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Flesh vs Faith
Galatians 4:21-5:1 – July 26, 2015
Hey, Church!
Looking forward to getting into the Word with you this morning… Grab a Bible and start
making your way over to Galatians chapter 4… If you can believe it, this is our 14th
session in the book of Galatians… And today we’re going to wrap up chapter 4…
As a way of recapping where we’ve been in the last number of months, I just want to
show you a comparison chart to highlight some of the things we’ve talked about to
contrast law and grace… because we’ve said that Paul is writing this letter in response
to his friends in Galatia who have let go of Jesus and the life of grace that he offers to
turn back to religiously following laws and standards and expectations put on them by
people, specifically the Judaizers who wanted believers to be circumcised… There are
any number of different things that might serve as the equivalent…
So let’s take a look here… Law vs. grace… These are the two systems for living that
Paul outlines for us in the book of Galatians…
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Law is an achieving system. Grace is a receiving system.
Law says, “DO.” Grace says, “Done!” Jesus said that on the cross, actually, didn’t he…
Law emphasizes what man does or can do. Grace emphasizes what God does.
Law means living out of our flesh or our self-life (we’ll come back to that again today).
Grace lives out of the Spirit of God or Christ’s life.
Law relies on people’s resources. Grace relies on God’s resources… which are more
than sufficient for what we’ve got going on! I guess one thing worth mentioning is that
God gets to direct his power and resources… We might want him to use his resources of
lightning to zap our annoying neighbour, but instead he wants to use his abundant
patience and kindness to soften us up towards them… our job is to submit…
Law deals with external regulations, rules and standards – am I living right? Do I look
right? Grace deals with inward attitudes and postures of the heart.
Law is focused on ought tos, shoulds, have tos, and musts… graces says “I want to… I
GET to!”
Law creates bondage and obligation… Grace creates freedom…
Law declares “DO… so that you can be…” but grace says, “YOU ARE!! So go, now, and
do…”
Law produces guilt, condemnation, and defeat… grace produces victory, security, and
acceptance…
The operating principle of law is to try harder, more effort, and work… Grace operates
on receiving, trusting, abiding, and resting…
Maybe it becomes clear when you put them side by side, but let’s say it for the record…
these systems of living are mutually exclusive… they don’t mix, and there’s no
compromise… one doesn’t balance out the other… they are separate from one another,
and must remain so… Sort of like a new wine in old wine skins… you can’t stick grace
into law, or things get really messy… Or like Charles Swindoll suggested, a glass of
pure water with even just a tiny little bit of arsenic in it suddenly ceases to be the
refreshing, life-giving drink you need it to be… And so this, on the left, is what Paul says
we’ve been released from… in fact, we died to it! That’s what Paul writes in Romans 7:6
“But now, by dying to what once bound us, we have been released from the law so that
we serve in the new way of the Spirit, and not in the old way of the written code.”
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And again, Romans 6:14: “sin shall no longer be your master, because you are not
under the law, but under grace.”
Amazing! You know what that means? We’re free! Abundantly, incredibly, ridiculously
free! Free to live with and talk to and approach the living God, and to adventure with him
through life! It’s glorious!
Except sometimes we forget this! And we turn back to trying to live up to the standards
and expectations that are put on us… just like was happening in Galatia… And so we’ve
heard Paul’s claim to authority as an apostle, we’ve heard his shock and concern, we’ve
heard 6 brilliant theological arguments about why we shouldn’t go back to living by law,
and we’ve heard Paul’s heart as a concerned spiritual father to these churches… That’s
where we left off last time, Galatians 4:19 and 20… I feel like I’m labouring in childbirth
again for you … Moms, giving birth once is tough, right? Pain, and agony, and hours of
labour… but the little bundle of joy at the end wipes it all away… can you imagine
having to do it again once you’ve had the kid for a bunch of years? Or if it became an
annual event to keep the kid? Humanity might have died off a long time ago! But Paul
says, “I’m going through the pain again until Christ is formed and made complete in
you… I’m perplexed… I love you, and I’m totally confused about you…”
We’ll pick up there… Let’s read Galatians 4, starting in verse 21… This is going to be
Paul’s last kick at the can, so to speak… His final argument about why we as believers
shouldn’t be turning back to the law as a measure of holiness or righteousness or
goodness…
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It’s for freedom that we were set free. STAND FIRM! Don’t let yourselves be burdened
again by a yoke of slavery…
You know, a minute ago we were contrasting law and grace. The truth is that as
believers we have options about how we’re going to live life. Before we’re saved and we
have the Spirit of God living inside of us, empowering us and equipping us, we have no
choice but to live according to law and according to our flesh… But now we can depend
on God!! Or not… We still have the option to live according to law… Law that says, “You
should get circumcised…” or the law that says, “You can’t drink alcohol and still be a
good Christian…” or the law that says, “Only wear skinny jeans to church on Sunday…”
And it begs the question, “Why would we do that???” And we’ve touched on this before,
but the words Paul uses in verse 21 are telling, if we look at them closely. “Tell me,” he
says… “you who desire to be under law…” You know what that word desire means?
