Sermon: Children Set Free

I ask you to take a copy of God's word this morning. We're gonna turn open to the book of Galatians as we continue our way through that book. And this morning, Galatians chapter four, verse 21, if you wanna use a pew Bible, you just grab the Bible in front of you there. It's on page 9 7 4 in the Pew Bible 9, 7, 4. And this morning we're looking at Galatians chapter four verse 21 through five 15 this morning,

Galatians 4 21 through five 15. And let's pray before we open God's word together this morning.

Our Father, even as we just son, We long and we wait for the return of your son and our savior, the Lord Jesus Christ.

And we are thankful that you have not left us alone, that you and the son chose to sin the spirit into the world. That even now that the spirit dwells in us and is that move among us and we are thankful that the spirit attends to your holy word. And so we prayed this morning that even as you have promised, so you would do that by your divine decree, by the son's intercession according to your promise the spirit would move in our midst.

And that every single soul in this room

and even those that are live streaming would find that they've heard a word from God on high. That where there is need for encouragement, it comes where there is need for rebuke. It comes where there is need for comfort. It comes where there is need for challenge. It comes where there is need and there is need in every soul in this room that you would minister. And we pray this in the strong name of Jesus. Amen. Galatians chapter four verse 21

and we will go through verse 13 in chapter five, tell me who 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 one 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's 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 the time, he who was born according to 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 for freedom. Christ has set us free stand firm therefore and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery.

Look, I Paul say to you that if you accept circumcision, Christ will be of no advantage to you. I testify again to every man who accepts circumcision, that he is obligated to keep the whole law. You are severed from Christ, you who would be justified by the law. You have fallen away from grace for through the spirit by faith. We ourselves eagerly wait for the hope of righteousness for in Christ Jesus. Neither circumcision nor uncircumcision counts for anything

but only faith, working through love. If you were running well who hindered you from obeying the truth? This persuasion is not from him who calls you a little 11 elevens a whole lump. I have confidence in the Lord. You will take no other view and the one who is troubling you will bear the penalty whoever he is. But if I brothers still preach circumcision, why am I still being persecuted? In that case, the offense of the cross has been removed.

I wish those who unsettle you would emasculate themselves. Though the grass withers and the flower fades, the word of God is forever thinks be to God. Amen.

You say, well Pastor Jason, that seems like an awful long passage for you. And it is. I agree. Uh, it wasn't my plan to preach, uh, this whole passage. Uh, the plan was to do half of it last week and half of it this week. Um, but doing some recovery last week couldn't quite do it. Uh, but we gotta keep on pace here because this allows us to finish the book of Galatians by the end of the year. It would've been a little odd

to do our faith focus in January and then come back and do one or two message in Galatians. So we're keeping on, keeping on all that to say this as we approach this passage and we have such a large text, this is just going to be kind of a high level view of this text, but I think it works to our benefit in this way, in that it allows us to have a kind of high level summary of what Paul has said so far in the book of Galatians.

Because in many ways that is what he is doing. He's taking all of these four chapters and as we get to the end of that fourth chapter, he's pressing home his point about what he has been teaching them and he's doing that as we'll see before we begin the passage next week where he's going to focus on sanctification, what it looks like now to be in Christ. And so it gives us an opportunity here this morning to do kind of a high level summary of everything thus far

by looking at this passage. So what is the high level summary? It would be this Paul is contrasting two different religions, two religions that these Galatians are being pulled between two different religions that cannot mix. They do not go together. You, you can't bring them and make them compatible. They don't have anything to do with one another. There is no possibility of keeping one foot in the false religion and one foot in the true religion.

It's like trying to keep your foot on ground and trying to keep your foot on a boat as that boat is moving away from the shoreline, you just are being ripped apart. It's not possible

'cause they're mutually exclusive. I'm going to use John Stotts language in this, in that we have in one religion the false religion which is law works, slavery or bondage. Whereas in the true religion we find grace, we find faith and we find freedom. False religion pose, combating could be summarized in the word circumcision. Law works bondage the true religion could be summarized in Christ crucified grace, faith, freedom.

So it's worked through these law works, bondage grace, faith, freedom, circumcision verse Christ crucified in verse 21, Paul begins by assuming the argument that these false teachers and the lies some of these Galatian Christians have bought into and begun to embrace. He says, all right, let, let's assume that you want this false teaching. Let's assume that means that you want to be under the law and relying upon works that that's what you desire.

