Some of the books of the Bible
seem to me to be more important than others, but that's because
of my ignorance of what those lesser important ones seem to
be. But this one, the book of Genesis
is an amazing book because in it we see all of the doctrines
of the gospel. You see the fall of our fallen
Adam. You see our representation in
Adam. You see God's electing or his
redeeming grace in the Lamb of God. You just follow it through
Genesis. You see his choice of Noah and then Abraham. His electing
grace in Jacob and not Esau. You see his covenants. And this is where we're going
to go today. Now the book of Genesis was written by Moses. And so was Exodus, Leviticus,
Numbers, and Deuteronomy. Those first five books of the
Bible were written by Moses. And you've always heard that
advice that if you're going to understand what someone has written,
always read all that they've written. That's what we're going
to see today, that the people who missed the truth were neglecting
the first part of what Moses had written. They were only focusing
on the book of Exodus, for example, and Leviticus, and so on. So
they missed that. They didn't realize that Moses
wrote all that he did to convey a larger message, which was the
gospel of Christ. So we're going to see that today.
I've entitled this message, Two Covenants, and you'll see quickly
why that's the case. Last week, if you recall, we
saw how in the 15th chapter of Genesis, God foreshadowed the
nation of Israel going down into Egypt under bondage for 400 years
and being afflicted there, and God bringing them out again.
We saw in that how that we are brought out of our bondage to
Satan, sin, and the law by the redeeming blood of Christ. And
that this was all told beforehand by God to Abraham. And Abraham
had to wait, and so did that nation of Israel. They had to
wait in hope for God's deliverance. And so in that chapter, in chapter
15, we see it again. This theme that we see, that
is repeating in Abraham's life, the theme of believing God's
Word and waiting in hope for the salvation of the Lord. Psalm
27, 13, and 14 is all about hope. But before we begin, let's pray.
Dear Father, we pray that you would be with us today as your
dear children by the Lord Jesus Christ. And we pray Lord that
you would give to us an understanding by your spirit and this faith,
this precious faith to believe you and to walk in this life
as Abraham did. Believing your word, looking
in hope for the fulfillment of all that you've promised on the
basis of our Lord Jesus Christ, that son through whom all the
nations of the earth are blessed, justified by his righteousness.
given eternal life because of his righteousness, and found
in him their covenant head. We pray, Lord, that you would
give us this grace to believe him, to look to him in all things.
Lift yourself up in your Son today, in our eyes, so that we
might see him and believe him. In Jesus' name we pray. Amen.
Genesis 16. Let me just give you a snapshot. This is Abraham and Sarah before
they had children, God had promised them that they would have a son.
God promised that through their son that they would have, that
God would save all people out of all nations of the earth.
The Gentiles, that's us. Gentiles, we are not Jews by
nature. We're not Jews by birth. We're not Jews because we're
in that nation. We're Gentiles by nature, and we have no claim
to what God said in the Old Testament, except His promise here to Abraham. And in that promise, we do. But
God had promised them that they would have a son, and they looked
forward to the birth of their son, which they didn't have yet,
even though they were old. God spoke that first to Abraham
when he was 75, and now he's 86 in this chapter. And later on, they're not even
going to have a son until Abraham's 99, almost 100 years old. It
seemed unlikely. Sarah couldn't have children.
She was barren, as the Bible says it. She was unable to have
children. And Abraham was old. Together,
they could not have children. Together, they were dead to bearing
children. But God had promised and Abraham
had believed that promise. And so it even says in chapter
15 verse 6 that God counted to him as righteousness what he
believed. That the Lord Jesus Christ would
be his righteousness. Through whom he would come through
his son Isaac. So Abraham believed God. But
now in this chapter something else happens. What we see is
that Abraham and Sarah begin to doubt. And they begin to think
of how they can help God accomplish this promise. They didn't think
of it in those terms. They just thought, well, God has promised
a son, and it's not happening, so we must have to get busy in
some way to make this happen. And that's the lesson that we
are going to focus on today. So let's read it together. Verse
1, Now Sarai, Abram's wife, bare him no children, and she had
a handmaid, an Egyptian, whose name was Hagar, And Sarai said unto Abram, Behold,
now the Lord hath restrained me from bearing. I pray thee,
go in unto my maid. It may be that I may obtain children
by her. In those days, it was legal for
a woman to bear children to her husband's name and for her family
by having her slave actually bear that child. So she says,
well, let's do it this way. You go take my slave, Hagar. And she says, it may be that
I may obtain children by her. And Abram hearkened. He listened
to the voice of Sarai, his wife. And Sarai, Abram's wife, took
Hagar, her maid, her slave girl, the Egyptian, after Abram had
dwelt 10 years in the land of Canaan and gave her to her husband
to be his wife. So Abram now is going to bear
children through Hagar, the slave girl. And he went in unto Hagar,
and she conceived. And when she saw that she had
conceived, her mistress was despised in her eyes. Her mistress was
her master, Sarai. And Sarai said to Abraham, My
wrong be upon thee. I have given my maid into thy
bosom. And when she saw that she had conceived, I was despised
in her eyes, the Lord judge between me and thee. But Abram said to
Sarai, Behold, thy maid is in thy hand. Do to her as it pleaseth
thee. And when Sarai dealt hardly with
her, she fled from her face. So I'm going to skip now over
to chapter 21, if you want to turn over there. Because there's
several things that happen between these two accounts. But you can
see here in chapter 21 and verse 1, it says, and the Lord, this
was after Abraham had a son by Hagar, the Egyptian maid, the
Egyptian slave. And the Lord visited Sarah as
he had said, and the Lord did unto Sarah as he had spoken.
