08 Galatians 4:21-31 Who is your mother?

Speaker 1: This is Wednesday in the Word, a women's ministry at Trinity Presbyterian Church in Charlottesville, Virginia. Today is October twenty-sixth, twenty eleven. Our passage is Galatians chapter four, verses twenty-one through thirty-one. Our teacher is Krisan Marotta. For more talks in this series, please visit our website, which is www.Wednesdayintheword.com. Well, we are I actually have a little levity for us today. We're coming to the end of the doctrinal section of Galatians. And I found this on the internet. Since we've been talking about law versus grace and sonship versus slavery and promise versus deal, this is a mommy's Old Testament. So you you ought to, and we talked about this, you know how you you graduate from the law. Okay, so these are the dietary laws. Of the beasts of the field and of the fishes of the sea, and of all the foods that are acceptable in my sight, you may eat, but not in the living room. Of the hoofed animals broiled or ground into burgers, you may eat, but not in the living room. Of the cereals cereal grains, of the corn and of the wheat and of the oats and of all the cereals that are of bright color and unknown origin, you may eat, but not in the living room. Indeed, when you reach the place where the living room carpet begins, any food or beverage there you may not eat, neither may you drink. But if you are sick and are lying down and watching something, then you may eat in the living room. Now these are the laws concerning the table. And if you are seated in your high chair or in a chair such as a greater person might use, keep your legs and feet below you as they were, neither raise up your knees nor place your feet upon the table, for that is an abomination to me. Yes, even when you have an interesting bandage to show, your feet upon the table are an abomination and worthy of rebuke. Drink your milk when it is g as it is given to you, neither use it on any utensils, neither fork nor knife nor spoon, for that is not what they are for. And if you will dip your blocks in the milk and lick it off, you will be sent away. When you have drunk, let the cup remain on the upon the table and do not bite upon its edge, and by your teeth, hold it to your face in order to make noises like a duck. For you will be sent away. This is one of my favorites. When you chew your food, keep your mouth closed until you have swallowed, and do not open it to show your brother or your sister what is within. I say to you, do not do so, even if your brother or sister has done the same to you. Oh, let's see. Eat your food only, do not eat that which is not food, neither seize the table between your jaws, nor use it the use the raiment upon the table to wipe your lips. I say again to you, do not touch it, but leave it as it is. And behold, even as I have said, it will come to pass. Okay, now one more. Here's the laws pertaining to dessert. We judge between the plate that is unclean and the plate that is clean. Saying, if the plate is clean, then you shall have dessert. But if the un of the unclean plate, these are the laws. If you have eaten most of your meat and two bites of your peas, with each bite consisting of not less than three peas each, or in total six peas eaten where I can see, and you have also eaten enough potatoes to fill two forks, both forkfuls eaten where I can see, then you shall have dessert. But if you eat a lesser number of peas, and yet you eat the potatoes, still you shall not have dessert. And if you eat the peas and leave the potatoes uneaten, you shall not have dessert. No, not even a small portion thereof. And if you try to deceive by moving the potatoes or peas around with a fork, that it may appear that you have eaten what you have not, you will fall into iniquity. And I will know, and you shall have no dessert. Various other laws and statutes. Bite not lest you be cast into quiet time. Neither drink your own bath water nor the bathwater of any kind, nor rub yourself against the car, nor against any building, nor eat sand. Leave the cat alone. For what has the cat done that you should so afflict it with tape? And hum not that humming in your nose as I read, nor stand between the light and the book. Indeed, you will drive me to madness, nor forget what I've said about the tape. And then finally, the complaints and lamentations section. Oh my children, you are disobedient, for when I tell you what you must not do, you argue and dispute hotly even to the littlest detail. And when I did not seed, you cry out and hit and kick. Yes, even sometimes do you spit and shout stupid head and other blasphemies. And you hit and kick the wall in the moulding thereof when you are sent to the corner. And though the law teaches that no one shall be sent to the corner for more minutes than he has years of age, yet I would leave you there all day. Almighty am I in anger. But upon being sent to the corner, you ask straight away, Can I come out? And I reply, No, you may not come out. And you ask again. And again I give the same reply. But when you ask again a third time, then you may come