You will find Galatians chapter 4 verses 21 through 31 printed for you there in the bulletin, and I hope to point out some other scripture to you today as we move along. So find it there on one of the panels, Galatians 4, 21 through 31. This is God's Holy Word. Tell me you who want to be under law. Do you not listen to the law? For it is written that Abraham had two sons, one by the bondwoman and one by the free woman. But the son by the bondwoman was born according to the flesh, and the son by the free woman through the promise. This is allegorically speaking, for these women are two covenants, one proceeding from Mount Sinai bearing children who are to be slaves. She is Hagar. Now, this Hagar is Mount Sinai in Arabia and corresponds to the present Jerusalem, for she is in slavery with her children. But the Jerusalem above is free. She is our mother. For it is written, Rejoice, barren woman, who does not bear, break forth and shout, you who are not in labor. For more numerous are the children of the desolate than of the one who has a husband. And you, brethren, like Isaac, are children of promise. But as at that time he who was born according to the flesh persecuted him who was born according to the Spirit, so it is now also. But what does the Scripture say? Cast out the bondwoman and her son, for the son of the bondwoman shall not be an heir with the son of the free woman. So then, brethren, we are not children of a bondwoman, but of the free woman." Thus far, God's holy, inspired, and infallible Word. Thanks be to God. Now, I've titled this today Two Covenants, but there are really a lot of twos here, as we'll see as we go through. In his zeal to convince the Galatians not to follow the teaching of the people that we call the Judaizers, Paul uses an interesting literary device called an allegory. An allegory is a story. in which the characters and the elements are symbols. So for example, let's say the story of Little Red Riding Hood. I think most of you know that story. And if we would say that's an allegory, we would say that the little girl is a symbol of good and the big bad wolf is a symbol of evil. So you could say that that fairy tale or that little story we learned growing up is an allegory. Now, in our passage, Paul takes a true story. It's not a made-up story. It's not a fairy tale. He takes a true story of Abraham, Sarah, and Hagar, and the birth of their sons, and he symbolizes the conflict between salvation by works, that is, trying to save yourself by obeying the law, by obeying the commandments, and that in contrast with salvation by grace. And that's pretty much set forth in verse 24 when it talks about these two covenants or these two contrasting matters, if you will, so that we will be looking at that today. Now, we want to be careful not to sort of allegorize everything in the Bible. In fact, it's better to wait and let God tell you that something is allegorical, and then you're on good solid ground there. But when you start making up things about stories, David and Goliath, or whatever, and say this is an allegory, you can kind of go off into some funny directions. So we're told very clearly here, without any doubt, He says this is an allegory. Allegorically speaking is the way our translation puts it. So I'm just going to follow through this, and you'll see the twos as we come to them here, rather than say, here's point one, point two, point three. I'll kind of mention that as we go along. We begin with Abraham that we call the man of faith. Abraham, the man of faith. That's a title that's given to him. And he is a symbol, yes, a true person, but a symbol of any believer. If you believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, then you are a man or a woman of faith. And so it was with Abraham. Now, you see, both the Judaizers, these people who said, if you want to be saved, you have to keep all the commandments, both the Judaizers and the proponents of Grace, we might say, those who said, just trust in Jesus, that's all you need to be saved. They both claimed Abraham. They both said, Abraham is the one that we want to point you to. And so Paul picks up on that as he speaks to these people. Now, of course, he is a proponent of grace. He wouldn't say, well, there's a little bit all right with these folks and a little bit all right with us over here. He would say, no, you've got to be fully and completely sold out to the Lord Jesus Christ. And so, he simply picks up on the idea that everybody's interested in Abraham. But Paul's point, as he's already mentioned in Galatians, is that Abraham was not known as a man of works, but a man of faith. Now, James will point out that Abraham had some works too. Don't forget that he was willing to give his son Isaac when the Lord commanded him to do that. But that was because he already had faith. Faith comes first. So both Judaism and what we might call evangelical Christianity, they claim Abraham. But Abraham, you see, believed God's promises and he did not trust in, believe in, His obedience, he simply believed God's promises. And we're told in the 15th chapter of Genesis, the sixth verse, that Abraham believed God and it was counted to him for righteousness. He didn't have to bring any righteousness of his own. That righteousness was given to him because he believed. Nevertheless, Abraham was not a perfect man. He was a man of faith, but he was not perfect. And we can take some encouragement from that because you and I are not perfect either. And there was a point at which his faith faltered. And if we were really being truthful and thorough, we