Allegory of Law and Gospel

Well, good morning everybody. Good morning, dear choir.

Alright.

Law and Gospel in Galatians 4

Open up your Bibles to Galatians chapter 4. We're going to finish the chapter today, Lord willing. And then we'll move on. You know, we spend a lot of time going slow in the beginning, but once you get a feel of the context of the book and the context of the argument that the writer is making, you can then begin to pick up the pace a little bit because you're not having to lay so much of a foundation every time you come to the text.

We know that Paul has been arguing in this book about the distinction between law and promise, or more specifically, law and gospel. He has said very clearly, the law cannot save because no one can keep the law.

The gospel saves by faith apart from the law. Therefore, if anyone is going to be saved, it will not be by the law, but it will be by faith in the promises of God which are found in the gospel. We know that this is in response to the argument which was made by the Judaizers, which said that if you are going to be saved, you have to keep the law.

And so that leads us to where we are today in the text. Now, we're going to look at verses 21 -31, but before we read, I want to make a few observations to help us understand what we're about to read.

Because Paul is going in this passage to give us an allegory of his argument. Now, something to note is where this is actually coming in the argument. Paul has already argued from experience. He's already argued from Scripture.

He's already argued from history. He's even argued from emotion. If you remember, we talked about that last week. He's made his arguments over and over and over. And so now he's going to give an allegory for his argument.

And the reason why I'm mentioning this is because notice this isn't his first argument. He didn't start with the allegory. He started with logic and experience and Scripture and all those things. This one comes at the end.

And the reason why is because, in my opinion, it's really the weakest argument. You say, well, what do you mean? Well, allegories are dangerous things. Because allegories are basically when someone takes a story and applies it to something else.

And that can make for dangerous interpretation. Allegorical interpretation can be very, very dangerous. In fact, what I wanted to do to start with is I want to give you just an outline very quickly of different ways people interpret the Bible and the dangers of these different ways.

So before we even read the text, I want to give you four ways people tend to interpret the Bible that are incorrect. The first one is the liberal interpretation. The second one is the subjective interpretation.

The third one is the devotional interpretation. And the last one is the allegorical interpretation.

You said there's four ways.

Four incorrect or bad ways that people would interpret the Bible. The first one is the liberal interpretation. What is the liberal interpretation? The liberal interpretation approaches the Bible in an attempt, rather than to accept what it says, it attempts to try to rationalize what it says.

And it attempts to, rather than simply take on faith that the Bible is true, it assumes that there are things in the Bible that are untrue. Therefore, when the Bible says God split the waters for Moses, the liberals come along and they try to find a way that that could be done without miraculous intervention.

You know, the water was really shallow, or a meteor hit, or something. They try to find some rational example, some rational explanation, because they do not want to incorporate the supernatural. Liberals are naturalists in general.

They're very naturalistic. They don't want to accept and appropriate the supernatural. Remember this, if you don't remember anything else, Christianity is a supernatural religion. We believe that God exists, and that's a supernatural claim.

We believe that Jesus died and rose again. That don't normally happen, right? In nature, when things die, they stay dead. But we believe Jesus rose from the dead, therefore we believe in something that's above the natural.

We believe in supernatural. And liberals tend to avoid the supernatural, and therefore their interpretation of the Bible is boxed within a naturalistic worldview. Jesus didn't feed 5 ,000 people with five loaves and two fish.

Jesus encouraged the people that had to share with the people who didn't have. And it wasn't a miracle of God creating something out of nothing, but what it was was a big socialist miracle where God caused the people who had to share with the people who didn't have.

Jesus was a first century Bernie Sanders, you know? Y 'all might not know who that is. The point of the matter is, liberals tend to approach the Bible with a highly skeptical approach, and therefore they read it through the lens of their skepticism.

The second is a subjective interpretation. The subjective interpretation is not concerned with what the Bible means, as much as it is concerned with what the Bible means to me. And therefore every verse is read through the lens and through the grid of my personal experience.

