Sunday Sermon: Children of Promise (Galatians 4:21-31)

You are listening to the teaching ministry of Gabriel Hughes, pastor of First Southern Baptist Church in Junction City, Kansas.

Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday on this podcast, we feature 20 minutes of Bible study through a New Testament book.

On Thursday is our Old Testament study, and then we answer questions from listeners on Friday. Each Sunday we are pleased to share our sermon series.

This is the sermon that was preached last week from our pulpit. Here's Pastor Gabe. In honor of the word of the

King, would you please stand. Galatians chapter 4, beginning in verse 21. The Apostle Paul writing to the churches in Galatia.

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.

Let us pray. Heavenly Father, as we come to this passage this morning, we are reminded of the great care that you have given to us in that while we were yet sinners,

Christ died for us. And this is the love of God displayed for us. If any of us ever need wonder if God cares for us, we need only to look at the cross.

For we see the giving of the Son of God on our behalf for our sins. So let us not forget what great cost was needed to redeem us from lawlessness and clothe us in your righteousness.

And I pray that in this, we come to realize that it is not by the law that we are saved, there is nothing that we do, but we have been justified by faith in our

Lord Jesus Christ. How easy it is for us to fall right back into the desires of our flesh, or carrying out the desires of the body and the mind, or thinking that we have to do something and check off some kind of list in order to earn favor before you.

But we have been given by your grace favor through our Lord Jesus Christ.

And stand before you justified, so there is nothing else that we do in order to gain this fellowship with God.

We already have it through our Savior. Continue to encourage us in your word when we get weak, lest we fall back into a pattern of thinking that we have to do something in order to merit our salvation.

Remind us of the grace that was given for the saints through our Savior. And it's in Jesus' name that we pray, and all

God's people said, Amen. Thank you. You may be seated. Now I am not the kind of preacher, some of you know this of me, but I'm not the kind of preacher that whenever we get around to a holiday,

I'm going to stop whatever it is that we're doing and focus on some kind of sermon or message or topic that's going to go with the holiday.

There was one time several years ago when I think we got to like the third or fourth

Easter message that I had ever delivered here. And it actually was a message that corresponded with Easter, the resurrection of our

Lord Christ. And it only happened to be because that was where we fell in our study of that book at that particular time.

And there was somebody that commented to me on the way out. They said, it's about time we got to Easter Sunday and you actually did an

Easter sermon. And I said, well, I've been preaching Easter every Sunday.

So it just so happens by the providence of God that we fall into this particular section today,

Galatians chapter four, verses 21 through 31, where we're talking about two mothers, a mother who is

Hagar and others who are in Christ Jesus of the child of the promise, our mother would be

Sarah. Those who are of the children of promise rather than the children who are continually bound by law.

So that is the metaphor, that is the allegory as Paul puts it here that is presented for us in Galatians chapter four.

He starts this particular section Galatians 4 .21 talking about how we are children of faith and remember once again that he is rebuking a church that has left that beautiful doctrine of justification by faith alone.

And they are choosing to believe again that one must be justified by works. Now it's not that they have forgotten

Christ in their liturgy altogether. Like no one is even talking about faith in Christ anymore.

It's not like that's happened in the church in Galatia. They still believe in Jesus. They still believe in the cross.

They still believe in the resurrection from the grave, but they believe that wasn't sufficient.

The cross wasn't sufficient. The resurrection isn't enough. We need something else in order to be justified and so they've fallen right back into a pattern of works.

And so even though they still proclaim faith in Christ, Paul yet says to them, you've chosen a different gospel.

You might use Christianese, you might say all the right Christian words, but if you're adding works into this, you're choosing to believe something other than the grace of God that was given through his son.

The emphasis of your faith is whatever fills in the blank of your equation,

Jesus plus blank equals my salvation. Whatever is going in that blank is getting the focus.

And for the Galatians, it was the works of the Judaizers. Those who had come in and said, you still have to keep the festival days.

You still have to keep the dietary laws. You still have to be circumcised.

And boy, Paul really lays into that one thick when we get to chapter five and we'll be looking at that particular condemnation next week.

But here, Paul once again reminds them that if they are going to be bound by law, they have enslaved themselves to a list of accomplishments that they are never going to be able to complete.

