Series

The North Wind and the Sun watched a lonely traveler as he walked along a path below. A debate broke out between the two as to who was more powerful. They decided to settle the dispute through a contest. The first one to get the man to remove his clothing would be declared the most powerful. The North Wind went first and blew his chill wind hard across the man’s face. However, the harder the wind blew, the tighter the man clung to his coat. Admitting failure, the North Wind invited the Sun to see what he could do. The Sun shone with great warmth and immediately upon feeling the sun’s genial rays, the man removed his coat. In fact, he was so warm that he removed all of his clothes and bathed in a stream along the path. The moral of the story: Persuasion is better than force.

This famous fable communicates an important lesson in itself. However, as I see it, this fable also illustrates our text from the book of Galatians this morning. The North Wind reminds me of the Judaizers. The Judaizers had it in their mind that acceptance by God could be secured by human planning and effort. They tried to convince the Galatian Christians that they needed to do their part fulfilling God’s plan of grace and mercy. That the gospel wasn’t enough, that Jesus wasn’t enough, that it was Jesus plus really good behavior, Jesus plus circumcision, Jesus plus observing the right feasts and festivals. They blew hard! Their effort was going to win them favor and acceptance with God. The harder they tried, the better they thought they were.

This morning in our text from Galatians, Paul takes us back deep into the history of God’s people to illustrate the big idea that I want us to focus on today: God’s plan is always best, and always leads to freedom; human plans and effort will always lead to slavery.

This is a challenging text in many ways. In many ways, it can raise more questions than answers; it can make us uncomfortable because it appears that God might be mean and harsh. It can, and I think will, challenge our perspective on God and maybe cause us to look at our lives to see if what we believe about God is really how we live. Notice that I said “we”.

As is always the case, I am not speaking from a place of expertise, I am speaking as a fellow journeyer.

Context

Now, by this time, nearly two and a half months into our study of Galatians, you know why Paul wrote this letter. You know how high the stakes were. But for those just coming in, let me give you some context. The Apostle Paul, St. Paul, had come to the region of

Galatia

to rest and recover from a terrible illness (Galatians 4:13 ).

Galatia

wasn’t on his travel itinerary but he was sick and needed a place to recuperate, so

Galatia

was where he stopped.

While he was in Galatia, God empowered him to teach the Galatians about the gospel, the truth that the only way a person is accepted by God is through faith in the cross, the historical event when Jesus Christ, God’s son, was killed as a sacrifice for the sin of the world—your sin and mine. And that the only way a person can live a holy life and obey God is through the power of the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of Jesus himself, poured into us the moment we become a Christian. That is the message that Paul was preaching among the Galatians—Cross and Spirit. As a result, many Galatians, and indeed many since, including many of you, put their faith in Jesus and became Christians.

But the Galatians had come under fire from some people, the Judaizers, who taught that the gospel wasn’t enough to be accepted by God. So Paul wrote this letter to the Galatian church to argue against the Judaizers’ teaching. Paul has spent much of his time reminding the Galatians that God has set them free because of the Gospel. The Judaizers were threatening their freedom by trying to impose the law as a requisite to God’s acceptance. Today we come to the last of Paul’s arguments against the Judaizers. Let’s look at the text…

Reading the Text: Galatians 4:21-31

[21] Tell me, you who want to be under the law, are you not aware of what the law says? [22] For it is written that Abraham had two sons, one by the slave woman and the other by the free woman. [23] 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. [24] 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. [25] Now Hagar stands for Mount Sinai in Arabia and corresponds to the present city of Jerusalem , because she is in slavery with her children. [26] But the Jerusalem that is above is free, and she is our mother. [27] For it is written:

[28] Now you, brothers, like Isaac, are children of promise. [29] 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. [30] 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." [31] Therefore, brothers, we are not children of the slave woman, but of the free woman.

Unpacking the text

Paul begins in verse 21 with a rhetorical question to the Galatians, “Tell me, you who want to be under the law, are you not aware of what the law says?” Do you know what kind of life you’re asking for by accepting this Jewish law? Do you know what sort of bondage you’re in for, you who are letting these Judaizers trick you?

