Amen. Our first scripture this morning comes from Galatians chapter 4, beginning at verse 21. Paul writes:
‘Tell me, you who desire to be under the law, do you not listen to the law? 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. Now this may be interpreted allegorically: these women are two covenants. One is from Mount Sinai bearing children for slavery; she is Hagar. Now Hagar is Mount Sinai in Arabia; she corresponds to the present Jerusalem, for she is in slavery with her children. But the Jerusalem above is free, and she is our mother. For it is written:
‘Rejoice, O barren one who does not bear; break forth and cry aloud, you who are not in labor, for the children of the desolate one will be more than those of the one who has a husband.’
Now you, brothers, like Isaac, are children of promise. But just as at that time he who was born according to the flesh persecuted him who was born according to the Spirit, so also it is now. But what does scripture say? ‘Cast out the slave woman and her son, for the son of the slave woman shall not inherit with the son of the free woman.’ So, brothers, we are not children of the slave but of the free woman.’
From Galatians, we turn to the prophecy of Isaiah, which Paul was quoting, and this will be from chapter 54. Isaiah writes:
‘Sing, O barren one who did not bear; break forth into singing and cry aloud, all you who have not been in labor, for the children of the desolate one will be more than the children of her who is married, says the Lord. Enlarge the place of your tent, and let the curtains of your inhabitations be stretched out; do not hold back; lengthen your cords and strengthen your stakes. For you will spread abroad to the right and to the left, and your offspring will possess the nations and will people the desolate cities. Fear not, for you will not be ashamed; be not confounded, for you will not be disgraced; for you will forget the shame of your youth and the reproach of your widowhood you will remember no more. For your maker is your husband; the Lord of hosts is his name; and the Holy One of Israel is your redeemer, the God of the whole earth he is called.
For the Lord has called you like a wife deserted and grieved in spirit, like a wife of youth when she is cast off, says your God. For a brief moment I deserted you, but with great compassion I will gather you. In overflowing anger for a moment I hid my face from you, but with everlasting love I will have compassion on you, says the Lord your redeemer. This is like the days of Noah to me; as I swore that the waters of Noah should no more go over the earth, so I have sworn that I will not be angry with you and will not rebuke you. For the mountains may depart and the hills be removed, but my steadfast love shall not depart from you, and my covenant of peace shall not be removed, says the Lord who has compassion on you.’
O afflicted one, storm-tossed and not comforted. Behold, I will set your stones in antimony and lay your foundations with sapphires. I will make your pinnacles of agates, your gates of carbuncles, and all your walls of precious stones. All your children shall be taught by the Lord, and great shall be the peace of your children. In righteousness you shall be established; you shall be far from oppression, for you shall not fear, and from terror, for it shall not come near you. If anyone stirs up strife, it is not from me; whoever stirs up strife with you shall fall because of you. Behold, I have created the smith who blows the fire of coals and produces a weapon for its purpose; I have also created the ravager to destroy. No weapon that is fashioned against you shall succeed, and you shall refute every tongue that rises against you in judgment. This is the heritage of the servants of the Lord and their vindication from me, declares the Lord.’
This is the word of the Lord. Thanks be to God.
Let us pray:
Heavenly Father, you have given us your word and your Son. Together they have spoken things that are hard—truths that are difficult to understand at times. Illuminate our minds; open our hearts to receive you and what you have to say to us today. We pray this according to your Son, who is our rock and our redeemer. Amen.
So, over the past few weeks, we’ve heard about the negative effects or application of the covenant of law upon our earthly human condition—that which allows us false hope in a system of works for divine justification, enslaving us to the stoichia of the world, rewarding us with the curse of death for even one single failure or deficiency.
And the futility of holding any confidence in our human selves for eternal salvation—all that is the story of the woman of the first covenant, Hagar, and her children. That is the inheritance due to those who are the heirs of Ishmael, Abraham’s son of impatience and lack of trust in the Lord. That is the just reward of those who follow, seek, or trust in the ways of the world rather than trusting the Lord God in faith.
Paul’s allegorical interpretation compares the historical Hagar who bore Abraham a son in the usual way with Mount Sinai, where the Lord gave Abraham’s descendants the Torah, teaching them the way in which they are supposed to live in this world, and with Jerusalem, the center and focal point of the Jewish religion, declaring that all three are similar expressions of bondage and slavery under the covenant of law.
Ishmael was born naturally to Abraham and Hagar, following a contemporary custom of the time to try and generate for Abraham a legally legitimate heir because he had grown impatient and Sarah wanted a child to claim as her own. This was the normal way in which the world worked in that time. This was an acceptable social stoichia of the day, for when a master did not have a child or legitimate son by his wife, he took a concubine, and if the concubine produced a male child, then he would be claimed and raised by the master’s wife as the heir and son.
