This marvelous thing.
As we come to the study of God’s Word, I want to remind you—and my own heart—of that principle of Bible study that is absolutely indispensable: total reliance upon God’s Holy Spirit.
Only God can reveal God. He delights to do it. He has promised that He would. He is far more desirous to show Himself than anyone in this room is to see Him. He has given us His Word, He has put His Holy Spirit in our hearts, and He desires to unveil Himself.
Before we look together in the Word, I want to share one Bible verse and then go to prayer. It is from the book of Acts—Acts 20.
Remember the story of Eutychus? Eutychus was that brother who was sitting on a windowsill, listening to the apostle Paul. Then, when Paul got about halfway through his message, he fell backward out the window, and he died. He fell down three stories, and he died.
Then the apostle Paul went down and, by the power of God, raised him from the dead so he could hear the rest of the message.
Now, that passage teaches many things. I do not think God recorded it to speak out against long-winded preachers, or about sluggards who fall asleep. But I think a great truth that we can glean from that passage is this: if I am to hear the full message, I need the miracle of resurrection.
And if you are to hear the full message of the Lord, you also need the miracle of resurrection. He wants to give us that very resurrection life this afternoon so that He can give us His full heart, His full message. So let us bow together and trust Him to do that for us. Then we will look together in His Word.
Our Heavenly Father, we thank You so much that You have not left us on our own as we come to the study of this precious Book, as we come to a theme as awesome as sonship.
You have put a Bible Teacher in our hearts: the very life of God, the Holy Spirit, who enables us to cry out, “Abba, Father.” How we bless Your name for that dear One, whose delight and ministry it is to shed light on our Lord Jesus, to take the veil away, and to show us Him.
Even this afternoon, we would ask You to do that for us. Quicken our hearts, we pray. Do for us what You once did for Lydia: open our hearts to be receptive to the Lord Jesus.
We thank You, Lord, that You are doing it now and that You are going to continue to do it. We give this little session over to You. We pray that You might manifest Yourself to our hearts, and then grace us to appropriate that revelation as You show Yourself.
We pray in the matchless name of our Lord Jesus. Amen.
Well, it is my privilege this weekend to have a part in this wonderful theme. As we have heard some of the brothers already, they are going to follow that glorious theme to its glorious end. From Ephesians 1, Romans 8, Galatians, and other portions, they will follow that theme until sonship is seen in its full blossom, its ultimate fruit, and its maturity.
Sonship is wonderful in all of its stages. But the end of it—who can take it in? That stage that the apostle Paul speaks of, where creation is groaning in expectation, waiting, longing, eagerly waiting for the revealing of the sons of God: the redemption of our bodies.
That stage is where our Lord Jesus will have His eternal purpose fulfilled and realized forever; where Christ will be manifest in His people, as Dana shared with us last night; and where that light will radiate through the New Jerusalem. Marvelous, marvelous theme, especially in its end.
But it is also wonderful in its beginning. It is my privilege to hold that before your heart and before my own heart. I would like to look at sonship in its earliest stage: at the beginning, right at the start of it, right when it begins.
I will leave the development of that great theme to these other brothers, who have so deeply drunk from the truth of God and from the presence of the Lord. I am going to go way, way back, and we are going to look at the most basic of all principles concerning sonship.
Even at the beginning, it is wonderful. It is wonderful at the end; even at the beginning, it is wonderful.
I have a dear Christian friend back in Newport, Rhode Island. God has done a wonderful work in his heart. This friend has severe limitations. We all have limitations, but this brother has severe limitations. Let us just say he is academically challenged.
One day he came to me and said, “Ed, will you pray for me?”
“What should I pray?”
He said, “Ask God to let me win the lottery.”
I said, “Did you buy a ticket?”
He said, “No. I would never do that.”
I said, “Then how do you think you can win the lottery?”
He said, “By a miracle. God can work a miracle.” That is his simple faith.
I said, “If you did win, how much would you win?”
He said, “I heard it on the radio: $130 million.”
I said, “Brother, what would you do with $130 million?” I will never forget his answer.
He said, “I would put it as a down payment on a trailer.”