Sometimes we want to be under the law! And there may be a couple of different
reasons for this… Maybe it’s because we’re not allowing Jesus to meet our needs for
love and acceptance and worth and significance, and so we allow ourselves to become
enslaved to law so that we can try and feel some sense of fulfillment and satisfaction…
Or maybe it’s because we are bent towards pride, and we can find acceptance and
value by achieving in our own strength for a time… I mean, skinny jeans are a small
price to pay to feel loved and accepted by your churchy neighbours, right? (Can you
picture me in skinny jeans?? Don’t do that.) The kind of love that we receive as a result
of meeting someone else’s standard is fickle, and looks like dirt when you stand it
beside the love of God that overflows to us…
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The truth is this… We’re free… and nobody can make us return to a life of bondage to
the requirements of the law except us… and sometimes we get swayed, and sometimes
there’s a lure set out for us to pull us out of depending on God and into depending on
our own abilities… But there’s no life there! So stand firm, church…
But you who want to be under law, haven’t you even read what the book says? Paul’s
going back to Abraham now. Abraham is the Pharisees’ great answer, and the
Judaizers great answer… “We must be okay – we’ve got Abraham as our father…”
Paul’s going to straighten them out here…
Vs. 22: Maybe you know this story. Abraham’s been on this adventure with God,
making his way to a new land that God is going to show him, and waiting for the day
when God is going to fulfill his promise to make Abraham a daddy, to give him a son,
and to make him the father of many nations… and in Genesis 16, Abraham and his wife
Sarah get a little antsy about the promise… they don’t see how it’s going to happen,
they’re getting quite old – Abraham is already 86, Sarah’s 76 – and so they try to help
God out… Sarah, who, to this point, is barren, says, “Abraham, sleep with my slave,
Hagar, and maybe you can have a son that way…” and without much hesitation,
Abraham says, “Okay…” And lo and behold, Hagar gives birth to a son named
Ishmael…
About 13 years later, God says to Abraham, “You know, Ishmael isn’t the heir of the
promise. I’m going to give you a son with Sarah.” Sarah laughs, cuz she’s 89 years
old… But the very next year… You wanna talk about the miracle of birth… Abraham is
100 years old… Sarah is 90… They’re way past the point of having kids, and yet here
comes Isaac… God’s promise produced God’s way…
Vs. 23: The thing is, Ishmael was produced according to the flesh. Abraham was itchy
to see the promise fulfilled, and so he wasn’t depending on God’s power, God’s
faithfulness, God’s timing… but instead was counting on his own reproductive
capability, his own timetable, his own sufficiency to produce the promise. He was full of
great intentions!! But he wasn’t depending on God or living by faith…
In fact, this is a trend in Abraham’s life… Because when God told Abraham to leave his
country for a place he didn’t know about yet, Genesis 12, he took his nephew Lot
along… why? Likely because he didn’t have a son, and Lot could become his legal
heir… But Lot and Abraham had a falling out, so they parted company… Then in
Genesis 15, Abraham and God are talking about the promise, “I’ll make you the Father
of many nations, and in you all the people of the world will be blessed!” “Yeah, but God,
I don’t have a son… all I’ve got is Eliezer, this slave boy who was born in my house…”
who, coincidentally, could also become the legal heir of Abraham’s estate… And THEN
Abraham has Ishmael with Hagar in an attempt to help God fulfill the promise… Full of
good intentions, and pointed in the right kinda direction… but none of those methods
were God’s design or power at work…
We do that, don’t we?? We rush the process, or we find our own ways of accomplishing
what we think is the goal… We get what we want or what we think we need by making
the most of our own abilities… It’s flesh at work! A definition of the flesh might be
something like this: Living out of my own resources in order to cope with life, solve my
problems, meet my needs, become a success, and/or please God with my
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performance… In other words, living independently of Jesus… God’s calling us to put
down our flesh, to trust him, and allow him to work out his good plan in and through
us…
Vs. 24: This is the only time that Scripture flat out says that there’s a hidden or a deeper
meaning attached to the plain reading of the text. Paul tells us, though, that Hagar and
Sarah, Ishmael and Isaac are an allegory of the two covenants: The Abrahamic
covenant of faith and grace, and the Mosaic covenant that was made at Mount Sinai in
the desert where the law was handed down on stone tablets… Paul says Hagar is
