Well, good morning. It's good to see you all here.
I want to begin with a question this morning.
Which do you prefer?
A contract or a promise?
If you walk into a used car sales lot,
and this guy comes up and he says,
I've got the best car for you.
I promise it's going to be the best car.
And I'll give you the best deal.
And you're going to be the happiest customer in the world.
Are those promises what you want?
Or do you want a contract?
I want to see the VIN number.
I want to see the crash report.
I want to see the repair record.
I want to see the financing details.
I need all of those details.
What do we prefer?
Contract, right?
Because contracts are clear.
Because we know the parameters.
We know what we're getting ourselves into.
We know what our role is.
What we're supposed to do in a contract.
I do my part.
You do your part.
We're all good.
Even consequences are laid out.
If you do it or don't do it, right?
We love contracts partly because it gives us a sense of safety.
And a sense of control.
But I wonder if we think about our relationship with God in a similar way.
If, in fact, in our spiritual lives, we want a contract with God.
I do my part.
X.
God does His part.
Y.
It's clear.
It's achievable.
It's doable.
And it provides a sense of security and control.
I do my religious things.
I give money.
I serve the poor.
I read my Bible.
I maintain my sexual purity.
I develop a ministry.
I grow in theology.
I pray more.
Or maybe I do my religious, maybe not so religious things, but good things, right?
I'm nice to people.
I don't lie or steal or cheat.
I walk old ladies across the street and feed stray cats.
Whatever it is, the good works that you do.
And in our religious hearts, we think, if we do these things, God will give us something
in return.
He will bless us.
He will accept us.
He will affirm us.
He will say, it's enough.
It's good.
Is that really better?
This is the question that Paul is addressing in our passage today in Galatians chapter 4.
I forgot to look it up.
Page 9, 16, 18, 20, something in there.
Galatians chapter 4.
Anyone?
9, 15.
All right.
I was pretty close.
We've been in Galatians going slowly enough.
I kind of remembered, but I didn't look it up.
So if you want to turn there in your few Bibles, we're going to be looking at this passage together
this morning.
And just remember context, or if you're visiting, Paul has been arguing for the last two chapters
in chapters 3 and 4, summarizing a lot of really rich theology.
He's woven theological themes together like a strong rope so that we can grab on to the
truth of the gospel in meaningful ways.
And what he's saying is in response to those who had come into the Galatian church and said
that Christians, particularly Gentile Christians, needed to keep the law of Moses in addition
to believing in Jesus.
That is, they need to particularly be circumcised.
They need to follow dietary laws.
They needed to keep the Sabbath.
But they need to keep the whole law in order to preserve the unique identity of God's people
and to claim the fulfillment of being the children of Abraham, the children of God's promises.
And Paul has been arguing that no, since Christ has come, something new has come.
That salvation from sin comes not through the law, but through faith in Christ alone.
And through faith in Christ alone, we have not only this salvation from sin, but also a new identity
as God's people.
We are the ones who receive through Christ the fullness of the blessing of Abraham to all people.
No longer needing to keep the law in order to do that because Christ has done it for us.
This is the argument that he's been arguing over and over again in the last two chapters as we've been looking at.
And he's finishing this argument with a crazy story.
It's an allegory or an illustration from the Old Testament to try to give us an idea one more time
of why he sees this as being so important.
It is, commentators kind of agree, might be one of the most challenging parts of the book to really understand.
So we're going to go a little far afield here into the Old Testament a number of times
to figure out what exactly Paul is saying.
But let's look at it this morning so that we can hear what God's Word has to say to us this morning.
So Galatians chapter 4, starting in verse 21.
Let's read it together, and then we'll pray and ask God for his help.
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 the 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?
Well, let's pray and ask for God's help.
Lord, we thank you for your Word, and we thank you for the richness and beauty of it.
Lord, as we look at this this morning, we ask for your help.
For we know that apart from your Spirit, Lord, our minds are dull and our spirits are cold,
and we are unable to understand your Word.