This brother has a dream to have his own trailer. And I thought, $130 million—what must that trailer look like?
You know, we read of an inheritance. Our brother referred to it this morning in 1 Peter: imperishable, undefiled, and unfading, reserved in heaven for you. But we also read about a down payment, an earnest.
Listen, please, as I quote from Ephesians 1:13-14:
In Him, ye also, having heard the word of the truth, the gospel of your salvation—in whom, having also believed, ye were sealed with the Holy Spirit of promise,
which is an earnest of our inheritance, unto the redemption of God’s own possession, unto the praise of His glory.
That is more than hundreds of dollars and hundreds of millions of dollars. The Holy Spirit of God, the very life of God, is given to us to indwell us. We are blessed with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus.
And that is the down payment. That is not the inheritance. That is the foretaste. That is just the beginning, the earnest.
So, even though it falls to me to share some truths of sonship at the beginning—at the start, undeveloped, not in the full measure of sonship—I am not going to be standing with Brother Hail on that mountain and looking off into the future. My heart thrills, but my head spins.
I am glad that the brothers gave me liberty to trace this out and share what I can handle. I will tell you, even at the beginning, it will take your breath away. Even in its earliest stage, this wonderful truth is magnificent.
May God give us grace. I will be using Galatians 3 and 4 as my chief text, especially the allegory in Galatians 4:21-31.
The apostle Paul was speaking about sonship, and he thought of an illustration in the Old Testament that would help him communicate that truth. I would like to use his illustration. If Paul thought that illustration would help get the truth of sonship across, perhaps it will help us as well.
Since that illustration is drawn from the Old Testament, I will also be referring to the historical record in Genesis. I will give you time, I suppose, to turn to the passages; but because it covers so much ground, I think I will simply refer to the passages and tell it in my own words. I think you will get the flow as we look at it.
Now, if you will begin, please, in Galatians 3. I want to isolate Paul’s illustration.
Galatians 3:16 says:
Now to Abraham were the promises spoken, and to his seed. He saith not, And to seeds, as of many; but as of one, And to thy seed, which is Christ.
Then Galatians 3:29:
And if ye are Christ’s, then are ye Abraham’s seed, heirs according to promise.
Once again: Abraham. And then Galatians 4:21-22:
Tell me, ye that desire to be under the law, do ye not hear the law?
For it is written, that Abraham had two sons, one by the handmaid, and one by the freewoman.
I think that is enough to tell you that Paul’s illustration is Abraham. He is going to use the redemptive history of Abraham to put across the early stages of this wonderful theme: sonship.
His message seems to revolve around Galatians 4:22:
It is written, Abraham had two sons, one by the bondwoman, and one by the freewoman.
The story is about Abraham, his two wives—Sarah and Hagar—and the two sons, Ishmael and Isaac. His point is clearly made in Galatians 4:24:
Which things contain an allegory: for these women are two covenants.
As you know, Sarah is God’s illustration of the covenant of grace, of promise, of what God does—the supernatural. Hagar is God’s illustration of the covenant of works, or the law, or what man does.
When Abraham joined himself to Hagar, the covenant of works, he produced one kind of fruit—one kind of child. When Abraham was joined to Sarah, picturing the covenant of grace, he produced another kind of child.
Those are the two possibilities. I can live as Abraham did and relate to Hagar, and the fruit of that union will always be Ishmael. Or I can live as Abraham did and relate to Sarah, and the fruit of that union will always be Isaac.
At the time Paul wrote this, many of the Galatian Christians were not living up to their inheritance in Christ. They were Christians, but they had been infiltrated by the Judaizers and those who came in with a legal spirit. Many of them were trying to supplement the Lord Jesus: Jesus plus, not Jesus alone.
They knew very little about the real liberty and freedom to which God had called them. Basically, Paul is saying to the Galatians, “You Christians are acting like children. You are doing what Abraham did: you are relating to Hagar, and look at the fruit in your life.”
“You ought to grow up and be sons, and do what Abraham finally learned to do: relate to Sarah after a mighty miracle of God, and watch the fruit you can produce.”
Now, I am not focusing on the glorious end of sonship. I am not even focusing on the process by which God is bringing us into sonship. As our brother shared this morning, that is a process. There is growth.
