Thank you, Brass. And now would you please open your Bible with me to the book of Galatians. Galatians chapter 3. The comedian Lily Tomlin made this statement. She said, I've always wanted to be somebody, but I see now I should have been more specific. Within the heart of every human being there is the longing to be somebody, to find some significance in this life. Many find it in ways that are only for this life, but how wonderful to find a significance in this life that extends into the next.
Today we're going to learn that the Christian has become somebody in Jesus Christ, his Lord. The Apostle Paul is building a case in chapters 3 and 4 of Galatians for his doctrine of justification by faith alone. He adds to the series of arguments that we've been looking at now for several weeks, one that relates to the position or to the status of the Galatian believers.
But there's a status that is enjoyed by everyone who has been justified by faith and who therefore has a right relationship with God. Essentially, what Paul urges them to do and urges us to do is to remember who we are, to remember who we are. Believers are sons, not slaves, he says. So don't live beneath your position. Believers in Jesus Christ are sons of God, not slaves. The Apostle Paul expresses two realities in the text that I'm going to read, beginning in chapter 4 and verse 1.
Now I say as long as the heir is a child, he does not differ at all from a slave, although he is owner of everything. But he is under guardians and managers until the date set by the Father. So also we, while we were children, were held in bondage. We were enslaved, says Paul, under the elemental things of the world.
But when the fullness of the time came, God sent forth his Son, born of a woman, born under the law, in order that he might redeem those who were under the law, that we might receive the adoption as sons. And because you are sons, God has sent forth the Spirit of his Son into your hearts, into our hearts, crying, Abba, Father. Therefore you are no longer a slave but a son, and if a son, then an heir through God.
However, at that time, when you did not know God, you were slaves to those which by nature are no gods. But now that you have come to know God, or rather to be known by God, how is it that you turn back again to the weak and worthless elemental things to which you desire to be enslaved all over again? You observe days and months and seasons and years. I fear for you that perhaps I have labored over you in vain. There are two realities in this text that the Apostle Paul points to.
First he points to their past reality, a reality that might be summarized in this statement, they had been held as slaves. The Apostle speaks of them as children. The word that he uses here means an immature baby. He says, whatever your potential as a child, as an immature baby, your status is the same as that of a slave. You have no rights and no privileges. Now it's difficult for us today to understand what Paul is saying here, but those from the Roman world understood.
Those who were minors, those who were considered immature babes, had no standing at all in the family, even though the child may be the heir of everything. The child was considered no more in status than a slave, even like the slave that might be appointed as a tutor over him, to bring him and to teach him and to mature him to that point of maturity. The child had no rights or purposes or privileges. Whatever his potential might have been for the future, he was counted no more than a slave.
So Paul is saying to them, whatever your past, you were a slave. Who are these slaves? He describes them as those who do not know God in verse 8. In saying it that way, he is talking about all of the Galatian Christians up until the time at least the gospel had been preached. They were all slaves. And to what were they enslaved? Well, Paul seems to have two groups in mind as he writes these verses, going back a bit into chapter 3 and then into what we read in chapter 4.
Paul seems to have in mind, first of all, the Jews who had now come to Christ, but who before had been enslaved. He sees them as having been enslaved to the law, to the law of Moses. He describes them as shut up by the law, as in bondage to the law. Then the apostle is thinking also of the Gentiles who had now come to Christ in Galatia. And particularly of them, he says, you are in bondage to the elemental things. That's how the New American Standard Version puts it.
You will see that used in verse 3 and again in verse 9. He says, you Gentiles have been enslaved to the elemental things. That is the very basic things in the pagan ideas and mythology. These basic elements referred to the fire, water, air, and earth that were often associated in those days, especially with the worship of idols and false gods, associated with these basic elements as they saw in that ancient world.
And so Paul is thinking here of those false deities that the Gentiles had worshiped, associated with the elements of nature. I think he is talking about demonic powers, spiritual powers that were associated with this false worship in the temples of the gods and goddesses of the Greek and Roman world. The spiritual forces of darkness under the control of Satan. He is saying to the Gentiles, you in your past religious experience were actually in bondage to powers that you're ignorant about.
