The following sermon is from the Westminster Pulpit, extending the worship ministry of Westminster Presbyterian Church, Lancaster, Pennsylvania. We are a local congregation of the Presbyterian Church in America. Please contact us for permission before reproducing this message in any format. Galatians 4 at verse 21. Tell me, you who desire to be under the law, do you not listen to the law? For it is written that Abraham had two sons, one by a slave woman and one by a free woman. But the son of the slave was born according to the flesh, while the son of the free woman was born through promise. Now, this may be interpreted allegorically. These women are two covenants. One is from Mount Sinai, bearing children for slavery. She is Hagar. Now, Hagar is Mount Sinai in Arabia. She corresponds to the present Jerusalem, for she is in slavery with her children. But the Jerusalem above is free, and she is our mother. For it is written, Rejoice, O barren one who does not bear Break forth and cry aloud, you who are not in labor. For the children of the desolate one will be more than those of the one who has a husband. Now you, brothers, like Isaac, are children of promise. But just as at the 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." And may God bless the reading and the hearing of his holy word. We're continuing in our study of the book of Galatians, and this evening we come to the final passage of Galatians chapter 4. where the apostle uses an Old Testament illustration to hammer home to the Galatians the importance of standing on the true gospel of salvation by grace alone, through faith alone. And warning them not to fall into the bondage, the slavery of a works righteousness or a law-keeping attempt. to gain acceptance with God. As we study through this section, I think each of us should search our hearts and ask ourselves the question, am I standing every day in Jesus Christ alone? Am I standing by grace through faith in Christ? Or we need to ask ourselves, how am I possibly being tempted today to go back to somehow relying on my own goodness, my own righteousness, the works of the law, as Scripture would say, to be pleasing to God or to be acceptable to God or to expect blessing from God, as though as if I walk my Christian life well enough, then I will merit blessing from God. It's a very insidious kind of temptation that all Christians can fall into, and we do. And we need to keep coming back to and reminding ourselves of grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone. In other words, we need to remember that in Jesus Christ, we are children of promise, as Paul puts it here. children of God by grace and freely accepted through Christ and his death and resurrection from the dead. The promise of the gospel that was spoken to Abraham and which was being fulfilled in Isaac. I have three main points from our text, and the first is this, an illustration that teaches salvation by grace, not by law keeping. Our first point is that this is an illustration. Paul even uses the word an allegory, not that he denies the historicity of the Genesis account. But here he is setting forth an extended example of the truth he's been teaching so far as a way to make it come alive and to bring it home with power. And he goes back to the Genesis narrative of chapters 16 to 21 of Genesis, and he looks at the births of Ishmael from Hagar and Isaac from Sarah as symbolic of the spiritual truth that the gospel brings true freedom. But self-righteous religion only brings bondage. It brings spiritual slavery. It doesn't bring salvation from God. So, he's using this narrative and this story in this symbolic way. And it's interesting, as we read this, we know, if you know the story pretty well, that not everything that Sarah did was rightly motivated or was from faith. Some of it was from unbelief. And Hagar wasn't bad. In fact, God blesses her and she cries out to God. And so, even though that is all part of the historical account, Paul is looking at it symbolically here for us, under divine inspiration from the Spirit of God. The account in Genesis tells us that Sarah came up with the idea that since she was apparently unable to bear children, Abraham should take her servant girl, Hagar, her slave, as an additional wife and have an heir, a son by Hagar. And Abraham, as you know the story, goes along with Sarah's scheme and as a result, Ishmael is born. This is not the child of promise though. And of course, as sin always does, it brings many problems and conflicts to Abraham's extended family. And then finally, years later, when both Sarah and Abraham are beyond the ability of producing a child, Abraham is about 100 years old, Sarah is about 90 years old, by God's promise and by God's power, not according to the flesh or in the ordinary way birth takes place. I mean, it wasn't supernatural like Jesus was born, like Mary conceived, but it still was extraordinary and supernatural in that Sarah was beyond childbearing. She had gone through menopause by God's promise and power. Sarah conceives and bears Isaac, the true son of the promise of