Sermon Tone Analysis

Who’s Your Mama?

Galatians 4:21-5:1

The people of Kilgore Bible Church love the Bible.

(Can I get an “amen”?)

We love the Bible because we hear God’s voice in the Bible; he speaks to us through the words on these pages.

We love the Bible because we love Jesus, and we see Jesus in the pages of this book.

We love the Bible because the Holy Spirit produced this book through human authors, and that same Spirit of God lives in each one of us, giving us ears to hear the voice of God and eyes to see the Son of God throughout the pages of this book.

Because we love the Bible, we take it seriously and we seek to understand it rightly.

We recognize that God has communicated clearly in ordinary human languages, so that we can understand the Word of God.

However, we also recognize that God has not communicated all things with equal simplicity.

Some things in the Bible are hard to understand.

(How ‘bout another “amen”?)

Nevertheless, we believe that there are right ways and wrong ways to approach the Bible.

For example, we’d say that you’re off to a poor start if you assume that what you’re reading in the Bible is just a fairy tale, or that the historical details aren’t necessarily true.

On the contrary, we believe that the human authors had messages they intended to communicate to real people, and we believe that it’s possible for us today to understand what these human authors intended to communicate.

But we must go further.

As Christians, we believe that God himself was working in and through these human authors to communicate a unified message across the ages, not only to the original audiences of those days, but also to his people scattered across the globe and through the generations.

Because we believe this, we seek to interpret the Bible in line with its author’s intentions, and because the Bible is literature—a collection of documents, texts—we approach God’s Word fundamentally as a book.

This means we work to understand the meanings of the words the authors used, the grammatical structures the authors used, the literary genres or types of literature the authors used, the figures of speech the authors used, and the historical and cultural world the authors were living in.

Some folks call this method “grammatical-historical interpretation.”

More simply, we could call it “contextual interpretation” or “reading in context.”

Why do we do this?

Why do we think this method is the best method for interpreting the Bible?

I’m going to let that question hang in the air, while I raise a related, and possibly more important question: Does the apostle Paul interpret Scripture this way?

In our passage this morning in Gal. 4, this question becomes very important, as Paul comes to the climax of his theological argument against the false teachers in Galatia.

Paul is going to take a look at the story of Sarah and Hagar, originally told in Genesis chapters 16, 17, and 21, but he’s going to suggest that the story is an allegory, in which Sarah represents one covenant and Hagar represents a different covenant.

Commentators of every theological persuasion have looked at this passage and concluded that Paul certainly is not engaging in “grammatical-historical” or “contextual” interpretation.

I’d like to address this before we get into the details of the text, because how we understand the first phrase of verse 24 will shape everything else we have to say this morning.

So, look at Gal. 4:24.

After summarizing the story of Sarah and Hagar, without even mentioning their names, in verses 22-23, Paul transitions to his explanation of this story.

In the ESV, we read “Now this may be interpreted allegorically.”

You can see several alternative translations in your sermon notes and on the screen.

• Now this may be interpreted allegorically (ESV)

• This is allegorically speaking (NASB)

• Which things are an allegory (KJV)

• I’m going to use these historical events as an illustration (GWT)

• These things may be taken figuratively (NIV)

• which things are symbolic (NKJV)

None of these are what we might call a “literal translation” of what Paul has written.

The King James Version is truly paraphrasing here, but, of the available options, it best captures the sense of what Paul has written.

But it’s still not clear enough.

The KJV rendering indicates that the events Paul just described are an allegory, and by saying that, Paul is not saying that the events described in Genesis did not actually happen, and neither am I.

I would translate Paul’s phrase in Gal.

4:24 “These things are written allegorically,” which would be a more literal translation than any of these options.

Look at this chart on the screen; it’s also in your sermon notes.

This entire passage is shaped by Paul’s reading of Scripture and his call to the Galatians to go back and read the Scriptures.

Paul has placed this statement about allegory in the very center of a series of references to what is written in the Scriptures.

So, the very shape of this whole passage suggests that we should expect in verse 24 a focus on what is written in Scripture, rather than how Paul interprets Scripture, as the ESV seems to imply.

And, this is what the verb Paul uses actually means: to speak or write allegorically.

Thus, Paul is suggesting that the author of Genesis—and he’s probably referring particularly to the divine author, God—intended the story of Sarah and Hagar to be understood both as a historical narrative of events that actually took place, as well as an allegory with some greater significance.

If that’s the case, then we have 2 questions to answer: how did Paul recognize the allegorical significance on top of the historical meaning, and why did he appeal to this to argue against his opponents in Galatia?

The details of our passage, I believe, will provide the answers.

So, back in verse 21, Paul addresses the false teachers directly, as well as any of the Galatians who are tempted to follow them: “Tell me, you who desire to be under the law, do you not listen to the law?”

