This is the Truth Network. Forever, thy word is settled in heaven. Psalm one, nineteen, verse eighty-nine. I'm Stu Epperston. Welcome to the special Wednesday in the Word Leader podcast, where we prepare to equip our leaders of this special Bible study outreach breakfast.
Every week to teach through the scriptures. Thirteen Dario locations. There's a men's group meeting, and several of the locations host the women on Thursday morning. Stay tuned. Be encouraged as we jump into this week's Wednesday in the Word.
Paul has introduced us to Father Abraham. This week we're going to meet Mother Sarah. Dr. Horn, it's about time we met our spiritual mother, isn't it, brother? You know that's exactly right.
And we were talking just before the call that, before this this podcast, that that there are two mothers in this in this text, and you've got to identify with one of those two. There's not a third option. And so, really, really key text. In the book of Galatians, we spent the first two chapters looking at Paul's credentials and his authenticity and his authority to speak the way he speaks to the Galatians, and the recognition of that authority and the implication of that authority, even in the interchange and the confrontation that he had to have with Peter.
So we looked at that really, really carefully, and then we are wrapping up. Chapter four today, which which is at the end of the doctrinal section, and chapters three and four reestablish the doctrinal foundations upon which Paul established the gospel. And then, as we get into five and six, and we continue our journey through this manifesto that defends our freedom in Christ, Paul is going to move into the application: why all of this matters. But before we get into that section, we got to talk about our moms, and that's exactly what he does. We're having a warm mother moment, and this is so critical spiritually.
These last eleven verses of Galatians four, verses twenty-one. One through thirty-one. As we wrap up the chapter, of course, we'll be jumping into the freedom in Christ in chapter five, verse one.
Next time, Doctor Horn, a lot in here.
Some theologians have have labeled this as one of the more tricky or more challenging texts to understand in Galatians. We have. Paul employing the use of allegory in this debate, and some even say Spitzer's commentary says this is his capstone argument. Like this is, he's kind of been building up to this argument. And you know to almost put a nail in the coffin of the Judaizers who are trying to seduce and bewitch the Christians in Galatia back into the law, which is a curse, back into the performance treadmill, back into circumcision and the feasts and such that we've covered in these previous weeks.
So, how do you set this up, Dr. Horn? You know, 11 verses. You have. You have two, you know, you have two moms, you know, Hagar and Sarah.
You have two sons, Ishmael and Isaac. You have, you know, these two seeds. You have these two cities. You know, you have this Jerusalem below and in Sinai, and then Jerusalem above, and then you know have two covenants. And it's just a lot in here, but just it's it's it's rich.
I mean, it's important that we establish. I was. I would much rather be a son than a slave, Doctor Horn. And why would we go back into slavery for Pete's sake? Yeah.
Well, I think that's you summed it up really well. This is Paul is giving a dichotomy that is unavoidable. In other words, you can't straddle these two ideas. You've got to line up under one or the other. And what's happened in Galatia is represented.
Who have the DNA of one of these moms has showed up. Representatives who are firmly entrenched in advancing one of these cities, one of these mountains. Is is is has arrived, and so Paul is going to is setting this argument up not to confuse the Galatians or us, but to number one continue the strong warning and to actually call for action, like he has been laying it all out for. Three and a half chapters, and now he's going to come to the deciding point. You're going to have to pick a mom.
You're going to have to decide what you're going to do with the other mom, but you can't have two moms. And that's the idea here in the text. And obviously, he's he's explaining to us why these Judaizers are not what they appear. They have shown up. They are compelling.
They are bewitching. They are they are attracting attention and gathering a following. And and Paul has been exposing them. He has been going line on line. Gospel line after gospel line, pulling back.
The covers and showing what's underneath, and and and now he takes. It's like he comes to this final place, and he pulls everything back, and he says, "I'm just going to be straight up with you. These these people that have bewitched you, that that you're starting to embrace, are from the mother that you don't want to be from. You do not want that DNA, because if you have that DNA, you're no longer a son." And and so that's in essence, and and he does it sort of in in three massive movements, and then he he calls at the very end. The fourth thing he does is he calls for a big action, and so that's sort of the outline.
It's really simple, but that's kind of where it goes. And so I I can walk that that us through that outline, but I'm curious as to how you would would summarize or react to what I just said. I think it's great. I'd love to hear you break this down. I think it's important.
