Allegory of Law and Gospel

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Well, good morning, everybody.
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Open up your Bibles to Galatians chapter 4.
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We're going to finish the chapter today, Lord willing.
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And then we'll move on.
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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.
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We know that Paul has been arguing in this book about the distinction between law and promise, or more specifically, law and gospel.
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He has said very clearly, the law cannot save because no one can keep the law.
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The gospel saves by faith apart from the law.
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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.
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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.
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And so that leads us to where we are today in the text.
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Now, we're going to look at verses 21 to 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.
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Now, something to note is where this is actually coming in the argument.
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Paul has already argued from experience.
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He's already argued from Scripture.
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He's already argued from history.
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He's even argued from emotion.
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If you remember, we talked about that last week.
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He's made his arguments over and over and over.
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And so now he's going to give an allegory for his argument.
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And the reason why I'm mentioning this is because notice this isn't his first argument.
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He didn't start with the allegory.
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He started with logic and experience and Scripture and all those things.
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This one comes at the end.
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And the reason why is because, in my opinion, it's really the weakest argument.
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You say, 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.
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Allegorical interpretation can be very, very dangerous.
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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.
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So before we even read the text, I want to give you four ways people tend to interpret the Bible that are incorrect.
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The first one is the liberal interpretation.
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The second one is the subjective interpretation.
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The third one is the devotional interpretation.
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And the last one is the allegorical interpretation.
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You said there's four ways.
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Four incorrect or bad ways that people would interpret the Bible.
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The first one is the liberal interpretation.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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You know, the water was really shallow, or a meteor hit or something.
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They try to find some rational example, some rational explanation, because they do not want to incorporate the supernatural.
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Liberals are naturalists in general.
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They're very naturalistic.
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They don't want to accept and appropriate the supernatural.
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Remember this, if you don't remember anything else, Christianity is a supernatural religion.
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We believe that God exists, and that's a supernatural claim.
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We believe that Jesus died and rose again.
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That don't normally happen, right? In nature, when things die, they stay dead.
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But we believe Jesus rose from the dead, therefore we believe in something that's above the natural.
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We believe in supernatural.
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And liberals tend to avoid the supernatural, and therefore their interpretation of the Bible is boxed within a naturalistic worldview.
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Jesus didn't feed 5,000 people with five loaves and two fish.
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Jesus encouraged the people that had to share with the people who didn't have.
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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.
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Jesus was a first century Bernie Sanders, you know? Y'all might not know who that is.
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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.
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The second is a subjective interpretation.
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The subjective interpretation is not concerned with what the Bible means, as much as it is concerned with what the Bible means to me.
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And therefore every verse is read through the lens and through the grid of my personal experience.
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And you've heard of exegesis and eisegesis.
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Exegesis means to read out of the text what's there.
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Eisegesis means to read into the text what isn't there.
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Well, there's also something called narsegesis.
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Narsegesis comes from the idea of narcissism, which means totally self-focused.
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And some people read the text with themselves in view.
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And we call that narsegesis.
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It's a joke word.
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It's not a real word.
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But narsegesis is making myself the point of the text.
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And whatever text I'm reading, I'm going to read it with myself in view.
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That's a very dangerous way to interpret the Bible, because the Bible isn't about you.
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You're in view in certain places, but it's not about you.
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And so to make it about you is a dangerous interpretive grid.
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The third one is a devotional interpretation.
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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.
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And therefore, they use the Bible as if it were like a prayer book or an inspiration book.
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And so every verse is taken out of its context and used in the sense of some type of inspiration for the day.
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Like our daily bread, right? You get one verse.
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It's not our daily bread.
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It's our daily crumb.
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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.
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And it really has nothing to do with the context of the text.
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The text is then used as sort of a springboard to some idea or something in life.
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And we call that devotional interpretation.
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Very common.
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People will read the verse in Jeremiah about Him being called before He was born.
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And He was made a prophet to the nations.