We read this with a certain degree of smugness—at least I do. Yeah, how foolish these Galatians were to go back to the bondage of rules when they’d been set free by the gospel! Who’d want that sort of life? But if I’m honest and, if I may say so, if we’re honest, we are in the same place that the Galatians were in. We struggle to be free much the same as the Galatians struggled to be free.

I think that the majority of us, including myself, secretly try to live under the law. In fact, the church has promoted something of a law-based Christianity for a long time. We allow rules to shape our experience as Disciples of Christ. We think if we just wear the right clothes, sing the right songs, and read from the right translation of the Bible, we’ll be doing all right. If we stay away from alcohol, watch only “G” rated movies, and never, ever dance then our lives are more pleasing to God than those who do those nasty things. Or what about this, which happens to be a big one for me, if I read the Bible enough every day, and pray enough every day, then surely I have done enough to please God today. Does this sound familiar?

Why do we do this? Why do the majority of us live this way? I think that it gives us a false sense of security. We like to know that we are doing something, anything, to warrant God’s acceptance, that we’re doing something to justify God’s free gift of grace. Our culture screams “nothing comes free”, that “if you want to make something of yourself, you’ve got to earn it”, or my personal favorite, “God helps those who help themselves.”

But Paul says to the Galatians, and to us, “You foolish people, you foolish church, stop marching to society’s drum. Don’t you know by now that it’s not what we do that makes us acceptable to God? Rather it is what God has already done. You are set free because of faith in Jesus Christ, by God’s grace and mercy, not by anything you do yourself.”

And then Paul takes us back to the beginning to make the most beautiful point in this text, and maybe this whole letter. Look at verse 22 & 23. “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.” Paul goes back to the covenant (promise) God made with Abraham, let’s follow…(Genesis 15-21)

The promise God made with Abraham was that he would be the father of the faithful and that all nations would be blessed in his offspring. But there was an obvious problem: Abraham didn’t have children. All Abraham had was a promise that he would have children. Years went by, still no child. God promised, but there was nothing to show for it. Complicating matters was this thing called the “biological clock”, and it was ticking slower and slower for Abraham’s wife, Sara, who was now a very old woman.

So, thinking they knew best, or at the very least, thinking they’d help God’s plan along, Abraham and Sara came up with their own a plan to have a child. There was an accepted custom in those days that allowed for men who were unable to carry on a family lineage by their wife, to marry another who could produce a son to carry on the family name. Abraham had a slave girl named Hagar. Hagar and Abraham, with Sara’s blessing, got together and made a baby, a son named Ishmael.

A few years later, God’s original promise to Abraham came true—as God’s promises always do. Sara got pregnant by Abraham and they had a son named Isaac. So we have now two boys: Ishmael, born to Hagar, and Isaac, born to Sara.

This was anything but a happy family. Sara, who had long resented Hagar, hated Ishmael too. Sara resented everything about them to the point she urged Abraham to banish them.

But Abraham was reluctant, so God spoke to him and said, “Do what Sara tells you, for it is from your son Isaac that the blessed people will come”(Genesis 21:10 -20, paraphrase mine).

(By the way, what do we do with a God who allows, even encourages, a slave girl and her child to be banished? Doesn’t this kind of trouble you a bit? Me too. But I have to say, that my mind is so limited to understand all of God’s ways. In fact, I can only know so much of God. What I know of God, however, leads me to trust Him. I want the God who sends away slave girls and their baby because I believe that He knows best, that his love is messy, his plan for his people isn’t always sweetness and roses…look at the cross.)

There are some key things that Paul wants us to know from this text; firstly that Abraham had two wives, Hagar and Sara. Now Paul takes the story of Hagar and Sara and creates an allegory to communicate a deeper spiritual truth:

“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. [25] Now Hagar stands for Mount Sinai in Arabia and corresponds to the present city of Jerusalem , because she is in slavery with her children. [26] But the Jerusalem that is above is free, and she is our mother. [27] For it is written:

Now in order to understand what Paul’s trying to communicate through this story, we need to look at each woman individually.

Hagar was a slave, and as slaves go, the children they bear are also considered slaves. Hagar was banished because her children would never share in the inheritance that a free child would share in.