Then, then let's listen to the law. Let's listen what the law has to say to you. Remember Paul's already in Galatians three, he has walked through the fact that those who have faith in Christ are already children of Abraham. Chapter three verse 29. He says, and if you are Christ, then you are Abraham's offspring, heirs according to promise. And then in the beginning of chapter four, he details our adoption in Christ. The Spirit dwells in us as he says in verse six.

So you are no longer a slave but a son. And if a son, then an heir through God and now he's taking that same language, the idea of being sons versus the idea of being slaves. And he's going to press it home with an illustration from the Old Testament scriptures. He turns them to the book of Genesis

and he tells them about this account of the offspring of Abraham, of Isaac and Ishmael, both Isaac and Ishmael. They have the biology. But verse 23, the son of the slave was born according to the flesh. Well the son of the free woman was born through promise. That's an absolutely interesting portion of scripture here because Paul, as he tells us there in verse 24, he is doing an allegorical interpretation. He's going back to this account in Genesis

and he's going to allegorize it. He says, do you remember back when Sarah and Abraham had been promised by God that they would have a son and that that he would be a blessing to all of the nations and and he had this promise and yet Abraham and Sarah that they never conceived and they had trouble conceiving. And so Sarah, she has this light bulb moment and she says, ah, I have this slave woman, Hagar, my maid servant.

I'm gonna send Hagar into Abraham and and we'll see if maybe Abraham can conceive with Hagar and then there will be a child as God has promised us. And so she sent in her slave Hagar to have relations with Abram. And when Abram has relations with Hagar, a child is conceived and that child conceived is Ishmael. But Ishmael was not a son of promise. He was, as Paul says here in verse 23, he was born according to the flesh that as Ishmael was a result of human effort,

he was a result of human achievement and the result was slavery.

But there was another child, Paul points out there was the child of promise Isaac and he was born under different circumstances. This was not man's doing, this was not man's achievement. This was God's doing. It was God's achievement by God's promise, not human activity, but god's. And what was the result? Freedom one was according to the flesh, the other according to promise or another way of saying it, one was according to works,

the other was according to grace. And what Paul is doing is he's making this comparison between the two great operative religions in the world from the beginning of time in the one you have law works, slavery and the other you have grace, faith, freedom.

So he takes us to Mount Sinai. That's where God gave the law. The summary of the moral law and the 10 commandments says Hagar, the mother is, is Allegorize, he says is Mount Sinai. She's the present Jerusalem as Paul calls her. If you look to the law as your mother, then you're born a slave. If you effort by the flesh, you are in slavery. If you seek to have peace with God according to the law, you are an Ishmael. And maybe we, we stop there for a moment

and just say what, what Paul is painting is this picture is that you, you realize you're either one or the other. Everyone is either operating in one religion or the other. Either you are an Isaac or you're an Ishmael because everybody is born into this world under the law and all of us know that, that we have done evil. We know that there is a difference between good and evil. We all know that. I remember RC Sproul was on a panel one time where someone asked him,

they said, what do you do with someone that says that there are no moral absolutes, there's no such thing as good and evil. He said, steal their wallet. We all know there's good and evil and we all know that we have not been completely good. We all sit underneath the condemnation of the law. We're all born into the world of Ishmael Slaves under the rule of Mount Sinai. It's a type of slavery where under the taskmaster

of the law, the law just keeps demanding and demanding. It says do this, do this, do this. And you have peace with God. Do this and you have a clear, clear conscience. Do this, but you can never do enough of this.

It's a task master that just amens and demands.

But there aren't just ishmaels. Paul is stating there are Isaacs, those who have become by God's grace, his his promise, no longer slaves but born to freedom. But how not by looking to Hagar as their mother or Mount Sinai, but being born of the Jerusalem above, he says, of the church of grace by faith,

two different religions, false religion, law, works, bondage, that's the religion of circumcision. True religion, Christ crucified grace, faith freedom.

