Gooding, David: 7 - Arguments 8 and 9

At chapter four verse twelve of Galatians, Paul turns to another argument. This time it is a once more an argument from experience. That is the experience of the people in Galatia that had professed conversion when Paul preached to them, but were now in danger of thinking what false teachers had told them, that faith in Christ was not ne- uh, was not, uh, uh, by itself enough for salvation, but they must add there too circumcision and the keeping of the law of Moses. First of all, he reminds them of the tremendous joy that they had when first he preached the gospel to them, shown in the way they treated him. Apparently, at the time he had some illness, disease or something that he refers to in Ja- verses thirteen and fourteen. You know that because of an infirmity of the flesh I preached the gospel unto you the first time, and that which was a temptation to you in my flesh, you didn't despise nor reject it, but received me as an angel of God, even as Christ Jesus. Where then is that gratulation of yourselves? For I bear you witness that if possible, you would have plucked out your eyes and given them to me. So then I, then am I become your enemy because I tell you the truth. The authority of the gospel as it came to them through Paul, even in his weak condition, that they might have naturally found repulsive. The authority of the gospel he preached may, uh, led them to receive him as an angel of God, even as Christ Jesus himself. And the wonder and the joy of salvation that gripped them. So grateful were they to him and to the gospel that they would have plucked out their eyes if necessary and given them to him. Now comes the argument. What's happened to your attitude to me? And what on earth has happened to that, uh, uh, experience of gratitude and joy that, uh, uh, came upon you when you learned that salvation was a free gift from God. Any doctrine that changes our attitude to Paul and makes us somewhat hostile to him, or to disregard him, is a very doubtful doctrine, by definition. False top gospels will not produce that joy and gratitude of heart to God, that salvation by faith and salvation as a gift produces. Why have they become his enemy? Because of these false teachers who zealously seek you out in no good way. They court you. I suppose a modern equivalent would be to court somebody's interest, favor, loyalty. They court you, but not in a good way. They desire to shut you out. That is from Paul, that you may seek them as the great authorities. Now there's nothing wrong, says verse eighteen, in someone seeking to gain your attention and your friendship, to listen to the gospel that you would preach. And that is not merely confined to when I'm with you. Let another true preacher of the gospel come, and you should show the same respect and joy- loyalty to him too. But my little children, he says, of whom I am again in travail until Christ be formed in you. Yea, I could now wish to be present with you and to change my voice, for I am perplexed about you. So look what he says then, aloft in verses eight, nine, ten, and eleven. He's perplexed about them. Why? How be it at that time, not knowing God, you were in bondage to them which by nature are no gods. At that time when Israel were under the law, the Gentiles, you Galatian Gentiles, were alas in bondage to them which by nature are no gods, with their polytheistic ideas. But now that you have come to know God, or rather to be known of God, how do you turn back again to the weak and beggarly rudiments? Whereunto you desire to be in bondage over again? You observe days and months and seasons and years? I mean, don't you all of you know some Christians who keep Christmas? Never come across any? And, uh, sometimes do people ever being Christians, arrange great conferences on at Easter time? Not to speak of July the twelfth. And what's wrong in that? Well, in itself, nothing wrong with it, of course. The danger is, even with Christian days and months and festivals, when people think that keeping the festival somehow helps their salvation. That's a danger with them. And as Paul points out at the end of Galatians two, you'll see these things at best are shadows, symbols. It's so desperately easy to be content with the symbol and not have the reality. There are millions of people, maybe, who at Christmas time feel very cuddly and moved in their heart about the baby. Oh, nice baby, dimpled cheeks. We should all be interested in babies, yes. Mm-hmm. Provided they got the talcum on in the right places. But, uh, I do say, and that is what Christmas is about, babyhood. You know nothing about the reason for the virgin birth and the fact of it and the coming of Christ and what he came for. Danger of Easter, that people go on pilgrimage barefoot at Easter and are helping their salvation thereby, so they think. A danger, therefore. It was likewise, uh, the true of these Gentiles. They had their religious calendars, but they were pagan. Now they had heard of Christ and were delivered from it. Oops. The danger for Jews now to impose on them the days and seasons of their ritual calendar given to