representative of the mosaic covenant and law. She is a picture of the system that
requires people to attempt to measure up… but measuring up is impossible!! We saw
that in chapter 3:10. And so people find themselves striving, and then they find
themselves guilty of breaking the law, they find themselves condemned, and that
disobedience excludes them from the promised inheritance… They’re in bondage just
like Hagar and Ishmael were in bondage…
Vs. 25: So, Hagar is a picture of Mt. Sinai in Arabia. Stop there for a second. You can
take what you like from this, but I think it’s interesting that Paul mentions Arabia…
because Arabia isn’t in Jerusalem… it’s not even in Israel… it’s outside Israel… and the
thing that marks Jews more than anything else, the thing that the Judaizers are making
such a fuss over, isn’t even from Israel… Curious…
Not only is Hagar a picture of Mount Sinai where the law was handed down hundreds of
years before Paul’s letter, but she is a picture of the Jerusalem of Paul’s day who is
caught in slavery… Because these Judaizers, who have stirred up so much trouble in
the Galatian church, are from Jerusalem… they came from Jerusalem, were taught in
Jerusalem, and held to the customs and practices of Jerusalem… which meant getting
circumcised… which meant bondage to law…
And so Paul’s point become clear, both to the Galatians and to us… Don’t follow these
people!! Don’t be caught up in their seemingly wise words, and don’t buy into their
traditions that make them seem so pious and devoted… You’ll remember that in
Colossians 2 Paul tells us that these practices have an appearance of wisdom, but they
are totally devoid of value… These people claim Abraham as their father, but their
mother is Hagar, and they are slaves!! There are people around who could maybe show
us how to be children of Abraham, but because they’re holding out a list of expectations
to meet, they’re pulling us into the wrong family line… and we make ourselves slaves
again, instead of living as free heirs…
Vs. 26: And that’s who we are!! Free heirs! We’re the adopted sons of God, fully
mature, and receivers of the inheritance God promised to us… Jerusalem above is free!
It makes me think about Colossians 3 – set your hearts on things above where Christ is
seated at the right hand of the Father… set your minds on things above… you died, and
your life is now hidden with Christ in God…” John Piper says that Jerusalem above is
like a reference to the dwelling place of God, and it’s from God that our life and our
freedom and our identity come down… Our value and significance and security and
peace are established in him because we’ve been made his very own children. Sarah is
a picture of this city, the covenant of grace, because she gave birth to Isaac by relying
on God’s power instead of relying on her own ability… And because of her act of
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dependence on God, it’s like she’s become the mother of all who live by faith… Which
was prophesied in Isaiah 54. You can read it in verse 27 there…
And so verse 28 is for you, Church… You, Church, are children of the promise…
Because you believe, and you’ve received the promised Holy Spirit… you have an
identity that is rooted in the family of faith… and so you are no longer under the
requirement or expectations of law to be okay with God, to be made right with the
Father, to make yourself good enough or acceptable enough. You are acceptable, and
you are accepted, and you’re holy, and you’re good… right now! And so you can live
that way, and live out of that truth…
I want to talk with you about verses 29 & 30, but for the sake of time I’m going to save it
for another session, I think… It’s fun… kinda gets into issues of church discipline… and
how we deal with legalistic people… We’ll come back to it…
But let’s close with this… chapters and verses are man-made addresses to help us get
around the books of the Bible… but chapter 5:1 fits so perfectly with 4:31 they should
probably go together… You have an identity. You’ve been adopted into the family of
faith, and you are children of the free woman! It doesn’t even make sense for us to try
and live according to law – that’s not who we are… that’s the wrong family line!! No… It
is for freedom that Christ set us free! So stand firm! Don’t let yourself be burdened again
by a yoke of slavery… Do you get that, Church? We’ve been fundamentally changed…
we’re part of a different family that is already declared holy and righteous and good
because of faith in the finished work of Jesus and our dependence on him… So don’t be
deterred and don’t be swayed when someone holds out to you the yard stick of their
acceptance… You are free! So stand firm in your freedom… walk in it… bask in it –
because it’s glorious! You are children of the promise! And you are free…
Let’s pray, and I’ll be done…
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