Bruton, Bob: From Slaves To Sons-Gal 3 ~ Fairhaven Bible Chpl Ministry

I don't think so. Well, bring it, bring it over here. Bring it over. All right. Mike's voice isn't very good this morning, or excuse me, that wasn't said right. Mike's voice is not what it normally is, and my back is not what it normally is this morning. I did something that's, uh, I shouldn't have done yesterday, so they're giving me stools and aids in case, uh, I can't, uh, stand through the whole service. I have an announcement, first of all, for the high school and the college, uh, young people. Jim McCarthy and, uh, the young people at Grace Bible Chapel in San Jose are sponsoring a video production contest, and the idea is for, uh, you to get into teams of four, five, or six people and to make a short five or six minute video that either explains the gospel or challenges young people to live for Christ. And then they are going to get all these, uh, videos, and the ones that are, um, are good, that are worth it, are they're going to put on YouTube. And so the idea of the whole thing is to get young people that are familiar with YouTube and Facebook and some of these things to start thinking about how you can use those things to proclaim the gospel. And so this is a contest. There's a number of churches involved, and there's prizes, um, and if you're interested in that, uh, if you'll see me either after the service today or tonight, I'll give you the, the information on that. And we'd like to see at least several, uh, teams from Fairhaven, uh, get involved in that, um, contest. Now, how many of you like history? Raise your hands. Oh, more than I thought. Uh, history is usually one of those subjects that people either like or they hate. I don't know, it divides, uh, people into pretty strong categories. But it's often been said, if you don't know your history, that you're doomed to repeat it. And as we go through the book of Galatians, and we read about this, uh, controversy that, that, that rocked the first century church, a fair question for some to ask would be, well, what does that have to do with me today? You know, this, this is old history. This is stuff that happened a long time ago. It doesn't really apply to us today. But unfortunately, some of the issues that we are reading about and will continue to read about in the book of Galatians, uh, have continued to inflict the church throughout history. You remember Martin Luther, one of the prime movers in the Protestant Reformation. One of his battle cries was Sola Fidea, faith alone, only faith. Why? Why was that such a big thing to him? Because the dominant church at the time that he lived, they were adding things to the gospel. They were prescribing other things that people had to do in order to be right with God, and that's continued throughout history, right down to the present time. And so even today, even, uh, Protestant groups over the centuries, uh, have allowed little things to creep into their doctrine that they've added to the gospel, that they begin to teach and they begin to, uh, influence people to think that in order to be right with God, you have to do these things in addition to what Christ has done for them. And so it continues to be an issue, uh, today, and for that reason, I think that what we're studying in Galatians is worthwhile, it is profitable, and we need to pay heed to the message, uh, that we're reading. Now, how many of you, if you know, have descended from either French, Irish, Scottish, Welsh, Briton forebearers? All right, you've got that in your bloodline, all right? Well, you may not have known it then, but the Galatians was written to your ancestors. Uh, Galatia, a province in Asia Minor, as Kevin pointed out to us, uh, was the Roman word or the Latin word, uh, for the Gauls. The Gauls were originally from France. That was the Latin word for Celts. And we know that the Celtic people were the original inhabitants of France, uh, parts of Germany, and the British Isles. And so if you have any of that French, uh, British, English, Scotch, Irish, Welsh blood in you, then, uh, your great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great grandpa may have been one of the people that Paul was writing to. All right, let's, uh, just review the argument of the book so far so that we can kind of place our discussion this morning into context. You remember that Deacon Cooper started off, uh, with the first ten verses, and he instructed us how that, that Paul, uh, in Galatians uses a much briefer introduction than normal. He gets right to the point. He just gets right to it. And he, uh, tells the Galatians that he believes they're guilty of deserting the gospel, of perverting the gospel, or at least of believing a perverted gospel. And with very harsh language, he proclaims a curse on anyone who teaches a gospel different than the one that he had delivered, delivered to the Galatians. And then in the second week, Reverend Walker finished chapter one, where Paul defends his credentials. Paul knows that the Galatian believers are hearing different things from different