But I would like us to look, God helping us, at the very beginning—the starting point. There is a transition between being a child and becoming a son. That is what I want to look at. By God’s grace, I want to see that transition.
If you glance at Galatians 4:1:
But I say that so long as the heir is a child, he differeth nothing from a bondservant, though he is lord of all.
That verse teaches clearly that there are some Christians, children of God, who live like slaves. That is clearly stated there. We do not want to live that way. We want to stop being children.
I pray this weekend, as we contemplate this marvelous theme, that God will put in our hearts a passion: “I do not want to be a child anymore. By God’s grace, I want to enter into sonship.”
How can I get out of this? How does childishness—the wrong kind of childlikeness—end? How can I move from that to sonship? It is so frustrating to live like a slave when you know what God has called you to.
To talk about liberty and not have liberty; to talk about overcoming and not be able to overcome; to talk about victory and not have victory; to have words about peace and joy and rest, and not enjoy those things in fact.
There is so much we could say about that childlike stage, but I want to come right to the end of it and ask, “How do you close the door on that? How does that end? And then, how does this begin?”
It is a process, but even the process has to start somewhere. How does it start? That is what we want to look at: how does it begin?
Praise God, some of these brothers are going to tell us about the process: how it develops, how we can grow and mature, go on in sonship, and become more and more like our Lord Jesus. But I want to know: how does that end? I do not want to be a child anymore. And I want to know how this begins, so I can start being the son that God has from eternity past predestined me to be.
We are trying to get to Galatians 4:7:
So that thou art no longer a bondservant, but a son; and if a son, then an heir through God.
That is where we want to be. How do we leave the one and start the other?
For those who enjoy logical connection, this afternoon, God helping us, we are going to look at that first part: How do I come to the end of this? What is the great revelation that God gives that begins that transition from childhood to sonship?
Then, Lord willing, in our next lesson, I would like to show you how sonship begins. How it progresses is a thing all its own. You grow in sonship, but you step into sonship. I want to look at the step. Once you step into it, then the process begins.
I called lesson one “Children in Bondage,” from the early part of Galatians 4; lesson two, “Sons Set Free.” So may God give us light.
Let us look, then, at the very end of living like children, so that we can begin to live like sons of God. I think it would make more sense now if I simply did what Paul did and dipped back into the history.
For most of you, I am quite sure these facts will simply be a review of the Abraham story. I am not going to tell you anything new. I am sure you have heard this many, many times. But there may be some for whom it is new, and so be patient with me, that we can all move together on the same page.
The story really begins in Genesis 12, right after God revealed Himself to Abraham. At the start, we see that God is showing us a man who believed God, and God counted it to him for righteousness.
As our brother said this morning about the apostle Paul in Romans 7, that “I” and that “me” there is not the rebellious ego, the proud “I” that says, “I want to do my own thing.” It is not that at all. Paul loved the Lord. He loved the will of God. He hated sin, but he could not perform. That is Romans 7.
When we come to Abraham, I want us to begin knowing this: we are looking at a man who is not a rebel, not a backslider, not self-willed, not attached in an unhealthy way to mammon, and not trying to live for this world.
He is a pilgrim in his heart. He wants the will of God. He does not want to live for the flesh. In his deepest heart, he wants to follow the Lord, but he does not know how.
At this point, he does not know how. God is going to educate him, work in his life, and engineer circumstances to teach him a twin truth. You have to know this truth. You will never get out of childhood—I will never get out of childhood—if God does not show these two things.
Early in the record, God had told Abraham that he would be blessed and that through his seed the world would be blessed. In Genesis 12:10, it says there was a famine in the land.
I am quite sure Abraham blew it at this point. You know the story. God was going to begin to discover to Abraham his own heart. We know he messed up here because this is the story where he lied about his wife. He said she was his sister and put her in a grave situation, possibly one in which she would be violated.
Abraham did not trust God at this time. The famine was a test, and he failed the test. He trusted a plan that he and Sarah had agreed upon, and in the end he was sent away in disgrace. But when he was sent away in disgrace, he was also sent away wealthy in this world’s goods.
