Old Grace for a Modern Church
Galatians • Sermon • Submitted • Presented
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· 1 viewBecause the Bible is all Christ’s book, we must mine for grace to live in His church.
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Introduction
Introduction
What do you when you read the story of David and Goliath? What is your thought process when your Bible in a year plan has you read about Abraham, Sarah, Isaac, and all of that family drama?
I am afraid that many of you are still thinking in “felt board mode.” It was very easy in the late 90s to turn every Old Testament story into a “be better” lesson.
“Be like Abraham, don’t be like Jacob, be like Joseph, don’t be like Samson,” and on and on it can go.
Did you notice what was missing in what I just said? Nothing I said was actually sinful: there are things about Abraham and David that are good to emulate. If my daughter comes to me later in life and says, “Dad, I really want to be like Sarah and Deborah,” I am going to say, “Go for it.”
What is missing from that way of reading the Old Testament is one thing: Christ. If you were listening, you would have noticed that I never referenced him at all.
Giving someone duties without Christ is like giving a car a destination with no gas.
You must learn to train yourself to see Christ in the Old Testament. This is not something that we are coming up with. We are not trying to read into Scripture an idea that is not there.
John 5:39 (KJV 1900)
39 Search the scriptures; for in them ye think ye have eternal life: and they are they which testify of me.
If we believe Jesus, we believe the Old Testament is about him.
How? We’re going to have to work for it. Our title this morning is “Old Grace for a Modern Church.”
Because the Bible is Christ’s book, we must mine for grace to live in His church.
Galatian’s
Remember that Paul has been arguing against the Judaizers. These individuals said to be a Christian, you to believe in Jesus along with being circumcised. To had to be Jew in order to be a Christian.
These individuals believed that what we call the Old Testament was their best weapon. That it was their playground. Paul turns that on its head in this passage and gives us weapons to use in our fight for grace in our church.
The Foundation of Grace for the Church
The Foundation of Grace for the Church
Galatians 4:21 “21 Tell me, ye that desire to be under the law, do ye not hear the law?”
Notice the language: Paul is assuming that there is a message, a genuine and original message from the Old Testament, that is not being heard by these Judaizers.
If he were inventing this, it would not work against his opponents.
The only way Paul could accurately fight these individuals is if the Old Testament was going to support the point he was drawing.
He pulls now from the narrative of Genesis with Abraham.
Galatians 4:22 “22 For it is written, that Abraham had two sons, the one by a bondmaid, the other by a freewoman.”
This is the story of Abraham. He had two sons: one by a bondmaid, or a slave, and one by a freewoman, his wife.
Isaac and Ishamael.
Verse 23 is where we start to see how Paul is telling us to view this true historical story.
Galatians 4:23 “23 But he who was of the bondwoman was born after the flesh; but he of the freewoman was by promise.”
Cast your mind to Genesis 16. Abraham, in a moment of doubt, listens to his wife Sarah and decides to produce his own child.
Ishamael was the son he had by his own effort. Isaac was the son that Abraham had through God’s power and plan.
That is why, here, the child of the slave is called “born after the flesh.” It was Abraham’s own efforts, independent of God, that produced Ishmael.
It was God’s action that produced Isaac.
Application
Notice what Paul has done here: he has taken the Old Testament narrative, he has taken the true story, and he has examined it down to its foundational elements.
He has looked at the history in his Bible and has said, “What is the bare, foundational architecture here?”
This is how we do Old Testament typology. Let me give you a quick definition of “typology.
The word “type” is generally used to denote a resemblance between something present and something future
Let me give you another example of how you do this. David and Goliath.
Who is David? The Champion of God
Who is Goliath? The Enemy of God
Who are the Israelites? The scared people of God.
This is how we do typology. This only makes sense if God directed and wrote the Old Testament. We are looking for patterns in God’s book in God’s story.
To examine biblical typology is to examine the orchestration of the sovereign God.