And you've heard of exegesis and eisegesis. Eisegesis means to read out of the text what's there. Eisegesis means to read into the text what isn't there. Well, there's also something called narsegesis.

Narsegesis comes from the idea of narcissism, which means totally self-focused. And some people read the text with themselves in view. And we call that narsegesis. It's a joke word. It's not a real word.

But narsegesis is making myself the point of the text. And whatever text I'm reading, I'm going to read it with myself in view. That's a very dangerous way to interpret the Bible, because the Bible isn't about you.

You're in view in certain places, but it's not about you. And so to make it about you is a dangerous interpretive grid. The third one is a devotional interpretation. Devotional interpretation, unfortunately, is the way that most people in America read the Bible because they've never had any real training on how to interpret the text.

And therefore, they use the Bible as if it were like a prayer book or an inspiration book. And so every verse is taken out of its context and used in the sense of some type of inspiration for the day.

Like our daily bread, right? You get one verse. It's not our daily bread. It's our daily crumb. Because you get one little verse, and you get that one verse ripped out of its context and then a little story that goes with it.

And it really has nothing to do with the context of the text. The text is then used as sort of a springboard to some idea or something in life. And we call that devotional interpretation.

Very common.

People will read the verse in Jeremiah about Him being called before He was born. And He was made a prophet to the nations. And they'll say, oh, see, that's about me. And God knew me before I was born.

It ain't about you. It's about Jeremiah.

But everything becomes about... It's sort of like Narcissus. It's about me, but it's more inspirational. And the whole Bible is seen, rather than a book of God's plan of redemption, it becomes a book about how to make your life better.

So that would be a Joel Osteen.

Oh yes, Joel Osteen's whole sermons are basically devotional in nature. He very rarely, if ever, will dig down into the history of the meaning of the text because he didn't care about the meaning of the text.

It's not about what it means. It's about how it works. And if we can get it to work, it doesn't matter if it's right or wrong. Because in a pragmatist worldview, and that's what I believe he is, a pragmatist believes that as long as it works, it's right.

Well, as long as it works, it's the correct way to think. And the last one is allegorical interpretation. Now, allegorical interpretation is somewhat unique in these four in that the allegory is when you look for a hidden or the real message underneath the text.

For instance, Jesus went up to Jerusalem. Therefore, when we go toward Jerusalem, we're going toward God because God is up.

You see?

That's an allegory. It's allegorizing. You've heard people that talk about the Bible code. If you take the number of books and you divide it by the number of chapters and you times it times the number of times that you use the word Yahweh, and then you divide that by this and you'll come up with when you're going to die.

Something crazy.

Right?

It's this idea of looking for something that's hidden in the message. And this actually has long history in the church. Even some of the early church fathers believed that the best way to interpret the Bible was the allegorical way, was to find the allegory, the hidden message.

They may have a similar root, but I'm not even sure. But the idea though is to find that hidden message. And this was what was so big about the Reformation. Because one of the things about the Reformation was it followed this great time, what we call the Middle Ages or the medieval period.

And during the medieval period, the allegorical method was really on the rise. And that was when a lot of people were interpreting the Bible in allegory. And the Reformers came along and said, no, the plain meaning of the text is the meaning of the text.

We don't allegorize the text. We take the plain and simple meaning of the text. Because an allegory typically is based on something that is fictional. You guys recently watched Pilgrim's Progress.

Didn't you?

It wasn't recent? Okay, I'm sorry. But you know what I'm talking about, right? The Pilgrim's Progress movie. It's a cartoon animated movie based on the book.

Huh?

Oh, the one with Liam Neeson?

Yeah.

I know there's a film one and then there's the animated version. But it's based on a book that was written by John Bunyan. And John Bunyan was one of the greatest writers in the history of the Christian church.