Listen to Genesis 12:15-20:
And the princes of Pharaoh saw her, and praised her to Pharaoh; and the woman was taken into Pharaoh’s house.
And he treated Abram well for her sake: and he had sheep, and oxen, and he-asses, and men-servants, and maid-servants, and she-asses, and camels.
And the Lord plagued Pharaoh and his house with great plagues because of Sarai, Abram’s wife.
And Pharaoh called Abram, and said, What is this that thou hast done unto me? why didst thou not tell me that she was thy wife?
Why saidst thou, She is my sister? so that I took her to be my wife: now therefore behold thy wife, take her, and go thy way.
And Pharaoh gave men charge concerning him: and they brought him on the way, and his wife, and all that he had.
So he left Egypt, but he left very wealthy. Notice Genesis 12:16: among the things he took with him were female servants.
We find out later that one of those female servants had a name, and her name was Hagar. He got Hagar when he was out of the will of the Lord. Ten years later, Abraham got in trouble with Hagar.
I believe we should be awfully careful with what we get when we are out of the will of the Lord. That thing can rise up ten years later and bite you. I do not know how to apply it in every case, but I see a great warning here.
The story of Abraham and his union with Hagar, resulting in the birth of a slave child, revolves around two truths. If you do not get these two truths, you will stay a child until you do.
Number one: the promise of God. That is the first truth—the promise of a seed, the promise of a supernatural seed. God gave Abraham that promise first when he was seventy-five years old. According to Genesis 17:17, Sarah was ten years younger than Abraham, which means that she was sixty-five years old when God gave that promise.
God did not speak all at once. God did not just dump His truth on Abraham. He began to dribble it out. He gave him a little light, and that was all Abraham had. Months went by, and He spoke again, giving him a little more. Then a year went by, and He gave him a little more.
Five times God speaks to Abraham. The first time is in Genesis 12:7, and all he really learns is, “You are going to have a seed. That seed is going to become a nation. Everybody is going to be blessed because of that seed.” But that is all he knows.
In Genesis 12:7, God speaks a second time and says, “Add to that: you are going to get land.” He begins to tell him about the land.
God speaks a third time in Genesis 13:16-18. This time He says, “Your seed is going to be like the dust of the earth.” That is how many. If you can count the dust, you will know how many seeds.
God speaks a fourth time, and this time Abraham learns something very important. In Genesis 15:3-6, God tells him, “You are going to be the father.” He still does not know who the mother is.
God has dribbled out His truth over a period of ten years. When Abraham was seventy-five years old, he was told he would have seed; it would turn into a nation; the whole world would be blessed through that seed; he would have land; and he would be the father. That is all he knows.
Now God is not going to speak again for another fifteen years. All this time, God is engineering Abraham’s circumstances so he can come to the end of his childishness—the wrong kind—and become a son.
We want to look at the story of Abraham and Hagar in terms of that wonderful promise. Little did they know, when they waited ten years and nothing happened, that they were less than halfway there. They thought they were patient: “We waited for God for ten years.” Ten years is a long time. Twenty-five years is longer. That is just math.
This is a story about patience and the patience of faith. Do not think patience comes naturally. It is a mighty miracle of God.
My favorite verse on patience—for the moment—is the prayer that Paul prayed in Colossians 1:11. It is easy to remember: 1:11.
Strengthened with all power, according to the might of His glory, unto all patience and longsuffering with joy.
What do you need all the power of God for, according to all His glorious might? For the attaining of steadfastness and patience. That is what you need for patience. That is what I need, and that is what Abraham and Sarah needed as well.
God had promised Abraham and Sarah a child. Of course, when we say Isaac in the fully developed form, He is talking about Christ. The picture is Isaac, but He is talking about giving Christ to the world. That is the great promise.
That is the first truth: you have to see that God must do it by covenant. It is God’s promise.
Here is the second truth, and this is where they got hung up. This is where many Christians get hung up, and this is where I got hung up for seven long years: they also had to see the barren womb.
It is not enough to see the promise of God. They must also see the barren womb. Genesis 11:30: “Sarai was barren; she had no child.” Genesis 16:2: “Behold now, the Lord hath restrained me from bearing.”
