Galatians 4. We'll pick up in
verse 21. Let me get over there. Yeah, verse 21. You know, it's amazing how much
light the New Testament sheds on the Old Testament. When you
read the story of Abraham, Sarah, Isaac, Ishmael, you would have
never put this together if you didn't have the New Testament.
You didn't have this story that we're going to look at this morning
of the two covenants, two different people, two different Jerusalems.
all out of these two sons of Abraham. You know, when we look
at that, we think that was a bad situation of Abraham going into
Hagar. And it was not, you know, we're
not condoning that, but God can take something that's sinful
and bring something good out of it. And what a story we have
here, what understanding we have just by this story here, this
narrative, this allegory as Paul calls it, from the Old Testament. He reaches back to the Old Testament
and my, what a picture he paints. I titled this lesson, Two Covenants. Two Covenants or Children of
Promise. Everyone whom God saves is a
child of promise. God promised you, promised you
personally, you, to His Son to save you. Now, Paul speaks of
the two covenants given of God here in this portion of Scripture,
and he uses the two sons of Abraham. He's going to use Isaac, and
he's going to use Ishmael to illustrate this meaning, or their
meaning, There are two distinct covenants given in the Scriptures.
One is all of works and the other is all of grace. Ishmael represents
the covenant of works, being born of the bondwoman, a slave. She was a slave, a servant woman. And Isaac represents the covenant
of grace or promise. He's the child of promise, being
born of the free woman, Sarah. And these two covenants that
Paul will deal with here, these two covenants operate by two
totally different principles. They don't operate on the same
principles. One operates on the principle
of grace, and the other operates on the principle of works. And
neither two shall mix. Remember, he's talking to the
Galatians here who were trying to mix them. They can't be mixed. And he makes this so clear in
this portion of Scripture. Now he says in verse 21, Tell
me, ye that desire to be under the law, do you not hear the
law? Do you not have ears? What did
our Lord say? He said, He that hath ears, let
him hear. Do you not have ears? Do you
not hear what the law says? Do you not hear the demands of
the law? I just finished up Deuteronomy. I'm starting now in the book
of Joshua. And all those laws, all those laws, he says, do you
not hear the law? Do you not hear the demands of
the law? If you understood, if you really understood the law,
you would not be so eager to be under it. If you understood
it, if you understood the strictness of the law, how far reaching
it is, it reaches into the heart, it reaches into the motive. If
you really, and he's writing to them and to us, if we understand
it, we wouldn't desire to be under it. I don't want to be
under the law as a means of salvation because salvation is not going
to happen because we can't keep it. Listen to Romans 3. 19-20, Now we know that what
thing soever the law saith, it saith to them who are under the
law, that every mouth may be stopped, and all the world may
become guilty before God. Therefore by the deeds of the
law, by the doing of the law, there shall no flesh be justified
in his sight. Now we may justify one another,
but not in God's sight. And that's the sight I'm concerned
about. I'm concerned about being justified in God's sight. For
by the law is the knowledge of sin, not the knowledge of salvation. It's the knowledge of sin. And then Paul writes here in
verse 22 and 23, For it is written, he reaches back to the Old Testament,
that Abraham had two sons, the one by a bondmaid, the other
by a free woman. But he who was of the bondwoman
was born after the flesh. But he of the free woman was
by promise. The first son was born to a slave
woman, Hagar. She was the servant to Sarah.
And the second son was born to a free woman, Sarah, Abraham's
wife, who was never in bondage. Never. Henry has a good message
on this. It's called Born Free. Born free. You and I are born free. Who
are born of God. We're born free. We're not under
bondage. We're not slaves to a command
or commandments, to rituals and ceremonies and pictures. We're
not slaves to those. We're born free. We're free from
them. The Lord has freed us from them.
Now the first Son was born by the energy of the flesh, not
by promise. Not by promise. It's by natural
process. Not by promise, but by natural
process. And not when it was physically
impossible. You see, it was still physically
possible for Abraham to have a son. And of course he did.
He went into Hagar and she conceived and they had a son. He was born
to a slave woman. And it was by natural process.
There was no promise in this. Not at all. Isaac was by promise. He was born by promise. Abraham
and Sarah were old. It says they were old. They were
past the age of childbearing. I mean, they were way past the
age of childbearing. And so for her to have a son,
for Abraham to have a son, God had to intervene. God had to
perform a miracle. That's what happened. God had
to perform a miracle. You are a miracle. God's saving
you. You are a work of God. You're
a miracle. You're a son of promise. God had to perform a miracle
in order for Sarah and Abraham to have a son. And before they
did, God promised Abraham he'd have a son. And then he waited. until they got to the age where
they were past childbearing, and it was evident that God Almighty
had to make it happen. It's so beautiful. The picture
is so beautiful. I was thinking of this. In our
day and time, This decisionism in our day and time is nothing
more than another Ishmael being born by the energy of the flesh.
