In the book of Galatians, false teachers were trying to convince the people to return to God's law to earn God's favor.
So they said, okay. We'll go back to the law. And Paul's saying, Are you crazy? Do you hear what the law says? Do you want to be the child of slavery?
Or the child of promise. That was almost 2,000 years ago, but what the Apostle Paul was pleading with the Galatians to rediscover is just as important for us today. Thanks for being with us, for Renewing Your Mind. And in this final sermon from R.C. Sproll, in this series in Galatians chapter 4, you'll see that the answer always was and always is the gospel.
As this is the final message in the series, it means it's also your final opportunity to add Dr. Sproll's commentary, not just on chapter 4, but on the entirety of Galatians, to your library. This single volume hardcover commentary can be yours. Will you request a copy when you donate before midnight tonight at renewingyourmind.org?
Well here's Dr. Sprawl. 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 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 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 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 who was born according to the flesh, persecuted him who was born according to the Spirit.
So also it is now. But what do the scriptures 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. It was the night of my 24th birthday. I was coming home from a basketball game. through the portion of Pittsburgh which was called East Liberty.
I was coming back to our apartment where we were going to celebrate my birthday. When as I was walking past a jewelry store, Suddenly I heard a woman screaming, stop, thief. And I turned and looked. And this man ran out of the jewelry store and ran right into me. Instinctively, and certainly not heroically.
I just grabbed him by the shoulder and I said, Hold it right there. And he looked at me meekly and he said, I give up. Yeah. Fortunately, he didn't have a knife or a gun or anything, but I just stood there and held him until the police arrived and they took him away into custody. A couple days later, I saw one of the arresting officers on the street in East Liberty, and I said, What was with the man who robbed the jewelry store?
And he says, Oh, he says, That fellow's a strange one He said He had just gotten out of jail. But jail is his comfort zone. He likes it there. three square meals a day and a roof over his head. He can't cope in free society.
So as soon as he gets out of jail, he immediately commits a crime. And allows himself to be apprehended.
So he can go back to jail. Can you imagine somebody Just getting out of jail and wants to go back?
Well, this is what Paul is saying to the Galatians. He says In chapter 4, tell me. You who desire to be under the law. Do you not listen to the law? Do you not pay attention to the law?
Are you... Listening to what the law says. The law says, thou shalt not, thou shalt not, thou shalt not. And if you are. Under this law.
You're in bondage. They're under the curse of the law. And you are not living. In freedom. He says, you're like the people of Israel who cried out while they were enslaved by Pharaoh in the Old Testament, and they groaned and moaned, and God heard the groanings of his people, and he sent Moses to Pharaoh, saying, Let my people go.
And you know the story of the Exodus. And then the magnificent thing that God did to free his people. But no sooner had they been liberated And as they were wandering in the desert, Sick and tired of eating manna morning, afternoon, and night. they began to think nostalgically of how great they had it in Egypt. They had Garlic.
Cucumbers. Onions. And they said, let us go back. They wanted to go back in the prison. For the sake of some garlic?
And they murmured. Against the God. Who set them free?
Now Paul goes on here. When he said 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.
You know the story of Abraham and Sarah. God came to Abraham in his old age when his wife was past the age of childbearing. She was barren, and God promised Abraham that he. Would have a son. And he would be the father of a great nation.
His descendants would be more than the stars and the sky and the. Crystals of sand on the seashore. When Abraham told that vision that he had to his wife, Sarah. She laughed. And the word for laughter in Hebrew is the word Isaac.
But Abraham was convinced that God would keep his promise. And so he waited for a week, he waited for a month, and expected Sarah to become pregnant, and she wasn't. He waited, he waited for six months, a year, six years. And every day Sarah grew older. and older.
and the promise was all the less likely. To be fulfilled. And so finally. Abraham and Sarah. Concocted a scheme to make sure that God's promise would be fulfilled.
Sarah said, why don't you Join with my Servant Hagar. And have a son. And so the story goes. Abraham Got with agar. She became pregnant.
and bore a son. whose name was Ishmael. But Ishmael was not the son of promise. He was the son of slavery. God had not forgotten the promise that he had made to Abraham, and so it came to pass that Sarah.
became pregnant. And she had a son. Whose name was Isaac? Laughter.
Well, Paul speaks of this story in history and attaches an allegorical significance to it. He says, Now, this may be interpreted allegorically. These women are two covenants. They represent two different covenants. One is from Mount Sinai.
