Make Up Your Mind
Text: Gal. 4:21-31
Introduction
1. Illustration: I have no idea who said this, but its truth is unmistakable,
"Angels are pure spirits, but it was God's intention to raise human beings, who are lower than the angels, to divine status, to union with the Trinity. An ancient tradition tells us that this was the cause of Lucifer's rebellion, jealousy over one day being ruled by a mere human. The great army of Michael got it right–-God's will is best, and serving God's will is the highest happiness, even if it causes us some inconvenience."
2. Proposition: One of the greatest truths of Scripture is that we can choose to do things our way and die, or we can choose to do things God's way and live.
3. In our text this morning we discover...
a. You Can Do Things Our Way
b. Your Way Leads to Slavery
c. God's Way Leads to Life
4. Let's stand together as we read Gal. 4:21-31.
Transition: First, we learn...
I. You Can Do Things Your Way (21-23).
A. Human Attempt
1. From Genesis to Revelation we find human beings who think that their way is better than God's way.
a. God told Adam and Eve not to eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, but they didn't listen.
b. The children of Israel in the wilderness thought they should do their thing instead of listening to God.
c. The nation of Israel thought it would be better to have an earthly king rather than let God be their king.
d. And the story goes on and on.
2. Another classic example of humans thinking they know better than God is that of Abraham and Sarah. So Paul uses them as an illustration to the Galatians who thought they knew better than God.
3. Paul asks them, "Tell me, you who want to live under the law, do you know what the law actually says?"
a. Under the influence of the false teachers (the Judaizers), the Galatians wanted to live under the law. Paul wanted to turn them back to accepting salvation by grace alone.
b. He confronted them directly by saying, “Do you know what the law really says?”
c. The Galatian believers, most of them not from a Jewish background and thus with little more than an elementary understanding of the Jewish law, may have answered an indignant “yes.”
d. Hopefully they would have halted long enough to realize the impossible standards under which they were placing themselves (Barton B. Bruce et al., Life Application New Testament Commentary, 784).
e. Like the rest of us, they thought their way was better than God's.
4. So Paul reminds them of what the Scripture teaches. He says, "The Scriptures say that Abraham had two sons, one from his slave-wife and one from his freeborn wife."
a. Paul alludes here to texts in Genesis 16, 21, and 25. There we learn that Sarah's frustration over not having children led her to encourage Abraham to have children through her servant, Hagar, a custom that was apparently acceptable at that time.
b. She had a son named Ishmael, but Hagar herself became disrespectful of Sarah; so, Sarah punished her.
c. Hagar fled Sarah's anger, though she eventually returned. Ishmael, as promised by God, was disliked by the descendants of Sarah, departed from living with them, lived in the wilderness of Beersheba and Pharan, and eventually became the head of the Arabs (McKnight, The NIV Application Commentary – Galatians,230).
d. Throughout the analogy, all distinctions between the two sons are based on the fact that they had two different mothers, not on the fact that they had a common father, Abraham.
e. The heritage of the line through one mother is lostness and bondage, and the heritage of the line through the other mother is salvation and freedom (MacArthur, MacArthur New Testament Commentary – Galatians, 124).
f. Hmm...Our way brings bondage and God's way brings freedom. Remember that one!
5. Paul continues his argument by saying, "The son of the slave-wife was born in a human attempt to bring about the fulfillment of God’s promise. But the son of the freeborn wife was born as God’s own fulfillment of his promise."
a. The birth of that son, whose name was Ishmael, was by human attempt, not because it was physical but because the scheme for his conception, devised by Sarah and carried out by Abraham, was motivated by purely selfish desires and fulfilled by purely human means.
b. The birth of Isaac, however, the son by the freeborn wife Sarah, was through the promise.
c. His conception was supernatural, not in the sense that he was conceived directly by the Holy Spirit, as Jesus was, but that the Holy Spirit miraculously enabled Abraham and Sarah to produce a child after she was far past normal childbearing age and had been barren all her life (MacArthur, 124).
d. So they had a choice: they could rely on God's power or their own.
B. I Did It My Way
1. Illustration: Perhaps you are familiar with the Frank Sinatra song "I Did It My Way." Hear are some of the lyrics, "For what is a man, what has he got? If not himself, then he has naught. To say the things he truly feels and not the words of one who kneels The record shows I took the blows and did it my way! Yes, it was my way!