But, Lord, by your Spirit, you are able to help us and to make us understand your Word.
So, Lord, I pray that as we look at this Word this morning, that you would be our help,
that by depending on your Spirit, Lord, we might together understand the riches of this message
and might glorify you.
Lord, I pray for help.
You would help me speak as I ought.
Lord, we pray that your Word, Lord, would show itself in power to us
and that we would sit under it this morning.
We pray this in Jesus' name.
Amen.
All right, so at one level, the meaning of this passage is very clear.
Let me try to summarize it.
God wants us to know that a life of faith in the promise-keeping Savior
is by far superior to a works-based contractual relationship with God.
All right?
That's our big idea.
How do we get there?
All right.
I wrestled with my outline.
Here it is for those of you who love outlines.
We're going to look at the backstory.
We're going to look at the contrast.
We're going to look at the basis.
And then we're going to look at the application.
Okay?
So, the backstory, the contrast, the basis, and the application.
The backstory will be looking back at the story of Abraham and Sarah and the Hagar and their children.
The contrast will be looking at the passage.
The basis is going to be looking at the Old Testament quotes.
And then the application.
What does this mean for us?
So, that's where we're going this morning.
We can look at it.
Paul begins looking at the backstory.
He says, those of you who want to go under the law, don't you know what the law says?
And he's using the law here in a broader sense that he has in lots of other places.
And I say that because he quotes from both Genesis and Isaiah.
He's not merely talking about the Mosaic law, Exodus 20 through the end of Leviticus.
But he's talking about the law writ large.
The revelation of God in the Old Testament.
He's saying, don't you see what the Old Testament says about these ideas?
And then he explains it.
For, and he goes on, and he talks about this contrast, this allegory, or this figurative reading
of an Old Testament story that he assumes that everyone knows.
So, he doesn't tell us.
But we're not them.
So, we're going to tell that story.
So, we're going to start with the backstory of Abraham and Sarah and what God did in that story.
This is a story of Genesis 2.
And make your name great so that you will be a blessing.
I will bless those who bless you, and him who dishonors you I will curse.
And in you, all the families of the earth shall be blessed.
So, God comes to Abraham and his wife Sarah.
If you go back, their names are a little bit different.
That's part of the story.
Their names get changed in the middle.
And you go through the next five chapters, and there's no child.
And there's this promise laying out there of, I'm going to make you a father of a great nation.
But there's no children.
And then you get to the beginning of chapter 16.
And Abraham and Sarah waited 10 years.
And they're like, God, I'm not seeing this happening.
We're getting older here.
And so, they come up with a plan.
They take this God's promise into their own hands.
And they say, we're going to fulfill God's promise by our own plan.
So, they use an Old Testament, an ancient pattern, which would be if a woman was not able to bear children,
she would give her maidservant to her husband in order to bear a servant.
And the child produced in that would be hers in some sense.
This is a common cultural practice.
And as you might imagine, it's a pretty ugly and messy story.
Hagar gets pregnant.
And the whole story goes sideways.
She starts scorning Sarah.
Sarah gets angry and vengeful, casts Hagar out.
Hagar is wandering pregnant in the wilderness with nothing.
And God intervenes, meets Hagar, blesses the fruit of her womb, and sends her back to live in Abraham's household.
And the son, Ishmael, is born.
The son created by this human mechanism to try to fulfill God's promise.
Now, you read along, and, you know, there's more to Abraham's story that I'm just completely glossing over.
But you get to chapter 21, probably about 15 years later.
Right?
So, this is now 25 years after the first promise.
And Abraham and Sarah are now so old.
They're like 80 and 100.
They're so old that they're like, there's no way that these bodies can produce children anymore.
And God says, yeah, now it's time.
And Sarah gets pregnant.
Miraculously pregnant.
And she bears a son.
A son of promise.
And this son is Isaac.