would say there are a lot of places where his faith faltered. But certainly in this matter of whether God was going to give him a son, or not because he waited a long time through his life for that son that God had promised and at a certain point it still hadn't come so he and Sarah conspired together to have him have a child by Sarah's maid, Hagar. And indeed a child was born there, and that's sort of the subject matter here that Paul is talking about. And he says that one reason that God allowed this to happen, and we won't say it's the only reason, but one reason that God allowed this unpromised child to come, and so forth, and then followed that with the child of promise, was that God wanted to set up this allegory. God wanted to set up the symbolism for people who are struggling with this matter of, well, do I just trust Christ alone, or must I bring some works in order to satisfy God? From this first point, then, we're presented with these twos or these pairs of contrasting things, two covenants and so forth. But the first you have here is two women. And that's what we want to look at first, the two women. Now, Hagar is mentioned by name. Sarah is not mentioned by name. But if you know the Bible, if you know the scriptures, then you know that the other woman and really the true wife of Abraham was Sarah. So they represent, on the one hand, belief, and on the other hand, unbelief. The following after Hagar, trying to have a child through Hagar because We're impatient with what God has promised. That is unbelief. But the child that finally came was the child that God had promised and promised to those who trust Him. So, when you look at these two women, Hagar and Sarah, who are they? On the one hand, you have unbelief in Hagar. You have belief in Sarah. Now Abraham in one sense is the believer, but Sarah was a believer too, and Hagar was not a believer as far as we know. Hagar conceived according to the flesh. She conceived alright, she bore a son alright, but we say it was according to the flesh, and that is that the Spirit of God had nothing to do with the birth of this boy Ishmael. Hagar conceived according to the flesh and represents the doubting or the unbelief of the promises of God. Sarah, on the other hand, here you have the contrast. One, you have unbelief, the other belief. Sarah conceived miraculously as God kept His Word to those who believed." With God, you see, nothing is impossible. That was the phrase that was used there. With God, nothing is impossible. Don't laugh at this and think that it's impossible. God can do the impossible. That's an element of faith that's trusting God. And Sarah, well beyond the age of childbearing, bore a son and therefore becomes an emblem, a symbol of belief at that point. The only son who was destined to receive God's blessing was the one who was associated with faith. Now, that doesn't mean that God was cruel to the other one, but he said, you don't belong here, and Hagar and her child Ishmael had to leave. Now, she worried about what's going to happen to us, and God said, I'll take care of you in this world, in this life, your son will go on to be a person of importance, head of a large family, and so forth. So God's not cruel in the sense of just saying, go off and die somewhere. But He is saying that only one of these children is destined to really have God's eternal blessings, and that is the one who's associated with faith. That is Isaac, the child of Sarah and Abraham, and not Ishmael. So again, if you want God's blessing, this is what the symbolism is trying to get across to you, if you want the blessing, then identify yourself with the one who believed, identify yourself with the child of promise, and not the one who was conceived according to the flesh. That's the first lesson that's really put before us here. So you have two women. Secondly, you have two sons, and we've mentioned their names already, Ishmael and Isaac. Now what do they represent? Of what are they symbols? Well, they represent, and you'll see this in the passage here, they represent slavery and freedom. Ishmael is born to the bondwoman. He's born into slavery. Isaac is born to the free woman. And he therefore is free himself and entitled to all the things that come to those who indeed are free. Ishmael, as we've pointed out, was the product of the flesh, that he was born without trusting God. rather trusting biology, trusting the way that things normally go, but there's nothing miraculous, there's nothing truly spiritual about his birth. He's the product of flesh, he's born into slavery, and thus he has no familial rights. Now that doesn't mean that if he had stayed in the family and so forth that he would not have been well taken care of, but he could never claim leadership His offspring would never have the claim to go on to do the great things that God has in mind to be done. Ishmael, the product of the flesh, and therefore of slavery. But Isaac, the product of faith, and he was born into freedom, and that meant that the future was his. As far as Ishmael was concerned, the future was his only insofar as God might tangentially bless him in this way or that way. But he had nothing to do with the great thing that God was going to do in salvation. Now let us say here that there's nothing in the passage or in the original passage in Genesis to say that Ishmael could not have become a believer. There's nothing that says he could not have been free in that sense. When you come over to the New Testament, Paul says, were you born a slave? He says, don't worry about it. God has made you free. And he