Dr. Kevin DeYoung | Slave or Free?

this morning we come to the book of galatians galatians chapter 4. hopefully you have a bible you can turn there you can find the bible in the pews if you are regular here you'll notice right away that we are in galatians instead of in genesis for two reasons one last week as i was studying the passage what i had originally divided into two weeks i decided to put into one so when you get those bookmarks that lay out the schedule from time to time as i'm studying i realize well this ought to be divided a little different so i put two weeks into one because i thought all of chapter 21 fit together that meant there was a week open but more importantly as i was working on last week's sermon there was this connection point to galatians chapter 4 that i didn't really have time to unpack and so i thought what better way than to do all of 21 last week and to set aside this week to look at paul's inspired interpretation at least one spiritual lesson to draw from what we saw last week in genesis 21 and so we come this morning to galatians 4 verses 21 through 31 and if you've been here you'll recognize right away that we are back into the story of abraham and hagar and the child by hagar and sarah and the promised child isaac from sarah and what it means and what spiritual importance there is for us as god's people verse 21 tell me you who desire to be under the law do you not listen to the law for it is written that abraham had two sons one by a slave woman and won by a free woman but the son of the slave was born according to the flesh while the son of the free woman was born through promise now this may be interpreted allegorically these women are two covenants one is from mount sinai bearing children for slavery she is hagar now hagar is mount sinai in arabia she corresponds to the present jerusalem for she is in slavery with her children but the jerusalem above is free and she is our mother for it is written rejoice o barren one who does not bear break forth and cry aloud you who are not in labor for the children of the desolate one will be more than those of the one who has a husband now you brothers like isaac are children of promise but just as at that time he who was born according to the flesh persecuted him who was born according to the spirit so also it is now but what does the scripture say cast out the slave woman and her son for the son of the slave woman shall not inherit with the son of the free woman so brothers we are not children of the slave but of the free woman do you remember when you were a little kid and you would get separated from your parents maybe in the mall a restaurant a park at church i remember it happening often at church why are you still talking and when your perspective on life is about knee high and you misplace your parents you go looking for them you may recall finally finding the pant leg or the the hem of the dress of your mom and grabbing on to that leg finally and you look up in desperation only to see that woman look down at you and you have no idea who this person is it's happened to me when i was a kid it's happened to me as a parent sometimes i'll see a young child of mine wander off and think that's the wrong leg and it's happened to my leg oh bless you child that's not the person you're looking for and as a child you want to scream and maybe you do scream you're not my mom this passage in galatians is a complicated passage many commentators think this is the most difficult section in galatians but at the heart of this passage is a very simple question who's your mama do you know who your mother is there is a less than edifying genre of comedy called yo mama jokes and i will not regale you with any examples but the idea is basically your mamas so this and that and it's an insult you don't like to have your mother insulted i hope not no you don't like to have your father insulted either but there's something especially bad about insulting your mama for one thing we ought to be instinctively protective of our mothers as they were protective of us and second there is a sense i think deep in the human psyche if you insult my mom you're insulting me now of course some of us had great moms some of you had not so great moms but yet you should feel as a child an instinctive sense of protection in a larger sense that you do not understand me if you don't really understand who my mother is and what's true of an earthly family is even more true of our spiritual family that's what this passage is about now we're going to get into the weeds of it and try to understand all of the various analogies that paul is heaping upon each other but the conclusion is very straightforward look at it in verse 31 so brothers and that's an inclusive word for men and women brothers and sisters we are not children of the slave but of the free woman that's what paul is driving at addressing his fellow jews and reminding them in christ who their spiritual mother is why why was that so important in paul's day why is that so important for you to know who your mama is well that's the conclusion let's go back up to the top and see paul's argument look at verse 21 because it's really important to understand to whom he is speaking who is he addressing here tell me you who desire to be under the law that's who paul is speaking to in this section those who desire to be under the law now you look back at verse 12 he says there brothers i entreat you because uh become as i am so paul is one who is a jew by birth and yet he does not desire to be under the law and he wants the galatians to experience that same freedom but they want to be under the law what