Well, good morning. Good morning. I know we have
some road issues, so I'll wait a few minutes. But if you know
me very well, I can't stand to wait past the time very much.
So if you would, open your Bibles with me to Galatians chapter
4. I know we've been going through
studying Mark in the Bible class, and I'm going teach that lesson
from Mark in the worship services so we can observe the Lord's
table afterwards and been looking at this passage and thought it
might be a blessing for us to look at. So before we begin,
let's bow together in prayer. Our father, how thankful we are
that this is the day that has been appointed and set aside
to meet together with our brothers and our sisters and to worship
your matchless name. And Father, I pray that this
morning you would give us the spirit of worship, that you would
enable us to hear the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ and
to worship you from the heart in awe and thanksgiving that
you've seen fit to be so gracious to sinners like us. that you've
been so patient with us, your weak and erring children. Father,
how we thank you that salvation is by grace and grace alone.
It's by the doing and dying of our Lord Jesus Christ and requires
nothing good from us. Father, we're so thankful because
we have nothing to offer. We have nothing to bring. But
we're thankful that salvation is accomplished, is full and
free in our Lord Jesus Christ And Father, I pray this morning
that you'd let us see him with the eye of faith and to worship. And what we pray for ourselves,
we pray for your people, Father, wherever they're meeting together
today. Father, cause your word to go
forth in power, that in this dark, dark day, your glory, your
redemptive glory, and the Lord Jesus Christ might shine forth.
Father, bless us. For Christ's sake, we pray. It's
in his name, for his sake, his glory, we pray. Amen. Now, I've titled the lesson this
morning, Cast Out the Bondwoman and Her Son. I was watching a
TV show earlier this week, and someone asked, why can't there
be peace in the Middle East? And a woman gave the answer,
told the story of Isaac and Ishmael. And that's true enough, that's
largely why we cannot have peace in the Middle East, those two
descendants are never going to get along with each other. But
I got thinking about her answer in this story that we read here
in the book of Galatians, and was so blessed to think about
what the true meaning of this story is, that salvation is in
God's covenant of grace. It's not in any way come from
man's works. It's salvation in the covenant
of God's grace, that God purposed grace for his people, before
he created anything, that he purposed his son to be the sacrifice,
to be the righteousness, to be the savior of his people before
he created anything. And if the Lord let us see this
story, see it by faith, we'll be so happy to be free from the
bondage of the law and to be saved by God's grace. Now, Paul
in this story tells us of two women, Hagar and Sarah. Sarah is Abraham's wife. She
left with Abraham, left Abraham's father's house and went out into
the desert, not knowing where they were going. And they'd been
out there for a while. Sarah's 65 years old. She has
no children. Seems very unlikely at this point
that she's gonna be able to bear any children. But when she was
65 years old, God came to Abraham and he promised Abraham, you're
gonna have a son. You're gonna have a son by Sarah. And the
Messiah is going to come through that son. All nations of the
earth will be blessed in him. And you know, they love that
promise. They're so happy to hear that promise from God. But
10 years later, they had no son. Nope, no baby had come. And Sarah
thought, well, God must need us. to help him, give us a son. He must mean for us to have a
son by my servant, Hagar. And I'll take that son and I'll
love him and raise him as my own. You know, Hagar's a young
woman. She's in her childbearing year.
She's strong. You know, she'll be able to bear
us a son. So she told Abraham her idea
and And he agreed to it. That's that weak faith we were
talking about, you know. And he went into Hagar. Sure
enough, she had a son. And Abraham named him Ishmael. Well, that baby's come, but it
didn't work out like Sarah thought it would, did it? You know, she
thought that this baby would bring her so much joy and she'd
raise this child and bounce him on her knee and she'd feel all
this deep love for him. But instead, what it made her
feel is less. Now, Hagar's had a son for my
husband, but I can't give him one. Instead of making her feel
happy and joy, it made her feel worse. Made her feel so bad about
herself. Well, then there's Hagar. She's the second woman. And Hagar's
been a servant for probably her whole life. But now she's had
a son by Abraham. And she thought she was something
else. She's got the heir. Her son is
gonna be the heir of everything that Abraham owns. And she went
on thinking that for 15 years. Now it's 25 years after God first
promised Abraham a son by Sarah. And then Isaac was born. Miraculously,
unexpectedly, Isaac was born. Well, now that Isaac's here,
the child of promise is here, And it's impossible for Sarah
and Hagar and Ishmael and Isaac to live under the same roof.
