A Story with a Lesson

Well, as Josh said in the announcements, I am leaving right after this service to drive to Lubbock and then tomorrow I hope to get to Yuma where my parents are and then on Tuesday morning arrive in California where I'm calling this my rescue mission for my daughter.

We've been praying for six years for her to be able to move home and it is, it's almost unbelievable. We've been praying so long and the day is finally here and I get to leave today to do that. So I don't think there's any coincidence that God would allow me to preach this sermon on that day.

The Heart of a Father and the Aim of the Sermon

Understanding the heart of a father, and I think you have to look at this text with that heart and that understanding and if you're not a father here, it's hard to describe, but this is what Paul is talking about today.

Now this is a difficult text and I confess as I've read this in the past, it's kind of been like this in my head, until I get to Galatians 5 .1 and I go, oh, it's for freedom that Christ has set us free.

Oh yeah, I know this. Yeah, I get this. I don't really know what that thing was, Hagar and Sarah and that whole deal, but I do understand this, right? But I think this morning, my goal is that we would go through it and that it would stop being kind of just gobbledygook, but it would have meaning.

We would say, oh, now I know why he's saying it's for freedom that Christ has set you free, because he said this and because I do understand that. Even if we can get a basic understanding of that this morning, that's my hope.

Paul’s Question to the Galatians and Their Contradiction

But today, as we look into the scriptures, Galatians 4 .21, he begins with a question, Paul begins with a question to the Galatians and that question is, as I turn there, tell me, you who desire to be under the law, do you listen to the law?

Tell me. He continues a tone of perplexion that was in last week. If you remember, it actually goes all the way back to the beginning of chapter four as he begins in chapter four, verse seven, and says, so you're no longer a slave, but a son and if a son and heir through God.

But now that you have come to know God or rather be known by God, how can you turn back again to the weak and worthless elementary principles of the world whose slaves you want to be once more? How can you do that?

Or last week, as I referred to, he says, I wish I could be present with you now and change my tone because I'm perplexed about you. It's like reading, as we were reading in finished Exodus, reading about the children of Israel coming out of the land of their slavery and they not too long into their journey and they go, ah, this isn't what we thought it was going to be.

We should go back. And you're like, how? Five hundred years of slavery. Finally, you get to leave and you're so ready to go back into slavery. And for me, I'm perplexed by that. Maybe you are as well.

But that's where Paul is. Tell me you who desire to be under the law. I can't fathom. Do you not listen to the law? I can't even fathom why you would do this. In the Greek, it is literally, do you not hear the law?

And of course, during this time, they had an oral tradition. They did hear it. Do you not hear the law? And what he's implying in this first question is that they themselves are contradicting or they're contradicting themselves because their desire is not consistent with their pedagogue.

Remember, we talked about the law being a pedagogue, a teacher to us. He says, don't you realize we've talked about this? The law was given to teach us that we were in slavery to sin, that we were hopeless to attain anything close to God's promise of freedom.

Remember? Remember, Galatians, you heard the gospel. You heard it, which was that in the fullness of time, God sent his son so that everyone who believes in him can be born again as a free son of God.

And if you want to boil this whole sermon down, that's what he is still trying to communicate. He's communicating this is the gospel. You heard it. In the fullness of time, God sent his son. He also sent the spirit to dwell within us, a spirit of adoption that cries out, Abba, Father.

He's done all of this so that if we believe in him, we can be born again as free sons of God. So at this point in his perplexion, Paul must be thinking, how do I communicate this to them? How do I get it across to them?

How do I break them out of the spell that they're in? Remember, he said, who has bewitched you? And I've tried reasoning. I've spoken harshly to them. I've appealed to friendship. What's left? How else could I describe this to them that they would get it?

Now, I'm speculating a little bit, kind of trying to enter into Paul's mind here. But what we do see his approach today is that he uses a method frequently used by rabbis to challenge their opponents.

And that method is allegorical interpretation. It's a way of interpreting the scriptures where you look for symbolism, right? And it was very common among Jewish rabbis. They still do it today, still.

So Paul sets forth a story from the Old Testament, and his desire is to illuminate a spiritual truth and show them their own contradiction. He says, let me tell you a story. Let me tell you a story from the Old Testament, from the law.

Abraham’s Two Sons and the Allegory of Hagar and Sarah

And he begins in 22. He says, for it is written, it's written in Genesis 16, 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.