does it mean to desire to be under the law this is apt to be misunderstood we must say first of all his concern is not that somehow their desire to be holy or obedient to god is mistaken so don't hear oh they take holiness seriously that was a bad thing no we see elsewhere as we get to chapter 5 verse 13 for you were called to freedom brothers only do not use your freedom as opportunity for the flesh verse 14 for the whole law is fulfilled in one word you shall love your neighbor as yourself so in that sense yes you are people obeying the law the law as it's summarized in its general moral precepts love god love your neighbor look at chapter 5 verse 16 walk by the spirit and you will not gratify the flesh or you see in verse 25 live by the spirit keep in step with the spirit so paul is not giving them an excuse to be indifferent to god's commands or to holiness that's not what he means so what is the concern what does it mean a desire to be under law understanding paul's doctrine of the law is one of the trickiest things and most difficult things in theology and in new testament interpretation but i think we can simplify it by thinking of two words regulations and reliance that's what it means to have a desire to be under the law one that you want the regulations of the law what do i mean well you have your bible open to galatians look at chapter 2 verse 11. here's an example when cephas that's paul peter came to antioch i opposed him to his face because he stood condemned for before certain men came from james he was eating with the gentiles when they came he drew back and separated himself fearing the circumcision party and the rest of the jews acted hypocritically along with him so that even barnabas was led astray by their hypocrisy but when i saw that their conduct was not in step with the truth of the gospel i said to cephas before them all if you though a jew live like a gentile and not like a jew how can you force the gentile to live like jews peter had embraced his freedom in the gospel and that christ broke down the barriers between jews and gentiles no longer did they have to be a people set apart from one another no longer did god require in order to be his faithful people that you kept certain observance of days that you kept certain food regulations that you kept yourself unstained from gentiles and peter had fully embraced that and there he was yucking it up with the gentiles having blts whatever he was doing and then some some people came in who said i don't think so remember that's not what we do as god's people and so he got nervous and barnabas got nervous and they all backed up and said okay we're not gonna eat like the gentiles anymore we're not gonna eat with them and in fact yes yes to be a real good christian you do need to keep these things and paul says well you're being a hypocrite you you weren't keeping those regulations yourself and now you're insisting that in order to belong to god you have to keep all of the laws regulations so paul says in chapter four you who desire to be under the law okay you who think that you need these certain regulations now he's not throwing out the whole law but these certain ceremonial regulations that had to do with purity and ritual observance of days and keeping yourself unstained from certain peoples these regulations that's what it means to desire to be under the law you want a nice list of things that you do or don't do and there you can set aside and you're right and they're wrong the other word is reliance look at chapter 3 verse 10 for all who rely on works of the law are under a curse they relied on the law here's a a homely illustration actually a homie illustration the difference between the law as adorning the gospel and the law as reliance instead of the gospel so if you're building a spiritual house what do you those two by fours or two by sixes as you frame the house and then you you put the brick along the exterior what keeps you safe well it's not the the hangings on the wall it's not the color of the paint or the plush carpet what keeps you safe and secure you rely upon the the framing the wood or in a large building the steel and the brick that's what you rely on now what do you do inside the house as you're safe and secure you adorn it you put up pictures you paint it you make it look nice so to rely upon the law is instead of using obedience to adorn the gospel to make people say ah look at the gospel the gospel changes people the gospel is something i want in my life instead of adorning the spiritual house with obedience you rely on it and you think the the studs in the wall that keep you safe are not the studs and the frame of the gospel but of your law keeping that is to rely upon the law now you might say to yourself i don't want to be under the law who wants to be under the law but remember before you quickly set aside these galatians and say oh you foolish galatians remember these were people who believed in christ they believed jesus was god's son they believed jesus was the messiah they believed jesus rose from the dead you see that paul the very beginning of the book he's writing to the churches of galatia he's not writing to the synagogues of galatia he's writing to christians now they may have so misunderstood the gospel they're in danger of not being christians but they are at least in churches they are professing christians he says grace to you in peace from god our father and the lord jesus christ these are people who said god is my father jesus is the messiah jesus is my lord they have known something of the grace of christ chapter 1 verse 6. so let's understand that these were people like