People just just jot down in your margin Genesis chapter sixteen, the introduction of Hagar to Abraham, and then Genesis twenty one. Kind of the aftermath, what happens where there's actually a mocking of Hagar of Sarah and Ishmael mocking Isaac, and then there's this this banishment of Hagar and Ish Ishmael out of the kingdom, so out of Israel. And so, Doctor Horn, I mean, on a five thousand foot view, it's ultimately, is it? My trusting in God's promise as an heir, as a son, in the gospel of grace and what He's done. Right.
Or am I going to force my plan, my works, a little bit of God's promise, a little bit of my works, a little bit of law in with a little bit of grace, like Sarah did and Abraham did when they said, "Hey." God needs our help. You know, I'm I'm dagum seventy five, eighty years old. I ain't got no kids, and I'm supposed to be the father of many nations.
So let's let's bring in the bondwoman. Let's let's let's have a yeah yeah. You know, let's let's have a child with with Hagar. And basically, it's it's it's two models. One is is work salvation, and one is grace.
And of course, the Judaizers tried to blend the two.
So I mean, it's really When you grab, I think when you grasp those, you know those two that are like you said, completely opposite. They cannot be. Conflated, they cannot be confused. The cults do everything they can. Yeah, yeah, no, that's right.
To say, you know, you know, and so and so, yeah, break it down and take us through these verses, because man, there's a lot in this whole idea of allegory. You know, Pilgrim's Progress was an allegory. Jesus told stories a lot, and so you know, but but Paul's actually dealing with a real family. Like you know, these are real people. Yeah, that really happened.
No, that's no right. In the in the first century, Jew listener, a reader of this epistle, they knew this intimately well. We're hearing these names like, well, who was that? And well, that's kind of out there.
Well, this was very close, and for you to call anyone who is a of Jewish descent to call them a son of Hagar and Ishmaelite, yeah, are you? That's like the height. That is like the Most brutal insult you could level against someone, especially that was Jewish, but that's exactly what these Judaizers were.
So I want to get out of the way and let you just kind of take us through these eleven verses and and break them down for us quickly.
Well, let's start in verse twenty-one with this this question, this really sort of rebuke slash question that Paul starts with, and there's a really important application for us because what he's setting up in the question. Is the choice between Moses or the Messiah? In other words, Paul says, "I've come to Galatia, giving you the good news of God's Messiah, who's arrived and made atonement for sin by his death on the cross." And these other people have come, and they're trying to get you to go back to their version of news. And their version of news is Moses. And so, in essence, everything I've been saying for three and a half chapters boils down to who you're going to choose.
Are you going to remain under the Messiah, or are you going to return to Moses? Or if you're a Gentile, are you going to are you going to abandon the Messiah that you embraced and embrace Moses, like these Galatian or like these Judaizers are are urging you to do?
So he starts off with this question. Listen to the question. Tell me, you who desire to be under the law, do you listen to the law? Do you not listen to the law? In other words, he he's looking at and there's a debate whether he's talking to the Judaizer or he's talking to the Galatians who are converting or deconverting from following Jesus and becoming new converts to Moses.
And I I've struggled over that and I've come to the conclusion it doesn't really matter. He's probably talking to both of them. And he's saying, "Have you actually heard what the law says?" I mean, you're so enamored with going back to Moses, you've convinced yourselves that you've got to do this. Have you actually taken the time to hear the law carefully? You know this is this is true even in our day.
You know we have we have a movement of people in churches like evangelical churches, conservative evangelical gospel preaching churches, and there are people in those churches who get enamored with Roman Catholicism, and they decide you know actually I I feel better. It's more ancient. It's it's it's really established. I like this new pope. I think I'm going to go over there, and they go over there, and and they get really enamored with the traditions and the pageantry and the sights and the sounds, and they come back to you and they say, you know, I really believe that's what I the Lord's leading me to do.
I think I need to go become a Roman Catholic. And when you look at them and you say to them, "Have you actually read what Roman Catholic doctrine teaches compared to what Paul teaches in Romans?" They kind of look at you and say, "Well, no, no, I really haven't." You know, Roman Catholics talk about grace. They talk about faith. They talk about Jesus.
So actually, you know, I feel like I'm just changing. Churches, I'm not really changing gospels. Have you actually thought about what Roman Catholic Catholicism teaches? Have you listened to their doctrine? Or maybe they're going to go over to Mormonism, or they're going to go over to to Greek Orthodoxy, and you look at them and you ask them, "Have you actually seriously considered what those faiths actually teach about the Lord?" About God, about His Word, about the atonement, about faith alone and Christ alone, in the finished work of the cross and the atonement alone, and they look at you and they say, "Well, not really.
