The Great Reversal of Fortunes

Well, this morning, we're looking at Galatians chapter four. If you haven't been here before, we are doing a series on the book of Galatians, the letter of Galatians, as it explains the gospel, the essence of who we are as Christians, what we believe, how we have become Christians. And Paul is really laying out the bare essentials of the gospel, the good news of Jesus Christ. And so we've been dealing with the last few weeks about the idea or the philosophy, the theology, I guess, of adoption. How we have been incorporated into God's family.

And this morning, we're going to see how Paul wraps this up at the end of the fourth chapter in Galatians. I don't know about you, but I've never really understood soap operas. I don't understand what's the point of them. You know, the ones that I'm talking about? The Days of Our Lives, Bold and the Beautiful, the Essendon Football Club.

Hey, Rob. Yeah. I don't know if you've ever tried watching them, but I've tried to, and the storylines, the plot just seems so far fetched, so ridiculous. People having babies who they thought are their daughters, but in fact are somehow their sister, and then they somehow fall in love with them.

This is actually not made up. I did my research. It is a genuine plot line in one of the soap operas. I won't mention which one. May ruin it for you.

But it seems the more bizarre the story is, the better. The more bizarre, the better. Well, this morning, we take a look at a situation that could almost resemble the markings of a great dysfunctional soap opera plot. It's a situation that's as dysfunctional as they come. The next passage we come to in Galatians rounds off for Paul what he's been talking about in the last two chapters, and that is, like I mentioned, the adoption of Christians into the family of God.

The point he's been making is that absolutely anyone, absolutely anyone, can become a child of God based upon the promise that God made to a man called Abraham. If you have your bibles with you, let's have a look at Galatians four. We're going to be reading from verse 21 to the end of the chapter, which is verse 31. Galatians 4:21-31. Paul says: "Tell me, you who want to be under the law, are you not aware of what the law says?

For it is written that Abraham had two sons, one by the slave woman and the other by the free woman. His son by the slave woman was born in the ordinary way, but his son by the free woman was born as the result of a promise. These things may be taken figuratively, for the women represent two covenants. One covenant is from Mount Sinai and bears children who are to be slaves. This is Hagar.

Now Hagar stands for Mount Sinai in Arabia and corresponds to the present city of Jerusalem, because she is in slavery with her children. But the Jerusalem that is above is free, and she is our mother. For it is written: 'Be glad, oh barren woman who bears no children. Break forth and cry aloud, you who have no labour pains, because more are the children of the desolate woman than of her who has a husband.' Now you, brothers, like Isaac, are children of promise.

At that time, the son born in the ordinary way persecuted the son born by the power of the spirit. It is the same now. But what does the scripture say? 'Get rid of the slave woman, for the slave woman's son will never share in the inheritance with the free woman's son.' Therefore, brothers, we are not children of the slave woman but of the free woman."

So far, our reading. Now that may seem a little bit confusing, but hopefully, we're going to be able to unpack this a little bit. Paul's been pleading from his pastoral caring heart for these Galatian Christians, these young Christians, to not turn away from the good news of grace. And once again, he wants to grab their attention, and he does it in a really clever way. He starts at verse 21 by saying: "Tell me, you who want to be under the law," you who want to be serving and ticking the right boxes in terms of religion.

He looks them straight in the eye, so to speak. And he begins his final attack on their flawed logic, on the idea of these false teachers who had been trying to sell them a different gospel. Paul wants to show them how their logic undermines itself. They want to be under the law.

They want to do the things that God wants them to do in order to save themselves, in order to be right with God. And because they want to be under the law, they should be aware of what the law says, Paul says. But if they actually understood what the law says, they wouldn't want to be under it. Paul begins by turning the tables on them. Paul begins by saying, "Fine.

You know the law? You want to obey that? Well, then you should know the story of Abraham." Verse 22 begins: "Abraham had two sons.

One by the slave woman and the other by the free woman." Okay. Let's have a pause there. We have to know the story behind this. We have to understand the story of Abraham and Isaac and Ishmael and Hagar and Sarah.

I want to make also the point that when Paul talks about the law, he doesn't talk about the ten commandments necessarily. He's talking about the entire first five books of the bible, which the Jews knew as the law. They talk about it, or they label it as the Pentateuch, which just simply means five volumes. The first five books of the bible, Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy, are for the Jews the law. So Paul says, "You know the law?

