Latest / Topeka Bible Church Audio Archive / November 10, 2024 | Galatians - Slavery vs Freedom

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November 10, 2024 | Galatians - Slavery vs Freedom · Topeka Bible Church Audio Archive

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_00: Hey, good morning.
• 0:01
  unknown: Good morning.
• 0:02
  SPEAKER_00: Glad to be with you this morning.
• 0:04
  SPEAKER_00: Hey, I wanted to follow up as we begin our service with sort of my commitment that I made to you last week.
• 0:12
  SPEAKER_00: It seems like an age ago, but this past week we had elections.
• 0:17
  SPEAKER_00: And so my commitment to you last Sunday was that no matter who won the election, we were going to pray for them as a church so that we could follow God's command in 1 Timothy 2, which reads, I urge that petitions, prayers, intercessions, and thanksgivings.
• 0:36
  SPEAKER_00: I carried this stand-up here and I'm kind of out of breath right now.
• 0:40
  SPEAKER_00: I just, it's one of those things like when you go up a flight of stairs and you're like, that should not have winded me, but it did.
• 0:47
  SPEAKER_00: Anyhow, um, there's the wrong time to pause.
• 0:51
  SPEAKER_00: For kings and all those who are in authority, so that we may lead a tranquil and quiet life in all godliness and dignity.
• 0:57
  SPEAKER_00: This is good, and it pleases God our Savior, who wants everyone to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth.
• 1:04
  SPEAKER_00: So, in view of that and the good it does for us to pray together as a church, let's go ahead and bow our heads.
• 1:10
  SPEAKER_00: Father, we come before you today and we thank you.
• 1:14
  SPEAKER_00: Um we thank you, Lord, that we live in a nation where we are able to elect leaders and that uh that is something that matters.
• 1:22
  SPEAKER_00: Um God, we pray for those who um were elected this past week and will be taking office soon.
• 1:29
  SPEAKER_00: We pray for those who are already in leadership positions, whether here at the local level, the state level, Lord, or national.
• 1:36
  SPEAKER_00: Um God, we ask that you would give them wisdom to make wise decisions, to use discernment in their judgment, and to be able to plot the right course forward for our nation.
• 1:47
  SPEAKER_00: Lord, we ask that they would uphold justice and that they would value that as a means to handle um difficulty and lawlessness, but Lord, also that they would uh value mercy as well as you do.
• 2:01
  SPEAKER_00: Lord, we pray that um they would desire peace, um, as you say in 1 Timothy, Lord, how good it is for us to live in a land where there is tranquility and quietness.
• 2:15
  SPEAKER_00: Um God, we ask that you would um, or that rather that they would walk in humility before you, understanding that their role is one that has been appointed by you, and God, that you are ultimately the one who is over all government and whatever roles that they have.
• 2:33
  SPEAKER_00: And God, finally, that every person uh who is leading would draw deeper into a faith if they don't have one already with Jesus Christ, Lord, that they might find Him as their Savior, and that that would influence uh the way that they are leading our nation and our local government.
• 2:51
  SPEAKER_00: Lord, we thank you for these things, and again, we thank you that as Christians, even though we might have differences on who should be elected, Lord, that we can come together and pray for them all as one body.
• 3:02
  SPEAKER_00: It's in Jesus' name we pray.
• 3:03
  SPEAKER_00: Amen.
• 3:04
  SPEAKER_00: Amen.
• 3:06
  SPEAKER_00: So the goal this morning, as we go to Galatians, is to wrap up chapter four.
• 3:13
  SPEAKER_00: And uh as we are doing that, I'll be honest with you, uh, the passage this morning is a bit of a doozy, and that I probably bit off a little bit more than I could chew.
• 3:24
  SPEAKER_00: Not in terms of the size of the passage, but if this were a college class, it would be like Bible 301 kind of thing.
• 3:32
  SPEAKER_00: It's going to involve some parts of the Old Testament, and so we're gonna walk through that together as a church, but you know, I think it's good.
• 3:40
  SPEAKER_00: I have sort of this obnoxious perspective that most of the time when there are hard passages in the Bible, I like doing those anyway because I don't like the idea that there are passages that we're skipping over because they're difficult.
• 3:54
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but nevertheless, then sometimes it comes to bite you, uh, like this morning, where we are going through uh talk about this um this Old Testament story of Sarah and Hagar uh that Paul is going to use to illustrate uh the point that he has been making for the last couple weeks, which is that there is this difference uh between spiritual slavery and spiritual freedom.
• 4:21
  SPEAKER_00: And that those things um we can find them within God, uh, not necessarily that we are slaves under God, but rather that we can find our freedom through him, and that he has redeemed us from spiritual slavery.
• 4:35
  SPEAKER_00: Um slavery to what?
• 4:37
  SPEAKER_00: This is what he talked about a couple weeks ago, to many things.
• 4:41
  SPEAKER_00: Um the passage is going to talk about this, but we are slaves to sin, we are slaves to the desires of the world, we are slaves to ourselves, we are slaves to the law, we're slaves to uh hedonism and greed and all of these things that draw us away from God.
• 4:59
  SPEAKER_00: But specifically, what he's getting at today is that they're even still, kind of within the umbrella of those who have trusted in Christ, right, there is a matter of spiritual slavery when we think that we can be made righteous or justified before God by following all a whole set of rules.
• 5:19
  SPEAKER_00: And Paul has made kind of great efforts over the last few weeks and months as we've gone through Galatians to say that that's not possible.
• 5:27
  SPEAKER_00: When you go before the Lord at the end of all things, and he asks if you are righteous, your track record of obedience is not what gets you there.
• 5:35
  SPEAKER_00: It is your faith in Jesus Christ.
• 5:38
  SPEAKER_00: That is what makes you righteous.
• 5:40
  SPEAKER_00: That is how God sees us because we cannot be righteous on our own.
• 5:43
  SPEAKER_00: And so as we close out chapter four, we're also closing out really the second of three huge sections in the book of Galatians.
• 5:55
  SPEAKER_00: Chapters five and six, which we'll get into next week, are really like rubber hits the road, application, how does this affect our lives?