people, and they are thinking to themselves, well, wait a minute, Paul, you're telling us this, but these other people are telling us that. Why should we believe you? And so Paul feels compelled to defend his credentials and to defend the message that he had brought to them. And he says, in effect, you need to believe me because I got my message directly from the Lord himself. I didn't make it up. I didn't get it from other men, but what I gave you, the gospel I presented to you, I got from the Lord himself. And then, uh, Cardinal Chin took us through chapter two, where Paul goes to Jerusalem after some times, and he, he has a huddle with the big shots in Jerusalem, and they conclude. Everything all right? All right. Paul meets Peter, James, and John, and they conclude that Paul, even though he had been operating independently of the other apostles, they compared notes, and they found that Paul was indeed preaching the same gospel, uh, that the other apostles were. And then Bishop Rabot spoke to us from the first nine verses. You look good, Roger. Roger spoke from the first part of chapter three where Paul turns to the example of Abraham, and he says, how was Abraham made righteous before God? Before the law ever came, how was Abraham made righteous? Was it by keeping the law? And the answer is obviously not, because the law hadn't been given yet. So what, how did people before the law, how were they made righteous with God? And he says it was because of faith. Righteous, uh, Abraham believed God, and it was credited to him as righteousness. And then last week, Dr. Kelly, and I don't have a picture of him, I'm sorry, Bill, but Dr. Kelly showed us in the, in the middle parts of chapter three that whereas the promise to Abraham on the basis of faith brought a blessing, the law that was given to Moses and came four hundred and thirty years later brought a curse. If you didn't keep the law entirely, then it brought condemnation from God, and the penalty was death. But then Christ came to take that curse, to take that doom on himself, so that the promise of blessing, the promise of salvation that was given to Abraham would come to all men, both the Jews. And now we start in verse nineteen of chapter three this morning. And Paul poses a question, and it's really a rhetorical question. I think Paul knows that as he writes this letter, he anticipates what the Galatians are going to be thinking, what's going to be going through their mind. And he anticipates them thinking that in light of what he has just told them up to that point, that they would ask the question, why the law then? Why the law? If what Paul is saying is true, if righteousness before God comes by faith in the promise of Abraham that his seed, his, one of his descendants would bring salvation to everybody, then why did God give the law? Why was it necessary? You must keep in mind that for the Jews, the law did bring righteousness before God. The Jews, for the most part, thought that that is what made them right before God, keeping the law. If you asked a Jew what made them a Jew, they would say, well, my mama was a Jew. Well, what about her? Well, her mama. But if you trace it all the way back, they would eventually get to the point that what made them unique as a people was the fact that God had entrusted them with the law. And so that law, the circumcision, the dietary rules, the animal sacrifices, the special holidays and festivals, all those things that were prescribed in the law, they made the Jews what they were. That's what gave them their national and even their personal identity, and they believed, for the most part, that by keeping that law, that they were right before God. They knew they couldn't keep it perfectly, but that's what they had the animal sacrifices for. If they blew it, if they violated the law, they would just take a little lamb, go down, give it to the priest, have it sacrificed, and wham, you know, they're they're good again. That's why in the scriptures we see this attitude portrayed. When the rich young ruler came to Jesus and said, good teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life? Jesus said, well, you know the commandments. Thou shalt not murder, thou shalt not commit adultery, etc. How did the guy respond? He said, all these I have kept from my youth. I've done it. The rich young ruler thought that he was righteous before God because he had kept the law. We see the same attitude in the Pharisees over and over again. They often accused Jesus of being a sinner and of associating with sinners. The inference in their words was, were, you are a sinner, but we're not. We're righteous. We're godly because we keep the law. Paul has already told us in verse eleven of chapter three that it's evident that no one is justified by the law. Well, it was evident to Paul, but apparently it wasn't evident to a lot of the other Jews because they were counting on the law to make them righteous before God. And what's more, some of these Jews who had professed faith in Christ as their Messiah, who were p- professing believers, they continued