They would get to the end of their life and that list that they have to keep in order to be justified or what they believe they have to do in order to be justified, there's going to be a lot of blanks left because there's just no way.

There is no way that we can do it, that we can keep the law, that we can account for our justification or our righteousness by our own works.

We can't do it. We will always fall far, far short. Now, if you're trying to compare yourself with other people, maybe you look more righteous than the guy that's sitting next to you, at least according to your own point of view.

But we are not being graded on a curve. Our holiness is being compared to the holiness of God.

And when you compare your righteousness with his righteousness, you have none.

You can't even stand in that place before a holy

God without being melted by the awesomeness of his glory.

There is no way any of us would ever be able to come into the presence of God by our own merit if we had not been clothed first in the righteousness of Christ.

It's as though we come into the presence of God with a holy, gleaming armor that can actually tolerate and stand in the presence of God, but still not without a whole lot of humility.

And that armor that we have been cloaked in is not something that we fashioned ourselves, for we are not good blacksmiths in that sense, but it is an armor that has been given to us by our

Lord Christ, a righteous robe that we have been clothed in so that we may also be made a kingdom of priests and come into the holy of holies, the access through which we have in Christ.

This is our only way to God. Only way. Only way anyone has ever been able to get to God is by grace through faith.

That's it. And here the Galatians are thinking that they have to add some works to their faith in order to make it a good faith.

And Paul says to them in verse 21, tell me, you who desire to be under the law, do you not listen to the law?

Paul is saying, have you actually listened to what it is that you're committing to? Do you know if you are ever able to keep that?

Are you listening to the list of qualifications that you have to meet, and yet you don't come to understand just by listening to it that you don't measure up, nor will you ever measure up?

Don't you know from the prophets, Isaiah 64 6, our best deeds are like a soiled garment before a holy

God. You've got nothing good to give. You're going to be thrown away into the trash.

The Psalms say to us, and Paul repeats again in Romans 3, together we've become worthless.

I mean, do you really think so little of God that you think your worthlessness is worthy to be in His presence?

For He is so great and holy and mighty that it takes the righteousness of Christ in order to stand in His presence.

That is a wonderful, beautiful gift. It is His grace by which we stand.

So let us never think so highly of ourselves and so little of God. Paul tries to draw their attention to the reality of their sin by pointing them to the law.

Now remember that Raymond is leading our evangelism class on Sunday night.

You're invited back 5 o 'clock tonight as he's going to take us through steps on how to share your faith with unbelievers.

Last week was the introductory message. That was powerful. That was convicting in itself.

But if you didn't catch that message, don't think that you'll be lost. You can still come tonight and be convicted by tonight's message.

But one of the things that Raymond is going to point out, and he's going to help us to understand when it comes to sharing the gospel with others, particularly with unbelievers, for that's what we want to go out and do in our own community, sharing the gospel of faith with people who have none.

When it comes to sharing the gospel, it is bringing a person to a knowledge of their sin through the law.

Do you consider yourself a liar? You ever told a lie before? You realize you've broken one of the commandments if you have told a lie.

Have you ever murdered anyone before? Who in here would say that they've murdered someone before?

But Jesus pointed out in Matthew chapter 5 that if you've even hated your brother in your heart, or you've called a person names, you are guilty of the fires of hell.

It's the same as if you had murdered them in your heart. And so this is

Jesus pointing out to those who might have some sort of self -righteous piety about themselves, I've never murdered anybody before.

Jesus going, oh yeah? See lawlessness comes from a heart that desires to do lawlessness.

It is the wickedness of the heart that wickedness comes. It is from the wickedness of the heart that a person does wicked and evil things.

And so Jesus pointing out, your heart is wicked. When you hate and despise your brother and you wish that they were as good as dead, or you belittle them and call them names as though they were less than you, it is the same as if you had murdered them in your heart.

And just taking that one command, none of us can stand right before God and say, I'm not guilty of any of these things.

We've all lied. We've all murdered. We've all committed adultery in our hearts. We have coveted, desiring things that didn't belong to us, thinking that what

God has given to me is not good enough, and so I need this other thing in order to be satisfied.

So we also are establishing our own equations. Jesus plus this equals my happiness.