• 6:03
  SPEAKER_00: But as we finish today, um, Paul is sort of putting an exclamation point on everything that he has been teaching the church about this difference between spiritual slavery and spiritual freedom.
• 6:15
  SPEAKER_00: And he wants to remind them at this point that it is not just that they are following a false gospel or listening to false teachers who we must remember have gone into the church and are sort of telling them these lies.
• 6:28
  SPEAKER_00: But he says, to do so to believe what they are saying, it's not just incorrect, it's worthless.
• 6:35
  SPEAKER_00: In Galatians 4, 8 through 9, Paul says, But in the past, since you didn't know God, you were enslaved to things that by nature are not God's.
• 6:45
  SPEAKER_00: But now, since you know God, or rather have become known by God, how can you turn back again to the weak and worthless elements?
• 6:54
  SPEAKER_00: Do you want to be enslaved to them all over again?
• 6:58
  SPEAKER_00: So Paul brings up these themes of freedom and slavery, which are about to become very important to our story.
• 7:05
  SPEAKER_00: And his charge to the church is that there is a um a matter of expectation that now that you have trusted in Christ, now that you know him as your savior, that you would continue down that pathway of grace and mercy and faith and not sort of slide back into this life where you were still trying to achieve merit or righteousness on your own, right?
• 7:30
  SPEAKER_00: Uh we have spent so much time talking about how those two things are mutually exclusive.
• 7:35
  SPEAKER_00: You cannot say that I can do it on my own, and also I need Jesus for myself, right?
• 7:40
  SPEAKER_00: For my sins.
• 7:42
  SPEAKER_00: And so Paul is saying that there is this possibility, right?
• 7:46
  SPEAKER_00: Acknowledging it, that we can trust in Christ, we can be saved, secured in our salvation, we're going to be in heaven with the Lord, all of these things.
• 7:55
  SPEAKER_00: We are forgiven and yet still backslide into this position where yet we are still trying to do it all on our own, to put all the weight on our shoulders, to bear that heavy yoke.
• 8:08
  SPEAKER_00: And Paul says, we don't need to do that any longer.
• 8:12
  SPEAKER_00: We are not children of slavery, we are children of promise, we are children of freedom.
• 8:18
  SPEAKER_00: And so he's going to use two different arguments to do it.
• 8:22
  SPEAKER_00: We're looking at one of them.
• 8:24
  SPEAKER_00: So the if you're following along in your Bibles, the next sort of section, he's going to make this emotional appeal, which is basically like, I was with you, right?
• 8:34
  SPEAKER_00: I came in to your cities, we have planted these churches, we have developed relationships, like you treated me not only like I was one of your own, but that I was sort of this, he says, like an angel, that they sort of rolled out the red carpet for Paul.
• 8:49
  SPEAKER_00: And we also know that Paul had a lot of physical afflictions, and he says, they took care of me, they they watched out for me, and when I left, everything was good.
• 8:58
  SPEAKER_00: He's like, What has happened in the meantime?
• 9:01
  SPEAKER_00: Because now these people have turned to you against me.
• 9:04
  SPEAKER_00: Return to your understanding of truth.
• 9:08
  SPEAKER_00: He goes, Why are you upset with me for telling you what God has really said?
• 9:12
  SPEAKER_00: You've been fooled by these people who have come in, have given you a message that not only isn't true, but just leads you down this path of disappointment.
• 9:22
  SPEAKER_00: He goes, Return to your first love here.
• 9:25
  SPEAKER_00: Not me, but to the true gospel.
• 9:28
  SPEAKER_00: But then he finishes chapter four with a story.
• 9:31
  SPEAKER_00: It's a story that is drawn from Genesis, uh specifically chapters 16 and 17, and it is one of uh primarily two women named Sarah and Hagar.
• 9:43
  SPEAKER_00: And so this is what he says, and then we'll get into the story.
• 9:47
  SPEAKER_00: Verse 21 Tell me, you who want to be under the law, right?
• 9:52
  SPEAKER_00: Don't you hear the law?
• 9:53
  SPEAKER_00: Don't you understand what's happening?
• 9:55
  SPEAKER_00: For it is written that Abraham had two sons, one by a slave and the other by a free woman.
• 10:00
  SPEAKER_00: But the one by the slave was born as a result of the flesh, while the one by the free woman was born through promise.
• 10:07
  SPEAKER_00: These things are being taken figuratively, for the women represent two covenants.
• 10:12
  SPEAKER_00: One is from Mount Sinai and bears children into slavery.
• 10:15
  SPEAKER_00: This is Hagar.
• 10:16
  SPEAKER_00: Now Hagar represents Mount Sinai and Arabia, and corresponds to the present Jerusalem, for she is in slavery with her children, but the Jerusalem above is free, and she is our mother.
• 10:28
  SPEAKER_00: Right?
• 10:29
  SPEAKER_00: Super clear.
• 10:30
  SPEAKER_00: So Genesis 16 and 17 is the story of Abraham, Sarah, and Hagar.
• 10:38
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, it finishes in 21, but that's kind of the primary place.
• 10:42
  SPEAKER_00: It begins with Abraham.
• 10:44
  SPEAKER_00: We have talked about Abraham the last couple of weeks.
• 10:47
  SPEAKER_00: Um, if you've been with us, you know that Paul has been using the phrase like the promise of Abraham and the seed of Abraham to describe the life that we want Christians to lead.
• 10:59
  SPEAKER_00: He was drawing everything back to this promise that God made to Abraham, which was based upon his faith, that the Lord was going to bless him and give him a descendant that was going to bless the entire world.
• 11:12
  SPEAKER_00: Parentheses, we now know that that is Jesus.
• 11:16
  SPEAKER_00: Abraham was not aware of all of that at the time, and so he just needed to trust in the Lord that God was going to give him this blessing.
• 11:24
  SPEAKER_00: Now, um part of the problem and part of the need for faith was that Abraham and Sarah were far past the age where they could have children, and in fact they had none.
