The Allegory of the 2 Women

And actually listen to what was read. Did you did it all make sense? It sounds really it sounds really complicated Well, hopefully I can make it less complicated. That's my goal So today we're going to talk about what's called the allegory of the two women I first like to kind of go back and look at the the story the historical story in Scripture of what that's based upon so let's look at And I see how to say this right. I enjoy McCauley's work and I like his his diet, not diagramming outlines.

OK, so basically this section of Galatians four, eight to 13 is called God's Son and Slavery. So verse 8, we saw previously, talks about the fact that in the past, these Galatian believers had no knowledge, no freedom. They were in slavery. In the religion, they had no reality. Then he kind of moves into the present state of legalism, a life of legalism described, which you had earlier. And then Mike spent a long time on this legalism discouraged, as Macaulay calls it.

But now this section we're going to cover today, and Mike started last week, Is this illustration which is actually I hope hope you'll come to appreciate this illustration. It's pretty cool. He You know Paul's incredible. He takes he comes from every possible direction to convince you that The Judaizers were wrong that living under the law Under a rule-based system is is not the way the Christian life is to be lived. So now he's going to attack it from let's find a familiar and Story from scripture a real-life story about two women and he wants to tell this story So when we view the story first Then we're going to look at the allegory of the story which actually the allegory is used in scripture is different than what you might have come across in literature and then next week Mike's going to kind of wrap it up and Apply that So okay, so let's go on here.

Okay, so Paul the question that Mike was asked last week is Tell me, you want to be under the law. Do you listen to the law? You're desiring to be under the law. Have you really listened to the law? So think of when he tells this story about the two women, he's trying to get them to see what the law is really doing to them. What is the effect of the law on their lives?

That's what he's trying to communicate here. So now we're going to review that. So we're going to start off with Hagar. So what's cool about the Hagar part of it is all kind of encapsulated in Genesis 16. When we get to Sarah, it goes over four or five chapters, and actually goes over 25 years. But Sarah's part is pretty much to the point. So Sarah, she was this Egyptian handmaiden of Abraham's wife Sarah, and she didn't have any children. So Sarah had an idea.

And I kind of wonder if this idea maybe was popular in the culture. I don't know. But it wasn't God's idea. Because we're going to see that God promised Abraham long before this account that he would have a child. By Sarah. A real child. So this idea that Sarah came up with, hey, take one of my maids and have children by her, and then we'll have children. We'll fulfill what God has promised us. That was her idea.

Not a good idea. Not a good idea. But, you know, I was kind of thinking, Adam went along with Eve, Abraham went along with Sarah. Sometimes being a spiritual leader takes guts. Anyway, enough said. Okay. So, basically he listened to his wife, he had relationships with Hagar, And she conceived and she bore a son and they called him Ishmael So that's kind of the story of Hagar and you know quickly Totally by man's efforts totally and actually opposed to what God had told them, but they had a child So now they could tell God we have a child and later on we'll see that Abraham even tells he says Lord let Ishmael walk before let him be the the offspring that will go forward that wasn't God's plan and So now let's look at the other side of the coin here, Sarah and her account. So I, Hal Malloy had a great kind of summary here, so I borrowed that to go over here. So let's start off.

So the promise, the promise was given to Isaac, promise in Genesis 15, Sarah's 65, kind of track the ages here, Sarah's 65 and Abraham's 75, and in Genesis 15, The Lord says then behold the word of the Lord came to him Abraham or Abram this man Will not be your heir, but the one will come from your own body. He shall be your heir and Then it says down in verse 6 he Abraham believed the Lord and it was reckoned to him as righteousness So this occurred and then we have the well, I just covered we have ten years pass and we have the account I just covered of Sarah Sarah asking Abraham to have relations with his maid and have a child so ten years pass And this was the solution ten years down the road think about yourselves God makes you a promise doesn't happen as believers these days. It's in his word the promises are in his word But here he makes the promise so how long before you do something? You know physically they did something God made a promise.

We're gonna make this happen so They did something ten years down the road so at that point Sarah 75 Abrams Abraham is 85 So 13 13 years pass Now Sarah is 89 and Abrams 99 and there's a series of events that happen here in Genesis 17 he reconfirms his promise in 1 through 5 Then I'd like to read a little bit and then he tells again He tells Sarah again and Abraham that they're going to have a child in verse 15 He says Then the Lord said to Abraham, As for Sarah your wife, you shall not call her name Sarah, but Sarah shall be her name.

I will bless her, and indeed I will give you a son by her. Then I will bless her, she shall be a mother of nations. And that's going to kind of come up as we look at the allegory. She'll become a mother of nations. Kings of people will come from her.