Here is an amazing thing. Sometimes we simply believe the promise of God: “God said it, I believe it, that settles it. Just claim the promise of God.” You are doing well—but that is only half of it.
Praise God if you can claim the promise of God. But you also had better see this: God must do it. I cannot do it.
That is the elephant that you were talking about. That is the wretched man. That is the grass of the field. If you do not see that, you are going to be a child forever.
God’s part is keeping His promise. My part is saying that I cannot do anything to help. The tragedy of this story is that the promise was large in the eyes of Abraham and Sarah. This was really the difference between child and son: they had embraced the promise of God.
When you think of babes in Christ, as Corinthians has it, you think of those who are carnal and living for this world, using carnal means to get carnal ends. But that is not what you see here.
They were focused on the Lord. They wanted God’s will. They wanted the promise of God. They were not using carnal means to get carnal ends; they were using carnal means to get a spiritual end.
When you use carnal means to get a spiritual end, you are going to produce slave children. It is far more subtle. They were trusting themselves to help God.
Let me go through this story. They accepted the promise of God. They loved the promise of God, but they had trouble with the barren womb. So they kept trying to skirt around the barren womb.
But God will always make Himself indispensable. He will never back off that principle. No matter how long it takes, and how thick-headed or stubborn we are, God will continually engineer our lives to make things impossible, so that we finally say, “You have got to do it, Lord. I cannot.”
He is going to show you that your womb is barren. That is the part they had such trouble with.
According to Romans 4:19:
And without being weakened in faith he considered his own body now as good as dead (he being about a hundred years old), and the deadness of Sarah’s womb.
The fact that Sarah was barren was not a coincidence. The fact that God waited all those years, until they became old and sexually dead, was not a coincidence. That was a deliberate plan.
God brings us to that place where we can cry out, “O wretched man that I am!” God was making Himself indispensable.
In the natural, we are so wired to try to help God. They were always trying to help the Lord. Every time we try to help God, we do it the same way: we try to substitute that which is natural for that which is supernatural—flesh for Spirit.
We refuse to believe that what God has promised, God will perform.
So Abraham has this suggestion. In Genesis 15:2-3, Abram said:
O Lord God, what wilt Thou give me, seeing I go childless, and he that shall be possessor of my house is Eliezer of Damascus?
Behold, to me Thou hast given no seed: and, lo, one born in my house is mine heir.
That was logical to Abraham. “You promised I would have a child. It is not happening. I waited a long time. It is still not happening. So I must have misunderstood You. You must have meant something else.”
But God said, “No, it is not Eliezer.” Then He took him outside, showed him the stars, renewed the promise, and encouraged his heart.
Still, he could not face the idea that God was indispensable and that his womb was barren. So he tried again.
Genesis 16:1-3 says:
Now Sarai, Abram’s wife, bare him no children: and she had a handmaid, an Egyptian, whose name was Hagar.
And Sarai said unto Abram, Behold now, the Lord hath restrained me from bearing: go in, I pray thee, unto my handmaid; it may be that I shall obtain children by her. And Abram hearkened to the voice of Sarai.
And Sarai, Abram’s wife, took Hagar the Egyptian, her handmaid, after Abram had dwelt ten years in the land of Canaan, and gave her to Abram her husband to be his wife.
Hagar became Abraham’s solution. God’s promise had gotten him in a jam, he thought, that he could not get out of unless Abraham helped.
“If God will not accept Eliezer of Damascus, His faithful servant, maybe He will accept the son of a surrogate wife.” Once again, they brought nature to the rescue. “God needs help, and so I will try to help Him.”
Before we get too hard on Abraham and Sarah, remember: as far as light is concerned, God had never told him at that point that Sarah would be the mother. He did not know that yet. So he was not rebelling in that sense.
But consider how logical and how spiritual it sounds. In fact, if you look at Sarah, it appears to be a very unselfish act. She seemed to have God’s promise in view. She said, “God promised you that you would have an heir, and I am in the way. I am barren. I cannot do it. Maybe this is God’s solution.”
She made this proposal—really, to do violence to the deepest thing in womanhood—to take Hagar. But it was out of love, out of despair, and for the will of God.