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And they'll say, oh, see, that's about me.
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And God knew me before I was born.
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It ain't about you.
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It's about Jeremiah.
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But everything becomes about...
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It's almost sort of like Narcissus.
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It's about me, but it's more inspirational.
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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.
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So that would be a Joel Osteen.
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Oh, yes.
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Joel Osteen's whole sermons are basically devotional in nature.
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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.
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It's not about what it means.
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It's about how it works.
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And if we can get it to work, it doesn't matter if it's right or wrong.
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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.
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Well, as long as it works, it's the correct way to think.
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And the last one is allegorical interpretation.
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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.
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For instance, Jesus went up to Jerusalem.
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Therefore, when we go toward Jerusalem, we're going toward God because God is up.
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You see? That's an allegory.
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It's allegorizing.
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You've heard people that talk about the Bible code.
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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.
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Something crazy.
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Right? It's this idea of looking for something that's hidden in the message.
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And this actually has long history in the church.
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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.
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They may have a similar root, but I'm not even sure.
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But the idea though is to find that hidden message.
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And this was what was so big about the Reformation.
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Because one of the things about the Reformation was it followed this great time of what we call the Middle Ages, or the medieval period.
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And during the medieval period, the allegorical method was really on the rise.
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And that was when a lot of people were interpreting the Bible in allegory.
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And the Reformers came along and said, no, the plain meaning of the text is the meaning of the text.
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We don't allegorize the text.
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We take the plain and simple meaning of the text.
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Because an allegory typically is based on something that is fictional.
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You guys recently watched Pilgrim's Progress.
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Didn't you? Wasn't it recent? Okay, I'm sorry.
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But you know what I'm talking about, right? The Pilgrim's Progress movie.
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It's a cartoon animated movie based on the book.
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Huh? Oh, the one with Liam Neeson? Well, I know there's a film one and then there's the animated version.
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But it's based on a book that was written by John Bunyan.
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And John Bunyan was one of the greatest writers in the history of the Christian church.
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I mean, he just was such a tremendous intellect.
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And he was the author of Pilgrim's Progress along with many other books and sermons.
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And when he wrote the Pilgrim's Progress, that's an allegory.
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And it's on the nose.
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You know what it's about.
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The guy who's the hero of the story is Christian.
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Why? Because he's a Christian.
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He's got a burden on his back, which is his burden.
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I mean, it's not like he didn't try to...
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The guy who tries to get him off the path is worldly wise man.
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The place that tries to tempt him is called Vanity Fair.
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You know, it's like 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.
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I'm not saying it's simple in the sense that it's not well thought out.
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I'm just saying he didn't try to confuse us.
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Because there's other allegories, like you ever heard of the Narnia series? Chronicles of Narnia.
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You realize that's an allegory, right? Anselim the lion.
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What's his name? Anselim? Aslan.
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Aslan the lion represents Christ.
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You know, he dies and he comes back to life.
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It's a lot more hidden in Narnia than it is in Pilgrim's Progress.
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Pilgrim's Progress is like right on the nose.
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This is Christian.
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This is hopeful.
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This guy and that guy, they all got names that are very obvious.
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But then you get to Narnia and it's not so obvious.
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The Wizard of Oz is an allegory.
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It's not for religion.
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Yeah, and again, allegories stretch out in other areas.
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Yeah, for sure.
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So, the reason why I'm bringing all this up is because the reformers said, no, these are incorrect.
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What we should be using, it's called the grammatical historical method.
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Now you know that.
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Did anybody else know that? Okay, alright.
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Because if you know it, I don't want to waste time.
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But if you don't know it, this is important.
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This was something that the reformers helped the church to understand.
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That when you come to Scripture, rather than having a liberal, subjective, devotional, or allegorical approach, you need to have a contextual approach.
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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.
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And thus they call it the grammatical historical method.
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You determine context based on grammar, how are words used, and based on history.