Let's think about this and think about it maybe from the mouth of Jesus. My mind immediately ran to John three while I was working on this passage this week. And you had that fascinating account in John three where Nicodemus, a Pharisee, a man who is living under the law, living under Mount Sinai, looking to Hagar as as his mother, comes to Jesus at night and and Jesus tells Nicodemus something very curious, he says this, unless one is born again,

he cannot see the kingdom of God. Now Nicodemus, he's a grown man and he spent his entire adulthood as a grown man seeking to live to the honor of God. He is a pharisee. And yet Jesus says, unless you are born again, you cannot see the kingdom of God. But Nicodemus adhered to the law. He was faithful to the law. So he's so confused,

it's almost comical. He, he says to Jesus, what, how does a grown man, how, how do I get back in my mother's womb to be born again?

And Jesus responds that this type of birth is not by the flesh, it's by the spirit. It's a work of grace. It's God's doing a work of God. True religion means grace. Faith results in freedom.

At the end of that, that passage with Nicodemus, Jesus says to Nicodemus says, he says, as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the son of man meaning himself, so must the son of man be lifted up, that whoever believes in him may have eternal life. True religion is found in Christ's crucified.

One religion of works, one is a faith, one results in bondage the other in freedom.

And Paul makes it clear that the, these Galatians that they, they've been born af fresh in Christ, they, they had received the message from him of, of Christ crucified. He had preached it to them, they had grabbed a hold of it. They have already been set free. And so he commands them in light of all this, here's what you must do, chapter five verse one, stand firm therefore and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery.

How would they submit again to a yoke of slavery by returning back to the law for their justification? No, you've been set free stand firm. Stand firm together in what you've received.

That it's one word in the Greek, that word stand firm and it's a, it's a word that would've sent pictures going through a person's head in this day and age because it was often used to, to speak of the Roman legions and the Romans who, who were unified as a legion and they would stand their ground and they would stand firmly their ground unified together. Not budging, not giving in Allegion might embato form what was called the testudo or

or the tortoise where they would create a square of their legion and all the men on the outside would put up their shields like this facing out. And then all the men on the inside of the tortoise would put their shields up over their head and so it would be like a turtle with a hard shell all around it. And then their spears would stick out the sides and between the shields so that when an enemy came and sought to destroy them,

they would just fall upon this tortoise show and they would break themselves upon the show stand firm as one. But you've received, you're united in,

you've received this one baptism, you're under this one Lord, you have this one faith. You are free. You start peeling off and returning back to justification by the law. That's a different religion.

He uses that word multiple times in his letters. Let me read you just a few of them. One Corinthians 16, 13, be watchful. Stand firm in the faith. Act like men be strong. Philippians 1 27, only let your manner of life be worthy of the gospel of Christ. So whether did I come and see you or am absent, I may hear that you're standing firm in one spirit with one mind striving side by side for the faith of the gospel. Philippians four, one,

therefore my brothers whom I long love and long for my joy and crown stand firm, thus in the Lord my beloved. Notice that when he tells them, he gives them this command. It's always in a context. He wants them to stand firm, to be immovable in what? In the faith that they have in the Lord. That's the context. Stand firm in what you received,

not to be shaken.

Therefore stand firm in the second half of five one as in light of what he has just declared to them in the first half of five, one for freedom, Christ has set us free.

You stand firm not as slaves, but as freedmen freed women.

I say, why? Why Paul's wrestling with this? Well, what are you doing? Why would you go back to that which is bondage? When you've been established in freedom, you have complete utter freedom in Christ. You're returning to the law as a means of your justification. And yet we do this so quickly. We do this so often as if human hef effort will set us free. Oh in Christ your Christian posts and you, you, you are free.

I remember as a non-Christian in high school and beginning of college watching Christians and and thinking they were in bondage, I remember thinking, ah, they're hemmed in. There's all kinds of things that they can't do or that they shouldn't do.

They're in slavery. I was blind to my own slavery. Didn't see you. See we we're all born in this world is Ishmaels and and we're in slavery. We're in bondage to sin. We're in bondage to Satan. We're in bondage to hell. We're in bondage to death. We're in bondage to a guilty conscience.

Those Christians weren't

when it came to no Christ. I must have been in this room then. I truly experience freedom

to know Christ is to be free.

To be a servant of Christ is to be the most free. Being in the universe

is a Christian constrained yes, but only by love is the Christian hymned in yes, but only in the words of the Psalms on one side by goodness and by the other side, by mercy of the Lord. Surely his goodness and mercy shall follow me. All the days of my life, they just hymn me in. Always follow me, always keep me, always keep the Christian.