Well, then you should know the story in Genesis of Abraham and his two wives." He says, in the law is the story of Abraham. Abraham had two sons, Ishmael and Isaac. He had these two sons by two different women. And these two sons were born in very different circumstances.

This is what Paul wants to highlight. Remember, previously, Paul reminded the Galatian Christians that God had promised to Abraham that He would give him an heir to inherit the promised land that God wanted to give him, as a sign of God's love and as a sign of God's involvement in Abraham's life. But the truth was that promise was getting along in years. Abraham was getting old. His wife Sarah was barren.

They weren't able to conceive children. And for ten years, after the promise had been made, there was nothing. No son, no heir. For ten years, Abraham was waiting. So the story goes that Sarah suggests to Abraham that her maidservant, her servant that looked after Sarah, Abraham could take her as his wife and have a son with her.

Abraham would sleep with her servant Hagar in order to build a family through her. Abraham agreed. Hagar got pregnant, and Ishmael was born. Then fourteen years later, when Abraham was a hundred years old, he had another son. This time, however, the son was born by Sarah, who was barren.

Now this is a miracle. This is a special event. It's significant. Paul sums up the difference between the two. He says: "Hagar had a son, Ishmael, who was born in the normal way.

In the regular way that people have sons and daughters. But Isaac was born supernaturally." Abraham knew God's promise, Abraham believed it, and God credited to him as righteousness, but Abraham failed when push came to shove. And the question that he was asking is: "How can a son be born to a couple like me and Sarah? Sarah was barren.

She was old, and it would take a miracle to happen. Meanwhile, Hagar was available, she was young, and she was fertile. It made a lot of sense. And by the customs of the time, it was normal to be able to take a servant and to take her as a concubine or a wife. And if you were unable to create your own lineage, to create it with the servant.

But that was not God's will. God said, "Sarah will have a son." And also, it was not God's will to take another wife. So Abraham decided not to wait on God, but to get his son through the logical human way. Not through what God was capable of doing, but through what Hagar and Abraham were capable of doing.

That's important to know. And this is what the point is of Paul's argument. You see, the Jews believed that they were the children of Abraham. They were the descendants of Isaac. They belonged to that line.

The promises that God had made to Abraham and Isaac was relevant, was applicable directly to them. They were the heirs of the promises of God. Their ancestors had received God's law at Mount Sinai, and their nation was centred on the holy place of Jerusalem. That's what they believed. And so in the Galatian churches, there were Christians who came from a Jewish background, and they wanted to convince these young Christians that in order to become true children of Abraham, in order to receive the promises that God wants for them, to be their God and for them to be His people, they needed to become Jewish.

Now Paul doesn't hold any punches here in trying to floor this logic. In verses 24 to 25, he says: "These two women represent two covenants. One covenant is from Mount Sinai and bears children who are to be slaves. This is Hagar. Now Hagar stands for Mount Sinai in Arabia and corresponds to the present city of Jerusalem.

In other words, Paul is saying Hagar and her son Ishmael represents the law, the covenant of Sinai, where the ten commandments were given to the nation of Israel, and it represents the earthly Jerusalem, which was the hub of the Jewish faith. Paul says that these people are under the slavery of the law. These people are the ones who make the law the means of their rightness with God, their justification with God. And you'll remember that from chapters three and four, Paul wants to debunk that understanding. And now he dramatically and amazingly reemphasises this point by making a stunning link with Hagar and Sarah representing the two different parts of the story.

By sleeping with Hagar, Abraham was choosing to rely on his own capabilities. He was opting to earn the promise that God had made rather than to receive it. He had faith, but the faith was in himself as the saviour. He was going to fix this problem. Now, if you read the story in Genesis a bit further, you see the result.

Ishmael is born, and for fourteen years, Ishmael is the golden boy. He's loved and he's cared for. He, you know, he's a son to Abraham. But then Sarah becomes pregnant and has Isaac. And in the family, immediately, there is division.

Because Ishmael starts teasing Isaac, starts making fun of him, because Ishmael had been the golden boy. Sarah is jealous of Hagar, who's not really Abraham's wife, and you can see the soap opera happening. Can't you? It's a mess. The result of the story is Abraham just can't live with this.