God. Now, Paul uses the events of this history to illustrate truth and symbolize spiritual truth. And these are the main contrasts that he brings from this story. There are two mothers, Hagar and Sarah. Sarah is free. Hagar is a slave. Hagar's son is born into slavery. Sarah's son is born free. There are two sons. Ishmael is born in the ordinary way. Isaac is born by the supernatural intervention of God. There are two covenants represented here, the covenant of Sinai, which Paul talks about here, which included a works principle in it, and the covenant of the promise, the covenant of grace. There are two cities, he goes on to say, the Jerusalem that is below, the present city of Jerusalem of Paul's day, which had largely rejected the gospel and was basing salvation on works, and the Jerusalem above, the city of God. There were two families represented here, the children of the present Jerusalem, all the people seeking to obtain salvation by works, and the children of the Jerusalem above, the true church of God, all the people who are trusting Jesus Christ alone for salvation. And there are two ways of righteousness. One is by faith, which grants true righteousness through Jesus Christ. One is by law, which gives no true righteousness before God. And so, overall, there are two ways, the ways of bondage or the way of true freedom through Jesus Christ. A beautiful analogy. Now, I want us to stop and think about how powerful this illustration would have been for the new believers at Galatia. Here they were. They've recently come to Christ. They've been set free from sin decisively once and for all, and that's being worked out in their lives, and they're still coming to understand what the Christian life is all about, how to walk by faith in Christ, what that means. And now, false teachers have come into the church teaching confusing things, telling them that they had to add various works and Jewish ceremonies and circumcision and the observance of special feast days if they were to be truly and fully and rightly saved. They were being led astray. In verse 21, Paul is beginning this by saying, tell me, you who desire to be under the law, do you not listen to the law? And he's saying this both to the false teachers in one sense and to anyone at Galatia who was starting to be led astray. Do you really want to be under the law? Do you not listen to the law?" And he's essentially saying the law itself tells us that we can't perfectly keep the law. And this illustration from Genesis is from the law, the Torah, the first five books, and it's teaching us the same thing. These false teachers were very strong on the idea that they were descended from Abraham. We know that the Jews of Christ's day were very strong on that as well. And they were certainly saying, we are descended from Abraham. Abraham is our father. But Paul is saying here, well, let me ask you this. If Abraham is your father, here's the key question for you. Who is your mother? I'm sure that threw them for a loop. What? What do you mean? He's saying, well, you might claim Abraham as your father, but Your theology is basically saying that Hagar is your mother because it leads to slavery. It leads to bondage. Law-keeping never saves. The key is that you have Abraham as your father by faith and that you have Sarah as your mother by faith, that you are Isaac-like. and that your mother is the true Jerusalem above, that you're part of the true people of God who are not saved by their works but through Jesus Christ. Do you realize what a shocker this would have been? In a sense, Paul was saying to them, your mother is Hagar. In other words, it would be like calling them Gentiles. It would have just been like slapping them across the face. It would have been an insult, but it was true spiritually. The point he's making here, and the point we need to remember as well, is that anyone who reduces Christianity to a list of do's and don'ts, or to ceremonies to keep, or to rituals to go through and observe, anyone who does that is a slave, is a slave to sin still and not set free in Christ. Christianity is a supernatural religion. It's a supernatural religion in which God gives the sinner new life by the historic work of Jesus Christ, the miraculous birth of a greater Isaac, Jesus Christ, the perfect life Jesus lived in our place, Christ's sin-bearing death for us, his death defeating resurrection from the grave. And so, it is by faith that we receive a righteousness from God that Jesus purchased for us by His life and death and resurrection. What a powerful illustration this is. I like the way Dr. Philip Ryken talks about it. He says the Judaizers, these false teachers who were there at Galatia, these Judaizers prided themselves on being the true sons of Abraham. Paul admitted that they were children of Abraham, but he said that they were spiritually illegitimate. He reasoned that since they were giving up the gospel to go back under the law, they must be sons of Hagar rather than children of Sarah. This meant that they were still in spiritual bondage. The same is true of anyone who seeks to be justified