He just was such a tremendous intellect. And he was the author of Pilgrim's Progress along with many other books and sermons. And when he wrote the Pilgrim's Progress, that's an allegory. And it's on the nose.

You know what it's about. The guy who's the hero of the story is Christian.

Why?

Because he's a Christian.

He's got a burden on his back,.

Which is his burden. He didn't try to... The guy who tries to get him off the path is worldly wise man. The place that tries to tempt him is called Vanity Fair. You know, he's like, we're going to make this allegory just as simple as we can and make sure you can't miss the picture that we're giving here.

I'm not saying it's simple in the sense that it's not well thought out. I'm just saying he didn't try to confuse us. Because there's other allegories. Have you ever heard of the Narnia series? Chronicles of Narnia.

You realize that's an allegory, right? Anselim the lion.

What's his name? Anselim?

Aslan.

Aslan the lion represents Christ. He dies and he comes back to life. It's a lot more hidden in Narnia than it is in Pilgrim's Progress. Pilgrim's Progress is like right on the nose. This is Christian.

This is hopeful. This guy and that guy, they all got names that are very obvious. But then you get to Narnia and it's not so obvious.

The Wizard of Oz is an allegory. It's not for religion.

Yeah, yeah. And again, allegories stretch out in other areas. Yeah, for sure. So, the reason why I'm bringing all this up is because the reformers said, no, these are incorrect. What we should be using, it's called the grammatical historical method.

Now, you know that. Did anybody else know that? Okay, alright. Because if you know it, I don't want to waste time, but if you don't know it, this is important. This was something that the reformers helped the church to understand.

That when you come to Scripture, rather than having a liberal, subjective, devotional, or allegorical approach, you need to have a contextual approach. What is a contextual approach? A contextual approach examines the grammar of the text and the historical setting of the text to determine the meaning of the text.

Thus, they call it the grammatical historical method. You determine context based on grammar, how are words used, and based on history. Understand this, guys. I know some of you look tired, and I hope I'm not trying to put you to sleep, but listen, this is important.

Understand this. The Bible is a book. Therefore, it is to be interpreted like a book. Some people think the Bible is magic. Now, I will say the Bible is inspired. It's infallible. It is the Word of God given to men by the people of God through the Spirit of God.

We know what the Bible is. It is a miraculous book, but it's still a book. Which means to be able to understand the Bible, you've got to know how to read. Well, it's not Braille, but it's also not some...

I heard a guy one time years ago. It was a guy who was a preacher, and I use preacher in air quotes because he was kind of a whatever. He said, this is how I study for a sermon. He said, I open up my Bible and I lay it on the ground, and I lay my face down on my Bible, and I just pray and pray and pray with my face in my Bible, and that's how I get my sermons.

That was my point.

I just put my face in it and just pray and pray and pray, and that's how I get my sermons. Well, faith flipping is... I call it lucky dipping, but yeah, just where you just sort of go and stick your head.

Don't say a name.

The way I've explained that before is that you find a letter that said, I got a bunch of spam today. You know, you would think,.

Oh, I got a bunch of junk email.

But if you date it.

And see it was written in 1970, then it changes the whole meaning. It's probably someone got a bunch of canned meat.

You know what I mean?

If you read it grammatically and historically...

Yeah, the historical setting would change. Like if I said the word social distancing two years ago... Two weeks ago. Yeah, two weeks ago. Social distancing. No one would know what that is. If I mentioned Wuhan, China,.

No one would know where it was. But now everybody knows where it is.

That's where the social distancing started. So, yes, absolutely. Context, history, all of these things will help us to understand the right meaning of the text. And the right meaning of the text is what the author intended when he wrote it.

Somebody says, well, we can't know that there's a right meaning. Yes, there is, because Paul knew what he meant when he wrote. Jeremiah knew what he meant when he wrote. And therefore, my goal is to try to understand what they meant when they wrote it.