• 11:34
  SPEAKER_00: They were childless, and this was a significant burden on them emotionally, because many people during that time obviously had kids and saw it as a sign of blessing.
• 11:46
  SPEAKER_00: So there was this discontinuity where God is saying, You will be blessed with a child, and they go, We haven't been blessed with a child our entire lives.
• 11:54
  SPEAKER_00: So God says, Has faith, I will give you this child.
• 11:57
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but it takes a really, really long time.
• 12:00
  SPEAKER_00: It takes, in fact, um Abraham's been waiting over a decade for this to happen.
• 12:05
  SPEAKER_00: And he and Sarah, though they have faith, they don't maybe have as much patience.
• 12:10
  SPEAKER_00: And so what they do is they make the fateful decision to involve their slave Hagar in this sort of whole deal to kind of fast track the process.
• 12:21
  SPEAKER_00: And so Abraham has relations with Hagar, and this is not a good thing, this is not part of God's plan, and in fact, everything that comes out of that decision ends up causing pain and suffering, especially for poor Hagar.
• 12:38
  SPEAKER_00: And so as they try and fast-track this process, as they try and sort of achieve God's blessing without him, per se, because God had said specifically it would be the child would come from Abraham and Sarah.
• 12:55
  SPEAKER_00: Um, nevertheless, Hagar has a child, and his name is Ishmael.
• 13:00
  SPEAKER_00: Ishmael, because Hagar is a slave, uh, is born as a slave as well.
• 13:05
  SPEAKER_00: That becomes a very important point in this story.
• 13:08
  SPEAKER_00: But God meets with Abraham, reminds him of the promise, reminds him that the promise is going to be fulfilled through Sarah, and years later, about 14 years later, finally, they have a child.
• 13:21
  SPEAKER_00: His name is Isaac, and Isaac is born to Sarah, no less the, thankfully, the wife of Abraham, but also a free woman.
• 13:31
  SPEAKER_00: And so there's this contrast: two women, two children, one born into slavery, one born into freedom.
• 13:39
  SPEAKER_00: There are other elements of that story that you can go and read about in Genesis, even though Hagar and Ishmael were not a part of God's really original plan here.
• 13:48
  SPEAKER_00: God ministers to them, cares for them, and eventually makes Ishmael into his own nation.
• 13:54
  SPEAKER_00: But the story just kind of stops.
• 13:56
  SPEAKER_00: The details that we need are really just those two things, that there are these two women and they've had these two children.
• 14:04
  SPEAKER_00: And what Paul is going to do is he is going to now stack.
• 14:09
  SPEAKER_00: He is going to see those two sides as two different ways to live the Christian life, that these people are representative of a spiritual condition, okay?
• 14:21
  SPEAKER_00: And he is going to begin associating other ideas and themes on either side that further reinforce his point.
• 14:29
  SPEAKER_00: Last thing before we go on that's important to understand, is that in Paul's day, the story of Sarah and Hagar and Isaac and Ishmael, that story is used to separate Jews from Gentiles or non-Jews, right?
• 14:47
  SPEAKER_00: Because the promise has come through Sarah, and so everybody who's a physical descendant of her should be afforded this promise.
• 14:54
  SPEAKER_00: They are the Jewish people, they are the righteous nation, they are God's chosen, and everybody else who follows through the line of Hagar, they are the Gentiles, they are unworthy, they are not God's chosen people.
• 15:05
  SPEAKER_00: Paul is going to flip that on its head.
• 15:08
  SPEAKER_00: And instead of making it something about physical descendants, instead of making it something about Jews and not Jews, he says, no, this is about those who are free in Christ and those who are still slaves under the law.
• 15:22
  SPEAKER_00: So I, if that um sort of serves as a summary, let's kind of try and dig into some of these elements because it is truly, even if your head is sort of swimming right now with, and especially if you don't know the story in Genesis, I understand why this is sort of a little jarring, but there's a lot of beauty in what Paul is trying to do here, really drawing beauty from a terribly broken situation and pointing people to Christ.
• 15:49
  SPEAKER_00: So the first thing, and we've already talked about this, the first thing that happens is that Paul simply says that Abraham had two sons.
• 15:57
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and what is about to become evident is that their mothers are the ones that sort of signify what is going to happen to those children, right?
• 16:09
  SPEAKER_00: In uh the backside of verse 22, then these titles are attached to them.
• 16:14
  SPEAKER_00: Sarah is the free woman, Hagar is the slave woman.
• 16:19
  SPEAKER_00: And because Paul is, I mean, keep in mind, just at the end of chapter 3, right, he was discussing and shared that great verse in 28, 328, that there is no Jew or Greek, there's no slave or free, there's no male and female, all are one in Christ Jesus.
• 16:36
  SPEAKER_00: Right?
• 16:36
  SPEAKER_00: What we're talking about here is certainly not that Paul is saying this story is, you know, a wonderful thing that happened in Genesis, but rather he is saying that everybody, no matter their background, is eventually going to be able to find their home if they had trusted in Christ, in the identity of the free woman, even if physically they have come down another pathway.
• 17:03
  SPEAKER_00: Um let's see here.
• 17:06
  SPEAKER_00: So as we move on, then Paul says that the one by the slave was born as a result of the flesh, while the one by the free woman was born through promise.
• 17:17
  SPEAKER_00: So the birth of Ishmael was a result of, we could say, like man's effort.
• 17:23
  SPEAKER_00: And I don't mean physically man's effort, I mean like that one was given a promise, and God had said, I'm going to supernaturally make specifically Sarah be able to bear children again.
• 17:35
  SPEAKER_00: And Abraham goes and does it his own way.
• 17:38
  SPEAKER_00: Right?
• 17:38
  SPEAKER_00: We could say flesh, we could say sin, uh, we could say that just going outside of God's design and promise, but the distinction is that Ishmael was representative of when we try and do things that God has told us he is going to do.
• 17:54
  SPEAKER_00: And so you can already see how we're pointing out this idea behind when Paul is saying at the end of it, like, you cannot be righteous on your own.
• 18:02
  SPEAKER_00: You have to trust in Christ.
