Abraham had two sons: Ishmael and Isaac. They were both sons of Abraham, but there was an enormous difference in how they came to be born!
Do you remember the promise God made to Abraham? God told Abraham that he would be the father of a nation with as many people as the stars in the heavens. But Abraham was getting old. Even more, Sarah, in their own words, was dried up and well past childbearing years.
So what do Abraham and Sarah then begin to believe and do? They think God won’t live up to His promise, that He’s all talk and no action. How can Abraham be the father of a mighty nation when, by all appearances, Sarah is barren?
So they act on their own, thinking God needs their help. Abraham and Sarah choose to sin. But they rationalize and excuse their sin because they say they are following God, doing His will.
So with Sarah’s encouragement, Abraham has sex with their house slave, Hagar. Hagar becomes pregnant and gives birth to a Son, Ishmael. And so Abraham and Sarah are proud. On their own, they think they have fulfilled God’s promise. They did what God could not.
But Abraham and Sarah were wrong. They didn’t fulfill God’s promise. No, they sinned! Ishmael was born according to the flesh–not according to God’s promise!
Later–14 years later–God finally fulfills His promise to Abraham. In an age before Viagra and fertility drugs, when Abraham was 99 and Sarah 89, she gives birth. God was true to His Word. Sarah gives birth to a son, Isaac. Isaac is the son born according to God’s promise!
In our epistle reading, Paul uses the account of Abraham, Ishmael, and Isaac to show that not all the children of Abraham are the children of God. For Abraham had two types of children: those born of the promise, like Isaac, and those born without the promise, like Ishmael.
But then Paul gets allegorical. He says that Abraham’s two sons and the related events of their lives are symbolic. That means the historical events also contain other truths, not just the historical events. When Paul travels down this allegorical road, he isn’t saying that Abraham, Hagar, Sarah, Ishmael, and Isaac aren’t real historical figures. No, what Paul is saying is that Old Testament history teaches us something far greater than simply the historical facts.
So what are the greater truths we are to learn from the historical lives of Abraham, Hagar, and Sarah–of Abraham, Ishmael, and Isaac? For starters, the two women, Hagar and Sarah, represent the two covenants of God. Hagar, who was Abraham and Sarah’s slave, represents the Old Covenant of Mount Sinai. Yes, Hagar gave birth to Ishmael, but he did not become an heir of Abraham but remained a slave. So allegorically, the slave Hagar, Mt. Sinai, the Law, gave birth to a people who remained enslaved to the Law.
For no freedom exists under the Law. That’s because the Law always demands, always calls for more, and always accuses when you fail to live up to is expectations. The Law cannot save because we can never fully meet its demands. The Law shows us the unrelenting perfection that God demands, but it doesn’t provide that holiness or give it to us. The Law diagnoses the disease of sin but provides no cure. So if you want to make yourself right with God through the Law, you remain a slave.
But then Paul links Hagar with Jerusalem. That’s strange, for Jerusalem was where the Temple was. Jerusalem was where God poured out His forgiveness to His people through the sacrifices at the Temple. So, Jerusalem should’ve been where God freed His people from their failure to keep His Law. Yet, Paul doesn’t say that. He says that Hagar represented Jerusalem–and Jerusalem represented enslavement. Why?
Here’s why. Those rituals and sacrifices that God gave to His people, through which He would bring them His forgiveness, got all twisted around. Those rituals, which even pointed His people forward to the Messiah, got all turned around. The Jews had turned those God-given rituals into deeds that focused on what they did–and not on what God did through those rituals.
So, instead of being all about God and His forgiveness, those Old Testament rituals got all twisted around and focused, instead, on what the people were doing. That’s why Hagar, the slave, not Sarah, represented Jerusalem. That’s why Jerusalem brought slavery and condemnation, instead of freedom and deliverance.
All right, I see where God’s people messed under the Old Covenant. But what does that have to do with us who live in under the New Covenant? Well, would you believe this twisting around of what God has given His people is happening today?
Think of the New Testament rituals that God gave to bring us His forgiveness. That’s what Baptism is. Baptism is for the forgiveness of sins. That’s what the New Testament teaches (Acts 2:38-39). Yet, for many, baptism is no longer a way that God brings people His forgiveness but, instead, has become something that focuses on what the Christian does. It’s twisted all around and backwards.
It’s the same with the Lord’s Supper. Jesus replaced the Old Testament sacrifices with His Supper to give us His body and blood for the forgiveness of sins. That’s what Jesus says. He says, “This cup is the New Covenant in my blood, which is shed for you for the forgiveness of sins.” But sadly, for many, the Lord’s Supper now focuses on what the Christian does. It’s twisted all around and backwards.
Do you now see how many have turned God’s forgiving ways into something that focuses on what they do? Today, God’s own people are committing the same sin and error that eventually caused His Old Testament people even to reject Jesus!
Yet, praise God that Paul also speaks of Sarah. Sarah represented a different Jerusalem, a Jerusalem set free from the Law. Sarah represented the New Covenant, the New Testament Church. In this New Covenant–where it hasn’t been all twisted and turned around–children are born according to God’s promise. For those in the New Testament Church are not born in a natural way. They are born by a miracle, just like Sarah’s son, Isaac.
It is as Jesus told Nicodemus. “Unless one is born of water and Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God” (John 3:5). Through the Church, we are born from above, through baptism, by water and Spirit. We are born–not into slavery, according to the flesh–but into freedom by grace, according to the promise.
In the New Covenant, God nourishes His people with His Word, the Word that gives us forgiveness and salvation. We feast on the body and blood of Jesus Christ for life and salvation. Those born of the promise are in God’s family, by His grace, through the gifts that He gives through His Church.
Yes, we are God’s children by His promise, not by physical birth, not by the mere choice of man, not by anything we do, but by the promise. The Gospel promise of forgiveness and salvation makes us children of God. Christ made us free by bearing the curse and carrying the burden for us. He made us fit us for eternal life.
That’s why we don’t have to try to earn our salvation through the enslaving Law. That’s why the rituals God gave to His New Testament Church bring us His forgiveness. They are God’s ways to forgive, not rituals that focus on what we do.
Of course, we still strive to live by God’s Commandments, but we do so with a free and cheerful heart. We don’t follow God’s Law to earn His favor, but do so because the new self given us in our baptism strives not to sin.
You were born into this world as a child of Hagar, enslaved by the Law, knowing nothing of God’s mercy and grace. But the Lord doesn’t leave you to languish in such slavery. He comes in the flesh to save and rescue you, to do for you what you could not do for yourself.
To give you this new birth, God’s Son climbed the mountain of the Law. There, He bore His cross to save you from sin and death. And so today, Jesus gives you that salvation through His Bride, the Church, from her womb of baptism and at her table of the Lord’s Supper.
And Jesus will raise you up on the Last Day. So rejoice, children of Sarah. You are not the children of Hagar, slaves of the Law, but free children in Jesus. For the Lord has rescued you from the enslaving Law and brought you into the one, true faith, which clings to His grace. Amen.
