Covenant Protestant Reformed Church
83 Clarence Street, Ballymena BT43 5DR
Rev. Angus Stewart
Lord’s Day, 22 January, 2023
“And if ye be Christ’s, then are ye Abraham’s seed,
and heirs according to the promise” (Gal. 3:29)
Morning Service – 11:00 AM
The Mosaic Law: Illustration, Expostulation & Allegory (10)
Cast Out the Bondwoman and Her Son! [youtube]
Scripture Reading: Genesis 21:1-21
Text: Galatians 4:29-31
I. The Historical Ishmael and Hagar
II. The Allegorical Bondson and Bondwoman
Psalms: 27:1-5; 56:1-6; 83:5-15; 75:4-10
Evening Service – 6:00 PM
Why Our Deliverer Must Be God [youtube]
Scripture Reading: Romans 3
Text: Heidelberg Catechism, Lord’s Day 6
I. The Wrath of God
II. The Righteousness of God
III. The Life of God
Psalms: 85:6-13; 56:7-13; 40:6-10; 36:5-10
For CDs of the sermons and DVDs of the worship services, contact Stephen Murray
If you desire a pastoral visit, please contact Rev. Stewart or the elders
CPRC Website: www.cprc.co.uk • Live Webcast: www.cprc.co.uk/live-streaming
CPRC YouTube: www.youtube.com/cprcni
CPRC Facebook: www.facebook.com/CovenantPRC
Announcements (subject to God’s will)
New Standard Bearers and Beacon Lights are available for subscribers.
We express our sympathy to Colm Ring in the death of his grandfather. The funeral was held on Tuesday.
Monday catechism classes:
5:00PM: Corey, Jason, Katelyn, Maisie & Sebastian (Seniors OT)
5:45PM: Eleanora, Felicity, Hannah, Jorja, Keagan, Lucas, Sammy, Somaya,
Sophie & Yossef (Beginners NT)
6:30PM: Penelope & Xander (Juniors OT)
7:15PM: Angelica, Bradley, Jack, Josh, Samuel & Taylor (Heidelberg, Book 2)
8:00PM: Alex, Jacob & Nathan (Pre-confession)
Tuesday Bible study at 11 AM will meet to continue our discussion on faith and reason, including the question, Is the biblical faith “reasonable”?
Belgic Confession Class meets this Wednesday at 7:30 PM. In connection with article 37, we will consider the heavenly signs of our Lord’s return.
PRC Church Visitors: Rev. & Dawn DeVries and Pete & Dorothy VanderSchaaf arrive on Friday. A sign-up sheet is on the back table for those who would like to have the church visitors at their home for dinner, etc.
The Reformed Witness Hour broadcast next Lord’s day (Gospel 846 MW at 8:30 AM) by Rev. Bruinsma is entitled, “God Sends Ahab Strong Delusion.”
On Wednesday, 1 February, at 7:30 PM, Rev. DeVries will lead a discussion on men preparing themselves to serve as office-bearers.
The congregational dinner will be held on Friday, 3 February, at Adair Arms Hotel. A menu and sign-up sheet is on the back table. Cost is £10 per adult and £5 per child to be paid to Julian on the night of the dinner.
There will be tea after the evening service on 5 February, Tea Rota: Group B.
Offerings: £1,172.08. Donations: £63 (Co. Tyrone), £15 (CR News).
Translation Additions: 1 Dutch, 2 Hungarian, 2 Polish, 1 Russian and 3 Spanish.
Quotes to Consider
Martin Luther on allegory:
“This admonition I have often given elsewhere I repeat here and shall give again: that the Christian reader should make it his first task to seek out the literal sense, as they call it. For it alone is the whole substance of faith and Christian theology; it alone holds its ground in trouble and trial, conquers the gates of hell (Matt. 16:18) together with sin and death, and triumphs for the praise and glory of God. Allegory, however, is too often uncertain, and is unreliable and by no means safe for supporting faith. Too frequently it depends on human guesswork and opinion, and if one leans on it, one will lean on a staff of Egyptian reed (Ezek. 29:6). Therefore we should beware of Jerome, Origen, and similar fathers or read them with independent judgment. Yes, we should beware of that whole Alexandrian school, which the Jew Philo extols, according to the testimony of Eusebius and Jerome, for having once excelled in the pursuit of such allegorical interpretation. For later writers unhappily imitated their example, which was adopted with excessive praise. They constructed and taught arbitrarily from Scripture according to their liking, until some shaped the words of God into the most absurd monstrosities; and, as Jerome also complains about his own time, they drag scripture into contradiction with itself by citing proofs that do not apply, a crime of which he himself was also guilty.
Such are those who nowadays expound almost the whole Bible, wherever they find a word in the feminine gender, concerning the Blessed Virgin. Likewise those who build monasteries from the dwelling place of Martha and make our schoolmasters out of the mighty in Israel, and numberless similar wonders. One was even found who applied the whole of the Metamorphoses of Ovid to Christ, at which Jerome is properly indignant; in the Epistle to Paulinus he calls them peddlers” (Lectures on Deuteronomy, pp. 24-25).
Robert Harbach on the allegory in Galatians 4:21-31:
“Paul is not speaking of these people as people, but as things, as representations, or illustration ‘of God’s two ways of helping people.’ For the Old Testament history does not teach that Ishmael was personally excommunicated from the Old Testament church. Paul, in Galatians, uses the history only to show the contrast between natural and spiritual Israel. The historical account of Genesis does not bear out the supposed reprobation of Ishmael. This allegorical account teaches the expulsion of the carnal seed from the church. What we have here in Hagar’s son is, not Ishmael as an individual, but as an example of the carnal seed. The relation between the history and the allegory is not that of prophecy and fulfillment, but of fact and illustration. ‘These women are, represent, two covenants,’ that is, they are not so actually, but illustratively.
The Dutch version (Staten vertaling) of verse 24 reads, ‘Hetwelk dingen zijn, die andere beduiding hebben,’ or, ‘which things are those (that) have another meaning,’ that is, things of this nature, of a figurative nature, convey also additional meaning to that of the literal, historical narrative. The English versions of the text speak of an allegory. Allegory is a particular mode of interpretation. The allegory does not present the people in their own proper persons, but as representations of spiritual groups.
But what, specifically, is an allegory? It is a particular form of figurative language. Perhaps the simplest figure of speech is the simile, which is a form of comparison between two different objects. This is a simile: ‘He fought like a lion!’ A metaphor is an implied comparison (simile). This is a metaphor: ‘He was a lion in the battle!’ It is more concise than a simile. A parable is an extended simile. An allegory is an extended metaphor. The sense of a metaphor is different from the apparent one” (Studies in the Book of Genesis, pp. 434-435).
Homer C. Hoeksema on Hagar in Genesis 16: “There are … facets of this history we must not ignore … we note that the Lord comforts Hagar. She is the recipient of a wonderful revelation through the angel of Jehovah, the Old Testament manifestation of the Christ (Gen. 16:7ff). The Lord reveals his favor to Hagar and promises to multiply her seed exceedingly. Hagar commemorates this revelation by naming the well where the angel of Jehovah appeared to her Beerlahairoi, ‘the well of him that liveth and seeth me’ (Gen. 16:14)” (Unfolding Covenant History, vol. 2, p. 157).
Prof. Herman Hanko on Galatians 4:29: “Persecution does not necessarily mean physical torture or murder of the faithful. Persecution consists also in mockery, as it did in Abraham’s home. The people of God represent the cause of God and Christ, but they are small and without power according to the standards of the world. They are mocked for their small number, for their insistence of the rightness of their cause, and for the testimony of the gospel of Christ. Their cause is despised and ridiculed, and their faithfulness is branded as negativism, narrow-mindedness, intolerance, and lack of love. They are ostracized and pushed out of society because of their adherence to God and his word” (Justified Unto Liberty, p. 337).
Martin Luther on Galatians 4:30:
“The Holy Ghost contemptuously calls the admirers of the Law the children of the bondwoman. ‘If you do not know your mother, I will tell you what kind of a woman she is. She is a slave. And you are slaves. You are slaves of the Law and therefore slaves of sin, death, and everlasting damnation. You are not fit to be heirs. You are put out of the house.’
This is the sentence which God pronounces upon the Ishmaelites, the papists, and all others who trust in their own merits, and persecute the Church of Christ. Because they are slaves and persecutors of the children of the free woman, they shall be cast out of the house of God forever. They shall have no inheritance with the children of the promise. This sentence stands forever.
This sentence affects not only those popes, cardinals, bishops, and monks who were notoriously wicked and made their bellies their gods. It strikes, also, those who lived in all sincerity to please God and to merit the forgiveness of their sins through a life of self-denial. Even these will be cast out, because they are children of the bondwoman.
Our opponents do not defend their own moral delinquency. The better ones deplore and abhor it. But they defend and uphold their doctrine of works which is of the devil. Our quarrel is not with those who live in manifest sins. Our quarrel is with those among them who think they live like angels, claiming that they do not only perform the Ten Commandments of God, but also the sayings of Christ, and many good works that God does not expect of them. We quarrel with them because they refuse to have Jesus’ merit count alone for righteousness.”