And like I said, this is written in Genesis 16. So if you'll take your Bibles, we're going to go there, right? Because we can't understand the story unless we know the story. So let's go to Genesis 16 and see what Paul is referring to.

I'm turning there as you're turning there. Reminds me of sword drills. And here I am, Genesis 16. Let's read this together. And Abram listened to the voice of Sarai. So after Abram had lived 10 years in the land of Canaan, Sarai, Abram's wife, took Hagar, the Egyptian, her servant, and gave her to Abram to be her husband as a wife.

And he went into Hagar, and she conceived. And when she saw that she conceived, she looked with contempt on her mistress. And Sarai said to Abram, May the wrong done to me be on you. Wait a second. That's confusing.

I gave my servant to your embrace, and when she saw that she conceived, she looked on me with contempt. May the Lord judge between you and me. But Abram said to Sarai, Behold, your servant is in your power to do to her as you please, because she's a slave.

Then Sarai dealt harshly with her, and she fled from her. Verse 7. The angel of the Lord found her by a spring of water. And speaking of Hagar in the wilderness. The spring on the way to Shur. And he said, Hagar, servant of Sarai, where have you come from, and where are you going?

And she said, I am fleeing from my mistress Sarai. And the angel of the Lord said to her, Return to your mistress and submit to her. And the angel of the Lord also said to her, I will surely multiply your offspring so that they cannot be numbered for multitude.

And the angel of the Lord said to her, Behold, you are pregnant. You shall bear a son. You shall call his name Ishmael, because the Lord has listened to your affliction. He shall be a wild donkey of a man.

I love that. Maybe some of you relate to that. His hand shall be against everyone, and everyone's hand shall be against him. And he shall dwell over and against all of his kinmen. So she called the name of the Lord who spoke to her, You are a God of seeing.

For she said, Truly here I have seen him who looks after me. Therefore the well was called Bir Lahoroi. It lies between Kadesh and Bered. And Hagar bore Abram a son, and Abram called the name of his son whom Hagar bore Ishmael.

Abram was 86 years old when Hagar bore Ishmael to Abram. Notice in this chapter, as we've read it, who's the focus on? It's on Hagar here. She gets most of the story. We're also going to read chapter 21 later, and notice there's a change, and the focus is on Sarah.

Now, Paul says in verse 24, this may be interpreted allegorically. This is the only passage in the Bible where Paul uses an allegory. The Greek word for allegory here is only used once in the New Testament.

It's used right here. Now, an allegory, what's an allegory? I actually had to look it up, just because I wanted to make sure I was explaining it correctly. An allegory is a story in which the character or characters or events are symbolic, representing other events, ideas, or people.

Allegories have been used in the past as tools to critique politics. It's kind of an out loud way of saying the quiet part without saying it. And you can make your point kind of subtly through an allegory.

Some examples of this are George Orwell's Animal Farm, if you've read that, kind of in high school maybe, or Jonathan Swift's Gulliver's Travels. They were speaking about political events that were happening.

But it's also a tool that can communicate or teach abstract ideas or spiritual truths. It's purpose, again, is to help the hearer arrive at that deeper meaning through the means of a story that contains concrete things, things that they know about, things that they can easily grasp.

Examples of spiritual, the way that this is used as a spiritual tool are John Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress, if you've ever read that story about Christian on his way to the celestial kingdom. If you haven't, read it to your kids.

It's great because it tells a story. And it's pretty obvious because the characters are named Christian, evangelists, some of them have more nefarious names. But another great example is Jesus himself using parables to communicate a deeper truth.

He does this with stories about the kingdom of God, like the parable of the sower or the parable of the prodigal son, which again, this is a day that I'm thinking about that story. Paul says very clearly, this is an allegory.

This is a story that has a symbolic meaning. He's using the story of Hagar and Sarah to symbolically represent the old and new covenants so that the Galatians might understand the difference. Now, there's a warning that goes along with allegories.

Allegories can be tough to understand and allegories can be taken too far. There's a basic meaning within an allegory that we need to find. Sometimes those allegories are obvious, like this one where he plainly says this is an allegory.

Sometimes it's hidden. But in either case, we need to find the true intent of the teller. Why is he telling us this story? What is he trying to teach? We can't allow our imaginations to run wild as if the true meaning is going to be found within us.

Now, what we need then is a good hermeneutic. That's a theological word, hermeneutic. That means the interpretation of Scripture. How we interpret Scripture. We need a good method of interpreting Scripture.

