“And Sarah saw the son of Hagar the Egyptian, whom she had borne to Abraham, scoffing. Therefore she said to Abraham, ‘Cast out this bondwoman and her son; for the son of this bondwoman shall not be heir with my son, namely with Isaac.’ And the matter was very displeasing in Abraham’s sight because of his son. But God said to Abraham, ‘Do not let it be displeasing in your sight because of the lad or because of your bondwoman. Whatever Sarah has said to you, listen to her voice; for in Isaac your seed shall be called’” (Genesis 21:9-12).
Ishmael was fourteen years older than Isaac and, therefore as he started mocking Isaac, it displeased Sarah and realised that Ishmael might demand Isaac’s inheritance. Ishmael is the illegitimate child; therefore he has no claims of the inheritance since there is the legitimate child. Sarah, in order for her to avoid the squabbles at a later stage, she chased Ishmael and Hagar his mother. Abraham was enraged by this saying of Sarah to chase them out because Ishmael was his biological son. Nonetheless, what Sarah said here was in line with the heart of God, and as Abraham was displeased, the Lord came to Abraham and told him that Sarah was right.
Now because Abraham had a connection to Hagar through Ishmael, he could not see what Sarah saw. Above all, Hagar and Ishmael could not show the disrespects they had on Isaac and Sarah in front of Abraham. This is the reason why Abraham felt as if Sarah was being unfair to chase them out. The Holy Spirit through this is talking to us, ensuring us that our inheritance is safely ours. The children of slaveries which are the unbelievers cannot be co-heirs with us.
Paul said, “The promise that he would be the heir of the world was not to Abraham or to his seed through the law, but through the righteousness of faith” (Romans 4:3). The unbelievers cannot inherit this promise because it is obtainable through the righteousness of faith. Keeping the Ten Commandments won’t make us be heirs; neither did Abraham become heir because of them. What makes us to be heirs of the kingdom of heaven is the faith of Christ. I have severally mentioned that we need to confess that ‘We are the righteousness of God in Christ,’ through this we remind ourselves of our position.
Again look at what Paul said, “Therefore you are no longer a slave but a son, and if a son, then an heir of God through Christ” (Galatians 4:7). Clear! We are heirs of God through Christ. Paul is urging these Galatians to stop boasting on their natural intelligence because they are now heirs of God through Christ. The Holy Spirit in all this wants us to be cognisant or to be in full knowledge of His wisdom. The unbelievers cannot inherit what is ours and made this in an allegoric manner using Isaac and Ishmael.
Pay attention to what the bible says here, “Then Sarai, Abram’s wife, took Hagar her maid, the Egyptian, and gave to her husband Abram to be his wife, after Abram had dwelt ten years in the land of Canaan” (Genesis 16:3). There are details that I want us to pay attention to. First of all, I want us to pay attention to the word Egypt, where Hagar originated. The word Egypt in Hebrew is Mitsrȋy (מִצְרִי) meaning to limit. The Holy Spirit here put out every detail vividly that we may understand the position of Hagar.
Hagar is not just the bondwoman because she is a maid, but because of where she comes from. Egypt means slavery. When the children of God were in Egypt, they were in slavery and that happened for 450 years. However, we know that the slavery began 234 years later in Egypt. But because they were the children of Abraham, the appointed nation, in Egypt they were in slavery. I say Egypt means slavery because if you are limited, you are not free. Meaning, you are not free to move, you are not free to explore, you are not free to dream, you are always limited because you are conscious of the limited resources.
However, in the land overflowing with milk and honey, there are no frontiers. The sky is the limit in Jesus Christ. We are able to dream big, to explore everything and to move the way we want. However, the bible says of us, “But if you are without chastening, of which all have become partakers, then you are illegitimate and not sons” (Hebrews 12:8). For the fact that we are free to move and think or do whatever we want, does not mean we are without chastening. We are actually disciplined children through the grace of God because we are legitimate sons.
The bible also in detailing the situation of Abraham, it outlined the fact that he dwelt in Canaan ten years. The word Canaan means humiliated. In essence, Abraham dwelt ten years in humiliation and that led him to resort in falling back to his efforts, that is being under the law. Ten is the number of the law, so for being under the law after you known the grace of God leads to humiliation. We learnt that Abraham was patient enough to wait upon the Word of God but his wife Sarah felt it was taking forever and suggested that Abraham should go in to Hagar. This was not the solution but added upon the problem which already was in the house.
This is where the ideology of this gospel of the grace of God becomes profound that the son of the bondwoman cannot be heir with the son of a freewoman. This is stipulated further in the bible in the book of Galatians where Paul was reprimanding the believers who had a mixture of the gospels. This is, they fell back to their efforts rather than being in the faith of Christ through the righteousness of faith. He said, “Tell me, you who desire to be under the law, do you not hear the law? For it is written that Abraham had two sons: the one by a bondwoman, the other by a freewoman” (Galatians 4:21-22).
When the children of Israel came out of Egypt, they were brought by Lord into the law. The law for us who are born of God is what shaped us to understand God’s holiness and to understand how much we need a Saviour who is our Lord Jesus Christ. The law made it easy for us to acknowledge the perfect way of Christ that we don’t need anything else but Jesus Christ our Saviour. Therefore, I do not desire to be under the law because I know that the law is the picture of slavery.