us is it possible that you desire to live under the law take those two words now likely not jewish regulations you're not saying i wish i could keep kosher foods and i wish well almost everyone here we are gentiles so it's not the jewish regulations but isn't it the case that some of us would like to boil christianity down to a few manageable commands a few regulations that we could get right i don't cheat on my spouse i don't cheat on people i go to church and not every week but you know twice a month when it works when the weather's not too nice but not too bad i go to church and i say yes sir and no ma'am i mean we're not yankees okay we know how to speak so i just have a few regulations some of us would like a christianity like that some of you may think of christianity basically that's what you want there's four or five things i do them you do them you can be good i do them i'm good or maybe take the other word reliance most of you would know better than to say i'm earning my salvation but think what really is your confidence in the spiritual house in which you live what what keeps you safe from the storm winds of god's judgment what do you think is on the other side of that dry wall those two by fours is it your obedience now there are people who come here this morning who are very confident and people who are not confident if you're a confident person generally you feel good about yourself good about life keep your head up high uh where is that confidence is it really in your accomplishments throughout life you've always just tended to come out on top or toward the top your gpa and your test scores um maybe your athleticism maybe you've been one of the good looking people maybe your natural abilities in some area maybe you feel like you're very cultured you travel maybe you have a position maybe it's in your family you have a certain confidence about you now what if you're not the person who's confident you may think surely i'm not one who desires to live under law but think about it that unconfidence is also often the same desire to live under law you simply don't feel like you're very good at it you've disappointed someone there's something very dark painful in your past you've not lived up to other people's expectations you never felt like you could please your mom or dad or your your house doesn't seem to be on the level of south charlotte or your family doesn't seem to be acing it whether you're here generally feeling good about yourself and pretty confident or you're feeling deep down like you're not making it and you're not measuring up it is quite possible that both sets of people are actually relying on works of the law one thinks you know of course i believe the gospel yada yada yada but i kind of am nailing it and then the rest think of course i believe in the gospel but i know how much i'm not nailing it and that's why i just don't feel like a very good christian either because you think you are scoring well compared to others or because you're not scoring well compared to others but in both cases you may actually be relying on the law and you may desire deep in your heart to be back under the law so paul yes in one sense he's addressing people unlike us who are having these particular jewish controversies and these jewish regulations and these jewish debates about the torah and the mosaic covenant and that's by and large not us but when you get to the spiritual heart of it it is a predicament of the human condition that we keep running back to live under the law give me the regulations that i can pass let me rely upon my achievement of these good things paul is going to argue strenuously against that's why he addresses back in chapter 4 21 you who desire to be under the law do you not listen to the law so what he's going to do is take us now back to the law back to the old testament and say if you want to live under the law before you make that mistake why don't you listen to what the law says and he proceeds along three lines historically allegorically and personally i get those three from john stott when you see john stott's three points they're almost always right historical allegorical personal look at the historical argument he says it is written abraham had two sons now you have to remember one of the proudest and loudest boasts of the jews was that they were children of abraham matthew 3 9 jesus says do not presume to say we have abraham as our father john 8 39 they boast abraham is our father it was one of the uh the chest thumping retorts but we are children of abraham and paul says not so fast remember there were two family lines descended from abraham and notice he points out two differences they were born by different women and they were born in different ways so you can see that verse 22 one was born by a slave woman hagar one was born by a free woman sarah so you say you're a child of abraham but who's your mother which line are you descended from hagar or sarah so born by different women and then born in different ways look at verse 22 the son of the slave was born according to the flesh while the son of the free woman was born through the promise it's easy to skip over this verse it sounds very spiritual christian sort of language flesh and promise but don't miss the vital argument that paul is making what's the difference between how ishmael was born and how isaac was born ishmael was born according to the flesh now isaac was flesh isaac came from a woman who was real flesh so what does it mean according to the flesh it means according to the way of the world according to the normal natural process abraham got together with hagar and she was a young