White, Earl: Studies In Galatians-09-Gal.4:1-12

Thank you very much, Michael. We appreciate that. And, um, as you know, we're going through the, uh, book of Galatians, and this morning we're going to start in Galatians chapter four, if you want to turn there. And, um, you know, I'll be honest with you about the book of Galatians. I thought, you know, that I was going to be able to breeze through this book and, and take these verses and, um, uh, whip up on them. I, I tell you what, Galatians has been whipping up on me in, in my study of it. And I found out that it, the book of Galatians is quite a challenge, um, for an expository preacher, and, um, there's certain things in there that, um, uh, that we read, and I'll be honest with you, there's certain things in there that I didn't really understand until I started studying it and digging it out for my, for myself, and I found out that, uh, that the, there's some wonderful truth in the book of Galatians. And we're about halfway through the book, and we're going to read, uh, we're going to go through this morning, Lord willing, uh, the first twelve verses of chapter four. And as you recall, the Apostle Paul, I'll give you a summation of what's going on. Uh, Paul preached the gospel to the churches in Galatia. There were a number of them, number of cities, about four cities that he preached. Um, people got saved in each one of those cities. Um, they established a local testimony, a local assembly in those cities, local church. Um, the Apostle Paul, uh, heard after that, after he had left the region of Galatia, that there had been Judaizers who had come down and infiltrated by stealth the churches in Galatia and had introduced some things that were not biblical about the gospel. They were adding things to the gospel. Uh, they were telling the Galatian Christians, uh, you can't be saved unless you keep the Old Testament law. Uh, the Galati- the Christians there in the Galatian churches, they were confused, they were upset. Many of them, um, started going back, reverting back to Old Testament practices, even as, as Christians. And we may say, we, you know, we may think that that's for us, that that's a pretty foreign thing to do. That's rather strange that a group of Cali- uh, Christians may revert back to the Old Testament. We have to, uh, keep in mind where these, uh, Christians came from. They had, their background was Jewish in most for, for many of them. Uh, they had come from the Old Testament background, the, the, uh, sacrificial system, and the, uh, Old Testament law especially was ingrained in their minds and in, in their hearts. And the Apostle Paul was telling the Chr- Galatian Christians, you know, you, you have freedom and liberty now, you don't have to go back to these practices in the Old Testament. And it was causing a great deal of, of confusion among the Christians there, and Paul wrote this letter to them to correct many of the practices that were going on in the churches in Galatia. And, uh, in chapter four, uh, as we're going to see, we again see, um, Paul speaking about the law in relation, uh, to grace. So we're going to read the first twelve verses of chapter four. Now I say that the heir, as long as he is a child, differs nothing from a servant, though he be lord of all, but is under tutors and governors until the time appointed of the Father. Even so, we, when we were children, were in bondage, bondage under the elements of the world. But when the fullness of the time was come, God sent forth his son, made of a woman, made under the law, to redeem them that were under the law, that we might receive the adoption of sons. And because ye are sons, God has sent forth the spirit of his son into your hearts, crying, Abba, Father. Wherefore, thou art no more a servant, but a son, and if a son, then an heir of God through Christ. How be it then, when ye knew not God, ye did service unto them which by nature are no gods. But now, after that ye have known God, or rather are known of God, how turn ye again to the weak and beggarly elements, whereunto ye desire again to be in bondage? Ye observe days and months and times and years. I am afraid of you, lest I have bestowed upon you labor in vain. Brethren, I beseech you before, be as I am, for I am as ye are. Ye have not injured me at all. And we'll stop right there, verse twelve. Uh, first of all, verse one, the Apostle Paul in- is continuing a thought that he, uh, started in verse twenty nine of chapter three, the last verse in chapter three, Chap- that verse twenty nine reads, and if ye be Christ, then are ye Abraham's seed and heirs according to the promise. Now I say that the heir, as long as he is a child, differs nothing from a servant, though he be lord of all. Well, this particular case, the, um, child here are the spiritual heirs, or spiritual heirs are like y- lo- young children living under the law. And, you know, underage children, uh, don't have the full, uh, privileges of adults. Uh, they have no more freedom than a servant or a slave, according to what Paul is, is, is talking about here. He says in verse one uh, in that the, uh, servant is lord of