Lesson 11
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A Divine Allegory
Galatians 4:21-31
21 Tell me, ye that desire to
be under the law, do ye not hear the law?
22 For it is written, that
Abraham had two sons, the one by a bondmaid, the other by a freewoman.
23 But he who was of the
bondwoman was born after the flesh; but he of the freewoman was by promise.
24 Which things are an
allegory: for these are the two covenants; the one from the mount Sinai, which
gendereth
to bondage, which is Agar.
25 For this Agar is mount
Sinai in Arabia, and answereth to Jerusalem which now is, and is in bondage with
her children.
26 But Jerusalem which is
above is free, which is the mother of us all.
27 For it is written, Rejoice,
thou barren that bearest not; break forth and cry, thou that travailest not: for
the
desolate hath many more children than she which hath an husband.
28 Now we, brethren, as Isaac
was, are the children of promise.
29 But as then he that was
born after the flesh persecuted him that was born after the Spirit, even so it
is now.
30 Nevertheless what saith the
scripture? Cast out the bondwoman and her son: for the son of the bondwoman
shall not be heir with the son of the freewoman.
31 So then, brethren, we are
not children of the bondwoman, but of the free.
“Tell me, ye that desire to
be under the law, do ye not hear the law?” We have already noticed while
the
Galatians were a Gentile people who had been saved by grace, they had fallen
under the influence of certain Judaizing
teachers who were trying to put them under the law. They said, “Except ye be
circumcised after the manner of Moses,
ye cannot be saved” (Acts 15:1), and so in this letter the apostle Paul has
taken up the great question of Law and
Grace and has been expounding it, clarifying it, making clear that salvation is
not by words of the law but entirely by
the hearing of faith.
Undoubtedly these Jewish
teachers who had gotten into the Christian company were referring the believers
back t
the Old Testament, and they could give them scripture after scripture in which
it seemed evident that the law was the
supreme test, and that God had said, “The man which doeth those things shall
live by them” (Romans 10:5) [However,
no man could do all that the law required. James writes: “For whosoever shall
keep the whole law, and yet offend in
one point, he is guilty of all” (James 2:10).] and, “Cursed is every one
that continueth not in all things which are written
in the book of the law to do them” (Galatians 3:10). And so they sought to
impress upon these believers the importance
of endeavoring to pacify God, of gaining divine favor by human effort.
Now he says, “You desire to be
under the law; do you? Do you want to put yourselves under the law of Moses?
Why do you not hear the law? Why do you not carefully read the books of the law
and see just what God has said?”
his is true about many of us, we take someone else’s word about spiritual
things without reading in the Bible to see
what God has to say.
Paul uses the term “law”
here in two different ways. In the first instance as referring to Moses’ law,
the law given at
Sinai with the accompanying rules and regulations, statutes and judgments, that
were linked with it, but the second, as
refer to the books of the Law (First five books of the Bible in which God tells
us of the covenants).
Then he turns back to Genesis
and says, “For it is written, that Abraham had two sons, the one by a
bondmaid,
the other by a freewoman.” We know that story. Abraham’s wife was Sarah,
and God had promised that Abraham
and Sarah should be the parents of a son who was to be the forerunner of the
coming Seed in whom all nations of the
earth should be blessed, but the years passed by and it seemed as though there
was to be no fulfillment of that promise.
Finally, losing hope, Sarah suggested that Abraham should take another woman,
not exactly to occupy the full status of
a wife, but one to be brought into the home as a concubine. Abraham foolishly
took Hagar. As a result of that union a
son was born who was called Ishmael, and Abraham fondly hoped that he would
prove to be the promised one through
whom the Messiah should come into the world. But God said, “No; this is not
the one. I told you, you should have a child
of Sarah, and this one is not the promised seed.”
Abraham pleaded, “O that Ishmael might live before Thee!” (Genesis
17:18). But God said, as it were, “He can have a certain inheritance, but he
cannot be the child of promise. In due time
Sarah herself shall have a child, and in that child My covenant will stand
fast.” (Psalm 89:28).