It seems that these false teachers came in after Paul had planted these churches in the region of Galatia, and they were saying something like, “Yes, trusting Jesus is good, but, if you want to be counted truly righteous, you must also obey the Mosaic Law.”

Paul takes them head-on here, and he points them to a portion of “the Law” that undermines their position, when understood the way Paul does.

Paul uses the word “law” with 2 different senses in this verse, as a sort of play on words.

Addressing those “who desire to be under the law,” he’s pointing to these false teachers and referring to them as people who insist on earning God’s verdict of “righteous” by obeying the Mosaic Law.

He condescendingly asks them, “Don’t you listen to the law?

Don’t you know what it says?”

When he asks this question, he’s referring to “the Law” as in the written Torah, the first five books of the Old Testament.

He’s referring to Scripture.

Paul’s using a tactic that Jesus often used in the Gospels; Jesus would get into arguments with the religious leaders who opposed him, and he’d ask them, “Have you never read...?”

With this statement, Paul takes them back to the book of Genesis, but he doesn’t quote a particular verse; instead, he summarizes the story of Sarah and Hagar.

Look at verses 22 and 23: “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.”

Why does Paul refer to this story?

Throughout Galatians 3 and 4, Paul has focused on Abraham; in fact, the questions, “Who are the true sons of Abraham?” and “What does it mean to be a son of Abraham?” have been central to the discussion in these chapters.

Why? Probably the false teachers in Galatia were claiming that they were the true sons of Abraham, and they were suggesting to the Galatian Christians that if they wanted to be the true sons of Abraham, they had to be circumcised and submit to the entire Mosaic Law.

But Paul reminds these folks here that Abraham actually had two sons, with two different women, in two different sets of circumstances.

Do you remember the story from Gen. 16? God had made a promise to Abraham back in Gen. 12, and then he reaffirmed that promise as part of a covenant relationship with Abraham in Gen. 15.

God had promised, among other things, that Abraham would have descendants that would outnumber the stars.

However, there was a problem: Abraham’s wife, Sarah, was barren; she could not have children.

And they were old.

And they were getting older.

In Gen. 16, Sarah becomes a bit impatient and she instructs Abraham to take Hagar, Sarah’s Egyptian slave, as a second wife.

So, 86-year-old Abraham obeys the voice of his wife, and Hagar and Abraham have a son, named Ishmael.

According to the laws of the day, Ishmael would have “counted” as Sarah’s son.

Hagar would have been viewed like a surrogate mother.

Abraham and Sarah seemed to be under the impression that Ishmael would serve as the offspring God had promised to Abraham to begin the line of descendants.

But, in Gen. 17, God speaks to Abraham again and clarifies that Ishmael does not “count” as the promised offspring; God insists that Sarah will bear the son God had promised to Abraham, even though she’s already 90 years old at this point, and Abraham is 99.

The next year, Sarah became pregnant and gave birth to Isaac.

So, what does Paul see in this story?

If you look up at the screen, or down in your sermon notes, you’ll see the main connections Paul wants us to see in this story.

The false teachers in Galatia can claim all day long that Abraham is their father, but Paul is beginning to show them that, even if that were true, who their mother is is even more important.

Hagar was a slave; her son Ishmael was born according to the flesh.

Paul seems to be commenting here on the fact that Ishmael’s birth came about because Abraham and Sarah decided to “help God” along.

They wanted to fulfill the promise by their own efforts, and in this they were not trusting God.

By putting it just this way, Paul is already connecting the Galatian false teachers with the slavery associated with Hagar.

The whole story highlights Abraham and Sarah’s faltering faith; they had begun trusting God’s promise, but, over time, they decided they needed to engineer a creative solution that would bring God’s promise into effect.

Similarly, the Galatians were being tempted to be “perfected by the flesh,” as Paul had said in Gal.

3:3.

Paul connects the false teachers with Hagar because they are trying to get the Galatian Christians to rely on their own efforts to obey the Mosaic Law in order to be justified by God, rather than trusting Jesus Christ alone.

Sarah, on the other hand, was free; her son Isaac was born through promise.

This not only highlights Isaac’s miraculous birth, but it also, and more importantly, highlights the fact that God is completely responsible for fulfilling his own promises.

He is not dependent on our efforts or our creativity.

God is capable of putting his promises into effect, and he does it in his own way and in his own time.

God patiently and graciously taught Abraham this very thing, even in the face of Abraham and Sarah’s unbelief.

Now, what does Paul do with this story?

As we discussed earlier, he seems to recognize that, on top of the historical events being described in Genesis, there is an allegorical significance to the women in the story.

Let’s read verses 24-27: “Now this may be interpreted allegorically: these women are two covenants.

One is from Mount Sinai, bearing children for slavery; she is Hagar.