I don't think so." But I'm going to go ahead and make the switch. That's the modern version of what this question is intended to do. Paul says, "You really haven't listened to the law, have you? Because if you had listened to the law." The law itself, Moses himself would tell you not to do this.
So that's the first thing I think we got to see here is that Paul is really wisely setting this up by by getting them to really consider carefully the theological system they want to go back to, which in this case is Moses. Yeah, and it's it's almost Sam Pastor Horne. It's almost as though Paul's saying, "Okay, do you want to go this? You want to go the full gambit of the law? You really want to be under the law?
Then you just go. Let me just let me just show you where this takes us." And he's already done this a little bit to the point where he just says, "You know, in full exclamatory, by the deeds of the law, no one is justified in his sight." And he's told him he's gonna in chapter five he's gonna say I wish these guys would just cut themselves. I mean he gets pretty brutal, he gets pretty graphic, and you know pretty rough on them. But once you go that route, you're under that route. You're under that doctrine, and it is.
Nothing short of bondage, and keep going because this is the this opens up the whole text right here. That first question, yeah, and so I think as you come into the next big idea, so you've got this really probing question, right? This this challenge. Have you really listened to the law? Have, in other words, you want to go back to Moses, or you want to hook up with Moses?
Okay, have you really, really heard Moses?
Now I know the Judaizers are telling you all kinds of things about Moses, but have you actually listened to Moses himself? You you have the Torah, you have the Book of Genesis and Exodus, Leviticus and Numbers and Deuteronomy. Have you actually listened to Moses? And and and the implication is when you listen to Moses in verses. Uh, twenty, uh, two and twenty-three.
He is going to introduce two sons, who had two very different kinds of birth, and share, and have two very different DNAs. And so, look at verses twenty-two and twenty-three. Then this is the allegory. And before I read the verses, let me just talk about allegory here. Paul is using the idea of an allegory differently than than a lot of us are thinking.
You know, sometimes we think of an allegory as a made-up story that that somebody uses to communicate, like a moral lesson. It's kind of like a a fable. On steroids, whereas Paul is actually doing something different. The Holy Spirit is leading Paul to go back to the founding of Abraham's family in Genesis 16, and he's going to teach a spiritual lesson about the gospel from those. Those realities that we read about in in Genesis 15.
This is not the only place that he does this. He actually does this in Romans.
So he uses in Romans 9. He uses the story of Ishmael and Isaac and their births to distinguish. Who, which of those two sons is going to be the line where where God is going to send His Messiah, and it wasn't Ishmael. Here, the allegory is a little bit different. Listen to how he says it in verse twenty-two.
For it is written. You want to listen to the law? You got to go back to the scripture. You can't go back to the Judaizers. You can't go back to the oral tradition of the rabbis.
You've got to listen to what is written, and there, there it is. Right? We got to go back to the scriptures in our day. Before you convert to Roman Catholicism or Greek Orthodoxy, you got to go back to what is written. What did God write in Romans?
What did God write in Galatians? You got to wrestle with that before you jump. What did God actually say in James? And so you got to go back to what is written. And here's what is written: Abraham had two sons.
And the thing I want you to know about the two sons, Paul says, is their mother. In Romans nine, he wanted us to know something else about the two sons. He wanted us to know about the way they were born. Isaac was born by human ingenuity and human effort, or Ishmael rather was born by by by human ingenuity and human effort. Hey, let's think up a way to get a son.
Whereas Isaac was born when it was humanly impossible for Abraham and Sarah to have children, he was born by divine initiative and supernatural intervention. That's the point Paul is making in Romans nine. Here he's making a different point. He wants us to focus in on the moms, right, and and their status and their identity. Abraham two sons, one by a slave woman and one by a free woman.
That's the point that Paul wants to focus on. Not so much the nature of the birth, not so much the human ingenuity behind it, but the status of the moms.
So one son is born of Of a slave woman, and the other is born of a free woman, right? And we know we know who these are. And then he's going to tell us the impact of that in verse twenty-three. The son of the slave was born according to the flesh, while the son of the free woman was born through the promise. In other words.
In verse twenty-three, now we are focusing on on the on the human effort and the divine initiative that distinguished, or or was the distinction between the two two births. The son of the slave woman Hagar was born according to the flesh, according to human effort and human ingenuity, while the son of the free woman was born according to the promise through divine in. Initiative. This is going to be really important because Paul in in in chapter three and later in chapter five is going to go back to if you were born of the flesh. Or if you were born of the spirit, you know it was your birth spiritually.