• 18:04
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, but yet so many of us try to be righteous on our own, why he is aligning that with Ishmael and Hagar and Abraham here.
• 18:13
  SPEAKER_00: But we also know when he uses this word promise, that he's drawing back to language that he's been using because the line of Jesus flows through Sarah and Isaac.
• 18:26
  SPEAKER_00: It doesn't go through Hagar and Ishmael.
• 18:29
  SPEAKER_00: And so the plan was always, right, that Sarah and Abraham would have this child and that he would be this great sign and carry on the promise, and eventually his seed would be the one that blessed the world.
• 18:42
  SPEAKER_00: And God still did all of those things.
• 18:45
  SPEAKER_00: But Abraham and Sarah kind of created this alternate route that represented their lack of patience, and you could even say to a degree their lack of faith.
• 18:58
  SPEAKER_00: I'm not demonizing them.
• 18:59
  SPEAKER_00: Waiting 25 years is a long time for promise, okay?
• 19:03
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but nevertheless, that is sort of the way that this story goes, is they created this difficulty.
• 19:11
  SPEAKER_00: Then we see, now we're starting to get into the part where it very clearly is not just about the people, right?
• 19:19
  SPEAKER_00: Paul says, uh, these things are being taken figuratively.
• 19:22
  SPEAKER_00: Like I'm using them as an illustration.
• 19:24
  SPEAKER_00: It's not the people, it's what they represent.
• 19:26
  SPEAKER_00: And the women represent two covenants.
• 19:30
  SPEAKER_00: Covenants being much of the way that the Lord throughout time has worked with his people.
• 19:37
  SPEAKER_00: There are many different covenants.
• 19:39
  SPEAKER_00: Um we live right now under the new covenant.
• 19:42
  SPEAKER_00: This is the one that Jesus brought about, and it is the final covenant.
• 19:46
  SPEAKER_00: Covenant being an agreement between us and the Lord, he says, I am your God and you are my people, I do this and you do that, right?
• 19:53
  SPEAKER_00: And though they are the covenants have changed over time, um, they often represent different, you could say, times in redemption history, or having somewhat different goals, even though the ultimate aim was the same.
• 20:10
  SPEAKER_00: Again, a couple weeks ago, so much of this is like Paul's culminating point.
• 20:15
  SPEAKER_00: And it's like he's drawing from what he has been saying for the last couple chapters.
• 20:20
  SPEAKER_00: But the Mosaic Covenant is the uh agreement that God made with Moses and the nation of Israel at Mount Sinai, right?
• 20:29
  SPEAKER_00: If you think of it nothing else, it's Moses walking down with the Ten Commandments, right?
• 20:34
  SPEAKER_00: Or as my favorite scene from the history of the world, part two, says Mel Brooks walking down with three stone tablets, trips, stumbles, drops one, and he goes, Well, first of all, he's like, I brought to you the fifteen, the ten commandments.
• 20:50
  SPEAKER_00: I love that.
• 20:52
  SPEAKER_00: I botched the delivery, but I do love it.
• 20:54
  SPEAKER_00: Um the Mosaic covenant, though, was the law.
• 20:59
  SPEAKER_00: When you hear the word the law, that's what we're talking about.
• 21:01
  SPEAKER_00: We're talking about the those rules and regulations that, as we've learned in Galatians, serve to uh both convict the world and in fact increase the ways that they were walking or falling short of God's standard to show them and tell them that they could not do it on their own and they needed a savior.
• 21:23
  SPEAKER_00: And this is the covenant that Paul has associated with slavery.
• 21:28
  SPEAKER_00: He says, You are slaves under that covenant because you cannot escape from it.
• 21:33
  SPEAKER_00: All it does is condemn you.
• 21:36
  SPEAKER_00: And then remember, he has contrasted that with Abraham and the promise.
• 21:41
  SPEAKER_00: The Abrahamic covenant or the covenant of promise, which was simply based on faith.
• 21:46
  SPEAKER_00: And Paul had made, taken great pains to say that the Mosaic covenant, which came after the Abrahamic covenant, roughly like 400 years or so, a little bit more than that.
• 21:57
  SPEAKER_00: He's like, it didn't do away with the promise.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_00: Just stacked on top of it.
• 22:01
  SPEAKER_00: And so he says the Abrahamic covenant is the one that we go back to even today when we think about Jesus.
• 22:08
  SPEAKER_00: It is based on our faith in him that we receive grace in forgiveness.
• 22:15
  SPEAKER_00: And even though the promise that God made to Abraham was a bit more simplistic, not um it was not that it was a lesser, but there weren't as many details about it.
• 22:27
  SPEAKER_00: It was more just like, have faith in me and I will bless you and I will bring forth that that principle still applies today.
• 22:34
  SPEAKER_00: So, back to Sarah and Hagar, Sarah understandably represents the child of promise and this covenant of grace and this idea of faith and all that she needed to believe in and trust in in order for God to bring her blessings.
• 22:50
  SPEAKER_00: And Hagar is associated with the Mosaic Covenant simply because of how we are stacking things as those who are in slavery, right?
• 23:02
  SPEAKER_00: As we keep going now, there's um this is probably one of the most confusing parts in a rather difficult passage, is the women are associated then with two different mountains.
• 23:16
  SPEAKER_00: Hagar says one is from Mount Sinai and bears children into slavery.
• 23:20
  SPEAKER_00: This is Hagar.
• 23:22
  SPEAKER_00: Mount Sinai is the location where Moses received the Ten Commandments and the Mosaic covenant was like ratified, right?
• 23:31
  SPEAKER_00: And so all Paul's doing here, it sounds kind of weird, but all he's doing is associating now like this spiritual idea with a geographical location.
• 23:39
  SPEAKER_00: And he's like, when you think back to Mount Sinai, which was so big to the Jews, right?
• 23:43
  SPEAKER_00: Like this idea that this was when God sort of told us how we should be living, and he goes, actually, that's the location where you were in this kind of spiritual slavery that you received the law that you could not escape from.
• 23:58
  SPEAKER_00: And it was part of God's plan and part of his design to point you towards this coming Messiah, but nevertheless, like Mount Sinai isn't all that it's cracked up to be in your mind.