It's absolutely impossible. Sarah finally got fed up with
it and told Abraham, you cast out the bondwoman and her son. The son of the bondwoman shall
not be heir with the son of the free woman. And Abraham cast
him out. Now, if that's all we knew about
this story, we would have thought, this is a sad story. It's a sad
story that God gave us in his word to teach us about what happens
when men make bad decisions, the chaos and destruction that
they bring to their families. And these two boys, Ishmael,
the destruction and chaos and misery his descendants had brought
to the whole world, we'd have thought, this just shows you
what happens when you don't trust the Lord, when you don't wait
on the Lord and you rush ahead with your own idea. And we'd
have thought that until Paul wrote this epistle to the churches
of Galatia and told us what the story is really teaching. What
it's teaching is salvation is by God's grace and God's grace
alone. And it's with no mixture of man's
works. Man's works do not enter into
this thing of salvation one bit. except to provide our need for
salvation. Our works are so full of sin,
what they made us is sinners who need a savior. But salvation
is either all of man's works or it's all of God's grace, one
or the other. But you can never mix God's grace
and man's works to accomplish salvation. Paul tells us that's
what this story is a picture of. And these two mothers are
pictures of the two different covenants. the covenant of the
law, and God's eternal covenant of grace. Hagar represents the
law. Hagar is a servant, and she,
as a picture of a servant under the law, under the rule of a
master, the law puts a burden on people that they can't bear,
a burden that they can't keep, and anybody under the law can
never expect to be anything more than a servant. You'll never
be an heir. An heir is not someone who earns
something, is it? An heir is someone who's given
something freely that somebody else earned for them. Someone
under the law can never be the heir. All they can ever be is
a servant. And Sarah, she represents God's
covenant of grace. And anybody who's under this
covenant of grace, they're free. They're free in Christ. They're
free from the demands of the law. They're free from the burden
of the law. They're heirs, heirs of God and
joint heirs with Christ. So that's the story. That's what
this whole thing means. Now let's pick up here in verse
21, Galatians chapter four. Tell me ye that desire to be
under the law. Do you not hear the law? You
know, anybody that wants to be under the law and earn their
own salvation, earn their own righteousness, the only reason
they can want that is they're spiritually blind. They're spiritually
dead. The law requires absolute perfection
and no son of Adam can produce it because we all died in Adam.
We all became guilty and we all became sinners in Adam. The law does not say, do the
best that you can and then Christ will make up the difference Do
the best that you can and God will understand. The law requires
perfection. Now the law says you can have
life as long as you obey the law perfectly all of the time,
all of your life. But seeing one time, you're guilty
of the whole law and the law will demand your condemnation.
Now, that's what the law says, and Paul says, do you really
wanna be under that? Do you wanna be under that burden? Do you wanna be under the law,
under the rule of the law that knows nothing of grace, that
knows nothing of mercy, that knows nothing of forgiveness,
that only knows strict justice for your disobedience? You really
wanna be under that law? Then he goes on in verse 22,
and he says, for it is written that Abraham had two sons, The
one by the bond made, the other by the free woman. But he who
is of the free 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 for Mount Sinai, which
gendereth to bondage, which is Hagar. For this Hagar is Mount
Sinai in Arabia, and answereth 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." See, here's where
Paul tells us this story of Abraham and Sarah and Hagar and Isaac
and Ishmael, this is not just a story that's got a moral to
it that tells you, now keep trusting God, keep trusting the promise
of the Lord and look at the mess you'll create if you don't wait
on the Lord. That's true, I mean, that's true.
But what Paul is telling us here is that's not the main point
of this story. This is not a story about why
there will never be peace in the Middle East, although this
explains why there'll never be peace there in the Middle East.