out. It goes on and on. But I thought you'd appreciate that. Call them mommy's Old Testament. There's um there's laws concerning uh screaming, the face and hands. It's pretty funny. So I thought you'd appreciate that since we've been talking about the law and graduating from the law, and all those rules eventually end. Okay, we are in Galatians 4 today, verses 21 through 31, and a lot of people consider this passage the most difficult one in Galatians as far as Bible study goes. It's difficult because Paul assumes you have a knowledge of the Old Testament, which we may or may not have today. There are references to historical people and places that we might not be able to locate on a map, and then his argument is allegorical, it's not didactic, and it's kind of technical. And then on top of that, Paul seems to use a Bible study method that we find a little questionable. Despite all that, there is widespread agreement on what Scott Paul is saying. Most everyone agrees on the main point. So we're going to talk about what why it's hard as a Bible study, and then we're going to talk about his point. And just to remind you, where we are in the book, you'll remember Galatians is divided into three sections. Chapters one and two are biographical. That's where he defends his authority to minister as an apostle and teach the gospel. Chapters three and four are doctrinal. There he defends the doctrine of justification by faith. And chapters five and six, which we're coming to, are practical. He's going to now, having finished the doctrine and his authority, apply all the things he's been teaching to real life. So I can hardly wait to get to that. So just to remember where we are in three and four. In chapters three and four, he makes a series of five arguments for the fact that we're justified by faith alone, and we are looking at the last of the five today. So in the first one, which is three, one through five, he argues from experience and he says, look at your own experience. Did you receive the Spirit because you kept the law or because you believed? Well, obviously it's because you believed. And in six through fourteen, he says that experience is confirmed by Scripture. The Scripture has taught from the beginning that Abraham believed and it was counted to him as righteous, as righteousness, and it's always been so. And then in 15 through 22, he says God made a promise to Abraham, but the law which came later was a deal, and the deal does not nullify the promise. And then he goes on a slight digression in 323 through 411, where he answers the question, well, why did he give us the law then? And he explains that the law was functioned as a kind of drill sergeant to him in our rebellion and to drive us back to God. So it put a fence around us to teach us not only that we were sinful, but to get us to turn back to God. Then last week we looked at his fourth argument where he makes a personal appeal to the Galatians based on their relationship to them, and he reminds them how much they loved and respected him when he first preached to them, and how much he loved and served them when he was with them, and he basically says, Nothing on my side has changed. You can still trust me. So now we're going to look at his final argument in 421 through 31, and this will close the doctrinal section of the book, and the next two chapters he will start applying it. And so remember, he's demonstrating that salvation is a matter of faith and not works, and it comes by grace, not law, and he's defending this against the Judaizers who were teaching the Galatians that you started with faith, but then you had to keep the law in order to be saved. Okay, so today we're looking at um his allegory, and his argument is not really an argument so much as an illustration. So he's already made this point four times, and now he's gonna kind of round it out and close it all out with an illustration. So just like we would make a point and then we then we borrow it from a story to try to tie down the point and make it clear, that's uh what I think he's doing. And he's going back to an Old Testament historical vent and saying, we can this illustrates the point he's trying to make. And the point he's trying to make is it's not enough that Abraham is your father. So just because you were born Jewish is not enough to get you a free path into heaven, that's not what the key to salvation is. So it he's gonna make that point, which he's been making throughout chapter three, now he's gonna illustrate it with a historical event. So the problem is what's he doing? Uh, what's an allegory and why is he using it? So the word in in 424, when he says, now this may be interpreted allegorically, that word occurs nowhere else in the New Testament. It's not found in the Septuagint. Um, so it's a little we don't have a whole lot of evidence for what it means, but it does occur in the classic writers, classical Greek, and it means to have an underlying meaning. So the idea is you say one thing is true, and then that thing is true, and it implies another thing that is true, is kind of what we think the word means. So