And whatever goes in that blank gets the emphasis. That's really what you're worshiping, not

God. But the thing that you think you have to have in order to be satisfied because God wasn't good enough.

All of us have fallen short in this way. All of us are lawbreakers, and we cannot stand before God claiming our own justification.

Paul pointing out to the Galatians the law so that they might realize that they are sinners and they can't keep it, and nothing by the law will make them justified before God.

They cannot stand in righteousness before God. They cannot proclaim their own innocence.

Are you listening to what you say you're following? Tell me, you who desire to be under the law, that's an insult, by the way.

You don't desire salvation by grace through faith. You desire to be under the law.

That's the religion you're following, not the true faith that has been delivered once for all to the saints, the gospel that we came proclaiming to you.

You believe a different gospel. So tell me, you who believe your false religion, have you actually been listening to the requirements of your false religion?

Because you can't measure up. You can't make it that way.

What Paul is drawing their attention to is legalism. Living by a set of laws, a set of rules, keeping these rules is what makes me justified before God, and that is a miserable way to live.

It is not easy to be a legalist. It is impossible to be a legalist, to meet all the lists of demands, not just that the law has, but even, get this, even the set of standards that you have set for yourself, you can't keep that either.

And I witness that all the time in the world of a person with a double standard. They want everybody else to follow their own system of morality, but they themselves cannot follow it.

Francis Schaeffer one time said that if you were to stand before God in judgment, and we all will, God wouldn't even need to use his law to show that you are guilty.

All he would have to do is play back all of the moral judgments that you've made over the course of your entire life.

And then every time you made a moral judgment, if you had a little tape recorder around your neck, like we say, we're all born with an invisible tape recorder.

And back in the day when Francis Schaeffer was giving this illustration, it would have been literal cassettes in this tape recorder.

Okay. Anybody know what a cassette tape is? We have some in here that don't, but anyway. So you have some sort of invisible spiritual tape recorder hanging around your neck.

And every time you made a moral judgment, that tape recorder would record it. And when you stood before God in judgment, all

God would need to do is hit play on that tape recorder and play back for you, your moral judgments. Judgment after judgment, after judgment that you made against someone else.

And you would stand there and realize that you've not even kept the standards that you placed on everybody else.

All of us stand guilty before God and trying to live by a code and think that we will be justified by it will lead to certain damnation.

It does not lead to salvation for salvation was accomplished only in Christ by his death on the cross.

And it is given to us by faith. As we sang this morning,

I know not how this faith comes. I don't know how the spirit works in my heart to bring about this faith, but I know in whom

I have believed and he is able to deliver me on that day.

That is our Lord Christ. That is our salvation. Faith in Christ who died for us, rose again from the grave so that by faith in him, we do not stand condemned under the law since we could not keep the law, but we are justified by his grace.

Tell me then you who desire to be under the law, do you not even listen to what it is that you say that you need in order to attain your salvation?

Verse 22, for it is written that Abraham had two sons and the sons in particular we're talking about are

Ishmael and Isaac. Both start with I, that's the only similarities that they have.

There's a vast contrast between Ishmael and Isaac. One was the son of a slave woman and one was the son of a free woman.

Now we haven't even gotten to the part yet where Paul says, let me share with you an allegory.

Okay, let's look at these things allegorically and even though he has not yet seen that, are you already beginning to see the correlation?

One the son of a slave and the other the son of a free woman. And if we were to consider this allegorically, that those who aspire in legalistic sense toward their own salvation are actually enslaved to the law that they cannot keep.

Whereas we who believe in Jesus Christ, we are children of promise.

We are children of faith. We are not enslaved by the law or our sin or the wages of sin, which is death, but we've been set free from these things in Christ.

So you are either going to be bound by slavery or set free by faith.

But the son of the slave, Paul says, verse 23, the son of the slave was born according to the flesh while the son of the free woman was born through promise.

What does that mean? Now remember that God had promised Abraham that he would make him the father of many nations.

From him would come a son and through that son would be many more heirs that would become the people of God through whom

God would place his promises and deliver for himself a people out of this world.

And with this promise that was given to Abraham, Abraham was already in his old age, in his nineties.