Was your birth a birth of human effort and human activity, or was your birth the result of divine intervention in your life? When you were born again, were you born again by the spirit, or were you born after Moses and after your own human effort? And he's going to contrast how you recognize that if you were born after human effort, there are certain works of the flesh that are going to show up in your life. If you were born by divine intervention and and born of the Spirit, there's a whole another set of things that are going to show up in your life. It is the fruit of the Spirit.
So he's kind of setting us up for for that idea there.
So the son of the slave was born according the flesh, and the son of the free woman was born through the promise. And so now we've got these two these two sons born of two very Very different mothers, and and and whichever mother you belong to, that is also your status.
So, if your mom was a slave woman, guess guess what you are. And if your your mom or if your mom was a free woman, then guess what your status is.
So your status as a slave to Moses or as free in Christ depends on your mom. If you were born of the slave woman by human effort and human ingenuity, then you are a slave to Moses. Or to the law, if if you were born of the Spirit, then you are a son of the promise. You are a true son of Abraham. You are a child of God, and you are free.
And so you can kind of see really clearly now how he set up that that contrast.
So that that's what's going on in verses 22 and 23.
So as you continue on, there's just there's there's no middle ground. You're either a son of freedom or a son of slavery, right? Right. That's exactly right.
So that comes to the next thing in verses 24 through 27. We are we we now have two covenants. There used to be in verses 22 and 23 two moms. That had two sons, and the status of the mom is the status of the son. That's historical.
That we saw that in Genesis 16.
Now Paul says, "Remember, I said about the allegory. Paul says, 'Let me bring this allegory in place.' Each mom represents a covenant that was made on a mountain, right?
So, so let's talk about those two covenants." He says in verse twenty four.
Now this may be interpreted or understood allegorically. These two women are two covenants. All right. What are the two covenants? One is from Mount Sinai, and the other doesn't show up till verse twenty six.
The other is from Jerusalem. Right, so it it one is a mountain and the other is a city, and so what are these two, uh, two two covenants and and these two locations? We have the location of Mount Sinai, and we have the location of Jerusalem. Jerusalem is a city that was built on on a mountain. And and so, what are these two cities, or these two mountains, or these two locations?
All right. So he explains that that the first one, Mount Sinai, is a place where God made a covenant. And if you follow that covenant, if you follow, if you embrace that mountain, it bears children for slavery. She is Hagar. In other words, Hagar represents this mountain.
Now Hagar in verse twenty five is Mount Sinai in Arabia. She corresponds to present Jerusalem, for she is in slavery with her children. In other words, Paul saying, "I am going to go all the way back to what the law said. I am going to take you all the way back to what is written, and and our father Abraham had two sons." One of a bond woman and one of a free woman, and the Judaizers are going to say, "I'm so glad you brought that up, Paul, because we are actually the children of which mom? Where are we physically descendant?
Descendants? Are we physically in our physical lineage? Are we descendants from Hagar, or are we descendants from Sarah?" And Paul is going to look at them, and he says, "Going to say to them, physically, you're the descendants of Sarah. You come physically from the right mom, but spiritually, you are actually spiritually the sons of the wrong mom, because you have married yourself to the covenant that she represents." And even though you are in the right city, Jerusalem, it's not the Jerusalem from above. It's the Jerusalem that has bound itself to Moses.
When Messiah came to Jerusalem, and presented himself at the temple, you rejected him. When Messiah, the true Son of Isaac, showed up and taught you in the Sermon on the Mount that He was greater than Moses, you rejected Him. When He said to you, "You need a righteousness that is greater than than Moses and greater than the Pharisees," you mocked Him. And he, when he demanded your allegiance, you crucified him.
So, which mom do do your actions, do the works of your life show you to be? And the answer is, you have married yourself to the wrong mom, and you are in bondage. You are in bondage to your flesh. You are in bondage to the law, and the works of the law are never sufficient to bring justification. Paul said in Romans.
By the works of the law shall no flesh be justified. No human will be justified by the works of the law. And you've married yourself to that mom. And so the Jerusalem from which these Judaizers are coming is filled up with religious teachers who are zealous for righteousness, but they're going around, as Paul said in Romans ten, to establish their own righteousness, and they have they have refused to submit to the right. Righteousness of God that He provided in Christ, and so He's making this argument that that on the surface can be really, really complex, but but He's He's very skillfully helping the reader understand.