Who becomes then of the Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, the fathers of the nation of Israel and the Jewish people.
So, this is the story.
This is the backdrop to Paul's analogy.
Now, I need to stop.
I need to give a couple of, like, caveats or just to clear up some of the ways in which the church or people have misinterpreted this passage terribly
and made it say things that it has no means of saying.
First of all, it's not about heroes and villains.
Paul is not saying Sarah was a righteous woman and Hagar was an evil woman.
And therefore, this is what happened.
Right?
In fact, you see in the story a rebuke of Sarah.
You see God's special grace to Hagar.
Right?
And you see that in the middle of it, it's God who is the hero of the story.
Right?
And so, we need to make sure that we look at this because when Paul then uses these contrasts and says,
the line of Sarah and promise is better than the line of Hagar and Ishmael,
it's not a moral condemnation of them.
It's about something else altogether.
It's about God's redemptive plan.
So, that's the first thing I need to say.
The second thing I need to say, and maybe I should have said this first,
but this passage does not condone either slavery or mistreatment of women.
Okay?
There are lots of stories in the Old Testament that describe sinful actions.
And it describes God being able to work in the midst of sinful actions without saying,
these actions are good or right or righteous or commendable.
Third, we need to make sure that we don't read this passage as a rebuke of Ishmael and Ishmael's descendants
who were the Arab people according to the Bible.
Okay?
It could be seen, and it has been seen in the church,
that this is a condemnation of Arabic people, Arabic-speaking people, the descendants of Ishmael.
But that is not the story at all.
Because when you read the Old Testament, you see God did choose a people,
the Jewish people, the descendants of Abraham.
Why?
Not because they were better.
Not because they were righteous.
Not because they had anything to commend themselves to at all.
Simply because He graciously chose to use them not as the terminal point of His redemptive plan,
but as the beginning of it.
And so, through Him, as you saw in Genesis 12,
through Him, through Abraham's descendants, He would bless the whole world.
So that all people might know the blessing of God,
even the descendants of Hagar and Ishmael.
So we need to make sure that we don't allow this to seep into our mind or to infect us in a way that allows us to begin to see racial disparities in this passage.
Because it's not there.
It's not God's purpose.
Okay.
I'm hoping that cleared the wood for some of you of, like, what in the world is this story all about?
Let's try to get back to the passage, right?
We have this story of God providing a child of promise after human fleshly endeavors tried to create a fulfillment of the promise on our own.
Okay.
So, this is the contrast, then, that Paul is drawing on and uses the word allegory.
Here's the thing.
It's not actually the word allegory.
Particularly those of you who are literary people, this is not a formal allegory in any way.
And the word, the reason why it says allegory is because the Greek word is, like, allegorica or something like that.
I didn't memorize it, but it's just, it's basically the Greek word that is the root of the English word allegory.
Probably figuratively or as an illustration is a better translation of what he's doing as he's trying to say there are two, there's a contrast here.
There are two ways to live that are represented by two children and two lines.
Okay.
So, the first one is, right, the son of the slave woman, Hagar.
He is born according to the flesh, according to human effort.
He is related to Mount Sinai where Moses received the law.
He's born into slavery because his mother, Hagar, was a slave.
He corresponds, according to Paul, to the present Jerusalem, which means the first century Jerusalem, the first century picture of Judaism that Paul is confronting because of its works-based approach to relationship with God.
And in this line, they do not inherit the blessing of Abraham.
And then there's the other figure, right?
The son of the free woman, Isaac, who is born through promise.
He is related to the covenant with Abraham, the covenant of promise.
He corresponds to the Jerusalem above, related to the freedom of those who know that faith in Christ alone is sufficient and completely all that we need for relating to God.
And this one, the promised child, through him comes then, or he is then the one who receives the blessing of his father.
Now, if you want to go back and unpack all the richness of what I just said, go back and listen to the last four sermons.
Because all of these themes have been talked about multiple times in the last four sermons as we've unpacked this whole section.