For Sarah conceived and bare Abraham a son in his old age,
at the set time of which God had spoken to him. And Abraham
called the name of his son that was born unto him, whom Sarah
bare to him, Isaac. And Abraham circumcised his son
Isaac, being eight days old as God had commanded him. And Abraham
was a hundred years old when his son Isaac was born to him.
And Sarah said, God hath made me to laugh. That's what Isaac's
name means, is laugh. So that all that hear will laugh
with me. And she said, Who would have
thought? Who would have said to Abraham that Sarah should
have given children suck? For I have borne him a son in
his old age. And the child grew and was weaned,
and Abraham made a great feast the same day that Isaac was weaned.
And Sarah saw that Hagar, the son of Hagar, the Egyptian, remember
she was the slave girl through whom Abraham had his first son
Ishmael. Sarah saw that the son of Hagar,
the Egyptian, which she had born to Abraham, was mocking Wherefore
she said to Abraham, Cast out this bondwoman, and her son,
for the son of this bondwoman shall not be heir with my son
even Isaac. And the thing was very grievous
in Abram's sight because of his son Ishmael. And God said to Abraham, Let
it not be grievous in thy sight because of the lad, and because
of thy bondwoman, in all that Sarah hath said unto thee, hearken
unto her voice. For in Isaac shall thy seed be
called. And also, he goes on and talks
about Ishmael, which was Hagar's son. Now go to Galatians chapter
4, and this is all explained here in Galatians chapter 4. We wonder when we read these
accounts in the Old Testament what it means. And we would never
know what it means unless God explained it to us, so I'm thankful
that He has done this. Now, in Galatians chapter 4,
I want to pick this up in verse 21. Galatians 4, 21. It says, Tell
me, ye that desire to be under the law. Under the law of Moses,
he means. Do you not hear the law? And
in that term, the law means what Moses wrote in the larger context
of everything, the Old Testament, the first five books. You that
desire to be under Moses' law, don't you hear the whole law
that Moses wrote? You could paraphrase it that
way. Verse 22, For it is written that Abraham had two sons, the
one by a bondmaid, the slave girl, the other by a free woman,
his wife. But he that was of the bond woman
was born after the flesh. But he of the free woman was
by promise, which things are an allegory, for these are the
two covenants. The one from the Mount Sinai,
which gendereth to bondage, or leads to bondage, which is Agar,
For this Agar is Mount Sinai in Arabia, and answereth, or
corresponds, to Jerusalem, which now is, and is in bondage with
her children. But Jerusalem, which is above,
is free, which is the mother of us all. 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. Now we, brethren, as Isaac was,
are the children of the promise. but as then he that was born
after the flesh persecuted him that was born after the spirit
even so it is now nevertheless what sayeth the scripture cast
out the bond woman and her son for the son of the bond woman
shall not be heir with the son of the free woman so then brethren
we are not of the children of the bond woman but of the free the word allegory Here, in verse
24, these things are an allegory. What it literally means is that
the things that were written in the book of Genesis that we
just read, they were written with a different meaning in mind
than what you see on the surface. They were written explicitly
to teach this truth, which is taught in Galatians chapter 4.