You think you worship the elements, but in fact you're worshiping what's behind the worship of the elements, and that is the powers of darkness. Not as interesting to me that Paul says both to the Jew and to the Gentile, you were enslaved. We might think it different that the Jew, rather, having had the law, would have an advantage, and certainly there was an advantage in one sense. But Paul here says that in terms of relationship to God, both the Jew and the Gentile were in bondage.
Not that the law and pagan worship was equivalent. The law, as we have seen before, had a good and noble and holy purpose. But I think Paul's point here, by implication, may well be that the law, even though it was good and holy and given by God, could be used by the devil as much as he would use pagan worship to hold people in spiritual bondage, because the law can be abused.
And that's how most of the Jews in those days were using the law in an abusive way, thinking that by keeping the law they were earning merit with God. Paul says that is as much bondage to the soul as worshiping demons that are associated with the false idols of pagan mythology. Paul's point here is that every sinner is a slave to something, be it even to his own religious pride and self-righteousness. And Satan is the slave master who keeps all sinners in bondage and in ignorance.
Paul having painted the picture of their past reality says, now let me get this again, you want to return to that? You want to follow the teaching that leads you back into the bondage that you had in the past? In essence, he's saying, pardon me if I'm a bit confused by this. The apostle Paul then points to their present reality. Their past reality was that they had been held in bondage as slaves, but their present reality is that they were now adopted as sons.
In the Roman world of Jesus' day, a young man achieved legal status when he became an adult. At that time in his life, whatever the father appointed as the right time, as the Romans viewed it, the young man was taken into the public forum. And there on the public platform before the citizens of the city, the father would say something like this, this is my son. He has now come of age. He inherits my name, my property, and my social position.
And then he would take off the toga that the boy was wearing called the toga protexta, and he would put upon him a new piece of clothing called the toga virilis, which was the coat of a man. That public act making his immature child a man, a son in the family, was called adoption. And that is the image that the Apostle Paul is drawing upon here when he says that God has given us adoption as sons. Sons are those who have come of age.
And here in the context of what Paul is saying, to come of age means to come to that place in life where one places his faith in the promise of God that is found in Jesus Christ. Paul says that's what it means to come of age and to be adopted as a son. It means that you have come out of the bondage of being an immature youth associated with slaves, and now you have believed in Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior. And in doing that, you have been adopted as a son.
Now Paul gives to us the means by which God causes this new position to become a reality. He tells us how it is possible that God could give us this change of position. He says it happens this way. In the first place, God Himself sent forth His Son. He is talking here about the incarnation, the coming of the eternal Son of God into our world in human form, which he explains by some modifiers to this idea. He says this happened in the fullness of time, verse 4.
That relates to what Paul said in verse 2 when he speaks about the date set by the Father. He says, at the fullness of time, God sent forth His Son at the very moment that God had prepared the world. God used the Roman peace and the Roman roads by which the gospel could be spread to help prepare the way for this fullness of time. He used the contribution of the Greeks, especially in their language, Koine Greek, which had become like English is in our world.
It was sort of the universal common language. And so the Greeks gave their contribution. The Jews gave their contribution of the belief in monotheism, in one God, and the law of God. And when God saw that everything had come together, the contributions of the Romans, the Greeks, and the Jews of that day, in the fullness of time, He sent forth His Son, whom He describes as being born of a woman, a very significant phrase on several accounts.
In the first place, it shows us that Jesus was authentically human. He just didn't come into the world and appear as a man, but He was born into the world. Secondly, He was born of a woman. We would say, well, of course. You see, women in that day were considered inferior. And so Paul does not hesitate to show the association of Jesus in His birth as one born of a woman.
Furthermore, there is the reference back to Genesis 3.15, where Jesus fulfills that promise of the seed of the woman, who would come to crush the head of the serpent, though He Himself would be bruised in the process, speaking about the suffering that He would endure on the cross, but through which suffering He would defeat the powers of Satan, the serpent. He also describes Jesus as being born under the law. That is, Jesus was born into a Jewish home.
He was born as a Jew, and as such was subject to the rituals and to the judgments of the law. He came under the law. But that brings us to the next part of His wonderful statement about how Jesus, or how God accomplished our adoption. And that is, not only did He send forth His Son, but He redeemed us who were under the law. His Son was born under the law that through His death He might take the curse of the law upon Himself and redeem us.