woman and young women usually have babies and so according to the flesh very naturally it happened with all of the biological function between a man and a woman that child was born natural how was isaac born not natural supernatural all of the regular biological functions that work when a a man and a woman come together were long since gone for abraham and sarah and she had not had children her own life and now when she was very very old this would happen not according to the natural way of things not according to human effort but according to the promise do you see the argument that paul is making why it's so different which line from abraham you descend because there's one way in which you say you know how we're going to do this you know how i'm going to be right with god it makes sense we're going to work at it we're going to be smart about it we're going to be wise people just like abraham said ah i know how to do it i know how to have the kid we haven't been able to have i got a you have a young slave a young servant girl this will work that's according to the flesh that's not the way of the gospel the way of the gospel is not the way that says ah here's how we do it we're smart enough we're good enough we work hard we put it together we think there's a great plan the gospel is according to the promise this should not have worked you had nothing to contribute to it it was solely by a supernatural miracle of god's grace with hagar abraham worked he took matters into his own hands he tried to be his own deliverer his own promise keeper he attempted to do what god meant to do that's the way of hagar and ishmael the way of sarah and isaac is to say god only you can do it and i can't work it out i can't make it happen i cannot be a self-savior and it is the default of every human person to want to be a self-savior two different women two different ways that's the history the biblical history second he makes an allegorical argument verse 24. this may be interpreted allegorically now that sets us on edge a bit makes us nervous paul are you are you going to pass your exegesis class in seminary we don't we don't do allegories well let's understand what he means and doesn't mean by this term here's what he does not mean he does not mean to take spiritual lessons divorced from history or to make history say something that it doesn't mean or to tell stories that have no basis in history this is not a sort of aesop's fable and here's a story about a scorpion or a snake or a frog and we just take these stories about animals that we make up and then we draw some lesson for that's not the sort of allegory or it's not like as some of the church fathers did and tried to draw very ingenious allegories like saying the two coins that were given to the innkeeper and the parable of the good samaritan represent the two sacraments that christ gave to the church mind-blowing no that's not a good explanation it's better to think of paul's use of allegory here as analogy figure of speech spiritual lesson and illustration until yesterday was 9 11 anniversary and think if someone was interpreting the history of 911 and said the two towers that fell in new york that represented george washington and abraham lincoln would say um not exact how how did that that's just pulling things out but could you draw lessons and say those towers represented american freedom and american prosperity or uh capitalism and american ingenuity yeah you could draw and lots of people drew those sorts of lessons what did those towers at the heart of manhattan what do they symbolize so there's a right way and a wrong way to draw figurative analogies or illustrations the rabbis often drew these kinds of spiritual lessons from the old testament and though we must be very careful in doing it ourselves we must not fault paul for drawing these kinds of lessons essentially what he says is here in our church day is a similar sort of situation that we see analogously in the old testament and so he draws a series of contrasts analogies figures illustrations two covenants two mountains two cities you can see this he starts heaping them up upon each other and so it gets a little confusing but really that's what he's doing he says these women are like two covenants so the mosaic covenant and then the new covenant and the new covenant is really the fulfillment of the abrahamic covenant the covenant of promise so there's two covenants and then he said two mountains so the one is mount sinai of course the ten commandments were given to moses on mount sinai and that's in arabia almost sort of suggesting that's that's outside of israel today actually that that's somewhere else outside of our borders down in arabia but there's mount sinai and then he never mentions the second mountain but the implied mountain is mount zion we see this spelled out in hebrews chapter 12. the author there makes a contrast with the two jerusalems which we'll see and with the mount sinai and with mount zion two covenants two mountains and then two cities so there's the present jerusalem we might call the jerusalem below and then there's the jerusalem above so the jerusalem below is earthly jerusalem representative of all these regulations and of reliance upon the law and then there is the jerusalem above the heavenly city which is free two covenants two mountains two cities and he brings this to a head this allegorical argument in verse 27. he quotes from isaiah 54 1. now the context in isaiah 54 the prophet is speaking to the day when israel will be in captivity in babylon and he's comparing jerusalem in captivity to a barren woman because god's people have been taken