2. The Bible describes "doing it our way" as sin.
a. Romans 1:21-22 (NLT)
Yes, they knew God, but they wouldn’t worship him as God or even give him thanks. And they began to think up foolish ideas of what God was like. As a result, their minds became dark and confused. 22 Claiming to be wise, they instead became utter fools.
b. Sometimes we think that God's way is okay, but it needs a little tweaking.
c. Sometimes we think that God must be out of his mind and our idea is much better.
d. We think that we know more than an all-powerful, all-knowing, and all-seeing God.
e. However, we find out that we aren't as smart as we think we are.
3. Doing it our way never ends well.
a. Romans 6:23 (NLT)
For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life through Christ Jesus our Lord.
b. Doing things are way brings nothing but trouble.
c. Doing things our way always blows up in our face.
d. Doing things are way brings death.
e. However, if we had done it God's way we could have life.
Transition: So we can do things our way, but...
II. Your Way Leads To Slavery (24-27).
A. Law That Enslaved Them
1. Having made the argument, now Paul explains it.
2. He says, "These two women serve as an illustration of God’s two covenants. The first woman, Hagar, represents Mount Sinai where people received the law that enslaved them."
a. Under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, the apostle explains that these women, the slave woman Hagar and the free woman Sarah, are illustrations of two covenants.
b. The two mothers and two sons plainly and graphically represent two covenants. Hagar and Ishmael represent the covenant of law and works, and Sarah and Isaac represent the covenant of grace and faith.
c. The Old Covenant of law was given through Moses at Mount Sinai and required God's chosen people, the Jews, to keep all the commands He gave in conjunction with that covenant.
d. Because the terms of the covenant were humanly impossible to keep, it produced a type of religious slaves, as it were, bound to a master from whom they could never escape (MacArthur, 125).
3. Paul continues his application by saying, "And now Jerusalem is just like Mount Sinai in Arabia, because she and her children live in slavery to the law."
Mount Sinai in Arabia, Paul continues to explain, corresponds to the present Jerusalem.
a. Both Mount Sinai and Jerusalem are commonly associated with Jews, not Arabs, but a major emphasis throughout the Galatian epistle is that historical, geographical, racial, social, and all other superficial distinctions among people have no spiritual significance.
b. In fact, on the spiritual level, one's identity as Jew, Gentile, Arab, or whatever makes no difference.
c. What unbelieving members of those groups have in common is infinitely more important, and damning, than any of their differences.
d. Spiritually, they are all lost, because they are all spiritual descendants of Hagar and Ishmael, religious slaves who live by the futile power and for the sake of their struggling and never-attaining flesh (MacArthur,125).
4. Paul then shows the other side of the coin. He says, "But the other woman, Sarah, represents the heavenly Jerusalem. She is the free woman, and she is our mother."
a. It is obvious that the holy city was also the location for the consummation of the New Covenant in the death and resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ,
b. but because the people rejected that New Testament in blood, the present Jerusalem, like Mount Sinai in Arabia, is where Hagar still figuratively lives in slavery with her unbelieving children—self-righteous, Christ-rejecting, grace-ignoring people (MacArthur, 126).
c. You see what Paul is saying is, that even when God shows us a better way, we still choose to do things our way. But it never works out because God's way is always better.
B. Our Way = Slavery
1. Illustration: Someone came to me a while back and said they were going to stop paying their tithes because they had this crisis in their life and had to set aside money to take care of that crisis. A few weeks later that person said to me, "You know I stopped tithing to save money for this crisis in my life, but then my car broke down. I'm going back to tithing because this just isn't working!"
2. Our way may look better to us at first, but it always gets us in trouble.
a. Proverbs 14:12 (NLT)
There is a path before each person that seems right, but it ends in death.
b. It may look good on the outside, but on the inside its rotten.
c. It may sound good at first, but it always ends on a sour note.
d. It may taste good on the way down, but it leaves us with a belly ache.
3. Doing things our way always leaves us with regrets.
a. Romans 6:20-21 (NLT)
When you were slaves to sin, you were free from the obligation to do right. 21 And what was the result? You are now ashamed of the things you used to do, things that end in eternal doom.
b. It leaves us feeling ashamed.
c. It leaves us with more problems than when we started.
d. It leaves us with things we wish we could change but we can't.
e. The more we try to fix it the worse it gets.
f. We would have been better off to do it God's way the first time.