James M. Hamilton, Jr.
We affirm that God is in control of history. That is why we can find these foundations of grace that Paul guides us to affirm.
Transition: Once we have those foundations of grace for the church, we can see how Paul moves on to give us.
The Explanation of Grace for the Church
The Explanation of Grace for the Church
Paul takes that architecture he has found in Genesis, and he begins to explain it particularly to the Galatians.
Galatians 4:24 “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.”
Galatians 4:25 “25 For this Agar is mount Sinai in Arabia, and answereth to Jerusalem which now is, and is in bondage with her children.”
Hagar = the Law and its Children
Hagar = the Law and its Children
It was Abraham’s own efforts, independent of God, that produced Ishmael. It is the Law, apart from Christ, that shows sinners they are merely slaves.
That is why verse 25 says that Hagar “answereth to Jerusalem which now is, and is in bondage with her children.”
The current Jerusalem in Paul’s time had rejected the Law as pointing to Christ and was using it as a means of salvation. The result was the same as Hagar: slavery and children of slavery.
That’s what Hagar and Ishmael are. Our efforts. Now, Sarah and Isaac. Verse 26
Galatians 4:26 “26 But Jerusalem which is above is free, which is the mother of us all.”
Paul makes us fill in the gaps here. He jumps from the earthly Jerusalem to the heavenly one.
His logic is very, very straightforward.
Where Hagar was the law and its children,
Sarah = the Gospel and its Children
Sarah = the Gospel and its Children
It was Abraham’s own efforts, independent of God, that produced Ishmael.
It was God’s action that produced Isaac.
It is our own efforts to save us that produce slavery.
It is God’s efforts, and His good news, that make us sons of the heavenly city.
Paul, the master of the Old Testament, grabs a quotation next from Isaiah.
Galatians 4:27 “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.”
This quotation from Isaiah 54 follows immediately the strong Messianic prophecy of Isaiah 53.
It is the restoration of Israel.
It begins by confessing how the barren woman, seemingly cursed by having no children, will somehow have more children than the married woman.
How, the Jews would have asked, could a woman with no husband have numerous children?
Because God was promising the heavenly Mother City that would give birth to us.
Application
This is how we take the foundations of grace we find in the Old Testament and tease it out. We find those God-ordained parallels.
It is not going to be easy. You are going to have to dig, and think, and learn, and study, and pray.
This is our goal in reading our Old Testament. To find that Foundation of Grace and be able to flesh it out and explain it.
Transition: This moves us to our last point.
The Application of Grace in the Church
The Application of Grace in the Church
Remember how Paul is arguing against the Judaizers. He uses the grace he found in the Old Testament begins to apply it directly to his audience.
Galatians 4:28 “28 Now we, brethren, as Isaac was, are the children of promise.”
As Isaac is born by God’s gracious action, so are we.
Galatians 4:29 “29 But as then he that was born after the flesh persecuted him that was born after the Spirit, even so it is now.”
Paul looked at the Old Testament narrative and saw this fact: the son of slave persecuted the son of promise.
It is the same thing now, Paul says. Those who want salvation by their efforts will always persecute those who are children of grace.
Look at what Paul says to do. He again quotes the Old Testament. He quotes Genesis 21.10
Galatians 4:30 “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.”
What do you when those in the church are trying to distort the Gospel? You do what God’s people have always done: cast them out.
This is not about the color of the carpet. This is about the gracious Gospel of God.
That’s why Paul ends this chapter the way he does.
Galatians 4:31 “31 So then, brethren, we are not children of the bondwoman, but of the free.”
We in the church of Christ are sons of the free woman of Genesis. We must act that way and preserve God’s Gospel now in the present.
Conclusion
Conclusion
Because the Bible is Christ’s book, we must mine for grace to live in His church.
It belongs to Christ. He wrote it. He is in every story. It is our calling to mine its passages for as much gold as we can find.