Sarah was already beyond childbearing years. And so Abraham tells

Sarah about this promise and Sarah is going, well, where's this child going to come from? It ain't going to come from me.

I can't even bear children anymore. And so she gives her slave,

Hagar, to Abraham and says, if God has promised to make you a great nation, it isn't going to be through me.

It's going to have to be through my slave. And so Abraham sleeps with his wife's slave and she conceives and bears a child and this is

Ishmael. Sarah resents this woman for obvious reasons and Hagar attempts to flee with Ishmael.

But the Lord promises that he will protect her and in fact says to Hagar that he's going to make

Ishmael into a nation as well. Ishmael would become the father of the

Ishmaelites and we still have their descendants on earth today in the Middle East that continue to do war and conflict against the

Jews over there who occupy Israel. So anyway, that's a different theological history for another time.

Let's stick with the allegory that Paul is giving us here in Galatians chapter four. So Ishmael, the son of the slave woman, and Isaac, who would be the son of the free woman, several years later after Ishmael was born, according to Hebrews chapter 11, when

Abraham was as good as dead, meaning there's no way for Sarah to bear children anymore.

There's no way for Abraham even to sire a child anymore. He's as good as dead.

No heir to his name. Not through his wife of covenant,

Sarah. And yet it was then, when there was no possible way for two people to physically conceive and bear a child anymore, that old in their age, yet Sarah was given a son.

So that it would be known that this son did not come about through Abraham's decision or Sarah's decision, but it was the gift of God.

And this is the son who would be named Isaac, meaning laughter. Why is that the name that Isaac was given?

Because when God came to Abraham by the oaks of Mamre and said, this time next year you will have a son,

Sarah was in the tent and she laughed. She thought that was hysterical. Ha!

We're going to have a son? And God goes, why are you laughing? As though to say, don't you know who

I am? And when there was no conceivable way, pun, for Sarah to have and bear a son, yet God gave her that blessing.

And it was through Abraham and Sarah that the promised son was given, Isaac. And because Abraham and Sarah finally got the joke, they named

Isaac laughter. We laughed at God, but he knew better than us.

And delivered by his grace what he had promised. The child of promise.

And we who are in Christ Jesus, who would be a descendant from the line of Isaac, not a descendant from the line of Ishmael, but a descendant from the line of promise.

We who are in Christ Jesus are now the children of promise.

We've been adopted into the family of God. That's where the allegory is going, I'm moving ahead.

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.

This was Abraham and Sarah taking matters into their own hands. Not doing it in obedience to God, but trying to do it their own way.

So the son of the slave was born according to the flesh. Not in a marriage covenant.

Not according to the ordinances of God. One is from Mount Sinai, I'm sorry,

I'm moving ahead here. The son of the slave born according to the flesh, the son of the free woman born through promise.

It is through your marriage, it is through your wife that the son of promise is going to be born.

And when Abraham and Sarah trusted in God, they had faith in the

Lord, so the child of promise came to them. Now this may be interpreted allegorically,

Paul says. And he's been doing that all the while. An allegory would be like a metaphor.

An allegory would be a type or a shadow that points to something greater and bigger.

We have multiple examples of allegory throughout the scriptures. In fact, Becky, as she had been going through Psalm 23 with the kids our last several

Sundays, that's an allegory. The Lord is my shepherd. I shall not want.

I need nothing else, but I am fully satisfied in my Savior. He makes me lie down in green pastures.

He leads me beside the still waters. He restores my soul. He leads me in paths of righteousness for his name's sake.

What do we got going on here? The picture of God as our shepherd and the picture of us as dumb sheep.

That's why we get called sheep, because we're dumb. And we are helpless without our shepherd.

But God, by his grace and goodness, leads us in paths of righteousness, leads us to still waters, makes me lie down in green pastures.

This is all allegory. God is not literally a shepherd, but figuratively in this sense, a shepherd who leads and guides and cares for his sheep.

Jesus uses this allegory again in John 10. In fact, we have multiple ways in which this allegory gets used in that particular chapter.

The sheep know my voice, and they follow me. I know them and call them by name.

They won't follow a stranger, but they follow the good shepherd. I give them eternal life, and no one is able to snatch them out of my hand.