And that's quite amazing. That God would set up the whole
physical circumstances of Genesis 16 and 21 and then use that in
order to teach a doctrine, a truth. But that's exactly what this
is saying here. And I wish I had time to go through
those chapters of Galatians that precede this, but we don't have
that much time. So we're just going to have to refer to it
in very summary terms. But before we get into this,
I want you to look at verse 1 of chapter 4. Look at this together. The issue here is the lesson
is being taught. It's kind of complicated. It's
a historical circumstances with characters. And these characters
and circumstances teach a truth. But the truth that's taught here
is kind of in three layers. There's two women. There's two
sons. And those two sons have consequences
in their lives. The one mother, the two mothers,
the first mother is Hagar, a slave. Her son was Ishmael. He was born
to a slave woman. And he ended up without any inheritance
from Abraham. The other mother, the other woman
was Sarah. She was free. She wasn't a slave.
She had a son, Isaac. And Isaac was given all that
Abraham had. He was the heir. He was the son.
The promised son. And so, these things are explained
here in Galatians 4. But look at verse 1 of Galatians
4. He says, Now I say... This is
Paul talking to the Galatians. He says that the heir... An heir
is someone who is a son who is going to inherit things. If you
are the son of a king, then you inherit whatever the king has.
If you're the son of a poor person, then you don't inherit anything,
do you? Here he says that in ancient
times, a son was treated by his father differently when he was
young. So he says, now I say that the
heir, as long as he is a child, differeth nothing from a servant,
though he be lord of all. So when a father had a son who
was his heir, the one who would inherit all that he had, while
he was young, before he came of age, he would put him under
a governor or a tutor, a schoolmaster, as it's called in chapter 3.
And that man would keep that son under discipline. and make him fall in line and
keep all the things that his father required that governor
to teach him so that he would grow up and one day he would
be openly shown to be the son. and the heir, and then he would
receive the blessings. But while he was young, he would
only, he would have to be treated as a slave because he would be
put under, just like other, there was no difference between the
son who was young and the slave. They were both treated as if
they had to be, do work and be disciplined and all these things
by this governor, this tutor. And so he says, now the heir,
as long as he is a child, doesn't differ anything from a servant,
though he be lord of all. Even though when he grows mature,
he's going to be the lord of all that his father has. While
he's a child, he has nothing. He's treated like a slave. But
he's under tutors and governors until the time appointed of the
father, even so we... Now, that's the ancient practice. But the lesson taught is that
God's people God's people, and specifically God's Son, the Lord
Jesus Christ, when we were children were in bondage under the elements
of the world. Now, what is the elements of
the world here? Well, the elements of the world are those things
that he mentions a little bit later. He says in verse 9, You
turn again to the weak and beggarly elements, whereunto you desire
to be in bondage. You observe days and months and
times and years. They were practicing the observance
of these laws that were in the Law of Moses in order that they
might achieve acceptance with God. That they might please God
and find blessing from God and obtain that blessing. The weak
and beggarly elements, therefore, are those things that are done
in order to obtain God's acceptance and blessing. In order to please
God by what we do. And so he says, when we were
children, we were like slaves, we were in bondage under the
practice of keeping the law in order to be saved. We thought
that we could be saved, that we could be accepted by God,
made holy by what we did. That's what he's saying here.
And then he says in verse 4, but when the fullness of the
time was come, God sent forth His Son, Now listen carefully. Made of a woman, made under the
law. Not only were we who were predestined
to be the sons of God by adoption, under the elements of the world,
under the law of God, and treated like slaves, but God's Son, who
is the heir of all things. Remember Hebrews chapter 1 verse
2? He was appointed heir of all things. the one who deserves
all things by right as the Son of God, was appointed as our
mediator to be the heir of all things. And God gave everything
to him, but in order for him to obtain that inheritance, he
first had to be made in our nature, under the law. It says, so when
the fullness of the time was come, God sent forth His Son,
made of a woman, made under the law." Notice now, verse 5, "...to
redeem them that were under the law, that we might receive the
adoption of sons." So here we see something about the Lord
Jesus Christ. Not only was He the Son of God, and made in our
nature, in order that He might redeem us, but He acted as one
man for all the people in that covenant. So that what He did
was considered their doing, and what he suffered was considered
their sufferings. And his answer to God by his
death, in satisfaction, was considered answer to God for them, so that
he was able by his death, enduring the curse of God's law, for our
disobedience, he obtained for us an eternal redemption. Now
that's the Son of God. He acted, though a son, as a
slave under the law, serving God, but actually fulfilling
that law, not only in its requirements for our obedience, but its requirements
for our curse because of our disobedience. Now that we see that, he says
in verse 5, to redeem them that were under the law that we might
receive the adoption of sons. If you look back at Ephesians,
or if you look forward to Ephesians 1, verse 4, with me, he says
this. This is quite amazing here, what
God has done in revealing to us His purpose from eternity. He says in verse 4, in verse
3 actually, He says, "...Blessed be the God and Father of our
Lord Jesus Christ," He's the Son of God, "...who hath blessed
us." with all spiritual blessings in heavenly places in Christ."