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Understand this guys, and I know some of you look tired, and I hope I'm not trying to put you to sleep, but listen, this is important.
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Understand this.
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The Bible is a book.
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Therefore, it is to be interpreted like a book.
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Some people think the Bible is magic.
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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.
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We know what the Bible is.
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It is a miraculous book, but it's still a book.
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Which means to be able to understand the Bible, you've got to know how to read.
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Well, it's not Braille, but it's not some...
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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.
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He said, this is how I study for a sermon.
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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.
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And that's how I get my sermons.
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I just put my face in it and just pray and pray and pray and that's how I get my sermons.
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Well, faith flipping, I call it lucky dipping, but yeah, where you just sort of go and stick your head.
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Don't say a name.
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The way I've explained that before is that you find a letter that said, I got a bunch of spam today.
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You know, you would think, oh, I got a bunch of junk email.
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But if you date it and see it was written in 1970, then it changes the whole meaning.
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It's probably someone got a bunch of canned meat.
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You know what I mean? If you read it grammatically and historically...
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Yeah, the historical setting would change.
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Like if I said the word social distancing two years ago.
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Two weeks ago.
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Yeah, two weeks ago.
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Social distancing.
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No one would know what that is.
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If I mentioned Wuhan, China, no one would know where it was.
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But now everybody knows where it is.
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That's where the social distancing started.
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So, yes, absolutely.
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Context, history, all of these things will help us to understand the right meaning of the text.
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And the right meaning of the text is what the author intended when he wrote it.
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Somebody says, well, we can't know that there's a right meaning.
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Yes, there is, because Paul knew what he meant when he wrote.
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Jeremiah knew what he meant when he wrote.
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And therefore, my goal is to try to understand what they meant when they wrote it.
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Therefore, I study the grammar and the history of the text to understand it.
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You say, well, why in the world, Pastor, you're going through all this.
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We haven't even read the text yet.
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The reason why I'm saying all of this is because right now we are about to see Paul use an allegory.
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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.
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But what we must understand is when Paul gives us this allegory, 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.
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He's going to compare them to works and grace.
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But here's what he's not doing.
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He's not saying that makes their story untrue.
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See, a lot of times when people allegorize something, they assume that the allegory is based on something that's not true.
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Because normally it is, right? Pilgrim's Progress isn't true.
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It's an allegory.
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Narnia isn't true.
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It's an allegory.
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And so someone might read this and say, well, I guess Abraham really didn't have a wife named Sarah.
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I guess he really didn't have a handmaiden name because Paul says it's an allegory.
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No, no, no, no, no.
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Paul's not saying that story wasn't true.
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Paul is saying that story has a representation that most people don't realize it represents.
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And so I'm going to explain it to you under the inspiration of God.
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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.
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This does not give us the right to go allegorizing because we are not currently writing Scripture.
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And we do not currently have the authority that the Apostle Paul has.
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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 because that's not even what Paul has done.
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This is the last of his arguments.
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This is really the lowest form of argument.
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But this wraps up all the rest in a nice, easy-to-remember story.
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So it's concluding the arguments with the allegory.
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Alright, so having said all that, that was all introduction.
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Now let's read.
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Galatians 4, verse 21.
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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.
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But the son of the slave was born according to the flesh, while the son of the free woman was born through promise.
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Now this may be interpreted allegorically.
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See, he uses the word allegorically.
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This may be interpreted allegorically.
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These women are two covenants.
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One is from Mount Sinai, bearing children for slavery.
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She is Hagar.
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Now Hagar is Mount Sinai in Arabia.
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She corresponds to the present Jerusalem for she is in slavery with her children.
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But the Jerusalem above is free and she is our mother.
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For it is written, Rejoice, O barren one who does not bear.
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Break forth and cry aloud, you who are not in labor.
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For the children of the desolate one will be more than those of the one who has a husband.
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Now you brothers, like Isaac, are children of promise.
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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.
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But what does the Scripture say? Cast out the slave woman and her son.
