Pairs, not pears the fruit, but pairs or couples. The animals went to the ark in pairs, two by two (Genesis 7:8). Let’s talk about some pairs this morning. When I say Abbott, you say “Costello”. When I say Adam, you say “Eve”. When I say Moses, you say “Aaron”. When I say Simon, you say “Garfunkel”. Pairs, duos. Our minds have a wonderful way of remembering pairs, whether they are people, items, and concepts. Addition and Subtraction, Multiplication and division, good and bad.
Pairings are memory aids that just stick with us. This morning, our passage is full of pairs:
| 2 Mothers | Hagar – Sarah |
| 2 Sons | Ishmael – Isaac |
| 2 Covenants | Works – grace |
| 2 Cities | Jerusalem below – Jerusalem above |
| 2 Mountains | Sinai – Calvary |
| 2 Ways of Life | Slavery – freedom |
| 2 Births | Natural - spiritual |
These are wonderful pairs that Paul intends to shape our minds and our Christian life. Pairs that God wants us to know and understand for they are descriptors of the life of people in and out of Christ. God wants his people to remember, know and understand these pairs in the same way they remember Abbott and Costello or Scooby Doo and Shaggy too.
Our passage centers on the historically true biography of Abraham’s struggle for children. For those who aren’t familiar with the story, let me recount it a bit. At 75 God speaks to Abraham and tells him, Gen. 12:2 “I will make you into a great nation and I will bless you; I will make your name great, and you will be a blessing.” Not long after this God promises Abraham that Gen. 15:4 “…a son coming from [his] own body will be [his] heir.” But nothing happens, at least right away, so Sarah takes her maidservant Hagar and has Abraham sleep with her in order to build a family.
The whole plan doesn’t go so well and Hagar runs away because family dynamics in polyamorous relationships aren’t good. Nevertheless, God instructs Hagar to return which she does, and the Lord goes on to re-affirm to Abraham his oath that a child will come from the union of Abraham and Sarah. I love Abraham’s response: Gen. 17:17 “Abraham fell facedown; he laughed and said to himself, “Will a son be born to a man a hundred years old? Will Sarah bear a child at the age of ninety?”” But God stands firm in his promise and says, Gen. 17:19 “Yes, but your wife Sarah will bear you a son, and you will call him Isaac. I will establish my covenant with him as an everlasting covenant for his descendants after him.”
This is the story. This is the historical background to what Paul is about to interpret for the Galatians and every believer after them. There are two kinds of children pictured in this story. There are two kinds of people Paul says, those of the human union of Abraham and Hagar and those of the miraculous union of Abraham and Sarah. Paul says it this way, “These things may be taken figuratively, for the women represent two covenants” (Gal 4:24).
What Paul means is this. In human history there are two ways of relating to God and his promises. The first is to hear the promise and then believe that we need to do something to make them happen, or to ensure their fulfillment. People like this say or think, “God has promised me something that is wonderful and beyond imagination, now what can I do to help that process along, to make it happen quickly.” I will be honest, this is my natural inclination. To Abraham that was played out by sleeping with a woman other than his wife in order to make the promised child come. 13 years is a long time to wait, that is how long he made it, but God had another plan, 12 more years for a grand total of 25 years from the first promise until it’s fulfillment in Isaac.
To the Judaizers of Paul’s day it went something like this, God has promised us that we are his children. He has given us the Law. The Law implies that we need to maintain our promised elect status because there are punishments and blessing associated with our attitudes toward the Law and it’s demands, so we are God’s special people only as long as we obey these commandments. Thus the need for the Gentiles to get circumcised and to keep the holy days and the dietary laws, etc. The story of Abraham’s interaction with Hagar and the Judaizers interaction with the gentiles and the law fall under this way of relating to God. We’ll call people in this camp the ‘doers’. For those who read more theological books, a fancy name for the doers is “covenantal nomism” or “covenant law keepers” or Christian Reconstuctionism.
But even if we don’t consider think any of these terms apply to us, let me ask a question: How many of us carry the thought in our mind that we are holy because of Christ, but we can become more holy by our actions? If this is true for us, what we believe is that we can help God by ‘being so good’ that we can’t possibly be condemned. How many Christians rely on doing certain things or not doing them in order to be assured of their acceptance before God? I didn’t kill someone today, and I did read my bible and helped someone in need. See I am a Christian. I gave $500 dollars this month, or $10000 dollars this year to the church, I prayed for my enemies and I went to church 48 out of 52 weeks this year. I avoided R-rated movies and only listened to Christian radio. I am truly a better person than others and more holy because of what God did for me and what I did for him.
Don’t we often, as Christians, both obey the “Law,” whether it is God’s law or cultural CRC law, and then rely on it and appeal to it for an assurance that our sanctification and transformation are being carried out just as God promised? Is that any different than Abraham and Hagar, taking it into our own hands to assure ourselves that the promise happens, and happens quickly? It’s not.
How does Paul describe this kind of life? SLAVERY. It is slavery, absolute utter slavery. Why? Because when we appeal to human ability, we negate the word of God. Jesus says as much when speaking about the traditions of the elders in the Gospels. He says people ‘nullify the Word of God by your tradition” (Mark 7:13). Our personal experiences can testify to the fact that living this kind of life isn’t liberating, its crushing and strangulating. It brings hardship, difficulty and the constant pressure of needing to perform.
But there is another way of relating to God: To Hear his promises, to believe them and to wait for them to come true. This characterizes the better way of interacting with God, and we will call these folks “believers” instead of “doers”. This is Abraham and his son Isaac, born to a 100 year old man and a 90-year-old woman. This is the impossible coming true, not by human effort, but by divine intervention. This is the story of the one who is unable to make God’s will for him or her happen, and who must wait for God’s timing.