Paul has talked about this already in chapter 3, as we've seen a few weeks ago. And Paul is saying here that Jesus in doing this gave us freedom from the law. He came under the law's obligations and its bondage, and then paid the price for us who were cursed by it by becoming our curse on the cross for us. He paid the price and then led us out from underneath that bondage. You get His point, don't you?
He is saying to them, then why do you want to go back to that bondage from which Christ set you free? I will show that I am a man by saying to you that one of my favorite movies is Braveheart. That is not a favorite of most women because it is pretty gory, but men like gory stuff. And I like Braveheart. Not so much the gore in it as the story of this very brave Scotsman, William Wallace. And who after seeing, how many of you have seen the film? Well, there are a few women too who have seen it.
One of the stirring points in that film is when William Wallace cries out, freedom! He was willing to lay down his life for the freedom of his people. Dear folks, our great champion is Jesus Christ who came into our world, identified with us, and then purchased our freedom. Having done that, he placed us into his household as sons, as those who are full grown and mature and have all the privileges of an adult. A wonderful thing. Edson Rogers was the son of a wealthy farmer.
Edson was a strapping young man who went off to service for Virginia in the war between the states. He met as a friend in the course of the war another man by the name of Robert Sawyer. They became best buddies. They fought together for a number of years until near the end of the war when Edson Rogers was mortally wounded. His very best buddy was there as he lay dying. He said to his buddy, Robert Sawyer, I want you to go to my home and I want you to tell my parents of our friendship.
Robert Sawyer said, your parents are very wealthy. They own a plantation. I am nobody. I am a very poor person. They would never believe me. So Edson with his dying strength took out a piece of paper and scribbled a note to his parents introducing Robert Sawyer to them. Shortly after that he died. A few months after the war was over, Robert timidly made his way to the mansion where the Rogers family lived. Indeed his clothes were shabby and when he got there he expected to be rejected.
But as he was being turned away he handed the letter to the butler and the butler took the letter to the Rogers. As he was leaving he was stopped. The father said, Bob, Bob, come back. You must not go. We want you here. He was invited into their home. They got acquainted with Bob and there came the day when Robert thought it was appropriate that he should leave. And again Mr. Rogers said, No, Robert, we want you to stay. Edson was our dearest treasure. He was everything to us.
Now won't you come into our home and be our son in his place? And he did. And what was it that made the difference? Robert was the name of Edson with whom Robert was associated. And friend, you and I have been adopted into the family of God because of our identification with the name of Jesus. It is because of him that the Father says to you and to me who have received him and who are therefore identified with him, I bring you into my family as my own son.
Adoption in the biblical context doesn't really mean what we think of with adoption, but I came across a great story that I've got to share with you about a first grade teacher whose name was Debbie Moon. She was discussing the picture of a family with her first graders and a little boy in the picture had a different color of hair than the other family members. So one of the first graders suggested that this little boy must be adopted.
Another little first grader, a little girl by the name of Jocelyn said, I know all about adoptions because I was adopted. Well, the teacher said, what does it mean to be adopted, Jocelyn? It means, she said, that you grew in your mommy's heart instead of her tummy. Isn't that great? That gives you the emotion at least of what adoption is to God. He brings us into his family as an act of his heart of love for us.
He gives us the result of this new position that we have as well as the means for it in verses 6 and 7. He says as a result of this, we have the indwelling of God's Spirit. He says, now you're sons and God has sent forth the Spirit of his Son in our hearts. As a result of being adopted into God's family, we have the Holy Spirit who lives in us. I was going to talk more about that in chapter 5.
Secondly, he says, we have identity as God's Son because now we can cry out as the Spirit tells us, Abba, Father, we have identity with the Father. We can call him Papa, which is what Abba means. It's an Aramaic expression for Daddy or Papa, a term of great intimacy and dearness. Now that we've been adopted into God's family, we have identity with God's Son and we can address the Father as Abba. Furthermore, he tells us because we've been adopted into God's family, we have inheritance.
For we're not only sons of God, he says, because of that we are heirs. We will inherit with Jesus Christ all things. For he shares all things with those to whom the birthright belongs. One of the great hymns in my opinion of the Christian faith is the one written by Charles Wesley entitled, Arise, My Soul, Arise. Shake off thy guilty fears. The bleeding sacrifice in my behalf appears. Before the throne my surety stands and my name is written in his hands.