says, and in case you free people think you're better, God has made you His slaves. So there's not the idea that Ishmael could never have been saved. It's just the idea that if you're born into slavery, that's where you're going to stay pretty much the rest of your life because there was not really emancipation and so forth in these earlier times. This jealous slave boy, we're told, actually persecuted the one who was free. Mistakenly thinking that since he was child of Abraham, and since perhaps Abraham might look favorably toward him, that somehow he could supersede this one who was born. And so he mocked him. He and his mother both mocked the child that was born. And yet we're told here that Isaac was born of the Holy Spirit. Now, of course, this picture is in a sense the Lord Jesus Christ who was conceived by the Holy Spirit, as we say in the Apostles' Creed. But he was also destined, this boy Isaac was destined to receive the Holy Spirit, to be led by the Holy Spirit in his life as over against this unbeliever and mocker and persecutor named Ishmael. And so you see, Isaac would go on to serve God. This would be the thing about Isaac's life. There's not actually a lot said about Isaac in Scripture in terms of the things he did, but the impression you get is he pretty much lived his whole life serving God. Indeed, being filled with and led by the Holy Spirit. Isaac would go on to serve God while Ishmael refused God. We said before, he could have claimed salvation by God's means, by God's method, but rather than do that, he went on to serve Satan. He went on to serve the flesh. And so you have the picture that's presented here. And the lesson for us in that is that we should seek freedom and not slavery. And that means that we should identify, you see, with Isaac and not with Ishmael, even though we might feel sorry for Ishmael in that case. Let me read you a passage from Galatians, the third chapter here, about this matter of freedom and so forth. Galatians 3, verses 13 and 14. Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law, having become a curse for us. For it is written, cursed is everyone who hangs on a tree. Now listen to this, in order that in Christ Jesus, the blessing of Abraham might come to the Gentiles so that we would receive the promise of the Spirit through faith. What's being told us here by this symbolism, by this allegory is that you have these two sons and you say, I wish I wasn't Ishmael, I wish I was Isaac. And God says, you can be Isaac if you put your faith in the one who became a curse for you, the one who hung upon a tree, the one who can truly free you and give you all the blessings of God, all the blessings of Abraham. If you just say, well, I'm Ishmael, I don't get any of those blessings, that might be true from a human point of view, but spiritually, you see, you can have all the blessings. You can be Isaac if you put your faith and trust in the Lord Jesus Christ. Okay, so we've had two women, we've had two sons, and now we're told there are two centers of influence. These are actually two locations that are mentioned here. And one location is kind of split in two, and I'll get into that for the moment. But centers of influence are what leads you in one direction, what leads you in the other direction. That's the idea here. And Paul says in this case, you have Mount Sinai, and here's where the split comes. You have Mount Sinai that's kind of moved over to Jerusalem. But it's the present Jerusalem, he says, the earthly Jerusalem. And he says combining these two together, that's a center of influence that would influence you to trust in yourselves rather than in God. You come under the influence of Mount Sinai or the present Jerusalem, and you say, I don't need Jesus. I can do it all myself. I can be good. I can be a good neighbor. I can help the poor. I can do this and that. I can be very religious. And that's the influence of Sinai, present Jerusalem. But there's another Jerusalem. That's why I say it's split. Because there's another Jerusalem, he says, that is above. the heavenly Jerusalem, if you will. And of course, that's where Christ is. The scripture says, put your eyes on things above, where Christ is. Now, in that particular passage, he's saying don't get involved with earthly, worldly, sinful things. But the idea is still very appropriate here. What's going to influence you? Well, you could be influenced just by plain old sin, of course. But in religious things, you could be influenced to say, I can save myself. I can do good works and God will love me for it. Or you can say, I have no hope except for that One who's above who came down and died on the cross and rose again and ascended into heaven. If I trust in Him, if that influences my life, then I can have with Him everlasting life. Those who are born from above, and there's a new birth you see. Those who are born from above look to Jesus for salvation. And we're told that there are many of them. Now, just look at a couple of the verses here in your passage. It says, but to Jerusalem above is free. She is our mother. It's unusual for Him to use that sort of terminology, but really He's referring to being born again. Your mother bears you. In other words, from heaven comes the new birth. She is our mother. And then he goes on to say there's a lot in the next verse, talking about the barren woman and so forth. He says, how numerous they are, for more numerous are the children of the desolate than the one who has a husband. The fact is that those who try to save themselves, you're really not going to find any of them, because