My Father who gives them to me is greater than all, and no one is able to snatch them out of my

Father's hand. I and the Father are one. Jesus even includes the enemy in this metaphor.

The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy, but I have come that they may have life and have it abundantly.

This is allegory. We also have allegory used throughout the book of Hebrews, talking about how

Jesus is the greater Melchizedek. Jesus is the greater Moses.

And so in this way, even Moses is referred to in an allegorical sense. Moses came as a prophet to the people to speak the word of God to them.

But Moses said, Deuteronomy 18 .18, there is another prophet who is coming that's even greater than I, and you will listen to him.

And that was a precursor to our Lord Christ. So Moses was even an allegory of the coming

Christ. We talk about allegory in other ways, like David being a type of Christ.

He who was the only one who could slay the giant, representing sin and death and the devil's schemes.

David to whom the covenant promise was made, and that on his throne, God would establish his kingdom forever.

And it's through the line of David would come the Savior. So David is even a type or a shadow of the coming

Christ. And we have multiple references like this all throughout the scriptures of using allegory.

Think we need to be very, very careful whenever we make allegory that we don't apply allegory where allegory is not intended.

But in this particular case, you can't argue with the apostle who's speaking the very word of Christ. And Paul says that this is an allegory.

The slave woman and the free woman, for we are either children of slavery or we are children of freedom.

This may be interpreted allegorically, says in verse 24, these women are two covenants. One is from Mount Sinai, bearing children for slavery.

What's the reference to Mount Sinai? That's where the law was given. That's where the law was first proclaimed to the children of Israel.

When after being led out of slavery in Egypt, they come to Mount Sinai, God descends upon that mountain and over one million

Israelites gathered around the base of the mountain hear the word of God proclaimed. You shall love the

Lord your God and you shall have no other gods before me. You shall not raise up a graven image.

You shall not take the name of the Lord your God in vain. You shall honor the Sabbath and keep it holy.

You shall honor your father and your mother so it may go well with you in the land to which

I am giving you. You shall not murder. You shall not commit adultery.

You shall not steal. You shall not bear false witness. You shall not covet. These 10 commandments, the entire children of Israel heard.

Oftentimes we have a picture of the 10 commandments being given in the sense that Moses goes up on the mountain and he sees the finger of God kind of etch it in stone tablets and pulls them out and hands them to Moses.

So Moses heard it and then the Israelites had to read the stone tablets. All of Israel was there at the base of the mountain and heard

God's voice proclaim these commandments. The law that was given to reveal

God's perfect character and how each one of us fall far short of that righteousness.

That's the use of the law that Paul had given to us earlier in Galatians chapter 3. The use of the law in the sense that it reveals to us our unrighteousness.

It was a tutor for a time, kept us in training, kept us in check, kept us from falling into worse sin than we could have fallen into.

But when it comes down to our salvation, the law was powerless to save and it is only

Christ who does so. So anyone who tries to live by the law will be judged by the law and they fall far short of the law.

So the children of covenant of Mount Sinai are children of 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.

Now what does that mean? Remember the present Jerusalem at that particular time was full of Jews who still thought that by their sacrifices and by their keeping of the law and by their checklist and their legalism that they were earning salvation before God.

That was Jerusalem at that time. And by the way, folks, nothing's changed in Jerusalem since then. It's still the same lost group of people today that it was 2 ,000 years ago.

They need the gospel as much as anyone else. Just because a person would be born in the line of Abraham, still carrying the

DNA of Abraham, all these thousands of years later, that does not make them free.

If they are not following in faith in Jesus Christ, they're still enslaved to their sin and unrighteousness.

They need the gospel of Christ. Everyone does, Jew or Gentile. Paul laid down that argument in Romans 1 through 3.

All have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. And we are justified by His grace as a gift through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus to be received by faith.

So Hagar corresponds to the present Jerusalem, the earthly Jerusalem, that Jerusalem which has no hope or no promise for us in this world.

She is in slavery with her children. Everyone who tries to abide by the law is enslaved to it.

Now, as Paul had illustrated earlier in Galatians, and we had talked about as we've been going through this study, whoever is not following in Jesus Christ is enslaved to the law.

Not just people who say they believe in the Ten Commandments. But everybody tries to be a law unto themselves.