By the way, as an aside, there is a great warning here also concerning the temptation that comes to us through a loved one—through a wife, through a husband, through someone very close, an elder, a friend.
It looked as though Sarah was self-sacrificing. It looked so spiritual. I do not want an answer out loud; I do not want you to respond to this rhetorical question. But how many times have you heard or said, “We waited patiently for the Lord. Does not God expect us to do something, to respond in some way?”
“Faith is not always passive; it is also active. God is a God of means. He expects us to use our heads. He expects us to do our part. God is not going to work if we just sit around and wait. He wants us to act, to do, to move, to work. He has put things at our disposal.”
Have you ever said that? Ever felt that? Ever heard someone else say that? Does that not sound like the will of God?
Sarah was not using carnal means for her own end; she was trying to do the will of God. Abraham was not simply jumping into bed with some harlot to satisfy the lust of his flesh. It was not about that. It was about doing God’s will.
In his heart, he said, “God promised, and I want to obey God. I believe the promise of God.” But he had not yet embraced the truth of the barren womb. That is what makes this thing so subtle—so close to the truth.
Anything that is close to the truth without being the truth is more dangerous. This thing is very, very dangerous. They had not come to see their own helplessness.
What Sarah should have said was, “Nature failed me, and therefore the Lord alone is my only resource. I will trust the Lord.” But instead, when nature failed her in one form, she turned to nature in another form in order to provide a spiritual end.
What is the difference if it is nature in Sarah or nature in Hagar? It is still flesh.
You say, “Does not God want me to use my head and do the natural thing?” No. He wants you to use your head and do the spiritual thing, not the natural thing. And the spiritual thing is to trust the Lord. That is the spiritual thing.
Our brother apologized this morning for being critical, and I will apologize in advance, but I am going to be critical.
You know, it breaks the hearts of God’s people to see Christians using carnal means to get a spiritual end: carnal means to finance programs that we call the will of God; carnal means to get the gospel out, using gimmicks and sensationalism and group dynamics and all that kind of thing.
Carnal means to solve problems—running from this counselor and that counselor and all that kind of thing. Carnal means to be spiritual.
“I am going to be spiritual. I am going to have devotions every day.” I talked to someone, and he gave me the clue how to be spiritual: give up dessert.
They want to be spiritual? Give up dessert.
A brother came to me—a very sad story. He was very much in bondage to indwelling corruption. He loved the Lord, loved the will of God, but was not able to perform.
I said to him, “Have you cast yourself helplessly upon the Lord?”
He said, “Yes, I have. And I am going to fast for eight days.”
I said, “Do you think that will help?”
He said, “Yes.”
I said, “Then you are not helpless. If it will help—if there is something that you think will help—you are not helpless.”
“I am going to be spiritual. I am going to get up early every morning and have devotions from 4:30 until 6:00.” Will that help? Then you are not helpless, and you are using carnal means to get a spiritual end.
After Ishmael was born, the problem was not solved. God continued to make Himself indispensable, continued to engineer things so that they were impossible.
In Genesis 16, Hagar conceives, and then she begins to mock Sarah. You remember the record of that. I do not know whether she mocked her barrenness, bragged about her own pregnancy, or simply used her condition to evade her duties. Maybe she was boasting about bearing the heir, or suggesting that Abraham loved her more than he loved Sarah. I do not know.
I know Proverbs 30 says there are three things under which the earth quakes, and one of them is a maidservant when she supplants her mistress. That is what we have here.
All we know is Sarah blew up and drove Hagar out of the house. I will not tell the whole story, but Hagar’s life became miserable. When she ran away, she met the angel of the Lord. This is the first record of the angel of the Lord. This is the first woman at the well: Hagar.
There, God—our Lord Jesus—met her. I am going to tie this in, Lord willing, tomorrow, because we want to get to the place: “Cast out the bondwoman and her son.” But some have cast her out too early.
You need the bondwoman and her son. If you cast the bondwoman out too early, Jesus sends her back. That is what happened here.
Among the many things the angel of the Lord told Hagar that day, He gave her a promise that she too was going to have a great seed: many generations and nations.