Where Moses received the law. One is from Mount Sinai bearing children. For slavery. She's Hagar.
Now Hagar represents Mount Sinai in Arabia. And she corresponds to the present Jerusalem. Sinai and Arabia, Jerusalem here. Because the Jews in Jerusalem were still living under the old law. of Moses.
And had rejected The covenant that God made to Abraham, which was a covenant. A promise But the Jerusalem above is free. And she is our mother. Let me. Just Pause for a second and Say that.
The Bible is filled with discussions about freedom and slavery. This tension is being discussed over and over and over again in sacred scripture. It's also been a point of discussion. For intellectuals. For philosophers Through All of Western history.
You think of the French philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau. It's famous for saying Man is born free. And everywhere he is in chains. I agree with half of Rousseau's assessment. The second half.
That yes, we are in chains. But I don't believe that we are born free. Lions may be born free, but human beings are not born free. The scriptures tell us. that from the moment of our birth We are afflicted.
By the corruption. of original sin. The American philosopher-theologian Jonathan Edwards. Wrote a treatise on original sin that's not nearly as well known as his treatise on the freedom of will or on his religious affections. But in that treatise on original sin, Edwards goes through all of the biblical texts and deals with them in an academic, exegetical fashion to.
Probe this whole debate about freedom and slavery and the corruption that we experience at birth. And then suddenly he shifts his attention from the scriptures. And he said, if the Bible never said a single word about original sin. Natural reason would have to posit it. in order to explain the human condition.
We've heard the clichés over and over and over again. Nobody's perfect. To err is human, to forgive is divine. I've heard people say that God entitles all of us to one sin. I don't read that anywhere in scripture that we have an entitlement to disobey God, but even if it were true that we're entitled to one mistake.
How long ago did you use yours up? But uh Edwards was saying, If we were all born free, From any Inherited corruption. Won't you suppose that at least fifty percent of the population would remain perfect and sinless? And you say, well, well, wait a minute. We're born free, but we're in a corrupt society.
Well, what's society made up of people? And they're corrupt people. You would still think that 50% of the people in this society would. Be free from evil. But Edward says the universality of the fallen human condition screams from natural reason.
for an explanation. And then in his much more famous Treatise on The freedom of the will. Edwards that I have to say, and I'm very. complex and difficult way analyzes The whole question of free will. Free will is one of the most abused concepts that we encounter in civil discourse.
in our country today. If I would ask the average person, do you believe in free will? Naturally, they're going to say, Of course I believe in free will. And so did Edwards. But with very careful Qualifications.
The common understanding of free will in our society is this: it's a concept borrowed from pagans, from humanism, that says that the human. The soul is free to decide with equal inclination either to the left or to the right. He can choose to be sinful or he can choose to be obedient to God. with equal power. That is, his will is neutral.
or indifferent.
Now, of course, looking at Scripture, we're told on every page that that's not the case, that we are born in a state of spiritual and moral bondage. And here is where Edwards makes this very important distinction, where he distinguishes between natural ability and moral ability. What's the distinction all about? Natural ability. is what nature equips us to do As we Or create it.
I do not have the natural ability to fly through the air like a bird. If I want to fly, I have to have some kind of mechanical. equipment to enable me to fly through the air. I don't have the natural ability to live underwater. I may be able to swim underwater for a few seconds, or I may be able to go underwater in a submarine, but by nature, I don't have the equipment necessary to live underwater.
I don't have the gills and the fins and the scales any more than I have feathers and lightweight bones and wings. that make it possible for me to fly. Through the air. The reason for Edwards' distinction was this: he says, we have the natural ability of freedom insofar as we have. A faculty.
That we call a will. We have the natural ability to make choices, and we make choices every day.
Well, we don't have is the moral ability To choose the things of God. By nature We're in moral slavery. An only God can set us free. You shake your head, then you're thinking, wait a minute, does that mean that if a person wants to choose God that they aren't able to do it? No, that's not what it means.
Anybody who wants to choose God can choose God. Freely. But the problem is what? With a one-two. Sure you can choose what you want to.
And you can choose God if you want to. But not if you don't want to. Because in one sense, we're doomed by our freedom. And Edwards goes on to explain it. He says a choice is an effect, and it has to have an antecedent cause.
And what causes the choice that you make today and tomorrow and yesterday is the strongest inclination that you have at a moment.