all, and he is the master of the estate by birthright and title. In a, in human terms, an heir has an estate, and he will inherit, uh, the, the estate at a, at a certain time when that person, when he or she grows up into a, uh, the right age. Well, what, what is Paul trying to say here? Well, he, Paul is warning the Galatian Christians that going back to the Old Testament law and becoming tangled up in its rules and regulations again, and, and he's telling the Christians in Galatia, you, you don't have to do that anymore. Uh, in Christ, the Galatians have spiritual liberty. They have freedom, uh, to obey Christ. They, and they don't have to keep the Old Testament law in- anymore. I, I, the illustration I could give, uh, for that, for this is the fact that, um, uh, those of us who know the Lord Jesus Christ, especially those of us who have, um, known him for a number of years, uh, let me ask you a question. Would you like to go back into your old life? I wouldn't. I wouldn't, I would never want to do that. Yet the, the Galatian Christians are going back, they're reverting back, uh, uh, into the, uh, to the Old Testament rules, the regulations, and Jesus Christ, our Lord, had delivered them from the bondage of the law. And, uh, we see that, uh, you know, if, if we go back to our old lifestyle, if we go back to the same things we used to do before we knew Christ, you know, uh, that's not going to help us at all. Uh, as a matter of fact, that will hurt us and do us damage more than anything else. Yet these Galatian Christians, uh, were doing exactly that. And, um, we see in verse two that Paul says that they're under tutors and governors until the time appointed of the Father. Now, uh, an heir, uh, a human heir who is underage is under guardians and tutors. They have a, a trustee to manage the, the state for the young heir until, um, until the time appointed by the father. When the heir is of age, he will possess his inheritance under the law. And under the law, men were, uh, uh, were minors and enjoyed little of the inheritance. Uh, they were under tutors and governors, you see. And you recall in chapter three that the Apostle Paul, uh, said that the law is our schoolmaster, that the law is our tutor, our teacher, to bring us to the knowledge of Jesus Christ. The law teaches us how sinful and how wicked we are. And so we see that, uh, in verse two, in the first two verses, Paul is using a human illustration of an heir inheriting an estate to illustrate, uh, uh, uh, being under the law to the Galatian Christians. And in verse three, he says, even so, when we were children, we're in bondage under the elements of the world. The world, the word children here is speaking to spiritually immature children, and they were in bondage, that is, uh, they were a slave under the rule of law, and they were part of the elements of the world, as Paul says in verse three. The elements of the world is like the kindergarten department of religious instruction in the law. They were like the simple ABCs of rules and regulations. And the, the Galatian Christians had come out from under all these things when they put their faith in Jesus Christ. And Paul was trying to get across in these first three verses, uh, that the Galatian Christians didn't have to go back to the Old Testament law. They could leave that behind. And Paul emphasizes that later. But in verses four and five, he talks about, uh, the coming of our Savior and what he has done for us. In verse four, he says, but when the fullness of the time was come, God sent forth, sent forth his son, made of a woman, made under the law, to redeem them that were under the law, that we might receive the adoption of sons. When the fullness of times had come. That is that a proper time that God had appointed, uh, the Lord Jesus came into the world. And if you think back, if you go back, uh, to the gospel of accounts, if you know anything of the history of the time when Jesus w- was born, it was a time of religious corruption. Uh, it was a time that people were seeking salvation in a bankrupt system that was incapable of changing people's lives. Sounds like today, doesn't it? Times haven't changed much since the Lord was born. But when the fullness of times had come, when the proper time that God had appointed had come, God sent forth his son. God's plan for mankind came at the right time for the people of the world. And, um, God's timing, you know, is always right. God is never too early. He's never too late. He is always on time. And people may ask, well, why wasn't Jesus Christ born in the twentieth century? Why wasn't he born in the nineteenth century? Why wasn't he born, uh, closer to the time where we're living? Well, it was never part of God's plan. See, God has a plan for the ages, and his plan, uh, uh, called for the Lord Jesus Christ to come from the glory and majesty of heaven into the world a little over two thousand years ago, approximately two thousand years ago. That was God's plan, you see. And Paul says in verse four that when, when the Son of God came into the world, he was made of a woman, the virgin birth of our Savior. He was