you're implying something else that is true by what you have said. Now, in Bible study and in literature, an allegory is a continued metaphor where you take the elements in the story and you compare them to something in reality, and you say the point of resemblance is the point of the allegory. So allegories, parables, and metaphors are bound in the writings of the ancient Near East. They were a favorite way of teaching and illustrating. Um, it seems that the Jews especially thought that you could grasp truth and remember it more if it was transmitted in a story. And the ancient Greek philosophers used this kind of method a lot. So I'm speculating that Paul is using this same method because it was the popular method of the day, and now he's trying to make his argument airtight. He's covering all the bases and saying, just here's one more way to argue. Um if you're familiar with church history, you know that the early church greatly abused allegories. And there was a time when many of the early church uh fathers, particularly those who origin and those who followed him, made the Old Testament almost entirely allegorical. And they found mystery in the most plain and straightforward story uh all the stories of the Old Testament. So they looked at the Bible as almost wholly a book of riddles and enigmas and puzzles where every little word and verb and noun had to be was a symbol of something else, and the more fanciful and ingenious your interpretation, the better. And that went on for quite some time. Um and since anyone could find anything in any passage of scripture, scripture became almost wholly useless as an infallible guide. Unfortunately, the church eventually rejected that and better principles of interpretation prevail. And now people it's widely recognized you interpret the Bible just like you interpret any other book, that you use the same principles of human language that you use to understand conversations with your friends and your neighbors or any other book, and that we should not allegorize Scripture any more than we would allegorize Homer or Shakespeare or something. So we're gonna talk a little bit more about that at the end, but all that is to say, I don't think that Paul has gone what he's doing is more an illustration, not so much uh allegory in the way Origin and the early church fathers did it. Okay, so we're gonna break this passage down in three sections. In 21 through 23, he gives the historical background. So 21 to 23 is the historical background. Abraham had two sons, one by a slave, one by a free woman. In 24 through 27, he's gonna illustrate his point by comparing it to these stories, and he's gonna argue the two mothers represent two religions, one a slave to law keeping, and the other freedom in Christ. So 21 through 23 is historical, 24 to 27 is the allegory he makes his point. And then 28 through 31, he applies it. And he says, Okay, this is what I want you to learn from it. As Christians, we are sons of the free woman, so we have freedom in Christ. We're no longer slaves to the law, which of course is the point he's been making for the last two chapters. Okay, so remember that the Jews believed that they were eternally safe because they were descendants of Abraham. So they thought God made a covenant with Abraham. He promised to make Abraham a great nation, to give him the land of Canaan, to make his offspring as numerous as the stars, such that all the other nations would be blessed through Abraham, and they say, We're in that covenant, so we are safe. And the false teachers that are challenging Paul are counting on that. They're saying, Yes, you have to be in that covenant to be saved. So the Jews boasted that Abraham was their father, they thought they were secure, and they were teaching that everyone had to go back to that law to be saved. Now, John the Baptist warns against this very thing, as does Jesus. I just want to point those passages out to you. This is Matthew 3, 7 through 10. John the Baptist speaking, he says, But when he saw many of the Pharisees and the Sadducees coming to be baptized, coming to his baptism, so the Pharisees and the Sadducees are the Jewish leaders of the day, he said to them, You brood of vipers, who warned you to flee from the wrath that is to come, bear fruit in keeping with repentance, and do not presume to say to yourselves, We have Abraham as our father. For I tell you, God is able from these stones to raise up children for Abraham. Even now the axe is laid to the root of the trees. Every tree, therefore, that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire. So he's warning the leaders of his day, don't think just because you have Abraham as your father that you are safe, because the axe is already at the tree. Those who are do not have bear fruit, and I he I think what he's talking about is have faith and repent, they're going to be cut down. Jesus teaches the same thing. This is in John 8, uh, verses 31 through 42. I'm not going to read all of them, but just the key ones. So that's John 8, verses 31 through 42. So Jesus said to the Jews who had believed in him, If you