to cling to the Old Testament law. They still felt that even though Christ had died, that they needed to c- be circumcised, they needed to follow the dietary regulations and other aspects of the law. And not only that, they were telling Gentile Christians that if they wanted to be completely right, if they wanted to enter into the full scope of their salvation, that they had to become like the Jews and be circumcised and follow these dietary laws and everything else. And that was a hard thing. That was a very hard thing. To suggest that the law, for Paul to come along and suggest that the law didn't really do anything for them, that would be a shock. That violated everything they had been taught growing up. It would be like somebody coming along today and attacking the American Constitution. All right? We were all raised in school to believe that the Constitution of the United States guarantees our freedom, and it guarantees us certain unal- inalienable rights. And if somebody came along and told you, well, it doesn't really do anything, the Constitution doesn't really have any value, you know, forget it, we need to get rid of the Constitution. A lot of people would have trouble with that, wouldn't they? All right? Because it violates everything that we've been taught, everything that we believe. And so this is the situation that Paul is in now. He is trying to show that the law doesn't do what some of these Jewish Christians and their Gentile friends were teaching. And so the question is, why the law? And Paul gives a very simple, direct answer, uh, and then he elaborates in more detail. The answer to the question, why the law, is simply it was given because of transgressions. God gave the law to the Jews because they were sinners. Now, they were already sinners. The law didn't make them sinners. It's not that they were innocent or okay before, and then somehow the law made sinners out. They were sinners long before the law came along. And so it begs the question then, well, if they were already sinners, if transgression already existed, then what was the purpose of the law? Would it keep people from sinning? Would it make people righteous before God? We'll see the answers to these questions as we go along. But first, Paul wants us to see the law in its historical context, in the way it relates to the promise that was given to Abraham. The law, we're told here, was given through angels to Moses. Now, when we read the Old Testament account, when Moses was not, was on Mount Sinai, there's no mention of angels. But not only here, but in Hebrews two and Acts seven and several places in the New Testament, it talks about the law being given by angels. So somehow Paul knew something that we don't read in the Old Testament scripture, that the angels were somehow involved in giving Moses the law. And then Moses took that law and acted as a mediator between God and men. He represented God to the Jews, and he represented the Jews to God. The Jews themselves wanted it that way. You'll remember that they told Moses when he came down from the mountain, you talk to God for us. We don't want to talk to God face to face, all right? We want you to be kind of a buffer between God and us. And Paul tells us here that the law was given for a fixed time. It says until the seed should come to whom the promise had been made. Paul is arguing that the law came for a, a, a d- a predetermined amount of time. It wasn't open-ended. It was never intended that the law would just continue indefinitely. It had a, a definite terminal point. And then Paul tells us that the law is inherently inferior to the promise, and he argues this way. This is hard to understand, I think. He says a mediator re- uh, now a mediator is not for one, whereas God is one. That- that's kind of awkward sounding to us. But what he's trying to say here is that a mediator represents two sides, all right? Two sides that can't reach a resolution. A mediator comes in and and helps the two sides to find some compromise, all right? And then both sides are obligated to live up to their end of the bargain, whatever it is. This side has to do this, this side has to do that. So the under the law, men were obligated to keep their part of the bargain, and their part of the bargain was they had to obey it. God gave it, they had to obey it. But on the other hand, the promise that was given to Abraham was only based on one party. A promise is just based on the person that gives the promise and on how trustworthy or how able they are to deliver on what they promised. So the promise to Abraham is superior to the law because it's based entirely on God's ability to fulfill what he said would happen. The law, on the other hand, is inferior to that promise because it involves man's ability to hold up his end of the bargain, which he can't do. And then Paul asked another, uh, rhetorical question, I think, that he anticipates is going through the minds of his readers. If the law is so s- inferior to the promise, is God then contradicting himself? Ha- has God established two competing principles that