I greet all of you in the Blessed name of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Our text for this morning's message is taken from Galatians 4:21 to chapter 5 verse 1. This is a difficult passage to understand, and I hope that you will be patient with me as I try to explain it in the best possible way I can, especially to those who are attending our worship service for the first time. We are studying through the book of Galatians, and this is a most difficult passage. It is difficult because here Paul uses an allegory. You can see that in verse 24: “which things are an allegory.” The word allegory comes from two Greek words which basically mean to speak other than what one seems to speak. You may say something but mean another thing. For example, a person says "Israel" or "the Israelites," but it can mean another thing.
So, sometimes people would try to take a real story like a Biblical account and then spiritualize it. In other words, they will ignore the literal meaning of the text to try and find a deeper meaning behind the actual text. So if an allegory is not used correctly, it is very dangerous because people would read the Bible and think deep into the text and try to find hidden meanings other than what is presented to them. You see, when the Bible records for us the historical facts and events that happen, like how God opened up the Red Sea and sent manna from heaven, God wants to convey to us the message as it is; there's no hidden meaning. One theologian said, “When the plain sense makes sense, seek no other sense.” So when we read the scriptures, there's no need to read and see if there's a deeper meaning behind it, underneath it. It is very dangerous. God never meant for his word to have any hidden meaning so that you and I have to dig and dig to find the hidden meaning.
Let me give you some examples of people who try to find hidden meanings in the Bible. In the parable of the Good Samaritan, there are some people who say that the two coins that the Good Samaritan gave to the innkeeper have a hidden meaning. They say that the two coins mean baptism and the Lord's Supper. That is not true. There are others who try to interpret the number 666 in the Book of Revelation to mean all kinds of things and people, using those names ending with six letters, from Caesar to Hitler to Stalin—the list goes on and on. Several years ago, an Israeli scholar claimed that he had decoded the Bible with a computer formula in order to find hidden meanings, and he claimed that the Bible had prophesied about Kennedy's assassination, the election of Bill Clinton—everything from the Holocaust to Hiroshima, from the moon landing to the collision of a comet with Jupiter. They are all nonsense. Can you see how an allegory is like a Pandora’s box that annuls the literal historical meaning of the Holy Scriptures and opens up all kinds of interpretation to every example?
Now, back to our text: the question is, why did Paul use the word "allegory"? It is right to say that here Paul was using a historical fact based on the Scriptures about Abraham having two sons through Sarah and Hagar to teach some spiritual truth. But he was not finding out hidden meanings in it—it was by divine inspiration. I believe a better way to describe this is that Paul was using an analogy or illustration whereby a spiritual truth was illustrated by a historical event. So here, the word "allegory" simply means an analogy, an illustration: putting two things side by side—one is a historical fact to prove the spiritual truth on the other side.
With this understanding, let us focus on the title of our message: "Freedom in Christ or Bondage to Works." Our first point is the analogy. Let us begin with verse 21: "Tell me, ye that desire to be under the law, do ye not hear the law?" Remember, the church at Galatia was influenced by the false teachers, or Judaizers, who had infiltrated into the church. They were teaching the people that believing in Jesus Christ was not sufficient; you need also to be circumcised, and you must obey the Mosaic law to be saved. The Apostle Paul destroyed that argument by using the Holy Scriptures to prove that Abraham believed God and was justified, and then, after that, he was circumcised. So faith came first, then the circumcision.
What about the law? The law was given to Moses many years after Abraham. So if the law was necessary for salvation, then people like Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and all the other Hebrew believers would be eternally lost. Paul then explained to the Galatians that no one could keep the law perfectly and go to heaven. Man breaks the law all the time; you and I break the law all the time. The purpose of the law was to expose their sins; the law would judge their sins, put them under condemnation. In fact, the more they studied the law, the more they would realize that there was no way they could ever, with their own efforts, go to heaven. By their own works, they could not find a place in heaven. So the law served as a schoolmaster to drive the people to Jesus Christ, the only one who could save them.
But the Judaizers and those whom the Judaizers had already influenced in the church at Galatia, they still wanted to go back to be under the law. So Paul asks this question in verse 21: "Tell me, ye that desire to be under the law, do ye not hear the law?" In other words, since you insist on living under the law, are you not willing to listen to what the law really says? In our modern times, we would probably say it this way: if you believe in the Bible, are you not willing to listen to what the Bible really says? If they are willing to listen, Paul says, let me show you what the Scripture has to say about this matter.
