WWUTT 1781 Children of Promise, Part 1 (Galatians 4:21-31)

Children of Promise and the Contrast Between Law and Grace

Those who try to acquire their righteousness through keeping the law, they are children of the slave. But those of us whose righteousness comes from Jesus Christ, we're children of the promise. What this means when we understand the text.

Many of the Bible stories and verses we think we know, we don't. When we understand the text is committed to teaching sound doctrine and rebuking those who contradict it. Visit our website at www .wutt .com.

Here once again is Pastor Gabe.

Thank you Becky. We are in Galatians 4 today, verses 21 to 31. Let me start out by reading our text and then we will get back to our study. This is the word of the Lord. Through the Apostle Paul writing to the churches in Galatia.

Tell me, you who desire to be under the law, do you not listen to the law? For it is written that Abraham had two sons, one by a slave woman and one by a free woman. But the son of the slave was born according to the flesh, while the son of the free woman was born through promise.

Now this may be interpreted allegorically. These women are two covenants. One is from Mount Sinai, bearing children for slavery. She is Hagar. Now Hagar is from 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. Now this sermon series that I've been playing from, I preached a few years ago, and this particular sermon was preached on Mother's Day.

Here is part one of the sermon entitled, Children of Promise. Now I am not the kind of preacher, some of you know this of me, but I'm not the kind of preacher that whenever we get around to a holiday, I'm going to stop whatever it is that we're doing and focus on some kind of sermon or message or topic that's going to go with the holiday.

There was one time several years ago when I think we got to like the third or fourth Easter message that I had ever delivered here, and it actually was a message that corresponded with Easter, the resurrection of our Lord Christ.

And it only happened to be because that was where we fell in our study of that book at that particular time. And there was somebody that commented to me on the way out, they said, it's about time we got to Easter Sunday and you actually did an Easter sermon.

And I said, well, I've been preaching Easter every Sunday. So it just so happens by the providence of God that we fall into this particular section today, Galatians chapter four, verses 21 through 31, where we're talking about two mothers, a mother who is Hagar and others who are in Christ Jesus of the child of the promise, our mother would be Sarah.

Those who are of the children of promise rather than the children who are continually bound by law. So that is the metaphor, that is the allegory as Paul puts it here that is presented for us in Galatians chapter four.

Justification by Faith Alone and the Failure of Legalism

He starts this particular section Galatians 4 .21 talking about how we are children of faith and remember once again that he is rebuking a church that has left that beautiful doctrine of justification by faith alone and they are choosing to believe again that one must be justified by works.

Now it's not that they have forgotten Christ in their liturgy altogether, like no one is even talking about faith in Christ anymore. It's not like that's happened in the church in Galatia. They still believe in Jesus.

They still believe in the cross. They still believe in the resurrection from the grave, but they believe that wasn't sufficient. The cross wasn't sufficient. The resurrection isn't enough. We need something else in order to be justified and so they've fallen right back into a pattern of works.

And so even though they still proclaim faith in Christ, Paul yet says to them, you've chosen a different gospel. You might use Christianese. You might say all the right Christian words, but if you're adding works into this, you're choosing to believe something other than the grace of God that was given through his son.

The emphasis of your faith is whatever fills in the blank of your equation, Jesus plus blank equals my salvation. Whatever is going in that blank is getting the focus. And for the Galatians, it was the works of the Judaizers.

Those who had come in and said, you still have to keep the festival days. You still have to keep the dietary laws. You still have to be circumcised. And boy, Paul really lays into that one thick when we get to chapter 5 and we'll be looking at that particular condemnation next week.

But here Paul once again reminds them that if they are going to be bound by law, they have enslaved themselves to a list of accomplishments that they are never going to be able to complete. They would get to the end of their life and that list that they have to keep in order to be justified or what they believe they have to do in order to be justified, there's going to be a lot of blanks left because there's just no way.

There is no way that we can do it, that we can keep the law, that we can account for our justification or our righteousness by our own works. We can't do it. We will always fall far, far short. Now if you're trying to compare yourself with other people, maybe you look more righteous than the guy that's sitting next to you, at least according to your own point of view.

But we are not being graded on a curve. Our holiness is being compared to the holiness of God. And when you compare your righteousness with His righteousness, you have none. None. You can't even stand in that place before a holy God without being melted by the awesomeness of His glory.

There is no way any of us would ever be able to come into the presence of God by our own merit if we had not been clothed first in the righteousness of Christ. It's as though we come into the presence of God with a holy, gleaming armor that can actually tolerate and stand in the presence of God, but still not without a whole lot of humility.

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

A righteous robe that we have been clothed in so that we may also be made a kingdom of priests and come into the holy of holies, the access through which we have in Christ. This is our only way to God.