Remember, He's the heir of all. But God has blessed us with everything
in Him. And He says in verse 4, "...according
as He hath chosen us in Him, long before the foundation of
the world, that we should be holy and without blame before
Him in love. God's purpose was to have sons
And He chose them in Christ for this purpose, to make them holy,
and then He says, this is what He did, to not only make us holy,
but to make us His sons, having predestinated us, determined
beforehand, and planned out all the details, predestinated us
unto the adoption of children by Jesus Christ, to Himself,
according to the good pleasure of His will. So the Father, God
the Father, He predestinated us to the adoption of sons by
Jesus Christ. And that's what we see here in
Galatians 4. He accomplished what was necessary
to make us His sons. by making his son our representative
head in this covenant, so that what he did would be the fulfillment
of that covenant, and all that he did in fulfilling that covenant
would be the basis on which we would be made the sons of God
and given all blessings. Now, back to Galatians chapter
4, he says, And because you are sons, because you are sons, God
hath sent forth the spirit of his Son into your hearts, crying,
Abba, Father. Verse 1, he says, the heir, as
long as he is a child, is treated like a slave until the appointed
time of the father. But God chose us to be. He chose
us in Christ before the world began. And He predestinated us
unto the adoption of children by Jesus Christ to Himself. So
what that's teaching us is that even before the world began,
we were considered by God to be His sons by adoption. His
good pleasure made us His sons and He determined to do that
by Jesus Christ. And so we were sons of God even
before we were born, before the world began. And like we saw
in Genesis 15, even though they were the children of Abraham,
they had to go down into Egypt. We had to go under the, we were,
we fell in Adam. were made slaves of sin, were
put under the law as slaves, and we were stuck there until
the fullness of the time was come when God sent forth His
Son to redeem us out of our sin, out of that curse of God's law,
out of the captivity to Satan. all by the blood of Christ. And
because Christ redeemed us by His love, by His blood, He set
us free. Not only from the captivity of
those things, our sin and so on, but He set us free to inherit
all that God promised in that covenant. And one of the primary
things promised in that covenant is what follows next in verse
6. Because you are sons, God has sent forth the Spirit of
His Son into your hearts, crying, Abba, Father." There's many blessings
in God's covenant that He made with the Lord Jesus Christ for
His people. But one of them is, in fact, it says it in chapter
3, verse 14, "...the blessing of Abraham might come on the
Gentiles through Jesus Christ, that you might receive the promise
of the Spirit through faith." One of the main blessings is
that God gives His Spirit to us. Remember, God's promise to
Abraham was that He was going to justify the heathen by the
Lord Jesus Christ. And they would receive that by
faith, Galatians 3, 8 and 9. Here He's telling us that the
Spirit of God was given to us in order that we might see our
inheritance. We might have this freedom. That
we might be delivered in our own experience. from the bondage
of unbelief and bondage to the law. Now he's teaching these
things in Galatians to these... Paul is teaching these things
to the Galatians and that's when he ends up here in verse 21 where
we just read a minute ago. He says, tell me, in verse 21,
tell me ye that desire to be under the law. Do you not hear
the law? Don't you hear what Moses wrote in Genesis? For it
is written, And this was before the law was given. He says, it
is written that Abraham had two sons, the one by a bondmaid,
a slave, the other by a free woman, his wife. But he who was
of the bondwoman was born after the flesh. But he of the free
woman was by promise. Okay, this is the principle.
What God promises God accomplishes, and it has no conditions on us. The law is not that way. In the
covenant of promise, God makes all the promises. But in the
covenant of the law, the covenant of works, men have to make all
the promises to keep it. And so in Exodus 24, verses 6
and 7, when God gave the law by Moses, The people all said,
everything the Lord has said, we're going to do it. They committed
to do what God told them. You've got to do this. And they
committed. Yeah, we're going to do that.
We're going to do that. Look at that. Look at Exodus chapter 24. I want
you to see this. He says, Moses In Exodus 24, verse 6, Moses
took half of the blood and put it in basins, and half of the
blood he sprinkled on the altar. And then it says in verse 7,
Exodus 24, verse 7, and he took the book of the covenant. Isn't
that amazing? The book contained, the book
was the document of the covenant. So if you go to a lawyer and
you have him draw up some legal document for you and establishes
certain things, like say maybe a will for your children or something,
he creates this big thick book. And it says, here's everything
that has to happen in order for them to have an inheritance.