them in the Old Testament, the danger would be that these Gentiles would think that they had to keep those days, and by keeping those days, somehow they were adding to their salvation. That therefore has to be watched, doesn't it? If you would go to Mexico, so they tell me, you will find celebrations of Easter and such like saints' days in the Christendom aspect in Mexico. A lot of the Mexicans that would count themselves Christians add on to those festivals what are their pagan rites and ceremonies. In Malaysia, there are many Buddhists that can't see the difference between the goddess of mercy, which they worship in their Buddhist shrines, and the Virgin Mary in the Catholic shrines, so they go to both of them indiscriminately. Paul's anxiety for them. What would you deduce from their present behavior? What he is in anxious about is whether he has run in vain, and their conversions were not true conversions. And he wants to be with them again to make sure they've got the gospel the right way round, and it is Christ that they have got hold of and is being formed in them. Experience then, the argument from. It is an important argument, isn't it? When the false teachings, the imposing of religiosity upon Christian- Christianity, leads people to such behavior as makes you wonder, have they really got the point at all, that salvation is through Christ only and by faith and not of works. But now coming to the Jews. Uh, uh, sorry, coming to, to the, the, uh, false teachers. Those that desire to be under the law. Do you not hear the law? Which now introduces another argument from verse twenty one of this chapter to verse one of chapter five. But wants them to be as he was. When he got converted, he really got converted. Steeped in Judaism as he was, he saw the difference. Yes, he was prepared. In the case of Timothy, for instance, who was a half Jew anyway, his mother being a Hebrew, would it would have meant that to the Jews he was a Jew. He took and circumcised Timothy, not because it was necessary for salvation, but many a Jew would have been offended and stumbled if they had found a Jew like Timothy had not been circumcised. I think on another occasion I used the analogy. If you went to a very, uh, uh, Sabbatarian community, such as in the Western Isles or Scotland, where all were Sabbatarians to a man, so to speak, so that it was a very grave public offense if you drove your car on a, on a Sunday. You all walked to church. I lived in such a, a, a community at once, but not in Scotland, i- i- in a place called Belfast, where my, I lodged at one stage, and the good lady where I lodged found me whistling. Well, on a Sunday. Oh. Well, if somebody's going to have a conscience about whistling on a Sunday or polishing my shoes on a Sunday, and I have a chance to preach the gospel to them, I will not whistle on a Sunday then, and I won't polish my shoes on a Sunday. Not that I think it's, uh, necessary, uh, to ob- observe these prohibitions to be saved. I'm not needlessly going to, um, uh, offend their consciences, else they won't listen to the gospel. I get the chance to tell them the gospel, I shall tell them the gospel and then point out that not whistling on a Sunday doesn't help your being saved. Mm-hmm. So now he talks to those that know the law. And this time he is going to expound some narrative portions from the book of Genesis. And talk about Sarah and Hagar. And Isaac as the promised seed. And in the course of that, uh, uh, argument, chapter four verse twenty four, he says, what is, uh, uh, uh, according to the translation I have in front of me, which things contain an allegory. Many, therefore, have accused Paul of using an allegory to prove his point. They say he is treating the story of Abraham, Sarah, Hagar, Ishmael, Isaac, he's treating it as though it were an allegory. You say, what do you mean by an allegory? Well, Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress is an allegory, isn't it? It's no good saying what address I- I'd like to find that good man, uh, uh, John Bunyan. Could you tell me what street he lives in, uh, this pilgrim thing? It's part of the allegory that he lived in this world and and went through Vanity Fair and so on, but it is an allegory after all, isn't it? Yes? Yes? And they say, but then to treat Genesis as an allegory is false, because it was never written as an allegory. It is history. And some go so far as to say this: well, yes, we have to admit it was an allegory. But in those days, people would have accepted an argument from an allegory like this, do you see? They would have accepted his allegorical interpretation of Genesis. Of course, we wouldn't use it nowadays. Oh, really? Why not? Well, no, no, modern people who think wouldn't accept it. They'd say that this is nonsense. It has no authority, an allegory. I mean, Genesis isn't an allegory, it's history, and and to turn it into an allegory, no, no, no, that's a that's a false argument. Voici. So Paul used a false argument because the people of his day wouldn't have regarded it as a false argument, but he wouldn't use it today because he'd know it as a false ar- Really? And