Then down to verse 19 it says, But God said, well, they object to this. He says, let Ishmael live before you. And God says, no, but Sarah, your wife, will bear you a son, and you shall call his name Isaac. So God's plan is clearly that they have a son. And then miraculously, in the really cool account in Genesis 18, the Lord and two angels appear. The pre-incarnate Christ appears. They once again, and this is the incident where Sarah is so overtaken.

She says this can't be she laughs She says how can I have a child? You know? I'm 89 years old. How can I have a child? It's impossible Anyway, the Lord doesn't doesn't give her You know doesn't condemn her for that and then lastly this should be point for Sarah conceived and bore a son to Abraham she was 90 and he was a hundred 25 years passed before Isaac was was born, right? Okay. Okay. So that's the history of Sarah the history of Hagar so let's go on so now back to what Mike presented last week. This is a summary version of that Abraham's line we have two women Hagar and Sarah keep those in mind.

We're going to talk about them a lot today Two sons Ishmael and Isaac two positions in In the world, one is a slave or a bondwoman, and the other is a free woman. And two births, one by the flesh, totally natural, totally of man's desire to please God. The other is by a promise, totally miraculous. It was impossible, you know, humanly impossible for them to have a child.

Then lastly, there's one heir that goes forward. Okay. So now we're going to look at the application of the allegory. It actually comes into two parts. We're going to look at just four verses, or five verses today. 24 and 25 talk about Hagar and Ishmael and their relation to the whole picture of what's going on. And then 26 through 28 talk about Sarah and her son Isaac. And then next week, Mike's going to do the application of that. And I like this verse. It's really cool. So it kind of wraps up the end of the application.

It says, So then, brethren, we are not children of the bondwoman, but of the free woman. If you had to think of a summary, keep that in your head. We are not children of the bondwoman. We're children of the free woman. That's the message. That's the message Paul wanted to get across to the Galatians. That you're free in Christ. That you're a child of the free woman. You have freedom in Christ. Okay, so now let's get into the kind of details here.

So here's the two verses. So actually, I'll just skip over that. I'm just going to read them again in each of the sections. Okay, the first verse is, this is allegorically speaking for these women are two covenants, one proceeding from Mount Sinai bearing children who are to be slaves. She is Hagar. maybe literally which things the things the historical things are being allegorized or may are being made to make a point so the question is what's an allegory if you look at Webster it's an expression by means of symbolic symbolic fictional figures and actions of truth that's that's what Webster says and I was thinking when I was in college I might share with you guys I had to read my Orwell's Animal Farm. I didn't like to read it, but I had to read it.

I couldn't find the Cliff Notes. I'm not sure there were Cliff Notes at that time. That's before Cliff Notes. I talked to Ryan. Ryan finds the Cliff Notes, and he says, hey, we're good to go here. But I'm not sure I had Cliff Notes. Sorry, Ryan. Okay, they had Cliff Notes then? Okay, well, I guess I... I was cheap. Okay. All right, so you read the Cliff Notes and it says, Animal Farm, it's about the Russian Revolution, it's about the characters in that, and there are animals in the farm, and I can't even remember hardly anything about that.

But it was an allegory, and it was, you know, talking about the different leaders. It was real people, but in this fictional story, to kind of, I guess, make fun of that. Well, in our case, it's quite a bit different. In Galatians 4, we're taking the historical facts, the which things, from the verse, the first part of the which things, and applying them to illustrate a spiritual principle.

Paul desires greatly to show us that these women are pictures of where we are in our Christian life. Either we're in bondage under Hagar, or we're free under Sarah. Okay. These things are two covenants. So now we get into the allegory here. And so he pictures Sarah and Hagar as two covenants. And you almost can guess where he's going to go with this. Two covenants. So what are the two covenants? We'll see as we go through it, but I'll just summarize it first. The first covenant is the Mosaic covenant given at Mount Sinai to the Jews. And it was a covenant, you know, they said, Lord, just tell us what to do and we'll do it.

So the Lord tells them, and this is a pretty toughie here. You want to follow this? If you keep it, if you keep the law, I will bless you. If you don't keep it, I will curse you. That's a toughie. That's a toughie. You want to go by those rules? You want to sign up for that regime? I don't think so. But I don't know. They said, well, we'll do it. And to their, you know, they found out they couldn't do it. And then the Abrahamic covenant, totally different. It was given unconditionally, but you have to be careful about that covenant. It was given to Israel, not to the church.

But the wonderful part of that is a seed will come forth. And this seed is our Savior. And it will bless all nations. And that's the part that we kind of enter into that covenant in. So we have a covenant of law, if you will, and a covenant of grace. So that's kind of as we track through here.

