it's going to just be this big nation and I'm going to bless them. Okay, this is going to be a good thing.

And not only that, but in those ancient times, how many of you know that in order to be blessed, in order to survive, you needed a land. You needed some property. If they become Bedouins and they're just wandering around, battling and fighting against everybody that they encounter, which we saw in the wilderness, they're not going to last long in that culture and in that time and in that era.

And so God actually says, I will establish a great land for you and we studied that in the book of Joshua, but all of those promises, those two promises, I'm going to make you a great nation and I'm going to give you a great land to preserve you, are all driving towards the third promise.

One is going to be born of Abraham's seed, an offspring, further down the road, who is going to be the one who blesses all nations. The Messiah, the chosen one, is going to come from the line of Abraham and I'm preserving this people for the purpose of making my promise come true here on this planet.

For the purpose of carrying forward a promise that I will bless all nations through one of your offspring, Abraham. So are you guys good with the covenant?

You get that?

I know I've said that multiple times, but that covenant is the centerpiece of the Old Testament. All other portions and parts of the Old Testament needed to be interpreted through the lens of the understanding of that covenant that God met with a real guy named Abraham and made some promises to him.

So what we've often thought is that Moses is the center, the giving of the law, Mount Sinai is the center of the Old Testament. It is not. It is this promise. This promise is the centerpiece, maybe even the centerpiece of ancient human history up to the point where then Jesus Christ comes on the scene and fulfills it.

But promise given, promise fulfilled.

Right?

It's Old Covenant and New Covenant. In the Old Covenant we have the seeds of the promise. In the New Covenant we have the fulfillment of that promise that was made to Abraham. And that's the way that we're supposed to view this and think of it.

Paul already went into great detail earlier in the book of Galatians, identifying that Jesus Christ himself is that seed, that offspring of Abraham. He is the Messiah. He is the Chosen One. But here in this story he kind of takes on a little bit more of the first part of the promise.

What was the first part of the promise?

Anybody?

A great nation. He's going to make them into a great nation. He's going to give them, make of them, make of Abraham and Sarah a multitude. But in order to become a great nation, in order for your offspring to become a multitude, it seems like there might be one little thing that you would need to have happen.

Like you would need to have a kid. Like at least one, right? I mean, isn't that kind of important? If you're going to have offspring, you need a child. And that's where this story gets interesting. I think that's where we begin to understand kind of the flourish and the flair of God, the way that he works and moves in human history.

Because you see, Sarah and Abraham were barren. They had not conceived. They did not have children. They were getting up in years to compound the issue. And they had never given birth. As a matter of fact, Sarah was so certain that she was beyond childbearing years that when a few years down the road, some angels come to reaffirm the promise that God had given.

And I want to make it clear that this promise given by these angels as they come to the tent of Abraham, and there we have a little bit more detail, like we know how the angels.

Appeared to them.

They appeared in flesh. I mean, they ate with them and talked with them. So that's kind of interesting. But they come, they meet with Abraham, Sarah is preparing the food in the tent, and she overhears the conversation that they're having out there.

And he says, a year from now, your wife is going to be carrying a baby, her own baby that she's given birth to. And what does Sarah do? She laughs. I love it that Sarah laughs. Because I think that she's a great image and model of what faith looks like for us often.

Isn't faith often a laughable thing? Like really, God, you could fix that problem? God, you could reconcile that relationship? God, you could do this?

You could heal that? You could?

I mean, think about the way that faith operates. And how often have we been found guilty of laughter, a sarcastic, sometimes, laughter about what God can and cannot do or accomplish in our lives. Sarah is a great model of what human faith looks like.

It's kind of messed up, right? Even our ability to express rock-solid faith is here one day and gone the next. And our faith wavers, and it's shifting, isn't it? It's like Peter walking on the water, and what does he immediately do?

He takes his eyes off of Jesus Christ. He's standing on water, and he takes his eyes off of Jesus Christ and looks to the wind and the waves, and all of a sudden, he's down, right? Isn't that like us?

And we see that, and I think Sarah just gives us a great example of human faith. She laughs when she hears the promise of God. Pfft, me, have a baby. And then we see something else about her faith as we see how she moves forward with her own plans, with putting together some plans to help God get the promise done.

But it's in that context that verse 23, the son of the slave was born according to the flesh, but the son of the free woman was born through promise. This phrase, born of the flesh, is in contrast, now hear me, born of the flesh is in contrast to being born through the promise.

See, there is a way that lives life based on promise, and there is a way that lives life based on the flesh. And that's what Paul is driving home. There is a way of living life like a law abider that is appealing to the flesh, that is the way that we move and live and work and do things, and we can live according to law, and live according to flesh, in other words, try to do our best to please God, try to do our best to keep His laws or His rules, or there is a way that rests in the promise of God for salvation.