Verse 22 and 23: "For it is written, that Abraham had two sons, one by a bondmaid, the other by a free woman. But he who was of the bondwoman was born after the flesh; but he of the free woman was by promise." So here, Paul was using an analogy or illustration from the Scriptures to prove his point. Before we continue, the point that Paul was trying to make to the Galatians was this: that freedom in Christ, the freedom that Christ gives to us from sin and the condemnation of the law, is perfect, and we should not go back to anything that is imperfect. And this freedom in Christ is given to us by a promise; it is never earned by works. Please keep this in your mind as we study through this entire passage.
We are all familiar with the story of Abraham, who had two sons. In fact, Abraham had more than two sons. After the death of Sarah, he married Keturah, who gave him more sons. But here, Paul was focusing on the first two sons: Isaac and Ishmael. Isaac was born of a free woman named Sarah; Ishmael was born of a bondwoman, the Egyptian maid named Hagar. These two sons and these two women were used to prove a spiritual truth about freedom and bondage.
Many years after God had promised Abraham that his descendants would be like the stars in heaven and the sand on the seashore, he still did not have any son. And as he was getting older, he became weary. So when God appeared to Abraham in Genesis 15:1-4, Abraham said to God, "Lord God, what wilt thou give me, seeing I go childless, and the steward of my house is this Eliezer of Damascus?" In other words, Abraham was saying, "Lord, I still do not have a son. I'm getting older; is it this chief servant, Eliezer, who would inherit all the promises that you have given to me?" According to the custom at that time, if a man were to die without a child, everything would go to the chief servant. Abraham did not want that to happen. But God said to him, "No, it was not Eliezer; the one who would inherit the promise would come from you. It will be your seed."
At that point in time, Abraham was 86 years old; Sarah was 76 years old. But after several more years, when Sarah still had not conceived, she was desperate. So she devised a plan that Abraham would go to the maid Hagar and have a child, so in their minds at least, they could take that child as Abraham's seed. They did just that, and Hagar gave birth to Ishmael. That was the reason why Ishmael was called the one born after the flesh—because it was motivated by selfish desires; it was fulfilled by purely human means. In a sense, it was by man's works. Most importantly, it was not God's plan.
But Isaac was different because he was born by the free woman, by promise. Isaac's birth was after God's plan and promise, and when the time was ready, the Holy Spirit miraculously enabled Abraham and Sarah to produce the child after she was far past the normal childbearing age and had been barren all her life. So Paul was using the story of Abraham as an analogy. Abraham did not wait for God's promise; instead, he chose his own human plan to go to the maid and have a child. He trusted in his own human works to have that child. Therefore, one son was by the flesh, by human effort; the other son was by promise.
This brings us to our second point: the explanation. Look at verse 24: "which things are an allegory, an analogy, or an illustration for these two covenants; the one from Mount Sinai which gendereth to bondage," which means to generate or to produce bondage, which is Agar. Verse 25: "For this Agar is Mount Sinai in Arabia and answereth to Jerusalem which now is and is in bondage with her children."
Paul explained that the analogy of the two women, Sarah and Hagar, and the two sons, Isaac and Ishmael, was used to illustrate this spiritual truth about two covenants: the Covenant of Law and the Covenant of Grace, or Promise. As I said, this is a difficult passage, so please give me some patience to try to explain it as best as I can.
In the first covenant, the Covenant of Law, Paul used three names. Firstly, Agar or Hagar—it means the same thing. Agar is in Greek, Hagar is in Hebrew, referring to the bondwoman, Sarah's maid. Secondly, he also speaks about Mount Sinai, where God gave the Ten Commandments. And thirdly, Jerusalem. Notice when Paul speaks about Jerusalem in verse 25, he says, "Jerusalem which now is and is in bondage with her children." This was a reference to the earthly Jerusalem, where the law was being taught and implemented in the temple. We will come back to this in a moment.