• 24:08
  SPEAKER_00: And then he doesn't say what Sarah represents, sort of the geographical location.
• 24:15
  SPEAKER_00: What mountain is Sarah?
• 24:17
  SPEAKER_00: But it's pretty easy for us to guess what Paul is implying here, that she would represent Mount Zion.
• 24:25
  SPEAKER_00: Mount Zion being the mountain that Jerusalem is built on, it's where the temple mount rests, right?
• 24:31
  SPEAKER_00: It's where the literally the temple would be during the time that Paul is speaking here.
• 24:37
  SPEAKER_00: But moreover, God isn't so concerned about Mount Zion as this location of the temple in the Bible.
• 24:43
  SPEAKER_00: Mount Zion, which you might have heard before, it's the name of a cemetery here in Topeka.
• 24:48
  SPEAKER_00: Don't be confused, but it's the Mount Zion represents where we have been able to truly have fellowship and to worship with the Lord.
• 24:58
  SPEAKER_00: It is where we connect with him as our God and he connects with us as his people.
• 25:03
  SPEAKER_00: And at one time that was representative of the temple, but certainly now we don't need to go to Mount Zion to worship and follow after Christ.
• 25:12
  SPEAKER_00: And so Sarah represents this time of freedom.
• 25:16
  SPEAKER_00: Paul, for whatever reason, does not bring up Mount Zion, but it is clear that he is comparing one against the other here.
• 25:31
  SPEAKER_00: Excuse me, Israel coming out of Egypt, ironically being freed people who had been slaves in Egypt, then came under a relationship with the Lord that was defined by their failure to attain his standards.
• 25:49
  SPEAKER_00: And so as we continue on, there's just a few more levels here, but I hope you can see how these things are all just working towards the same point.
• 26:00
  SPEAKER_00: Kind of the last element here, Paul says, now Hagar represents Mount Sinai in Arabia and corresponds to the present Jerusalem, for she is in slavery with her children, but the Jerusalem above is free, and she is our mother.
• 26:16
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 26:17
  SPEAKER_00: Now the difference is not two different mountains on a map, but two cities, one in heaven and one on earth.
• 26:25
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, we've gone vertical.
• 26:27
  SPEAKER_00: And he talks about these two different Jerusalems.
• 26:32
  SPEAKER_00: One of them, the below on earth, he equates with Hagar, right?
• 26:37
  SPEAKER_00: They are that it is under slavery currently.
• 26:41
  SPEAKER_00: And those during this time would understand a couple ways that this would apply.
• 26:48
  SPEAKER_00: One is that Israel was under the commandment and rule of the Roman Empire.
• 26:54
  SPEAKER_00: In much of the way that they were living, they were enslaved to the Romans.
• 26:59
  SPEAKER_00: Okay?
• 27:00
  SPEAKER_00: This was why, whenever we talk about, like, you know, why tax collectors were so hated back then, it's like because they were Jews who worked for the Roman government and were oppressing their people.
• 27:10
  SPEAKER_00: Um, this idea of the Messiah coming and hopefully being the one that was going to throw off the chains of the Roman Empire was one of the reasons why they didn't get that Jesus did not come to lead warfare or physical warfare, but instead spiritual, in fact, spiritual warfare.
• 27:27
  SPEAKER_00: Anyhow, so there's this physical slavery that Jerusalem is basically under in terms of government.
• 27:34
  SPEAKER_00: But also, Paul, and this would be the bigger deal, is that Jerusalem is like the headquarters, right, of this whole heresy that in order to trust in Christ, you need to follow the law.
• 27:46
  SPEAKER_00: Once again, you need to do what Moses had said, even though Christ had fulfilled it and redeemed them.
• 27:52
  SPEAKER_00: This is where the temple is at.
• 27:53
  SPEAKER_00: This is where all the main sort of Jewish collection of people is at.
• 27:58
  SPEAKER_00: Those who are misguided and have hard hearts and don't understand that they're in spiritual slavery, they are represented by this current city of Jerusalem, right?
• 28:09
  SPEAKER_00: Basically, everything that Paul is talking about is found within that city.
• 28:16
  SPEAKER_00: But then he says, there is a Jerusalem that is above.
• 28:20
  SPEAKER_00: And that's not figurative language.
• 28:23
  SPEAKER_00: The Bible tells us this is a whole nother topic.
• 28:27
  SPEAKER_00: But that when Jesus returns and we get the new heavens and the new earth, that a new Jerusalem comes down from heaven and basically takes over the one that is currently there.
• 28:39
  SPEAKER_00: That there is a city in heaven that is the destiny and destination of all believers in this world.
• 28:47
  SPEAKER_00: And Paul is simply saying that where it awaits for us right now, and eventually later we will see it, that the children of promise and the children of hope and the children of freedom, those who are adopted by God into his kingdom, they find their true home, not in the sort of world around here, specifically not in the Jerusalem that is on earth, but the Jerusalem that is in heaven.
• 29:09
  SPEAKER_00: That is what they are waiting for, and that is what Sarah and Abraham were heading towards as well.
• 29:15
  SPEAKER_00: And so simply he associates them with the two women as well.
• 29:21
  SPEAKER_00: Sarah represents what is awaiting us in heaven and God's future plans for the world, and Hagar represents the current world and its struggle in spiritual and physical slavery.
• 29:34
  SPEAKER_00: Finally, when it comes to this comparison, Sarah, and you can see all the different things that are stacked there, right?
• 29:42
  SPEAKER_00: Sarah is this uh Isaac represents the child of faith and promise and the Abrahamic covenant and Mount Zion and the Jerusalem above, that she is our mother.
• 29:57
  SPEAKER_00: And not in the sense of the same way we call God our Father, right?
• 30:02
  SPEAKER_00: But rather that this would be a message to anybody that Paul was speaking to, particularly the Jewish guys who were arguing against him, where they would say, because of their blood, Sarah is our mother, right?
• 30:17
  SPEAKER_00: She is our like we are her heritage, she is our ancestor, she we come from her, and therefore we are a part of God's sort of chosen people.