by keeping the law. I like the way The preacher Charles Haddon Spurgeon made this point and drove this point home. He said, "'Hagar never was a free woman, and Sarah was never a slave. So beloved, the covenant of works never was free, and none of her children ever were. All those who trust in works never are free and never can be, even could they be perfect in good works.'" Spurgeon is saying, just think if you could be perfect in good works. Even if they have no sin, still they are bond slaves. For when we have done all that we ought to have done, God is not our debtor. We are debtors still to Him and still remain as bond slaves. If I could keep all God's law, I should have no right to favor. For I should have done no more than was my duty and be a bond slave still." The law is the most rigorous master in the world. No wise man would love its service. After all you have done, the law never gives you a thank you for it, but says, go on, sir, go on. The poor sinner trying to be saved by law is like a blind horse going round and round a mill and never getting a step further, but only being whipped continually." Wow. We don't have horses going around mills these days. We just think it. He's saying that's what it's like to try to be saved by keeping the law. You're just like a blind horse being whipped going around that mill, and you don't even know you're not getting anywhere. You're just going over the same path again, and again, and again. What an illustration this is. Well, our second point, verse 27, God's grace gives hope to the spiritually barren. God's grace gives hope to the spiritually barren. To bring home this point, Paul quotes from Isaiah 54, verse 27, 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, this quote from Isaiah 54 was originally written to the Jews in the Babylonian exile. And just think of their plight. Think of their mindset. They thought that their national life was over. Just think if your nation is essentially destroyed and the people carried off to another land, all your institutions gone, all your buildings gone, the temple gone, Jerusalem, broken down to the ground and burned. They were weak. They were helpless. There were other nations. They were in one and others around them that were strong. And they knew that they had been sent into exile by God because of their own sin to make it all worse. And so, this is a word of promise and a word of hope to the Jews in exile, and it's fulfilled partially when God restores them to the land after 70 years of exile, and then it's fulfilled fully in the gospel era when Jesus Christ comes. And it's very likely that Isaiah 54 verse 1 looks back to Genesis 17 and the story of Sarah, You remember? Sarah, barren, beyond the age of childbirth, Hagar, young, fertile, able to bear children still. And Isaiah is saying, here are these two women, and God chooses to save the world through the barren one. Sarah, it's Abraham and Sarah by which he brings Isaac, and he ultimately brings the promise through Jesus Christ. In other words, God saves and uses the weak and the poor and the barren in his kingdom. Tim Keller says, but now Paul turns the tables and comforts the Galatians powerfully. They are the barren woman. If salvation is by works, then only the fertile can have children. Only the morally able and the strong, the people from good families, the folks with good records can be spiritually fruitful and enjoy the love and the joy of God and transform the lives of others. But if the gospel is true, it does not matter who you are or who you were. You may be a spiritual and moral outcast, as marginal as the single barren woman was in those ancient days. It does not matter. You will bear fruit, the kind that lasts. The gospel says grace is not just for the fertile haggars, but for barren Sarahs. If Sarah can have a future, anyone can. The truth is you can be far from God and be moral, or humanly good, or you can be far from God and living for yourself like a pure heathen. Either way, the call of the gospel is really to admit that you are empty and you are barren apart from the life-giving grace of Jesus Christ. Isn't this amazing? Think of that ancient world. Think of what barrenness was all about. Think of the stigma attached to this. The gospel, you see, turns the ways of the world upside down. The barren woman in those days was completely marginalized. She was disrespected and disregarded by society. But she is the one who by the gospel is blessed and made to be fruitful in Jesus Christ." That's what the point of this quote is all about, the freeness of the gospel in Jesus Christ, and how that free gospel turns our lives upside down. It reminds me a lot of what Dr. Rogers was saying about David, the eighth son, being brought in. And you wonder whether Jesse, his father, even remembered he was out in the fields with his sheep. Well, this brings us to our third and final point, verses 28 to 31. Self-righteous religion always opposes God's children of promise. Self-righteous religion always opposes God's children of promise. Verse 28, now you brothers like Isaac are