When she came back, I know she told Abraham that, because Genesis 16:15 says Abraham named his baby Ishmael. How did he know how to do that? Hagar told him.
I assume she also told him, “When Jesus met me, He told me that I am going to have a seed, and it is going to be multiplied like the stars.” Abraham would have registered, “Oh, we did right. That is the promised seed. That is just what God told me, and now God told you.”
Do not read Genesis 16:16 and 17:1 too quickly. Genesis 16:16 says Abraham was eighty-six years old when Hagar bore Ishmael. Genesis 17:1 says Abraham was ninety-nine years old when the Lord appeared to him.
Practically, that means this: since he was eighty-six when he had his baby and ninety-nine when God spoke to him, for thirteen years he was well established in the deception, “Ishmael is the promised seed. We did the right thing.”
I do not know if it dawned on him that God stopped talking. Thirteen years is a long time not to hear from heaven. I would die if God stopped talking to me. I would want to die.
I do not know how Abraham took that, but he was more and more convinced that dear Ishmael was the promised seed. But God will not let him go on in that delusion forever, and He will not let you go on in that delusion. He loves you too much to let you think that you can do something.
He will convince you that you have a barren womb. When you begin to see the promise of God and the barren womb, you are ready to close the door on childhood, and you are very close to sonship. Oh, may God bring us there today.
Now God comes to Abraham after thirteen years. He speaks again in Genesis 17:15-16, and Abraham learns for the first time that Sarah is going to be the mother.
In other words: “You were wrong to try to help Me fulfill My promise. You were wrong trying to skirt around the barren womb. You were wrong thinking the fruit of the flesh could satisfy Me.”
“For thirteen years and nine months, you have been wrong—dead wrong. The heavens have been closed to you for all of that time. Now I am going to tell you the promise again. See if you get it this time, Abraham. I am going to promise it, and only I can perform it. You have a barren womb. You cannot do it.”
When God did it, you know how He did it: He made that dead womb live by the mighty power of God.
When Abraham heard that he had been wrong for thirteen years—that Sarah was going to be the mother, even though her womb was dead, and that God was going to do a miracle—how did Abraham respond?
Did he fall on his face and give thanks, saying, “Finally, Lord, praise You. You have made Your will known. Bless God, You have shown me that”?
Genesis 17:17 says:
Then Abraham fell upon his face, and laughed, and said in his heart, Shall a child be born unto him that is a hundred years old? and shall Sarah, that is ninety years old, bear?
And Abraham said unto God, Oh that Ishmael might live before Thee!
This was resistance—deep-rooted resistance. It was a complaint. It was the flesh gasping for its last breath: “Oh, that Ishmael might live!”
He was so certain that Ishmael was the promised seed. For thirteen years he had lived in that conviction: “God needed my help. He needed my contribution. If I am going to be a son of God, I am going to have to help.”
“It is going to depend on my devotions, my stewardship, my study, my gathering with the saints, my service, my ministry, my this or that.”
Abraham needed to see that he was an elephant and he could not fly. God will root out of us that childish behavior. He keeps putting impossible situations before us.
Abram says, “Eliezer, Lord, let it be Eliezer.” God says, “No.” “Ishmael, let it be Ishmael.” God says, “No.” It is going to be supernatural.
When Abraham related to Hagar, she produced Ishmael. In a twisted sort of way, Ishmael looks like anything but a slave.
Genesis 16:12 says:
And he shall be as a wild ass among men; his hand shall be against every man, and every man’s hand against him; and he shall dwell over against all his brethren.
Some would call that freedom: independent, fearing no man, untamed, self-rule, impatient, bold, needing nobody, at war with all God’s Isaacs.
For Hagar, that probably sounded like good news because she was a slave. “He is going to be a wild donkey of a man” means, “My child is not growing up as a slave. He is not going to take any guff from anybody. He is going to stand on his own two feet.”
Job describes the wild donkey in Job 39:5-8:
Who hath sent out the wild ass free? or who hath loosed the bonds of the swift ass,
Whose home I have made the wilderness, and the salt land his dwelling-place?
He scorneth the tumult of the city, neither heareth he the shoutings of the driver.