And so he decides to send Hagar and Ishmael out into the desert. He disowns them in a sense, sends them out into the desert. He can't handle this. Again, the amazing thing is that God says to Abraham: "Well, I said I was going to bless your heirs.

Ishmael is one of them, even though he didn't come by My will. So I will bless Ishmael. I will make sure Ishmael and Hagar are looked after, even in the desert." The bible says that Ishmael became also a great nation. And as history will show, Ishmael becomes the nations of Arabia.

But the bible also shows how the strife between the heirs of Ishmael, the descendants of Ishmael, and the descendants of Isaac fight. Throughout the whole bible, there is strife. There is division. And interestingly, even today, Islam came out of Arabia. And even today, the Arabian countries, the Islamic countries around Israel, are wrestling and striving against Israel, and Israel against them.

For four thousand years, nothing has changed. What a massive decision Abraham made to disobey God. What huge consequences this had. Paul says that the consequences of Abraham and his two sons can be taken figuratively. Hagar's son represents seeking salvation by works.

Sarah's son is salvation by God's grace, by God's promise. Sarah is the free woman who had a son who was born as a result of a promise. She represents not the earthly Jerusalem with a hub of Judaism, she represents the heavenly Jerusalem that is above, Paul says. The heavenly Jerusalem, which is God's new city. It's a place where we as Christians belong.

And this is the point. This is what Paul has been working towards. The gospel is grace to the barren. The gospel is grace to the barren. In verse 27, he quotes Isaiah 54:1.

"More are the children of the desolate barren woman than of her who has a husband." Isaiah, who wrote this six hundred years before Paul wrote it, wrote it to a nation of Israel that was in exile, that had been taken out of their promised land, that land that God gave to Abraham and his descendants, as punishment for Israel's rebellion against God. Israel was in a foreign land, and they realised how weak and how helpless they were. They were desolate. Their temple had been destroyed.

Their national identity was gone. They knew how helpless, how barren they were. Isaiah says, "Wait. God is going to do something with you, desolate Israel. And you are going to have so many children that even someone who is fertile wouldn't possibly be able to have."

God says to Isaiah: "Now that you realise that you are helpless, you will see that it is in the lives of the weak that My grace works most powerfully. The strong, the capable are too busy relying on themselves. But I will restore you, and I will make you numerous again." And Paul takes up the same message in the story of Isaiah. And he sees how it overlaps with the story of Sarah and Hagar.

And he brings it to an even more wonderful application. He says: "We, the Gentile Christians, the Christians who aren't Jews, are the beaten up, are the spiritually weak, are the barren women. If salvation is by works, then only the fertile woman who has a husband can be fruitful. If salvation is by what we do, then only the capable will be fruitful. Only the morally strong and the able people.

Only the ones with good families without the soap opera lifestyle. Only the ones with the good records, only the ones who can pray nicely, only the ones who can stand up confidently and preach can enjoy the love of God. But the good news is, Paul wants to say, is that it doesn't matter who you are or who you were. You may be a spiritual disappointment. You may be an unfertile outcast, as marginal as a single barren woman was in those ancient times. God's grace, God's love is able to make infertile Sarah's fertile again. You will bear fruit, God says.

Fruit that will last. The gospel says grace is not just for the fertile Hagars, but for the barren Sarahs. If Sarah could have a future, then you can as well. The last few verses conclude that we are children of promise. We are children of promise.

Sons and daughters born not of the normal natural way, but born of the holy spirit, born of the power of the spirit. When you become a Christian, you come to the end of yourself, and you proclaim: "Lord, I know that I am incapable. I am unable to make myself right with You. I realise that I need You. All of You.

I cling, Lord, to Your promise. I cling to Your unconditional love for me through Jesus Christ." But there's also a warning in these last few verses that Paul makes, and he says that the Ishmaels continued to persecute the Isaacs. That was what was happening in the Galatian churches. The Ishmaels, the ones still under the law, the ones that were born of effort, living under that law of effort, were still persecuting the Isaacs, born of freedom, born through grace.

They were persecuting them just like they were in the story of Genesis. And this is the important thing, the amazing thing we have to remember: persecution, persecution, the worst kind, doesn't necessarily come from the non-religious, the ones outside the church. Sometimes the worst persecution comes from within the church, from people that say to us: "You can't believe in that easy religion. It's too simple to simply believe in God doing everything for you.