But Paul is trying to say, here's by analogy.
There are sort of two ways to live.
There are two lines.
There are two children that you want to be a part of.
Right?
Either that of…
And it's fascinating, right?
Because Sarah is never mentioned, nor is Ishmael ever mentioned.
You only get Hagar and Isaac mentioned in the passage, which is, again, fascinating.
There's an assumption that we all know these stories.
But the argument is very clear.
Why would you want to live in the way of the slave woman when you can live in the freedom of the promise?
Right?
Why would you want to live in a world of works-based righteousness when you can live in the complete sufficiency of Christ's work for us and faith in Him?
You're a child of the new way.
Don't go back to the old.
It's spiritual slavery.
It's futility.
It's burdensome.
Now, he doesn't explain all this.
Again, he's been spending two chapters explaining it.
So, I'm not going to go…
But what is the basis of it?
Well, he quotes the Old Testament twice to try to say, don't you want this new way more than the other old way?
But as he quotes these two verses, it's not apparent why he quotes them necessarily on the surface.
You just think, really?
Really?
So, primer on reading the Old Testament text.
When the New Testament quotes the Old Testament, a lot of times we need to think carefully about how it's done.
Sometimes there's a word connection that the writer is making.
A word from a passage in the Old Testament is being picked up and being applied in the New Testament.
But often, when a writer, particularly Paul, is writing and he's quoting the Old Testament, he's not just quoting the particular verses that are recorded, but he's also importing with that all of the context.
Here's an illustration.
For those of you who have read classic English literature, right?
If you read older literature, the words of Shakespeare are littered throughout history.
And so, it might be in some 19th century novel where someone looks at his friend and says, et tu brute?
And you think, what is that?
It's a weird Latin phrase.
I don't even know what that means, right?
And then you realize, oh, well, he's quoting Shakespeare.
And this is from Shakespeare's Julius Caesar.
And these are the words of Julius Caesar to his friend Brutus, who has just betrayed him and killed him.
It's his demise.
It's his end.
The betrayal is final and tragic.
And so, the words et tu brute, which literally just mean, and you also, Brutus?
Are you a part of this as well?
The answer is, yep, he is.
But the bigger picture is, you've betrayed me.
It's this huge picture of an ally turning into an enemy, right?
But you only know that if you've read the play Julius Caesar, which doesn't necessarily correspond to history, but it's a great story, right?
If you've read the story, then you can quote that little phrase, and everyone knows what it means.
This is often what Paul is doing when he quotes the Old Testament.
But because we are not steeped in the Old Testament the way Paul was,
we need to do some exegesis and digging to figure out why does he do this.
So, let's look at the two verses that Paul quotes in this passage as the basis for why he says,
here's a contrast and there's a better one and a worse one for you to pick and choose.
So, I told you this was going to be a complicated sermon.
You ready?
First one, Galatians 4.30 is a quote from Genesis 21.
Remember, Genesis 21 is when Isaac is finally born to his very old parents as a miraculous gift.
Paul quotes verse 10 of Genesis 21 in Galatians 4.30 saying,
But what does the Scripture say?
Cast out the slave woman and her son, for the son of the slave woman shall not inherit the son of the free woman.
And basically what happens is, after Isaac is born, they're all living together,
Hagar and Ishmael, Sarah and Isaac, in the same household.
And they're going to have a celebration for Isaac being weaned.
And Ishmael laughs at him.
And there's some relational tension.
And Sarah says,
That's enough.
Hagar, Ishmael, they're out of here.
I am tired of them living in this household.
I don't want to have to share with them anymore.
I'm not saying it's good or right.
Abraham's a little bit sheepish about this.
He's like,
I don't know, Sarah.
Is that really the right thing?
And then God says,
It's okay.
Because God blesses Ishmael as he goes.
God blesses Hagar as he provides for them.
He doesn't condemn them or curse them.
But what he does say is,
This is right.
Why?