Then the last verse says, my God is reconciled. His pardoning voice I hear. He owns me for a child. I can no longer fear. With confidence I draw nigh and Father, Abba Father, cry. Every person listening to me right now lives in one of these spiritual realities we've talked about this morning. Which reality is yours? Are you a slave or a son? In some of his writings Warren Wiersby contrasts sons and slaves. He says the son has the same nature as the father, but the servant, the slave, does not.
He says the son has a father while the servant has a master. He says the son obeys out of love while the servant obeys out of fear. The son is rich while the slave is poor. The son has a future while the servant does not. Are you a slave still in bondage or are you a son who has been redeemed by Jesus Christ and made a son of God? Paul in verses 12-20 goes on to speak about his personal anguish as a spiritual parent. Every parent can identify with some of Paul's deep concerns here.
He says, for example, in verse 11, I fear for you that perhaps I've labored over you in vain. What parent has not, at least during the teenage years sometimes, said, I wonder if I've really done this right? That's what Paul is saying. I beg of you, brethren, become as I am, for I also have become as you are. You've done me no wrong, he says, but you know that it was because of a bodily illness that I preached the gospel to you the first time.
And that which was a trial to you in my bodily condition, you did not despise or loathe, but you received me as an angel of God, as Christ Jesus Himself. Where then is that sense of blessing you had? For I bear you witness that if possible you would have plucked out your eyes and given them to me. Some say that that's an indication that Paul had eye problems.
Maybe it is, but it's also an expression that was common in those days, like the one we have, he would have given you the shirt off his back. Paul says you would have done anything for me, you loved me so much. Have I therefore become your enemy by telling you the truth? He says they eagerly seek you, not commendably, but they wish to shut you out in order that you may seek them.
But it is good always to be eagerly sought in a commendable manner, and not only when I am present with you, my children, with whom I am again in labor until Christ is formed in you. But I could wish to be present with you now and to change my tone, for I am perplexed about you. Anything in there that you as a parent can identify with? He appeals to them that they might rejoin him in fellowship, in spiritual freedom, that they might forsake the bondage they've gone back to.
Have you ever appealed to your child to come back to where your child was at one point? Paul is fearful that his labor may have been in vain. He expresses the pain that he felt in his heart. He says, I feel like I am in labor all over again for your sake. He expresses his yearning and his wish that Christ might be formed in them, that he could be there with them and discover for himself why he is so confused. Maybe they could explain face to face their mistakes.
Paul is in anguish as he finishes the text that we read this morning. It brings me to some final observations. The first observation deals with the anguish of being a parent. Becoming a parent risks heartache. Did you know that? It is a wonderful thing to have a baby. But, oh, if you knew the risk of heartache, some of the smiles would be tempered. We as parents never stop caring about our children, do we? But as they grow older, we do lose our ability to control them.
What we don't lose is our ability to hurt with the mistakes that they make in their independence. What can we do as parents who are in anguish for a child? I am talking now about a child that is mature. A child that perhaps even has married. What can we do as we see the mistakes that our children make? Let me suggest three things that I think arise from our text here and what Paul does. In the first place, we can speak truth in love. We must never stop being the truth tellers to our children.
Now we need to tell them the truth lovingly. We don't want to use it as a battle axe to beat them over the head with. But we want to keep reminding them in gentle and loving ways of what the truth is. Secondly, we can set a godly example. We may not be able to control them at this point in life, but we can continue to set a godly example before them that they cannot escape and which, God willing, they will someday appreciate perhaps more than they are at this point.
And third, like Paul, we can show that we care. We can be in touch, not to interfere, not to cross boundaries that are inappropriate at this point in life, but we can still be in touch to show that we love them, that we care for them. I think those are great lessons because we do have some parents today who are in anguish over adult children who have gone astray from how they were raised. Paul identifies with that and gives us here, I think, a marvelous example.
There's a second observation I want to make from the text, and that is becoming a backslider brings chaos. Haven't we all learned this at some point in life in our times of backsliding? Becoming a backslider brings chaos. Look what it did to the Galatians. In verses 12 through 15, Paul says, remember what it was like back when? He says, what's happened to your joy? Where's the blessing that you once knew?