This is teaching us a glorious truth, that salvation is by God's
grace, not by our works. When God promised to give Abraham
a son, That's a picture of God's covenant of grace. Before God
created this world, he promised grace to his people. That's what
covenant means, it's a promise. God promised to give grace to
his people. God, in his mercy and grace,
promised to give Abraham a son through Sarah. Well, Ishmael
was born, but Ishmael's not the son of promise, is he? Now, Ishmael
was just born from the natural course of life. Hagar is a young
woman. It's just not surprising that
a young, strong, healthy woman could give birth to a baby boy.
That's just the normal course of life. That's not God's promise. Now Hagar bore a son, but all
she'll ever be is a servant. She's never gonna be Abraham's
wife. Sarah is his wife. She'll always
be a servant. She'll never become anything
but a servant. And so will her son. Her son, Now Abraham loved
him. Now this is Abraham's son. You
know Abraham loved that boy. Of course he did, but he'll never
be more than a servant because Ishmael can be cast out, but
Isaac can't because Isaac's the son of promise. And spiritually
speaking, you and I are what Hagar can produce. The only thing
this dead flesh can produce is sin. so that we're always gonna
be slaves to the law. We're never gonna be able to
satisfy the law. We'll never be anything but slaves to the
law. Now God's promised to save the
people by his grace, and he's gonna do it. This whole book
is written to show us how God has saved the people that he
promised to save in his covenant of grace. And this story and
so much of the rest of scripture tells us God doesn't need our
help. God does not need my help in
saving me and putting my sin away. He doesn't need my help.
He's promised to save his people and he's gonna send his son to
do it, to save his people from their sin. And not only does
God not need any of our help, God demands we don't even try
to help, that we don't even try to contribute some good work
to our salvation in order to be saved. Scripture says, obey
just one law. If you think, well, I'm saved
by grace, but boy, if I could keep this law always, God will
be happier with me than somebody else. Or he'd be happier with
me than if I don't keep this law. Apostle Paul tells us if
you do that, just one law, trying to make yourself more righteous
than somebody else or improve your standing with God, you become
a slave to the whole law. You've got to keep the whole
law of God and you'll always be a slave. You'll never be a
son by trying to keep God's law and earn his favor by your obedience
to the law. That's Ishmael. But then there's
Isaac. Isaac is the son of promise.
Isaac is the son that came through Sarah, the one that God promised
to give Abraham and Sarah, and his birth was a miracle. His birth is just like when a
child of God is born again. It's an absolute miracle. When Isaac was born, Abraham
was 100 years old, and Sarah was 90 years old. Jay and I were talking yesterday
about how the world has changed from when we were young people.
People tended, when we were young, to have their children when they
were young. And now a lot of people are waiting until they're
40. In their 40s, they're having their first child. And I think,
oh, I wouldn't want to be in my upper 50s teaching a child
to drive. I just thought, Abraham's 100. He's 100 years old with an infant. He's gonna be 102 with a two-year-old
toddler running all over creation. He's gotta try to keep up with
this kid. He's 100 years old. Abraham and
Sarah are too old to have any children, but they had a son
anyway, because God promised he was gonna give them one. And
that son was born not by the power of the flesh. That son
was not born until it was impossible for the flesh to bear a child.
That child was born by the power of God. and the grace of God. And that's how it is when God
saves his people. God only saves his people when
it is impossible for us to be saved any other way. When our only hope that's left
is the power and grace of God, then God causes us to be born
again. Then he reveals his son to us
and in us. But it's not going to be until
our confession is this, I've been saved by grace and grace
alone. It's all of God's grace. Christ
did it all. He saved his people because he
did every work that was required for their salvation. He obeyed
the law perfectly so they'd have a righteousness that God would
accept. He took the sin of his people
and he suffered and he died for sin that he never committed. And he put it away by his precious
blood. Now the creator dying for the
creature so that the creature might be saved. That's grace. It's the only explanation for
it is God's grace. And these are these two covenants.