did God inspire Paul when he was writing this thing down in Galatians chapter four? and God used a bad argument, knowing it was a bad argument, but the Galatians would have not seen it was a bad argument, so you use it. No, gentlemen. God never uses bad arguments. The difficulties arisen by the, by the translation, and what he means by allegory, uh, we can decide when we have looked at the stories. I'm now going to argue with you that far from being an allegory, he is now taking the story of Abraham, Sarah, Hagar and Ishmael, and Isaac, as straightforward history that actually happened. And the people named in the allegory walked on two legs. They lived in tents in those days. They didn't have street numbers, but they were real people. Historical characters, and what is said about them in Genesis is straight history. But if you read the history carefully, you will see these people, Abram and Sarah and Hagar and Ishmael. You will watch them and see them behaving in certain ways, and displaying certain attitudes, literally so, that in principle were the same as the false teachers were advocating. And that they had the same result. As the teaching that the keeping law, the law and circumcision for salvation will produce in people. The word I would use, therefore, to denote the way Paul is treating these stories, is to call them prototypes. They were prototypes. You'll notice that I deliberately didn't say they were types. The word type in the New Testament Greek means something different from what people normally mean when they talk about Abram being a type. Into that matter I won't go at this present time. What I mean by prototypes, I said it in your hearing before, but I say it now again because that will help you to remember it. Prototype in this sense, that the early airplanes were curious contraptions. When I was at school and an airplane came over, we all ran out of school to see it. It was such a rare thing. And they were made of bits of wood and what looked like paper stuck together with glue or something, and a few elastic bands and whatnot. Do you see? They were forever crashing, of course. Uh, do you see? But they did fly. Because even in those, uh, early models, they had discovered the aileron, the principle of an aileron. So you had a wing that was flat underneath and beveled at the top. And as you pulled it into the air by your engine, you should pull it into the air, the air that went underneath remained just as solid as it was before. The air that went over the top was, by that very method, thinned out. So the pressure under the wing was less than the pressure on top of the wing, and the thing went up, you see. They discovered that by watching birds, you see, use the same method. That principle of the aileron expressed in those early things worked. That same principle, of course, is to be seen in the jumbo jet that flies overhead at thirty five thousand feet. It's a very different thing, of course, from those early airplanes. It's got the same principle embodied, a lot of other principles that the other one didn't have embodied, of course. Uh, I see. So the early thing was a prototype of the bigger thing, an early expression at that humble level of certain principles that were later to be expressed at the much higher level. Many of the stories in the Old Testament are not only historical, they remain historical, but are prototypes. If you want an example of it, a simple one that you know very well already, Passover. The principle of being delivered from the angel of God's wrath by the shedding of the blood of an innocent lamb and putting it on the doorpost was a prototype that our Lord fulfilled, as he said. I desire to eat this Passover with you. I won't drink any more of this cup until it be fulfilled. Passover was the prototype. It wasn't a prophecy. It never pretended to be a prophecy. It was a memorial of a past event. But it contained that basic principle as deliverance from the wrath of God through the blood of the sacrifice of an innocent animal, a lamb. That same principle is expressed now at the highest possible level in the sacrifice of Christ at Calvary. He's not a woolly lamb. But the wrath of God remains the same. And the fact that re- uh, redemption is through his blood remains the same. The same principle, but at a higher level, of course. So we're now going to see, with Paul's help, how the story of Abraham and Isaac. Sarah and Hagar are prototypes. Taking up at verse twenty two, for it is written that Abram had two sons, one by the handmaid, the slave girl, in other words, and one by the free woman. How be it the son by the handmaid is born after the flesh, but the son by the free woman is born through promise. We better stop and get that straight. When it says the son of the slave girl is born after the flesh, it is not referring to the fact that Abram was the physical father and fathered the child according to the normal principles of human reproduction. Doesn't mean by it's born after the flesh, it doesn't mean that at all. He doesn't mean that Ishmael's mother was called, was named flesh, or that Isaac's mother was called promise. Of