• 30:26
  SPEAKER_00: And Paul says, not so fast.
• 30:28
  SPEAKER_00: Sarah is the mother to anybody who has trusted in Christ and are part of God's kingdom and his family, even the Gentiles who you think belong to Ishmael.
• 30:40
  SPEAKER_00: Right?
• 30:40
  SPEAKER_00: You get the difference there.
• 30:42
  SPEAKER_00: And so Paul makes this great statement that is cr like an arrow in the heart of those who are focused on legalism and following the law and being Jewish, even as they say that they trust in Christ.
• 30:56
  SPEAKER_00: He goes, You are still using this story to separate people.
• 31:00
  SPEAKER_00: And what God has shown through this broken story that He is redeemed is that we are all children of promise and freedom if we have trusted in Christ.
• 31:12
  SPEAKER_00: It is only if we follow after the line and the things of Ishmael, which she represents and Hagar represents, those are the people who are not a part of the promise, even though you think it is based on blood.
• 31:27
  SPEAKER_00: So, um, nevertheless, what what does this all mean?
• 31:32
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, how does it apply to us?
• 31:34
  SPEAKER_00: Obviously, there's a point here about um we want to be on the side of Sarah.
• 31:40
  SPEAKER_00: If you haven't picked that up, that is where we want to be.
• 31:42
  SPEAKER_00: That's the good place.
• 31:44
  SPEAKER_00: Um we want to be with Sarah.
• 31:46
  SPEAKER_00: We don't want to be with Hagar.
• 31:48
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but Paul thankfully kind of gives us as he the last paragraph of chapter four, he tells us really what he means.
• 31:56
  SPEAKER_00: I'm skipping over, just so you know, for those of you who are following along in your Bibles, I am skipping over a section where Paul quotes Isaiah.
• 32:04
  SPEAKER_00: I'll talk more about why he did that in the podcast.
• 32:08
  SPEAKER_00: But we're going to skip to the section where Paul says, This is why I have made sort of this grand comparison.
• 32:15
  SPEAKER_00: He says, Now you two, brothers and sisters, like Isaac, are children of promise.
• 32:22
  SPEAKER_00: But just as then the child born as a result of the flesh persecuted the one born as a result of the spirit, so also now.
• 32:31
  SPEAKER_00: But what does the scripture say?
• 32:33
  SPEAKER_00: Drive out the slave and her son, for the son of the slave will never be a co-heir with the son of the free woman.
• 32:39
  SPEAKER_00: Therefore, brothers and sisters, we are not children of a slave, but of the free woman.
• 32:45
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, so that first sentence there, right?
• 32:50
  SPEAKER_00: We are those who have trusted in Christ that Paul is speaking to.
• 32:54
  SPEAKER_00: He says, You are associated with Isaac, children of promise, children of faith, right?
• 33:00
  SPEAKER_00: You are the one that is going to the Jerusalem above, you're associated with true worship.
• 33:05
  SPEAKER_00: Good.
• 33:06
  SPEAKER_00: But then he goes back one last time to Genesis, and the part of the story that takes place in like Genesis 21, where the um the brokenness and the the immense pain that was caused by Abraham still trying to raise his son in the same household with Isaac, and the conflict between Hagar and Sarah, and really Sagar, Sagar, really Sarah's intense jealousy and uh I don't know, hatred is a really strong word, but she despised Hagar for everything that she represented.
• 33:50
  SPEAKER_00: She was able to have a child, she was able, she came first, and so Ishmael, according to many laws, would have been uh kind of the inheritor of all of these things, even though God had said it would come through Isaac.
• 34:01
  SPEAKER_00: And so ultimately Sarah tells Abraham that he needs to send away Hagar and Ishmael, that he needs just to like boot, give them the boot.
• 34:11
  SPEAKER_00: And it's it's this terribly sad moment, right, as we see um all of the pain kind of coming to its head.
• 34:19
  SPEAKER_00: But on top of that, um we understand, and it would be a part of tradition as well, um, but that there was some kind of conflict that would be not difficult to imagine between Ishmael and Isaac as they were children.
• 34:34
  SPEAKER_00: And so what Paul is referencing here is that conflict between the two of them, and particularly that Ishmael was difficult and hard to Isaac.
• 34:47
  SPEAKER_00: So that white when he says, but just as then the child born as a result of the flesh, Ishmael, persecuted the one born as a result of the spirit, Isaac, so also now.
• 34:58
  SPEAKER_00: And there is um there's actually a decent uh interesting line you can go with this where you talk about how even today, like the conflicts in the Middle East, are often between the children of, I and here I mean physically, the children of Isaac, which would be the Jewish people, and the children of Ishmael, which comprise uh much of the genetic line of the Arab states.
• 35:20
  SPEAKER_00: Um even as you look at the conflict there between the brothers today, context reminds us that Paul is talking about what is going on in the churches in Galatia.
• 35:29
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, it's not about war in the Middle East today, okay?
• 35:33
  SPEAKER_00: It is about the difficulty that was um happening at that time.
• 35:37
  SPEAKER_00: And Paul's point is he says the persecution that was coming from the physical line of Ishmael against the physical line of uh Isaac is now represented spiritually.
• 35:49
  SPEAKER_00: And so he says, the children of promise, Jews and Gentiles, those who have trusted in Christ, are being persecuted by those who don't trust in Christ.
• 35:59
  SPEAKER_00: And he says, this is what's going on in the churches, and then this is why he brings up Sarah's command.
• 36:05
  SPEAKER_00: Is he says, well, now that needs to get flipped on its head.
• 36:08
  SPEAKER_00: Not persecution per se, but the same idea that Sarah had that we need to get Ishmael and Hagar out of here and move them out of the camp.
• 36:19
  SPEAKER_00: He says, this is how you need to think of the churches and the people within them who are consistently opposed to the things of God, who are warring against it, who are not children of promise.
• 36:30
  SPEAKER_00: He said, and obviously, or I think it's clear within the text, he is specifically talking about those who are the false teachers, not just anybody who like disagrees about what the Bible says or something.