Even though the people that are coming to talk to you are from Jerusalem and they're descended from Sarah and Isaac, that's not actually who their spiritual identity is. They are not true sons of Abraham. They are physical sons of Abraham, but their spiritual mother is Hagar, and the covenant they are embracing is the one God gave to Moses, not the one God made through Messiah. And so that's what's happening here, right in. Verse twenty six, you you have this incredible contrast.
He says, "But there is another Jerusalem, a Jerusalem from above, and that Jerusalem is free, and she is our mother." Because from that Jerusalem is Jesus, right? 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.
So that's kind of an odd thing, right? He's actually saying, "Look." Even, even though you you come from the right mother physically, you got to remember that that mother was barren. She was unable to have children, and that's why Hagar came on the scene. Hagar was not barren; she was fertile. And and Abraham conceived, and you're looking at Moses and saying, "Look at all of the disciples of Moses.
Here is an entire nation, an an entire nation, of of of Moses and and that covenant." And I'm looking at Messiah, and he's got twelve ragtag disciples. And and and and you know he's barren, and and Paul Paul says, wait a minute, let me just remind you that that Sarah, God told Sarah that her line, her descendants would be more numerous than the sands of the sea, and that's exactly what's starting to happen everywhere that Paul went. Gentiles were being converted, and the Jews who initially would give him a hearing became incensed by this. They were they. were jealous of the success because they weren't having that kind of success in their cities, and so Paul is actually laying down this incredible dichotomy: these people who have come in your midst.
May physically come from the right father and mother, but spiritually from the wrong mother, and they are actually leading you back into slavery that Messiah delivered you from. Messiah delivered you from the law. They're trying to get you to come back to. And if you actually took time to read the law, if you actually listened to Moses, Moses would be saying, "Don't listen to them." You stay with Jesus. My whole point in writing the law was to point you to Him.
So don't come back to me. Stay over there. If you listen to Moses, that's what he would be telling you. If you listen to Moses' disciples, they want to bring you back to the bondage, and so that's that's what's going on. And we'll we'll finish the section here in a moment.
But I want to give you an opportunity to kind of add into that.
Well, I just love how the scriptures use the father and the mother language. And I love how you have. This isn't unique to Paul in this specific passage. I mean, in Thessalonians, he said to the church there, he says, "I was like a father to you, I was like a mother to you, a nurturing mother, you know, a a caring father." And here you have Jews who technically, biologically, were descendants of Abraham, sons of Abraham, and sons and daughters of. Sarah.
Yet they were living anything but that, and they were out actually outside of that. They were they were not you know as as he talked about in chapter three. They weren't true sons and heirs of Abraham. Jesus, John the Baptist, when he came on the scene. He said, "We we have our father Abraham." Jesus, John the Baptist confronted them.
He said, "You're not you're not like that. You're not the true sons of Abraham." And Jesus, in John eight, he says to the Pharisees, the religious leaders, "You're of your father the devil. You're deceiving like he did. He's been a deceiver from the beginning." And so this is really these these analogies are very important, Doctor Horn, because at the end of the day. We are, and this goes back to what He talked about—adoption through Christ, born of a woman, born under the law in the fullness of time, who adopted us, redeemed those from the curse, and adopted us as sons and daughters.
So we come into an amazing state of being. Even though we're not Jewish ethnically, we have—we have the because of the blood of Christ, we're in the bloodline of Abraham and of Sarah. And so, these these Judaizers, when they read this, they had to be aghast. Paul's got them pinned to the wall. There's no way around it.
You're either of faith, or you're of law. You're either in freedom, or you're in bondage. You're either an heir of the promise, or you are in the in the lineage. Of slavery, which ultimately leads to death, and so I just I just hope hope our our our teachers make sure they they lean into this because yeah I I agree not to be overly practical but Christians are to be constantly fathering and mothering. The next generation, a progeny of godly seed, and they may not even be your own.
Maybe you didn't, couldn't have kids. Let me tell you, I know people that don't have biological kids that have a ton of spiritual kids. Yeah, in fact, I'm a kid to some of those people. You are too, Doctor Horn. They they they father you, they love you, and you consider that you're closer to them than you are to biological family because through the Spirit and through life in Christ and through this this beautiful thing of adoption.
We have a whole new family, and but the Judaizers missed all of that. And Paul is saying to the Galatians, "Look at this. This is this. I can't be more graphic. You you can't you can't have it both ways." It's it's either Mother Sarah or Mother Hagar.