abide by my word, you are truly my disciples, and you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free. And they answered him, We are offspring of Abraham and have never been enslaved to anyone. How is it that you say you will become free? So you see, their mindset is, wait a minute, we're safe. We're offspring of Abraham. You don't have to tell us this. And Jesus answered them, Truly, truly I say to you, everyone who commits sin is a slave to sin, and he goes on to talk about that. And they answer him again in 839, Abraham is our father. And Jesus said to them, If you were Abraham's children, you would be doing the works Abraham did. But now you seek to kill me, a man who has told you the truth that I heard from God, this is not what Abraham did. So he warns them about Abraham is not truly their father, even though they are descended from him. It's the same point. But notice their attitude is, wait a minute, we're safe because Abraham is our father. So Paul's been making that point throughout chapter three. We see Jesus and John the Baptist make it, and now Paul's going to try to wrap it all up, make that same point by saying, look, Abraham had more than one son. Both sons had the same father, they had the same genetics, but one had the promise and one didn't. So it's m it's not enough to say that Abraham is your father. That's his main point. Now, you're probably saying, well, Abraham had six other sons by Keturah, the woman that he married after Sarah's death, and that is true, but for Paul's purposes, he's he's just using Abraham's most prominent sons to illustrate his point. Okay, now we're going to jump in. So Galatians 4.21. Let's look how he starts this off. Tell me, you who desire to be under the law, do you not listen to the law? So the first thing to notice is this passage is addressed to people who want to be under the law. And we go, well, that doesn't apply to us because we don't want to be under the law. But if you think about it, we may not be rushing out to learn how to live like Jews, but how frequently do we do do we ask, what must I do to be a Christian? What is being a Christian look like? You know, is it okay to um to drink in moderation or to drink this or that, or it was or there dancing that's off-limit, or do I have to hang out with certain types of friends, or volunteer and be in particular ministries, or you know, do I have to be in a particular political party or all of that? We start we start asking those questions. What does it mean to be a Christian? And it's easy to go from that kind of natural desire to please God because now I have faith to start making our own rules and traditions and practices about, well, this is what faith looks like. So there's a sense in which this passage is addressed to people like us. And his point is, okay, if you want to be under the law, do you listen to what the law says? Because the law condemns you. The law says you're a sinner. Now, I just want to clarify, he's addressing people who are doing more than just obeying the law. So he's not, it's not that the Galatians are saying the law is good and righteous and just, and it's a description of what God values, and it teaches me his worldview and his mindset, and I want to obey it out of gratitude to him. That's not the attitude Paul's writing against. The Galatians are saying, are taking that one step further, following the teaching of the Judaizers and saying salvation depends on keeping the law. So there's a real sense in which they're returning to a covenant of works, and that's what Paul is writing against. So it's not the attitude of I love the law, it's a great description of holiness and righteousness. It's the attitude of I have to do this to please God. I have to do this to prove I'm a believer. So we might study the law and love it and appreciate it for what it teaches us about God and what it uh reveals about his character and his values and his righteousness, but we also recognize it does not now, nor was it ever intended to bring salvation. And that it's that looking at it as a means to salvation that Paul is writing against. So he's saying, Do you not understand what the law says? Don't you realize that the law declares you guilty? Okay, now we get into the allegory. So 42 and 23, 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 according to the promise. So to contrast this bondage under the law with freedom in Christ, he's gonna make a comparison between Ishmael and Isaac, and he says they had the same father but different mothers. So Hagar was a slave and her son was Ishmael, and they were both uh born into slavery. Sarah and Isaac, her son, were free, they were heirs, they were treated accordingly as free. Now, Paul is not implying that these people never existed. He is not implying that this is all just a historic uh just a story. I think if you asked him, he would say these are actual historical people who lived real lives. We he expects his audience to know who they are, he's counting on them to be familiar with their history, but he's using their story to make a point. So he's saying, look, the boys are