• 36:43
  SPEAKER_00: But he's like, these folks who are teaching heresy, like they are leading you astray, they are teaching you a false gospel.
• 36:51
  SPEAKER_00: He's like, you need to take a lesson from Sarah's book, and you need to send them out.
• 36:58
  SPEAKER_00: Finally, therefore, brothers and sisters, we are not children of a slave but of the free woman.
• 37:03
  SPEAKER_00: This concludes chapter four, and really it is the thing that uh Paul will then run with for the next two chapters.
• 37:10
  SPEAKER_00: It's just what does it mean to be free in Christ?
• 37:13
  SPEAKER_00: So many beautiful things in the last two chapters of Galatians.
• 37:17
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but this is, we had to get to this point in order to appreciate that.
• 37:21
  SPEAKER_00: When he talks about living by the Spirit and not by the flesh, when he talks about the need for us to live out our faith, not just in obedience, but in a desire to follow after the Lord, so that we can use our freedom well and not act like we are still slaves, like all of that uh is built upon the foundation here, that we are not children of a slave, but of the free woman.
• 37:47
  SPEAKER_00: So, how do we finally apply this to our lives?
• 37:51
  SPEAKER_00: I have a couple things I want to share with you.
• 37:53
  SPEAKER_00: A couple things that I think we can draw from this.
• 37:57
  SPEAKER_00: The first thing is that God makes beautiful lessons out of broken stories.
• 38:02
  SPEAKER_00: There is nothing about the story with Abraham and Hagar that is very beautiful at all.
• 38:11
  SPEAKER_00: It is abuse, it is shame, it is jealousy, it is division, it is neglect, it is um sinful.
• 38:22
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 38:24
  SPEAKER_00: And yet God is going to take that story, ultimately, and he is going to use it to help us understand a deeper truth about his kingdom.
• 38:33
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 38:34
  SPEAKER_00: And so I honestly this is just more of a personal thing, that just because Paul used this story doesn't mean that what happened was good, but rather that God can take any situation, including whatever you have gone through or are going through, that is broken, and redeem it ultimately for good.
• 38:51
  SPEAKER_00: And that is included both things that have happened to you and things that you have created that have caused difficulty, much like Abraham did here.
• 38:59
  SPEAKER_00: This dude threw a big wrench in the gears here.
• 39:04
  SPEAKER_00: Um, not enough to stop the Lord, nothing can, but nevertheless, like there is a whole section of Genesis that is then devoted to this pain.
• 39:12
  SPEAKER_00: And yet Paul was able to bring it into Galatians and say, Yeah, it just proves the point that we are children of freedom and not children of slavery.
• 39:20
  SPEAKER_00: Number two is that our spiritual condition is at stake here.
• 39:25
  SPEAKER_00: Paul is not talking to, he's not really trying to separate the line between Christians and non-Christians, right?
• 39:32
  SPEAKER_00: Um, his encouragement to those in Galatia, right, because he's saying brothers and sisters the whole time.
• 39:37
  SPEAKER_00: We just talked about what it means to be a child of God and be adopted into his kingdom.
• 39:41
  SPEAKER_00: And so he's saying, like, fellow Christians, do not go back into the life of slavery that you had.
• 39:48
  SPEAKER_00: Like you can still trust in the Lord, love Jesus, be saved by him, and yet walk back over and over again into a life where you are trying to make it on your own instead of trusting in his promises.
• 40:02
  SPEAKER_00: And he says, not only is that sad, but it leads to disappointment.
• 40:06
  SPEAKER_00: Like you are not ultimately able to become righteous on your own.
• 40:10
  SPEAKER_00: And so, less so, why try?
• 40:12
  SPEAKER_00: But more like, what's the point?
• 40:14
  SPEAKER_00: Like, what are you seeking after here?
• 40:17
  SPEAKER_00: Why do you think that that is going to be fulfilling when we think of obedience when it comes to our faith in Christ?
• 40:24
  SPEAKER_00: We say over and over again, it is not because we become righteous or better in the sight of God that we have been obedient to his commands, but rather out of an overflowing of the love that has been poured out to us through the cross, we simply want to follow after the Lord because he says, this is where you find fulfillment and joy and peace and security.
• 40:46
  SPEAKER_00: Like when you do the things that I have called after for you to do, right, you live out the life the way that it was designed.
• 40:53
  SPEAKER_00: Abraham going his own way with Hagar did not lead to life, even though they thought it would advance God's promises.
• 41:01
  SPEAKER_00: God says, if you had just done what I had told you to do, life would have been so much better.
• 41:10
  SPEAKER_00: Number three, the pathway to freedom was bought by Christ.
• 41:14
  SPEAKER_00: A point that bears reminding, right?
• 41:17
  SPEAKER_00: Um, why is it that this truth, which again, if you've been with us through the whole book of Galatians, you're probably like, uh-huh, yes, right?
• 41:26
  SPEAKER_00: Why is it that this thing becomes so stale at times to us?
• 41:31
  SPEAKER_00: For those who have known Christ for so long, why is it that Jesus being the purchaser of our faith through his blood, why is that something that ever becomes tired to us?
• 41:42
  SPEAKER_00: But yet it does, right?
• 41:44
  SPEAKER_00: It becomes tired to me at times as well.
• 41:46
  SPEAKER_00: There, I confess to you, preaching Galatians, like this is the main lesson of like every passage.
• 41:53
  SPEAKER_00: And so I'm like, okay, what's the like new way that I'm going to try and like spin this this week?
• 41:58
  SPEAKER_00: And it's like, it doesn't need to be spun.
• 42:01
  SPEAKER_00: It is that Jesus died on the cross for your sins.
• 42:04
  SPEAKER_00: And furthermore, what I think we can draw here is not just that his death was effective, because it was, but that it was necessary.
• 42:14
  SPEAKER_00: It's not just that it was effective, it was necessary in order for you to have a right relationship with the Lord.
• 42:20
  SPEAKER_00: Fourth and finally, is that our freedom isn't finished yet.