Well, Paul is emphasizing tears that in Christ he's not just doing though a general freedom, he's telling them they've been set free in their conscience. That's where his emphasis is here. The guilt of their sin. It's been removed. They're set free from the tyranny of the law. A hard task master that keeps accusing them and saying, you must do more. You haven't done enough and you feel weighed down that that law just sits as a,

as a burden on the shoulders and the guilt of of not fulfilling. It just sits there and weighs a person down and Jesus says, come to me all you who are weary and heavy laden and I give you rest, freedom Christ. We are children of God and Christ. We have peace with God. Freedom without freedom within. This is why Paul can't believe what he hears about them. This is why he is so upset that whoever this false brother is, this false teacher that

as he says is unsettling them, so much so that he's saying anybody that's teaching like this, they want to teach circumcision. Let em emasculate themselves. Let 'em cut it all off because they're disrupting the people of God.

Why return to the law as a slave master? Paul's clear in verse two and following his argument is this, you want to return to circumcision thinking it's of advantage to you and you're standing before God. Well, if that's the route you want to take, then Christ is of no advantage to you. You, you can't have Christ and this that's not possible. It's either all Christ or it's none of Christ, all of Christ or none of Christ.

Either you stand before God in Christ or you stand before God in and of your own effort. They're two different religions. They don't go together, they don't mix.

And he's saying, oh, EU Galatians, you've got a foot in each and this one's set in say, and he's fearful they're gonna drown.

So he says, let's explore the law. Let's think through this. God, let's, let's rely upon your own efforts. You want to live by the law. You think the law will provide for you to be near a God. We're readily accepted by God. Let's explore this Pauls, if you think circumcision helps you with God, here's the problem. Verse three, if you believe observance of the law gives you right standing before God, then he says, you must keep the entire law, all

of it because if you break just a little small little piece of the law, you've broken the whole law

and thus the law does not save you. It condemns you. This is why it's slavery. You can't get out from under it. You want that religion, but here's true religion, not circumcision, but Christ, not law but grace. Not works, but faith, not bondage but freedom. Verses five and six. For through the spirit by faith, we ourselves eagerly wait for the hope of righteousness for in Christ Jesus. Neither circumcision nor uncircumcision counts for anything

but only faith. Working through love. You don't add to your justification why? Because your justification is found completely holy in Christ, in Christ, in the promise in grace. If it's found in yourself by obeying the law according to the flesh, then you might add to it. You might be able to do that, but it isn't. Two different religions,

I've been circumcised. Well, it doesn't matter for your justification. I love my neighbor. It doesn't matter for your justification. I've attended worship week in and week out for decades. It doesn't matter for your justification. Whereas one of my relatives once said to me, growing up, I went to Sunday school every single week as a child, never missed a single Sunday school. It doesn't matter. It doesn't matter that you prayed a prayer.

It doesn't matter that you walk denial. It doesn't matter for your justification. None of those things justifies you. You take out in that verse where he says, neither circumcision nor uncircumcision means anything. You can put anything you want there. It means nothing for your justification. Your justification is found holy and completely only in Christ.

All those other things may be commands from God. They may be great things that are part and parcel of living the Christian life, but none of them takes you from slave to free. None of them takes you from darkness to light. None of them takes you from a rebel to a son of God. None of them justifies you before the throne of God. None of them gives you peace with God. None of them gives you everlasting eternal life. Only Christ,

it's found in Christ.

Some get nervous at this point.

I say, well, I know it was when I walked the aisle. That's how I was saved. No, you were saved in Christ. Say, well, I know, I know it was that that day that I was on my knees and that I prayed that prayer. It was when I prayed that prayer that I was saved in Christ. That may be the case. It may be that when you prayed the prayer you were saved, but it was not your prayer that saved you. It was Christ. Your justification is found holy

and completely in Christ either or. Salvation is all of Christ or is none of Christ. And Paul so badly wants them to understand this. They are dangerously straddling these two religions and one is false and one is true. He's saying anything that takes our eyes off of Christ, as Paul says in verses seven, eight, is hindering us from obeying the truth. And this persuasion is not from him who calls you all that we need. All that we have for our salvation is found

in Christ.