God made a covenant. And in this covenant there was
lots of requirements. And this covenant was a covenant
between God and the people. Each individual person, God made
a covenant with them. Each one of them in the nation
of Israel. And he says, so it says that Moses took the book
of the covenant and he read it in the audience of the people
and then they said all that the Lord has said we will do and
be obedient. That's their commitment to keep
the covenant. The covenant was an agreement.
God made the covenant, He made the agreement, and He was the
first party, but Israel, each individual in Israel, was the
second party. And they all committed to it.
They agreed to the terms of this agreement, this covenant, this
arrangement, by which God would require things from them, and
they, in doing those things, would receive blessings from
God. Here's how you please God. You do all these things. And
then Moses says in verse 8, He took the blood from these animals
and He sprinkled it on the people and said, Behold, the blood of
the covenant which the Lord hath made with you concerning all
these words. There are several things to be
pointed out here. First of all, the covenant wasn't just a set
of disconnected rules and regulations. The covenant wasn't just the
Ten Commandments. The covenant wasn't just those
things that were amplified later after the Ten Commandments were
given to explain what they meant in terms of their civil obedience
that was required of them. Here's what it means not to murder.
Here's what it means not to steal. Here's what it means not to lie. All these things were put out
there in detail. But the law was part of a covenant and all
the things in the law was one covenant, even though there are
several laws in the document of the covenant. And so in order
to keep the covenant, you had to keep all of the laws in the
covenant. And if you broke one, then you
broke the whole covenant. And so when Moses took the blood
and sprinkled the people, he also sprinkled the book. Because
it was the blood that ratified, that made that covenant, put
it into force. Made it come into force for all
the people that agreed to this. All of Israel. If you look back
at Hebrews chapter 9, we see what this, this is quite amazing
here. I want you to see this in relation
to these covenants. He says in Hebrews chapter 9
and verse 19, When Moses had spoken every precept to all the
people, so he read the whole covenant. Can you imagine standing
there and listening to that long legal document? When he read every precept to
all the people according to the law, Not just the Ten Commandments,
not just what sometimes people call the moral law, the civil
law, the ceremonial law. It was all one document, one
covenant. You can't separate it. He says,
when he had read all the law, He took the blood of calves and
of goats with water and scarlet wool and hyssop and sprinkled
both the book and all the people, saying, This is the blood of
the testament which God hath enjoined to you." Now it's a
binding agreement upon you because of the blood. The blood brought
that covenant into force. But now, in Galatians 4, he says
these two women, the mother of Ishmael, Hagar, and the mother
of Isaac, Sarah, represent two covenants. So, look at Hebrews
chapter 10. In the first covenant, God was
the one party of the agreement. Who was the other party? Well,
it was all the people. Each person individually had
to stand before God, and they had to personally give their
own obedience, and they had to personally suffer for their disobedience.
The law required personal agreement to that law, and personal obedience,
and personal punishment. But listen to this. He says in
Verse 1 of Hebrews 10, for the law, having a shadow of good
things to come, not the very image, not the reality of those
things, can never with those sacrifices which they offered
year by year continually make the comers thereunto perfect.
It was just a shadow of things to come. But listen to this,
verse 5. All these sacrifices and things
never put away sin. He says in verse 5, Wherefore,
when he, the Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God, came into the
world, he said, Sacrifice and offering thou wouldest not, but
a body hast thou prepared me. In burnt offerings and sacrifices
for sin thou hast had no pleasure. And listen very carefully. Then
said I, Lo, I come in the volume of the book It is written of
me to do thy will, O God." This is huge. This is saying that
all that was required in God's covenant with His people that
He made with Christ, and Christ was the one who would keep it,
He came now to do all the will of God. That book is the covenant
of God's grace that He made with Christ on behalf of His people
who were the heirs with Christ in that covenant. And so His
blood actually made the covenant. His blood. Remember, look at
Matthew 26. I've pointed this out several times, but I want
you to see this with your own eyes. Matthew 26. In verse 28,
remember, one book, one covenant, lots of details, Christ came
to do it all. And He did it all when He gave
Himself as an offering to God for His people in obedience to
God, fulfilling God's law and fulfilling that other covenant,
which is called the covenant of promise. But in Matthew 26,
verse 26, It says, 2626. And as they were
eating, Jesus took bread and blessed it and break it and gave
it to the disciples and said, Take, eat, this is my body. And he took the cup and gave
thanks and gave it to them saying, Drink ye all of it. All of you
drink it. For this, listen now carefully.