Paul, the apostle, now shows us
that these events had a symbolic meaning. He does not mean to imply that they
did
not actually take place as written. They did. Scripture says in I Corinthians
10:11, “Now all these things happened unto
them for ensamples: and they are written for our admonition, upon whom the ends
of the world are come.” Noticed,
“All these things happened.” Some people say they did not happen, that they
were just myths, or folk-lore, or something
like that, but the Holy Ghost says, “All these things happened.” And so as
you read in the Word concerning different
Old Testament characters, the nations, cities, and so on, all these are to be
received as historic facts. During the last
hundred years when the voice of archeology has been crying out so clearly and
loudly, not one thing has been discovered
to refute anything written in Scripture, while thousands of discoveries have
helped to bear witness to and authenticate
the Bible record. It does not need to be authenticated, of course, as far as
faith is concerned, for we believe what God
has said. However, these important discoveries have helped in a large measure to
shut the mouths of skeptics who
would not believe the statements of Scripture to be true. Abraham lived, Sarah
lived, Hagar lived, Ishmael lived, and
Isaac lived.
From Ishmael came the Arabs and
from Isaac came the Hebrews. From the beginning the two boys did not get along
together, and these nations were not friendly. That explains the trouble in
Palestine today. They could not get along fro
the beginning and they cannot get along today. But Paul undertakes to show that
these two mothers and their sons
had symbolic significance.
“But he who was of the
bondwoman was born after the flesh (and so he speaks of ALL who are only
born after
the flesh); but he of the freewoman was by promise” (Isaac was the
child of grace). It would have been absolutely
impossible from a natural standpoint for Abraham and Sarah to become parents at
the time Isaac was born. It was a
divine manifestation, a miracle.
Isaac was a child of promise,
and hence the child of grace. The apostle tells us that these things are an
allegory. In
Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary, 1994 Edition, page 30, the word
“Allegory” means “The expression by means of
symbolic fictional figures and actions of truth or generalizations about human
existence.” All through the Word, God
has used allegories in order that we might receive great moral, spiritual, and
typical lessons from these incidents, and
here the Spirit of God Himself unfolds one of them for us.
“Which things are an
allegory: for these are the two covenants; the one from the mount Sinai, which
gendereth
to bondage, which is Agar. For this Agar is mount Sinai in Arabia, and answereth
to Jerusalem which now is,
and is in bondage with her children. But Jerusalem which is above is free, which
is the mother of us all.” These
two women represent the two covenants, Sarah, the Abrahamic covenant, and Hagar,
the Mosaic covenant. What was
the difference between these two?
The Abrahamic covenant was the
covenant of sovereign grace. When God said to Abraham, “In thee and in thy
Seed
shall all nations of the earth be blessed,” He did not place any conditions.
It was a divine promise. God said, “I am going
to do it; I do not ask anything of you, Abraham, I simply tell you what I will
do.” That is grace. Grace does not make
terms with people; grace does not ask that we do anything in order to obtain
merit. Many people talk about salvation by
grace who do not seem to have the least conception of what grace is. They think
that God gives them the grace to do the
things that make them deserving of salvation. That is not it at all. We read
“Being justified freely by His grace” (Romans
3:24), and that word “freely” literally means “gratuitously.” The same
word is translated “without a cause” in another
portion of Scripture. It is said of the Lord Jesus Christ that the Scripture was
fulfilled, which was written concerning Him,
“They hated Me without a cause” (John 15:25). Jesus never did anything to
deserve the bad treatment that men gave
Him, and you and I cannot do one thing to deserve the good treatment that God
gives us.
Jesus was treated badly by men
freely; we who are saved are treated well by God freely. I hope that you
understand
this wonderful fact, and that your soul is thrilling with the joy of it! What a
marvelous thing to be saved by grace! One
reason that God saves people by grace is that, “It is more blessed to give
than to receive,” and He must have the more
blessed part.