So, the first covenant was represented by three historical elements: Hagar, Mount Sinai, and the earthly Jerusalem. What was the connection here? You see, the descendant of Hagar, Ishmael, lived in Arabia, and it was in Mount Sinai, which was in the Arabian Peninsula, that God gave the Ten Commandments. So, the Israelites, the children of the bondwoman, lived in Arabia, the southern or southeastern part of Israel. Now, when the Jews were coming out of Egypt, they passed through Mount Sinai and then entered into the Promised Land. Right there at Mount Sinai, God gave them the Ten Commandments, and when they received the Ten Commandments, later on, when they reached the Promised Land, they went to Jerusalem, the earthly Jerusalem, where the law was being taught and practiced.
That was well and good, but the problem was that the majority of the people became legalists, thinking that the law was given to them so that they could be righteous, thinking that the law was given to them that they could show off that they were holy and godly, or that they could earn a place in heaven. That was the reason why during Jesus' time, He had to condemn the Jews for their legalistic attitude. He called them "whitewashed tombs." Outwardly, they appeared to be very beautiful, but inwardly they were filled with dead men's bones because the Jews thought that they were very righteous on their own. They trusted in their own efforts, their own works. They would always say, "We did this, we did that; we obeyed this, we obeyed that." But Jesus said to them, "If you are going to have that kind of attitude about self-righteousness, you will never enter into the kingdom of heaven. You can never achieve God's standard of perfect righteousness; no man can."
That was why Jesus said in Matthew 5:20, "Except your righteousness shall exceed the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees, ye shall in no wise enter into the kingdom of heaven." And Jesus, by the promise of God, came to provide that righteousness if only they could turn to Him. Essentially, Jesus was telling the people not to put their trust in the legalistic mentality preached and taught by the Jews.
So Paul was speaking about two groups of people within the Jewish community. To a larger extent, there were two groups of people in this world: one, the hypocritical religious people who trust in their own works, self-righteousness, and own efforts; the other, the believing Jews or the true believers. The hypocritical religious people think that they can achieve their self-righteousness and salvation on their own, just like the human plan of Abraham and Sarah to have a child by Hagar. They did not want to wait for God's plan and promise; they did not want to wait for God's promised child. They wanted their own—they devised their own plans. If you want to follow the flesh, if you want to trust in your own human efforts, you will never inherit the promise; you will never inherit God's eternal salvation and blessing. But if you want to inherit God's eternal salvation and blessings, then you must turn to His promise, who is none other than Jesus Christ.
Let us return to our text again. Verse 24 and 25: "Which things are an allegory, for these are the two covenants; the one from Mount Sinai which gendereth to bondage, which is Agar, and this Agar is Mount Sinai in Arabia, and answereth to Jerusalem which now is and is in bondage with her children." Notice the word "bondage" being repeated. So, Paul made a connection between Hagar, Mount Sinai, and the earthly Jerusalem with the word "bondage." You see, just as Hagar was a bondwoman and she had not inherited the promise, the law was given at Mount Sinai to reveal the sins of the people, to expose their sins, to tell them that they were under the bondage of sin. And the earthly Jerusalem was the place where the people practiced their legalistic mentality and attitudes; they were all connected with the word "bondage."
In other words, if you want to go back to the law, if you want to be living under the law, to be stuck in the covenant that God had given at Mount Sinai, to be legalistic like the practices in the earthly Jerusalem, you will be in bondage just as Hagar was in bondage. Basically, under the divine inspiration of the Holy Spirit, the Apostle Paul was revealing to the Galatians that there was no point in going back to the law, to be stuck in the law. The law cannot save you; the law cannot provide salvation. The law can only tell you that you are a sinner; accept your sins, you are condemned. Then turn to the only Savior who can save you: Jesus Christ.
Now Paul moved on to the second covenant, the Covenant of Promise, which is in Christ. Look at verse 26: "But Jerusalem which is above is free, which is the mother of us all." Like Sarah, who was the mother of the free child, which was Isaac, the Jerusalem which is above means the Jerusalem in heaven is for all those who have received the freedom in Christ. The Jerusalem in heaven is our focus; the Jerusalem on this earth is not our focus because the Jerusalem on this earth is full of legalistic practices.