Now we're either gonna rest in Christ and we'll be free in Christ
as his sons and daughters, or we're gonna be a slave to the
law. One of the two. God's only gonna deal with men
in one of these two covenants. That's what Hagar and Sarah represent,
these two covenants. All right. Now you know this
story well. What does all this mean? This
is what I wanted to get to. This is the thing as I thought
about this story. It was such a blessing to me.
What does this mean for the believer? That we can, we're either free
in Christ or we're slaves to the law. Well, verse 28. Now we brethren, as Isaac was,
are the children of promise. Every child of God, the only
reason they're a child of God is because of God's promise of
grace. But as the end, 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 bondwoman and her
son, for the son of the bondwoman should not be heir with the son
of the free woman. So then brethren, we are not the children of the
bondwoman, but the children of the free. Now here's what all
of this means to a child of God. A believer, saved by grace, is
free from the law. You're free from the law. If
God saved you by his grace, you're a son. You're a daughter. You're
not a servant. You're not a servant. And you're
a son, you're a daughter, and that's what you'll always be.
A son, a daughter, a child of God. So that the law has no more
demands on you. The law can't require anything
else of you. because Christ kept it for you.
Christ obeyed every demand of the law for you. The law is not
even looking for you. God's justice is not looking
for you. The law is not demanding God's justice come looking for
you and condemn you because Christ has already been condemned in
your place. The believer has no relationship
to the law whatsoever. I've said this before and let
me say it again. I was reading an article this
morning about a place and every once in a while I'll look and
think, there's gotta be somebody out there preaching the gospel,
you know, and I'd look and so far, I've always been disappointed.
But this was the thing that they just really were hammering. The
believers got to look to the law. A saved person has got to
look to the law in order to see how to live and what they're
supposed to do and what they're not supposed to do. Don't do
that. Don't do that. Don't look to
the law to see how you're doing, because all it's going to do
is make you miserable. You're not doing good. You're not doing
well at all. We're not keeping, we're not
doing good at keeping the law. The believer has no relationship
to the law whatsoever. Christ has made you free from
the demands of the law. And now you're free to serve
Christ out of love. not out of fear of punishment.
A servant does what his master tells him to, because he's afraid
he's gonna be punished if he doesn't. A believer serves Christ
out of love, out of thanksgiving, because you want to, not because
you have to. Scripture tells us to look to
Christ, and Peter says, to whom coming. You're constantly coming
to Christ, because you're constantly looking to him. If you want to
see the direction you go, just keep looking to Christ. Just
keep looking to Christ. He's made you free from fear
of punishment of the law. As I was writing this in my notes, I thought that this is weak. How can you express the joy of
this like It really is joy to our hearts. It's just greater
than, at least I have the ability to express, maybe somebody else
can express it, but I can't express the joy that it is for the heart
of a believer that we are free from the law. Free from the demands
of the law and free from the condemnation of the law. Now
I know to the natural man, that sounds too good to be true, doesn't
it? But listen, if it doesn't sound
too good to be true, it's not God's grace. It's not God's grace. God has saved a people without
them contributing one thing to it. Now I know that sounds too
good to be true, but that's God's grace. And if Christ has saved
you, you're free from the law. Second, if you're resting in
Christ, you're an heir of God. You're an heir of God. You know,
when it came time for Abraham to write his last will and testament,
he gave some gifts to Ishmael and some of the other people
around. He gave him some gifts. But Isaac, yeah, Isaac inherited
it all. He got it all. Christ is the heir. He's the
heir and believers are joint heirs with Christ so that you
receive as your inheritance everything that the father has given to
his son, which is everything. You're an heir of the whole shooting
match if you're a joint heir with Christ, if you've been saved
by his grace. But now here's the third thing,
a believer is going to have to constantly cast out our works. Now, from what we can gather,
Ishmael seemed to be a fine young man. I mean, I know he was making
fun of Isaac when he was being weaned and they had this party
for him and stuff. But now, other than that, I mean,
he seems to be an okay kid. But his true colors came out
when he found out I'm not going to be the heir. Now he spent
15 years thinking he's going to be the heir. And now he sees
I'm not the son. I'm not. Isaac's the son. And Sarah is not standing for
that. I mean, you mothers, you understand
this. Sarah is not standing for this. And she went to Abraham,
she said, you cast that bondwoman, her son, out? I mean, you cast
them out. Well, they can never come back.