Now I know that Sarah didn’t wait, she tried and tried to get the promised child. But did all her trying hurry the process? Did all her trying make it come any faster? Or did all her trying simply create other problems along the way? It created other problems along the way. In some respects, we are all like Sarah and Abraham, we want to trust, we want to wait, we want to believe, but we just can’t bring ourselves to “wait on the Lord” (Ps 25:3) or to “delight in the Lord and receive the desires of our heart” (Psalm 37:4). We feel the pressing need to do something. But does it really bring about anything beneficial? No, not if we take Paul’s allegory to heart.
Paul says, that which is impossible for humanity to accomplish is accomplished by the power of the Spirit. When we distrust God’s plans and feel the need to help, our only hope is to be born of the power of the Spirit (Gal 4:29). That is what Jesus said to Nicodemus in John 3:3-8,
3 …“I tell you the truth, no one can see the kingdom of God unless he is born again.” 4 “How can a man be born when he is old?” Nicodemus asked. “Surely he cannot enter a second time into his mother’s womb to be born!” 5 Jesus answered, “I tell you the truth, no one can enter the kingdom of God unless he is born of water and the Spirit. 6 Flesh gives birth to flesh, but the Spirit gives birth to spirit. 7 You should not be surprised at my saying, ‘You must be born again.’ 8 The wind blows wherever it pleases. You hear its sound, but you cannot tell where it comes from or where it is going. So it is with everyone born of the Spirit.” 3 In reply Jesus declared, “I tell you the truth, no one can see the kingdom of God unless he is born again.” 4 “How can a man be born when he is old?” Nicodemus asked. “Surely he cannot enter a second time into his mother’s womb to be born!” 5 Jesus answered, “I tell you the truth, no one can enter the kingdom of God unless he is born of water and the Spirit. 6 Flesh gives birth to flesh, but the Spirit gives birth to spirit. 7 You should not be surprised at my saying, ‘You must be born again.’ 8 The wind blows wherever it pleases. You hear its sound, but you cannot tell where it comes from or where it is going. So it is with everyone born of the Spirit.”
Did you see how Nicodemus is trying to aid God in the process of seeing the Kingdom of God? He is asking what he can do? He can’t climb back in, the image is ludicrous, but he can’t extricate himself from the idea that he must help God in the process, yet Jesus says, you need a new birth, a spiritual birth, a supernatural birth for that will change your whole way of relating to God. And Paul picks that up. He applies that to the Judaizers who are trying to take them back to helping God out, instead of allowing them to live in the glorious freedom of Grace, and trust and complete abandonment to God.
The Judaizers are trying to keep them in an earthly slavery, an earthly way of relating to God but Paul says the Spirit has liberated them from that kind of thinking; they have a new way of relating to God. We live under a new covenant, not an old one, a new one, a Covenant inaugurated at Calvary with the shed blood of Jesus Christ. It is a Covenant that can’t be added to nor taken away from (That was Paul’s argument from 3:15-25). It is a covenant that places the entire burden on God and allows us the freedom to trust God to begin and complete that which he has promised.
And do you know what that covenant has promised? It has promised us a city built by God himself, Heb. 11:10 For he was looking forward to the city with foundations, whose architect and builder is God. God has promised us a place where Rev. 21:4 He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away.” He has promised us a place where Rev. 21:27 Nothing impure will ever enter it, nor will anyone who does what is shameful or deceitful, but only those whose names are written in the Lamb’s book of life. He has promised us a place where Rev. 22:3 No longer will there be any curse. The throne of God and of the Lamb will be in the city, and his servants will serve him. It will be a place where God’s servants Rev. 22:4 They will see his face, and his name will be on their foreheads. Rev. 22:5 There will be no more night. They will not need the light of a lamp or the light of the sun, for the Lord God will give them light. And they will reign for ever and ever.
These are but some of the promises God has made and we can’t speed them up, we can’t aid him in accomplishing them, we can’t improve on them. We must just trust that only God can fulfill these realities. But this is unpopular and it will bring persecution. “Doers,” descendants of Hagar always appeal to works, they always add a “Yah, but you must…” or a “Yah, but we need to…” And they persecute those who refuse such ideas; they condemn those who refuse their ways. Such is the way of Hagar. To persecute the free. But…
We must trust that our actions don’t get us in or keep us out, for if nothing impure can ever enter and I am still acting impure and all my trying not to act impure leaves me with nothing but filthy rags before my God, then I am hopeless. And so are you, if you are honest. We are at a loss; we can’t make God’s promises come true any faster. We can’t make ourselves righteous, and we can’t make ourselves just. Those are three things that God demands: holiness, righteousness and justice. And every time we try to make them happen, we end up with a new law to appeal to and a new smugness on our face. Every time, we end up a slave to our new rules and we end up persecuting those who don’t buy into our new branding of “God’s way of living.”
So brothers and sisters, what is the solution? Gal. 4:30 … “Get rid of the slave woman and her son, for the slave woman’s son will never share in the inheritance with the free woman’s son.” Don’t appeal to law or rule or any standard that you can achieve. Get rid of it. Don’t allow it into the church. There can be no place for that kind of thing in the Kingdom, for the only standard is Christ and his work, and we are all in need of his life and his spirit. We need a supernatural birth if we are to ever enjoy the kingdom that is not of this world. We need the gospel and nothing more. Not social justice, not morality, not anything else. WE need Jesus Christ crucified and raised from the dead. That is all the church needs to preach and live.
People of God, be encouraged, God accepts you because of Christ, just as you are, and not for what you do. Therefore, Go and live a life of freedom at the foot of the cross, allowing that Spirit to live through you, to change you and to bring you into the city built by God and God alone. Trust that he doesn’t need our help, but that he can do it entirely through the power of his Spirit at work in you. Amen.
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