different. First, they have different mothers, one was born from a slave and one was born from a free woman, and they were born in different ways. One was born according to the flesh, i.e., the natural kind of human effort, normal processes, but the other was born from a promise. From a human standpoint, Isaac's birth was impossible. Both Sarah and Abraham were too old to have children, and Sarah had been barren. So you've got this normal human effort versus the promise of God. And that's the historical background. Now he's gonna make the comparison. Oh, wait, let me make sure just to make sure you understand this. If you have your Bibles, you can turn to Genesis 16, if not, I'll read it to you. Um, just to make sure you we're familiar with the history. So this is the circumstances surrounding Ishmael's birth. Genesis sixteen, one. Now Sari, Abram's wife, had borne him no children. She had a female Egyptian servant whose name was Hagar, and Sarah said to Abram, Behold, the Lord has prevented me from bearing children. Go into my servant, it may be that I shall obtain children by her. And Abraham listened to the voice of Sari. So after Abraham had lived in the ten years in the land of Canaan, Sari, Abram's wife, took Hagar the Egyptian, her servant, and gave her to Abraham as her husband. So instead of waiting for the promise, they're taking matters into their own hands, and Ishmael is born in the normal human effort, and that's the principle Paul's getting at. He was born according to the flesh. He was born according to how do I get the blessing my way. And so Hager and Ishmael illustrate or stand for the kind of natural self-effort that you would find or legalism. Over in Genesis 17, look at how Sarah is born, or um Isaac is born. So this is 17, 15 through 21. God said to Abraham, As for Sarah, your wife, you shall not call her Sari, but Sarah shall be her name. I will bless her, and moreover, I will give you a son by her. I will bless her, and she shall become nations. Kings of people shall come from her. So again, I will bless, I will give, I will bless. He is this is all God's doing. Then Abraham fell on his face and laughed and said to himself, Shall a child be born to a man who is a hundred years old? And shall Sarah, who is ninety years old, bear a child? And Abraham said to God, Oh, that Ishmael might live before you. And God said, No, but Sarah, your wife, shall bear you a son, and you shall call his name Isaac. I will establish my covenant with him as an everlasting covenant for his offspring after him. As for Ishmael, I have heard you. Behold, I have blessed him and will make him fruitful and multiply him greatly. He shall father twelve princes, and I will make him into a great nation. Then then the key verse, but I will establish my covenant with Isaac, whom Sarah shall bear to you at this time next year. So the point of the Genesis passage is Abraham's got two sons, one does not get the covenant, but one does. So it's not enough to say Abraham's my father, there's something else going on. So he says, Yes, I will bless Ishmael, but my covenant is with Isaac. Two sons, same father, different mothers. So one child is born normally, one is born supernaturally. Sarah is barren, it's a miracle that she conceived, and by the time she was 90 and Abraham was a hundred, it's too late. But um it's based on the promises of God. And Hebrews 11:11 makes a big issue out of that, and rightly so. Uh if you look at that in Hebrews 11, 11 it says, through faith, um Abraham, I'm not going to read it exactly, but Sarah and Abraham received the strength to conceive. And he makes a point, it was because of their faith. This is the promise, this is grace. God gave them the power to have a baby after it was too late, and it was so Isaac is the child of promise and of faith. So you've got Ishmael illustrating legalism, Isaac illustrating faith. Okay, now he goes on. Look at 424 to 27. And this may be interpreted allegorically. So now he's going to make his point and he's going to say those so that's the history. Here's what I want you to learn from it. These women are two covenants. One is from Mount Sinai, bearing children for slavery. She is Hagar. Now Hagar is in Mount 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. So he's saying, These two sons, there's a sense in which these two sons illustrate the two covenants. Now remember, a covenant is a contract or a promise between parties, two parties, and God established the old covenant through Moses and the new covenant through Christ. So the old covenant was based on law with people agreeing, here's what we will do and not do. If we do these things, we are blessed. If we don't do these things, God will curse you. And it was a two-sided deal, basically, where everybody had to pull their part. But the new covenant is a promise. It was ratified by Christ and it's foreshadowed by the Abrahamic covenant, and it's saying, God will bless because he is God without condition. He will give to those who have the same faith as Abraham. So Paul's saying, okay, the old covenant was made in Sinai, which is in the in