And thus, we lean heavily on the context. When you get to something that's symbolic in the text of Scripture, you need to go, what is he talking about here? This isn't just open for us to assign any kind of meaning to it.

And why do we do this? Well, beginning in the Middle Ages with Origen, this method of using allegory became really popular, especially in the city of Alexandria. And Martin Luther hated it. He hated it.

And the reason why was because their search for symbolism resulted in a lot of weird interpretations, which then garnered this negative connotation to allegory as a method of Scripture interpretation.

However, when we look at this, and when we look at what Paul is doing today, what he's going back to is these roots that are found in the tradition of Jewish rabbis who loved to use allegory. If you read the Mishnah, it's weird because they use so much symbolism.

And you're kind of going, I don't know where they're getting this in the Bible. Well, they're using allegory. Okay, so that's maybe way too much you need to know about allegory. Get back to the story.

Get back to the text. Here, Paul is using these actual historical people, Abraham, Hagar, Sarah, Ishmael, and Isaac. And he's wanting us to understand something. So the basics that we do know that are easy to reach are that these two women are representing two covenants.

Sarah and Hagar represent the new covenant of grace and the old covenant of works. Hagar represents slavery, which relates to the law that was given to Moses, the old covenant. There is no covenant of Hagar.

Okay, just want you to know that. What he's saying here is that this woman represents the law. It represents, it says she is from Mount Sinai, bearing children for slavery. She is Hagar. Now, Hagar is Mount Sinai in Arabia.

She corresponds to the present Jerusalem, for she is in slavery with her children. So if Hagar represents this, the old covenant, this way that man relates to God, present Jerusalem represents God's people under that covenant of works.

So I've been thinking, how do I describe that relationship? And yesterday, I have to confess, I was pulled over by a policeman. And as I pulled over in Siloam Springs and saw him get out of his car and start walking towards me.

You know, you get that feeling whenever you get stopped, you know, it's like this sinking feeling. And I'm reaching for my wallet, pulling out my driver's license. I'm like, what did I do wrong? Because I know I've done something wrong, right?

He wouldn't be pulling me over otherwise, right? And our relationship is based on the law. So there is fear there, right? Even though he came up to my window and he said, hey, do you know you have a brake light out?

And I was like, actually, I did not know that. And I'm about to drive to California. So, you know, thank you for letting me know that I have that. I just got my oil changed. They didn't tell me. So usually they tell me when something's out like that.

I can't believe it. He goes, well, you know, I'm not going to give you a ticket. Just going to give you a warning. But that was the basis of my relationship with that policeman was the law. I am in submission to the law.

And whenever he pulls me over, I'm not jumping out of my car to go run and give him a big hug. Right? That's not our relationship. My relationship is based in fear. What have I done? I have done something wrong, right?

And I am bound to those laws. So so when he this is this is the relationship that that Paul is trying to paint here with with this slave Hagar. She is in slavery and she bears children of slavery and the present Jerusalem.

They've been living under that slavery. That has been their relationship with God. If we look if we look at Hebrews 12 verses 18 through 21 and Hebrews is a wonderful text to kind of bounce back and forth on it.

The writer of Hebrews says, for you have not come to what may be touched. Something that's natural or physical. It's not it's not like a blazing fire and a darkness and a gloom and a tempest and the sound of trumpet and a voice whose words made the hearers beg that no further messages be spoke to them.

What is he talking about there? He's talking about given the law. We just read Exodus, right? Moses went up to the mountain. Everybody's like, okay, tell us what he says, but we ain't going there. Okay, they were terrified.

Even Moses. So it says for they could not endure the order that was given. Even if a beast touches the mountain, it shall be stoned. Indeed, it was so terrifying. That was the site that Moses said, I tremble with fear.

It was the law was given inspiring fear and terror. It had teeth and it was punitive. You obey this completely or or you die. Therefore, the law created children of slavery, children who had to earn their own way.

They were fearful of judgment, not knowing the love and mercy of God. They were servile. They had to serve God as someone who related to them in a very judicious way. Now, he continues in 26, but Jerusalem.

So, but the big contrast here, but Jerusalem above is free. She is our mother. Now, why doesn't he say Sarah? That was my question. I was like, wait a second. You were saying Hagar, Old Covenant law. Sarah, you know, you don't say Sarah, but the Jerusalem above is free.