exile off to babylon and the capital city the holy city jerusalem is empty it's barren but isaiah predicts that there will be a day when the children of the desolate one will be more in other words there is coming a great day a resurgence a revival in jerusalem jerusalem will be rebuilt that's the promise paul's using it here to make a connection with sarah that just as jerusalem in the captivity was the barren one so sarah was that barren one unable to have children and yet in the midst of that physical impossibility god said there's gonna be a day when her spiritual children are going to be more than the children of those who went the earthly route is not a mathematical formula about how many people are going to be saved or not saved it's simply making the point that you should not rely upon earthly means you should not rely upon the earthly city you should not just look if you were there if you were there in abraham's day you want to say where where is abraham the great nation gonna come from you got his 90 year old wife you got this young servant girl and he's going to sleep with both of them you're all going to say you know she's had a whole lifetime had having children and now it's we all know it's impossible where's this great nation coming from well it's going to come from hagar and paul's reminding them but it didn't that's not where it came from and so the spiritual lesson he's drawing is this take confidence in that which you cannot see in that which you cannot fathom and then drawing it back to those who desire to be under the law he says you may think that your works amount to something you may think well all i have is promise and faith and grace and what's what's that that's some ethereal thing i actually have something i can build on i know i'm not perfect but i'm getting some things right and i'm being a good person and i'm giving to the church and i'm being the best husband that i can i'm being a good wife i'm working hard at my job i got something this analogy from isaiah 54 1 tells us they look to be fruitful they're barren they will not get you where you need to go but over here what looks to be desolate what looks to be nothing nothing to show for yourself except the empty hands of faith that is going to prove supernaturally fruitful sarah the barren one had a future and even with your works that seem to be barren i got nothing okay easy for you to say pastor you're a pastor you're probably you know just a minor sinner or something you're probably still a pretty good person but my works you don't know where i've been you don't know what i've done it's barren well the good news of the gospel is god says rejoice o barren one you have a future the very ones who desire to be under the law and have confidence in their own efforts are the ones without a future and he brings this home finally historically allegorically personally now brothers verse 28 you like isaac he doesn't have to convince his audience that isaac is the good guy they know that if you've been around the church you know that isaac richmond well obviously we want to we're with isaac okay paul says got it two sons you're with isaac what does that mean well he gives two things that that means one it means we will be persecuted like isaac verse 29 just as at that time he was born according to the flesh persecuted him who was born according to the spirit so it is also now if you were here last week we looked at that that was genesis 21 verse 9. and there is that word translated laugh that ishmael laughed at young isaac and there was a little footnote in the esv that said or or mocked and we said that paul interprets it to be a kind of mocking disdain persecution what exactly did ishmael who's a a teenage young man say to two or three year old isaac we don't know but we might speculate they sort of laughed derisively said you know who the firstborn son is you know who's uh been loved by our dad longest you know who's gonna be the heir it's the firstborn son welcome to the world isaac we don't know exactly but some sort of derisive mocking word perhaps claiming his privileged place in the family ishmael did not persecute with the sword but with words with disdain with mockery with scorn it doesn't mean that we're always the good guys in our story sometimes we're not but there is a spiritual lesson here that there is always going to be a sense in which those who think they have something to show for themselves lord it over those who don't have something to show for themselves that there is an uncomfortability with unmerited lavish grace have you ever made the connection to the story of joseph joseph his father loves him he loves him embarrassingly so he said you're making the other sons feel bad the coat of many colors and heaping upon him all these favors of course his brothers hate it and they're jealous and they are going to kill him but they said they sell him off they sell him off to ishmaelite traders a caravan of ishmaelites and many ancient commentators made the connection selling him off to the dis the child of the promise to the descendants of ishmael and even here looking at galatians 4 it's not a strain to make a connection that there was something as they sold him off to the ishmaelites of course it was god's people there the descendants of of isaac even who sold him off but you work with the announcer they sold him off why because they could not look upon god's lavish favor they could not embrace a father loving his child so much more than he deserved and when you can't stand that you send them off to the ishmaelites there are always people who want to boast in something other than grace and they will