Like I said earlier, with the moral judgments that we make and try to keep, and we think we can earn our righteousness that way, that in itself is legalism whether or not they have brought the

Ten Commandments into it. They're still trying to earn righteousness by their own merit.

Everyone apart from Christ is enslaved to the law. And everyone apart from Christ will be judged by the law whether or not they had the law.

This woman corresponds with the present Jerusalem, and she is in slavery with her children who are enslaved to the law and cannot keep it.

And then Paul talks about a spiritual Jerusalem, the heavenly Jerusalem that we see talked about at the end of the book of Revelation, coming down from heaven, clothed and adorned in white as a bride for her husband.

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

For it is written, Rejoice, O barren one who does not bear, speaking of Sarah, who had been given a child.

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.

You see that? The children of the desolate one will be more than those of the one who has a husband.

The one who has no children will be given much, but even the children of slavery will be more numerous on earth than the children of freedom.

Jesus said in Matthew chapter 7, enter through the narrow gate, for wide is the way that leads to destruction, and many find that road because that's the easy way.

But narrow is the gate, and long is the road that leads to life, and few will find it.

This is Jesus saying that our path in Christ Jesus is the difficult road.

But the broad way, the easy way on this earth, that leads to destruction.

The narrow way leads to eternal life. My friends, it is easy to walk in sin.

It's easy to do that. It's easy to give in to the passions of your flesh. I know that full well.

I don't speak to you as anybody who is self -righteous and claiming that I've got this mastered. It is easy to fall into the temptations of your flesh if not kept in check, if not keeping your mind and your heart committed and following after Christ and focused upon Him.

This is why we read in Hebrews chapter 12 that we need to put off sin and anything that easily entangles and focus ourselves on Christ, looking unto

Jesus, the author and the perfecter of our faith, who for the joy that was set before Him endured the cross.

We won't ever have to endure that because Christ endured it for us, taking the wrath of God upon Himself so that we may stand before the

Father justified. Jesus endured the cross, despising the shame, and is seated at the right hand of the throne of God, interceding for us so that we have good standing with our

Father in heaven because of the love of our Lord and Savior Christ. It is easy for us to fall into sin and temptation, and it's even easier for us to never confront anyone else in their sin or temptation.

You know somebody who is still attached to the bottle and getting drunk every night.

It's easy enough to just hand him a bottle and tell him to continue to take a drink. It is easy to tell the pregnant young woman who has no husband, who got pregnant out of wedlock, it's easy to tell her, just go get an abortion and that'll take care of the problem.

It's easy to tell the young man who is struggling with sexual temptation, just give in as long as you do it safely.

It's easy to tell the person who has hatred in their heart that they're justified because that person did them wrong.

So it seems fair that you'd be angry over this. All of these things are easy.

It's difficult for us to, in love, stand in the way of sin and not let that person go to their destruction and say to them lovingly, kindly, pleading on behalf of their eternal soul, repent, turn from your sin and follow

Christ. The world will hate us for that message because they love their sin and their flesh and they hate

God. But we must, in love, stand in patient opposition because we care for their souls.

That's a difficult thing to do. The easy thing would be to just let them give in.

The easy thing for you would be to give in to your own temptations. It is a difficult road to follow

Christ, but it is the road that leads to life. And I tell you, if you're not on it, the way you're walking right now might seem easy to you for a time, but eternity will be really, really hard in ways that I would not even dare to try to imagine or interpret for you.

Though the Bible has some pretty descriptive words, turn from your sin and walk in the righteousness of Christ that we may not lead in the way of our destruction, enslaved to our sin and the passions of our flesh.

Instead, be set free in Christ. The Jerusalem above is free.

The Jerusalem on earth remains in slavery. Setting our sights on the kingdom of God above is freedom.

But continuing to long for the things of this world and the passions of our flesh is slavery.

None of it will ultimately satisfy, and all of it will lead to destruction.

Paul says in verse 28, now you brothers... Now, this is such a comforting section that Paul has come to in this particular part of Galatians.

He said it earlier in verse 12. He said, brothers, I entreat you. Strongest rebuke was in the first three chapters, though he's still not done.

He's got some strong comments yet to make. But so that these Christians in the churches in Galatia do not fall into despair.

