A Different Gospel – 09/07/2025

Podcast

Welcome and Prayer: Jim Calhoun

Come Lord, join us here today
Help us to step into your grace
Help us to be where you actually are
Not where we imagine you are
Or believe you ought to be
Or where someone else has said
You have been before

For this we will need to listen for you
So grant us the stillness to hear you

And we will need to be emptied
Of our expectations and theories
So grant us simplicity to receive
You as you choose to come to us

And we will need to turn toward you
So grant us a hope of a more and better
And fuller life in exchange for the life we have today

Call us Lord and
Let us come to you
Help us to swipe away
Every obstacle
And rest in your loving goodness
Amen

Morning Talk: chuck smith, jr.

Tell me, you who desire to be under the law, do you not listen to the law? Galatians 4:21

Intro: If you ever decide to read the Bible all the way through,

At some point, you will find yourself struggling to understand it
– even if you’ve been a believer for a long time and read it before (or read a kiddie version)
• a passage will confuse you, trouble, or just seem wrong
◦ I’m fortunate to have many helpful resources
• however, when even those study aids leave me with questions
◦ then I resort to creative thought experiments; for instance, I ask, “what if”
◦ what if this were meant to frustrate? or be a puzzle? or experienced rather than studied?
– there have been occasions when these “off trail” ventures,
• have led me to surprising and edifying insights

Our reading in Galatians has me wondering if Paul used similar techniques
– I imagine Paul pouring over the story of Abraham and Sarah–again!
• we know that Abraham’s relationship with God was key to Paul’s theology
◦ God’s promise, Abraham’s faith, miracle of Isaac’s birth
• Sarah was his partner in all of this and also had an important role
◦ but her first attempt to fulfill it, misfired
◦ she offered her slave girl, Hagar, to Abraham to sire an heir through her
– as Paul reads, he suddenly catches a glimpse of something he’s never seen
• he re-reads the story, not as history, but through a dif. lens
◦ a truth comes to him in a new way
• and now, in his letter to the Galatians, it seems like the perfect way to demonstrate his point
◦ that’s what we’re heading into – Paul’s strangest use of scripture in all his writings

Paul begins with a challenge

The supposed “experts” . . .
(I apologize that I haven’t come upon the perfect title for them. The term “Judaizers” was once used, but many biblical scholars question its authenticity. Anyway, there is a wide range of legalistic Christians in the world these days, some of whom are in cults, some who think they’re experts in exposing cults, some who are doctrinarie, and some who have weird customs and rituals that make them consider themselves more advanced than other believers.)
The supposed “experts” had convinced the Galatians they were not true Christians
– that to be truly “saved,” they had to fully embrace Judaism; both the religion and culture
• they needed to practice a law oriented do-it-yourself righteousness
• so Paul asks these experts whether they had really listened to the law
◦ BTW, when Rabbis referred to law, or Torah, they included all of the first five books of the Bible
◦ so that included Genesis, where story of Abraham is found
– Paul asks if they really paid attention to what was there,
• because he intends to reveal insights they had never discovered

Paul gives a short and simple overview of the story
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. Galatians 4:22-23

What Paul makes absolutely clear, is that running through this narrative, is a binary division:
– two sons – two women – two classes (slave and free)
• and regarding the two sons, they arrived in two different ways:
Ishmael: “according to the flesh”; the normal, natural process of conception and birth
Isaac: “through promise” – God’s covenant with Abraham – a miracle baby
– so Paul has set the stage:
• he has introduced the players – the mothers and the sons
• and he has revealed their positions and roles in the storyline

This is where Paul gets creative . . .
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” Galatians 4:24-27

Seriously creative! Unlike any of his other writing
– he continues to insist on the binary divisions
• two covenants – two places (Mt. Sinai and Jerusalem) – two mothers – and two sets of children
◦ and like before, two classes: those in “slavery” and those who are “free”
• but he expands the characters to represent more than the persons
– Paul adds to them specific associations
• Hagar, the slave he associates with Mt. Sinai (where the law was given)
• Sarah, the free woman and Jerusalem
◦ perhaps “free” because as God’s presence in the sanctuary was his gift to Israel
– at this point, Paul reveals the identities of these children
• the slaves were the imposters who imposed the law on the Galatians
• the free were the true believers, made right with God by faith
– he tacks on at the end a quote from Isaiah
• it doesn’t relate directly to Sarah, but her ordeal, and how it was replayed in Hannah’s story,
◦ became a set image in Israel’s poetry and prophecy
◦ it is the God’s promise to turn the barrenness of his people into abundant fertility