Therefore, I study the grammar and the history of the text to understand it. You say, well, why in the world, Pastor, you're going through all this, we haven't even read the text yet. The reason why I'm saying all of this is because right now, we are about to see Paul use an allegory.

And even though we've said allegorical interpretation is not the best way to interpret Scripture, there are times where the Bible itself gives us allegories and shows us things that we would not have known otherwise.

But what we must understand is when Paul gives us this allegory,.

Because what he's going to do,.

He's going to compare Sarah and Hagar, the mother of Isaac and the mother of Ishmael, he's going to compare them to the law and the promise. He's going to compare them to works and grace. But here's what he's not doing.

He's not saying that makes their story untrue. See, a lot of times when people allegorize something, they assume that the allegory is based on something that's not true. Because normally it is, right?

Pilgrim's Progress isn't true.

It's an allegory.

Narnia isn't true. It's an allegory. And so someone might read this and say, well, I guess Abraham really didn't have a wife named Sarah. I guess he really didn't have a handmaiden name because Paul says it's an allegory.

No, no, no, no, no. Paul's not saying that story wasn't true. Paul is saying that story has a representation that most people don't realize it represents. And so I'm going to explain it to you under the inspiration of God.

This is why we can trust this allegory is a good one because it comes to us from the writing of the Apostle Paul who's under the inspiration of God. This does not give us the right to go allegorizing because we are not currently writing Scripture.

And we do not currently have the authority that the Apostle Paul has. So that's my sort of warning today is even though we're going to see an allegory used in the Bible, that doesn't tell us that's the best way to interpret it.

Because that's not even what Paul has done. This is the last of his arguments. This is really the lowest form of argument. But this wraps up all the rest in a nice, easy-to-remember story. So it's concluding the arguments with the allegory.

Alright, so having said all that, that was all introduction. Now let's read. Galatians 4, verse 21. 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. See, he uses the word allegorically. 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's pray.

Father, I thank You for Your Word. I pray now that as I seek to give an understanding of it, that You would keep me from error. I pray that You would bless this time of study, bless these men, and help them to understand the words that You have given to us by the power of Your Spirit, who is the only real, true, and living Teacher today.

And we believe this and trust this in Christ's name.

Amen. Alright.

Hagar, Sarah, and the Two Covenants

Martin Luther, in regard to this particular passage, says this, Paul is an expert at allegories. They are dangerous things. Unless a person has a thorough knowledge.

Of Christian doctrine,.

He had better leave allegories alone. That's a pretty good warning from Martin Luther. But notice what he says. He says Paul is an expert. Why is Paul an expert? Because Paul knows the Old Testament and he knows the New Covenant, and he is able to interweave the ideas of the Old Covenant into the New Covenant in a way that makes for a sensible understanding.

Paul is showing us here a picture of what the New Covenant looks like from the Old Covenant. And I want to draw a chart on the board. I hope this works. I don't know how many of you take notes, and you really don't have to take notes, but I actually drew this in my notes and I thought it would be helpful.

Because basically, this is what we're given from Paul. He gives us a comparison and a contrast between two ideas. The first, he says Abraham had two sons. The first son is Ishmael. The second son was Isaac.

Now, before we go any further, Abraham had more sons than this. He actually had an adopted son, Eleazar of Damascus, before he ever had any sons. We learn about him in Genesis 15. And then later, after Sarah died, he married a woman named Keturah.

And through Keturah, it says he had many sons and daughters. So Abraham had many sons.

Huh?

Yeah, amazing.

That's right.

That's right.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

That's right.

Yeah, he's my boy. Alright, so yes. So when Paul says Abraham had two sons, he's not saying he only had two sons, but he is referring to the fact that he had two sons that have a unique position in his home.

Because one of the sons was born according to the flesh. And one son was born according to the promise. Now, something to note about this in the text. Notice what he says here. He says,. It is written that Abraham had two sons, one by a slave woman, one by a free woman.