Yeah, and let me give you pick your lane. Pick your lane. Yeah, well, let me give you a text that I think our leaders need to be aware of, and I would I would put this text right next to this passage. It's in the Book of Romans, chapter two. And and Paul Paul makes a really important point because what's happening in Galatia is there are Judaizers who are coming to these Gentiles and saying to them, in essence, look, if you really want God's favor, you've got to become a Jew.
You've got to be circumcised. You've got to come under Moses. You've got to become a Jew. I'm so glad that Paul came to you with the words about Jesus, and that's great. But but you really need to become a full orb disciple of Moses.
You you've got to come back under the law that you've never been under. But but that's really the next step for you. You've got to become a disciple of Moses. Happy to have you keep loving Jesus, but you got to become a disciple. Of Moses, and because in order to be righteous, you've got to be a true Jew.
And in Romans chapter two, Paul says this: No one is a Jew who is merely one outwardly. Nor is circumcision outward and physical, but a Jew, a true Jew, is one inwardly, and circumcision is a matter of the heart, by the Spirit, not by the letter. His praise is not from man, but from God. Right. So, so in essence, not everybody who is a physical Jew is a true Jew.
In in other words, this is this is what Paul was saying in Romans nine. Not every son of Abraham is an is a true son of Abraham. Not every physical son of Abraham is a true son, a promise. Not everyone who is a physical descendant of Abraham is is a true son of God. In order to be a true Jew, you have to be one inwardly, and in order to be one inwardly, there has to be a supernatural thing that happened in your heart.
And that happened to you. This is the the final thing that we see in the text in verses twenty eight through thirty one. Paul says, based on what happened in your heart, you need to recognize your mother and defend your brother. That that's what's happening here.
Now that you know what's really going on. And now that you see these two mothers and these two covenants and these two locations, and you now know the identity, the spiritual identity, and the spiritual status of the Judaizers, they have the wrong mother, and they are—they're not free. They're actually enslaved to the law. They're in bondage.
Now that you know that, you need to identify yourself. You need to recognize that you are not a son or a daughter of Hagar. Your mother is actually Sarah. Your your father is Isaac.
Now look at verse twenty-eight.
Now you brothers, like Isaac, are the children of promise. You didn't come into existence spiritually by human effort, like like like Ishmael did. You came into existence through divine intervention and supernatural birth, just at the time. But just at that time, he who was born according to the flesh persecuted him; was born according to spirit.
So also it is now. And so go back to the story that Moses told you, and Moses wrote down for you. Paul says, if you go back, the same thing is happening now to the sons of Sarah, you, and to the sons of Ishmael, the Judaizers. That was happening to the physical son of Hagar and the physical son of Sarah. One was persecuting the other.
One was trying to damage the other. One was trying to displace the other, and Ishmael was the one who was trying to displace the other, Isaac. And that's happening right now. The Judaizers are coming, and they are trying to displace your spiritual mother. They are trying to remove your spiritual brothers and bring them into bondage.
And so, verse thirty says, "What does the Scripture say? What does God tell you to do about this?" And this is the really strong part of the text, right? The scripture says, "Cast out the slave woman and her son, for the son of the slave woman will not inherit with the son of the free woman." And brothers, we are not children of the slave, but of the free woman. In other words, you've got to do what God told Abraham and Sarah to do. You've got to cast out these Judaizers.
You've got to remove them from your midst. You can't give them place because they are not going to inherit the kingdom of God with you. Unless they leave Moses and come to Messiah, they are never going to inherit the promise that God gave to Abraham. Even though they are his physical descendants through the physical son Isaac, they are not true Jews. They are not spiritual sons of God.
They are not true sons of Abraham. They are not children of the promise. They will not inherit spiritually. They've identified with the wrong mother, and they are in bondage in. If you don't cast them out, they're going to enslave you, and they already are.
So you've got to identify your mother and protect your brother. You've got to cast out these Judaizers. The word "cast out" is a very strong word. It's not a gentle term. It's the idea of hurling them out.
You've got to remove them from your midst. You've got to shut the door on them. And if you don't do that, you are going to return to a bondage that is going to destroy you. And you know, Stu, that's happening all over. You know, these young families, these young people that are so enamored with Rome.
Paul would say to them, "Go and read what I wrote in Romans, and when you get done, really understanding what I read in Romans, cast out that system." Give it no place in your thinking. Give it no place in your mind. It doesn't matter what church father you googled, or what little real you you happen to read or or observe, or what little you know, little internet instructor you found that's trying to convince you that that you know the authority of Scripture is not.