However, because of the mother’s status, there’s always the risk that the concubine’s child would be supplanted and replaced by a son of the wife, the true heir. The concubine’s son would be deposed despite being the elder, which is exactly what happened when Sarah gave birth to the Lord’s promised child, Isaac, well after her childbearing years.
At Mount Sinai, the Lord gave Moses and the Israelites the Torah. This law was the guide rule for their whole social structure; it governed what they ate, common social practices, judicial decisions, and how they would interact with strangers and outsiders. Ultimately, it was given to teach them how to worship God—to remain in a right relationship with him.
However, their failure is something which was anticipated and expected, for the Lord also gave them the means to return to fellowship with him by the means of sacrifice. The instructions of Torah were given by God to teach us the right way to live before God, but instead, it became a system of rules applied by men to try and gain or to maintain the Lord’s favor— instead of being taken to heart in the intended way as our living response to God’s providential grace and mercy.
Solomon, David’s son, built the first temple in Jerusalem as the Lord’s house; yet even then, the demands of the law were too much for God’s people to bear. They failed to keep it either in whole or in part, devolving into idolatry and apostasy. So, after his long-suffering, they suffered the Lord’s promised judgment and retribution, and the temple was destroyed.
But in God’s mercy, they were forgiven and eventually returned to the land and restored to a right relationship with him. The second temple was rebuilt during the days of Zerubbabel and later expanded and improved and glorified by Herod the Great, and this magnificent structure was the seat of worship to the Lord. But for many, the temple itself could be said to have become itself an idol, born out of reverence and the fear of the Lord.
Restrictions greater than required by Torah were added to their religion as traditions to avoid transgressing God’s holy law again through the fear of divine punishment. Right worship of the Lord in faith and the people’s dependence upon him gradually transitioned from the fear of the Lord into the practice of religion. Faith and trust gave way to trying to appease God.
Now, charitably, we assume that when this all began, they were trying to do the right thing just for the wrong reasons. They were following the letter of the law instead of the spirit of the law. They tried to meet their contractual obligations and maintain the status quo of the covenant relationships, perhaps thinking by their devotion they might seek to improve their fortunes, hoping to overthrow the Roman authority.
But for many Jews in the land, their religion had become devoid of faith and filled instead with obligation. They became totally enslaved to the strictures of the law. The means of faith had become the end. Having knowledge but lacking wisdom, their leaders misunderstood the thrust of the law and the prophets. They did not recognize Jesus as the prophesied Messiah when he came to rescue them—and us—from our sins and said worship, instead of worshiping the object of true faith. They unjustly crucified him according to the stoichia to which they were enslaved.
Even the pagan Gentiles who did not know the Lord still recognized the presence of divinity in the world. They understood that there is a creator, even if they did not know who he is. Out of ignorance, they sought to influence the gods or God or spirits through various forms of sacrifice, doing whatever they believed to be good, right, and proper, or desired by them. They wagered their temporal and eternal fortunes upon transactions with the unknown, trusting to chance that which can only be received by faith.
So, all those under this covenant of law trust in themselves, casting their hopes upon good works, on being good people, or at least being better than the other guy. Preferring the out-of-reach promises of law, they remained yoked to things which provided nothing and only hastened their demise, death, and damnation. This is the ultimate inheritance of the allegorical Hagar’s children: hopelessness, doubt, death.
But not so for the children of the allegorical Sarah, the free woman of the covenant of grace. Paul has shown us that we who trust in Jesus Christ alone are the true heirs to God’s promises given to Abraham and thus are the children of Sarah. We are the children of God’s promise, the covenant of grace mediated through Isaac and his heirs, and we receive the inheritance of Abraham in union with our brother, Jesus Christ.
But that inheritance is more than just a homeland, more than citizenship in the eternal country that we patiently wait to enter into—the kingdom of God.
Now Paul’s and our focus pivots away from the slave woman and her children under the law to the free woman and her children who are under grace. Paul turns our thoughts and minds once more to God’s promises made through the prophet Isaiah, saying:
‘Rejoice, for the children of the desolate one will be more than those of the one who has a husband.’
Who is this barren or desolate one? Fortunately for us, this is actually an uncommon expression across scripture—the barrenness—but when it appears, it is used particularly to describe historical women such as Sarah, Rebecca, Rachel, the wife of Manoah, and Hannah.
So what was it that all these women had in common? What they shared is that each woman was loved greatly by her husband but was childless. However, each woman also trusted in the Lord, who answered their prayers and gave them sons: Isaac, Jacob, Joseph, Samson, and Samuel.
Each child was born through the promise of God, and each child served as a representative head or mediator for God’s people, Israel. Each child was a type of Christ, and each woman served as a type of the mother of promise—that Jerusalem containing within herself the whole people. The desolate one, then, is the true Israel—the church—and these her prophesied children are all the elect of God, chosen and called out from all nations and all times.