Because the child who is the fruit of human mechanism to fulfill my promises is not my way.
This child over here, this child of Isaac, he is.
He is the child of promise that I have provided miraculously for you.
And this is a pattern.
Because you know the other son that God provided miraculously for the world?
This is the gospel of Jesus Christ.
The son of Abraham.
The son of David.
That's how Matthew begins his gospel.
Right?
So, Paul is saying,
There is a promise here.
The seed,
The seed of the promise that comes through Isaac leads us all the way to Jesus Christ.
And to this new way.
Because Christ becomes the beginning of the new people.
So, Paul says,
See, if you read your Old Testament,
Even the law says,
Faith in Christ is where this is all leading to.
He does the same thing in verse 27 of Galatians 4 as well.
In Galatians 4, 27,
He's quoting from Isaiah,
Chapters 54.
I'm going to read it for you.
Verse 27.
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 will be more than those of the one who has a husband.
This is a passage that Alex read earlier.
In the ancient culture,
And maybe to a certain extent today,
Being barren was a shameful thing.
And so, his words are meant to be heard as a surprise.
Isaiah says,
The barren woman can rejoice with loud praise.
Why?
Well, because her children will be more than those of the woman who has a husband.
That is, who is able to bear children.
That's the implication of that phrase.
Sarah represents the barren woman who couldn't have children for so long.
Hagar represents the woman who had a husband.
That is, she was given to Abraham and had a child.
Because she was fertile.
And Paul is saying,
Don't you see?
Though the way of Hagar seems to be better,
Because it produced fruit through human mechanism,
Through trusting in human plans,
In the end,
That will be a dead end.
Over here is the way of the barren woman,
Who God miraculously intervenes.
And the children of her will be more.
They will be greater than that.
Because God will miraculously do far more than what we can do through our human mechanisms,
Or through our human works.
So this is what God is saying,
To the people of Israel.
There's a way here.
Through Sarah the seed will come,
And the eternal people of God will be greater than it all.
So that's the immediate verse,
And it's exegesis.
But the context brings then this mack truck of wonderful connotations to this great truth.
Because if you read the book of Isaiah,
You realize that in chapter 40 through 55,
This is a long section of word of promise to the people of God while they are in exile.
When it feels like God has abandoned them,
Isaiah comes and speaks word of hope,
That God is not forgetting,
That He in fact will redeem them,
And He will restore them,
And He's going to do something even greater than what He's done before.
And He will do it through one who will be a suffering servant on behalf of His people.
And so in Isaiah 49, verse 6,
Isaiah says this,
It is too light a thing that you should be my servant to raise up the tribes of Jacob,
And to bring back the preserved of Israel.
I will make you as a light for the nations,
That my salvation shall reach to the ends of the earth.
And then a couple of chapters later,
In Isaiah 53,
That famous passage about the suffering servant,
And how He will bear the transgressions of the people.
In verse 10, Isaiah writes,
Yet it was the will of the Lord to crush him.
He has put him to grief.
When his soul made an offering for guilt,
He shall see his offspring,
He shall prolong his days,
And the will of the Lord shall prosper in His hand.
Out of anguish of his soul,
He shall see and be satisfied.
By His knowledge shall the righteous one,
My servant,
Make many to be accounted righteous,
And He shall bear their iniquities.
Do you see how those two verses pull together some grand themes?
The way that God's coming redemption,
The promise of what He's going to bring,
Is one,
It's going to be not just for the Jewish people,
But for all peoples,
For the whole earth.
And how will He do it?
He will do it through this one,
Who will suffer for His people,
So that many will be counted righteous,
And He will see His offspring.
And these verses then in the New Testament
Are applied to Jesus.
Jesus is the suffering servant.
Jesus is the one who comes,
Not merely to redeem Israel,
But to provide a salvation for the whole world.
Right?
So that Jew and Gentile alike
Are called to be God's offspring
Through faith in Christ.
Christ.