Arabia, outside the promised land, and it was made according to the flesh. So Hager and her children were slaves. They were born outside the promised land, they were born according to the flesh, they are children of the law and are slaves just as Hagar. So Mount Sinai is in Arabia, and the Arabians today are the sons of Hagar, they claim that Abraham is their father as well. So Hager represents the old covenant of the law and stands for the Jerusalem of Paul's day, which was the Jews who were seeking through law-keeping to please God. Now he says the other covenant is different. This covenant was made in the Jerusalem above, or the heavenly Jerusalem. Sarah and Isaac were free. They were born Isaac was born in the promised land. He was born supernaturally because of the promises of God. And he makes a comparison in 26. If you are a believer, if you have the faith that Abraham had, then you have found this freedom in Christ. You are a child of of Sarah and heir to the promised. So two women, two sons, two covenants, and then two places. He contrasts Mount Sinai and Arabia with the um the promised land and then the Jerusalem of today with the heavenly Jer Jerusalem. And all of that is to say if you're trying to please God by law keeping, then you are just like Ishmael, who did not inherit the covenant, who was not a child of the covenant. The covenant was made with Isaac. In contrast to the children of Sarah, who was the line of Isaac, they received the promise, they receive it by grace, it's a miracle, and um it's all based on the grace of God. So there's the contrast. You've got two descendants of Abraham, but what really matters is whether they have faith or not. And that is represented by who their mother is, metaphorically. Follow me through all that. When you start thinking about it, is uh that's why most people agree this is what he's saying. It doesn't matter, just it's not enough to claim Abraham is your father. What really matters is are you like him in faith? And he's illustrating that by who is your metaphorical mother, one who had faith or one who didn't. Then he concludes this section by quoting Isaiah 54, 1. And in that passage, Isaiah is addressing the exiles. He's also speaking metaphorically to the exiles, and he's comparing being in exile as the result of God's judgment and wrath to being like a barren woman whose husband has deserted her. She has no hope of having children. So if you're barren, if you have no husband, you have no hope at all. And he's saying, that's how you exiles are. You've been driven out of the land. It looks like you have no hope, but the exile will end, you will be restored, God's wrath and judgment will end, and so he's comparing, Isaiah is comparing the future of the exiles to a barren woman who is now has more children than she could ever imagine. So because of the promises of God, God's people will the exile will end and they will be more numerous when they return from exile than they were before. So that passage was originally written to the exiles in Babylon, but Paul is using that language to apply it to Sarah, and he says, the words illustrate that um see if I can say it. So there was this unfruitful childless person that he's comparing it to, this childless woman, and all of a sudden she rejoices because she has more children than the one who has a husband. So it may look like you're getting to God through lawkeeping. That would be the woman who has the husband, but the one who seems to be outside the covenant, who seems to have no hope, actually has all the hope. It's because of the grace of God. So just like a barren woman with no husband and no possibility of children will rejoice in the miracle of all these offsprings, so the exiles who have no hope will return from exile and be more fruitful, and in the same way, Sarah, who had no hope of having children, now she has more descendants than the stars as well. I mean, it's not just Abraham whose descendants were more numerous than the stars, it is Sarah's as well. So all of that is to argue it's not enough to claim that Abraham is your father. The real question is who is your mother? And if you strive to please God by keeping the law, then Hager is your metaphorical mother and you're in bondage. But if you have prom if you have faith in the promises and the grace of God, then Sarah is your metaphorical mother and you will inherit the promise giving to Abraham. Okay? Now he wraps it up. So let's look at twenty-eight through thirty-one. Now you brothers like Isaac are children of the promise, but just at the time he who but let me try that again, but just as at that time he who was born according to the flesh persecuted him who was born according to the spirit, so also it is now. But what does the scripture say? Cast out the slave woman and her son, for the son of the slave woman shall not inherit with the son of the free woman. So, brothers, we are not children of the slave, but of the free woman. So now he's applying it. And he's saying, You are not like Ishmael, you are like Isaac. You have heard the gospel and believed and been given faith, you are