Born Again Free By Grace
Galatians 4:21-31
INTRODUCTION:
There is a delightful children's book by P. D. Eastman entitled Are
You My Mother? It is about a little bird which hatches from an egg while his
mother is out getting food. He leaves the nest to find his mom, and as he
searches, he learns that a kitten, hen, dog, cow, boat, plane and steam shovel
are not his mother. His mother, as you might expect, is a bird, which he
discovers by the end of the book. Now, most of us are not confused about who
our physical mother is, but today we are going to talk about an even more
important question: Who is your spiritual mother?
THESIS: We
must not think that keeping the law brings about regeneration.
TEXT:
Paul changes his line of argument again. He moves from a personal appeal to an allegorical one.
Allegory is similar to metaphor, but is usually more elaborate and extended. In an allegorical narrative, each character (or, sometimes, object) has both a literal meaning and a consistent metaphorical meaning, and the story proceeds on two levels at once. Thus, in C.S. Lewis’ The Loin, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, Ashlan, a mighty lion who is killed by evil forces and rises again, is a symbol of Jesus Christ and his work on the cross.
our mother. As citizens of the heavenly
Genesis 21:9 Now Sarah saw the son of Hagar the Egyptian, whom she had borne to Abraham, mocking.
First, like Isaac, the Christian has been brought to
life by a supernatural birth.
·
Genesis 17:17
Then Abraham fell on his face and laughed, and said in his heart,
"Will a child be born to a man one hundred years old? And will Sarah, who
is ninety years old, bear a child?"
[
· It was anything but natural for such a birth to take place, Isaac means “laughter” because Sarah was dumbstruck by God’s announcement.
· The Scriptures make it clear that our salvation, our new birth in Christ is entirely a supernatural work of the Holy Spirit.
·
Ezekiel
·
2 Cor.
·
Ephes.
·
John 3:5 Jesus answered, "Truly,
truly, I say to you, unless one is born of water and the Spirit, he cannot
enter into the
· Water a symbol of purification by the Spirit.
·
A flippant youth asked a preacher, “You say that unsaved people carry a weight of sin. I feel nothing. How heavy is sin? Is it ten pounds? Eighty pounds?” The preacher replied by asking the youth, “If you laid a four-hundred-pound weight on a corpse, would it feel the load?” The youth replied, “It would feel nothing, because it is dead.” The preacher concluded, “That spirit, too, is indeed dead which feels no load of sin or is indifferent to its burden and flippant about its presence.” The youth was silenced!
APPLICATION: You must be born again! You can not look to law keeping or ceremonies steeped in formalism to bring you into new life. Only God can raise the dead in trespasses and sins.
SECONDLY, we must expect that the persecution and mocking of the Children of Promise will continue.
·
There
was strife between Isaac and Ishmael – Ishmael mocked Isaac as a precursor to
the enmity between the Jewish and the Arab nations which continues to this day.
·
Genesis 21:8-9 And the child grew and was
weaned, and Abraham made a great feast on the day that Isaac was weaned. 9Now Sarah saw the son of Hagar
the Egyptian, whom she had borne to Abraham, mocking.
·
Mark
13:9 "But be on your guard; for
they will deliver you to the courts, and you will be flogged in the synagogues,
and you will stand before governors and kings for My sake, as a testimony to
them. “ [
·
Persecution
continues against those who are Christ’s followers today…Sometimes in its most
harsh and crude state…Sometimes in less obvious ways.
· C. S. Lewis's description of how the greatest evil is done not in sordid dens of crime, or even in concentration camps. "In those we see its final result," Lewis notes. "But it is conceived and ordered . . . in clean . . . warmed and well-lighted offices, by quiet men with white collars . . . who do not need to raise their voices."
·
Tension
exists as Christians seek to see culture transformed
·
A
price to be paid in being faithful.
·
Theodore Beza, made a famous retort to King
Henry “Sire, it is truly the lot of the
APPLICATION: Are you prepared to confront this mixed up
culture with the truth…family…friends…co-workers…etc? We must confront the culture…We must be
prepared for persecution…
THIRDLY, We like Abraham must be prepared to take painful measures to keep the family of God true to the Truth
·
Genesis
· This MUST have been an agonizing and grievous action. Yet, Abraham obeyed God in order that the line of promise would remain pure.
· God calls us to purity! God calls us to separation! God calls us to be different from the world! God calls the church to hold us accountable for our witness.
· This is especially true of preserving the truth Gospel of Grace…
They tell the story of a mountain climber, who desperate to conquerthe A-con-cag-ua, initiated his climb after years of preparation. But he wanted the glory to himself; therefore, he went up alone. He started climbing and it was becoming later, and later. He did not prepare for camping but decided to keep on going. Soon it got dark... Night fell with heaviness at a very high altitude. Visibility was zero. As he was climbing a ridge at about 100 meters from the top, he slipped and fell. Falling rapidly he could only see
blotches of darkness that passed. But then he felt a jolt that almost tore him in half, IT WAS THE ROPE THAT HE HAD TIED AROUND HIS WAIST. There he was dangling in the darkness. He called out to God in the bitter cold! A voice said “Cut the rope.” The man just held tighter to the rope. The rescue team says that the next day they
found, a frozen mountain climber hanging strongly to a rope...TWO FEET ABOVE
THE GROUND!!!
APPLIATION: What are you trusting in? Your efforts? Your law keeping? Your wits, strength, beauty, connections??? We live by God’s grace alone…
We must not think that keeping the
law brings about regeneration.