conceived by a miracle of God in, in Mary's womb, and, and, and Mary bore the Son of God. Mary was the human instrument that God chose to bring his son into the world, virgin born, free from sin. You and I can't say that, you said, uh, because when we were born, we were born directly into sin. And Jesus Christ, our Lord, was never born into sin. He was the perfect, faultless Son of God, virgin born. And also, Paul says in verse four, he was made of a woman, made under the law. When Christ came into the world, he was a, he was born a Jew, under all the ordinances of the law. His family, uh, Mary and Joseph, uh, his parents kept the Jewish law. And of course, we understand that no Jew or any person in the world has kept the law perfectly, yet our Savior did. He kept the law totally, completely, one hundred percent, perfect, perfectly all the time. And when Jesus came into the world, he was made under the law. He was the perfect fulfillment of the law when Christ came in. And it says in verse five, Paul says to the Galatians, he says, the reason why Christ came, to redeem them that were under the law, that we might receive the adoption of sons, to deliver us from the curse of the law. As I said before, the law was our schoolmaster. Uh, it was our tutor to show us how sinful we are, and to the law was supposed to, uh, lead us to faith in Jesus Christ. We were supposed to see how wicked and evil we were, and and that would lead us to Christ. That's what the law was there for. And he says, verse five, that we might receive the adoption of sons. You know, the Galatian Christians were a- as as we are today, were adopted into the family of God. When the the very second, the very m- um, minute, second that you place your faith and trust in Jesus Christ as your Savior, you're automatically adopted into the family of God. We are his sons and daughters. We are his children. The Apostle Paul talks about that. And we are no longer slaves to a, to a religious system. Uh, we don't have to keep, uh, ru- rituals and rules and ordinances. We're set free from the law. We're, we're children of God now. And that, that was the point that Paul was trying to get across to the Galatian Christians, that they didn't have to go back to the Old Testament law as the Judaizers were teaching. The Judaizers, the, the legalists who were teaching this stuff, were lying to the Galatian Christians. They were telling outright lies. And we talked about this earlier in chapter two, When Paul said, when we're ta- or chapter one, when we're talking about the gospel of Jesus Christ, how simple and how pure that message is, yet the gospel of Christ, that message had been corrupted by the Judaizers, and they were telling the Christians in the Galatian churches that you can't, you can't place your faith and trust in Christ. You've got to keep the Old Testament rules, the rituals, and the regulations of the law in order to be truly saved. Do you see what a lie that is? Do you see how people can be deceived into thinking that? And you know, there are folks, there are, there are people out there today, and I've mentioned this before a couple of times. They are literally working themselves to death to be accepted by God. How sad, how sad. They're trying to keep a, a, a, a group of rules and regulations, uh, the Ten Commandments or whatever it is, be a nice, decent, good person. Do all these nice, good things, and that'll make me acceptable to God, and God will, uh, c- uh, will forgive my sin. Well, the Bible says those things are filthy rags. The things that s- that these people are trying to do in themselves are good, but in they're trying to make themse- themselves acceptable to God. Uh, God will not accept our good deeds. They are filthy rags to God. And I don't know where you stand this morning, uh, in your relationship to God. Maybe you are saved. Maybe you do know the Lord Jesus as your savior. But the word of God says that there's only one way to get to, to get to God. There's only one way to have your sins forgiven. There's only one way that you can have eternal life in heaven someday, and that's through the sacrifice, the shed blood of Jesus Christ our Lord. There is no other way. I don't hear any amens out there. Ah, brother Bob gave me an amen. Appreciate that. But you know, you, you, you, the Galatian Christians were in a mindset, and, and, and these people, the Christians in Galatia, they were saved people, keep this in mind. They were just like you and I, they were born again. And, uh, the Apostle Paul was trying to get across to them, uh, that, uh, in verse, in verse five, that Jesus Christ came in to redeem them, them that were under the law, that we might receive the adoptions of sons. What a wonderful standing that is, to know that you and I as believers are adopted into the family of God. What a wonderful standing. And in verse six, Paul goes on, he says, and because ye are sons, God has sent forth the spirit of his son into your hearts, crying, Abba, Father. Uh, uh, Paul repeats the fact that they are children of God, you're sons and daughters of God, and he says that God has sent forth the spirit of his