She is our mother. Okay, this is why it sounds like gobbledygook. Sarah represents the freedom of Christ in the New Covenant. But it doesn't say Sarah. Instead, it called she is called Jerusalem above.

And I believe that Paul is doing this to try and get to that deeper meaning right here. He's saying Sarah is obvious. You're anticipating Sarah, but I'm hoping that you can take this even deeper by comparing her to God's people and the land.

Both were given a promise and both had to endure barrenness. Israel could not produce sons of righteousness under the law. They just couldn't do it. So both Israel and Sarah were waiting upon the promise given to Abram.

Jerusalem above represents the covenant of grace and the symbolism here represents man's relationship with God based solely on the promise of God for an inheritance and for freedom. And it looks very different, right?

As I described my relationship with the police officer, I'm going to see my dad in a couple of days, and that's going to be very different. Right. I'm going to go and I'm going to hug his neck. Right.

And we're going to we're going to enjoy every minute together because he's my father. Now, interesting that you don't know is that he's my adopted father. Right. So I've been adopted by him. I've been given his name.

I had another father who was terrible, awful human being. He's now passed away. But when I think about my dad, I don't think about him. I think about. My adopted father, he is in every way a father to me.

Right. And when I see him. That that's the difference, and that's now what God has, this Jerusalem above that they have that kind of relationship with God. So so from from the story, what we know is that this divine promise was given to Sarah and that though she was barren, only she, not Hagar, could produce a promised child.

Only she could produce Isaac because that was the promise. And the greater result of this is the promise of the church, the firstborn of God. And again, we go back to Hebrews 12, 22 and 23. But you have come not to Mount Sinai, but to Mount Zion.

And the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem to an innumerable to innumerable angels and festal gathering to the assembly of the firstborn who are enrolled in heaven and to God, the judge of all and to the spirits of the righteous made perfect.

That's us freed from the law. No more fear, no more terror. She is our mother. That is our dwelling. From Sarah, this heavenly city, this Jerusalem above will be will be populated by children born because of God's promise.

And it will be a vast and innumerable lineage. Now, why? Why? He then now goes in verse 27 and he quotes the Old Testament. It's very interesting because he's still trying to make this point about Sarah representing this this future promised people of God.

And so he says, for it is written again, telling us that this is somewhere else in the Bible. And it's in it's in Isaiah 54, 54. He says, Rejoice, O barren one who does not bear. Break forth and cry aloud.

You who are not in labor. OK, who is he talking about here? I believe he's speaking of Sarah and Jerusalem, both here. Both are barren, right? Barren one who does not bear. Break forth. Cry aloud. Those who are not in labor.

OK, still waiting on the promise. Then he says, for the children of the desolate one will be more than those of the one who has a husband. And that really confused me. It's like. Who's the desolate one?

Is that Sarah? But she has a husband. So it can't be Sarah. The children of the desolate one is Jerusalem because God has separated from her through the exile in Babylon. And he's saying the children of Jerusalem will be more than those of the one who has a husband, which is Sarah.

Now, let's how do I know that? OK, if we go to the context in Isaiah 54, remember that Isaiah 53 is famous. You guys know Isaiah 53, right? Let me remind you this is about the suffering servant. One of my most beautiful passages in all of Isaiah.

It says he was despised and rejected by men, a man of sorrows, acquainted with grief and as one from whom the men hide their faces. He was despised and we esteemed him not. This is talking about Jesus.

Surely he has borne our griefs. He's carried our sorrows and we esteemed him as stricken, smitten by God and afflicted. But he was wounded for our transgressions. He was crushed for our iniquities. Upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace.

And with his stripes, we are healed. Remember that passage? OK, so 54 follows it and says, Rejoice, O barren one who does not bear. Break forth, 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.

This is a sharp contrast from this suffering servant to now this call for rejoicing. The work of God through Christ is being applied to his symbolic wife here, Lady Jerusalem or Lady Zion. Isaiah is saying, actually in Isaiah 54, 5 -8 later in this, he says, I am your husband.

I'm a husband to you. But he's calling to her in her desolation, in her barrenness, in this time of separation during the time of captivity. And he says, all of that is over. And you are no longer disgraced.

You're no longer fallen. You're called to rejoice. And the next verse, right after this one that we have here, Isaiah says to this woman, he says, Enlarge your tents. Enlarge your tents because you're going to bear children against all hope.