course not. Flesh here in the Pauline sense of man working in independence of God. And it is literally true, this is not allegory, gentlemen, pray notice it is fact, that the son of the handmaid, that's Ishmael, born of Hagar, was born after the flesh in this sense, that God had promised to give Abram a son. And God's promise was that God would give it, and it would be a miracle of God's intervention to give life to this aged couple. What Sarah produ- uh, uh, suggested, and Abram went along with, was to attempt to fulfill that promise by using their own resources. And therefore Sarah suggested to Abram that he take Hagar, thus bypassing the difficulty that Sarah herself was barren. And by their own ingenuity and effort and taking Hagar, they would produce a son, which then they would say, well, that by God's grace, we did it. We did the best we could, and God honored it. No, says Paul, that is acting after the flesh, acting in independence of God, to try to get the promise by doing it the best you can to fulfill it. That is acting after the flesh. That is precisely what Abraham and Sarah w- went to when Sarah suggested that he take Hagar. Acting independently of God to produce by their own effort the promise of God. And God said, no, no, no, Ishmael, nice lad in himself, of course, I'll bless him, yeah, yeah, but no, no, that is not what I meant. When I said I was going to give you a child, I meant I was going to give you a son, and I will yet give you a son, and when I do it, it will be my divine intervention. The son will be born of promise, meaning that God promised to give him a son. Abraham believed it, eventually believed it solely, and kept on believing, and against hope believed in hope, and considered the fact that his body was as good as dead, but kept on believing God's promise, and God himself fulfilled the promise. Do you see the difference? And the analogy Paul is drawing now between that incident in the Old Testament. Abraham and Sarah's attempt to use their own resources, namely Hagar, to fulfill the promise that they were going to have a son, equivalent to those who take the law and suppose that they have by their own strength to keep this law in order to gain eternal life and forgiveness of sins. That is an act of the flesh. That is a fleshly attitude. The true attitude, believing the promise and therefore counting on a God who can bring life out of death, says Romans chapter four, and letting it be a gift from God, not earned by my effort, but given by God according to his unconditional promise. So those characters, do see, the two sons by Abram, one by the slave girl and one by the free woman, were prototypes, not an allegory. These two women are two covenants, one from Mount Sinai bearing children to slavery, which is Hagar. Now, Sinai, to, to cut the time, to cut the, uh, length of this explanation, let me read you perhaps one of the best texts on this matter. S- verse twenty five, Sinai is a mountain in Arabia, and answereth to the Jerusalem that now is, for she is in bondage with her children. But the Jerusalem that is above is free, which is our mother. What do you mean by saying these two women are two covenants? Isn't that allegory? Well, let me test you and your knowledge of politics. Margaret Thatcher was the very conservative principle incarnate. Allegory? You know, say, you say no, it wasn't all too true, that was factual and down to earth. Yeah, see. She stood for that kind of conservatism. Mm-hmm. And Jerry? Is terrorism? Well, you'd know what I meant if I said it, wouldn't you? So Paul says these two women are two covenants, meaning they represent two covenants. Are the expression of the principles of those two covenants. The one is the covenant God made with Israel at Sinai. A two-party covenant. Where God laid down the terms, offered them to Israel, Israel said, yes, we will do every, we keep all those terms, and on that basis, the law was given. So it depended on Israel keeping those laws. The new covenant, which of course is a one-party covenant. As you see, when our Lord fulfilled it, he fulfilled it. This cup is the cup of the new covenant. It is by his blood shed that we have forgiveness, not through our efforts. Two different covenants, therefore. And you see these two women are two covenants. Hagar, that whole incident, and of course Abraham and Sarah are to be blamed in this, that they sponsored this scheme to start with. But Hagar was a slave girl. And her son was never th- any- anything else than a slave boy. Didn't become a member of the family, you know, as a true born son. Remained a slave. Very appropriate, says Paul, because if people try to keep circumcision and the law to gain salvation, it will make slaves of them. How could it not? If you took it seriously. And it's condemnation of sin. A lot of folks who hope to be saved by keeping the law don't take the law seriously, you know. They kind of think if you get uh eighty percent, God will wave you through and give you a start first. That isn't true. You should take the law seriously. You break one point, you're guilty of the lot. You've broken the law. If you took