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A Tale of Two Women or
Who is Your Mother
Galatians 4:21-31
I don’t know about you but his
passage sounds confusing to me.
Most commentators also agree that this is the hardest passage in the
book of Galatians. It’s not easy to understand exactly what Paul
means to say. For that reason,
many people skip right over these verses so they can get to the
“good stuff” in chapter 5, especially the part about the
fruit of the Spirit in 5:22-23.
Part of my problem is that Paul’s form of argument is very Jewish,
even Rabbinical, which means that his first-century readers probably had
no problems following him, but that same style can seem rather odd to
21st-century readers. To make matters more challenging, there are parts
of this passage that we understand and parts that seem to make no sense
at all. It’s not quite clear how Paul gets from Hagar to Mount Sinai to Jerusalem to a woman enslaved with her children. You
don’t hear very many sermons on that verse. I’ve never known
anyone to choose Galatians 4:25 as his life text. Yet it’s in the
Bible, so it must be true and there must be a message that we need to
hear.
The key to the whole passage can be found in verse 21: “Tell me,
you who want to be under the law, are you not aware of what the law
says?” He is addressing
people who want a hybrid religion that is part Jewish and part Christian.
Part Jesus and part something else. They intend to believe in Jesus plus
they want to hold onto some of their former beliefs as a means of
pleasing God. Paul’s point
is, Have you considered the implications of what you are saying?
In the case of the Galatians…they wanted Jesus and the O.T.
rituals. Paul is saying you can
have the law as a way of life or you can have Jesus, but you can’t
have both. In order to press the
point home, he reminds them of a familiar story (verses 22-23), then he
draws an allegory from the story (verses 24-27), then he applies the
allegory to the contemporary situation (verses 28-31).
I. An
Old Testament Story 21-23
“Tell
me, you who want to be under the law, are you not aware of what the law
says? For it is written that Abraham had two sons, one by the slave woman
and the other by the free woman. His son by the slave woman was born in
the ordinary way; but his son by the free woman was born as the result of
a promise” (Galatians 4:21-23).
The history behind this story is
found in the book of Genesis. It basically goes like this. Abraham was a
prosperous pagan businessman in Ur of the Chaldees when God appeared to him and
told him to take his wife Sarah, leave that land, and go to a land that
God would later show him. God also promised to give him descendants who
would become a great nation. That was all well and good except that
Abraham was 75, Sarah was 65, and they had no children. In the course
of time they arrived in Canaan, the land God promised them. Ten years passed
and still no son had been born. Since the biological clock was ticking
away, Sarah suggested that Abraham marry Hagar, Sarah’s Egyptian
maidservant. After some hesitation, Abraham agreed and in due course
Hagar became pregnant and a son named Ishmael was born. It should be
noted that Sarah’s motives—on one level at least—were
noble. She concluded that since she was 75 years old, there was no way
she would ever have a baby. That was a perfectly reasonable, perfectly
“human” conclusion. So she and Abraham decided to take
matters in their own hands and “help God out.” But, of
course, God doesn’t need our “help,” and whenever we
try to “help” God (instead of waiting for God to reveal his
plan in his own way in his own time), things get worse, not better.
That’s exactly what happened. Genesis 16 says that animosity arose
between Sarah and Hagar. Understandable.
Now, fourteen years pass. Abraham is now 99, Sarah 89. His body is
“as good as dead.” Her womb seems shut tight. There is no
chance, none whatsoever, that they will ever have a child together. But
at precisely that point, God announces that Sarah will conceive and bear
a son within a year. God revived the bodies of Abraham and Sarah and 12
months later Isaac was born. As Paul puts it, Ishmael was born the
ordinary way and Isaac was born as the result of God’s promise.
Ishmael is born a slave because his mother was a slave; Isaac is born
free because his mother was a free woman.
That much of the biblical story is
familiar to most of us. It’s clear why Paul uses this example. The
Jews revered Abraham as their spiritual father. As far as they were
concerned, if you were a physical descendant of Abraham, then you were in
good standing with the Lord. As long as you could find Father Abraham
somewhere in your family tree, then you didn’t really need anything
else. It was a matter of lineage, of heritage, of tracing your family
tree. Of course Muslim’s
have Abraham in their family tree too, through Ishmael. But the Jew’s here are saying if
you could find Abraham back there somewhere in your family tree, you were
in God’s family. Paul is saying, “Not so!” God’s
family is made up of those who have a relationship with him by faith in
Jesus Christ. It’s a matter of faith, not your family tree.