The range of the mountains is his pasture, and he searcheth after every green thing.
A lot of Christians think they are free, but there is nothing more than the freedom of Ishmael. It is the freedom of the donkey. They are living in the wilderness. They are doing their own will. They are separate from the body; in fact, they are at war with the body. They are serving nobody. They are not under any authority.
Every time I try to help God, I must produce an Ishmael—a slave child. It is the opposite of the fruit of the Spirit. It makes me more confident in the flesh. It sets me up against the body of Christ. It makes me arrogant, stubborn, independent, hard, and unteachable.
No matter how spiritual it looks or how spiritual it sounds, it only produces slave children.
Brothers and sisters in Christ, we need to see that it is only God—the promise of God. But we also need to see the barren womb.
Let me close with this illustration. Mark 5.
Suppose Jairus had heard the word of the Lord Jesus: “Your child is not dead, but sleeping.”
Then all of a sudden he said, “Lord, I see it. I see it. I believe Your Word. You are almighty God, and You said she is not dead; she is sleeping. Thank You, Lord Jesus. I will be on my way right now because I have Your promise. You said it, I believe it, and that settles it. I am going to tell my wife, and we are going upstairs and wake her up.”
Picture Jairus and his wife with that good news. They have the promise. They look, and to the eyes of the flesh she looks dead. She is just lying there—pale, still. But he believes God.
God said she is only sleeping, and I believe it. Jairus walks over, grabs her by the hand, and says, “Talitha cumi; which is, being interpreted, Damsel, I say unto thee, Arise.” What would happen?
He says, “Well, maybe we need a little prompting.” He picks her up and stands her on her feet. What would happen?
Then he shouts in her ear, “Wake up! I know you are only sleeping. Jesus said you are only sleeping. Wake up, wake up, little girl!” Then he shakes her. “Come on now. Wake up, wake up. Honey, go get some water.” She gets water, and they throw water in her face.
Jesus made the promise, and only Jesus can fulfill it. Jairus, it is not enough to have the promise. Jairus needs Jesus to fulfill the promise.
Romans 7—our brother was sharing about this Paul, when finally he said, “You do not have to live in Romans 7, but you have to go through it.” Romans 7 is so close to Romans 8 because childishness in the wrong way is so close to sonship. Romans 7 and Romans 8 are right together.
How do I get out of Romans 7 into Romans 8?
I thank God through Jesus Christ our Lord.
You say, “Oh, it is so hard. I love God, I hate sin, and I cannot perform. Such a struggle.” Let me tell you, brothers and sisters in Christ: it is as easy to leave the child stage and enter sonship as it is to get out of Romans 7 and get into Romans 8.
How do you get out? By saying, “Thank You.” That is how you get out.
“I thank God through Jesus Christ.” It is as simple as saying, “Thank You.” It is all done.
This whole idea that it is going to be a struggle, that it is going to take forever, and that I will never get there—there is a process once you begin, but to begin is a step. It is not a process.
At any moment in your life, you can be the son of God that He has redeemed and created you to be. At any moment in my life, I can be the Christian God wants me to be.
At any moment in your life, you can be the husband God wants you to be. At any moment in your life, you can be the wife God wants you to be. At any moment in your life, you can be the servant God wants you to be. At any moment in your life, you can be the brother or sister God wants you to be.
Learn to say, “Thank You.” We are so busy saying, “Please,” asking God to give us what He has already given us. Let us learn to say, “Thank You.”
Get out of Romans 7 into Romans 8. Let Him open our eyes. “Yes, I see the promise, but I also see the barren womb. What You promised, You must perform.”
I promise you, if God dawns that revelation on your heart, you are going to hear a door slam on that old life and a door open wide to sonship and all that it means.
Father, thank You so much for Your Word—not what we think it might mean, but everything You inspired it to mean. Work it in our hearts, Lord.
We know that our womb is dead. We cannot do anything. We are the elephant that cannot fly. We are the wretched man. We are the grass that withers, the flower that fades.
Show us, Lord, as we have never seen it before. Show us so that we can leave this slave life—children in bondage—and become sons set free.
We ask in Jesus’ name.