For this is my blood of the New Testament. You see Moses sprinkling
all the people in the book? The Lord Jesus hands His cup
to the disciples and He says, this cup is the blood of the
New Testament. He says, which is shed for many
for the remission of sins. When He shed His blood, He not
only fulfilled the conditions of that covenant, but all the
blessings promised in that covenant were brought to His people because
of His blood shed. Now back to Galatians chapter
4. Now that we see those two things, the covenant hangs together. James said it this way, if you
break the law in one point, you've broken the whole law. Because
it's all together. And that's why in the book of
Galatians, when Paul says, if you be circumcised, Christ is
going to profit you nothing. You're a debtor to do the whole
law. Because it's one covenant and
you're living under that covenant by claiming to live under even
one of its laws. If you think you're going to
come to God and be accepted or be pleasing to Him or made holy
by doing the laws of that old covenant, then you obligate yourself
to do the whole law and come to God on the basis of your own
personal obedience. But the New Covenant, which is
the Gospel or the documents of that New Covenant, it declares
to us that Christ, our Covenant Head, acted for the people, one
man, doing everything that God required, and all that he did
was considered theirs. Their doing. And there's many
covenants in scripture. Remember, there's the covenant
God made with Adam, Noah, Abraham, David, all those guys. In every one of those covenants,
there was one man acting for the people. Except in the Law
of Moses, each person acted individually. So then, here in Galatians 4,
he says, now with that background, he says, In verse 22, don't you
hear the law? It is written that Abraham had
two sons. The one by the slave, the other by the free woman.
But he that was of the bond woman, the slave woman, the mother who
was a slave, was born after the flesh. How was he born? Through natural processes. Abraham and Hagar had a child.
It's just like all the people in the world are born that way.
There's no miracle there more than the natural process God
had created by which children were born. Nothing natural there. I mean nothing miraculous at
all. So God says it was after the
flesh. Jesus said to Nicodemus, that which is born of the flesh
is flesh. It can't rise any higher. It came from the flesh. It's
going to only go as high as the flesh enables it to go. And so
Ishmael was born after the flesh. It means that what Abraham did
with Hagar was not according to God's promise, it was according
to his own action. Sarah and Abraham looked at themselves,
they saw they were old, and they wondered, how is God's promise
going to be fulfilled? We have to have a son. The only
way we're going to have a son is if, and it's got to come through
you, maybe it's through my slave. And so they, in human wisdom,
with human mechanisms, they put this plan together and, lo and
behold, Ishmael was born. This has got to be what God intended.
No! It was not what God intended.
That is not the son through whom God is going to fulfill His promises.
God made a covenant with His son, who would be born through
Isaac, by promise. Christ is the promised Son. He
came by the will of God, by promise, not by the conditions. You see,
Abraham and Sarah were simply doing their contribution to help
God's promise come to pass. They were acting as those who
were under a different covenant. Not a covenant of promise, but
one in which they had to do their part. And so he says, Which things
are an allegory, for these are the two covenants." Okay, now
listen. There's two women, two mothers, and these two mothers
with their two sons represent three things. Two covenants. The one from Mount Sinai, which
is gender as a bondage. What's from Mount Sinai? The
Law of Moses. And what does it produce? What
kind of children does it produce? The mother If the law is the
mother, who are the children of that law? What are they going
to be like? They're going to be, it says, which gendereth
to bondage, which is Hagar. For this Hagar is Mount Sinai
in Arabia, and corresponds or answereth to Jerusalem, which
now is, and is in bondage with her children. Okay, two mothers,
two sons represent two covenants and two cities. Jerusalem, it
says, which now is and is in bondage with her children. What
is Jerusalem, which now is? Well, that was the whole system
of the Jews' religion. And Jerusalem was the capital
which represented all of their living by the law. The law was
the life of the Jews. They lived by it. All their life
was ordered around it. They came to God by their obedience
to it. Or they were kept away from God
by their disobedience. They worshiped God according
to their own obedience in that law. Everything in their life
was around that law. They couldn't think of anything
outside of keeping the law as the way of coming to God, and
finding favor with God, and knowing God, and worshiping God, and
receiving blessing from God. It was all tied up in that law.
That system of law keeping, that dependency on our own personal
obedience, That was represented by that Jerusalem in those physical
times. And it's actually the same thing
as all religion over all time. Man's religion makes man do what
is necessary to make himself acceptable to God. Even the Gentiles. Look at verse 8. Galatians 4. How be it then, when you knew
not God, you did service unto them which by nature are no gods? So the Gentiles didn't have the
law. They didn't live by the law.