Now remember, even though some people today will like to quote a single solitary verse from a text of scripture to prove their particular point, that was not how Paul and the other New Testament authors used scripture. Whenever they said, ‘For it is written,’ they would quote only a small portion and expect their audience to fill in the details of their thought. Much like if I were to say, ‘We hold these truths to be self-evident,’ or ‘Four score and seven years ago,’ you will automatically come to mind the rest of the Declaration of Independence or the Gettysburg Address, along with all of their surrounding context and the attended emotions that go along with them.
So what is it that Paul is quoting here? It immediately follows Isaiah’s prophecy of the Lord’s righteous servant—the one who would suffer and intercede on behalf of the many transgressors and make them righteous. And he continues with:
‘Enlarge the place of your tent, and let the curtains of your inhabitations be stretched out; do not hold back; lengthen your cords; strengthen your stakes, for you will spread abroad to the right and to the left, and your offspring will possess the nations and will people the desolate cities.’
We remember that the Lord’s servant was called to be a light to the nations. He was called to draw all the nations to faith in the Lord by his intercession, and he would be stricken, put to grief, cut off from the land of the living to accomplish this—dying, cursed, and without children. Yet he was also promised that he would see his offspring.
His offspring are those transgressors whom he has redeemed, those for whom he died and whom he has justified before God. Thus, the Lord commands that Israel’s tent must be enlarged, the curtains must be stretched and spread out wide to accommodate all of these other people being brought into the family of God.
When Isaiah says ‘your offspring will possess the nations,’ the singular offspring of Abraham—the Messiah, Jesus—is in his view, as well as our union with him. ‘Possess’ here may also be read as ‘inherit,’ for Christ has received the nations as his inheritance, and he has all authority in heaven and on earth.
He also possesses the nations through each one of us—individual people. We were once the Gentiles. We were born out of the diverse many nations, and we are united together in Him. And thinking of our future life in the consummated kingdom, the elect, who are undivided in Christ, will still continue to remain distinct peoples with all those things that make us unique and special. We will still be the nations, and we shall inherit that future land with our brother Jesus, the new earth.
We are the ones who shall people those cities that currently lie desolate and empty, waiting for us. Isaiah continues:
‘Fear not, for you will not be ashamed; be not confounded, for you will not be disgraced; for you will forget the shame of your youth, and the reproach of your widowhood you will remember no more.’
Words of comfort for the church; words of hope for our ultimate redemption—when we shall stand justified, when we will surely know that the Lord has forgiven us and that we have been cleansed of all our sin. We know that we will not be abandoned or forgotten by our Savior, for your maker is your husband.
The Lord of hosts is his name, and the Holy One of Israel is your redeemer, the God of the whole earth He is called. Isaiah looks ahead here to the glorious wedding feast of the Lamb and his bride, the church. The bridegroom has redeemed us, purchasing us with the dowry of his lifeblood.
However, his bride—us, who is expressed in both ancient Israel and the historical and contemporary church—has never long remained faithful to our betrothed. Since the very beginning, we have all often sinned against him, betraying him. We have turned ourselves to new gods of our own devising, worshiping the creation instead of the creator. Again and again, we have violated the gracious covenant which he chose to make with us, which he desired to make with us, which he condescended to make with us.
So, over and again in the past, and perhaps even in the present, God’s people have felt cast off, sent away, deserted, abandoned in the wilderness until we truly grieve over our sins and repent and seek our husband.
The bride of the Lamb—Israel, the church—was once as Gomer, the wife of Hosea, who prostituted herself to idols and men who were not her husband, and enslaved herself to Satan and all the powers of the world. However, even in the depths of our sinfulness, we are never truly alone. We have never been forgotten because our betrothed has never stopped loving us.
He has remained faithful and true to us and his covenant through all things. Despite our constant faithlessness and frequent betrayals, he has always and will always love us.
‘For a brief moment I deserted you, but with great compassion I will gather you. In overflowing anger for a moment I hid my face from you, but with everlasting love I will have compassion on you,’ says the Lord your redeemer.
The Lord—the Lamb—loves his bride. He shows compassion and takes pity upon us. He brings us back to himself when we were unable to approach him. Out of his everlasting love—his hesed, his loving-kindness—he gathers us up and promises to establish us. He will plant us in the garden of the eternal city. He loves us, we who were once unloved. He calls us his people when once we were not a people.
And when Christ returns, the Lamb and the bride will be united together forever as one, for he has redeemed us. He has paid the bride price. Our sin, which was all that we brought to this relationship, became his debt, and he has paid it in full.
His righteousness, which he brought to us, has been wrapped around us by his death, clothing us in his life by his resurrection and his glorification by our Father.