Those are the two covenants. So it says, one proceeding, so this is kind of giving the rationale for why we could call it the Mosaic Covenant. One proceeding, or one is from Mount Sinai, one of the covenants is from Mount Sinai, therefore it's a Mosaic Covenant, because Mount Sinai was the place where that took place, the physical location, bearing children who are to be slaves. So it basically says, Scripture is declaring here that that through this allegory that there's actually slavery there. And we can see that. When we see that it says, if you don't follow me, I'll curse you. It's black or white. They're in slavery. They're in slavery. They're keeping that code.

And it says Hagar is identified in this allegory. The Mosaic Covenant is represented by Hagar. So that's the first part of that. And so some of the main ideas, and I borrowed some of these from Hal. Hagar was a bond bondswoman and think about any children that she would have since she's in slavery. She's in bondage, right? She's a maid She's not free would be in bondage to In like manner anyone under the Mosaic Covenant is also a child of bondage So you see he's building his case He's can you imagine if you know if you were a Jew then and Paul came to you and said do you realize what I'm showing you here is Here are people you know about.

Here are the patriarchs. You know Abraham. You know his maid. You know what happened. He's showing that they're in bondage too. A person under the law was spirited like a child of Hagar. They are therefore in bondage. Something that would be kind of a shocking thing. You know, whoa, wait a minute. I never realized. And that's his whole point. He's tried to argue with them countless ways. He's going to give them an illustration to make his point. So now verse 25. He's going to give another kind of variation.

Now this is Hagar. Now this Hagar is Mount Sinai in Arabia. Okay? Hagar represents Mount Sinai in this allegory. And then he says it corresponds to the present Jerusalem. And the idea of corresponding is the idea it kind of lines up with. So it lines up or you can put in a line. So I drew this little exotic picture. I'm joking. Hagar, Mount Sinai, present Jerusalem. It's in a line, right? Boom, boom, boom. Okay. So actually, all these pictures of how Hagar represents, she represents Mount Sinai, she represents present Jerusalem. Once again, Hagar is in slavery with her children. So what's the takeaway from this?

Mount Sinai is a geographical location where the law was given. Remember God descended in a cloud and Moses went up to get the commandments? That's the geographical location. Jerusalem is a geographical location where the law was upheld. Everybody went to Jerusalem and exemplified and went out from there.

Both Mount Sinai and the present Jerusalem brought forth children and slavery, just like Hagar did with the birth of Isaac. So we see the line of Hagar is all these pictures of Hagar and how she represents different things. Not a pretty picture. It's all about slavery and bondage. That's kind of a wake-up call. The present Jerusalem is like Hagar. He is? I don't know. If you're a Jew, you think, wow, that sounds rather harsh.

Okay, let's see the positive side of the coin here. Okay, so now the allegory is related to Sarah and her children, Isaac, our son Isaac. What's interesting is the Lord, in His wisdom, is going to give us three verses which don't necessarily directly point out either Sarah or her son, but kind of in the details there, you kind of see them. So bear with us. It starts off, But the Jerusalem above is free, she is our mother.

That alone could be a head-scratcher for a while. For it is written, Rejoice, barren woman, who does not bear. Break forth and shout, who are not in labor. For more numerous are the children of the desolate than of the one who has a husband. And you, brethren, like Isaac, are children of promise." Especially that middle verse. Boy, I first looked at that middle verse and I said, what in the world is he talking about here? Why would a woman with no children be happy? I mean, I was just thinking of the Old Testament times. Well, hopefully we can answer that. Okay, so let's start off.

But the Jerusalem above is free. She is our mother. So what is the Jerusalem above? This one's actually pretty easy to answer. Think about the Jerusalem above. Is there any other Thing you can think of like in the end times and revelation you can think of well There's just a ton of neat verses about this in Hebrews it talks about But you have come to the Mount Zion to the city of the Living God the heavenly Jerusalem to myriads of angels and Then a revelation 21 to I saw the Holy City New Jerusalem coming down out of heaven from God made ready as a bride adorned for her husband and then the third one In Revelation 21 10 and he carried me away in the spirit to the great and high mountain and showed me the holy city Jerusalem Coming down out of heaven from God So the picture of this Jerusalem above is this picture of the New Jerusalem and think about it, you know from Scripture we know that we're already have right now is right now today and On today's date, we are already heavenly citizens.

We already are seated with Christ in the heavenly. So we already have this wonderful place which is spoken of as the heavenly Jerusalem in these verses here. So we already have that as a believer. So two statements are made about Jerusalem here. First of all, Jerusalem above is free.