Let us turn to Hebrews 12:22-23 to get a better picture of this Jerusalem which is above. Hebrews 12:22-23—I believe the writer of Hebrews was the Apostle Paul because you will see a strong connection in the things he talked about. He said in verse 22: "But ye are come unto Mount Zion." Let us pause and consider this. What is Mount Zion? Just now, we talked about Mount Sinai, which was in the Arabian Peninsula. What about Mount Zion? It was in Jerusalem, another name for Jerusalem. But was Paul referring to the earthly Jerusalem here? No, because he went on to say: "And unto the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, and to an innumerable company of angels, to the general assembly and church of the firstborn, which are written in heaven, and to God the judge of all, and to the spirits of just men made perfect."
Here, the writer of Hebrews was speaking to all the believers that when they are gathered together in the church, like what we are doing here in our church too, they were not focusing on the literal church on earth. There was nothing spectacular about the earthly church, no matter how big or magnificent it may be—nothing spectacular. This morning, do you come to worship this building? Do you come to worship the structure of this building? Or is there something holy about the pews you are sitting on? No, our worship has nothing to do with the earthly building, the earthly Jerusalem. When we come together, we come to focus on the heavenly Jerusalem, where God is, where ultimately we will be one day.
So when Christians come together to worship God, it is more than just the local community, more than just the hundred or so worshippers here. We are part of the communion of saints who are here and elsewhere in other churches around the world, as well as the saints who had died and gone to heaven. In other words, when we meet here in this local church, we are part of the universal church, which is in heaven. So while we are here, we are anticipating our gathering in heaven one day. I hope none of us in this room would ever think that we are going to remain here forever. We are going to be worshipping in this earthly building forever. No, our focus is in the heavenly Jerusalem. As true believers, our citizenships are in heaven; we are members of the heavenly Jerusalem. So we are not bound to this earthly church, this earthly Jerusalem. Paul says the earthly Jerusalem is not our focus; the heavenly Jerusalem would be our focus because the heavenly Jerusalem is the mother of us all.
What does he mean? See, sometimes we will say to people, "I'm going to my mother's house," meaning to say, "I'm going home; I'm going to my real home." When we are gathered here, we are not stuck here on this earth; our real home, our mother's house, is in heaven. That should always be our focus; that should always be our perspective—the heavenly Jerusalem.
Verse 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 a husband." Now he used another analogy, and he quoted from Isaiah 54:1. Allow me to briefly explain this text, this verse. The background of it was that God had promised the Jewish people who were exiled in Babylon. Isaiah was predicting that the Israelites would be taken into captivity by the Babylonians, so he was telling them, "When you are being taken into captivity, remember you will be like a barren woman without children."
You see, when Israel was taken into captivity in Babylon, she was expected to die there, never to return again. Oftentimes, when the oppressor took away the people into captivity, they would not allow them to multiply in numbers; they wanted them to ultimately be destroyed, be disintegrated. But Israel was the only nation that survived all the efforts of the world to destroy it; they came back, revived, and even prospered. So Isaiah was saying to the Israelites, "Rejoice, you who are barren; break forth and cry, thou that travailest not," which means, although like a barren woman you may not experience the pain of labor, God is going to give you more children than a woman who has a husband and is ready to give birth.
Did that promise come to pass? Most certainly. Israel went into captivity in Babylon; she was expected to be completely destroyed, but she survived. After 70 years, she returned back, and she flourished even more as a nation. How did all that happen? By a promise. So when the Jewish people like Daniel, Shadrach, Meshach, Abednego, Ezekiel, and the rest who were taken into captivity—they had a hope. That hope was not based on their own power to rebel and fight against the oppressor so that they could return back to the promised land. No, that was not their hope. Their hope was based on a promise—the promise that God sent to them through the prophets like Isaiah and Jeremiah, that they would return back to the land and they would flourish. Based on that hope, they clung onto it, and finally, they came back.
So what was Paul teaching us here? Yours and my spiritual inheritance, our eternal salvation and blessing, have nothing to do with our human efforts, our works, or our abilities to be perfectly righteous—none of that. It is all based on God's promise, and we inherit it simply by faith. God says it, He promised it, He will bring it to come to pass; by faith, we believe it.
Having given the analogy and explained the analogy, Paul moved on to apply this truth, so you need to apply it into your life. This brings us to our last point, the application. Verse 28: "Now we, brethren, as Isaac was, are the children of promise." Remember Isaac—how was he born? By promise, not by human works, efforts, or abilities. No, by God's promise. Just like Isaac, our spiritual inheritance, eternal salvation, and blessings have nothing to do with our works but God's promise. God promised that through Christ, we would receive all these blessings.