• 42:25
  SPEAKER_00: And you go, well, what is more free than free?
• 42:27
  SPEAKER_00: Well, in God's kingdom, that actually has an answer.
• 42:31
  SPEAKER_00: And that answer roots itself, and this is sort of the last thing I want to bring up, it's just so neat, is that there is an anticipation and a hope that we have for this future freedom.
• 42:44
  SPEAKER_00: You are free now in Christ.
• 42:47
  SPEAKER_00: You are no longer slaves to sin.
• 42:49
  SPEAKER_00: You, by the power of the Spirit, you are redeemed from a previous way of life, and you can live in this freedom.
• 42:55
  SPEAKER_00: God desires for you to live out that freedom in a certain way, right?
• 42:59
  SPEAKER_00: But nevertheless, it is because of Christ that you are free, it is not because of what you do.
• 43:04
  SPEAKER_00: And yet, still, there are ways in which we are slaves to this world because of its desires and our sin.
• 43:12
  SPEAKER_00: There are ways in which we still draw back into slavery, spiritual slavery, because of our occasional need to either do things ourselves or find purpose and value and fulfillment outside of Christ, or whatever it is that we think is going to fill our bucket that doesn't actually work.
• 43:30
  SPEAKER_00: But when we look to the future, there's an element here that changes, which is that the freedom that we have now finds its completion.
• 43:42
  SPEAKER_00: There's no more like, yeah, buts.
• 43:44
  SPEAKER_00: There's no more, you know, sort of asterisks attached to that freedom where we go, yeah, but you know, because of our sin or because of all.
• 43:51
  SPEAKER_00: No.
• 43:52
  SPEAKER_00: It is that we live in freedom with Christ, no longer experiencing sin, no longer having a temptation, no longer.
• 44:00
  SPEAKER_00: Desiring things that are outside of the Lord, no longer experiencing the curse of that sin as well, including death and disease and pain and suffering and loss.
• 44:10
  SPEAKER_00: Those things are all gone.
• 44:12
  SPEAKER_00: But also, I draw you back to one last point that we already brought up, which is that we are awaiting that new Jerusalem, the one that is in heaven right now.
• 44:22
  SPEAKER_00: I want to leave you with this.
• 44:23
  SPEAKER_00: There's a passage in Hebrews that sort of puts a nice little bow on all of this.
• 44:28
  SPEAKER_00: Hebrews 11, it sort of gives the um the obituary of Abraham and Sarah, according to sort of their what reads on their gravestone.
• 44:40
  SPEAKER_00: And what this is going to do is first of all show you that even those who created an absolutely broken situation, I want you to see how the Lord sees them and really how he redeemed them, and also how we, along with Abraham and Sarah, are all waiting for the exact same thing, which is this New Jerusalem.
• 45:04
  SPEAKER_00: This is Hebrews 11, and I'm going to uh start in 13, though I'm going to skip a section.
• 45:10
  SPEAKER_00: But it says, speaking about Abraham and Sarah, they died in faith.
• 45:16
  SPEAKER_00: Which right there, for some situation that was created by a lack of faith.
• 45:21
  SPEAKER_00: They died in faith.
• 45:22
  SPEAKER_00: Although they had not received the things that were promised yet, but they saw them from a distance, greeted them, and confessed that they were foreigners and temporary residents on the earth.
• 45:35
  SPEAKER_00: But they now desire a better place, a heavenly one.
• 45:40
  SPEAKER_00: Therefore, God is not ashamed to be called their God, for he has prepared a city for them.
• 45:47
  SPEAKER_00: And Abraham and Sarah are now living in that city that they were waiting for.
• 45:53
  SPEAKER_00: That was not a part of this world, but the one that they were looking forward to and looking forward to in the future, right?
• 46:00
  SPEAKER_00: So, what do you take away from this?
• 46:02
  SPEAKER_00: Man, I want you to understand that no matter your background, that you can be a child of freedom.
• 46:09
  SPEAKER_00: And that freedom is the thing that should define your life in Christ.
• 46:14
  SPEAKER_00: A freedom that we use well, certainly, but it is nevertheless that we are free, set free by the blood of Jesus.
• 46:22
  SPEAKER_00: Second, that you are not a slave to your past life.
• 46:25
  SPEAKER_00: You are not a slave to the things that held you down before, the mistakes that you've made, the things that have been done against you, like the things that used to define you before Christ no longer define you.
• 46:38
  SPEAKER_00: You still have your identity, but your identity has taken on a new and glorious title, which is that you are a child of God and a child of the free woman.
• 46:50
  SPEAKER_00: And as we align with Paul, with all of that list of things that were represented by glory, we understand that God has been working out this plan through all time.
• 47:02
  SPEAKER_00: And that He wants you to be a part of it if you would trust in Jesus as your Savior.
• 47:07
  SPEAKER_00: Let's pray.
• 47:10
  SPEAKER_00: Heavenly Father, we thank you for today.
• 47:14
  SPEAKER_00: God, we thank you for redeeming broken stories like Abraham and Sarah's and like ours.
• 47:21
  SPEAKER_00: Lord, how you use them to draw people into your kingdom, to tell us what truth is, and God, ultimately, where we can find hope.
• 47:30
  SPEAKER_00: Lord, I thank you that we are children of the free woman.
• 47:37
  SPEAKER_00: Lord, we are not children born into slavery, but rather, God, you have redeemed us and rescued us, which is the story of your unending love for your people, is how you redeem them from their brokenness and bondage.
• 47:54
  SPEAKER_00: God, I ask that by the power of your Spirit, first of all, you would make clear what was unclear about this passage, but also, Lord, that you would help us to appreciate it, to really just rest in the truth that you gave us, that we are free people.
• 48:13
  SPEAKER_00: And God, no matter how we come, how we came into church this morning and wherever we're at, and whatever's going on in our life that makes us feel like we are in change, God, that you are the one who sets us free from those.
• 48:25
  SPEAKER_00: We thank you for these things, Lord.
• 48:27
  SPEAKER_00: And it's in Jesus' name that we pray.
• 48:29
  SPEAKER_00: Amen.