son into your hearts. You know, God commissioned the Holy Spirit as he did the son. You and I, who are believers, are automatically indwelt by the Holy Spirit of God at the very second of our conversion, when we're saved. And the Holy Spirit, as as Paul wrote in in the book of Romans, is the earnest or the down payment of our inheritance in Christ. That we now inherit everything that Jesus Christ has. Everything that Jesus Christ has, we have. And isn't that amazing? That's our standing in Christ. And, you know, we don't understand that. I certainly don't understand. I can't comprehend or grasp that totally and completely, but someday we will. Someday we will stand before that throne, and we will understand totally and perfectly exactly what we have in the inheritance in, in Jesus Christ. What a wonderful time that'll be. But Paul says also in verse six, he sent spirit the, the, he sent forth the spirit of his son into your hearts, crying, Abba Father. That word Abba is an interesting word. It's an Aramaic word. Nobody in the world speaks Aramaic in, in anymore. That's pretty much a dead language. Kind of like Latin. Nobody speaks Latin anymore. But the word, uh, denotes intimacy between a child and their father. You dads out there who have children, do you remember when your children were real small and they, they cr- climb up into your lap and, and put their arms around you and say, I love you, daddy? You remember that? Well, our relationship with our Savior, with, or our, I'm sorry, our relationship with God the Father is a, is similar. The English equivalent of the word Abba is daddy or papa. I would never call God daddy, but we can use that word Abba, can't we? The Lord Jesus used that word in the Garden of Gethsemane. He cried out to his, to his father, Abba, Father. The Lord Jesus was expressing that intimacy, that, that close, warm, loving relationship that he had with the Father. Brothers and sisters in Christ, you and I can have the same thing. We can cry out to the Father, Abba, Father, because we belong to him. We are no longer estranged from God the Father. He, he is our heavenly Father, our Father in heaven. You know, when we pray, we start our prayers off. Our Father in heaven, or, or Father in heaven, and, and we are, we're expressing that intimacy that you and I have wi- with God the Father now. We could come to our God, and we could say, Abba Father. Just like your child crawling up into your lap and saying, I love you. We can do the same thing. And, um, uh, Paul goes on in verse seven. Now, you know, verse six, Paul is trying to get across that special intimate relationship that the Galatian Christians have with God the Father. And in verse seven he says, wherefore thou art no more a servant but a son, and if a son, then an heir of God through Christ. You're no more a servant, that is, you're no more a slave. Uh, the Galatians were not slaves to the law anymore. Uh, they were sons and daughters of God. And the, the Galatians had that high privilege of, uh, of being, uh, children of God, and they were heir of God through Christ. They had that, that new spiritual heritage, uh, of no longer being under the law. They no longer had to keep the rituals, the regulations of the Old Testament law in order to be accepted by God. You know, salvation is totally, totally and only by the grace of God. And I said this before, by the grace of God alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone. Hear that word alone? You know what that word means? That means nothing else. There's no other way to get to God except through the person of Jesus Christ, our Lord. And the Galatians were no more a, uh, they were not slaves anymore, they were sons and daughters of God. And, uh, in verse eight, um, Paul says, in in verses eight through fourteen, Paul is talking about, uh, the legalistic elements of the law, and he says in verse eight, how be it then, when ye knew not God, ye did service unto them which by nature are no gods. Ye knew not God. You know, b- before Paul came and preached the gospel of Christ, uh, the, the people in the Galatian, uh, cities, they didn't know anything about God. They didn't care about God. Do you, do you remember in your life before you knew Christ, uh, did you care anything about God? I didn't. Not until the Spirit of God convicted me and let me know that I was a sinner. I didn't care about God. And, uh, Paul is saying, uh, when you knew not God, you did service unto them which by nature are no gods. You know, the, uh, many of the Galatians had worshipped idols before they were saved. The Gentile ones, that they had bowed down to a, uh, a piece of wood, to a piece of metal, to a piece of stone, and to them that was their God. They prayed to that God, they worshipped that, that inanimate object as their God. He w- that person was their God. And you did service unto them, which by nature are no gods. But in verse nine, he says, but now, you notice there's a transition there in verse nine. He says, but now, after that ye have known God, or rather are known of God, how turn ye again to the weak and beggarly elements? In, in other words, when