But the slave was born according to the flesh. According to the flesh. Some of your Bibles might say he was born naturally. Or some might say... Anybody have something other than according to the flesh?

What does yours say, brother?

According to the impulse.

Really?

That's actually really good. What translation is that?

CSV? Okay.

Because that, I think, is getting to the heart of what Paul is pointing to. What was it about Ishmael's birth that related specifically to it being of the flesh? The question was, what was it about the birth of Ishmael that made it particularly according to the flesh or of the flesh?

Because God told him to wait for the promise. Wait for the promise.

He couldn't wait.

That's right.

It was man's attempt, and I think that's what you guys are saying. It's man's attempt to circumvent God's promise or trying to get the promise through another means. God had promised Abraham He was going to have a son.

After a while of Sarah staying barren, what does He do?

Got to go another route.

Sarah's obviously not going to be the one.

Who gives me the promise.

And actually, it was Sarah. If you go back to Genesis 16... Yeah, she said, have you noticed my handmaiden?

I've been noticed.

I don't know what he said. Again, I'm interpreting based on my knowledge of men. Have you noticed my...

Yes, I have.

And so, she has to convince him. I have no idea how long it took to convince him.

It's not that long.

And again, we shouldn't be laughing. Actually, I don't want this to be misunderstood. Yeah, and again, in all of this, she was involved in this ruse to try to circumvent the plan of God. And therefore, when the text says, the slave woman's son was born according to the flesh, or like yours says, according to the impulse of the flesh, that's pointing to the fact, it's not just that he was born naturally, but that he was born out of the desire of a fleshly attitude.

It's more than... When we talk about something of the flesh, in the New Testament particularly, it usually refers to something negative. You know, don't behave in the flesh. Behave in the spirit. So when it talks about...

And there's a difference between soma and sarks, right? Soma is the Greek word for body, and it's almost always used in a good way. We're the body of Christ. Treat your bodies well. Don't treat your bodies as the temple of the Spirit.

That's soma. That's the word soma. It's used almost in the positive. The negative is sarks, flesh. When the Bible talks about flesh, it's almost always in the negative. So right here, when it says he was the son of the flesh, it's referring to the fact of the negative aspect of his introduction into the world, which was this attempt to circumvent the plan of God.

Alright, so we have Ishmael and Isaac. One's the son of the flesh. One's the son of the promise. We have a slave woman and we have a free woman. The slave woman, of course, is Hagar. The free woman, of course, is Sarah.

So this is our chart as we go down. And what we're going to see is how Paul makes this argument and he basically builds two sides because under Ishmael, of the flesh of the slave woman,.

He says,.

Now this represents the covenant at Sinai. So we say the covenant of the law. And this represents the promise. We could say the covenant of promise, but he doesn't really use that language. Let's read it together.

It says,.

Now this may be interpreted allegorically. These women are two covenants. One is from Mount Sinai, bearing children for slavery. She is Hagar. And he goes on to say later that the promise is the other.

And what covenant was the covenant of promise prior to all that? The covenant God made with Abraham. Remember, that's a covenant Paul's talked about all this time. Was the covenant God made with Abraham was based on promise.

Abraham believed God and was counted as righteousness. What was the promise? All the nations will be blessed through you. What is the new covenant? The fulfillment of the covenant made with Abraham, right?

So really, if you think about the promise, this is Abraham's covenant and it refers to the new covenant. So we have the promise given to Abraham fulfilled in Jesus Christ, who is the seed of Abraham. Now, he goes on to say Ishmael was of the flesh, of the slave woman.

He represents the covenant of law and he represents the earthly Jerusalem. And Isaac represents the heavenly Jerusalem. Now, here's the part...

Yes?

Isn't this where the Muslims get fought?

Yes.

And that's fine. That's not really off topic. I actually wondered if I should mention that. Because in the Muslim faith, the Muslim belief, Isaac is not the favored child, but Ishmael is the favored child.