He calls them brothers. He would not be approaching them in this way if he didn't care for them as brothers and sisters in the

Lord. You brothers, like Isaac, are children of promise.

So stop following after the slave woman. Verse 29, but just as that time, he who was born according to the flesh persecuted him who was born according to the spirit.

So also it is now. Allegorically, what is Paul referring to here? Well, when

Isaac got old enough to be weaned from his mother, we have this story in Genesis as well,

Ishmael made fun of Isaac. Ishmael, who was years older than Isaac now, made fun of him when he was being weaned from his mother.

And it was at that point that the Lord had said to Abraham, it was time for Hagar and Ishmael to go.

They could no longer reside under that home. And Abraham was reluctant to let him go, but he was obedient to the

Lord. So Ishmael, in making fun of Isaac, became a persecutor of Isaac.

And so what Paul is saying here is that here's what's happened. You guys were following well in the true gospel, justification by faith, but then these

Judaizers came in and made fun of you for the true gospel, and you guys caved. You were like, oh yeah, well

Jesus was a Jew, and in order to be a good Christian, apparently I have to keep all these Jewish laws.

So hey, you're right, and I don't want to get made fun of by these Judaizers. I mean, they're Jews, right? They're descendants from Abraham.

So they're so much holier than I am, I've got to listen to what it is that they're saying. And so they caved on the true gospel that had once been delivered to them, and they started adding works into the mix.

The persecution did you in. And so just as this had happened between Ishmael and Isaac, so it's happened to you.

So also it is now. Verse 30, 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.

Here is what Paul is saying. If you have people in your midst who are believing a different gospel, get them out!

Because they are affecting the entire body. As Paul put it with Timothy, in 2

Timothy, they're becoming like gangrene. Their lies are spreading like gangrene, causing parts of the body to rot and fall off.

Quite the picture that is. But if we have false doctrine in our midst, that's what it does to the body of Christ.

It causes people to go after the false doctrine, abandoning the gospel, and their souls rot away and die.

Now we have welcomed people in our church before who were unbelievers. Unbelievers are certainly welcome to come in and sit and listen to the sermon.

But after hearing the gospel proclaim, I hope that they would make a decision to follow Christ. You can't be a member of our church without it.

A lot of the problems that are going on in the Southern Baptist Convention right now, and some of you are aware of those things, those problems are happening because people who have not been tested, who are not known or understood to actually believe the gospel and be able to repeat it, are being given membership, though there was no evidence of their faith to begin with.

And that has created massive problems and various scandals that are happening in the Because these churches are so seeker -driven.

We just want people here and we want them to stay here at any cost. And we're not following proper membership requirements.

Sit down and have a conversation with somebody and just even make sure they understand what the gospel is. We don't do that because we're trying to make sure we got a nice little club going on here.

We do this because we care about you and we care about everybody else whom you would be in fellowship with in this body.

It's out of love that we do those things, not out of legalism. Paul is saying, you got somebody in your midst believing a different gospel, get them out.

Because they are causing you to be enslaved to the things that you were once set free from. 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. We are children of the free. So live in freedom and not in slavery.

Do not be enslaved to the passions of your flesh, the sins, the desires of your body and your mind.

Don't follow after those things anymore. But as Paul says in Romans chapter six, be slaves of righteousness.

If you've been clothed with righteousness, do the righteousness. And that is not legalism.

That's an expression of your heart who rejoices to do what pleases a

Savior who died for you, who forgives your sin.

And as he's promised in Revelation three, he who endures to the end, I'll give you a place to sit with me on my throne.

Imagine that you were once an enemy of this throne, treason against the throne of the God of all creation.

And instead of destroying you as the enemy that you are. He has instead made you his friend and he has seated you on his throne with him to reign forever in glory.

What better gospel could there ever be? So repent of your sin, your legalism, the lawlessness that you persist and continue in, that this whole world is in until the day of Christ comes.

And let us walk in righteousness to please our master and our Savior who has saved us.

Thank you for listening to our weekly sermon presented by First Southern Baptist Church of Junction City, Kansas.

For more information about our church, visit fsbcjc .org.

On behalf of our church family, my name is Becky, inviting you to join us again this week, Growing Together in Christ, when we understand the text.