Only way. Only way anyone has ever been able to get to God is by grace through faith. That's it. And here the Galatians are thinking that they have to add some works to their faith in order to make it a good faith.

And Paul says to them in verse 21, tell me, you who desire to be under the law, do you not listen to the law? Paul is saying, have you actually listened to what it is that you're committing to? Do you know if you are ever able to keep that?

Are you listening to the list of qualifications that you have to meet and yet you don't come to understand just by listening to it that you don't measure up, nor will you ever measure up? Don't you know from the prophets, Isaiah 64, 6, our best deeds are like a soiled garment before a holy God.

You've got nothing good to give. You're going to be thrown away into the trash. The Psalms say to us, and Paul repeats again in Romans chapter three, together we've become worthless. I mean, do you really think so little of God that you think your worthlessness is worthy to be in his presence?

For he is so great and holy and mighty that it takes the righteousness of Christ in order to stand in his presence. That is a wonderful, beautiful gift. It is his grace by which we stand. So let us never think so highly of ourselves and so little of God.

Paul tries to draw their attention to the reality of their sin by pointing them to the law. Now, remember that Raymond is leading our evangelism class on Sunday night. You're invited back five o 'clock tonight as he's going to take us through steps on how to share your faith with unbelievers.

Last week was the introductory message. That was powerful. That was convicting in itself. But if you didn't catch that message, don't think that you'll be lost. You can still come tonight and be convicted by tonight's message.

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

When it comes to sharing the gospel, it is bringing a person to a knowledge of their sin through the law. Do you consider yourself a liar? You ever told a lie before? You realize you've broken one of the commandments if you have told a lie.

Have you ever murdered anyone before? Who in here would say that they've murdered someone before? But Jesus pointed out in Matthew chapter 5 that if you've even hated your brother in your heart, or you've called a person names, you are guilty of the fires of hell.

It's the same as if you had murdered them in your heart. And so this is Jesus pointing out to those who might have some sort of self-righteous piety about themselves. I've never murdered anybody before.

Jesus going, oh yeah. See, lawlessness comes from a heart that desires to do lawlessness. It is the wickedness of the heart that wickedness comes. It is from the wickedness of the heart that a person does wicked and evil things.

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

And just taking that one command, none of us can stand right before God and say, I'm not guilty of any of these things. We've all lied. We've all murdered. We've all committed adultery in our hearts. We have coveted, desiring things that didn't belong to us, thinking that what God has given to me is not good enough, and so I need this other thing in order to be satisfied.

So we also are establishing our own equations. Jesus plus this equals my happiness. And whatever goes in that blank gets the emphasis. That's really what you're worshiping, not God. But the thing that you think you have to have in order to be satisfied, because God wasn't good enough.

All of us have fallen short in this way. All of us are lawbreakers, and we cannot stand before God claiming our own justification. Paul pointing out to the Galatians the law so that they might realize that they are sinners and they can't keep it, and nothing by the law will make them justified before God.

They cannot stand in righteousness before God. They cannot proclaim their own innocence. Are you listening to what you say you're following? Tell me, you who desire to be under the law, that's an insult, by the way.

You don't desire salvation by grace through faith. You desire to be under the law. That's the religion you're following, not the true faith that has been delivered once for all to the saints, the gospel that we came proclaiming to you.

You believe a different gospel. So tell me, you who believe your false religion, have you actually been listening to the requirements of your false religion? Because you can't measure up. You can't make it that way.

What Paul is drawing their attention to is legalism. Living by a set of laws, a set of rules, keeping these rules is what makes me justified before God. That is a miserable way to live. It is not easy to be a legalist.

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

And I witness that all the time in the world of a person with a double standard. They want everybody else to follow their own system of morality, but they themselves cannot follow it. Francis Schaeffer one time said that if you were to stand before God in judgment, and we all will, God wouldn't even need to use his law to show that you are guilty.

All he would have to do is play back all of the moral judgments that you've made over the course of your entire life. And then every time you made a moral judgment, if you had a little tape recorder around your neck, like we say, we're all born with an invisible tape recorder.

And back in the day when, when Francis Schaeffer was giving this illustration, it would have been literal cassettes in this tape recorder. Okay. Anybody know what a cassette tape is? We have some in here that don't, but anyway, so you have some sort of invisible spiritual tape recorder hanging around your neck.

And every time you made a moral judgment, that tape recorder would record it. And when you stood before God in judgment, all God would need to do is hit play on that tape recorder and play back for you, your moral judgments.

Judgment after judgment, after judgment that you made against someone else. And you would stand there and realize that you've not even kept the standards that you placed on everybody else. All of us stand guilty before God.

And trying to live by a code and think that we will be justified by it will lead to certain damnation. It does not lead to salvation. For salvation was accomplished only in Christ by his death on the cross, and it is given to us by faith.