that seriously, make a slave of you. Whereas the new covenant will set you free and make you, as Paul has been declaring to these Galatians, not only children of God, but sons of God. Give you that status as a gift from God. Verse twenty five. The text, the manuscripts in verse twenty five are difficult. Let me therefore suggest to you, without arguing the, the, uh, the details, abstruse details of textual criticism, the gist of the matter. Sinai is a mountain in Arabia. What's the point of saying that? Well, it wasn't in the Promised Land, was it? They will observe that long since, of course. You know your geography well. Mount Sinai was not in the Promised Land. It was in Arabia. Hagar had come from Egypt and went off into the desert when she was, uh, uh, uh, uh, thrown out of Abram's home. Yeah. Lived in the desert, like an Arab. Yeah. And, uh, she answereth to the Jerusalem that now is, for she is in bondage with her children. Isn't Paul being here very rude? What Jerusalem that now is, is in bondage with her children. How dare he say it? Well, our Lord said it to the Jews who professed to believe on him. And he said to those Jews that had believed on him, if you continue in my word, you shall be my disciples indeed, and the, uh, you shall know the truth, and the truth will make you free. They said, excuse us. What did you say? Make us free? Yes. Well, we were never in bondage to anybody. Oh, really? He who practices sin is a slave of sin, said, uh, Christ. It wasn't long after that he said, you are of your father, the devil, actually. Jerusalem that now is, is in bondage. Paul knew what he was talking about. He had tried to keep the law and take it seriously. It enslaved him. But the Jerusalem which is above is free, which is our mother. It is the gospel as preached to Abraham and Sarah. Abraham believed God, and it was counted to him for righteousness. The covenant given to Abraham and to his seed, which is Christ, by in he- by uh uh uniting, being united with him, being in Christ, and Christ in us, sets us free. Gives us the status of freeborn sons of God. And the gift of the Holy Spirit within, whereby we cry, Abba Father. Romans chapter eight: for you have not received the spirit of slavery again to fear. But the spirit of God, whereby we, or the spirit of his son, by which we cry, Abba Father. You see, a slave does what he does very often because of the fear that if he doesn't do it, he'll be lashed by the taskmaster. The true born son doesn't do it for that reason. There's a different principle. Jerusalem, which is above, our mother, is free. Freeborn sons, there shall be no slaves in heaven. You know I didn't want to come here. Heaven. Didn't want to come, but I was threatened with eternal damnation of the lake of fire, so I had no choice, I came here. And there'll be nobody in heaven that doesn't want to be there. It's a city of feeble and sons, the Jerusalem that is above. And now Paul substantiates his interpretation of the behavior of Abraham and Sarah and Hagar and Ishmael and Isaac. And this part of it in particular. The Jerusalem that is above is our mother. For it is written, rejoice thou barren that bearest not, break forth and cry, thou that travellest not, for more are the children of the desolate than of her which hath the husband. Now that is not everybody's favorite verse in the old. Some people prefer Psalm twenty three, for instance. But it's part of the poetry of Isaiah, and he's talking about Jerusalem city and how she shall one day be restored. At the moment, her children. But this isn't allegory either, do you see? Aha, this is ordinary metaphor for us, any Semitic speaker. Jerusalem City, you call her citizens her children. She is regarded as a mother, and the citizens are her children. That isn't allegory, gentlemen. That's metaphorical language, yes, but not allegory. Listen to our Lord standing outside the literal Jerusalem and weeping. Oh, Jerusalem, Jerusalem, how often would I have gathered your children? Doesn't mean your infants. Your citizens. He's talking to Mother Jerusalem, really. But that's not a meta- I repeat, it's not allegory, it is metaphor, surely. And when he talks about he would gather, would have gathered her children, he's talking about her citizens, of course. Some people, uh, go to, uh, universities, and they come to look upon their university as their alma mater. Though whether they understand what that means now, I don't know, when universities give up teaching of Latin a lot. Your nourishing mother, alma mater, do you see? The university is likened to a mother who nourishes, and anybody that attended the classics anyway would have found out, yes, how well the university mothered the man and foot, you see, were kind to them and all that sort of thing, so we hope. Do we? Yes. Mm-hmm. Sons of the soil. Would you know what I meant by the term sons of the soil? Anybody here ever heard the term sons of the soil? Yeah? No? Never heard it. Oh dear. Mm, don't you bewail the fact that you weren't born earlier. You see. M- meaning those who work on the land, sons of the soil. It's figurative language anyway. Mm-hmm. Uh, so