Set Free in Christ

To know for sure that you're saved is a growing process with most Christians as they exercise three things. First of all, a greater trust in the promises of God.

That's your bedrock of assurance. The second thing is by the inward evidences of grace or the marks or fruits of grace in your life. And then the third is a direct testimony of the Holy Spirit that he speaks directly to your soul through the word, I am thy salvation or bring some other promise to play into your life. In such a way that you can't deny that he is assuring you that you belong to Christ and Christ belongs to you. You take those three things, the promises of God, evidences of grace, testimony of the Holy Spirit, and then put over them all God's faithful track record over the years. And God's people can have full infallible assurance of faith. Assurance of faith by Joel Beeke.

Visit Ligonier.org slash teaching series to learn more. The gospel is for failures. The gospel is for the broken. The gospel is for those who cannot do anything.

There's no amount of input on our part that can bring about this desired result. Welcome to Renewing Your Mind on this Thursday. I'm Lee Webb. One of the most beautiful and liberating aspects of Christianity is found in the message that we're about to hear. Dr. Derek Thomas has been leading us through a study of Galatians, the Apostle Paul's bold defense of the gospel. And in today's message, we'll hear echoes of Jesus' words, for my yoke is easy and my burden is light.

Lesson number nine, and we are in Galatians 4 at verse 21, and I want to go all the way into the first verse of chapter five, and it's that first verse of chapter five that I want to read at the very start of our lesson. For freedom Christ has set us free. Stand firm, therefore, and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery. Freedom. September 1620, the Mayflower, there was also the speed well, and it had to come back because it was taking in water. But the Mayflower set course from Holland, heading westwards across the Atlantic, 66 days later, November the 9th in 1620, it was spotted off Cape Cod.

102 passengers of saints and strangers, 30 crew within months, winter, and 45 of them died. The saints, of course, came for freedom, to escape King James in England and the acts of intolerance for Puritan worship. Freedom. It's the birth of a nation story, and that's what Paul is now going to do here, tell you the birth of a nation story. And it's about two women and one man and two sons, the birth of Jews and Arabs, Isaac and Ishmael, Sarah and Hagar, and, of course, Abraham. And the issue, verse 21, you who desire to be under the law, do you not listen to the law? So, he's going to tell us the history, and then Paul in verses 24 through 27 is going to do something just a little bit weird, a little bit unusual. Paul is usually a logical thinker.

Scholars say he was influenced in his rhetorical, analytical style by Quintilian of Greece, and more often than not, Paul argues and reasons logically, but now he turns to an entirely different way of teaching, and he introduces what we call an allegory, like Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress, except the characters in this allegory are actual real people. So, he begins with history, and he's back again with Abraham, and we've seen Abraham pop up several times, because what he wants to say is that Jews and Gentiles, without obedience to the ceremonial law of the Old Testament, are equally children of Abraham. The point is that Abraham had more than one child.

He had Ishmael, and that is a problem. And do you remember in Genesis 16, Sarah told Abraham to sleep with Hagar, the slave girl, to all intents and purposes, and Sarah is barren, and Abraham does that. And then in Genesis 18, you remember God comes to Abraham, who's a hundred, and Sarah, who is ninety, and says, you're going to have a son. And do you remember Sarah, she laughs, and she's rebuked for laughing, but you can understand why she laughed.

She's way past the age of childbearing, and Isaac is born. And the point here in verse 23, the son of the slave was born according to the flesh, while the son of the free woman was born through the promise. And he's setting up now an allegory. One is of the flesh, and one is of faith. And it's a perfect allegory for what Paul has been talking about in terms of our justification. One view, the Judaizer's view, it's of the flesh. It's through obedience. It's through the imposition of laws upon the consciences of Christians that have no place within the kingdom of God, and obedience to them out of conscience sake would be legalism, and the other is by faith alone. And the point, Ishmael was a slave, and Isaac was free, and that's the history. It's a history of the birth of a nation's story, and there's the way of the flesh, and there's the way of faith.

There's the way of works, and there's the way that is reflective of how we are made right in the sight of God, not through human effort, not through human obedience, but entirely as a free gift from Almighty God and received by faith alone. Well, the allegory then is one is by works, and the other is by faith. Two sons, Ishmael and Isaac, two mothers, Hagar, which represents Mount Sinai, which is in Arabia, so representing law, and the other, Sarah, representing Jerusalem, the mother of all who believe. And you have to go with the allegory from Hagar to Sinai, and do you remember Sinai?

When Moses describes Sinai, its clouds cover it, and there's thunder and lightning, and it's an oppressive place, and the description of it is one of oppression. There are two covenants, two sons, two mothers, two covenants, and one is by works, and one is by grace. Verse 24, this may be interpreted allegorically. These women are two covenants. One is from Mount Sinai, bearing children for slavery.