children of the promise. So you are not in the condition of Israel, of Ishmael, to whom no promise was made. You're in the condition of Isaac, to who the promise was made. And there's a sense in which what the Galatians are doing is they're trading their Isaac heritage for an Ishmael heritage, if you will. They're trading the promised land for um Arabia, they're they're trading the heavenly Jerusalem for the earthly Jerusalem to continue his metaphor. And Paul's saying, that's foolish. Why would you want to do that? Why would you want to go back to slavery? We're children of the promise. So don't go backwards. Now he warns that one result of being the child of the promise is persecution. And that's uh in Genesis 21:9, I think is the incident he's referring to in 429 here of Galatians. Ishmael mocked and persecuted Isaac, and he's saying, Yep, that's going to keep happening today. The uh the other side will mock and persecute you, but the true heirs of Abraham are not his children just by their physical descent, which would be only Jews. The true children are those who are his like him in spirit, and they can be either Jews or Gentiles. So the true heirs are those who have faith like him. Then we have to kind of figure out what's he saying in 430 when he quotes Sarah saying, Cast out the bondwoman and her son. This was the language Sarah used in Genesis 21.10. She's talking to uh you, as you might imagine, the relationship between Hagar and Sarah was not so great. There's a lot of jealousy and bickery going on, and she t turns to Abraham and asks Abraham to cast her out. And Paul quotes that language, which Sarah uses, and I think he's using it here by saying, just like Hagar was cast out, so we should cast out lawkeeping. So we should reject that way of life. We should reject that kind of effort, self-effort as a means of salvation. And I think again he's he's using the language of Scripture to say, reject that, cast that out, give that up, don't go back to lawkeeping, don't be tempted to try to please God through lawkeeping. We're children of the promise, we're free. And that closes the in the allegory. And let me just make a couple of comments about it as a Bible study method, and then I want to do a little bit of application. First, as I said earlier, Paul does not mean to teach by using this that that Hagar and Sarah never existed, that the events of Genesis never happened. I think he does, in fact, treat them as actual historical persons and real people, and we should too. And he's using their story to illustrate his point. And if you think about it, we do this all the time today. We borrow the language of Scripture and we use it, sometimes in context, sometimes not, to make a point. So how many times have you heard some someone talk about, oh, I'm in the wilderness, or this is my wilderness period? Well, we're borrowing the language of the Exodus to talk about something in our lives. We're making a we're making a comparison, or we might talk about reaching our promised land, or lusting after forbidden fruit, or you know, putting out a fleece to see what God wants, or finding manna from heaven. You know, I might say, oh, that was just like manna from heaven, or even taking at my cross. All of that is language of scripture, and we use it to make a point about something that's happening today. And that's okay. I think that's what Paul's doing. He's saying his readers were familiar with this story, and he's using it to illustrate his point. So he's making a comparison. Um, so there are parallel points between the history and the truth he's talking about, and he's saying this illustrates, one illustrates the other. And so I don't think he's really using it by way of a as a didactic argument so much as an illustration of the point he's already made. So he's not making substitutions and finding riddles in the text, and and he's just using a familiar story to illustrate a point. So uh all that I would say, don't try this at home, unnecessarily, but we'll let Paul do it. Okay, so what does this mean to us? Let's see if we can we've just gone through five arguments for why we're justified by faith alone. What what can we take away from that or how can we I'm gonna kind of wrap up all five. What can we learn from that? So remember, he's made the distinction between the works of the law and hearing with faith. He's made a distinction between being under the spirit or being under the flesh. He's made a distinction between the blessing and the curse, the law and the promise, sonship in slavery. So how can what can we take away from all that? Well, at the risk of um trying this at home, which I just told you not to do, I'm gonna try to give you an illustration to make that point and also to kind of because I think this is the kind of thing Paul was doing. But mind's made up. This is in a historical situation. So suppose you have a child and his father and they're walking down a dangerous path and they're holding hands. There are two ways to think about how they're holding hands. The first way you can think about it is that the child is grasping his father's hand