Hagar, Paul writes, represents the old Covenant given to Moses at Mt. Sinai —The Ten Commandments. This is the Law. This is the covenant that placed a huge responsibility on humanity.

The responsibility to behave right by their own effort, to live according to a list of impossible rules, an impossible responsibility. To live as slaves.

Paul also says that Hagar corresponds to the present city of Jerusalem . In the earthly city of Jerusalem in Paul’s day, there lived a whole law-abiding, law driven, people named the Jews. (Incidentally, this is where the Judaizers came from.) Paul is saying that Hagar and her children, represented by the earthly Jerusalem , are in bondage to the law, they’re slaves.

Now what’s Paul’s point in all of this? Hagar represents the law; she represents slavery. Hagar, then, could be considered the mother of slaves. As such, she will only produce slave children. In other words, the law produces slaves. Hagar represents what happens when human plans ignore God’s promise.

Now Sara represents the new covenant of grace and mercy and freedom, the covenant that was fulfilled when Jesus came. This is the covenant that says that the requirements of the law are no longer, that people can now live, not by their human effort, but by the Holy Spirit of God himself!

Sara, Paul, writes corresponds to the Jerusalem that is above, and “the Jerusalem that is above is free, and she is our mother” ( 4:26 ). Now as we read in the books of Hebrews and Revelation, the Jerusalem that is above is the Church. In the church there are people who have been set free from the law, people who have believed in the person and work of Jesus and are alive by his Spirit. In the same way that the Children of Sara are free, the children of the church are also free!

What’s Paul’s point here? Sara is the mother of freedom, and anyone who comes from her is free. Sara is the spiritual mother of the Galatian Christians who accepted the gospel by faith. Sara is also the spiritual mother of anyone in this room today who has done likewise. Sara represents what happens when God’s promises come true in God’s time, in God’s way.

Application

Are you still with me? This is a tough text, I know, but a very important one. The Bible is a very encouraging book. It is full of inspirational and wise sayings and stories. But God, when guiding his people to write this book, taught that the Scriptures are important for teaching and stretching the mind. He told us that we are to love him, not only with all our hearts, but also with our minds.

God says that we can feel and sense him, but that we can also know him. That is why it is really important that we wrestle with texts like this one.

I promised that if we stuck it out through the theology and history of this text, there’d be a couple of really important ways to apply this text to our lives today. Let’s look at them.

A. “Dabbleritis”

We’ve been pretty hard on the Judaizers over the last couple of months, and for good reason. However, it occurred to me this week, that though they were full of really bad ideas, I share something in common with them. In fact, as I’ve mentioned, I think the majority of us share something in common with the Judaizers. The Judaizers were infected with a very common disease: “Dabbleritis”.

“Dabbleritis” is the condition where we dabble in things of the faith, where our heads can speak all the right answers, but our lives don’t reflect the answers because our hearts haven’t been transformed.

The Judaizers dabbled in the gospel. They believed in Jesus, they thought he was important, but they hadn’t surrendered their whole lives to the truth that it was Jesus only that made them free, gave them life. They dabbled. A person with dabbleritis thinks that they have to help God along, that God’s plans need human support. Dabblers have a really hard time trusting God. Their minds lead them to say the right things, but when pressed, they default to their own strength and wisdom to order their lives.

Abraham and Sara suffered from Dabbleritis. They didn’t trust God’s promises so they manufactured a human plan to “help God along”. As a result, Ishmael was born to Hagar. Ishmael—the slave—was a product of human impatience, the human trying to do God’s work for him.[ii] Abraham and Sara believed with their minds, but they did not trust God to do things in his time, in his way. Their lives reflected this mistrust, and they suffered for it. The great disaster of Abraham’s life was that he used Hagar to get what he thought God wanted for him.[iii]

I’m wondering if there are any people suffering from Dabbleritis here this morning. I think there are. In fact I’d go so far as to say that all of us have, or are currently suffering from the condition.

Paul tells the story of Hagar and Sara to communicate what God desperately wants the Galatians to know, and indeed what we are to know: Don’t dabble, trust Him completely, God’s way is the best for our lives, because God’s way is freedom.

