CAST OUT THE BONDWOMAN by Uriah Smith

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, California · Jan 24, 1900

CAST OUT THE BONDWOMAN.

By Uriah Smith

PAUL, in the fourth chapter of Galatians, teaches in an allegory some very important truths in regard to the two covenants, testaments, or dispensations, the two systems, typical and antitypical, and the two peoples, the literal Israel and the true Israel, or Jews and Gentiles, as they stood as representatives of the Lord and His work, in two special periods of its development in the earth.

The characters he takes to illustrate the truth he has to present are the two sons of Abraham, Ishmael and Isaac. The fact that one, Ishmael, was born of a maid servant, Hagar, and the other, Isaac, of the free-woman, Sarah gave him the opportunity to make the application setting forth the truth he wished to present.

As the apostle has made such a use of this incident, it is worth our while to examine the particulars closely, to understand, if possible, the significance of all the features of the case.

Abraham had been promised a son; and by a unique and unusual arrangement between him and Sarai, who surrendered her maid, Hagar, to Abraham, there was born to him, through this woman, an heir, Ishmael. But this was a contrivance between Abraham and his wife to meet a seeming failure on the part of the Lord; and it did not fulfil the promise, nor meet the situation at all. But time passed on, and when Abraham was a hundred years of age, and Sarai ninety, God interposed to fulfil His promise, and Isaac was born.

Ishmael was thirteen years of age at the birth of Isaac, and he then committed an act of folly which changed his whole situation and subsequent career.

At the feast instituted to celebrate the birth of Isaac, Ishmael made fun of the whole scene; and Sarah saw him. This filled her with unappeasable enmity and anger; and she at once gave directions to Abraham to "cast out this bondwoman and her son; for the son of this bondwoman," she said, "shall not be heir with my son, even with Isaac." The proposition was very grievous to Abraham; for Ishmael was his son also; but at length he consented, and sent them away.

Then the bond of heirship and inheritance, as it pertained to Ishmael, was broken; and Hagar and her son were in bondage indeed, whereas they had been before in a comparatively exalted position; for if Isaac had not appeared upon the scene, Ishmael would have succeeded to the titles and inheritance of his father Abraham.

Now Paul makes the application. At the time Paul wrote, Hagar represented old Jerusalem and the Jews; for thus he says: "For this Agar is Mount Sinai in Arabia, and answereth to Jerusalem which now is, and is in bondage with her children." The Jews, the literal seed, corresponded to Ishmael, who was born after the flesh. Christians, believers in Christ, correspond to Isaac, who was born after the Spirit. But, as then, so now, those who were born after the flesh persecuted those who were born after the Spirit. That is, as Ishmael despised the birthday feast, and mocked Isaac, and thus subverted and destroyed his position in the family, so the Jews rejected the Gospel, and finally put to death upon the cross the Lord of life and glory. Then they were rejected from being the people of the Lord, which position they had up to that time held. They were broken off, as unfruitful branches of the true olive tree. The kingdom was taken from them and given to a nation which would bring forth the fruits thereof.

This took away the whole Jewish polity and ritual, all their shadows and typical services, and all that pertained to their position as a religious theocracy.

After Ishmael's rejection, all his offspring, from that time, would, of course, be in a condition of bondage; as Paul says, that covenant now "gendereth to bondage."

So, after the rejection of the Jews, all that system can gender only to bondage. Whoever would bring over any part of the ritual of that people, as essential to the Gospel, thereby repudiates Christ, and joins himself to the bondwoman, who has been cast out. In this case, says the apostle, Christ shall "profit you nothing."

Such is the situation to-day. So we are not to return to any of the services, ceremonies, or observances of that now obsolete and discarded system. To do so would be to show

an utter misapprehension of the principles of the Gospel, and renounce that liberty wherewith Christ has made us free.

"In Isaac shall thy seed be called." In the antitypical Isaac, Christ, we must be called, in order to have a valid title to the possessions of Abraham.

There is plain and repeated testimony that everything now centers in Christ. He is the grand pivot on which the dispensations revolve. A few passages of Scripture on this point will suffice; for one statement is as weighty and decisive as it would be if a hundred times repeated.

Paul writes to the Ephesians that Christ has abolished "the law of commandments contained in ordinances; for to make in Himself of twain one new man, so making peace." He is speaking of Jews and Gentiles; and the law of commandments contained in ordinances was "the middle wall of partition" between these two classes, and consisted of all those Jewish regulations, laws, ceremonies, and festivals which made them so intensely a distinct people from all the nations around them. All these Jewish peculiarities Christ abolished. To go back to any of them is to build again that wall of partition which Christ broke down and took out of the way.