work against each other? And he asks the question, is the law then contrary to the promises of God? Is God working against himself here? And he, once again, he answers in a very, uh, straightforward manner, a very simple answer, but then with a, a lengthy explanation. And the simple answer is emphatic. No. Never. God forbid. Absolutely not, depending upon your translation. Paul explains this way. If a law had been given that was able to impart life, then righteousness would indeed have been based on the law. It isn't just, it isn't a matter of the law working at cross purposes to the promise of God. It's that it's a matter of the law being unable. It just can't do it. It can't get the job done. As Bill pointed out last week, even our contemporary law, it has the power to condemn, to show that you're a lawbreaker, to show that you're guilty, but it doesn't have the power to fix the problem. All right? That can only be dealt with usually by, by penalty. You go to jail, you pay a fine or something like that. And here we're told one of those things that God can't do. You know, the scriptures say that God can't lie. God cannot look on sin. And here we're told that God could not, God himself could not create a law that would have made man righteous before him. If it could have been done, he would have done it, but it couldn't, it couldn't, wouldn't happen, couldn't happen. Then in verse twenty two, Paul starts with a but to show a contrast. Not only does the law not impart righteousness, but the Old Testament scriptures that contain the law show all men to be sinners. Both the Jews who are under the law, and we know from Romans one that Gentiles, even Gentiles who didn't have the law, they had nature and conscience that God had given them to direct them to do the right thing. So even the Gentiles were without excuse. The law, as it was contained in scriptures, showed men to be sinners so that they would realize that they couldn't merit salvation on their own, that they couldn't be good enough through their own works to merit God's righteousness. And it was to prepare them so that when the, the fulfillment of the promise to Abraham would come, when Christ would come, that people would be ready to believe in him and find their salvation in him. The next verse, in twenty three, Paul continues to describe the law, but he again, he uses language that's hard for us to understand. He says, but before faith came, we were kept in custody under the law, being shut up to the faith, which was later to be revealed. This makes it sound, at least the way it's, uh, translated in the New American Standard, like law in some way, the law kept people from faith. It kept you shut up so that you couldn't believe. Uh, a modern, I have a number of translations at home. I have a new translation that, of all things, is called God's Word, the God's Word translation, and it translates it this way: We were kept under control by Moses' laws until this faith came. That's really the idea. Not that f- not that the law excludes faith or prevents faith, but it kind of keeps the, the Jewish nation for whom the law was intended, keeps them in kind of a holding tank, kind of holds them in abeyance until Christ should come and the faith that he brought. Then in verse twenty four, Paul summarizes his answer to the initial question. The question was, why the law then? And Paul summarizes his argument by saying in verse twenty four, therefore the law has become our tutor to Christ, that we may be justified by faith. The law, contrary to what the Jews believed, was never intended to be an alternative means of finding righteousness before God. It was from the get-go intended to be a tutor, an aid that would point people to the need for Christ. And we can ask ourselves now today, with the vantage or with the advantage of hindsight, how did it work? Did the Jewish n- did the law bring the Jewish nation to a place where they were ready to receive Christ? The answer is, by and large, no. For the most part, no. The Jewish nation rejected Christ. We know there were a few exceptions. Uh, in the Gospels, Simeon, uh, is described as a righteous man who was seeking the consolation of Israel. Nicodemus in John three, who came to Jesus by night, we're told he was looking for the Messiah. Some of the Lord's disciples, some of the women that followed him, there were a s- a a a small group of people that recognized that the law just wasn't going to save them, and so they were looking for what had been promised to Abraham. But by and large, the Jewish nation, the Jewish people, uh, were looking for, uh, their righteousness in the law. They weren't looking for Christ. I believe Paul describes the way the law was supposed to work in that famous passage in Romans seven. You know it. Paul says of himself, in my mind, I want to do the right things. I want to keep the law. I want to do what pleases God, but in my flesh, I don't do it. And so I end up doing the things I don't want to do and not doing the things that I want to do. And he concludes, what a wretched guy I am. Who- who's gonna get me