and holding tightly, and if he lets go, it's his fault. So in that case, you would say the safety of the child depends on how tightly he clings to and his father's hand or how firmly he holds on to the father. And that's like keeping the law. That's one approach to God is how tightly I follow him and prove to him I'm righteous and keep the law to show him that I that I am deserving of his favor. Second, you could think of it the other way around, that the father is holding on to the child's hands. And it's only if the father lets go that the child will fall. And in that case, the child safely depends on how firmly and consistently the father is holding on to him. And that's the promise of justification by faith. God has promised he will never let go of your hand. Now, we can push the analogy a little further and say, okay, that the child gets distracted and loosens his grip, and then he might stumble and fall, and the father might let him stumble and fall and scrape his knee to teach him something. The child might even incur his father's displeasure, but the father will never release his grip on the child, the child will never fall over the cliff. And I think that's part of the point Paul's been talking to us. Uh Paul's been making about law keeping versus grace. The point is God has promised He will never let you go, and you can rest assured in that. Now, it is true that the Bible frequently teaches us to cling to God, and we are capable of letting go, and sometimes we do, uh, you know, we doubt or we struggle or we turn away. And obedience would say, hold as tightly as you can, and we may say, Well, our goal is to hold tightly to God, but even as we do that, we have the confidence that it is because God never lets go that we are safe, that he will never abandon us. We may fall, we may stumble, we get hurt, um, but he will never abandon us. So we obey the law in the sense that we delight in it, we delight in it, it's in wanting to hunger and thirst after righteousness, and it's it's description of that. But our salvation depends not on how tightly we hold on, but how God is holding on to us. Follow me through that? All right, so now let's make it one take it one more step. How many of you are tired and feel like you're about to crack under the pressures of daily life? And you know, you have this huge to-do list that's probably waiting for you the minute you walk out the door because our culture is activity addicted. You know, we we are not happy unless we are busy, and so if you want something done, you have to do it yourself, and there's always something that needs cleaning or fixing or changing or feeding or repairing or updating or handling or anything, there's always emailed answer or something. And we yet if we stop, if we're honest, we have to admit that we're not really in control. We're not up to organizing and running our lives all by ourselves. We can't control all the circumstances of our lives. It's exhausting, it doesn't work. Uh no matter how hard we try or how many circles we run in, there's always something that goes wrong or slips through the cracks, or some unexpected thing happens that slumps us. So that's there's a sense in which we can treat life like we're always working, trying to prove ourselves, trying to demonstrate how good we are. Maybe we're not trying to demonstrate to God how good we are, but we might be to the rest of the church, you know, that we're trying to show that we can handle all these demanding circumstances. We can be, you know, the daughter that our parents expect, we can be the wife our husband really wants, or the kind of mother you know you ought to be, perfect all the time, never angry, always patient, right? Haven't met that one yet. You know, or maybe you you have to meet all your boss's expectations or get the perfect grades in school, um, or be there when every last one of your friends needs you, and we're always trying to show we have it all together. Life works and it's up to us and we're doing okay, but it isn't. And the promise of the gospel is God is holding on to your hand. You don't have to keep it all together all the time. You can trust that He is there with you walking you through. So the promise of the gospel is, as Psalm 46.10 says, cease striving and know that I am God. Um you have someone you can always depend on. You have someone you can trust who, no matter how crazy it looks, it will get he will make it right. Someone's arms you can crawl into who will love you, no matter how unlovable you are. That's the promise of the gospel. You don't have to earn that place. So, Psalm 46, 10, cease striving and know that I am gone. God, Matthew 11, 28, come to me, all you are weary and heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls, for my yoke is easy and my burden is life, is light. That's what's so amazing about grace. It's a promise, it's not a deal, it's grace, it's not law. And ultimately we can rest in the finished work of Jesus that our success depends not on how well we strive, but on how much God loved us. So ultimately, He's holding on to your hand and He will not let you go.