That's all decisionism is. It's just the energy of the flesh.
It's like Abraham and Sarah made a decision to help God along
and produce a son of bondage instead of waiting on God. And
I'm not going to put pressure on people from the pulpit to
make a decision. That would be creating another
Ishmael. We don't need any more Ishmaels.
We don't need any more of them. What we need are Isaacs. That's
what we have here this morning. All of you who believe, you're
Isaacs. You're all Isaacs. Son of promise is what you are. Now we come to the two covenants
he's going to speak of here in verse 24. He's saying, These
two sons, these two sons of Abraham, which things are an allegory,
these are the two covenants, the one from the Mount Sinai,
which genders or leads to bondage, which is Agar, An allegory is
a symbolic narrative. That's what it is. He's going
to take these two sons and he's going to give us a symbol, a
type, a picture that we can draw from and get understanding from,
spiritual understanding. Now, the first covenant, which
is from Sinai and gives birth to bondage, is represented by
Hagar, the slave, the slave girl, the woman. The very reason God
allowed Abraham, and boy, you wouldn't know this without the
New Testament. You wouldn't know it without this. The very reason
God allowed Abraham to have this son by this bondwoman was for
this story right here. He allowed it for this story.
It clears up a lot of things. It does. It really clears up
a lot of things, especially if you were a Jew. If you were raised
in that day, And Paul gave this to you, he told you this story,
and of course, the Spirit of God making it known to you, it
clears up a lot of things. But I see the wisdom of God in
this and allowing this, that we might have this story. And
then he speaks of two Jerusalems there in verse 25. For this Agar
is Mount Sinai in Arabia. and answers to Jerusalem, which
now is, and is in bondage with her children." Paul says the
Jerusalem that now is, is in bondage with her children. Now, this is more than a geographical
location. When Paul says Jerusalem that
now is, he means more than a geographical location. It's the religious
system of works And it leads to bondage. It leads to bondage. The Sinai covenant could only
produce children of bondage. It was never given. It was never
given to save. It was never given to save. It
was never given to find acceptance with God by. It was never given
for that purpose. All it could do was, as it says,
gender children for bondage. And those who follow the law
as a means of acceptance will always be in bondage. It's what
Paul's telling those Galatians. If you want to be under this,
if you want to be under this, here's what's going to happen.
You're just going to be under bondage. That's all it leads to. And you're
going to be subject to the wrath of God because you can't keep
the law. You can't keep the law. And I
know you know this. I mean, you've been brought up
on the gospel. You believe the gospel of grace. God's made it known
to you. But I do know this also. I know that in every one of us,
there's still that old nature. And that old nature is given
to a legalistic spirit. It's given to that. It's given
to this, I got to do something. I feel like I got to do something.
No, you don't. No, you don't. You just rest
in the Lord Jesus Christ and you trust him and him alone.
He did the doing. It's the doing and the dying
of the Lord Jesus that saves my soul. It's not His doing and
dying and what I do with it. Because I can tell you exactly
what I'm going to do with it. I'm going to reject it. Every human
being will reject the gospel. They'll reject it unless God
saves them. God has to save a sinner first
before that sinner will bow to the Lord Jesus Christ and receive
Him by faith and look to Him every time. But now he says here in verse
26, but Jerusalem, which is above, is free. Now he speaks of it
as being above because it's from above, it's of God. That covenant
of grace began with God in eternity. It began with God in heaven.
It began with God between him, his son, and the Holy Spirit.
You know, the whole trinity is involved in that covenant of
grace. The whole trinity is. The Father chose us, the Son
redeemed us, the Holy Spirit regenerates us. A man told me
one time that the work of the Holy Spirit wasn't as important
as the work of Christ. I said, you can't do that, you
can't say that. I said, if you take any one of
them away, we're lost. We're lost. Now I know this,
I know that everyone whom God saves, He saves for the glory
of His Son. He's going to populate heaven
with the people just like His Son. But that people is not going
to be there. That's not born of God. Born
of God, the Holy Spirit, regenerated. It is the Holy Spirit who applies
all the blessings of Christ to us. He applies the blessings
to us. So he says here, but Jerusalem
which is free, which is above is free, which is the mother
of us all. The Jerusalem which is above.
