Who Is Your Mother?

Moore's Corner Church

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Thank you for listening to this message from the ministry of Morse Corner Church in Leverett, Massachusetts.

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Morse Corner is a non -denominational church that is committed to the preaching and teaching of the gospel of Jesus Christ.

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Our church was founded in 1896 by two students of the famous evangelist

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D .L. Moody. We seek to encourage and edify the body of Christ through the proclamation of God's Word through the ministries of the local church.

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If you'd like more information, visit our website morsecornerchurch .com. We hope you enjoy the message.

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Look at Galatians 4 21 through 31 starting in verse 21. He says, tell me you who desire to be under the law, do you not hear the law?

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In other words, he's saying, do you even know what the law says? Oh, you want to be under the law?

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You want to be under the old covenant? Do you even know what it says? I told you a while back about the man who told me that he was going to heaven because he kept, he keeps the

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Ten Commandments. I'm going to heaven because I keep the Ten Commandments. It's like, are you even listening to yourself?

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You've broken the Ten Commandments. You don't keep the Ten Commandments. I didn't say that.

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Maybe I should have. I don't know. I mean, maybe you've kept the third commandment so far this week.

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Maybe as of 1130 this morning, you've kept the 10th commandment, but that's not what it means to keep the law or to keep the commandments.

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You know, it's like the people that claim to keep the Sabbath day. Maybe you've met someone who's,

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I keep the Sabbath. Okay, maybe they don't go into their place of employment on Saturday and instead they go to a church that meets on Saturday.

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That's not what it means to keep the Sabbath. It's like, do you hear the law?

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Have you read all the Sabbath regulations? The Sabbath, keeping it, there's so much more to it than that.

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So you claim you're keeping the commandments. No, you're not. You claim you keep the Sabbath.

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No, you don't. So, are you, do you even know what it says? So that's what Paul is saying.

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Now he gets into the story of Abraham that we read. Look at verse 22. For it is written that Abraham had two sons, the one by the bondwoman and the other by a free woman.

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So the free woman was Abraham's wife, who? Sarah. The bondwoman was

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Sarah's maidservant, Hagar. Sarah, again, could not get pregnant.

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So the maidservant, Hagar, acted as a surrogate. But the child that she and Abraham worked, right, to produce, that child was the child according to the flesh.

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This was not pleasing to God. All right, this was not God's will. Ishmael would not be, or he was not, the child of promise.

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You know, it's interesting today, the religion of Islam claims to be from the line of Ishmael.

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This is a great debate amongst Jews and Muslims. They both claim

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Abraham, but Muslims claim Abraham and Ishmael and go through that line.

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The Jews claim Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob according to that. Now the Jews are actually correct to that degree.

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So these are the two lines that come from Abraham. Abraham has two sons,

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Ishmael from the bond, Isaac from the free woman. So this is

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Paul's illustration, and I'll say it again, Sarah represents who? New Testament Christians.

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All right, verse 23. But he who is of the bond woman, that's Ishmael, was born according to the flesh, and he of the free woman through promise.

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So Ishmael came about by the normal process, all right.

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The birth of Isaac was a miracle. Without God's supernatural help,

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Isaac would not have been born. And this is a great picture of Isaac being a type of Christ.

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First of all, Isaac is the seed of Abraham, just as Christ is the seed of Abraham.

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Both have this supernatural birth, and of course, Jesus and his followers were persecuted by who?

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In the earliest days of Christianity, they were persecuted by the unbelieving

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Jews and the Jewish Council. Well, and now you see that with Ishmael, scoffing

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Ishmael in a sense was persecuting Isaac. So it's bond versus free,

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Hagar versus Sarah. We could say law versus gospel. You know, the two cannot dwell together, right?

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Can you imagine a situation like that today? Well, you probably can't imagine it. There's probably some TV show or some celebrities are doing this or something.

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You have a man married to two women with two, there's two families under the same house.

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The two cannot dwell together. That isn't going to work. Well, law and grace, that doesn't, that doesn't work.

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One has to be cast out. Verse 24, look at verse 24. All of this is what?

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It says, which things are symbolic or the King James version says of which things are an allegory.

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When you hear the word allegory, you know, sometimes that makes you think that, well, it's just a story that it didn't really happen.

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No, this really happened, but it's also symbolic for something else, what

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Paul's describing. So of which things are symbolic. For these are the two covenants, the one from Mount Sinai, that's where the law was given, which gives birth to bondage, which is

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Hagar. One commentator says this, as God unfolded his purpose and fulfilled his promises, he caused many things in olden days to stand as symbols of things that would come to pass in latter days.

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Certain persons, places, objects, and events were shadows, or they were types of wonderful things to come.

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In this way, God reinforced his prophetic word and helped us to understand and believe the

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Bible story. Hagar and Sarah symbolized the two covenants which have been discussed previously.

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And of course, that's the law, which came through Moses, and then the promise made to Abraham, which culminated in Jesus Christ.

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Look at verse 25. This is a little longer of a sermon than normal. You still with me?

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Okay, you're still awake. Okay, good. Verse 25. For this, Hagar is Mount Sinai.

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Now, when you hear Mount Sinai, you usually think of what country? I mean, most people think of Egypt when they think of Mount Sinai.

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But what does this say? Arabia. Now, obviously, from then and today, the borders could have been redrawn, obviously.

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But Paul says, for this, Hagar is Mount Sinai in Arabia, and corresponds to Jerusalem, which now is and is in bondage with her children.