‘For the mountains may depart and the hills be removed, but my steadfast love shall not depart from you, and my covenant of peace shall not be removed,’ he has given us the promise of the Lamb’s eternal love. He has given us a covenant of peace sealed by his servant, and he shall never withdraw the fullness of his love and his favor from us. Even though all the world ends, this blessing is given to us by God’s grace alone and is so grossly undeserved.
But what is this covenant of peace that he gives? Remember, peace is not the opposite of war. Peace is not the absence of conflict or strife. Peace—shalom—is wholeness. It is completeness. It is undivided. It is undefiled and clean. It is the unity found when all creation works together in concert, in perfect harmony, like an engine firing on all cylinders, or a horse team that pulls all together in the same direction.
True peace is only found and experienced in Christ Jesus. What we think of as moments of peace are only pale reflections of the truth—loved, redeemed, cleansed, and at peace. The Lord promises that we shall also be adorned in beauty. Just as a devoted husband might see his wife bedecked in fine jewelry, so too will the bride of the Lamb be adorned.
‘Behold, I will set your stones in antimony and lay your foundations with sapphires. I will make your pinnacles of agates, your gates of carbuncles, and all your walls of precious stones.’
The vision which Isaiah saw, and viewed even greater by the apostle John, was the bride descending from heaven as the new holy city of Jerusalem, whose entire construction consists of precious stones and metals reflecting out and magnifying the light of God’s glory out across the whole new creation.
‘Then all your children shall be taught by the Lord, and great shall be the peace of your children.’
The prophet Jeremiah speaks to this also, this gracious new covenant where the Lord shall place his law into the hearts of his people, and all people from the greatest to the least will know him when he shall forgive our iniquity and remember our sins no more. Then we shall finally live in peace with the Lord and with one another, all our past sinful divisions forgotten.
‘In righteousness you shall be established.’
Then we shall stand firm, justified before God and man. ‘You shall be far from oppression, for you shall not fear; there will be no more oppression because there will neither oppressor nor oppressed.’
‘And from terror, for it shall not come near you.’
Being no longer numbered among the wicked, we will not live in fear or dread of the Lord’s terrible wrath. The only fear which shall rightly remain to us is the fear of the Lord—the fear found in our reverence for our God, an awesome God.
‘No weapon that is fashioned against you shall succeed, and you shall refute every tongue that rises against you in judgment.’
Since Christ is for us, then no one can stand against us because they cannot stand against him who unites us. None shall judge us then because we will have already been judged by the Almighty and been declared righteous by His holy decree.
‘This is the heritage of the servants of the Lord and their vindication from me.’
All of this is our inheritance: eternal life, a land to call home, forgiveness, justification, peace with God and one another, unity, and freedom from every fear. All this is freely given to us according to the Lord’s grace, received by faith in Jesus Christ alone.
Could you really believe that you might ever hope to earn or deserve all that is? Is anyone good enough? Could anyone ever be good enough? Only Jesus Christ. And thank the Lord that he shares his inheritance with redeemed sinners like us.
So we must separate ourselves from all that seek to re-enslave us to the yoke of futility. We must stand firm, trusting in the gracious ease of faith in Christ against the breaking of our bodies and spirits by the corrupt and cruel taskmasters of law.
Again, calling upon the story of Sarah and Hagar, quoting Moses when he says: ‘Cast out the slave woman and her son, for the son of the slave woman shall not inherit with the son of the free woman.’
Paul instructs the Galatians—and us—to exercise those false teachers from our midst and minds, to remove them from our Christian fellowship and friendship, or following; to excommunicate them, because they are anathema, and they have no share in Christ, and thus they have nothing in common with us.
We are the children of the free woman by our union in Christ Jesus. All our past sinful divisions have been removed. However, the children of the slave woman remain divided from us because of their continuing sin. Once upon a time, it was our own sins and the original sin of Adam that kept us separated from the Lord; but now that he is within us and we are found in him, those who absolutely persist in unrepentant wickedness may have no part with us.
Those who teach others to sin and proclaim as good that which the Lord and scripture declares as evil are as guilty as those who actively practice, pursue, and revel in their life of sin. But that doesn’t mean we should ostracize them or refuse to acknowledge them out there in society, in the world. We still must love them as they are people made in the image of God.
We must still pray for them and hope that one day the Lord will open their eyes that they shall receive Jesus just as you and I have. We must continue to remain faithful by our witness to the only Savior. We shall continue to share the gospel with them. We may even continue to eat with them, to enjoy all manners of sociability with them, and live authentically with them as Paul and Jesus did.
And we do this so that one day, when they see and truly understand that there is something different about us and how we live, when they ask us why, then we hope that they will listen and respond in faith as we tell them about the salvation found only in Jesus Christ.
So rejoice! We are the children of promise, and our inheritance is coming. It is such good news for us that we must and should share it and invite these others to join us in it. Amen.