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For the son of the slave woman shall not inherit with the son of the free woman.
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So brothers, we are not children of the slave, but of the free woman.
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Let's pray.
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Father, I thank You for Your Word.
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I pray now that as I seek to give an understanding of it, that You would keep me from error.
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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.
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And we believe this and trust this in Christ's name.
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Amen.
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Alright.
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Martin Luther, in regard to this particular passage, says this, Paul is an expert at allegories.
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They are dangerous things.
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Unless a person has a thorough knowledge of Christian doctrine, he had better leave allegories alone.
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That's a pretty good warning from Martin Luther.
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But notice what he says.
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He says Paul is an expert.
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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.
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Paul is showing us here a picture of what the New Covenant looks like from the Old Covenant.
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And I want to draw a chart on the board.
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I hope this works.
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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.
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Because basically, this is what we're given from Paul.
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He gives us a comparison and a contrast between two ideas.
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The first, he says Abraham had two sons.
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The first son is Ishmael.
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The second son was Isaac.
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Now, before we go any further, Abraham had more sons than this.
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He actually had an adopted son, Eleazar of Damascus, before he ever had any sons.
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We learn about him in Genesis 15.
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And then later, after Sarah died, he married a woman named Keturah.
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And through Keturah, it says he had many sons and daughters.
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So Abraham had many sons.
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Huh? Yeah, amazing.
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That's right.
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That's right.
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Yeah, yeah.
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Yeah.
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That's right.
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Yeah, he's my boy.
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Alright, so yes.
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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.
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Because one of the sons was born according to the flesh.
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And one son was born according to the promise.
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Now something to note about this in the text.
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Notice what he says here.
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He says, It is written that Abraham had two sons, one by a slave woman, one by a free woman.
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But the slave was born according to the flesh.
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According to the flesh.
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Some of your Bibles might say he was born naturally.
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Or some might say, does anybody have something other than according to the flesh? What does yours say, brother? According to the impulse.
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Really? That's actually really good.
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What translation is that? CSV? Okay.
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Because that I think is getting to the heart of what Paul is pointing to.
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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.
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Wait for Isaac.
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Wait for the promise.
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He couldn't wait.
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That's right.
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It was man's attempt, and I think that's what you guys are saying.
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It's man's attempt to circumvent God's promise or trying to get the promise through another means.
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God had promised Abraham He was going to have a son.
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After a while of Sarah staying barren, what does He do? Got to go another route.
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Sarah's obviously not going to be the one who gives me the promise.
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And actually, it was Sarah.
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If you go back to Genesis 16, she said, have you noticed my handmaiden? I don't know what he said.
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Again, I'm interpreting based on my knowledge of men.
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Have you noticed my handmaiden? Yes, I have.
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And so, she has to convince him.
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I have no idea how long it took to convince him.
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And again, we shouldn't be laughing.
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Actually, I don't want this to be misunderstood.
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Yeah, and again, in all of this, she was involved in this ruse to try to circumvent the plan of God.
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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.
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It's more than...
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When we talk about something of the flesh, in the New Testament particularly, it usually refers to something negative.
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You know, don't behave in the flesh.
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Behave in the Spirit.
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And there's a difference between soma and sarx, right? Soma is the Greek word for body, and it's almost always used in a good way.
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We're the body of Christ.
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You know, treat your bodies well.
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Don't treat your bodies in the temple of the Spirit.
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That's soma.
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That's the word soma.
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It's used almost in the positive.
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The negative is sarx, flesh.
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When the Bible talks about flesh, it's almost always in the negative.
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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.
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Alright, so we have Ishmael and Isaac.
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One's the son of the flesh, one's the son of the promise.
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We have a slave woman and we have a free woman.
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The slave woman, of course, is Hagar.
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The free woman, of course, is Sarah.
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So this is our chart as we go down.
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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.
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So we say the covenant of the law.
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And this represents the promise.