He's speaking here of the church and the kingdom of Christ. That's
who he's speaking of. That's the whole church that's
made up of Jews and Gentiles, which makes up the true Israel
of God. The whole church makes up the
true Israel of God, from the first one saved to the last one
saved. And he says, she's free. She's
free. The Messianic kingdom of Christ
is from above. It's not from Mount Sinai. The
church did not come from Mount Sinai. The Jerusalem that's above
was not generated, so to speak, from Mount Sinai. It was conceived and brought
forth by God Almighty in that covenant of grace And now we
see it. You're it. You're it. And you're
free. You are a free people. You're
free. You're free to worship God. You are free to worship
God in spirit and in truth this morning. And that's the only worship that
God accepts. That's the only worship that God Almighty accepts
is that which is from the heart. In spirit, it says in Hebrews,
I was trying to think of the verse, but it's in Hebrews, in
spirit and in truth. That's the worship God accepts.
That's the worship that's of God. That's why He accepts it,
because it's of Him. For it is written in verse 27,
For it is written, Rejoice thou barren that bearest not, break
forth and cry thou that travailest not, for the desolate hath many
more children than she which hath a husband." The law did
not generate one child. You know that? Not one child
of God. The law does not generate one child of God at all. Now,
this prophecy is from Isaiah 54.1. The church, and I believe
it's speaking here of the church, The church was small in her beginnings.
Twelve apostles. Twelve apostles go out preaching.
And from those twelve apostles going out preaching, it has gone
throughout the whole world. You know, don't think of heaven
being sparsely populated. Scripture speaks of it as an
innumerable company of people. Many, many. How many? And I do believe this. I believe
this all my heart. I believe those who died in infancy,
children, young little children, mentally handicapped, I believe
the Lord redeemed them. I do. I believe they redeemed
them. I tell you, there was a time when they didn't even, some people
wouldn't even name their children until they got to a certain age.
I was reading this in some place, they didn't even give him a name
until they got to a certain age to see if he's going to live.
The infancy death rate was high. It was high. He's going to populate
heaven with us whom he saves and we believe and born again
and with those who die in infancy, he takes them on home. There's
an innumerable company of people redeemed by the blood of the
Lord Jesus Christ, many of them. That's why He says, "...rejoice
thou barren that bearest not, break forth and cry thou that
travailest not, for the desolate hath many more children than
she which hath a husband." Now, we brethren, in verse 28, we
brethren, as Isaac was, are the children
of promise. He's speaking here, remember
who he's speaking to, these Galatians who were leaving grace, leaving
the gospel, and they were going back, they were going to go under
this system of works. These Judaizers came in, and
they were going down a wrong road. But he says, yeah, brethren,
we are children of promise. We're children of promise. We
are born in virtue of a promise. We are saved in virtue of a promise. God saved you because He promised
you to Christ. He didn't give me an opportunity
to get saved. He saved me because He promised
me. I'm a promised son of God to
Christ. You are too. You who believe.
We're sons of promise. But, he says there in verse 29,
"...but as then he that was born after the flesh persecuted him
that was born after the Spirit, even so it is now." Human nature
never changes, does it? It never changes. It will always
persecute God's sons and daughters. It will always do that. And this
is where we get the warfare within. This is where we get this struggle
that goes on within us. The flesh and the spirit war
against one another. And Paul was telling them that
this is why they are troubled by the Judaizers. A bunch of
Ishmaelites is what it is. They've come in to trouble you.
You're free. You're free-born. Don't you let
them put you under a system of works or a law. Don't you let them do that. He
said, you're free born. You're born from above. You're
born from above. And the covenant you have or
the covenant you are under and the covenant by which God deals
with you. We have to understand this. God
deals with every person according to a covenant. And God is dealing with us according
to the covenant of grace. that He promised His Son before
the world began, and that's how God deals with us. Nevertheless,
in verse 30, what saith the Scripture? Cast out the bondwoman and her
son, for the son of the bondwoman shall not be heir with the son
of the free woman. Cast Ishmael out. You see what
Paul's saying to these Galatians? Cast them out. Cast those Judaizers
out. He that brings another gospel
to you, preaches another gospel to you, cast him out. Don't bid
him Godspeed. You say that's harsh. No, no. If a mad dog came in this room,
would it be harsh if I shot it? I'd be protecting you, wouldn't
I? Cast him out. That's God protecting us from
these Judaizers, from these law men. Cast out the bondwoman. Cast out that covenant of works.
And don't you go back under it. Don't you follow it. Don't you
follow it. Don't try to mix works and grace.
One has to go. That's so clear here. It's either
one or the other. It's either one or the other. It can't be a mixture of either
one. It can't be by faith, start by faith and end by works. Paul said, you're not begun in
the spirit, and are you made perfect by the flesh? No, it
can't be. Can't be. So then brethren, I'm
going to read verse 31. So then brethren, we who are
born of God, who are born again, are not children of the bondwoman,
but of the free. Of the free. Never forget that
we are not born slaves. We are not born slaves to the
law, but we are born free to worship God in spirit and in
truth. The church in the Lord Jesus Christ is free.