Galatians chapter four, and I
want to read from verse eight, down to verse 14. How be it then,
the apostle is speaking, writing to his brethren amongst the Galatian
churches, 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 labour in vain. Brethren, I beseech you, be as
I am, For I am as ye are, ye have not injured me at all. Ye
know how through infirmity of the flesh I preached the gospel
unto you at the first. and my temptation which was in
my flesh ye despised not, nor rejected, but received me as
an angel of God, even as Christ Jesus. Amen. May the Lord bless
to us this reading from his word. Before the gospel came to the
Galatians, the apostle tells us they knew not God. Now that might seem obvious to
us, but it is worth noting what Paul is saying here. Without
Christ, it is not possible to know God. Now, all men and women
have an awareness and a knowledge of God's handiwork in the world
and in nature. The apostle teaches us that at
the beginning of Romans. And yet, while the evidence of
God's being and power in creation leaves us without grounds to
deny his existence, it is not the same as knowing him personally
in Christ. Adam had fellowship with God,
but communion was broken at the fall. Sin entered and separated
between man and God, God and man, leaving us ignorant of God
and unwilling and unable to rectify that situation. Indeed, the Bible
is so emphatic that it calls it a state of death, and we are
dead towards God, such is the degree to which we cannot have
any spiritual relationship with him. And since that time, since
that time of the fall, Men and women all the world over have
substituted all manner of animate and inanimate representations
of God to fill the place of the one true God. So that we find
all over the world idolatry exists. They are ignorant of the true
God but they have gone to any length to replace him and substitute
him with a God of their own making. And Paul describes this as serving
idols or worshipping them which by nature are no gods. So there's always that service
in man, there's always that allegiance to something, but it is not the
true God. And it's a useful reminder to
us all that an imagined God a God of our own making, a God of our
own imagination, is no God at all. A God of our own construction,
which is any God and any Christ, except the God who is revealed
in scripture, cannot save our soul or bring us into a knowledge
of the true God. And yet for these Galatians,
a change had occurred. They had been converted by grace
under the preaching of the apostle through the hearing of that true
gospel. And Paul here in this verse by
reminding them that they did not know God prior to hearing
the gospel is making a contrast. Once these folks were strangers
to God, and now they have been revealed as sons of God by promise. By an act of providence, God
sent them a preacher in the person of Paul. and by an act of grace,
God gave them faith to believe the message that they heard from
Paul. They had been taught about Christ
and believing the true gospel, they trusted in Christ for salvation. So that instead of being ignorant
and separated and actively opposed to God by substituting any number
of human constructions in his place, Instead of being in their
carnal nature, they had been adopted by God into a relationship
of family. Chapter three, verse 26, we read
that they were the children of God by faith in Christ Jesus. He had made them heirs of grace
and glory by divine goodness. He had given them spiritual life
and converted them to Jesus Christ. Now the circumstances will be
different for everyone, but this is the same process for all God's
elect. The Lord sends a preacher, we
hear the gospel, and we believe in the true God in the person
of the Lord Jesus Christ. And this transformation was at
God's initiative and instigation. We are what we are because God
knows us. We know God, but it's because
he knew us. And this is the foreknowledge
that Paul speaks about to the Romans in Romans chapter eight. Now it is true that God knows
all things because he is omniscient. It's one of the attributes of
God is that he is all knowing. and God knows all things, he
knows all people. But when we speak about foreknowledge
and when we speak about this relationship knowledge, when
we speak about the knowledge of God within the experience
of salvation and within the covenant promises, we are talking about
a particular knowledge. He knows his elect particularly
in love. He loves them. He has a chosen
people that he knows distinctively by name. Having distinguished
them from others within the eternal covenant. Set them apart securely
in Christ and called them to himself in the gospel. So that
God had all this in place. God knew his people and our knowledge
of God in conversion in time, because his is an eternal work
outside of time, our knowledge of God in conversion, having
heard the gospel, is our learning what God already knows, that
we are his redeemed people, that we are his purchased possession. We love him because he first
loved us and we know him because he first knew us. Therefore,
the apostle says to the Galatians, given this knowledge that you
now have of God, given this new revelation, why would you go
back to the weak and beggarly elements? Now the weak and beggarly
elements that he's speaking about are the rituals and the ceremonies
and the legal practices that these Judaizers were trying to
impose in the Galatians by teaching them that this was proper if
they were going to worship God. Even that it was required and
the only way to properly worship God. And to please Him. And Paul's
response is, that this is merely trading one set of religious
shackles for another. One set of religious rituals
for another. They had worshipped their idolatrous
gods in their darkened state and what was the point of now
that they had light going back to these weak and beggarly examples
and elements. So they, having given up their
practices, were now being tempted back under equally empty traditions
by these Jews, by these Judaizers. And these traditions bind. They're a form of bondage because
they substitute outward physical rituals for inward spiritual
experience. And I'm sure that we are all
familiar with modern equivalents. You don't have to be around religious
people for very long before they're sharing their expectations about
how you should be living and acting, how you should be dressing,
how you should be speaking, how you should be going about your
daily life in front of the world, according to their understanding
and their particular group practices. As far as the Judaizers was concerned,
the Apostle Paul gives some examples. He says he observed days and
months and times and years. And these appear to be references
to the Jews meticulously held Sabbath days and all the things
that they could do and not do in them, or the celebrations
of months when trumpets were blown or the times which are
a reference to the three occasions each year when Jewish men went
to Jerusalem to celebrate the principal feasts, or perhaps
the years when the land was allowed to rest fallow, and then there
was a 50-year jubilee celebrated when there was a restoration
of property and liberty was made of captives. The point that Paul is making,
though, is that all of these religious observances were not
to be maintained continuously. They had had their time. They
had had a purpose. They were shadows and types given
to the Jews to point them to the Messiah, to point them to
his work, the work of redemption, the rest that we have from our
own labours, our own works in order to please God, relying
rather on the blood and righteousness of the Lord Jesus Christ, and
the liberty that we have from the dominion of sin that Christ's
salvation brings. And that perpetuating the types
detracted from, indeed denied, the accomplishments of the one
who fulfilled the promises and ended the need for the symbols.