Paul has had to explain to the Galatians what he’s doing here

In other words, if you studied the Torah carefully all your life,
– you would have never come up with these meanings
• Paul informs us that he has used a specific method of reading the text
◦ allegory – this is an unusual category of literature
◦ a story is told in which everything has a double meaning
▫ there is the literal meaning, in which everything makes sense
▫ and there’s a hidden meaning that requires close observation (and imagination)
• this is not the usual way that we read scripture,
◦ nor is it the recommended way
◦ the majority of the Bible is to be taken at face value
(while noticing that many statements are idioms or metaphors)
– there are preachers who see the entire Old Testament as allegorical
• perhaps they have a hard time understanding the Old Testament,
◦ or making it relevant to believers today
◦ so they interpret as much of it as they are able, by treating it as a faint indication of what was to be revealed in the New Testament
• for some believers, this allegorical type of teaching sounds “deep,”
◦ as if they’re really going down into the spiritual truth of the Old Testament
◦ but the problem with allegory, as one scholar says, is that
“It is too easy to make things mean just what you want them to mean.” (William Neil)
– A friend has built almost his entire ministry on allegory,
• one time I teased him, “You ought to write a book: ‘Pastor J’s Fanciful Insights from the Word of God’”

Paul is not using allegory to prove his point, but to illustrate it
(he already proved it in the previous chapters)
– what I am noticing, is that he cannot overemphasize his concern
• the Galatians had been told they’re not good enough; that their faith in Jesu was not enough
◦ Paul says, “We were never good enough! Even with the law, Israel was never good enough”
• the Galatians were told they had to convert to Judaism
◦ Paul says, “Gentiles are only required to believe in Jesus and follow him and his teaching”
• the Galatians were told, the only way to be right with God is through the law
◦ Paul says,
“That never worked for Israel, and it will never work for you. Instead, that road will take you into a religious slavery in which you will never come to the freedom that is in Jesus Christ”
– having made these important points,
• Paul finds one more important lesson in his allegorical reading

What the Galatians have experienced is persecution
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 the 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” Galatians 4:28-30

Continuing to develop the allegory, Paul adds an episode
– Isaac was the miracle baby born to elderly Abraham and Sarah
• I don’t know whether parents generally celebrated a child’s weaning,
◦ but I wouldn’t doubt that Isaac was a little bit spoiled
• anyway, at the occasion of the event,
◦ Sarah caught Ishmael making fun of his half-brother (or so it appears)
◦ in Paul’s allegorical view, this behavior becomes persecution
– his message to the Galatians is that living by faith in Jesus will result in persecution
• they would face the wrath of the teachers who insisted on Gentile obedience to the law
◦ Paul was quite familiar with persecution
“Five times I received at the hands of the Jews the forty lashes less one. Three times I was beaten with rods. Once I was stoned. [I was in] danger from robbers, danger from my own people, danger from Gentiles, danger in the city, danger in the wilderness, danger at seas, danger from false brothers . . .” (2 Cor. 11:24-26)
◦ eventually he came to the conclusion that
“Indeed, all who desire to live a godly life in Christ Jesus will be persecuted” (2 Tim. 3:12)
• I promise you, there are high-conflict Christians who, when they see your freedom in Christ,
will sharply criticize and condemn you for it

Paul asks what the Scriptures have to say about this, and answers,
“Cast out the slave woman and her son . . .”
– he doesn’t go on to make as strong application that to the Galatians,
• but he may imply that is what they need to do
– remove the hyper-religious, hyper-critical people from their spiritual community

Conclusion: We can finish this morning where the chapter ends
So, brothers, we are not children of the slave but of the free woman Galatians 4:31

Sometimes, when our circumstances don’t make sense,
or they’ve become overwhelming and we feel lost or hopeless,
we might want to consider shifting to allegory
(or use a different lens when reading scripture)
Maybe there’s a hidden message that will emerge when use an open ended reading style
At least, remember this:
Creativity thrives in freedom and freedom thrives in creativity