look down on those who say it only always all of the time depends on grace so that's the first thing you will be persecuted and then second and here's his great conclusion if you're isaac we all get it you want to be isaac you want to be on team isaac then you are children of the free woman and he quotes in verse 30. interestingly in genesis 21 10 it's sarah who says this but here he quotes it as scripture because what sarah says scripture says it has that authority now it's a little troubling to us because sarah was in many ways in the wrong by wanting to just cast out hagar and hagar we feel sorry for but paul is not trying to adjudicate that dispute he's simply quoting from genesis 21 10 for this specific point he's reminding them of what they already knew that the descendant from hagar was not to be the heir that was not the one who would inherit rather it was the one who was born of the promise we are abraham's true children but paul reminds us you can be related to abraham in two ways but only one way makes you an heir and that's the way of the promise that's the way of grace that's the way that does not rely on super human ingenuity but on supernatural mercy that's the way of jesus that's the way of the cross that's the way of the gospel and so the question for them and for us is whether you are living as a free man a free woman maybe you're happy to live in that freedom and you make others live in bondage your kids your parents your spouse your fellow church member it happens too often in our hearts god thank you for the life i have by your promise undeserved mercy i love to live as a free child but i'll be you know what if i'm going to let them live as anything other than a slave how often do we sing of being justified by grace and we make our children we make our spouse we make our fellow church members be justified by works who is your mother calvin says in his commentary there are two mothers in the church he calls them legal and evangelical the legal one leads you to bondage meaning if you want to do this by the law if you think you have it in yourself to make this work i was over in the eastern part of the state yesterday sort of between fayetteville did i say that right i don't know fayetteville and wilmington i was doing a relay race here with uh evan and his friend and we were each doing a part of it and so we were out there and uh so i was done not because i was fastest i just did the short part and i was waiting for the race everybody to get in now sitting in a chair under a little awning and a man comes up to me maybe in his 60s and i'm sorry that i can't do a very good authentic north carolina accent but he says something to me like uh so what you got going on here i said well i'm i'm waiting for my friend to to finish well you you doing something i said well i i did i did the first part of the race and now i'm waiting and uh when we all get done i'm gonna you know get a picture see how we did and then i got to head home oh he says where's home i said well back in charlotte oh so you're not from around here no and then i'm thinking trying feebly maybe i'll just see if there's an open door to say something about the gospel so i just ventured and i said yeah i got to get back to charlotte because i got to go to church tomorrow morning he wasn't nibbling too much he said oh going to church well probably pretty good idea for you to do that so i thought i'd try again and go a little farther i said well i i got to be back for church because i'm the pastor and he said well if you're a pastor i imagine then you're a pretty good sinner and i said i said well my wife would probably agree with that and then he said and this is almost an exact quote he said my daddy always told me never eat food from a skinny cook and never listen to a preacher don't know anything about sinning so i said i i i do know something about sinning turns out that pastors sin too your preacher's sin your missionary sin your elder sin your deacon sin and doesn't do me any good to say well i'm one of those preachers who doesn't know anything about sinning and you know what it doesn't do you any good either to act like you don't know a thing or two about sinning i don't mean just safe nobody's perfect everybody says that i mean real honest to goodness god god-defying sin you do it i do it we've all done it we might as well admit it because you will never find the joy the forgiveness and the freedom you need by doing things the hagar way the legal way depending on your own effort and you may say all of the right things doctrinally but in your heart you don't want to admit that you're a sinner and you don't want to believe that you cannot contribute anything to it and you only always must rely on the promise grace everything today is about identity come back tonight we're going to talk more about identity you identify with a sports team you identify with your skin color you identify with your language your ethnicity today you identify are you on team mask or team no mask or vax or novak's brothers and sisters this is the identity if you belong to christ in the gospel you are not children of the slave but of the free woman do not run back under law brothers and sisters do not forget who your mama is let's pray father in heaven we want to be of the evangel of the gospel of your grace we confess it we read it we sing it may we enjoy it in jesus name amen

Channel: Christ Covenant Church

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Keywords: Christ Covenant Church, PCA, Reformed, Kevin DeYoung, Bible, Genesis, Galatians

Id: JhzLAqHRZVw

Length: 47min 56sec (2876 seconds)

Published: Tue Sep 14 2021