the Galatians were known of God, what that means is that God took the initiative to save the Galatians, and he knew a, uh, knew them in that transaction of salvation. And I think, you know, that's something for us to think about. You know, uh, the Son of Man has come to seek and to save that which are lost, them which are lost. Before we knew the Savior, we were lost. God sought us out. He was seeking us. He was, uh, the Spirit of God, uh, was was coming, was convicting us of our sin. The Spirit of God was speaking to our hearts and speaking to our minds and telling us and letting us know that we are sinners before God, yet through Jesus Christ that we can have pardon and forgiveness for our sins. And, um, God is the one that took the initiative to save us, to save the Galatian. And Paul is asking a question in verse eight to, to the Galatians. How turn ye again to the weak and beggarly elements, whereunto ye desire again to, wherein- wherein- where ye unto ye desire again to be in bondage? And the weak and beggarly elements, uh, Paul is saying, how can you turn from grace and liberty and back into law and bondage? Uh, can the law save the Galatians? Can the law, brothers and sisters in Christ, can the law save us? No. Can the law bring us into spiritual maturity? No. Uh, can the law atone for our sins? Absolutely not. Can the law give us eternity? No. No, no, no, and no to those four questions. The law cannot do any of those things. Why would the Galatian Christians go back into that law and bondage that Go- that God had deliv- delivered them out of? It doesn't make any sense, does it? But, um, li- like I said, the Galatians that were, uh, they had fallen under the spell of the legalists, and we'll talk about that in more detail tonight in the second part of our me- of the message. But, uh, ye desire again to be, uh, be in bondage. Do you want to be slaves again? Do you want to go back, you know, before you were saved, do you want to go back to the, to the time when you and I were slaves? You know, I read one time about this Christian who was witnessing to his la- uh, his neighbor. And his neighbor said, you know, you, you Christians, you know, y'all are slaves, you know that? Here I am, I can go out and do anything I want to, to anybody I want to, anytime I want to, and I can do anything, and I don't have to answer to God. Do you see how wrong that man is, how deceived that person is? Here he's saying that Christians are, are, are in bondage. You know, brothers and sisters in Christ, we've been f- freed from bondage. The chains of sin have broken out off of us. We are no longer slaves to sin. We've been freed from that, and our standing in Christ now is that Jesus Christ, God the Father, will never hold us accountable for our sins again. Never, never, never. Never. That word never means never. And, and the Galatian Christians, the, the dear, dear believers in Christ, were delivered from the bondage of the law, and yet they wanted to go back to the law. They wanted to go back to the law. How tragic that is. And, uh, one commentator said that I read, he said this, how can anyone want to exchange the robes of Christ's righteousness for the filthy rags of heathenism, Judaism, or any other ism? Good question, isn't it? You know, I, sometimes I believe that we, we Christians, we don't really understand what we have in Christ. We really don't. I think it will do us good to go back to the Word of God and to read those passages and those verses that show us our standing in Christ. Go back to Ephesians one. read that chapter. Read how much you are loved by God. Go back to First Corinthians thirteen. read that chapter. Go back to Romans eight. read that chapter. That talks about the Spirit of God and our relationship to him. You know, uh, and the Galatian Christians, and you know, for, I really don't believe that they understood what they had in Christ. And the Apostle Paul was trying so desperately to make it clear to the Galatians, uh, what they had lost, what they had gained, and what they are losing by going back to the law. But anyway, verse ten, Paul says, ye observe days and months and times and years. Uh, the Galatians were observing the Old Testament rules and regulations, the days, uh, that they were supposed to keep. Uh, they were cl- they were clinging to these legal requirements of the law, and, um, we see that the Judaizers were making inroads in the Galatian churches. They had actually influenced these Christians to go back and to put themselves under the bondage of the law. How horrible that would be. How horrible that would be. And Paul said in verse eleven, he says, I am afraid of you, lest I have bestowed upon you labor in vain. Uh, that word afraid, Pa- uh, Paul was alarmed by the Galatians, their conduct of returning to the, to the rituals and ceremonies of the law. He wasn't physically afraid of them. He wasn't afraid that they'd stone him to death. But as we will see tonight, their relationship had changed a great deal. But in verse eleven, uh, I'm afraid of you, lest I have bestowed upon you labor in vain. You know, Paul thought he was working among them