This is a crucial point to consider because millions of people today
think that being right with God is merely a matter of spiritual pedigree.
They say things like, “I’m Catholic so I must be okay.”
Or “I was baptized Presbyterian so I know I’m going to
heaven.” Or “My parents were Baptists and that puts me in
good with God.” But it is
not true. You don’t go to heaven because you get credit for what
your mother or father believed.
The problem in Galatia was this: The Judaizers taught that you could
have Jesus, but you also either had to be a Jew or you had to act like a
Jew in order to be saved. The
Judaizers said, “Who’s your father?” Paul said, “I’ve got
another question. Who’s your mother?”
And that question, “who’s your mother” brings us back
to the story of Abraham and Sarah and Hagar and Isaac and Ishmael. The
tricky part is that both times Abraham and Sarah believed God. When he
took Hagar as his wife, he (and Sarah) believed what God had said but
they also thought God needed some help. The second time he and Sarah
believed God alone and had Isaac as a result. The difference is this:
Will you believe God alone or do you think you need to do something to
help him out?
Here are the facts of the story put in simple terms. We have …
• One Father
• Two Mothers
• Two Sons
• One son born the ordinary way
• One son born by God’s intervention
• One son born by spiritual compromise
• One son born according to God’s promise
• Ishmael born according to works—trying to solve the problem
by human effort
• Isaac born because Abraham and Sarah believed God’s promise
The whole family is like a dysfunctional soap opera because self-effort and
faith in God cannot live in harmony.
What will Paul do with all this?
II. A
New Testament Allegory 24-27
“These
things may be taken figuratively, for the women represent two covenants.
One covenant is from Mount
Sinai and bears
children who are to be slaves: This is Hagar. Now Hagar stands for Mount Sinai in Arabia and
corresponds to the present city of Jerusalem, because she is in slavery with her children.
But the Jerusalem that is above is free, and she is our mother.
For it is written: ‘Be glad, O barren woman, who bears no children;
break forth and cry aloud, you who have no labor pains; because more are
the children of the desolate woman than of her who has a
husband’” (Galatians 4:24-27).
What happens next is that Paul
looks back at these historical persons and draws certain conclusions from
them. In essence, he sees a huge difference between Sarah and Hagar.
Sarah represents Grace and Hagar represents Law. Sarah stands for
trusting God alone and Hagar stands for trying to please God through your
own efforts. And the sons born to them represent the way of faith (Isaac)
versus the way of works (Ishmael). Thus you have real people who
nevertheless stand for (or point to or represent) certain spiritual
truths. When you boil it down, Paul is saying that Sarah is the line of
faith alone and Hagar is the line of works.
The reference to Mount
Sinai points us back
to the giving of the law to Moses. The “earthly Jerusalem” is the Jerusalem of the first century, which was the world
headquarters of Judaism with its dependence on the law as a means of
salvation. But since no one can be saved by keeping the law, the people
who live in Jerusalem are enslaved by the law. They are trapped by
demands they can never meet.
By contrast Sarah stands for the promise of God found in the gospel,
which reveals to us the Good News that Jesus died for our sins and rose
from the dead. The salvation he offers is free to anyone who will take it
by faith alone.
Finally, verses 26 and 27 are a quotation from Isaiah 54:1. They point to
a coming day when the barren woman (Sarah) will rejoice because she has
far more children than the woman with a husband (Hagar). The law cannot
produce life but grace produces life abundant.
Hagar and Ishmael stand for all those who want to help God out by doing
good works to earn salvation. Sarah and Isaac stand for all those who
believe God’s promise and are saved by faith alone.
Th
e line of works and
self-effort looks like this:
Abraham
Hagar
Ishmael
Mt. Sinai
The Law
Earthly Jerusalem
Bondage
Death
The line of faith looks like this:
Abraham
Sarah
Isaac
Mt. Zion
The Gospel
Grace
Faith in Christ
Freedom, forgiveness, salvation
Heaven
Note that Abraham stands at the head of both lines. That’s why
it’s not enough to be Abraham’s son. You must also be a son
or daughter of Sarah if you want to go to heaven.
So the question is not, “Who’s your father?” The real
question is, “Who’s your mother?”