Sola Scriptura. It's it's way beyond that, and and you get caught up in all of these things. And Paul says, "Cast all of that out. Don't give it a place. Don't listen to the argument of the Judaizer." Right?
That's what he's saying here to the Galatians. You got to anchor yourself to the gospel. You got to anchor yourself to what I taught you, and give no place to these dutyizers and to their bewitching, compelling arguments. Because if you give place to that, you're going to go back, and that's exactly what happens. Instead of giving place to Paul in Romans.
People are are so interested in figuring out.
Well, I wonder what all the church fathers had to say about this. I wonder what Augustine had to say about this. I wonder what Cyprian had to say about this. I certainly want to know, you know, what what other religious teachers are saying. I don't want to just listen to Paul.
I want to be objective. I want to get all the facts, and then I'm going to make my decision.
So I, I've got this evangelical priest who's who's trying to convince me that we're really not that far away from Paul, and that Paul actually would have agreed with us. And so now I'm starting to listen to all of this, and and and Paul would look at you and say to you. You need to cast all of that out. You need to hurl that out of your life. Give it no place, because if you give it place, sooner or later you're going to end up back in Rome under a system that's going to bring you into bondage.
And and that's why this passage is so piercing. That's why it's so powerful.
So I'm really encouraging our leaders to get really straight with their audience about this. That you can't give place for a moment to Roman Catholicism or Greek Orthodoxy or Mormonism, or or Jehovah's Witness theology. They're going to lead you right into bondage. Paul is telling you up front. They are from the wrong mother.
They represent the wrong system, and if you give them play, sooner or later you are going to go there. You've got to do what what God told Abraham to do, and remember how hard it was for Abraham. This was not easy. Abraham begged God for for Hagar and and for Ishmael, and God said, "No, I am going to take care of them, but you've got to cast them out." There can't be any location in inside your household for them. There is no room for them.
And there can't be any entertaining in our minds about the legitimacy of Roman Catholicism and its theology of salvation. There can't be any any toleration in in our in our lives or in our minds or in our hearts for the theology of salvation advanced by Greek Orthodoxy or Mormonism or or any other system that is going to lead us into bondage or into somehow we have to partner up and and contribute our good works or our. Baptism, in order to be, or our church membership, in order to be saved, Paul says, don't give that any room. No matter how good it feels, no how, no matter how ancient it feels, no matter how reverent it feels when you walk in there, no matter how otherworldly it makes you feel, no matter how awesome you might feel about taking the Eucharist, don't give it any place in your heart, in your mind, in your life. Cast it out.
Yeah, we're not talking about styles of worship. We're not talking about you know building or decorum or pastels or whatnot inside the inside the building. We're talking about doctrine. Doctrine is is God's truth. Yeah, we're talking about primary doctrine, right?
Not even secondary doctrine. We're talking about how God makes a man righteous. And the identity of Christ in that, you know, and and you, if you, if you are wrong on that, the eternal consequences are you are anathema. Wow. In that verse in Proverbs fourteen, there's a way that seems right to a man; that seems right to a man, but the end of that way is the way of death.
Yeah, you know, you're not anathema if you're a Baptist versus being a Presbyterian. You're not anathema if you're a Methodist versus a Baptist. You're just wrong. One of you's wrong, right? Or there's there's differences, but you are anathema if you embrace Roman Catholic soteriology.
You're you're an anathema. Yeah.
Well, even within the Baptist the And the Methodist, sadly, there have been some some some sad digressions away from the actual truth, and from the you know definition of men and women, definition of marriage and gender, and even it's it's it's bled into the salvation issue.
So you got to really look at it, and you got to be careful because the Galatian church was a sound doctrine church. And what happened? The Judaizers came in with all of this stuff. They came in with the bondage. They came in with the.
They came in with the son of, of, of Hagar. They came in with the Ishmaelite theology. They came in with, with basically the law taking them back. Into legalism and into bondage, and so it's got to be dealt with radically. I mean, I when I hear "cast out," it's so important, you know, Dr.
Horn, that we we take this and we deal with it, and that we don't tolerate it.
Now we want to. Evangelize those people. We want to lead them to Christ. We want to give them the gospel. We do not ever, ever, ever want to countenance say, "Oh, we're all one.
We're Catholics and Protestants together." Well, no. As long as the Council of Trent, the Catholic Bible, says that those who believe by salvation by faith alone are anathema, we cannot call them a Christian denomination. It doesn't mean that there aren't. Catholics within that that are born again, but it's not because of their church. It's it's in spite of their church, and the same thing is true of some of the other groups you mentioned.