The bible says, “But he who was born according to the flesh, and he of the freewoman through promise, which things are the two covenants: the one from Mount Sinai which gives birth to bondage, which is Hagar-- for this Hagar is Mount Sinai in Arabia, corresponds to Jerusalem which now is, and is in bondage with her children-- but the Jerusalem above is free” (Galatians 4:23-25). On Mount Sinai it is where the law was formulated by the Lord and gave it to Moses and that led to bondage among the children of Israel.
When Paul wrote this, between 50-55 AD, Jerusalem was still in bondage of the law. Of course, the gospel of grace was already being preached in Jerusalem then but it was in its infancy. As a result, the first letter to be written to the believers is believed to be in 62 AD, which is the book of James. Paul says that but the Jerusalem above is free, that denotes the upper room in Jerusalem. In the upper room it is where the first believers were baptised in the Holy Spirit for the first time, it is actually the time when the new covenant commenced.
John wrote, “For the law was given through Moses, but grace and truth came through Jesus Christ” (John 1:17). Now pay attention! Let us read, “And behold, there was a man in Jerusalem whose name was Simeon, and this man was just and devout, waiting for the Consolation of Israel, and the Holy Spirit was upon him. And it had been revealed to him by the Holy Spirit that he would not see death before he had seen the Lord’s Christ. So he came by the Spirit into the temple. And when the parents brought in the Child Jesus, to do for Him according to the custom of the law, he took Him up in his arms blessed God and said: ‘Lord, now You are letting Your servant depart in peace, According to Your word; For my eyes have seen Your salvation” (Luke 2:25-30).
Simeon was a devout of the law, and here in this story is the picture of the law. It was said that he would have to see Jesus first before he could die and indeed it happened that way. The bible says that he said ‘my eyes have seen Your Yeshua’, obviously he was talking about Jesus and the Hebrew name of Jesus is Yeshua. John 1:17 says that grace and truth came through Jesus Christ (Yeshua Hamaschiah). Simeon is declaring his death immediately after seeing Jesus because grace and the law do not coexist.
In the same event, we find that after that Simeon blessed Jesus. For that reason, we also cannot hold both the gospel of the law and of grace thinking we will get the benefits of both covenants. We will lose the benefits of both. The law says, “Now it shall come to pass, if you diligently obey the voice of the Lord your God, to observe carefully all His commandments which I command you today, that the Lord your God will set you high above all nations of the earth. And all these blessings shall come upon you and overtake you, because you obey the voice of the Lord your God” (Deuteronomy 28:1-2).
In order for you to receive all the blessings under the law, you must keep all the commandments of the Lord God. James wrote, “For whoever shall keep the whole law, and yet stumble in one point, he is guilty of all. For He who said, ‘Do not commit adultery,’ also said, ‘Do not murder.’ Now if you do not commit adultery, but you do murder, you have become a transgressor of the law” (James 2:10-11). The law demands perfection from us. The law doesn’t understand ‘I do my level best.’ See the above verse what James said.
Having learnt that, you can fully understand what I meant when I said you will lose the benefits of both. If you want the blessings of the law, you need to be perfect in keeping it, and if you think you can try to keep the law, you cannot be under grace because part of you is focusing on self-efforts. Part of you wants to merit the holiness of God and not depending on God, and when that happens, you lose the benefits of grace.
Jesus said, “And no one puts new wine into old wineskins; or else the new wine bursts the wineskins, the wine is spilled, and wineskins are ruined. But new wine must be put into new wineskins” (Mark 2:22). I hope this is clear enough that the new wine (new covenant) cannot be put into old wineskins (old covenant), it will burst and the wine is spilled. You cannot mix grace and the law thinking that you will get the benefits of both covenants, you will lose both benefits.
Again Jesus said, “So then, because you are lukewarm, and neither cold nor hot, I will vomit you out of My mouth” (Revelation 3:16). This is the picture of someone who is trying also to keep the law, if it gets tough on the law, he claims to be under grace. Do not be on the middle ground, stand your ground. It is like the people who say they are on grace but they still keep the Ten Commandments for holiness. I have a serious problem with that because we have been set free by the cross from that.
James said of those people, “But let him ask in faith, with no doubting, for he who doubts is like a wave of the sea driven and tossed by the wind. For let not that man suppose that he will receive anything from the Lord; he is a double-minded man, unstable in all his ways” (James 1:6-8). How more can the Holy Spirit elaborate? If you believe on the Mount Sinai, remain on Mount Sinai. Don’t say you are on Mount Sinai and on Mount Zion because you are wasting your time.
Even Elijah needed clarity from the people when Jezebel, the wife of king Ahab had corrupted the people and turned them into worshipping idols, Baal and Ashera. He asked them that how long will they falter between two opinions, if the Lord is God, they must worship Him and if Baal is god then let them worship him. To be under grace means the total dependence on God and not on yourself or your intellects.
If you want to be heir of God, and you want to make Jesus your Lord and Saviour today, you have the chance. I would like you to pray with me, “Father, I thank You, for Your wonderful Son Jesus, who carried my burden, that I may escape death, He took my judgment, that I may not be judged, I thank You Father, that although I deserve nothing, in Jesus I received what I did not deserve to receive, now I safely say, that I am saved, and well protected, nothing will come on my way, to discourage me, for Jesus Christ, is my Lord, today, tomorrow and forever, Amen!”
The prayer that you just prayed has unlocked you a seat in heaven. Heaven is your home, and Jesus Christ is your Lord and when you die, you will be with the Father in heaven. At least, I believe that you made this prayer with all your heart and in faith.
Stay in health through grace and favour...
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