I want to show you how complete this is from a little episode in church history in the early 17 hundreds there was a, there was quite a, a disruption in the, in the Presbyterian church in Scotland, the national church, and it happened in this little presbytery called the Otter Presbytery. The the presbyter is just a gathering of pastors and a gathering of the ruling elders in a given area. And part of the duty of a presbytery is to examine men that

that come to the presbytery to examine whether they should become ministers of the gospel, whether they should become preachers. And in the eroder, presbytery, just a little tiny presbytery, there was a man that would ask the same question of every candidate that came for gospel ministry in Auter. And his question was this, it came down to us, has been called the Auter creed. Here's the question, do you agree to this that it is not sound

and orthodox to teach that we forsake sin in order to our coming to Christ?

Put simply it's this. He wanted them to say that it's not orthodox to say someone must forsake sin before they come to Christ. Now, how would you answer that?

Scott's church was split over this creed.

The right answer is that you and I should be able to affirm that creed

because we do nothing in preparation for coming to Christ.

We do nothing to qualify ourselves for salvation in Christ. Now, it's absolutely true that as we come to Christ, we turn from sin. And when we have come to Christ, we absolutely are turning from sin. And we'll get into this next week as we walk into sanctification, but it is not. We do. And then we come to Christ,

Just Christ. It's an act of his grace that he pours out upon us and we simply place our faith in Christ. In that faith itself is a gift as Paul says in Ephesians two.

It's grace, faith, Freedom. It's All of grace.

Nothing in my hands I bring simply to thy cross I clinging naked, come to the for dress, helpless look to thee for grace.

Our justification, our acceptance, our eternal security is not in the law. It is not in our works. It is not in us. It's in Christ.

It's grace, faith, freedom

and oh, I want you all to know this,

not just know it where ah, you know, justifications by grace alone through faith alone where you can do the sous, but I mean living it

where it grips you day in and day out and it shapes your living and gives you that peace that surpasses understanding in Christ Jesus

that you know the joy of it. There's such freedom in Christ.

He so set you free

in that Scottish debate, there was a, a book that was unearthed, been written before by Edward Fisher called The Marrow of Modern Divinity and began to be circulated around Scotland and eventually the, the Presbyterian Church would ban the book and you couldn't read it, but it is a good book, has some errors, but there is, it is a good book, but it's trying to press home this reality that salvation is holy by grace alone through faith alone

and Christ alone. And there's this wonderful passage that Evangelista, one of the characters says this, and I want to read this to you in closing. She said this, there are thousands in the world that make a Christ of their works and here is their undoing. They look for righteousness and acceptance more in the precept than in the promise in the law, than in the gospel in working, than in believing. And so miscarry many poor ignorant

souls amongst us. When we bid them obey and do duties, they can think of nothing but working themselves to life. When they're troubled, they must lick themselves whole. When wounded, they must run to the south of duties and stream of performances and neglect. Christ. It is to be feared that there be many who in words are able to distinguish between the law and gospel and in their judgments hold and maintain. That man is justified by faith without works of law

and yet in effect and practice that is to say in heart and and conscience do otherwise. And then this great pastoral insight. There is some touch of this in us all. Otherwise we should not be so up and down in our comforts and cast down with every weakness as we are.

Paul says in verse 12, these, these false church, false teachers have unsettled them. And it's unsettling. It's unsettling When you return back to the law for your justification, whether that is a church, whether that is a nation, or whether that is an individual's soul,

receive salvation by grace alone.

You were given the gift of faith through faith alone.

All of your justification is caught up in Christ alone.

He set you free. Free from a guilty conscience, freed from being weighed down free.

Oh, that we would all more and more know the freedom we have in Christ and stand firm in it. We pray for us.

Father, we are thankful for the true faith, the true religion, the gift of your grace and the person of your son.

And what fools we are that we go tra scene after that which just burdens and enslaves to continually turn us back to Christ and Christ crucified. And we find that he is our all and all that he is the great treasure of our lives. That he is the great delight of our hearts, that He is our justification, our salvation, that in Him, our hidden all the treasures of you are God. And that we would find more and more what it means to live in the freedom of Christ

and all that to your glory and to your praise. Thank you for being our God and for making us your children. We pray this in the strong name of Christ. Amen.