III. A
Contemporary Application 28-31
“Now
you, brothers, like Isaac, are children of promise. At that time the son
born in the ordinary way persecuted the son born by the power of the
Spirit. It is the same now. But what does the Scripture say? ‘Get
rid of the slave woman and her son, for the slave woman’s son will
never share in the inheritance with the free woman's son.’
Therefore, brothers, we are not children of the slave woman, but of the
free woman” (Galatians 4:28-31).
In the last few verses of our text,
Paul draws four contemporary applications.
A. We are children of promise, not
of works.
He says this twice—in verses 28 and 31. We who believe in Jesus are
descendants of Abraham through Isaac. We are not the sons of Ishmael. We
have believed God’s promise by faith and on that basis alone, we
are going to heaven.
B. We should expect persecution
from those who practice the religion of works.
Paul’s point comes from Genesis 21 where we learn that Ishmael
mocked young Isaac, scoffing him and trying to humiliate him. Religious
people do the same thing today. John Stott points out that our chief
opposition almost always comes from religionists, not from true pagans.
No one hates God’s grace like the man who is trying to save himself
by his own good works. Nominal Christians hate true Christians because
they can’t understand them and feel rebuked by them.
It was religious Jews
who hated Jesus the most—not the indifferent Romans. And
Paul’s greatest enemies were not the pagan philosophers of Athens but the fanatical Jewish religionists. The
descendants of Hagar are always threatened by the descendants of Sarah
because Sarah’s children live by faith, Hagar’s by works.
Our greatest opposition comes from those who claim to practice religion
but do it in the name of tolerance, diversity and pluralism. Paul’s
point is clear: Don’t be surprised by the persecution of religious
people. It started with Ishmael and continues to this day.
C. We must not compromise with
those who do not accept the truth of God’s Word.
It was Sarah who told Abraham to throw Hagar and Ishmael out of the
house. On one level, it seems cruel and unfair. But on a deeper level,
Sarah knew what she was doing. The promise of God must be preserved at
all costs. If Hagar and Ishmael stayed in the family, there would be
unending strife. Someone had to go. If you let Ishmael live with Isaac,
there will be nothing but trouble.
In the church there can be no compromise on the core doctrines of our
faith, such as the Bible as the Word of God, Jesus as the Son of God, the
Trinity, salvation by grace through faith, salvation only through Christ,
universal sinfulness, the truth of the book of Genesis, the sanctity of
all human life, God’s design for marriage as one man with one woman
for life, moral purity in all things, the literal resurrection of Christ,
the blood atonement of Christ, the miracles of Christ, the virgin birth
of Christ, and the second coming of Christ. We must stand for these
truths even if it costs us popularity and personal advancement.
D. We who are persecuted inherit
all the promises of God.
Though we may be despised and rejected by men, we are accepted by God in
heaven. “We are hard pressed on every side, but not crushed;
perplexed, but not in despair; persecuted, but not abandoned; struck
down, but not destroyed” (II Corinthians 4:8-9). So it goes that the followers
of Sarah will never be understood by the followers of Hagar.
Not many of us will be super-rich and often we will be poorer than our
friends who do not know God. How should we feel about that? Sometimes the
temptation to envy the wicked is almost overwhelming. Other people may
seem to have a lot more fun even a lot more friends. But why should we
envy them?
Those who don’t know Jesus are under the penalty of sin and without
the comfort of knowing God. They are no better off then their slave
mother, Hagar. Riches and worldly pleasure is all they get, and with it
comes a gnawing emptiness that nothing in the world can satisfy. Their
happiness is only temporary.
Those who know Jesus have something that cannot be seen or measured but
is nonetheless very real. We are forgiven, redeemed, justified, accepted,
given a new name and a new life, adopted, reconciled, empowered, filled,
called, gifted, and commissioned. We are numbered with the saints and
protected by the angels. And after we die, we go to be with Jesus and our
heavenly Father for all eternity.
So if you have been whining and complaining lately, get over it. If
you’ve been moaning about your lot in life, stop it. Remember that
eye has not seen and ear has not heard, nor has it entered into the mind
of man what God has prepared for those who love him.
So, a simple but profound
question: Who is your mother? Hagar or Sarah? Are you born of the flesh
only or are you also born of the Spirit?
You are either a slave to works or you have been set free by
God’s grace.
Who is your mother? Make sure you know the answer to that question. Amen.
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