As we sang this morning, I know not how this faith comes. I don't, I don't know how the spirit works in my heart to bring about this faith, but I know in whom I have believed, and he is able to deliver me on that day.

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

Tell me then, you who desire to be under the law, do you not even listen to what it is that you say that you need in order to attain your salvation? Verse 22, for it is written that Abraham had two sons, and the sons in particular we're talking about are Ishmael and Isaac.

Both start with I. That's the only similarities that they have. There's a vast contrast between Ishmael and Isaac. One was the son of a slave woman, and one was the son of a free woman. Now, we haven't even gotten to the part yet where Paul says, let me share with you an allegory.

Okay, let's look at these things allegorically, and even though he has not yet seen that, are you already beginning to see the correlation? One, the son of a slave, and the other, the son of a free woman.

And if we were to consider this allegorically, that those who aspire in legalistic sense toward their own salvation are actually enslaved to the law that they cannot keep. Whereas we who believe in Jesus Christ, we are children of promise.

We are children of faith. We are not enslaved by the law, or our sin, or the wages of sin, which is death, but we've been set free from these things in Christ. So you are either going to be bound by slavery, or set free by faith.

But the son of the slave, Paul says, verse 23, the son of the slave was born according to the flesh, while the son of the free woman was born through promise. What does that mean? Now, remember that God had promised Abraham that he would make him the father of many nations.

From him would come a son, and through that son would be many more heirs that would become the people of God, through whom God would place his promises and deliver for himself a people out of this world.

And with this promise that was given to Abraham, Abraham was already in his old age, in his 90s. Sarah was already beyond childbearing years. And so Abraham tells Sarah about this promise, and Sarah is going, well, where's this child going to come from?

It ain't going to come from me. I can't even bear children anymore. And so she gives her slave, Hagar, to Abraham, and says, if God has promised to make you a great nation, it ain't going to be through me.

It's going to have to be through my slave. And so Abraham sleeps with his wife's slave, and she conceives and bears a child, and this is Ishmael. Sarah resents this woman for obvious reasons, and Hagar attempts to flee with Ishmael.

But the Lord promises that he will protect her, and in fact says to Hagar that he's going to make Ishmael into a nation as well. Ishmael would become the father of the Ishmaelites, and we still have their descendants on earth today in the Middle East that continue to do war and conflict against the Jews over there who occupy Israel.

So anyway, that's a different theological history for another time. Let's stick with the allegory that Paul is giving us here in Galatians chapter 4. So Ishmael, the son of the slave woman, and Isaac, who would be the son of the free woman, several years later, after Ishmael was born, according to Hebrews chapter 11, when Abraham was as good as dead, meaning there's no way for Sarah to bear children anymore, there's no way for Abraham even to sire a child anymore.

He's as good as dead. No heir to his name. Not through his wife of covenant, Sarah. And yet it was then, when there was no possible way for two people to physically conceive and bear a child anymore, that old in their age, yet Sarah was given a son.

So that it would be known that this son did not come about through Abraham's decision or Sarah's decision, but it was the gift of God. And this is the son who would be named Isaac, meaning laughter. Why is that the name that Isaac was given?

Because when God came to Abraham by the oaks of Mamre and said, this time next year you will have a son, Sarah was in the tent and she laughed. She thought that was hysterical. Ha! We're going to have a son?

And God goes, why are you laughing? As though to say, don't you know who I am? And when there was no conceivable way, pun, for Sarah to have and bear a son, yet God gave her that blessing. And it was through Abraham and Sarah that the promised son was given, Isaac.

And because Abraham and Sarah finally got the joke, they named Isaac laughter. We laughed at God, but he knew better than us. And delivered by his grace what he had promised. The child of promise. And we who are in Christ Jesus, who would be a descendant from the line of Isaac, not a descendant from the line of Ishmael, but a descendant from the line of promise.

We who are in Christ Jesus are now the children of promise. We've been adopted into the family of God. That's where the allegory is going, I'm moving ahead. For it is written that Abraham had two sons, one by a slave woman and one by a free woman.

But the son of the slave was born according to the flesh. This was Abraham and Sarah taking matters into their own hands. Not doing it in obedience to God, but trying to do it their own way. So the son of the slave was born according to the flesh.

Not in a marriage covenant. The son of the slave born according to the flesh. The son of the free woman born through promise. It is through your marriage, it is through your wife that the son of promise is going to be born.

And when Abraham and Sarah trusted in God, they had faith in the Lord, so the child of promise came to them.

Thank you for listening to When We Understand the Text with Pastor Gabe Hughes. If you'd like to support this ministry, visit our website www .tt .com and click on the Give tab in the top right corner of the page.

Join us again tomorrow as we continue our Bible study, When We Understand the Text.