children of promise, but just as at that time he who was born according to the flesh, that's Ishmael, persecuted him who was born according to the Spirit." That's talking about the event in Genesis when Isaac was weaned. And in Genesis 21, it said that the teenager, Ishmael, laughed, and the sense of the word is probably laughed in mockery. He was persecuting or opposing Isaac. That's where that sense comes from. And then Paul goes on, 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." And again, Paul is not saying that Sarah's motives were altogether right in wanting Hagar to be gone, but he's saying this was God's will that the promise be fulfilled in Isaac. The Galatian believers were essentially being persecuted by these false teachers who had come to their church. These false teachers would not let them live by God's free grace alone. They were oppressing them by these teachings about having to go back to the ceremonial law and to be circumcised and all of this. Isn't it interesting? that the Lord Jesus Christ was most bitterly opposed by the religious leaders of his day. One commentator puts it this way, the persecution of the true church is not always by the world who are strangers, but by our half-brothers, religious people, the nominal church. The greatest enemies of evangelical faith today are not unbelievers, but the church, the establishment, the hierarchy. Isaac is always mocked and persecuted by Ishmael. Again, Riken says this, persecution is one way to tell the difference between true and false religion. Persecution is the opposition Christians face for speaking or doing God's will. It can include ridicule. loss, violence, even martyrdom. One of the distinguishing marks of real Christians is that they are willing to suffer persecution for their faith and even to die for it. By contrast, it is false religion that always does the persecuting. Whether it's false religion that's completely different from Christianity or whether it's false religions that has the garb of Christianity to it, Reichen is saying, it's always self-righteous false religion that persecutes in that way. Well, what applications can we draw? Four brief ones. Number one, what is the basis of your relationship to God? We need to keep reminding ourselves of this. Essentially, this passage is telling us there are two ways. One, God's law says, you shall. And so, you approach God on the basis of God saying, you shall. And you try to obey the law, you try to do your best, and you hope that works out in the end. And Paul in Scripture says completely, that is not the way to come to God. The other way is that God says, I will. God gives us the promise of the gospel in Jesus Christ. He says, I have done all that is necessary. Are you clear on the fact that true Christianity is a religion of grace? In fact, it's the only religion of grace. Have you come to stand in Jesus Christ? Have you given him your life and received his work on your behalf through the gospel? Secondly, how do you look at your weaknesses, failures, and sufferings? Do you see yourself as strong or do you see the call of God for the barren to rejoice and believe the gospel in the face of possibly earthly desolation and hardship and difficulty in your life? How do you look at these things? This is not to say that earthly heartaches are nothing. No, they are very difficult to bear. But it says that they will ultimately be swallowed up by life because of the gospel. In a sense, there are times when each of us in our lives hears Isaiah 54, rejoice, O barren one. And we feel like we're barren in that sense, but the hope of the gospel is that there is life to come in Christ. Third, expect opposition if you belong to Christ. Expect opposition. It may not be too severe right now in America in our time. It might get a lot worse, but especially expect it from the self-righteous. Ishmael always persecutes Isaac. Guard your own heart so that You don't be persecutors of others. And one of the ways that we focus on that is by being grace-based. When we stop being grace-based, then we often set up ourselves as a judge of others around us. Expect opposition and stand on grace. And finally, keep standing in gospel freedom. and looking forward to the inheritance. Notice in verse 30, it says, "'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.'" Isaac was the true heir, and now we are heirs of God. through Jesus Christ. So, brothers, we are not children of the slave but of the free. And then in chapter 5, when Paul launches out into the more practical final two chapters of the book, he says, for freedom Christ has set us free, stand firm then and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery. Keep looking forward to the ultimate inheritance and standing in gospel freedom. It's one of the primary ways that we grow in Christ, to keep believing Jesus Christ alone and looking forward to the full and final fulfillment of that. Well, I have to end with a Thanksgiving illustration since it's Thanksgiving week. You know, the pilgrims came in 1620, and the first few years were very hard. And by the winter