Because this is the line of the promise.
And this is the challenge that Paul is giving
To those in the first century
Who were telling the Christians in Galatia
That they needed to become more Jewish.
Jesus is saying,
You don't become more Jewish by going backwards.
Because if you go backwards,
Whose line are you in?
You're not in the line of promise.
You're in the line of Hagar.
The line of human mechanism.
The line of flesh.
The line of justification by works.
That's not the way forward.
The way forward is through the line of promise.
Through God's miraculous provision
For the salvation and redemption of His people.
That will be greater than any.
And this is what God has done.
Through Christ.
And friends,
This is why we don't want a contract.
We want the promise.
Because the promise is so much richer.
So much more glorious.
So much greater.
The reason why we love the contract
Is because we think religion
And our relationship with God
Is something we can do.
I like the parameters.
I know what I can do.
I can check my boxes
And then I can say to God,
Okay God, now you must bless me.
And our human hearts crave for that kind of control.
And God calls us
To surrender that.
To recognize,
Like the old hymn says,
That there is nothing in our hands
That we can bring.
But simply to the cross,
We cling.
We come to Christ
Because He is the fulfillment
Of that seed of promise.
And that by faith in Him
Who has done everything
To satisfy the law.
Who is the fulfillment
Of the children of Abraham.
So that, as Romans says,
All who have faith in Christ
Are children of Abraham.
And in fact,
They are the true children of Abraham.
They are the ones
Who know where they stand before God.
Not because it's been secured
By our works,
But because it's been secured
By the perfect
And all sufficient work of Christ.
That's the promise
That we want to live in.
That's where we want to be.
Paul says,
Don't go back.
Don't go back to this
Measly, weak,
Unhelpful pattern of living.
Don't do it.
God has given us
Much better.
And so,
It's funny,
Nick and I didn't plan this.
But so,
Peter writes
In 2 Peter chapter 1,
His divine power
Has granted to us
All things that pertain
To life and godliness
Through the knowledge of Him
Who called us
To His own glory
And excellence.
By which He has granted
To us His precious
And great promises
So that through them
You may become
Partakers of the divine nature
Having escaped
From the corruption
That is in the world
Because of sinful desire.
This is what it means
To be children of promise.
We have received
The one who has fulfilled
The promises of the Old Testament
And who secures for us
The promise of an eternal salvation
And a glory that is to come
That is beyond all imagination.
And as we will see
In the coming
Two chapters of Galatians
And as His children now
In the freedom of the gospel
We will then now
Live a transformed life
Where we will do
Good works of love
We will bear fruit
Of love and patience
And peace and kindness
And goodness and faithfulness
And self-control.
We will do all of these things
Because we are children
Of promise.
Because Christ has done
Everything for us.
Okay.
I'm still good.
We still got five minutes.
Application.
How do we think about this
In ourselves?
What's the distinction
Between when we think
About our relationship with God
As a contract
Versus how we think
About our relationship with God
Through the eyes of promise?
Here's my best attempt.
It's easy for us
To think about our life
And our families this way.
I'm thinking about
Probably from the perspective
Of a spouse and a parent.
But you can fill in
If you're a child
If you're a single
But you think about
Your relationship
In your workplace
In your friendships
If I am faithful
To do my duties
As a father
To provide
Physical provision
For my family
God will give me security.
This is my contract thinking.
If I keep myself
Pure sexually
Before marriage
And in marriage
Then God will bless me
With an amazing sex life.
If I serve God well
Then God will give me
Earthly comfort.
If I take my family
To church every Sunday
God will make them
Faithful believers.
If I dote on my spouse
Properly
Then God will protect me
From relational disappointment.
Now look
All those things
That we're doing
Are good things.
There's nothing wrong
With any of those things.
We should do them, right?
But the contract mind says
I'm doing them
So that God will.
Right?
I do this
So that X
I will do these X things
So that God will give me
Y results.