The first thing that happens, or at least one of the things that happens to a backslider is this. Blessings are forgotten. We forget our blessings when we backslide. Somehow the devil just seems to put a fog into our minds. And those things that we once enjoyed in Christ, we sort of just forget about them. Secondly, friends become enemies when we backslide. Paul says in verse 16, have I therefore become your enemy by telling you the truth?
This morning, if you're looking at your life and reflecting on the fact that some of your Christian friends who love Jesus are not your friends anymore, they seem more like enemies, you need to stop and ask yourself why. Because when we backslide, our friends suddenly become our enemies because they're telling us the truth. Third, when we backslide, discernment is lost. Verses 17 and 18 talk about that. Paul says, oh yes, these false teachers, they want you all right.
They seek you, but their hearts are not right. He says it's great to be sought, but make sure it's for a commendable thing, that the motives are right. When backsliding, we lose our discernment. We make stupid judgments. We misjudge people and their motives. And what happens? We get ourselves into a mess. And that's my point. That becoming a backslider brings chaos to our lives. It leads to spiritual disaster.
And so if this morning you identify with what the Galatians were doing in backsliding from the Lord, understand that the course that you're on is only going to bring you trouble. And what you need to do today is to turn around and go back in the right direction. The final observation I want to make is this, that becoming a son grants spiritual privilege. It is a wonderful thing to be adopted into God's family because it means in the first place that we live in fellowship with the Father.
In verse 6, we can talk to Him as Papa. That is not blasphemous. That is not irreverent. The Spirit of God causes us to come to God with such intimacy. We live in fellowship with the Father. Second, we live in the freedom of the Son. Paul is going to say later, you Galatians, get back to the liberty with which Christ has set you free. A son lives in the freedom of the Son of God. And finally, a son lives in the fullness of the Holy Spirit.
Paul is going to say later, if you've been made alive by the Spirit, now walk in the Spirit. Live in the fullness of the Spirit's power in your life. The point is this, that if you are in fact in God's family, then live like it. Live in the dignity of your position, not beneath it. For God has adopted you. He has brought you into His household with grown-up privileges. Now make the most of your life's opportunities in light of that. I close with a parable, the parable of an eagle.
While walking through the forest one day, a man found a young eagle who had fallen out of his nest. He took it home and put it in his barnyard where it soon learned to eat and behave like the chickens. One day a naturalist passed by the farm and asked why it was that the king of all birds should be confined to live in a barnyard with the chickens. The farmer replied that since he had given it chicken feed and trained it to be a chicken, it had never learned to fly.
Since it now behaved as the chickens, it was no longer an eagle. Ah, but the naturalist said he still has the heart of an eagle and surely he can be taught to fly. And so he lifted the eagle toward the sky and said, you belong to the sky and not to the earth. Stretch forth your wings and fly. The eagle, however, was confused. He did not know who he was. And seeing the chickens eating their food, he jumped down to be with them again.
The naturalist took the bird to the roof of the house and urged him again saying, you're an eagle. Stretch forth your wings and fly. But the eagle was afraid of his unknown self and the world and jumped down once more for the chicken food. Finally the naturalist took the eagle out of the barnyard to a high mountain. There he held the king of birds high above him and encouraged him again saying, you're an eagle. You belong to the sky. Stretch forth your wings and fly.
The eagle looked around, back towards the barnyard and up toward the sky. Then the naturalist lifted him straight towards the sun and it happened that the eagle began to tremble. Finally he stretched forth his wings and with a triumphant cry soared away into the heavens. It may be that the eagle still remembers the chickens with nostalgia. It may even be that he occasionally revisits the barnyard. But as far as anyone knows, he has never returned to lead the life of a chicken again.
My plea to you this morning is remember who you are. You are a son, not a slave. You were made to soar, not live in a barnyard. And so live in the dignity of a son of God. Let's pray together. Father, the barnyard seems very comfortable sometimes to us. But, oh, may we learn that as your children adopted into your family as adults that we are not meant to live in the barnyard, that we are like the eagle intended to soar into the heavens.
Forgive us when we live beneath the dignity of being the adult children of God. Convict us when we have backslidden, as did the Galatians. Lead us out of the confusion and the chaos and the disaster of that situation. And teach us what it means to live as your sons. In Jesus' name I pray, amen. Would you stand together?