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Now, some of you know the site of Mount Sinai today is disputed.

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Of course, this is a tourist attraction in Egypt to some degree. But some people say that the historical site,

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Mount Sinai, some say it's in Egypt, and then there is another site in Saudi Arabia.

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Which is the true Mount Sinai? Well, I guess we don't know 100%.

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I'm pretty sure we do know, though. It's interesting. This is a great, this is a great truth.

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The Mount Sinai in Arabia, if you look at it, you go on Google later on and look at the mountain, the peak of the mountain is darker than the rest of the mountain.

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And there's no real explanation. Scientists, they don't really know why the peak is darker than the rest of the mountain.

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Some say that it looks burnt. I think it is burnt.

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You know why? Exodus 19 verse 18 says, now Mount Sinai was completely in smoke because the

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Lord descended upon it and in fire. It's smoke ascended like the smoke of a furnace and the whole mountain quaked greatly.

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When God gave Moses the Ten Commandments, you realize he descended on Mount Sinai in fire.

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And now the top of this peak is all burnt. Now when the people say, you know, put yourself in that situation.

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Let's say you were an Israelite watching this from afar. How would you feel?

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Now I can say, well, that's pretty cool. Well, now if I was there, I'd be terrified. And so would you.

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My friends, spiritually speaking, we don't want to come near Mount Sinai.

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You want to come to Mount Zion. Not the Jerusalem over in Israel today, but the heavenly

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Jerusalem, the new city, new Jerusalem. Hebrews chapter 12 speaks of this.

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We don't have time to look at it. But these are the two covenants, Mount Sinai, the heavenly city, new

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Jerusalem. One brings condemnation, the other salvation.

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Why did Paul say, did you pick that up, that Jerusalem down here, the earthly Jerusalem is in bondage.

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The earthly city corresponds to Mount Sinai. Jerusalem is called what?

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What are some of the names for Jerusalem today? The city of David. Okay. Is there another one?

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The holy city, right? Some people call it the holy city. Paul says it is in bondage.

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Why does he say that? Because in Jesus's day and in Paul's day, the

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Jewish leaders in Jerusalem were still under the law. They had rejected

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Jesus Christ. And to this very day, the Jewish leaders in Jerusalem, do they believe in Jesus or not?

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No, they don't. So in light of the gospel, the city to this very day is still in bondage by rejecting faith in Christ.

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Jerusalem is probably the most war -torn piece of ground on the planet. That is where the prophets were killed.

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That is where Jesus was crucified. If you go to Jerusalem today, there are still places where you can see bullet holes in the side of the building.

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There's barbed wire. I don't know how much of that still remains, but is there still barbed wire and blockades at certain parts of the city?

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Yeah. They're still in bondage. I don't know about you. I don't want to live there.

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I mean, maybe I'd like to visit. I wouldn't want to live there. You know where I want to live?

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The new Jerusalem. The heavenly city. I want to live up there.

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And the Bible says our citizenship is where? In heaven. Look at verse 26.

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We're almost done. But the Jerusalem which is above is free, which is the mother of us all.

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For it is written, Rejoice, O barren, you who do not bear. Break forth and shout, you who labor, or you who are not in labor.

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For the desolate has many more children than she who has a husband.

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This is a quote from Isaiah 54, which speaks of Jerusalem's future glory.

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And as pre -millennialists, we believe that the day is coming where Jesus will indeed rule and reign from Jerusalem.

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As of now, they're still in bondage. Look at verse 28. Now we brethren, as Isaac was, are children of promise.

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That is, we're not under the law. Incidentally, Isaac wasn't under the law either.

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Have you ever thought about this? Isaac and Jacob, they were not under the law. The Mosaic law wasn't going to be given for another 400 years.

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The point is the first covenant that God made with Abraham is better. It was an unconditional covenant that is tied in with personal salvation.

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Do you remember several weeks ago, we looked at Genesis chapter 12, where God promised

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Abraham, he said, in you, all the families of the earth shall be blessed.

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And Paul interprets that this way. He said that God was preaching the gospel to Abraham.

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The gospel in some way, shape, or form has always been around ever since the garden of Eden. Because how do

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I know that? Because men have been being saved from the beginning. Salvation has always been possible, and it is always the same way, by faith in the promises of God.

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Verse 29. But as he who was born according to the flesh then persecuted him who was born according to the spirit, even so it is now.

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And we read the story of Genesis, how Ishmael treated Isaac, and Paul ties that together with how the

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Jews viewed Christians, and how Christians were persecuted by the religious leaders of Judaism.

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Many people have the idea that in the New Testament, the Christians were being persecuted by the

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Romans. But it's not really true. Eventually that happened in history, no doubt about it.

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But if you read the book of Acts, it's the Jews that were persecuting the Christians.

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Paul knew that better than anyone, because he was the ringleader of it all. And yet through the grace of God, the church's biggest enemy,

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Saul of Tarsus, became the Apostle Paul, the church's greatest defender.

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That's what the grace of God can do to a person. If God can do that in Paul's life, who knows what he can do in your life.

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So in conclusion, what's the message? The bondwoman versus the free woman.

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You could ask it this way, who's your mother? Spiritually speaking, who's your mother?

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Sarah or Hagar? Thanks for listening. I'm Pastor Michael Grant from Morris Cornett Church.

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If you'd like to listen to the complete message, or if you'd like more information about the ministry, visit our website,

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MorrisCornettChurch .com. And we'd love to have you join us some Sunday morning here in Leverett.