And what I notice in this passage, there's this little amy verb that shows up a bunch of times, and it's this idea that something exists continually in the present tense, so that the Jerusalem above, therefore the Jerusalem above continually exists in a state of freedom in contrast to the present Jerusalem. So this allegory is all about contrast, all about contrasting Hagar where she's at with Sarah and and the heavenly Jerusalem where they're at So this is contrasting the Jerusalem above with the present Jerusalem one is free one is in bondage Now here's the one that might give you a little pause She Jerusalem is our mother and remember I read that back in Genesis there where it talked about what did it say it said that? It said in Genesis 1716 it said I will bless her talking about Sarah and Indeed, I will give her a son then I will come then I will bless her and she will be a mother of nations Kings of people will come from her. So I think he's kind of alluding to that here But I think it's a better So what I have here So also the same same Amy verb this Jerusalem Continually exists as our mother.

So I liked I found a actually body helped me with this one She said well, just look in J. Vernon McGee. So we looked in here and I found a cool statement so he gave a his thought on this and in Jerusalem is our mother as The present Jerusalem is a mother city of the of those under law So the New Jerusalem is a mother city of the believers under grace. I thought that was pretty satisfying so It's speaking of a gracious. This is a grace-based statement. He's talking about here. The Jews from above is free.

She is our mother So now here we go with this description, which is so first of all, let's look at it from Isaiah It's it's a quote from Isaiah 54. There's actually eight verses So if you go through those eight verses, you'll see this verse talks about the nation of Israel, obviously It talks about Israel husband and many times the Lord is a husband of Israel In this case the Lord of hosts is a husband here It talks about the shame of Israel in her youth Her relationship with the Lord of hosts. It was broken But then the Lord and his graciousness is going to restore that to Israel.

So that's the interpretation from Isaiah So how did how did Paul want us to see it in the context of Hagar and Sarah? idea So, this verse is speaking about Sarah. Sarah was barren until God intervened, right? Isaac was Sarah's only child. She only had one child. But Sarah, through the promise of the seed, will have many more children than Hagar. Think about that. So that idea of her rejoicing, being barren, she only had one child. But she can rejoice because of all the children, the spiritual children she has. Okay.

And then the last verse, And you, brethren, like Isaac, are children of promise. And you, brethren, brothers in Christ, Galatians, like Isaac, or according to the pattern of Isaac, are children of promise. Again, we have our AME verb again. This verb tells us that we continually exist as a child of promise by God's grace. That's one of the things you could say. I'm a child of promise.

I like this. Isaac was a supernatural birth. Wouldn't you agree that every believer that puts his faith and trust is supernaturally changed, a supernatural birth, a new birth in Christ? So I think that's kind of the parallel, the comparison there. That we're a child of promise in the sense that that we have a supernatural birth, too, like Isaac.

Okay, so this is another Hal chart. You guys probably remember the chart from when Hal taught this. And we're just going to summarize what's happened. Two covenants, right? Mosaic is law. Abrahamic is grace. Two mothers of children. One focused on Mount Sinai, earthly, and the present Jerusalem. The other, Sarah, focused on the promise, the promise seed, and the heavenly Jerusalem. Two positions. One in bondage, which is death or separation. One in liberty and life. And then one heirs, a believer. We're all heirs.

Okay, so I just have some final thoughts here. So we have the two camps, the Hagar's and the Sarah's, right? So hopefully this makes a little more sense. I know, hopefully. It has to me. I don't know. It doesn't count, right? It makes sense to you, Roger, but nobody else. Anyway, so think about Hagar.

A person under the law was spiritually like Hagar. She was in bondage, and that's what Paul was trying to get across to the Judaizers. Both Mount Sinai and the present Jerusalem brought forth children in slavery. As Hagar did, her child was in slavery.

And you notice, I didn't mention it, but if you go in the history of Hagar, down the road after 25 years elapsed, so Isaac's now, I'm sorry, Ishmael's now 25 years old probably. You know, Sarah says, I can't have him in my house anymore, basically. There's tension. She says, Abraham, get him out of my house. And the Lord comes to Abraham and says, okay, So she has to leave. He's the seed of Abraham. He has Abraham's genes in him. But nope, you're a son of the bondwoman. Get out. Get out of my house. I don't want you in my house.

And so the Lord was kind to them and gracious to them. Anyway, but Mount Sinai and the present Jerusalem brought forth children in slavery just as Hagar did. So her whole line is slavery, even after the birth of Isaac. Okay. And then, um, Sarah, much different picture. We're spiritually descendants of Sarah through Christ, through the seed. We're citizens of heaven and live in the freedom of Christ. We're children of promise by grace, not children of bondage under the law.

So that's all I have for today. Stay tuned. We get the, we get the application next week. Okay. So let's close in prayer. We thank you, Father. We thank you so much, Lord, for your marvelous word. Thank you for the illustrations that we have that are meant to be understandable by the people of the times, Lord. It's harder for us to understand them, but we thank you that they're there for our study and to think on them, Lord. Thank you for the wonderful savior we have, the wonderful freedom we have in him. We ask it in his name. Amen.