Now we should not read the Apostle Paul's, we should not read into
the Apostle Paul's expression of fear here, that anything that
he didn't intend. The Apostle is not suggesting
that the Galatians, having once been saved under his ministry,
could now lose their salvation. and be everlastingly lost. Paul knew better than that and
he had more confidence in the preserving power of God's love
and grace. However, neither should we minimise
what he is saying. It is possible for men and women
who have once heard and believed the gospel to lose sight of its
simplicity and its power and its liberty. by overlaying their
worship with all manner of extraneous activities and requirements that
merely serve to cloud the purity of the truth. And there's another
danger here as well, because that sort of activity also supplies
opportunity for observers who've never believed the gospel to
imagine that they have a part in the inheritance of saints
if they live the same way that these professors do. And if our
life, our Christian life, becomes a catalogue of the things that
we do and the things that we don't do, not only have we lost
sight of the sufficiency of Christ, but we're deceiving others who
copy our conduct and imagine that they have true Christianity
when actually all they have is a form and a ritual and a system
of moral conduct in place of spiritual life in Jesus Christ.
And this is a very real issue in denominations and it's an
issue in families of second generation believers because we train up
our children to have a moral code And we hope that the Lord
shows them that in addition to that moral code, there is a need
for true spiritual life and understanding as well. Paul's insertion of
the word brethren here shows, I think, that he retains a good
hope for the Galatians, that they will be recovered from the
foolishness of listening and following these Judaizers, these
false teachers. and in beseeching them, Paul
expresses a heart of earnest affection. He's pleading basically
with his friends that they might think better of their conduct
and realise that Paul not only has their best spiritual interest
in view, but he is endeavouring to continue to lead them in their
gospel understanding. He's not ordering or commanding
as an apostle who had authority might be tempted to do, but he's
appealing to be heard and to have his warnings considered.
He calls them to be as he is, that is, one who had turned away
from the shadows of the Jewish faith into the light of Jesus
Christ and who held fast to the liberty with which Christ had
made him free. having shaken off those bonds
and the stranglehold of empty religion. And he tells them that
he is just like them. He seeks for a deepening of their
spiritual understanding. He seeks for the best for them. as they seek for themselves.
The reason why they were listening to these Judaizers is because
they thought, they hoped there might be something else that
the Lord required of them that these Judaizers had to give them.
And Paul's saying, I want that for you, I want your spiritual
growth, but this isn't it. He's not trying to deny them
deeper truth or exclude them from a deeper or richer experience
of grace. On the contrary, he's exposing
the shallowness of the current path that they are on. and he
wants the Galatians to know Christ as he knows Christ and enjoy
by faith the liberty and the blessings of God as full heirs
of every divine blessing that they are entitled to in Christ.
The Apostle tells the Galatians that he hasn't been offended,
he hasn't been injured by them or affronted or diminished in
any way by them. He would not have them imagine
that he was angry or upset or anything else rather than that
he is simply continuing to work with them in confronting their
enemies and the challenges and the temptations that all believers
face. The risk that we might be taken
up with earthly, fleshly attractions in place of a true living relationship
with God by faith. And that is an enduring risk
for all believers in this flesh. But as their friend, as their
pastor, as their preacher, Paul is trying to nurture and guide
them, not trying to drive them to do things that they were reluctant
to do. And he reminds them that this
has always been his approach to them in the previous times
when he had visited them. and how he had preached the gospel
of grace to them in love. It was the gospel that he had
preached and they had reciprocated the love that he showed with
a loving and caring response of their own. It was the gospel
and not the law or the wisdom and the philosophies of men that the apostle presented
to them. The infirmity of the flesh or
my temptation that he speaks about might be a particular ailment
of which the apostle sometimes speaks, some physical abnormality
or deformity that he had. Or else just the effects of the
physical weakness and the arduous labours that he endured and travelling
and facing all kinds of hurdles and opposition, especially from
the Jews, but from other enemies of the truth as well, in order
to bring the message of the gospel to sinners. The Galatians had not previously
despised Paul under these trials, but had understood and respected
his integrity and honesty and apostolic cause. and they accepted
him as an angel or a minister of God and they could not have
treated him any better than if the Lord Jesus himself had come
amongst them to preach. And by reminding them of this,
he implies that nothing need hinder them now from maintaining
this approach to him and following his direction as they'd done
once before. In these verses, it's pleasing
to see the earnestness of the apostle for the well-being of
the souls of the Galatians. He pleads his case as a friend
and as a brother, and he does not impose his will by authority. He reminds his friends that the
gospel is not found in outward patterns of obedience, but an
inward experience of grace by faith and in the finished work
of the Lord Jesus Christ and the righteousness that he has
won. Our privileges in Christ are
received by grace and enjoyed by faith. Anything added to this
merely detracts from it. No works of man can add anything
to the accomplishments of Christ or enhance his finished work. Amen.