Now think about it for a minute, folks. Edwards would say, you have never made a choice. to do anything in your life That you didn't want to do. Last week I had a root canal. And it wasn't pleasant.
It didn't work. It was a disaster. And it was so bad that the dentist, after two hours, gave up and said, I'm going to pack that tooth. I still wasn't able to calm it down to make it numb. And you're going to have to come back in a week.
And we'll go after it again. The worst pain ever experienced in my life in a dentist's chair. And he says, come on back, and we'll do it again.
Now here's the crazy thing. I choose to do it again. My doctor who was here this morning. Prescribed some Drugs that made me willing. To go back again.
And so Even though all things being equal, I would never choose a root canal. What person in their right mind would? But when your tooth is hurting And it's abscess. And you want to make sure that it stops hurting. If your dentist tells you to go have a root canal I'd say I'd rather have a root canal.
than to have this continual pain, or I'd rather to have this root canal than have my tooth pulled. All things being equal, I didn't want the rooting out. But all things Warren Aqual. They're never equal. I know that there are people in this church this morning.
Probably men. Who, if you ask them, you want to go to church this morning? You say, That's the last place I'm going to go. I'm going to go play golf, I'm going to go play tennis. I'm going to go to the beach.
Yet you can. Why? Because you rather would come and spend an hour in church than listen to your wife complain all week long. And so That's what Edwards meant by choosing according. to the strongest inclination that you have at the moment.
You know, I think to myself sometimes. I'd really like to be sinless. I'd like to have sin gone from my life. But whenever I want to do something. More Then I want to obey God.
What do I do 100 times out of 100? Mm-hmm. If I want to obey God more than I want to do the sin, then I obey God. but it all comes down to the disposition or inclination of the heart. And here were these people that God had set free.
From the law. When they heard the gospel preached from Paul, they rejoiced. But then Paul left them and some false teachers came in and began to tell them, well, no, what you really have to do is get back under the law, the ceremonies, and keep all those laws that we've looked at in previous weeks. And so they said, okay. We'll go back to the law.
And Paul's saying, Are you crazy? Do you hear what the law says? Do you want to be the child of slavery? Or the child. of promise.
Then He says As it is written in the Old Testament, rejoice. O barren one who does not bear Break forth and cry aloud, you who are not in labor. He's talking about Sarah. For the children of the desolate one will be more than those of the one who has a husband. In every society.
This is the tragedy. More people willingly. Choose. Slavery. Then freedom.
But you, brothers, like Isaac are children of promise. For just as that time he who was born according to the flesh persecuted him who was born according to the spirit, so is it now. Fast forward two thousand years and Paul would say it again. And so Is it now? But what does the scripture say?
Wait a minute. We could stop right there and go home. and not answer the question, What does the Scripture say? Because Our natural inclination is to say what? Who cares?
what scripture says. And what Paul is saying is But what does God say? For many years I taught, among other things, The science of apologetics, which is the intellectual defense of the truth claims of Christianity. I don't know how many times I've had a debate with people who Had all kinds of intellectual objections to the Christian faith, and I tried to be as patient as possible to answer to the best of my ability every one of their. Critical questions, but at some point in the discussion, I would stop and say: hold the phone for a second.
Let me ask you a question. What do you do with your guilt? I don't know how many times I've asked people that question. What do you do with your guilt? I know there are all kinds of people out there that say, well, there is no such thing as guilt, there's no such thing as good or evil, and they say that until somebody steals their wallet and then they have a different opinion.
But You know, I've never had somebody look at me in the eye and say, I don't have any guilt. Because they knew that I knew. And if they said they didn't have any guilt, then I would know very well that they were lying to me. straight to my face. What do you do with your guilt?
You can rationalize it. You can deny it. Or you can have it forgiven. And the only answer to the law. is the promise.
That's what Paul's telling these people here. You want to listen to the law? The law will break your back. It'll bury you in guilt. But it's in the promise.
So he concludes by saying. What does the scripture say? The scripture says, cast out the slave woman, get rid of Hagar. Get rid of Ishmael. For the son of the slave woman shall not inherit with the son of the free woman.
So it concludes this section. By saying so, brothers We are not. Children of the slave. But of the free woman. That's what the gospel is all about.
Slavery? of freedom. And our inheritance. is not in Arabia. We're in Jerusalem.
But in the heavenly Jerusalem. as children of the promise. Amen. That was R C Sprawl with his final sermon in Galatians chapter four. Renewing Your Mind has a global listening audience.
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