here's the prophet Isaiah, and God through the prophet Isaiah talking to Jerusalem, who because of her sins, the nation's sins, has been bereft of her children and left alone an emptied city, the children all gone into exile, and she feels deserted by her husband. Read the figurative language in Isaiah, and that her husband has gone off, and she's deserted. And the prophet bids her rejoice. Thou that travailest not, for more are the children of the desolate than of her which hath a husband. Because one day, Jerusalem will be restored, and her citizens will be uncountable in number. Well, you could term that, use that metaphorical language of, um, Abraham and Sarah, now I think of it, couldn't you? You know, it was Sarah's suggestion to Abraham. He never dared suggest it. That was Sarah's suggestion to Abraham that, Abraham take Hagar and father a child, and all went well until Hagar realized she was pregnant, you see. Oh. When Sarah then said, now I'd like you this morning to, uh, clean up the sand inside the tent. I can't do that. I'm carrying Abram's child. Sarah didn't stick that very long. And she advised, she advised Abram, that woman must be cast out here. I'm not having that slave girl treat me like that. Throw her out. So Abram set her going. And she wandered in the wilderness with her newborn son. Oh, sorry, with her, sorry, with, uh, in her, in her pregnancy. And you see, the angel of the Lord met her and said, Hagar, my dear, this is no place for you to be in the condition you're in. You better go back to Abram's home. And the angel of the Lord sent her back and said, you'll have a child, and I will bless him, but he'll be a wild ass of a man, his hand against everybody else, and everybody else's hand against him. So the angel of the Lord sent back this Hagar with her, uh, child to be to Abram's home, and she brought forth the child. Ooh, talk about her airs and graces. And this youngster, when he grew up, was a wild ass of a chap. There were, I think, many scenes, as they are described, in Abram's home while he grew up. Yeah. And Sarah must have felt a little like that. Hagar has the child. I have no child. I am barren. But she learned her lesson eventually, did Hagar, uh, did, did Sarah. Bit long in learning it, but she learned it. And joined Abram in the act of faith. And according to God's promise, brought forth Isaac. Cool. And then she had more children, perhaps you say, than Hagar did. Yes. But more than that, gentlemen. God promised Abram that he would become the father of many nations. And Sarah eventually joined him in the same faith, was strengthened to conceive seed and bore Isaac. It's a long distance from that, Christ was born of the seed of Abraham. And now, says Romans four, Abraham's the father of us all who learn justification by faith. Multitudes like the stars of the heaven and the sand of the sea, sure. More children. Who f- trace their spiritual lineage back to the great act of faith of Abraham and Sarah. But now taking up, and verse twenty nine, but as then, sorry, twenty eight, now we brethren, as Isaac was, are children of promise. That is, our spiritual birth has come about on this basis. God makes the promise, and we have believed, and we are born again. Children of the promise. But as then he that was born after the flesh persecuted him that was born after the spirit, even so it is now. How be it what saith the scripture? Cast out the handmaid and her son, for the son of the handmaid shall not inherit with the son of the free woman. Wherefore, brethren, we are not children of a handmaid, of a slave, that is, but of the free woman. With freedom did Christ set us free. Stand fast, therefore, and be not entangled again in a yoke of bondage. So then, we come back to the narrative. Eventually, Isaac was born. The result of Abraham and Sarah learning to believe the promise of God. Born by God's own miraculous intervention. The boy grew up a little bit. And then one day Sarah noticed that Ishmael was not only playing with Isaac, for Ishmael was now thirteen years old plus, not only playing with the little fellow, but engaging perhaps in horse play with him. And Sarah's maternal instincts were provoked. She said to Abram, Abram, you better cast him out. I'm not having this slave boy inherit along with my freeborn son. That's Genesis twenty one, gentlemen. And this time, God told Abram to do exactly what Hera, uh, what Sarah said. The slave boy and his slave mother were turned out. Though God promised to bless them and make of them a great nation, and God has done so. But they were not the nation that should be used of God to bring in the promised seed. That was Christ. The slave boy then, the son of the hand of the slave shall not inherit, notice the term again, with the son of the free woman. It is the fact then that the son who was born according to the flesh by man's own independent effort persecuted him that was born by faith in the promise of God. It remains true, gentlemen. It's a curious psychological fact that they who will have it, that the way for salvation is by our effort to keep God's law, will from time to time persecute