And so, but but we got to make it ever clear that this is about freedom. This is about grace. This is about what Christ paid for on that cross, and we do not want to trample that underfoot. We do not want to denigrate His perfect work and start to put our works in there.
Well, I did a little bit.
Well, you know, God helps those who help themselves.
Well, I gotta, I gotta, man, I gotta, I gotta really do hard to make God like me. No, God smiles on you because He smiled on His Son, and you are in Christ. You are adopted in. Christ, verse, chapter four, verse four, five, and six. Go back and read that.
He's deposited spirit in you. You didn't earn that. You didn't achieve it, and you're not achieving it now. That's right. Living by faith.
In the son of the just, the justified ones shall live by faith.
Okay. And so this is, and this is the this allegory is it really? I believe is just driving that home, Doctor Horn. And but we got to cast out the stuff, anything that conflates or Convoludes or corrupts that doctrine of pure grace of Christ. We got to cast it out.
Yeah, that's right. And we and we got to cast out the bondwoman and live free. I hear people say, "Well, there are good Christians in Roman Catholic churches. There are genuinely say people in Roman Catholic churches, as though, okay, that makes it okay to be a Roman Catholic." Well, there are genuinely lost people in Baptist churches. Right.
So, what do you tell a lost person in a Baptist church? You say you need to get saved. You know, what do you tell a saved person in a Catholic church that knows that their church teaches a damnable error? You tell them, you tell them, get out. Right, you you don't you don't say, oh, there are actually saved people in Roman Catholic churches.
Of course, there are. God saves people independent of their church affiliation. Of course, there are saved people in Catholic churches. But but a saved a genuinely born again person in a Catholic church who who really is growing in the knowledge of Christ and in the knowledge of truth and they they start really digging down into what the scriptures actually say, if they actually do that they're not going to stay Roman Catholic. Right, that's exactly right.
Even you also don't stay. You also don't stay. In that, or even in a in a dead Protestant church that doesn't preach the gospel, to say, "Well, I want to reach these people. Who else is going to reach them?" That's right. You're not there.
You don't go to church to reach people. You go to church to be built up to be sent out to reach people. That's right. And to use your gifts and to be under the leadership of a godly shepherd who's not trying to corrupt you, but is but is trying to build you up. And hey, Doc, I just want to share.
Just the Lord put this on my heart as we're talking. I know we got to wrap it up. You got to pray us out of here. I love this closing verse. You know, we're not of the bond, a bondage.
We are free. I just love that, and I just hope everyone listens. We'll make sure you are free. Make sure you are not a slave. Make sure you're not going back into the system of slavery.
But I love the when it says cast out the bondwoman. We got to have nothing to do with that. We have to put it away from us. I love what Jesus said. He said, "He who comes to me, I will know why is cast out." And this is the the this is a call to come into freedom, yeah, and to walk in freedom.
And I hope that we will call people to the gospel, to the freedom of the gospel. We got a lot of believers walking around in bondage. They're living a they're the they're living in a law paradigm as opposed to living in. Freedom, and it's a daily, it's a daily being crucified with Christ. It's daily living out two twenty, living by faith in the Son of God who loves me and gave Himself for me.
Yeah, no, that's right.
Well, let me pray for us here, Lord. Thank you that you have given us such a wonderful chapter in our Bibles, and we are so grateful that. Through through no work or effort on our own, because of your kindness to us, we are of the right mother. We have been born again. We are children of the right covenant.
We are citizens of the Jerusalem that is from above. Help us never ever to take that for granted. Help us to rejoice in that. Help us to guard that. Help us to protect that.
And Lord, as hard as it is when when there are systems or even religious ones that are widely known and in many ways line up with our social stands and. And have people who are nice at their heads, and but they're they're leading people into eternal bondage because of a a works based salvation. Help us to be bold. Help us to be willing to stand up and say we've got to cast that system out. Lord, help us to do that graciously.
Help us to do that in the power of your Spirit, not in the anger of our flesh. But Lord, help us to do it. We pray that you would give our leaders understanding and strengthen this, Lord. This is a wonderful passage, but Paul brings everything to a head here, and he calls for a definitive response: cast out these Judaizers. And Lord, in our day, we've got to do that, and so help us.
We pray in Jesus' name, Amen. Thank you, Doctor Horn, and thank you for joining us for this Wednesday in the Word podcast. Learn more at Wed in the Word. Word. dot com.
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Proverbs thirty, verse five.