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We could say the covenant of promise, but he doesn't really use that language.
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Let's read it together.
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It says, Now this may be interpreted allegorically.
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These women are two covenants.
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One is from Mount Sinai, bearing children for slavery.
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She is Hagar.
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And he goes on to say later that the promise is the other.
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And what covenant was the covenant of promise prior to all that? The covenant God made with Abraham.
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Remember, that's a covenant Paul's talked about all this time.
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Was the covenant God made with Abraham was based on promise.
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Abraham believed God and was counted as righteousness.
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What was the promise? All the nations will be blessed through you.
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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.
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So we have the promise given to Abraham fulfilled in Jesus Christ, who is the seed of Abraham.
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Now, he goes on to say, Ishmael was of the flesh, of the slave woman.
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He represents the covenant of law and he represents the earthly Jerusalem.
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And Isaac represents the heavenly Jerusalem.
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Now here's the part...
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Yes? Isn't this where the Muslims get football? Yes.
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And that's fine.
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That's not really off topic.
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I actually wondered if I should mention that.
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Because in the Muslim faith, the Muslim belief, Isaac is not the favored child, but Ishmael is the favored child.
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They believe it was Ishmael that Abraham offered on Mount Moriah, not Isaac.
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They believe the entire story has been fabricated by the Jewish people to rob Ishmael of his rights as the firstborn son of Abraham.
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Yes, Muslims believe they are descendants of Ishmael in the faith.
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Yes, and so you have Ishmael who they would say he was the one Abraham was...
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Why do they believe that? Because they believe the Bible has been corrupted.
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That's where the prophet Mohammad came from was Ishmael's line.
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Yes, the Arabs would trace themselves back to Ishmael's line.
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And it's the same story up until this part in Genesis.
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What did the angel call when they went to the desert, when Mesher got mad and said, get out of here? And did the angel say, hang a mighty man? That is in...
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Well, it's in Genesis 16.
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We can go read it real quick if you want to.
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That's what he did.
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But actually, listen to what it says though.
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Because you're right.
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It says that he's going to be a mighty man.
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But listen to what it says about him.
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Because it's kind of crazy.
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Yeah, a donkey of a man.
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A donkey of a man.
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Here's what it says.
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It starts with the story of Sarah and Hagar in chapter 16 verse 1.
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But then in chapter 16 verse 7 is the part of the story you're talking about, brother.
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The angel of the Lord found her by a spring of water in the wilderness, the spring on the way to Shur.
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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.
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The angel of the Lord said to her, Return to your mistress and submit to her.
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The angel of the Lord also said to her, I will surely multiply your offspring so that you cannot be numbered for multitude.
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And the angel of the Lord said to her, Behold, you are pregnant and you shall bear a son.
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He shall call his name Ishmael because the Lord has listened to your affliction.
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He shall be a wild donkey of a man, his hand against everyone and everyone's hand against him.
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And he shall dwell over against all his kinsmen.
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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.
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Yeah, yeah.
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So it's an interesting prophecy here about the descendants of Ishmael.
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Isn't that what ISIS...
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Well, there's ISIS, Al-Qaeda, and different...
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They're all...
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Yes, yeah, yeah.
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It's Muslim extremist groups.
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Radical Islamists.
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Yeah.
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Alright, so here's the point I'm trying to get to.
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That took us...
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Not in a bad way.
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That took us off a little bit.
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But let me get back very quickly.
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The Judaizers.
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Remember them? They're the issue that Paul's dealing with.
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They're the ones that he's...
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They're the ones he's going to deal with all the way to the end of the book.
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Let me say this.
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If they looked at this list and they said, okay, we've got Isaac.
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Promise.
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Free woman.
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Covenant of promise.
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And we've got the heavenly Jerusalem.
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That is us! Well, here's the point.
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This is where it becomes an allegory.
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Because by birth, they were children of Isaac.
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Because they were Israelites.
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They were Hebrews.
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By birth, they would have been children of Isaac.