in vain, that he was not being effective among the Galatian Christians when he was, uh, when he heard about their return to the Old Testament law. Uh, they were turning to legalism a- and away from the grace found in Christ. Brothers, sisters in Christ, you know, the, the grace of God i- is, it's one of the most important, one of the most precious, and one of the most beautiful doctrines in the Word of God, the grace of God. That we don't have to earn our salvation. God has done it for us. A- as, as Paul said, uh, in, in verse four, God sent forth his son made of a woman, made under the law, to redeem them that were under the law. We don't have to go back to the Old Testament law and keep a bunch of rules and regulations and ordinances. We are saved by the grace of God. The grace of God. And finally, Paul says in verse twelve, he says, Brethren, I beseech you, be as I am, for I am as ye are, ye have not injured me at all. I beseech you, that means I beg you. I beg you, be as I am. Now, what did Paul mean by that? Well, Paul was no longer, he no longer considered himself under the Jewish law to obey the rules, regulations of law. He is now under the grace of God in Christ, you see. Paul gave up his Judaism. Uh, when he came to Christ and believed in Jesus Christ, he, at that moment in time, Paul gave up his past life, his, his, his adherence to the Old Testament law, and he no longer follows the rules and regulations of the Old Testament law. He's been freed from that. And actually, if you go back and look at Paul's life, he was living his life now as a Gentile, believe it or not. Here's a man who clung, uh, so earnestly and so desperately to the Old Testament law before he was saved, becoming a Pharisee and keeping the rules and regulations of the Old Testament. People saw, well, look at Saul of Tarsus. Man, isn't he a fantastic guy trying to keep the Old Testament law? But see, that's those things were keeping Paul in bondage. Paul has been freed by that. He is free from slavery to the law, to the Old Testament law. And, uh, uh, Paul in, in, in other tr- in order to reach other Gentiles with the, with the gospel, he started living like a Gentile. Amazing, isn't it? That a man who is so wrapped up, that a man who so steadfastly believed in the Old Testament law, that he was now ministering to the people that he once despised and hated. Ama- you know, see, that's how God can turn around a life. Isn't that great? And I know that, you know, in in my life and in some of your lives, uh, before you, uh, knew the Savior, uh, you had an attitude of hostility toward Christians. I didn't particularly care for them myself. And, uh, you know, when some of my family members became Christians and got saved, I thought, well, you know, that's the end of our relationship. I'm not going to see these people anymore. They're totally different from me now, and I will, I'm, hey, listen, I'm going my way. They can have their little, little church stuff. That was my attitude, you see. A wrong attitude. But, you know, when Jesus Christ came into my life, he changed all that. When Jesus Christ came into Paul's life, he changed Paul. When Jesus Christ came into the, the, the Christ- to the Galatians, to the people in the Galatian, uh, in the city of, of, of Iconium and Derbe and Tyre and Sidon, when Jesus Christ came into the lives of those dear Galatian people, he changed them. He delivered them from the, uh, Old Testament law that they were so wrapped up in. And brothers and sisters in Christ, you and I are no longer slaves to sin. Thank God. Praise God for that. And, and, you know, we don't have to go back, we don't have to revert back to our old sinful practices and follow our sin nature that turn our backs on the Lord Jesus Christ, and we don't have to do that. We can be obedient to the Lord. We, we, we can, we can, as the Apostle Paul said, we don't, we've been freed from the bondage of wickedness and sin. God has broken those chains. We are no longer subject to those things. We can come to God now and say, Abba Father. Abba Father. Isn't that wonderful? Well, that's the m- the message for t- uh, this morning, um, we'll pick it up in verse thirteen tonight. Let's go to the Lord in prayer. Now, Father, we, we thank you so much for that wonderful relationship that we have with you. That, that intimate relationship that we can come into your holy presence and, and call you our Father. We thank you so much for that. It is all made possible, Heavenly Father, by that most wonderful of all persons, the Son of God, the Lord Jesus Christ himself. When he went to the cross and, and died as a substitute for our sin. He was the one who made it possible for us to be here this morning. And we pray, Heavenly Father, for these dear ones this morning as, uh, as they read these verses in Galatians, we pray, Lord, that the Spirit of God may make the Word of God real to our hearts. We pray, Lord, that we will not only hear what, uh, hear the Word of God, but that we might obey it too. We just commit all these things to you, thanking you and praising you in the name of Jesus Christ, our Lord and our Savior. Amen.