They believe it was Ishmael that Abraham offered on Mount Moriah, not Isaac. They believe the entire story has been fabricated by the Jewish people to rob Ishmael of his rights as the firstborn son of Abraham.

Yes.

Muslims believe they are descendants of Ishmael in the faith. Yes, and so you have Ishmael who is the one who they would say he was the one Abraham was...

Why do they believe that?

Because they believe the Bible has been corrupted.

That's where the prophet Mohammad came from was Ishmael's line.

Yes, the Arabs would trace themselves back to Ishmael's line.

It's the same story up until this part in Genesis.

Yes.

What did the angel call when he went to the desert to get out of here? The angel told him to hang a mighty man.

Well, it's in Genesis 16. We can go read it real quick if you want to.

That's what they get it from.

But actually, listen to what it says though. Because you're right, it says that he's going to be a mighty man. But listen to what it says about him because it's kind of crazy. A wild beast. Yes, a donkey of a man.

A donkey of a man. Here's what it says. It starts with the story of Sarah and Hagar in chapter 16 verse 1. But then in chapter 16 verse 7 is the part of the story you're talking about, brother. The angel of the Lord found her by a spring of water in the wilderness, the spring on the way to Shur.

And he said, Hagar, servant of Sarai, where have you come from and where are you going? She said, I am fleeing from my mistress Sarai. The angel of the Lord said to her, return to your mistress and submit to her.

The angel of the Lord also said to her, I will surely multiply your offspring so that you cannot be numbered for multitude. And the angel of the Lord said to her, Behold, you are pregnant and you shall bear a son.

He shall call his name Ishmael because the Lord has listened to your affliction. He shall be a wild donkey of a man, his hand against everyone and everyone's hand against him. And he shall dwell over against all his kinsmen.

Isn't that interesting? That when you look at the history of the people of Ishmael that they still to this day have their hand against others and others. Yeah, yeah. So it's an interesting prophecy here about the descendants of Ishmael.

Who's that radical group over there?

ISIS.

Well, there's ISIS and Al-Qaeda in different...

They're all Muslim.

Yes, yeah, yeah. It's Muslim extremist groups. Radical Islamists.

Yeah.

Alright, so here's the point I'm trying to get to. That took us, not in a bad way, that took us off a little bit. But let me get back very quickly. The Judaizers. Remember them? They're the issue that Paul's dealing with.

They're the ones he's going to deal with all the way to the end of the book. Let me say this. If they looked at this list and they said,.

Okay, we've got Isaac, promise, free woman,.

Covenant of promise, and we've got the heavenly Jerusalem. That is us! Well, here's the point. This is where it becomes an allegory. Because by birth, they were children of Isaac because they were Israelites.

They were Hebrews.

By birth, they would have been children of Isaac. But if you go back to Romans 9, one of the things we learn in Romans 9 is this. Just because someone's born of Abraham does not make him part of the promise that God gave to Abraham.

Because the line isn't always by birth, but it's by choice. Because remember, God said to the mother of Jacob and Esau, I'm going to choose one and not the other. So the idea that just because someone is born of Abraham makes them a child...

Remember, that's what the Jews said to Jesus in John 8. We have Abraham as our father.

Jesus said, nah.

I mean, that's not really what He said.

I weren't there.

But basically, He said, oh, nay, nay. If you did have Abraham as your father, you would have believed in Me. If you had Abraham as your father, you would have believed in Me. What does that tell us? That tells us that they are incorrect.

And this is the most controversial thing Paul has said in the book so far. Because even though already Paul has attacked those who teach that the law is necessary, he's attacked those who say that you can't be saved by grace through faith alone.

And Christ alone.

But this is the most controversial thing because in this argument, what he is saying is the very people who are telling you that they are the descendants of Isaac are in this moment demonstrating themselves to be the descendants of Ishmael.