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But if you go back to Romans 9, one of the things we learn in Romans 9 is this.
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Just because someone's born of Abraham does not make him part of the promise that God gave to Abraham.
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Because the line isn't always by birth.
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But it's by choice.
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Because remember God said to the mother of Jacob and Esau, I'm going to choose one and not the other.
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So the idea that just because someone is born of Abraham makes them a child...
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Remember that's what the Jews said to Jesus in John 8.
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We have Abraham as our father.
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Jesus said, no.
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I mean, that's not really what He said.
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I weren't there.
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But basically, He said, oh, nay, nay.
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If you did have Abraham as your father, you would have believed in Me.
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If you had Abraham as your father, you would have believed in Me.
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What does that tell us? That tells us that they are incorrect.
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And this is the most controversial thing Paul has said in the book so far.
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Because even though already Paul has attacked those who teach that the law is necessary.
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He's attacked those who say that you can't be saved by grace through faith alone and Christ alone.
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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.
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Not literally, but allegorically.
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Not literally, but figuratively, they are demonstrating themselves to be in the line of Ishmael.
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Because Ishmael's line is the flesh.
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Ishmael's line is slavery.
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Ishmael's line is the covenant of law.
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And it's held in earthly Jerusalem.
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Why earthly Jerusalem? Because at this moment in time, when Paul is writing this word right here, the people in Israel, in Jerusalem, are still behaving under the old law.
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They're still sacrificing.
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They're still having their feasts.
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They're still under the old law.
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They had not yet come under the authority of Christ.
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Therefore, they are not descendants of Isaac, but at this point, they are descendants of Ishmael.
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That would have been so offensive to the Judaizers.
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What are you saying? I'm a descendant of Ishmael.
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I am of Isaac.
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No, no.
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That's right.
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He is at that moment demonstrating that though they believe themselves to be children of the promise, are actually children of the covenant of law.
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And that they are not of the heavenly Jerusalem, but of the earthly Jerusalem.
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Yes, PJ? So is this like the first account of anybody ever saying their actions are speaking louder than words? I don't know.
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Maybe.
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That saying has been around for a while, so maybe not.
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But ultimately though, what we see from verses 21-27 is Paul making the argument that I've just outlined on the board.
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There are basically two lines.
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There's the line of works.
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Works and the line of grace.
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There are two lines.
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The line of works and the line of grace.
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The line of works says I can do it myself.
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The line of works says I can fulfill the promise of God by going in and taking the handmaiden.
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The line of works says I can fulfill the law by keeping the law myself.
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That's the line of works.
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And guess what? It's always a failure.
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From the very moment Abraham went into Hagar and had Ishmael, it was a demonstration of the failure of man's attempt to attain the blessings of God by his own efforts.
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That's what the whole story narrates for us.
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It's that you cannot attain the blessing of God by what you do, but you must receive it by faith.
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You cannot accomplish it by works, but you must accept it by grace alone, through faith alone.
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Thus, it is a picture of the distinction between law and gospel.
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Now, here's the interesting addition that he makes in verse 29.
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Because he says, now you brothers, verse 28 he says, you are like Isaac, the children of promise.
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So at that point, he's sort of finishing up the analogy and he's saying look, you've got two lines.
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You've got the Ishmael line and the Isaac line.
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And if you're a believer in Christ, you're in the Isaac line.
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If you're believing in the law, you're in the Ishmael line.
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But if you're in the line of Isaac, or if you believe in Christ, you're in the Isaac line.
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He says, 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.
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What's he talking about there? Well, he's actually referring back to the fact that when Isaac was born, Ishmael taunted him.
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Now this is one passage in the Old Testament.
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It's Genesis chapter 21, verse 9.
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And all it says is that Ishmael laughed at Isaac.
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Now to us that's not a big deal.
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If I laugh at you, you laugh at me.
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Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha.
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But at this particular time in history, that idea of laughing at someone meant it was a reference of taunting and derision.