of 1623, it was hard going. And it was still very possible that they would be wiped out by the Native American tribes that were in the area there. They had a friend in one of the chiefs, one of the major chiefs of the area, Massasoit. But nothing was definite. In fact, not all was easy in that regard. And in that winter, the little colony at Plymouth gets word that Massasoit, the chief, 40 miles away at his village is very sick. And so William Bradford decides to send a little expedition of Edward Winslow, who's the leader of this expedition, and another Indian, and John Hamden, to go and try to help Massasoit. And there were other things that they were called to do as well. I won't go into all that. This was this expedition to the village of Massasoit. And they go, this 40-mile trips which takes them more than one day in winter, and they find Chief Massasoit close to death. They arrive in the middle of the night. They're pressing along so much to get there, and they find him surrounded by half of his tribe. Indian doctors over him trying to heal him with their charms, people, women rubbing his extremities trying to keep his warm. They find him very close to death. He couldn't even see anymore at this time. He could hear them and he breathes out a few words to Winslow, Edward Winslow, which essentially saying, Winslow is that you? And so Winslow, who knows some medical procedures, decides to feed Massasoit some fruit preserves on the tip of a knife. Massasoit hadn't swallowed up to that point for the last two days. He swallows a little time for the first time in two days. And Winslow examines his mouth and finds his mouth, quote, exceedingly furred. Furred is this coating of the tongue and the mouth with this white symptom of typhus, which will eventually turn brown and he'll die, and it makes the tongue swell up. And so, Edward Winslow scrapes Massasoit's mouth from this furry substance and cleans out his mouth. And he begins to be able to take a little bit of broth. And by the next day, he's gaining a little bit of strength, just enough to say to Winslow, please wash out the mouths of everyone else in the village because they're very good folks. And then he falls asleep. And Winslow is thinking, yikes, that's awful. But he goes about the village scraping out all the villagers' mouths and washing them out. And he says it's a very offensive duty, but he does it. And he and John Hamden stay there for a few days as Indians come from miles around, some from up to 100 miles. And up to the arrival of Winslow, the Indians had been saying the Plymouth colony doesn't care about Massasoit. But now they see that he does, and Massasoit grows in strength. and recovers. And it turns out that it's very likely that that change in attitude and that ministry, so to speak, was one of the major reasons that the colony was not wiped out. Talks about all the Indians coming, and before Winslow had come, they suggested that they cared little about Massasoit. With this remarkable recovery, everything had changed. Massasoit says, now I see the English are my friends and love me. And whilst I live, I will never forget this kindness they have showed me. And so, you know the story that the pilgrims. lived, the colonies survived. But Edward Winslow is my point of the illustration here because he goes back to Britain and he becomes a pretty famous diplomat in the British diplomatic corps under the rule of Sir Oliver Cromwell in that time period. For a decade, he's a diplomat. He goes to the West Indies finally on a diplomatic mission and dies. But before he dies, in his journals and so forth, it's become apparent that Winslow hopes that he is going to be remembered by the world. It's by his diplomatic endeavors of the last 10 years. Why do you think the world remembers Edward Winslow now? It's this mission of grace and scraping out Massasoit's mouth and saving his life and allowing the pilgrims to survive. A pretty interesting story, I think. And my point in all of this is that we do not know as God knows. And I think Winslow's actions are an illustration of Christ likeness. You see how God used that. Of course, the analogy breaks down somewhat, but my point is this. Christianity is a religion about God's grace to us and Jesus Christ who came and loved us when we were like those Indians in that tribe, needing our mouths scraped out because of our sin. And Jesus loved us and died for us. That is the power of the gospel. Why would we ever return to trying to keep the law? when we are saved by grace through faith in Jesus Christ. Thanks be to God. Father, thank you for the good news of Jesus Christ. We stand in that righteousness that Jesus gives, and we thank you. Thank you for such a Savior. Thank you for all the Bible stories and all the Bible analogies and illustrations and even things we see in our own lives of how you work by grace and that we stand by grace alone. Help us to stay on that firm foundation and help us to tell abroad and to share abroad and to serve in any way we can. Let others know this wonderful grace of Jesus Christ. We pray in his name. Amen.