Paul says, “Now you brothers (and sisters), like Isaac are children of promise”( 4:28 ). Paul’s referring to the great achievement in Abraham’s life. Abraham’s great achievement was what God did for him apart from any programs or plans that he came up with. Isaac—the free—was born of God’s promise; he was a product of God’s plan.

The lesson from this old story is clear: the moment we begin manipulating lives—our own lives or others—in order to get control of circumstances, we become enslaved in our own plans, and the consequences are tough. Remember what God allowed to happen to Hagar and Ishmael: they were sent away—consequences for an ill-conceived scheme to force God’s hand.

The life of freedom is a life of receiving, of believing, of accepting and of hoping. Because God freely keeps his promises, we are free to trust. Do you know something? We were created to live freely. Freedom is a basic condition of our wholeness. We were not constructed to be satisfied with feelings of insignificance. We are, as the scriptures say, “little less than God”. But we are not whole people until we are free; we are not free until we trust.[iv]

B. Persecution

Living a free life does not come cheap. Surrendering to God can be viewed in our culture as foolishness. But in our text this morning, Paul states clearly that persecution is part of the package: “At that time the son born in the ordinary way (the slave child, Ishmael) persecuted the son born by the power of the Spirit (the free son, Isaac). It is the same now”( 4:28 -29, parenthesis added).

Paul’s reference to persecution is timeless. For “the minute a Christian is willing to state his or her case for the truth of the gospel, at that very moment persecution of some kind will frequently occur.”[v] And sometimes that persecution comes from the inside, from other Christians. There are suggestions that some of the Judaizers were in fact Galatian Christians to begin with and that they were not committed to surrendering their lives to God so began attacking those who were.

Sometimes others of the faith challenge our freedom in Christ. I spoke at the beginning about us all at one time or another trying to live by rules so that we feel better about accepting God’s free gift of grace. Sometimes in doing that we impose our rules on others. One example I can think of is when a new believer comes to know Jesus. These are the freest, most passionate people I have known, especially those who have come to believe that Jesus can save them from addictions and other brokenness.

We do these people harm when we then suggest that now they have to do a, b, c, and d to really be a Christian. To really be acceptable to God, you need to dress right, read the Bible right, pray right, clean up your language, and quit smoking, etc. etc. Don’t do that! Don’t push them back to slavery; they’ve been set free! They’ve done nothing to earn God’s favor, but he gave it to them, don’t put conditions on them now. Hang out with them. If you’re struggling to live free in Christ, go spend some time with new Christians. But do so humbly, asking God to remind you of what it was like when you first wholeheartedly said yes to freedom.

The Bible tells us what we’re to do with slave thinking: “But what does the Scripture say? ‘Get rid of slavery because slavery only breeds slaves. The law only produces slaves to the law. And brothers and sisters, we are children of the free woman’”( 4:30 -31, paraphrase mine).

Get rid of slave talk. Get rid of slave thinking and slave behavior. Just get rid of it! It is not becoming for a people who are children of promise, of freedom, of the gospel.

Conclusion

I don’t want to confuse you. Living free does not mean that we now can just go on living any way we like, that there are no rules, no boundaries. In fact the opposite is true. The free life in Christ actually looks a certain way; the Holy Spirit leads those in Christ to a whole new way of being. But that’s for another day. Over the next four weeks, we’re going to look at what the life of freedom looks like as we come to the great climax and conclusion to the Galatian letter.

For today, however, leave here knowing that God’s freedom has nothing to do with anything we do to earn it. It has everything to do with what He’s already done. And remember, if you have chosen to follow Jesus for your life, “you are not a child of the slave woman, you are a child of the free woman.” You’re born free.

[i] Aesop’s Fables, “The North Wind and the Sun”, found at www.questia.com

[ii] Eugene Peterson, Traveling Light (Colorado Springs, CO: Helmers and Howard, 1985), 131.

[iii] Ibid

[iv] Ibid 132

[v] Scot McKnight, “Galatians”, The NIV Application Commentary, Terry Muck, general editor (Grand

Rapids, Michigan : Zondervan, 1995), 238.

Galatians 4:21-31

Introduction

Context

Reading the Text: Galatians 4:21-31

Unpacking the text

Application

A. “Dabbleritis”

B. Persecution

Conclusion