out of this mess? And that was the purpose of the law, to bring people to the point of desperation where they would know that they couldn't get there, they couldn't be righteous before God by keeping the law. In verse twenty five, Paul changes gears now. He's, he's, he's told us what the purpose of the law is, and now, uh, it, through the end of chapter three and the beginning of chapter four, he wants us to see what the significance of that is. How does that affect us? He says, but now faith, now that faith has come, we are no longer under a tutor, for you are all sons of God through faith in Christ Jesus. The Jews directly and the Gentiles indirectly no longer have the law as a tutor. We have been made sons of God with all the rights and privileges that that relationship entails. And this sonship, this privilege of sonship comes not from being circumcised, not because we sacrificed a sheep like we were supposed to, not because we don't eat pork or any of those things, but this sonship comes through our identity, our baptism into Christ. The fact that we are in Christ, that is what makes us a son of God. And the result of this new arrangement, that faith in Christ has brought the era of the law to an end, is that there is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free man, there is neither male nor female, for you are all one in Christ. What a wonderful verse that is. In Christ, all the, all the divisions, all the things that separate people and divide people have been broken down. Under the law, if we read the Old Testament law, slaves were not as valuable as free men. Men were viewed as superior to women. Jews considered themselves to be better than Gentiles. Paul talks more about this in Ephesians, where he tells us in chapter two that Christ broke down the barrier of the wall, the dividing wall, by abolishing in his flesh the enmity which is contained in the law of commandments. He's saying the law tended to separate men, tended to divide men. We see that earlier in this passage in Galatians. Uh, Paul relates an incident in which, uh, Peter had come to visit him in Antioch, and everybody used to eat together, have their meals together. But then some conservative Jewish Christians came from Jerusalem, men that still observed the law, that still tried to follow the dietary regulations of the law. And when they arrived in Antioch, Peter, we're told, withdrew from eating with the Gentiles. He wouldn't eat their food, he wouldn't have lunch with them anymore. He had to go, and the, the, the, the Jewish guys kind of segregated themselves alone. And Paul says, I had to call him on it. That wasn't right. But that's what the law tended to do, to separate people. We need to be careful, though, that we, when we read this verse, uh, we don't inject twenty first century ideas into what it is saying. The point of verse twenty eight is that all men, women, people from every tribe and nation, they're all equal before God. None are more righteous, none are better than anybody else. But the same Paul that wrote Galatians wrote First Corinthians, where he spells out the roles of men and women in the church. And in chapter seven of Corinthians, he tells slaves, if you're a slave, don't worry about it. Be content to remain in the condition you find yourself. So, under faith in Christ, Jews are still Jews, Gentiles are still Gentiles, men are still men, women are still women, slaves are still slaves, free men are still free men. The point is that they are all one in Christ, none are better than the other, all right? It says in twenty nine, and if you are in Christ, then you are Abraham's offspring, heirs according to the promise. Now the, again, the promise to Abraham was that all the nations of the world would be blessed through one of his descendants, and we know that descendant was Christ that brought salvation to the whole world. This would have been a very strange idea to the Jews who considered themselves the descendants of Abraham, nobody else. You remember in, in John chapter eight, Jesus was confronted by some Jewish guys, and they're having a discussion, and they use, in their defense, they say, we are Abraham's children, with a, a, a kind of a smug satisfaction. And Jesus goes on to blow them out of the water and says, you're not children of Abraham. If you were children of Abraham, you'd live like he lived. You- you'd do what he did. You would do the deeds of Abraham. He says, you're- you're children of the devil. But the Jews thought of themselves that way. They thought of themselves as the, the descendants, the children of Abraham. He tells them here that the children of Abraham are those that have exercised faith in Christ. Those are the true heirs, the true children of Abraham. Then in chapter four, the first couple verses, we'll just kind of lump some of these things together. Paul expresses the same ideas that he's been communicating in chapter three. He- he's almost repeating himself, but I think Paul understands that his audience is having trouble getting it. They're having trouble accepting what he's saying about