The apostle speaks still more definitely to the Colossians on the same subject. He says, "Blotting out the handwriting of ordinances that was against us, which was contrary to us, and took it out of the way, nailing it to His cross." And as a result of this, he says, "Let no man therefore judge you in meat, or in respect of an holy day, or of the new moon, or of the sabbath days" (the seven yearly sabbaths connected with the Jewish yearly festivals, in which were the spring and autumn types); and then comes the decisive utterance, "Which are a shadow of things to come, but the body is of Christ."

These typical annual festivals, with the sabbaths and celebrations connected with them, were all shadows. Paul says so. They must therefore have ceased with Christ, must have been abolished, and taken out of the way, being nailed to the cross; for a shadow can not possibly reach beyond the body which casts it.

Again Paul speaks of the same matter, in Heb. 9:10, and shows that these things were imposed, or made binding, on the people of that dispensation, "till the time of reformation," or the time that Christ came in the flesh, when all shadows would be lost in the reality. His language is this: "Which stood only in meats and drinks, and divers washings, and carnal ordinances, imposed on them till the time of reformation. But Christ being come," etc. The things here mentioned, as in the other passages, include everything embraced in and peculiar to the Jewish system. And if we seek to continue their practise, we subvert the Gospel. Heb. 9:10; Gal. 5:2.

But it may be said that some of the types have not yet been fulfilled, and therefore their outward observance must still be kept up. But this certainly can not be claimed after we have entered that great epoch in the divine plan to which they all pointed, and in which they all, in due time and order, will be accomplished, as fast as conditions permit and require.

Of the spring types we have the following: (1) The Passover; (2) the wave-sheaf offering; (3) the Pentecost. In regard to these Paul shows that we are still in the Passover. He says, "Christ our Passover is sacrificed for us." 1 Cor. 5:7. The wave-sheaf festival was fulfilled in the resurrection of Christ from the dead, the first-fruits of them that slept 1 Cor. 15:20. And the Pentecost was fulfilled by the outpouring of the Spirit, fifty days from Christ's resurrection, as recorded in the second of Acts. These were among the things nailed to the cross; yet their antitypical effects still continue. We are still feeding upon Christ, our Passover; we are still rejoicing in the wave sheaf, the resurrection of Christ; and we are still having the outpouring of the Holy Spirit.

Then among the fall types we have the following: (1) The memorial of the blowing of trumpets (Lev. 23:23, 24); (2) the atonement; (3) the feast of ingathering, or the feast of tabernacles (Lev. 23:27, 33-37). These are in process of fulfilment; but they no more require the revival of the typical ceremonies than do the Passover, the wave sheaf, or the Pentecost.

1. The memorial of blowing of trumpets we have in the great proclamation of the second coming of Christ, now going before the world, prophesied of in Revelation 14, and symbolized by three angels flying through the midst of heaven with the everlasting Gospel to proclaim with power in the ears of the people.

2. The prophet fixed the time when the atonement commenced, namely, at the end of the 2,300 days, in 1844. It is still in progress.

3. The feast of ingathering is before us, when the Lord shall send forth His angels, whom He calls the reapers, and shall gather the wheat, His people, into the garner. Everything connected with the types is being fulfilled in the proper order and in the proper manner. But we are not told to go back and repeat the services by which they were typically set forth from 1,800 to 3,000 years ago, and which, as shadows, were lost in the body, which is of Christ, when He died upon the cross.

But are we not told to "remember the law of Moses," and that, too, when the great and terrible day of the Lord is near?—Yes; but that is not saying that we are to turn back to the practise of it; and do we not remember that law, in all our treatment of the subject of the sanctuary, a subject of such vital importance to the church at the present time? How could we make clear and show the force of the great principles brought out in the subject of the sanctuary without a special study of the ministry of the tabernacle of Moses, as set forth in his law of offerings and sacrifices, and all typical services and yearly celebrations? Verily the instruction is timely that we thus remember the law of Moses now. But no part of that law, all of which was a shadow, can be made a living service after we have passed the dividing line where all shadows ceased, when the Seed came, the dispensations changed, and the work of the priests was transferred from earth to heaven, and the work became such that it could go forward in all parts of the world, and not be confined to one nation, or to any particular locality.

When this change was effected, then the old services became "weak and beggarly elements" and "carnal ordinances," the life lease of which had expired. The bondwoman was cast out. "Be not entangled again with the yoke of bondage," but "stand fast therefore in the liberty wherewith Christ hath made us free." URIAH SMITH.