Verse 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 went back to the story of Sarah and Hagar. "After the flesh" was a reference to Ishmael; "after the Spirit" was a reference to Isaac. We all know the story of how Hagar despised Sarah so much; later on, her son Ishmael bullied Isaac so much that it resulted in the expulsion of Hagar and Ishmael from Abraham's tent. So just like Hagar and Ishmael, these Judaizers, these people who were still under the bondage of legalism, these people who teach salvation was by works—they will come, they will challenge you, they will attack and despise you, they will cast doubts in your hearts and in your minds. "Even so it is now" means it is still happening now.
Isn't it true that when we preach salvation by grace, salvation by faith, salvation is by trusting in God's promise that He will send His only begotten Son, our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, into this world, that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish but have everlasting life? The moment we preach that, we would be rejected; we'll be despised; people will laugh at us, mock us, and say all kinds of things about us. When we tell the people, "Don't trust in your own works; trust in the Lord Jesus Christ," they will persecute us. They will even try to infiltrate into the church and cause us to compromise, that we may believe that salvation is by Christ plus something else—just like the Judaizers who would tell the Galatians, "You must believe in Jesus Christ plus circumcision, plus works, plus the Mosaic law for salvation."
What would we do when we are faced with this predicament? Look at verse 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 free woman." Abraham had to send Hagar and Ishmael out of his tent; they must go because they were not God's promised children. Likewise, we must cast out the Judaizers; we must cast out legalism and anyone who teaches any form of salvation other than through Jesus Christ alone. We must have no part in all these teachings, no part with them. Cast them out; do not be afraid. Just like Abraham, he had to do the right thing—cast out Hagar and Ishmael.
Verse 31: "So then, brethren, we are not children of the bondwoman, but of the free." We are true children of God if we have been set free by Jesus Christ, no longer under bondage. So what should we do? Finally, verse 1 of chapter 5: "Stand fast therefore in the liberty wherewith Christ hath made us free, and be not entangled again in the yoke of bondage." In other words, don't go back to legalism again; don't
go back to your own self-righteousness again; don't trust in your own efforts—you will never be saved. Christ was the only one who took away our sins; He was the only one who has made us free. Do not go back to the bondage again; go to Christ, my friends.
Think about all the wonderful verses given to us in the Holy Scriptures—verses whereby our Lord Jesus says, "In my Father's house are many mansions: I go to prepare a place for you. If I go to prepare a place for you, I will come again and receive you unto myself; that where I am, you shall be also." Think about those verses that say to be apart from the body is to be present with the Lord. When we draw our last breath as a believer, our soul goes to be with the Lord immediately. Think about the verses that say we will have a glorified body; we will be raptured to meet the Lord Jesus in the clouds. Think about heaven as our eternal home, where the streets are made of gold and garnished with precious stones. What is the basis of all these wonderful blessings? How can we get there? By God's promise, not by our own works, simply by trusting in God's promise.
It may be COVID-19, or cancer, or the terminal illness that will take you home. Do not be afraid; do not be moved. Just cling onto God's promise, just cling onto Christ and Christ alone—not anything or anyone else, including yourself—not your works, but the freedom that Jesus Christ has given to you. Do not be moved. I pray that all of us, as difficult as this passage may be, at least we'll be able to draw this spiritual lesson: Freedom in Christ is what we cling onto. It comes to us not because we have earned it, but it comes by God's promise. Do not trust in your works, your efforts, your abilities—they cannot save you. Trust in God's promise—Christ and Christ alone.
Let us pray.
Our Father in heaven, we thank Thee for this passage that Thou hast enabled us to consider. May Thou not just teach us but empower us by Thy Spirit, that all of us who believe in Thy promises will cling onto Christ and Christ alone, not trusting in our own works, our human efforts, or our abilities—they cannot save us. Help us always to focus on Christ and Christ alone, the freedom that our Lord Jesus has given to us. We no longer want to go back to legalism, to go back to self-righteousness, to go back to trust our own works—God forbids. But we will always focus on Christ, Christ the author and the finisher of our faith. We give Thee thanks, and we pray all this in Jesus' name. Amen.