Years ago a wealthy lady in New
York built a beautiful church. On the day of dedication her agent came up from
the
audience to the platform and handed the deed of the property to the Episcopal
Bishop of New York. The bishop gave
the agent $1.00 for the deed, and by virtue of the $1.00, which was
acknowledged, the property was turned over to
the Episcopal Church. You say, “What a wonderful gift!” Yes; in a certain
sense it was. For the passing over of $1.00
was simply a legal observance. But after all, in the full Bible sense it was not
a gift, for it cost $1.00; and so the deed
was made out not as a deed of gift but as a deed of sale. It was sold to the
Episcopal Church for $1.00. If you had to
do one thing, other than believing by faith, in order to be saved, if you had
even to raise your hand, to stand to your feet,
walk down an aisle, asked Jesus to come into your heart, it would not be a gift.
You could say. “I did thus and so, and
in that way earned my salvation.” But this priceless blessing is absolutely
free. “And if by grace, then is it no more of
works: otherwise grace is no more grace. But if it be of works, then is it no
more grace: otherwise work is no more
work (Romans 11:6).
And so we see the covenant of
grace illustrated in Sarah. God had said to Sarah, “You shall have a child,
and that child
will be the means of blessing to the whole world.” It seemed impossible that
that could ever be, but in God’s good time
His Word was fulfilled, at last through Isaac came our Lord Jesus Christ who
brought blessing to all mankind. Hagar,
on the other hand, was a bondwoman, and she speaks of the covenant of law, of
the Mosaic covenant, made at Mount
Sinai, for there God said, “The man that doeth those things shall live in
them,” but no man was ever found who could
keep that perfectly, and therefore on the ground of the law no one ever obtained
life. Sarah, who typifies grace, became
the mother of the child of promise; Hagar typifies law, and became the mother of
the child of the flesh. The law speaks
only to the flesh, while the believer is the child of promise and has been born
of divine power. “Jesus answered and said
unto him, Verily, verily, I say unto thee, Except a man be born again, he cannot
see the kingdom of God” (John 3:3).
Why is it that people generally are so ready to take up with legality and so
afraid of grace? It is because legality appeals
to the natural mind.
Today, instead of following the
Bible way for salvation, most people are doing something or paying something in
order
to gain divine favor. This appeals to the natural man. He feels God helps those
that help themselves, and if he does his
best, surely then God will be interested enough to do something for him. But our
best amounts to absolutely nothing.
Isaiah writes, “But we are all as an unclean thing, and all our
righteousnesses are as filthy rags” (Isaiah 64:6). The sooner
we learn that we have no goodness of our own, that we have nothing to present to
God with which to earn salvation,
the better for us. When we learn that, we are ready to be saved by grace alone.
We come to God as poor, needy,
helpless sinners, and through the work that the Lord Jesus Christ has done for
our salvation we who believe in Him
becomes the children of promise by faith.
Hagar typified Jerusalem, which
is here on earth because Jerusalem at the time was the center of the legal
religion. But
Sarah typifies Jerusalem above “which is the mother of us all,” or
literally, “our mother.” The law is the earthly system; it
speaks to an earthly people, to men after the flesh, whereas grace is a heavenly
system, which avails to children of promise.
The Jews have brought trouble
upon themselves because they sought the blessing not after the Spirit but after
the flesh,
and so refused the promise Seed when He came. And you Gentiles, if you are
seeking salvation by church membership, by observing ordinances, by charity, by
your own good works, prayers, and penances, can you not see that you too are
seeking the blessing after the flesh, when God would give it to you on the
ground of pure grace?