She is Hagar, and the other is Jerusalem above is free, and she is our mother. Verse 26, there's the way of works, do this and live, and there's the way of grace, live and do this. The way of works, do this and you will live. Perform and you will live. Work and you will live. And there's the way of grace, live and do this out of obedience, not in order to become a Christian, but because you are one, and you're the child of a king with Jesus our Savior.

You're the child of a king. Now, what's the point of this? Why is Paul introduced here this allegory?

And he doesn't do this often. This is unusual, and this is not meant to justify using all of the Old Testament allegorically. And in the history of the church, and one thinks of Origen, for example, there was an influence that lasted all the way through the Middle Ages that all historical narrative in the Old Testament should be interpreted allegorically, and seeing things then in historical narrative that are not meant to be seen. And I think the rule of thumb is we should only interpret the Old Testament allegorically where the Bible itself does, and don't go any further.

Don't start doing your own little bit of allegorization of the Old Testament because it'll probably get you into muddy, murky waters. Now, the lesson is a wonderful lesson, and it's grace to the barren and the desolate. The point of the allegory is that Sarah, at least from one perspective, and we need to say this delicately, it's not that simply she was barren and couldn't have children, and that's a very difficult position for a young woman to be in. And one needs a great deal of sensitivity, for example, around Mother's Day, that there are folk in the congregation who can't have children, or they're living with the guilt of having aborted a child, or they're living with the problems that their children no longer want to have anything to do with them, and a multitude of other scenarios.

So, the condition is one of enormous sensitivity. But in this instance, Sarah is ninety years old. She's in her tenth decade of life, and there is no way that a ninety-year-old can have a child, and if she does, it's a miracle. If she does, it's the imposition of the sovereign hand of God. It's a God thing. It's not a man thing. It's not a human thing.

It's a God thing. And that's a perfect way to describe salvation. Salvation is not by human effort. It's not by human initiative. It's not by human intuition. It's not by human cleverness. It's entirely a God thing, unless a man is born from above.

We could translate born again as from above, meaning not so much emphasizing the second birth, but emphasizing the sovereignty of that birth, that our new birth is entirely because of the imposition and the intervention of the sovereignty of God. From one point of view, Sarah was a failure. She was broken. She was a clay pot, fragile, must have been intolerable for her. It's hard to imagine being married to two women at the same time or having two women in the same house, but the taunting and so on.

And one thinks of Samuel's mother, Hannah, and how she was taunted by another woman in the house who was as fertile as a rabbit, it seems. And the difficulty of that. I think the point in the allegory is that the gospel is for failures. The gospel is for the broken. The gospel is for those who cannot save themselves. The gospel is for those who cannot do anything.

There's no amount of input on our part that can bring about this desired result. I sometimes think in our celebration of the Lord's table, it is customary to read from 1 Corinthians 11 and the dire warning about eating and drinking judgment to yourselves. And sometimes we pick up that word to eat and to drink unworthily, unworthily, and that therefore there's something that we need to do to make ourselves worthy. Sometimes preachers will read that passage, and to be fair, Paul is addressing a situation in Corinth that is unlike any situation that I've ever encountered in 40 years of ministry. What was going on in Corinth was systemic failure.

What was going on in Corinth was unbelievably wicked. There were things going on in the Lord's Supper and in the Agape Love Feast, combined with perhaps a church potluck dinner, and the whole thing is garbled in 1 Corinthians 11. It's chronic, and perhaps that's not the passage that we should use for communion on a day-to-day, week-to-week, year-to-year basis because that's not where most of our congregations are. The problem is it's the only passage in the New Testament that mentions the Lord's Supper, but sometimes that passage can be used in such a way to bring a sense of fear and a sense of gloom and a sense of trepidation. And I don't think that's how the Lord's Supper should be thought of. The Lord's Supper is a celebration. It's an anticipation of the marriage supper of the Lamb, and we ought to eat and drink with joy and with assurance and with a sense of the blessedness of our condition as children within the family coming to the family table for a meal. Actually, the Lord's Supper is more like an hors d'oeuvre in anticipation of the meal, reminding us that we are pilgrims and we're on a journey, and now are we the sons of God, but it does not yet appear what we shall be. I mention the Lord's Supper because there's a very famous story from the nineteenth century. Rabbi Duncan, the great Hebraist and scholar of many languages indeed from the Free Church of Scotland in the nineteenth century, and he was taking communion and noticed a woman in tears and her Bible open and drops of tears falling down on her Bible.

And when the bread, the plate came in her direction, she just shook her head. And Rabbi Duncan, who knew this woman very well, said to her, Take it, woman, it's for sinners. And that's the point of the Lord's Supper, that there's nothing that we can do to make ourselves worthy of this bread and worthy of this cup. We are unworthy by nature. And Jesus died not because we are worthy, but because we are unworthy. There's a sense here in Galatia that in order to be assured of their status, they need to make themselves worthy, and the way they did that was to obey out of conscience laws, ceremonial laws from the Old Testament, days and weeks and months and so on.