But what does it look like
If we look at it
Through the lens
Of fulfilled promise.
Because of the precious promises
Fulfilled in Christ.
My desire
My pursuit of purity
In marriage
Before
And in it
Is because Christ
Has washed me clean
From sin
And I want to
I want to cling to that
And live in that
And not turn back.
My faithful provision
For my family
Comes not so that God
Will give me things
But in a deep trust
That God has been
And will continue
To be faithful
And I can glorify Him
By using the things
He gives me
To bless those
Around me.
My serving God
Comes not from
A desire to get
Something from God
But a deep desire
To make God known
And to help others
Know Him more
By the way that I serve.
My church attendance
Comes
Not so that I can
Check a box
And say God
Is that good enough?
But because I love
To worship God
With His people
Because I need
The fellowship
Of other brothers
And sisters
So that I can
Know God more
And grow in Him
And so that I can
Encourage them
Not because it's
What I am served by
Or what I get out of it.
My doting on my spouse
Isn't so that
She has to respond
And dot on me back
In the ways that I want to
And here's the checklist
But I do it because
God has loved me.
I don't do any of these things
If I live as a child of promise
To get things from God
But simply because
God has already done
All that I need.
Because God is all sufficient.
Because in His love
In His mercy
In His grace
In the giving of His spirit
In the giving of His word
He has done everything
For me.
And so I simply receive
Those things
And I live my life
Not to get them
Or to earn them
Or to have this
Quid pro quo with God
But because
He has already given me
More than I could ever imagine.
And in that I find myself
Content
And satisfied
And joyful
And giving.
This is what it looks like
To live as children of promise.
And it's not just in our families.
This is how we pursue our career.
Not demanding that it give us
Identity or meaning.
But to serve God.
This is how we pursue
Our dating lives.
Not so that we can
Be fulfilled
Or find pleasure
Or you know
You complete me.
But so that
So that we can see
God's provision
Whether this person
May or may not be
God's provision for me
As we pursue Christ together.
Right?
We love the people around us
Because
That's the God that we know.
If you
Are a student
You do studies.
Why?
Is it to get the grade?
Is it to get the
Get the position
The acceptance
The next step
On the ladder
Of the rung
Of academia?
No.
No, we do our studies
So that we can explore
The world that God has made.
So that we can see
His glory
And describe its glory.
So that we can use
All the faculties
That He gives us
To be
Go back to John's
Sunday school
On
So we can be sub-creators
And be
In a way
Reflecting God
In this world
By how we do our studies.
Not to get things from Him
But to display His glory.
And friends
If this is the life
That we can have
By being children of promise
And forsaking
For good
The life of
Justification by works
Doing it ourselves
And thinking that
By that
We can somehow
Be in control
We can somehow
Know the outcome
Instead we abandon ourselves
To a promise
Keeping God
Friends
This is glorious freedom
This is what Paul says
In verse 5
In chapter 5
Verse 1
For freedom Christ
Has set us free
Stand firm therefore
And do not submit
Again
To a yoke of slavery
Nick will preach on that
Next week
But with that
Let's pray
Lord we are thankful
To you this morning
That you are
A promise
Keeping God
Lord that you have
In Christ
Done all
That is necessary
For us to be
Your children
That the blessings
Of Abraham
Are ours
Because of Christ
Lord that we are
Your people
And you are
Our God
Because Christ
Has fulfilled the law
Lord that you
Are our king
Because Christ
Came
To lay down
His life for us
Lord you have
Fulfilled all
These great promises
And Lord even now
We live with your
Great and precious
Promises that
Though we may
For a little while
Suffer in this life
Yet we know
That with you
There is an eternity
That is
Lord
Beyond comparison
And Lord that even now
We have your spirit
And your word
And life with you
So that we might
Taste
In increasing measure
The riches
Of your kingdom
And might display
In increasing measure
The beauty
Of your glory
Oh Lord
Help us today
We pray this
In Jesus name
Amen