Paul now quotes Isaiah 54:1: For
it is written, “Rejoice, thou barren that bearest not; break forth and cry,
thou
that travailest not: for the desolate hath many more children than she which
hath an husband.” What a strange
Scripture. First notice its character. The chapter that precedes it is Isaiah
53. There we have the fullest, the most
complete prophecy of the coming into the world of the Lord Jesus, His suffering
and death and resurrection, that
is to be found anywhere in the Bible. Isaiah seems to see Him suffering,
bleeding, and dying on the cross, and he says:
“But he was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities:
the chastisement of our peace was upon
him; and with his stripes we are healed. All we like sheep have gone astray; we
have turned every one to his own way;
and the LORD hath laid on him the iniquity of us all” (Isaiah 53:5,6), and the
prophet closes that chapter with the
wonderful words, “He bare the sin of many, and made intercession for the
transgressors” (verse 12). And then the very
next word, when you come to Chapter 54, is “Sing!”
Of what shall we sing? Of the
matchless grace that God has manifested in Christ. Paul translated that word,
“Sing,” as
“Rejoice.” Why? Because Jesus has died, the sin question is settled, and now
God can let free grace flow to poor sinners.
Grace in the past had been like a woman who was forsaken and alone, and longed
to be the mother of children, but
wept and mourned alone.
And on the other hand here is
legality typified by another woman, and she has thousands of children, people
who profess
to be saved by human effort, saved by their own merits. Yes; legality is a
wonderful mother, she has a vast family, and
poor grace does not seem to have any children at all. But now the gospel goes
forth, and what happens? Grace, the one
forsaken, neglected, becomes the mother of more children than legality. “For
it is written, Rejoice, thou barren that
bearest not; break forth and cry, thou that travailest not: for the desolate
hath many more children than she
which hath an husband.” Grace now has untold millions of children and
there will be millions more in the glorious age
to come.
“Now we, brethren, as Isaac
was, are the children of promise.” Are you sure that is true of you? Have
you believed
God’s promise? He has promised a full, free, and eternal salvation to everyone
who trusts in His Son. Those who believe
become the children of promise. But the children of legality cannot understand
this. No one hates grace as much as the
man who is trying to save himself by his own efforts.
“But as then he that was
born after the flesh persecuted him that was born after the Spirit, even so it
is now.”
During the dark ages, for over 1,000 years, the doctrines of grace were
practically lost to the church, and many were
trying to save themselves by penances, by long weary journeys, by thousands and
thousands of prayers repeated over
and over, by giving of their wealth to endow churches and build monasteries. The
children of legality were a great host
and God open the eyes of Martin Luther, John Knox, John Calvin, and a host of
others, and they found out that while
men had been trying to save themselves by human effort it was the will of God to
save poor sinners by grace. Luther
took hold of the text, “The just shall live by faith,” and the truth began
to ring out all over Germany and Europe and
then spread to Britain, and soon bitter persecution broke out and people cried,
“Put them to death, these people who
believe in salvation by grace, who do not believe that they can be saved by
penances and human merit; burn them,
starve them, shoot them, behead them, do everything possible to rid the world of
them!” Today, people saved by grace
still face worldwide persecution and even death. This world is no friend to
grace.
Beware of those who hold to
self-righteousness, imagining they are going to heaven by their church
attendance, because
they were baptized as a babies, were confirmed at twelve years of age, have
given of their money, and have attended to
their religious duties, and you ask, “Are you saved?” Their answer usually
is, “Nobody can ever know until they get to
the judgment seat of God, but I’m trying to be.” “Well,” you say, “you
can be sure;” and you tell them of salvation by
grace, and they exclaim, “What is this?” What detestable fanaticism!” and
as one they will begin to persecute you. The
children of the flesh cannot stand the children of the Spirit.
“Nevertheless what saith
the scripture? Cast out the bondwoman and her son: for the son of the bondwoman
shall not be heir with the son of the freewoman.” God says, “My children
are the children of promise; My children
are those who are saved by grace.” “So then, brethren, we are not
children of the bondwoman, but of the free.”
In other words, we have nothing to do with the legal covenant because we are
the children of the covenant of grace.
Lesson 11 Quiz on Galatians 4:21-31
Martin Luther held to this verse: “________ __________
___________ _________ ____ __________ ”
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