Transition: Our way leads to slavery and death, but...
III. God's Way Leads To Life (28-31).
A. Children of the Promise
1. Paul now concludes his justification for living by faith that he has been formulating thourgh this entire letter thus far.
2. He says, "And you, dear brothers and sisters, are children of the promise, just like Isaac."
a. Every believer, like Isaac, is supernaturally conceived, miraculously born, and the offspring of God's promise to Abraham fulfilled in Christ.
b. Those who have begun to sink back into the trap of legalistic Judaism must remember that they are children of promise, who owe their life not to their own effort but to the miraculous power of God, just as Isaac did in the physical realm.
c. God's sovereign power of grace gave them life, and to fall back under law was to deny that divine work and to dishonor God (MacArthur, 127).
d. Just as Isaac’s mother was free, so Isaac was free, and so Christianity offers true freedom because it depends not on our actions but on God’s unchangeable promises to us.
e. Paul hammered home his point to the Galatian believers: “As children of the promise, you never need to be enslaved to the Jewish laws. You are like Isaac!" (Barton, 785).
3. Then Paul says, "But you are now being persecuted by those who want you to keep the law, just as Ishmael, the child born by human effort, persecuted Isaac, the child born by the power of the Spirit."
a. Throughout history, and still today, the physical and spiritual descendants of Hagar and Ishmael have, respectively, opposed and persecuted the physical and spiritual descendants of Sarah and Isaac.
b. Those who hold to salvation by works, trusting in their own performance of the law hate those who proclaim salvation by grace without works.
c. In their own minds, the Judaizers thought of themselves as the legitimate, God-honored descendants of Abraham through Isaac.
d. But Paul was saying something that would infuriate them more than anything else, namely, that they, and all other unbelievers, are as much the spiritual descendants of Ishmael as the Arabs are his physical descendants (MacArthur, 128).
4. As with everything else, Paul comes back to Scripture saying, "But what do the Scriptures say about that? “Get rid of the slave and her son, for the son of the slave woman will not share the inheritance with the free woman’s son.” 31 So, dear brothers and sisters, we are not children of the slave woman; we are children of the free woman."
a. The spiritual children of Sarah and Isaac will receive an inheritance that the spiritual children of Hagar and Ishmael will not.
b. The persecutors are going to be thrown out, and the persecuted will receive their promised and rightful inheritance.
c. As Sarah had Hagar and Ishmael cast out of Abraham's household, so will their unbelieving descendants, those who live by works of the flesh, be cast out of God's household.
d. No one outside the covenant of grace will receive anything from God (MacArthur, 128).
e. Trying to be right with God under our own power leads to slavery and death, but being made right God's way, by faith alone, leads to freedom and life.
B. God's Knows Best
1. Illustration: I once read about a rabbi sitting next to an atheist on an airplane. Every few minutes, one of the rabbi’s children or grandchildren would inquire about his needs for food, drink, or comfort. The atheist commented, "The respect your children and grandchildren show you is wonderful. Mine don’t show me that respect." The rabbi responded, "Think about it. To my children and grandchildren, I am one step closer in a chain of tradition to the time when God spoke to the whole Jewish people on Mount Sinai. To your children and grandchildren, you are one step closer to being an ape."
2. In the long run, God's way is easier.
a. Matthew 11:28-30 (NLT)
Then Jesus said, “Come to me, all of you who are weary and carry heavy burdens, and I will give you rest. 29 Take my yoke upon you. Let me teach you, because I am humble and gentle at heart, and you will find rest for your souls. 30 For my yoke is easy to bear, and the burden I give you is light.”
b. Our way leads to frustration, pain and heartache.
c. Our way leads to stress, worry, and conflict.
d. Our way means we have to learn the hard way.
e. God's way leads to peace, joy, and goodness.
f. God's way means getting it right the first time.
g. God's way easier because it is based on Him!
Conclusion
1. In our text this morning we discovered...
a. You Can Do Things Our Way
b. Your Way Leads to Slavery
c. God's Way Leads to Life
2. We can try and do things our way, but the end result is just too painful.
3. Save yourself a lot of trouble, do things God's way.