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For instance, think about when Sarah heard God say, you're going to have a child, what did she do? She laughed.
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And God said, what did you think about that? What are you doing? You're laughing at My promise.
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Right? Later, you have the young, I don't think they were young children, I think they were young adults who taunted the prophet Elijah.
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You baldhead, you baldhead, ha, ha, ha.
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And then God sent the she bears to tear him up.
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What a story.
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The point though I'm trying to make is that sometimes the Bible understates the reality of the situation.
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I think what happened with Elijah, there was a lot more going on than what we actually read in the text.
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I think the text understates the situation, which makes it seem like, well, why did the she bears come and do whatever, whatever, you know? And I think in this situation regarding Ishmael and Isaac, I think it understates when it says he laughed at him, I think there's more involved.
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Again, I'm not trying to read too much into the text, but the point that Paul here says there was persecution that went from Ishmael to Isaac.
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Now, Ishmael's a lot older.
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So the persecution that went from Ishmael to Isaac, Paul is now bringing to his point, and he's saying, so don't you understand that you who are descendants of Isaac are going to be persecuted by the descendants of Ishmael in the same way Isaac was persecuted by Ishmael.
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And who are the descendants of Ishmael right then? The Judaizers.
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Understand that if you turn your back and you don't do what they tell you to do, they're going to persecute you.
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But know this, it is you who are the true children of Isaac.
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And just like Isaac was persecuted, you're going to be persecuted.
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And I kind of was thinking about this as I was writing my notes, and I was kind of just thinking about the fact that it's not usually the evil people that give us the most problem, it's the religious people.
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It's not usually the people who are the scoundrels, it's usually the people who think themselves to be the most upright, who are the most difficult, and the most to persecute.
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I mean, I'm a pastor.
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I've been a pastor for almost 15 years in the same church.
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And I have very rarely that I can remember had trouble from people outside.
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I mean, I have a few times had letters written and ugly comments made and phone calls that come.
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But the vast majority of persecution that I have faced that was real and severe didn't come from without, it came from within.
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And this is a reminder to us when he says, understand this, if you're a child of Isaac, the children of Ishmael are going to hate you.
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And that's not talking about Muslims and Christians, even though we could make that analogy.
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It's talking about people who are in the church who find themselves to be self-righteous rather than finding their righteousness in Christ.
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Listen to what, again, Martin Luther.
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He says, our quarrel is not with those who live and manifest sins, our quarrel is with those among them that think they are like angels, claiming that they do not only perform the Ten Commandments of God, but they also keep the sayings of Christ and many good works that God does not even expect of them.
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We quarrel with them because they refuse to have Jesus' merit count alone for their righteousness.
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They want their own merit to count.
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They want their own righteousness to count.
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And therefore, that's the real battle.
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Within the church, that's the real battle.
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That is the battle that we face all the time.
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Killing self-righteousness.
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What did Jesus say? I didn't come to call the righteous to repentance.
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But sinners...
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Was He saying there were really righteous people? No.
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But what He was saying is there are those of you who are self-righteous.
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And as long as you're self-righteous, you're never going to understand the need to repent.
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Yes, sir.
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Sure.
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Absolutely.
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Misbehavior in church keeps a lot of people out of church.
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I try to discourage people from not going to church because of that.
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Because I tell people that even though there is misbehavior in the church, we're still commanded to gather.
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And you can't affect something from outside.
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You have to affect it from within.
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So if you want to bring sanctity, bring it from within, not from without.
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But I understand what you're saying.
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I'm not arguing with you.
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I'm just saying I try to...
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People will say, you know, I don't come to church because of hypocrites.
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And I say, oh, please, we need one more.
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You know? No, no, I'm joking.
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But the reality is though, you're right.
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And it is true, right? Absolutely.
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And it is difficult.
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It is difficult to...
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It's difficult.
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And let me say this.