That rests in His promise, that rests in His goodness, that rests in His power to accomplish, and not in ourselves. Are you getting what I'm saying? There's a way that we can abide in the flesh, or there's a way that we can abide in the promise.

And we're going to see that ultimately, a child is going to be born according to the flesh, according to human attempts, and there's going to be a child born according to promise, a trusting and a resting in God.

You see, I'm convinced that Sarah had good motives. She wanted to help God along, okay? So God made this promise, this apparently impossible promise. Now she's getting up in age, she's in her 90s now, and she's being told she's going to give birth to a son, and anybody think that's a little unreasonable?

Okay, seem unreasonable? So she's kind of going, God, I'm not sure if what you meant was true, I'm not sure, as I think it through, maybe what you meant is that I'm supposed to follow a tradition and a custom of my people here in order to procure a child for myself.

And so she does what any one of us would do, right? Gives her slave to her husband. Okay, maybe not. She figured she needed to give God some help to make the promise come to pass. So she gives her slave to her husband so that she can have a baby and call it part of her family.

And that's like just, I mean, somebody get on the phone and call Jerry Springer, because I think they would get a place on the show, okay? But as crazy as it sounds, does that seem somewhat offensive to you?

Seems somewhat kind of strange to your, maybe offensive is a strong word, but it just seems like it just kind of abuses something in our sensibilities about the way that relationships work in families, something like that.

It ought to be a little bit weird to you. But as crazy as it sounds, this was not that uncommon in ancient Near Eastern culture. It wasn't uncommon for a wife who was unable to bear children to give her servant to her husband, which is creepy in and of itself, that that was common.

Now that doesn't solve the problem, because that's even weird in and of itself that that was a common practice. And I want to point out that often scripture is silent about things that are right and.

Wrong.

Like, I mean, you can read the text, you can read through the book of Genesis, and you're not going to find God condemn the behavior of Abraham and Sarah here, you know what I'm saying? Does that mean that it's acceptable?

Does that mean that that's okay practice and you ought to do it? No, not at all. It's just, that's not the main point of the text is drawing out that sin. The scripture is unclear about the sinfulness of the behavior, but scripture is abundantly clear that the heart of Abraham and Sarah in this was to accomplish the promises of God through the flesh.

That they were trying to accomplish the will of God, trying to make, kind of force his hand into the promise through dependence on their own plans. Through dependence on their own scheming, their own intellect.

Through giving God a little bit of help. God, let us do this for you, God, and we'll get it done, we'll get it done and we'll make this promise come to pass. He's drawing an analogy between the way that we live when we live by law versus living.

By grace.

When we live by law, God, I'm going to help you sanctify me. I'm going to make sure, I'm going to secure the promises of God over my life by jumping through a bunch of hoops and making you like me more, God.

Are you seeing the analogy? Are you seeing the analogy? Are you getting that? There's a connection here between this. Now, again, I think it's important because we could easily let Sarah off the hook a little bit here, but in reality, God had promised to Sarah that she would bear a son.

It was a very clear promise. So she was not off the hook by trying to follow some culturally acceptable method to procure a child outside of what she had been promised. Are you getting what I'm saying?

Now, I'm about to draw an analogy to our lives here. But first, I need to answer a simple question some of you are already formulating in your.

Minds.

Maybe you've already thought this as I've been talking. If Abraham and Sarah were wrong for depending on their own plans and schemes for their own intellect, for depending upon their own way of thinking, then what about us and our plans?

What about us and our intellect? Are we supposed to just throw our brains out the window and just, everything's by faith and I just, you know, I don't do what my brain tells me, I do the exact opposite every time because that must be the right path, that must be the path of faith.

I mean, there are some people out there who think that way though, right? Like the most extreme thing must be the will of God, the thing that's just the craziest. If it doesn't make sense to you, then you better do it because that's probably God telling.

You to do it.

Be careful about that. I think you ought to study the Proverbs a little bit when it comes to thinking through plans. I mean, do the Proverbs talk about making some plans? Do they talk about looking at the ant, oh sluggard, and pay attention to the way the ants work and they store up and they are diligent?

Think about your own life. Anybody in here have a career plan? Some place you, you know, I mean, just being honest, I mean, you have some place you'd like to be five years from now? Four, six, six or seven of you have a plan?

The rest of you are just kind of going with the flow like whatever happens, that's all.

Good.

Awesome.

So, those of you who raised your hand are just, no. How about a plan for your life? Like what you'd like your life to look like five years, ten years down the road? How about a plan for education? Some of you here are making decisions for what you're going to do career wise or what you're going to study.