the law, and so he's going to illustrate it once again in a different way. And in the first three verses, he uses the illustration of a child of a wealthy family, the child of a wealthy man. He says, this child is destined one day to own it all, all right? To own it all. But as long as he's underage, he's no different than a slave. He, he doesn't have the authority to, to enjoy all the rights and privileges, uh, of being a child of this wealthy family. Eric Harvey over here, he's a, he's a son and heir of Lord Harvey. And one day, Eric and his brother are gonna own it all, all right? The Harvey estate, the Harvey millions are all gonna be Eric's. But right now, he has to go to school. He has to do his homework. He has to obey his teachers, all right? He can't use the car. He can't spend his daddy's money whenever he wants to, all right? It's not his, although he is a son, and although he is an heir, the privileges that come with that are not yet his. He can't enjoy that. And that's what Paul is saying the Jews under the law were like. They they were like underage children that didn't, weren't able to enter into the full aspect of their relationship with God. And Paul's point is that the law, in in chapter three, he equates it to the law being like a warden that helped them in captivity. Here he says the law is like a guardian to rule over these juvenile children. But when the fullness of time came, God sent forth his son. There's a lot of discussion about what this, uh, phrase, the fullness of time, means. Some postulate that it means when the hearts of men, particularly the hearts of the Jewish nation, had reached a point where they were ready to receive Christ, but we know that the Jewish nation didn't exactly give Christ a real warm welcome. So I, I don't believe that's the answer. Others have suggested that the fullness of time refers, uh, to the conditions in the Roman Empire. It was, for the most part, peaceful and prosperous. The Romans had built roads all over the Mediterranean world that made travel back and forth easy. Uh, everyone spoke Greek, so no matter where you went to all these different tribes and nations, you could address them in Greek. And so these things fat- facilitated the spread of the gospel. Maybe that's it. We don't know for sure, other than God looked down and said, well, now's the time. God chose it and said, now's the time, and he sent his son. He sent his son born under the law that he might redeem those who were under the law. Christ fulfilled the law perfectly. He kept it perfectly, the only person to ever do so. And this qualified him to redeem everyone else who had not kept the law. That's what qualified him to be our substitute, because he kept it, and nobody else could, and so he could take our punishment on himself. That we might receive the adoption as sons. The thought here, when we think of adoption, we think of a, a someone that was born to parents over here, that for the parents die or something, and then they get adopted and brought into another family that's not their biological parents. The thought here, consistent with this idea of the underage children, is not that somebody's bringing in somebody from somewhere else, but that of a child reaching maturity, reaching the point where they they enter into the rights and privileges of their sonship. Eric gets to drive the car. Eric gets to spend his daddy's money, all right? He- he's adopted, he's- he's entered into the full capacity of his sonship. And the spiritual corollary to Paul's example is that because now you were sons, because you were mature sons that have entered into the- the rights and privileges of being a son of God, because of that, God has sent forth his spirit into our hearts, crying, Abba Father. God's gift to his children is not a car, is not the money, but it's the spirit of Christ that he sends into our hearts. The Jews under the law never experienced this. They never had the spirit in their hearts. This is something they didn't know. Instead, they had the law which condemned and separated men from God, and now God has given us his spirit that comes to comfort and draws near so that we can approach God directly, unlike the Jews who were afraid to come to God. Now, because of what Christ has done, Christ and God sending his spirit into our hearts, we approach him, call him Abba, Father, a term of affection. Paul, therefore, summarizes his, his argument, or in, in verse seven. He says, therefore, you are no longer a slave, but a son, and if a son, then an heir through God. Look at this little chart, the summary of what Paul has told us in this passage, the difference between being under the law and under faith. The law was given through a mediator. Faith was based on the promise of God. The law brings death, it condemns. Faith in Christ brings life. The law makes slaves to sin. Christ delivers from the power of sin. The law reduces men to slaves or to underage children. Faith in Christ elevates men to sons and heirs of God. The law divides men. Faith unifies men. The law is temporary, whereas faith in Christ is ongoing, it's eternal. Now, how do we apply this passage to ourselves today? Again, we're not in the first century. This, we don't have Jewish people running around our congregation trying to get us to, you know, not eat pork or, or be circumcised or anything like that. Well, a couple things come to mind. First of all, I have to say, just in, in reading this and studying this passer- passage several times, I've found myself just spontaneously thanking God that I don't live under the law. I mean, it's just such a blessing that we don't even have to deal with that. And I- I- I'm grateful for that. I think we- we need to thank the Lord for that. And then also we need to be ever vigilant not to add our own little laws to the work of Christ. I don't know what it is, but there seems to be something in the human makeup that makes us want to add laws that we don't have to. Uh, conservative churches in America tend to identify certain types of behavior and say real Christians wouldn't do that, and the inference is if, if you do those things, you're not a Christian. They add it and say you have to do these things or not do those things. When I was growing up in the fifties and sixties, it was commonly taught that a, a true Christian would not play cards or go to movies or go to dances. Those, Daniel Scott goes like that. Uh, th- those things were called the devil's playground, and no true Christian would do that kind of stuff. I'm not sure what it is today. I've tried to think if there's anything amongst us, but I think it may be that I just can't see the forest for the trees, you know, I'm, I'm part of it, but, uh, liberal churches, on the other hand, tend to absorb the politically correct views of our culture and elevate them to the status of law. I read the account this week of a woman that got saved, and she was invited to go to a, a, a mainline denominational church, and she went, and she was enthusiastic about the Lord, and they saw it, so they put her to work. They let her teach Sunday school, and they had her teach a small group during the week. And she was teaching the Bible and enthused about it, but then some of the things that she was teaching s- conflicted with some of the political and social views that this church held to. The pastor pulled her aside and said, well, we don't, we don't want you to teach that. She said, well, it's in the Bible. Well, we don't teach that here. And they asked her to leave. They kicked her out of the church. All right? It's, it happens today in the United States of America. Another application, I think, is for parents and Sunday school teachers to think, how do we communicate the truths in Galatians to our children? A lot of children that grow up in churches like Fairhaven, somehow, even though we don't intend it, they develop the idea that the Christian life is all about do's and don'ts. I can do this, and I can't do that. And we have kids, when they get to be of age, they leave. Why? Because they have this misconception in their mind about really what they're being taught. Somehow we need to find creative ways to communicate to children as they grow up that Christ died not to subject us to laws, but to give us freedom. How, how do we communicate that to children in terms that they understand? On the other hand, we can take, uh, the idea of kind of this anti-legalism bent too far in the other direction. We can say, well, because we're not under the law, we can do whatever we want to do then. You know, we're free to do whatever. And yet we know the scriptures don't teach that. Christ himself reiterated nine of the Ten commandments in his teaching and even upgraded them. Uh, not that we do those and earn our salvation, but in order to live a life pleasing to him. James tells us that our lives should be governed by the law of liberty, and that's to be characterized by being a doer of the word and not a hearer only. When we get to chapter five of Galatians, Paul will tell us not to use our freedom in the spirit as an opportunity for the flesh. And so the fact that we're not under the Mosaic law doesn't just free us up then to do whatever we please. One last application, I think we all need to consider what it means to be a son and heir of God. How does a son of God live? How does an heir of God, when you get up in the morning, get dressed, and get ready to go to work, you're going to work as a son of the Most High God. How do you speak? How do you think? How do you live before other people so that they know that Larry Meade is a son and an heir of God? That's worth considering. That's worth reflecting. Does our life reflect that truth that we're sons of Almighty God? Let's pray. Father, I pray that you'll help us as we reflect on these things, that you'll, you'll help us see what it means to be a son and heir. I pray that you'll give us grateful hearts that will always be thankful and grateful, Lord, that you've delivered us from the curse of the law and put the spirit in our hearts that allows us to come to you and call you daddy, our father. Lord, impress these truths on us, I pray. Amen.