there's not any. But those who are from above, where the mother is above, as it were, they are going... to be many in number because Christ saves people of every tongue, tribe, and nation. But you have to look to Jesus. You have to trust in Jesus. But that's what comes from above. So Jesus told Nicodemus, you must be born from above. All right. Got to move on here because there's still a couple other pairs to look at. Notice the mention of the two covenants as I've titled the sermon today. The two covenants. There's the Sinaitic covenant and the heavenly covenant. Now, a covenant is an arrangement by which you and God live together in peace, harmony, love. That's what the covenant is supposed to provide. And so we desire a covenant where that will really happen. Now, we're presented the choice of two covenants here. The covenant of Sinai, which is Hagar, it says, but the problem is this does not bring peace. Why? Because of sin. God says, yeah, if you obey me perfectly, you can go to heaven. But he says, I look down to see if there are any of those sorts of people and can't find any. That's Psalm 14. Romans 3.23, all have sinned and come short of the glory of God. So this one covenant, we could call it a covenant of works, it says obey God and go to heaven, doesn't work. But the other covenant, the heavenly covenant, is the covenant that brings forgiveness of sins, brings reconciliation with God, brings peace with God, and instead of death, it brings life. If you're looking at those two symbols that are put before you, you say, which one do you want? Well, I want the one that works. I don't want the theoretical one that there is no body to identify with except the Lord Jesus perhaps. But I want the one that really works, that brings forgiveness and resurrection, eternal life, peace with God. That's the one I want. And it is this heavenly covenant that Scripture keeps pointing to. Now notice how often in the passage here, he points to the Bible. He says, first of all, listen to the law. What does he mean by that? He means the law will tell you you're a sinner. If you're just listening to the law saying, oh, the law says don't lie, don't cheat, don't steal, don't do all these things. You may think that, but what the law really says is you're a sinner. Listen to what Scripture is saying. Then he says in verse 22, it is written. Then verse 27 again, he says it is written. And verse 30, he says what does the Scripture say? You talk about these two covenants. Scripture clearly says, pick this one. Pick this one. Did you ever see those television shows where they had the doors and you have to pick a door, you know? And it says, what about door number one? And a bunch of people in the audience shout. And door number two, and more people shout. Number three, people are shouting. Well, those people, some of them are obviously wrong. But God says, God who's never wrong says, pick door number two. We'll say number one because number one is sort of the way it unfolds in history. But door number two is Jesus. Covenant number two. Pick that one. The lesson is that only the covenant from heaven is worth pursuing. Only the covenant from heaven is worth pursuing. The other one, you open the door, and there's some ugly thing there that you didn't want. Okay, last thing. The end of the story gives us two outcomes. Two outcomes. We've had two women, two sons, two centers of influence, two covenants, and now we have two outcomes in verses 30 and 31 of the passage. The bondwoman and her son, which represent a Christless Judaism, They're cast out. That's one outcome. Being cast out. The offspring of the free woman, those who are saved by grace by just trusting Jesus, they're made heirs. Which outcome would you rather have? To be an outcast or an heir? To get nothing or to put it even in a worse situation, to get death. or to get everything and eternal life through Jesus Christ. There's two outcomes. Listen, he says, listen to the law. The law is telling you, follow me to a bad outcome. But God has issued promise after promise after promise. Remember, Isaac was the child of promise. God says that's the outcome you want, the outcome that goes with the promise. Listen to Me, God says, and there's a guarantee of blessing. And God has declared it so. Notice the absolute declaration that God has in verse 30. The son of the bondwoman shall not be an heir with the son of the free woman. You know, Abraham went to God at one time. He says, can't we just include Ishmael? Please, please, I like Ishmael. He's been a good boy. Can't we just include Ishmael? God says, no Ishmael. The son of the bondwoman is not going to be an heir with the son of the free woman. Friends, the Gospel says there's one way to heaven. And that's through the Lord Jesus Christ, and that's the only outcome that we should want or desire. So the lesson is, listen to the Bible. Listen to the Gospel. The Gospel says, believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and you'll be saved. But it also says, believe on anything else, and you'll perish. Let's pray. Father in Heaven, we thank You for this allegory today. It's not one that any man has made up or tried to fit into any scheme, but it's Your allegory for us to see these symbols in Abraham and Sarah and Hagar and Ishmael and Isaac. They're symbolic for us so that we would know the way to go, the way to choose, so that we would find the good outcome and not the bad outcome. Lord, make us to pay attention And then, Lord, we pray to be with You and know You and to have no contrast with You forever. We ask in Jesus' name, Amen.