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All you guys have faced different trials in your life, but all of us have a tinge of self-righteousness.
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I mean, all you guys have done something wrong, but if you came across a guy that was beating his wife, you'd probably act like you were better than him.
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Because you would say, I don't beat my wife.
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Or if you came across a guy who was...
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Huh? Well, what I'm saying, if you saw a child molester, you'd say, I hate that guy because he's a child.
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What I'm saying is we all tend to find where we're better.
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And we want to rest in that.
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And it gets really bad in the church because everybody's sort of trying to find the place where they're the best.
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Well, we really need to give that up and trust in Christ.
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Yes? It's like the same outside of the church.
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I want to say I remember thinking I was better than church people because I wasn't a church person.
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Yeah, yeah, yeah.
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There's a reverse self-righteousness.
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Yes? I think it's important to remember that the only place you're really going to find hypocrites are in church.
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Yeah.
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Because, you know, you go to a bar or you go to a bad place, you're not going to find people.
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Then there's standard.
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Yeah, the standard there is set.
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So in the end, what we see is that this is really not only what separates within the church, it's what separates in all of humanity.
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I've said this before.
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I don't know if you've heard me say it, so I'll say it again now.
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There's only two religions in the world.
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You say, no, no, no, there's thousands of religions.
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There's hundreds of religions.
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There's different types of Muslims.
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There's different types of Christians.
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There's different types of Jews.
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And then you've got all of the Eastern mystical religions.
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And you have the ancient Native American religions.
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And then you have the religions of the African religions and all of the different types of religions.
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You can't say there's only two religions in the world.
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No, there's only two religions in the world.
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And here they are.
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The religion of works and the religion of Christ.
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Because I don't care what religion you put under the first category, whether it be Muslims, whether it be Jews, whether it be the people in Africa.
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They all believe they have to do something to accomplish whatever it is they're trying to accomplish.
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And only Christ says, in Me it is done.
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So you have a do religion or you have a done religion.
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And the religion that says do all fall under that category.
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There is only one religion where it says God did it all for you.
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God so loved the world, He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believes in Him will not perish, but have everlasting life.
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God sent His Son into the world to die a substitutionary death, a satisfactory death for you.
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And you'll complain and say, well, but does that mean that I don't have to do anything? Martin Luther says this.
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He says, yes, that is right.
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You cannot do a thing to be delivered from the tyranny of the law.
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You can't do anything.
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All you can do is trust in what Christ has done.
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You cannot accomplish a thing.
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It's either by works or it is by grace.
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It is either by law or it is by promise.
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Have I said that enough already? I mean, honestly, I've been preaching this for how many weeks now? And I've said the same thing.
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Pretty much the same thing every week.
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Because that's the point of the book.
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Huh? That's the point of Galatians.
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It's still true today.
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Brothers, one, I can't violate the text.
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This is what the text is saying.
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But I can't find a better message to give anyone than either you're going to do it yourself or you're going to trust in Christ.
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And if you do it yourself, you're going to fail.
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And if you trust in Christ, He cannot fail.
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I want to leave you with this.
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Saint Bernard, not the dog.
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The actual saint.
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Saint Bernard was one of the best of medieval saints.
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He lived a chaste and holy life.
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But when it came to dying, he did not trust in his chaste life for salvation, but instead he prayed, quote, I have lived a wicked life.
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But thou, Lord Jesus, have a heaven to give to me.
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First, because thou art the Son of God.
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And second, because thou hast purchased heaven for me by thy suffering and thy death.
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Thou givest heaven to me not because I earned it, but because thou hast earned it for me.
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Beloved, that is the prayer of the descendant of Isaac.
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That is the prayer of the person who understands promise over law.
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Let's pray.
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Father, I thank you for this time to study.
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I pray this has been helpful for your people.
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Lord God, use this to help draw men unto yourself.
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And Lord, for those who are in you, Lord, to help bring them closer to conformity to Christ.
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And it's in His name we pray.
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Amen.