those who stand for the gospel, that we're saved not by our works, but by faith in Christ. Cain persecuted, in fact, slew Abel, you know, in the context of religion. And we think of medieval Christendom. What happened when Luther and company and other dear souls arose and stood for the fact that justification is by faith without works. You know what happened, gentlemen? But still to this day, if you insist that salvation that encourages the people to think that they are Christians because some little ceremony was performed on them as infants, that they are Christians. And therefore now the way for them to do is to do the best they can to keep the law and behave like Christians do. And you insist, no, that is not God's way of salvation. And if that's what your faith is in, you are putting your faith in something that is quite wrong. You must be born again. You must put your personal faith in Christ and Christ alone, and repent or put your faith in all these ceremonies and what have you. You must put your faith in Christ alone. If you insist on it, ooh, you will in some quarters be very disliked. And you can understand it, perhaps. If some people have pr- prided themselves that they have gone through all the ceremonies and are doing their level best to keep the law, and you come along and tell them they're sinners, and they're, if they go on like this, they'll never make heaven anyway. It insults them, so they feel. Notice the paradigm laid down for us in the story of the way the son of the slave girl persecuted him. That was the son of the free woman. But now let me give you a little rest by giving you something to look at. We heard Paul say, when he raised the question, what then is the law, that it was a temporary institution imposed until the promised seed should come. So now let me take you back to the Genesis story and read it in the light of what we've learned in chapter four. Isaac was the child of promise, that is, he was born on the basis that Abraham and Sarah believed God's promise, and God did the miracle and gave them new life. That Hagar was the opposite. At Sarah's earlier suggestion, Abram had taken Hagar, fathered a son called Ishmael. Not the child of promise. That was Abram and Sarah trying to fulfill the promise of God and bring it about by their own human effort. You'll see now, says Paul, the law, if you take it seriously and you try to keep it for salvation, will make a slave of you. What then was the law? It was added to suppress transgressions. After the covenant God made with Abraham, four hundred years after, was added until the promised seed should come. So let's look at, um, Genesis and the story therein. And this is not allegory, this is plain straightforward narrative. Genesis fifteen five, God promises Abram seed. Genesis sixteen is the story where Sarah con- uh, convinces Abram that he ought to take Hagar and father a son. But when Hagar realized she was carrying Abram's seed, she behaved badly towards her mistress, Sarah. And Sarah so mistreated her that she fled. But lo and behold, the angel of the Lord sent her back. Puts Hagar and Ishmael back into Abram's home. Angel of the Lord did it. So now he had this slave boy in his home, this wild ass of a chap. Well, he got to like him in a way. But he was put back into Abraham's home for thirteen years and more. Until... Genesis twenty one, the promised seed Isaac arrived. And immediately thereupon you have the story, how Ishmael treated Isaac the infant badly, and this time God agreed with Sarah. Hagar and Ishmael were cast out. When, therefore, Paul says in Galatians, for reasons that we have considered, that Hagar and her son represent and express the principles of the old covenant, man doing his best to keep God's law. Well, if that's what Hagar and her son represent, notice that until period. In Abram's life, the angel puts Hagar and Ishmael into Abram's home until the promised seed came, whereupon and immediately the slave girl and her slave son were cast out. Now, if you look at the other side of the, the other column, please notice that this is history, not allegory. You start at the very same point as first column started. God's promise, promises Abraham seed. The second columnan- column starts there too. God's promises Abram's seed. That's history. After the covenant God made with Abram on that score, Genesis fifteen, four hundred years later, God himself added the law. That's history too. But according to Paul's, uh, uh, interpretation, the law was a temporary measure until the promised seed should come. And the promised seed is Christ, of course, scripture. What then is the law who is added because of transgressions, till the seed should come to whom the promise hath been made? Both columns are literal history. The first, being history, is a prototype of the second. Now we have dealt with all the difficult things. Dare not claim I solved your problems, but if I've at least shown you some of the things that have to be thought through, then I have spent my time not in vain. So let's take a break before we come to the much easier and better known things of the Epistle to the Galatians.