As we have seen throughout this series, there are several
reasons why we must vote no on religion. This week, I would like for us to pick
up where we left off last week, where we will see Paul continue to try to
convince the members of the churches of Galatia to vote no on religion. And once
again, we will discover another timeless reason why we are to vote no on
religion. So let’s look together at what Paul has to say next, beginning in
Galatians 4:21:
Tell me, you
who want to be under law, do you not listen to the law?
Paul begins this section of his letter to the churches of
Galatia by asking a question: “Tell me, you who want to be under law, do you
not listen to the law?” When Paul refers to the Law here, he is referring to
the first five books that are recorded for us in our Bibles today, which the
Jewish people referred to as the Law or the Torah. The phrase under the Law
literally means to be in subjection to the Law. In other words, to be under the
Law required that a person followed all of God’s commandments that were
recorded in the Law, all of the time.
When Paul asks “do you not listen to the Law?”, he is
asking “Do you hear and understand what the Law really says? So you say you
want to live a religious centered life that follows the religion of legalism,
by keeping all of the commandments of the Law. Do you really understand what
the Law really says about how one experiences a right relationship with God?” Paul
then points the members of the churches of Galatia to a story that is recorded
for us in the Law in Galatians 4:22:
For it is
written that Abraham had two sons, one by the bondwoman and one by the free
woman. But the son by the bondwoman was born according to the flesh, and the
son by the free woman through the promise.
Paul points the members of the churches of Galatia, and
us here today, to the story of Sarah and Hagar, which is recorded for us in the
very first letter of the Bible, called the book of Genesis. In Genesis 15, we
see God remind Abraham, who was 86 years old, of His promise to make Him a
great nation that would leave a great legacy. Abraham responds to God’s
reminder with a question “How is my reward going to great? I am 86 and have no
children. I am getting old. You are going to have to give the reward to my servant.”
God then makes an amazing and seemingly impossible
promise to Abraham. Your servant will not be your heir. No, Abraham, you and
your wife Sarah will have a child and your legacy, your descendants, will be
too great to count. However, ten years after God had made this promise, Abraham
and Sarah still had no children. And after waiting ten years for God to fulfill
His promise, Sarah became impatient. We read what happens next in Genesis 16:1:
Now Sarai,
Abram's wife had borne him no children,
and she had an Egyptian maid whose name was Hagar. So Sarai said to Abram,
"Now behold, the LORD has prevented me from bearing children. Please go in to my maid;
perhaps I will obtain children through her." And Abram listened to the
voice of Sarai. After Abram had lived ten years in the land of Canaan, Abram's
wife Sarai took Hagar the Egyptian, her maid, and gave her to her husband Abram
as his wife. He went in to Hagar, and she conceived; and when she saw that she
had conceived, her mistress was despised in her sight. And Sarai said to Abram,
"May the wrong done me be upon you. I gave my maid into your arms, but
when she saw that she had conceived, I was despised in her sight. May the LORD
judge between you and me." But Abram said to Sarai, "Behold, your
maid is in your power; do to her what is good in your sight." So Sarai
treated her harshly, and she fled from her presence.
Now who says the Bible is boring; you really should read
it sometime. I mean this has all the makings of a reality T.V. show, doesn’t
it? “God is not moving fast enough, so sleep with my female slave; that should
turn out well”. Instead of waiting and trusting in God and His promises,
Abraham and Sarah decided that they would help God out by doing something for
God, which resulted in the birth of a son named Ishmael. Instead of trusting
God, Abraham and Sarah decided to do for themselves what God had promised that
He would do for them.
However, even though they had attempted to do for God
what God promised to do for them through Abraham’s activity with Sarah’s slave,
God is a promise maker and God is a promise keeper, as we see a little later in
the book of Genesis, beginning in Genesis 18:9, when the Lord and two angels visit
Abraham and Sarah:
Then they
said to him, "Where is Sarah your wife?" And he said, "There, in
the tent." He said, "I will surely return to you at this time next
year; and behold, Sarah your wife will have a son." And Sarah was
listening at the tent door, which was behind him. Now Abraham and Sarah were
old, advanced in age; Sarah was past childbearing. Sarah laughed to herself,
saying, "After I have become old, shall I have pleasure, my lord being old
also?" And the LORD said to Abraham, "Why did Sarah laugh, saying,
'Shall I indeed bear a child,
when I am so old?' "Is anything too difficult for the LORD?
At the appointed time I will return to you, at this time next year, and Sarah
will have a son."
And, a few chapters later in Genesis 21, we read that
Abraham, who was 99 and Sarah, who was 90 and on the other side of menopause,
acted with confident trust in God and His promises that demonstrated their
faith. And God, just as He had promised, graciously intervened in a
supernatural way to provide for them a son, named Isaac. Unlike Ishmael, who
was the result of their attempts to do something for God, Isaac was the result
of them placing their confident trust in God to do what only God could do.
Tomorrow, we will see Paul transition from this story to
the situation in the churches of Galatia…
No comments:
Post a Comment