It's too simple." Ishmaels will continue to persecute Isaacs, Paul says. Why? Because the gospel is more threatening to religious people than to non-religious people. Because religious people are touchy and they're nervous about their standing with God, how God sees them, how God values them, if He values them enough.

It's their insecurity that makes them true enemies of the gospel. It was the law-reliant teachers, these good Jews within the church, who were undermining the gospel of grace, the best news for all of humanity. And the Galatian Christians were in danger of going down that track, the track of Abraham and Hagar, depending on their religious spiritual fertility.

But the blessing lies with Isaac, who came through God's grace. God's salvation and love was powerfully displayed in the story of Sarah and Isaac. Grace is available to the Sarahs. Throughout the bible, if you know it, you'll see the story of this type of grace, this type of love. It's the weak that are elevated by God.

It's called the great reversal of fortunes in the bible. The golden thread of grace throughout all of scripture shows that the love of God is especially available to the barren, to the down and outers. The able, the fertile think that they can attain salvation without God, and so they reject the gospel of grace. Paul is saying that the gospel shows us that it is often the strong, the moral, the religious who in the end are the slaves without hope. Sarah and her story is a huge encouragement for you and me.

Religion today, philosophy today says that God and salvation are only for the good. It's exclusive, by any stretch of the imagination. The gospel, however, says that God and salvation are only for those who know that they aren't all that great. Anyone, anyone can belong to the gospel through grace, regardless of their background, regardless of who they were, who they are.

Rule-keeping religion is for the noble, for the able, for the moral, for the strong, but the gospel is for anyone. This morning, if you find yourself challenged by the sense that you hold on to religious pride, challenged by the sense that you resent those people around you that flirt with sin, or perhaps indulge completely in sin, today you're reminded that your true infertility and your true inability was overcome by God, freely, abundantly, graciously. We're challenged to give up our pride.

Remember the immense grace and the cleansing that you have received through Jesus. And then for us, perhaps on the other side, who are this morning confronted with our own sin and the fact that we are using God for our own purposes, that we're keeping committed to our own self-fulfilment, to our own desires, turning a blind eye to God's will for our lives, rationalising our own actions, and keeping that half away from God, and the other half perhaps having God and His involvement in our lives, but only really to get things from Him, today you're reminded that you must cling to His promise. You must cling to His promise, unlike Abraham who failed. Cling to His promise that He knows what is best for you.

That He wants you to obey Him. Jesus Christ died both for the religious and the irreligious, both for your spiritual pride and for your selfishness. Turn away from those things, and the promise from scripture this morning is that you will bear much fruit, fruit that will last.

You will become fruitful. Let's pray. Heavenly Father, we thank You for these examples in scripture that are so real and that we can so relate to, because we are those people. We see ourselves in these stories. But we are, without You, barren and desolate.

Without Your involvement in our lives, we can amount to very little. This morning, Lord, we realise again that we need You. We need all of You to fill us. Lord, we need all of You in our times where we are tempted to be proud, tempted to elevate ourselves above those who are stumbling around in darkness, tripping on their own flaws and their mistakes. We're tempted to look down on them, Lord, and forget who we were before we met You, who we are without You.

Thank You, Lord, for Your cleansing. Thank You, Lord, for Your enabling of us through Your holy spirit. Help us to receive and to understand this grace deeply so that we may live out of that in humility. And for us, Lord, that are this morning wrestling with sin, rationalising, ignoring Your convicting of our hearts, ignoring the direct command of Your scriptures, we pray that You will enable us to give up that lifestyle, to give up our self-fulfilment, and to realise, Lord, that the only fulfilment we will ever really have is in You.

The only peace, the only joy that we will ever have, which is true peace and joy, is in You. Give us the strength, Lord, to push through and to give up those things, to find our satisfaction completely in worship and adoration of You and what You've done in our lives. Thank You, Lord, that that sin has been paid for by the cross of Jesus Christ, that we have been able to nail it to that cross, and it is not a power in our lives anymore. Give us the knowledge and the understanding that we live in freedom, that we are born of the free woman. Lord, we look forward to that heavenly Jerusalem where we will dwell with You perfectly and without these flaws in our lives.

We long for it, Lord, and we pray this morning again that You will come soon, that You will make this heavenly Jerusalem a reality in our lives. We ask it in Jesus' name. Amen.