Paul is showing that God, through the prophet Isaiah, was pointing not only to the physical return from exile of Israel in exile, but also to this spiritual offspring, this nation that was promised to Sarah through Isaac.

And therefore, Sarah is the mother of the heavenly Jerusalem, the heavenly Zion. I think it's also interesting if you continue to read in Isaiah 54 because I just love context. I don't want to just pick that verse out and go, what is that?

But later, in verse 13, he says, All of your children will be taught by the Lord. Remember, two weeks ago, I had a sermon that talked about that the blessing of the new covenant is that we have a knowledge of God, that we can know God.

And here it's in Isaiah 54. All your children will be taught by the Lord and great will be their peace, right? Peace in righteousness, you will be established. Then it says tyranny or slavery will be far from you and you will have nothing to fear.

Terror represented by Mount Sinai and the law will be far removed. It will not come near to you. He is describing over and over again to these people, this is what it means to be a son of God, to be a daughter of God.

He's trying to get them to understand that. Now, those are kind of the basics as we kind of go through. I think there's three other things that kind of go beyond that, that Paul is teaching. The first one, Hagar from the story was given to Abraham by Sarah.

This arrangement was dreamed up by man, not by God. This is man's ideas, not a result of faith, faith in the promise of God. And I think it's important for us to think about that faith requires action, but not all of our actions are based on faith.

Let me say that again. Faith requires action for us to do something, but not all of our actions are based on faith. And it tells me and it helps me to understand that I need to be really careful to examine my heart and why I'm doing something.

Am I believing in God's promise or am I trying to fix the problem for God? Am I standing in his place and going, you know what, I know you promised this, and I know the law tells me that I can't fulfill it, but I'm going to try really hard.

You don't know what I can do. I can do this. And it's foolishness. Those are sons of disobedience. Why? Not because they're disobeying the law. We all disobey the law. Sons of disobedience are disobedient to their teacher, which is the law that says you can't do this.

I'm going, no, we can't. I know you're God of the universe and you create everything and you know the hearts of men. You just are wrong. I can do this. I got this. Let me show you. The second thing, Hagar was a slave, okay, and she served Sarah.

Slavery is based on earning your keep. You're a slave? Well, you better perform, right? Because the moment that you are not useful anymore, you get sold. Why? Because then you're just an extra mouth to feed, right?

You're not useful. And we need to think about that. The covenant of works provides life as long as you keep it, as long as you keep it all. And failure to do so means judgment. It means death. You don't get a second chance.

You don't get a second chance. It's a covenant of slavery because it's all about earning and proving your worth. The law was given, yes, to serve the gospel for a time. It was the law was given to teach us about our sin and our own corruption.

And we should learn from it. It served until the promise was fulfilled and then it became obsolete. It's no longer needed. Now, you might go, well, wait a second, Bart. We'll get to that. We'll get to that.

Let's just stay with what he's talking about, which is our relationship, how we relate to God as sons of God. Now, however, here's the problem, though, OK? We cling to the law and we try to be covenantally bound to it instead of Christ.

We want to marry it. We want it to be our wife till death do us part instead of Christ. And that is craziness. The Galatians are proving this truth. That's why he said you who desire to be under the law, do you listen to the law?

Is it teaching you? It should be teaching you that it can never be a permanent vehicle for a relationship with God. It never was intended to be that. Never permanent, only temporary, because it is weak and it is weak, not because it's not good.

It's weak because of us. We fail. We can't keep it. We break it over and over so it can never restore creation, nor can it be the restorer of freedom that that we as humanity enjoyed in the Garden of Eden.

Hagar could never give Abraham a child of promise. Let me say that again. Hagar could never give Abraham a child of promise. All she could ever do was produce slave children. And so it is with the law.

It's hopeless. It'll never happen. The third thing it says the covenant of grace was from above. All right. What does this mean? Is that was the covenant? I thought the covenant of grace was made to Abraham.

I think he's referring to something else. Where does this covenant from above originate? That's my question. It was a covenant. It's pointing to a covenant made between the father and the son and the Holy Spirit before the world began.

Now, you can't find this in the Bible directly. There's no passage that talks about this covenant that they were made, but we can see through different passages that there was an agreement that was made.

Let me give you some examples. Acts chapter 2. The nation's rage against God and his anointed one. And God says to his anointing one in this passage, ask of me and I will make the nations your heritage, the ends of the earth your possession.

