Lesson 19: Living in the Right Covenant
Read Galatians 4:1-31 - www.bible.com/bible/59/gal.4
21 Tell me, you who desire to be under the law, do you not listen to the law?
22 For it is written that Abraham had two sons, one by a slave woman and one by a free woman.
23 But the son of the slave was born according to the flesh, while the son of the free woman was born through promise.
24 Now this may be interpreted allegorically: these women are two covenants. One is from Mount Sinai, bearing children for slavery; she is Hagar.
25 Now Hagar is Mount Sinai in Arabia; she corresponds to the present Jerusalem, for she is in slavery with her children.
26 But the Jerusalem above is free, and she is our mother.
27 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.”
28 Now you, brothers, like Isaac, are children of promise.
29 But just as at that time he who was born according to the flesh persecuted him who was born according to the Spirit, so also it is now.
30 But what does the Scripture say? “Cast out the slave woman and her son, for the son of the slave woman shall not inherit with the son of the free woman.”
31 So, brothers, we are not children of the slave but of the free woman.


In today’s verses, Paul tells a story of real people of the past, about how these two women became God’s picture of His plan to teach mankind His perfect way of salvation.

God had promised Abraham a son. Even though Abraham and Sarah were well past the age of being able to have children, Abraham believed God. But then trouble came when Sarah thought she knew how to make God’s plan happen. She knew she was too old to have a baby, so she gave her young maid to Abraham so the baby born of this maid could be Sarah’s child. But jealousy and pride stepped into the relationship between these two women. Even though Ishmael was the firstborn son of Abraham, God said this was not the son He had planned. Sarah gave birth to Isaac, God’s promised child, and the jealousy between the mothers and the sons finally broke this family apart.

Our lives are just as upset as this family was when we try to make God’s plan work out by our own ideas and knowledge. God’s plan is the only plan which can work out in the end (Isaiah 46:8-11).

*Think of a time you tried doing good works your own way rather than God’s – what happened?