I don't ever want to lay eyes on them again. And you know that
was hard for Abraham to do. I mean, he loved this boy, Ishmael.
I mean, I know he's a mess, but Abraham loved him. And I don't
know, maybe Abraham thought, I'm just not gonna do this. And
the Lord told Abraham, now you listen to Sarah. She's preached
a good gospel message to you. This is a gospel message and
you cast him out. Now remember what Ishmael represents. It's being in bondage to the
law. Every believer lives with an Isaac and an Ishmael inside
of us. The old man and the new man.
And that old man loves our works of righteousness. I mean, I don't
think there's anything people love more than their works of
righteousness. Thinking I've done something
good enough that I can present them to God and God will be happy
with me. Human nature, I'm just convinced
of this, loves that more than even your grandbabies. I mean,
we love that. And it's painful to cast them
out, isn't it? It's painful to count those best
things that I have ever done as dung. It's painful, isn't
it? But they got to go. Those works
have got to go. Cast out the bondwoman and her
son. Cast out your works of righteousness.
And you know what? When you cast them out, when
you're not looking, they're going to sneak back into the house,
aren't they? They just constantly, self-righteousness
is constantly popping up inside of us. And we gotta cast them
out again. And you cast them out again,
say, no, I'm not gonna trust that. I'm trusting Christ. I
will not trust in my works. I'm casting them out. And they
come right back, don't they? They just keep sneaking back
in there. And if you desire peace, peace of heart, peace of conscience,
you're gonna cast them out again and again and again, because
there's no peace trusting in our works. The only way we can
have peace is trusting in Christ. And Ishmael, your works of righteousness,
they're going to keep coming back. And when you try to cast
them out, you know what they're going to do? They're going to
mock you. They're going to mock you. They're going to say, you're
a sinner. You're a sinner. You deserve
to die. Now, you better listen to what
I'm saying. You deserve to die. You gotta get to work. You gotta
get to work. You gotta do something to make
God happy with you, to make up for all this sin and for all
this, you know, what now you say, you trust Christ, but it
don't look very good to me. You better do something to kind
of shore that up a little bit. Cast him out. Cast him out. Now, it's true, I'm a sinner. It's true, I'm ashamed of my
works, I'm ashamed of my weak faith, but my works can't make
that up. The only thing that I can really
trust in is Christ. Trust Him, cast those things
out and trust Christ. And as long as this flesh lives,
we're never gonna be done casting out the bondwoman and her son.
We're never gonna be done until this flesh dies. Those works
will even show up at your funeral. You know when Ishmael showed
back up? When Abraham died. He showed back up. And Ishmael's
got to go. I mean, he's got to go. He's
got to completely go and never come back. And when he goes,
don't you send him with anything. Don't you send him with inheritance
now. When he goes, he's got to go. Ishmael, our works of the law,
are willing to compromise. Oh, I'll compromise. I'll compromise
and say, yes, you're saved by grace. But you've got to be circumcised,
too. Or you've got to fill in the
blank, whatever it is that people want you to do now. Ishmael would
be happy just to have a little shack. You've got 40 acres. Just put me on the property line
out there. Just give me a little shack so I can hang around. I'll
be happy to do that. No, he's got to go. Because if
you give him a little shack out there, you know what he's going
to say? I earned this. I earned this. And I might not
be in the big mansion, but I'm on the property. I earned it.
He's got to go. He cannot take credit for anything
that he has or anything that he's done. Everything we have
has come from God's hand of grace for no other reason that he's
gracious to us even though we don't deserve it. So cast out
the bondwoman and her son. This is the thing that I think
made me so happy as I was thinking about this story. Cast out the
bondwoman and her son. You don't need them. If you've
got Christ, you don't need them. So cast them out and don't look
back and just keep looking to Christ and Christ alone. All
right, I hope that'll be a blessing to you.