Okay. Ask of me. God is saying that to Jesus. Ask of me. I'll make the nations your heritage. Okay. And then in Jesus referring to this agreement in John 17 says, I have manifested your name to the people who you've given me out of the world.

So this exchange has happened. There's been a request for the nations as a heritage and it's been granted. You have given me yours. They were and you gave them to me and I have kept your word. Now they know that everything that you have given me is from you.

Jesus covenanted with God or God covenanted to give Jesus an inheritance. And then Matthew 26, 39, as he is in the garden, he says to the father, referring back to the agreement, my father, if it's possible, let this cup pass from me.

Nevertheless, not my will, but yours. Jesus covenanted to be the perfect sacrifice to accomplish the father's will. The cup of wrath that he's talking about was the judgment that you and I deserved. It is the cup that Jesus drank to the dregs for us with joy.

This is the agreement that was made. Now, you can't find a more trustworthy group of people to be in covenant together than the father, the son and the Holy Spirit. They're going to keep the covenant.

Children of Promise, Persecution, and the Call to Cast Out Slavery

Now, the application for the Galatians as we move forward in this passage, and I'm going to start trucking here because this is complicated. The application for the Galatians, he says in verse 28, now you, now you brothers like Isaac are children of the promise.

So here's the conclusion. And I've proven to you that you are sons, that you're heirs according to the promise. So you are Isaac in the story. You're children of promise. 29, 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. It's still happening even today. What is, what is he referring to? Well, one, he's referring to Genesis 21. Okay. We're going to, we're going to look at that passage in the second, but what he is doing is he's calling out the troublers of the Galatians.

He's not, he's not saying it out loud, but it's pretty direct here. He says, those who are teaching you, teaching bondage and slavery to the law. Paul is identifying them. He is saying they are Ishmael.

You are Isaac. They are Ishmael born according to the flesh and they persecute you as I, as Ishmael did Isaac. Now, what, how are the, these troublers of Israel, these Jews are the troublers of the Galatians, the Judaizers persecuting them.

And this is the point, uh, to this point, Paul has said in Galatians one, seven, not that there's, uh, there's another gospel, but there are some who trouble you and want to distort the gospel of Christ.

That's how they're persecuting you. Or Galatians two, four yet because of false brothers secretly brought in, who slipped into spy out your freedom that we have in Christ so that they might bring us under slavery, make imprison us, make us captive or Galatians three, one.

They've, they've, oh, foolish Galatians who has bewitched you. Galatians four, 17. They make much of you for no good person or no good purpose. They want to shut you out that you may make much of them.

They want something out of you. Now, what is this that I'm referring to in Genesis 21? If we look at Genesis, the story Genesis 21 is where Isaac is born. So 16. So when they come, come up with their plan to have, have a child through Hagar 21 is where God's promise is fulfilled.

And in verse eight, verse eight. And the child grew and was weaned, speaking of Isaac and Abraham made a great feast on that day. That Isaac on the day that Isaac was weaned. But Sarah saw the son of Hagar, the Egyptian whom she had born to Abraham, laughing or mocking.

Okay. This, this is going back to the story and he's saying that mocking that persecution is still happening today and it's happening to you. Okay. They are Ishmael. Verse 30. But what does the scripture say?

Cast out the slave woman and her son for the son of the slave woman shall not inherit with the son of the free woman. Go back to Genesis 21, verse 10. So she said to Abraham, cast out this slave woman with her son for the son of the slave woman shall not be heir with my son, Isaac.

All right. So what is he saying? He's saying you're Isaac Galatians. These troublers are Ishmael. Kick them out. Kick them out. Cast them away. It seems kind of harsh. I can see why he chose an allegory to say this harsh thing.

A son can never be cast out, but a slave can be. The slave will never share the inheritance promised to the true son. In fact, that's why this slave is cast out in the story. Sarah says he will not share in the inheritance of Isaac.

There's a huge difference between these two. Right now, people of slavery will say, oh, no, we're pretty. We're pretty close. We believe the same thing. It's like, no, we don't. We are not the same thing.

He is asking the Galatians. What does the scripture say for you to do? Cast out the Judaizers. They have no part in your inheritance. They're not part of your family. Stop listening to them. Cast them out of your gathering.

Now, I think about us doing that in here, and that would have to be done with great care. I think our tendency, though, is to fall into a trap of legalism and to have a spirit of slavery or maybe a mindset of slavery.