They didn't know about the law. They disregarded the law entirely.
They didn't try to keep the law. It had nothing to do with the
priesthood. Nothing to do with the sacrifices. They knew nothing
about all these things. They completely ignored it. They
were without law. And they were without God. But
they acted in the same way that those who had the law did. How
did they act? They came to their made-up gods,
their idol gods, through what they could bring. And they expected
to be accepted and blessed by what they did. So, he says in
verse 9, now, after that you've known God, or rather are known
of God, how turn you again, like you did when you were idolaters,
to the weak and beggarly elements, observing days and times and
all sorts of weird things that you would concoct and imagine
gods that you've created. And so the Gentiles acted just
like the Jews under the Old Covenant. They served a God that they made
up on the same principle as the Jews served the true and living
God. At least they thought they served Him. The Jews thought
they could serve God by what they did in their own personal
obedience. That would be pleasing to God
and they would be accepted and blessed and avoid the curse.
And so the teaching here is that two covenants, two cities. And
then he says, for it is written, verse 27, rejoice thou barren,
whoops, I'm sorry, verse 26. So Jerusalem, which now is, is
in bondage with her children. There's consequences. There's
consequences to living by the law. You're a citizen of that
kingdom on earth. Ishmael, Hagar received no inheritance
they were slaves all they had was just whatever they they had
while they were living in Abraham's house in Genesis 25 and verse
5 it says Abraham gave all that he had to Isaac He didn't give
anything to Ishmael. I think he gave Well, without
getting sidetracked to that, basically Isaac got everything,
Ishmael got nothing because he was a slave. There was no inheritance
for the slave. It was all given to the son by
promise. So he says, And verse 26, but
Jerusalem which is above is free. I'm sorry, verse 25, for this
Agar is Mount Sinai in Arabia. Hagar represents the law God
gave through Moses and corresponds to Jerusalem which now is that
physical Jerusalem which killed the Lord Jesus Christ and is
in bondage with her children, all those who come to God or
attempt to come to God by the law. Verse 26, but Jerusalem
which is above is free. What is Jerusalem that's above?
That's the kingdom of God. That's the heavenly Jerusalem.
That's the Jerusalem that is the city of the people of God.
Those are the ones, the ones in that city are the sons of
God, by adoption. By God's choice, by Christ's
redeeming blood, and by the Spirit of God in us. He says, Jerusalem
which is above is free, which is the mother of us all. So,
Sarah corresponds to the heavenly Jerusalem. And the covenant under
which those in that city live is the gospel. They don't live
by the law, they live by the gospel. They come to God on the
basis of what God received from Christ, their covenant head.
And when he shed his blood, everything in that covenant was put into
force and all the blessings were brought for them from God. So
he says in verse 27, For it is written, Rejoice, thou barren,
that bearest not. Break forth and cry, thou that travailest
not. That would be like Sarah. She didn't have any children.
Hagar had a child. She wasn't bearing. She wasn't
delivering a child with all the labor pains. For the desolate,
that would be Sarah, hath many more children than she which
hath a husband. But in the historical context,
Paul is talking to the Galatians, and the people from Jerusalem,
the Judaizers who practice keeping the law to worship God, they
were telling the Galatians, you can't be blessed unless you keep
the law. You can't come to God, you can't be holy, all these
things, you can't be accepted. But Paul is saying, no, not at
all. In fact, if you keep the law,
you're a slave and you got nothing. But if you're born of the woman
who represents the heavenly Jerusalem by the gospel, if Christ is your
covenant head, all the promises in that covenant are given to
you by free grace, by promise. And he says, so that the desolate
hath many more children than she which hath a husband, it
means that the church of God, the heavenly Jerusalem, gives
birth to God's children. And that's the only way God has
children, because when the gospel is preached and the Spirit of
God is given and points us to Christ, then we know our sonship.