And perhaps also in the background, the issue of circumcision for Gentiles and the issue of food laws, kosher food laws, and imposing this upon the consciences of the Gentiles. And then this first verse of chapter 5, For freedom Christ has set us free. Whatever you think of Nelson Mandela is beside the point, but he was imprisoned, of course, in South Africa, and when he was released from prison, and I've been to the prison, I've seen where it is on that little island off the coast of Cape Town, you remember the book he wrote, Cry Freedom, and that's really what Paul is saying here. Freedom, don't give that up. Liberty, liberty and justice for all, don't give up that liberty. You know, that's very special to me as a recent American citizen.

Truth be told, Her Majesty never gives up her subject, so I still actually have my British passport, but Thanksgiving Day has taken on a whole new meaning. Liberty, liberty in the Mayflower sense, liberty for those saints, there were also strangers on board, but there were saints on board the Mayflower, and they came to escape from bondage. What is legalism? Legalism is obeying out of conscience laws which God does not demand. Obeying out of conscience, meaning that if you don't obey these laws, your conscience is going to condemn you.

Do this, do that. Taste not, touch not, handle not. And you can bring out the examples of legalism in the church. Jesus has died to give you freedom.

Jesus has died to give you freedom from imposing laws which have no business being imposed upon your conscience. And that liberty, you know, it's the issue of meat being offered to idols that Paul takes up elsewhere, in Corinth and elsewhere, and this will to the Romans and so on, 1 Corinthians 8, Romans 14. You know, and Abe is coming home from work, and he's passing the butchers, and it's late at night, and there's no refrigeration, and there are flies everywhere, and the meat is being offered at 25 percent of what it's worth. And he says, give me the meat. And he pays for it, and he goes home, and he says to his wife, it's going to be stew for supper tonight. And she says, did you get it from that butchers? And he said, yeah, of course I got it from the butchers.

And then she says, was it offered to idols? Ask no questions for conscience sake. Meat is meat. But now that you've asked questions for conscience sake, you're in a mess of trouble, because that's what legalism does. It binds you.

It messes you up. It makes you look at yourself, and it makes you look at laws, and it makes you look at obedience rather than look at Jesus who has given you freedom, freedom to be whom God intends you to be. Well, celebrate that freedom and hold on to that freedom. Don't let law meddlers mess up your conscience. My conscience is captive to the Word of God and to the Word of God alone. It was the heart of Luther, so help me God, that our consciences are held captive only to Jesus and to no one else.

You notice in verse 29 Paul says, just as at that time he who was born according to the flesh persecuted him who was born according to the Spirit, so it is now. And that's the heart of legalism. It's a form of persecution. It's a form of manipulation. It's a form of control. When churches, institutions, preachers, whoever they are, try to mess up your conscience, try to impose something that the Bible has never imposed, it's a form of persecution.

It's a form of control, and you must not let it happen. Try freedom, for freedom Christ has set me free. That's Ligonier teaching fellow, Dr. Derek Thomas, with a message from his series, No Other Gospel, Paul's Letter to the Galatians. I'm Lee Webb. Thank you for joining us today for Renewing Your Mind. There are 14 messages in this series. We are pleased this week to air five of those messages. Dr. Thomas walks us through the background, teaching, and significance of Paul's letter to the Galatians, and he leads us to the unmistakable conclusion.

If we get the gospel wrong, we get everything wrong. We'll be happy to add this series to your online learning library when you give a donation of any amount to Ligonier Ministries. We'll also send you the two-DVD set. You can give your gift online at renewingyourmind.org, or you can call us.

Our number is 800-435-4343. Well, there's no question that we are witnessing a seismic cultural shift. The moral order seems to have been turned on its head, doesn't it? More than ever, we as believers need to know what we believe, why we believe it, how to live it, and how to share it. Dr. Thomas' series not only explains the gospel, but provides a framework for defending it. So request No Other Gospel when you give a donation of any amount to Ligonier Ministries. Our phone number again is 800-435-4343, or if you prefer, you can give your gift and make your request online at renewingyourmind.org. If you'd like to share today's message with friends and family, it's easy to do from that website. When you go to renewingyourmind.org, you'll see a Share button right in the middle of the page.

That button allows you to share today's program on Facebook, Twitter, or by email. You may never know who might be helped by the biblical truths you share. Well, the problem with adhering to the law for our salvation is that we have to follow all of it perfectly. That's why the book of Galatians is so important. I hope you'll join us tomorrow for Renewing Your Mind as Dr. Thomas continues his series with a message titled, Standing in Freedom. .