And we call God Abba, Father, Dada. My Father, my Father, Jesus
said, I go to your Father and to my Father, to my God and to
your God. And that's the promise of the
New Covenant. that God adopted us in Jesus Christ and by the
blood of Christ He redeemed us out of the slavery of our sin
and the law and Satan and the world. We're no longer slaves
to the philosophy and the religions of this world. We live to Christ. As Abraham walked by faith in
hope of the fulfillment of the promises by Jesus Christ, we
walk by faith in hope of the fulfillment of the promises in
Jesus Christ. We look to God to give us the
righteousness of Christ, the life. and the Spirit of God,
and eternal blessings, to know God, to worship God, and receive
eternal glory with Christ as heirs of God, as the sons of
God, in Jesus Christ. We have no confidence in the
flesh. We do not come to God at all
expecting that He will be pleased with us by what we do, but we
come to Him looking to Christ, expecting God will receive us,
though we're sinners, for what He finds in Christ. Now, knowing
that, Abraham lived his life in hope. He didn't live like
a hellion or like a rebel. He loved God. And it's only knowing
that we're accepted by God that we can love him. I think about
when I was working and being paid and I had a boss that was
of this world. My boss is a great boss now.
But anyway, when I had a boss then, this boss was a tyrant.
Nothing I could do could ever actually completely please him. It always gave me more to do
than I could ever get done. My abilities were never good
enough to get the job done. I didn't have enough brain power. I didn't have enough skills.
And even if I did my best, it wasn't considered good enough.
It was so frustrating. And stress, it causes so much
stress. I was never at peace with that
boss. But my father, He has come and
given everything to me in the Lord Jesus Christ. And He's promised
it to all who believe on the Lord Jesus Christ. And we wonder
sometimes, well, how can I know that I'm part of this covenant?
How can I know with confidence that all that God promised in
Christ is mine? How can I know that? Well, the
answer is that you're partakers of Christ if you hold the beginning
of your confidence steadfast to the end. Do you believe on
the Lord Jesus Christ? Well, you might think, well,
I don't know, because I don't know if God made those promises
to me. How can I believe His promises will be fulfilled if
I don't know that He made them to me? So I can't believe until
I'm sure of that. Listen to what God says, who He made those promises
to. When we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. He made promises
to sinners. Christ Jesus came into the world
to save sinners. The ungodly, He justifies the
ungodly. Do you fit that description?
Well, yes, I'm a sinner, but I still don't know if God spoke
His promises to me. Well, what do you think you need
in addition to what God said? Do you need to do something like
Abraham and Sarah did? Add something to what God said?
You're a sinner. Are you going to make yourself
any better in order to make yourself worthy of those promises? Give
yourself confidence and assurance that God's promises are for you?
Or are you just going to come to God by Jesus Christ and His
shed blood, as He told us to do? He says, therefore, we come
boldly to the throne of grace through the blood of Jesus. As
sinners, blood isn't needed for the righteous, it's needed for
the sinner. So we come to God and we lay
hold on the promises that are in Christ and only in Christ
and only in looking to Christ. We even come for that faith.
We don't look to our confidence for confidence or our assurance
for assurance. We look to Christ for everything.
But when we come to Him, notice what it says in Galatians chapter
5. He says, brethren, verse 13,
Galatians 5.13, he says, brethren, you have been called unto liberty,
called by the gospel, pointed to Christ, told about the redemption
he has purchased by his blood. You have been called to liberty,
only use not your liberty for an occasion to the flesh, but
by love serve one another. Our God and Father gave his Son,
And He, the Lord Jesus Christ, served His people. He gave Himself
for us. He shed His blood to make us
acceptable to God. What do we do? Well, when we've
been born of God, we have that same desire to love God because
of all He's done for us. We're not obligated to serve
God in order for payback. We trust that we have everything
in Christ, and so we can serve one another for Christ's sake,
to the glory of God. All that we do in our life is
to the honor and glory of Him who loved us and gave Himself
for us. And we always live looking to Christ only. Let's pray. Lord, we pray that we would learn
from what You've told us here, not to trust in anything of our
own, but to trust only in what You said and what Christ has
done, that You would receive us for Your namesake, to Your
glory, on the basis and the grounds of the righteousness and the
blood of our Lord Jesus Christ. And we pray, Lord, that You'd
give to us Your own Spirit, that the Lord Jesus Christ by His
Spirit would dwell in us, and we would know as He is, the Son
of God by nature, And that we would know that we're
sons of God by adoption, through His blood, by Your Spirit. We
would call You our Father. And we would come to You and
trust You, and look to You, and see our liberty in Christ. And
we would follow You as dear children. And You would conform us to the
image of Your dear Son. And we would stand before You
in righteousness, because You fulfilled Your promises, which
depended nothing on us, but You did everything for us, even this
faith we have. and this life we have is a gift
from you. Lord, help us to live in faith,
to walk in it, and to live in hope of the fulfillment of your
promises, asking you to do what we cannot do, and depending upon
you for all strength, and giving all glory to you in all that
we are and say and do. In Jesus' name we pray, amen.