We're going to be in Galatians
chapter 4 today, returning to the book of Galatians. I will
pick it up in verse 7 and we'll read through verse 20. But before
we begin, let's pray. Dear Heavenly Father, we pray
that as you have told us how you redeemed your children by
the blood of the Lord Jesus Christ, our Savior, and given to your
children your Spirit that you would even now, by your Spirit
in our hearts, show us the Lord Jesus Christ, make him known
to us in this precious faith that we might lay hold upon him
and so receive to ourselves all the promises that you've given
us in him. We ask that you would expound
your word to us in our hearts. In Jesus' name we pray, amen.
In Galatians chapter four, the first few verses are speaking
about how though we were under before the Lord made himself
known to us by his spirit, though we were children in the sense
that we were chosen to the adoption of children and predestinated
to it, Yet we didn't know it. And as long as we didn't know
it, we were under the elements of this world, under the law,
and under a sense that we needed to do something in order to obtain
God's favor. In a sense, we were serving idols.
Not in a sense, in reality, we were serving idols. But then
the Lord Jesus Christ came into the world before we were born.
And He redeemed us by His precious blood. He was made under the
law, taking our place under the law, and fulfilled the obligations
of the law. And then He suffered the penalty
of the law, that He might redeem us from both the curse and the
bondage of the law, in order that we might receive, in our
own experience, the adoption of sons. And verse 6 says, And
because you are sons, God has sent forth the spirit of His
Son into your hearts, crying, Abba, Father. We talked about
that a few weeks back, the precious words, Abba, Father, my Father,
a personal knowledge of God, the Father, the God and Father
of our Lord Jesus Christ, addressing him with the same words and in
the same relation as he did as man, Abba, Father. What an endearing
term this is that He's given to us and He's put it in our
hearts to call Him this. Not because we suddenly wake
up and say, aha, God is my Father, but because we see in the Lord
Jesus Christ that He has redeemed us and made us the sons of God
by His redeeming blood and therefore sent His Spirit to us that we
might know what He's done and know what He purchased and the
relation He established in Himself for us. That's the work of the
Spirit of God in our hearts to point us to Christ. And now we're
going to pick it up in verse 7 for today, and I've entitled
the message today, The Loveliness of Christ's Lowliness. Remember,
as we read the Word of God, the important thing is that we see
in the Word of God the nature, the true character and person
of the Lord Jesus Christ in His work and in His words. And so,
by God's grace today, I want to try to help you see the loveliness
of Christ's lowliness. So we're going to read from verse
7. It says, Wherefore, the apostle Paul now is addressing the Galatians,
and he was addressing them because of his earnest desire to restore
them again to their obedience of faith they had They had heard
the gospel, they had believed it, at least it seemed to Paul
that they had. But they had been tempted and
tried by these Judaizers who came in and tried to entice them
to go back and stand in relation to God as they could establish
by their own obedience to God's law. The outward obedience to
the law somehow is going to improve their relationship with God.
And throughout this book, Paul is earnest, intent on making
sure that that disobedience to the gospel is corrected. And
so he spends the whole book really doing that, but he does it in
many ways. And now he's going to do it by
an appeal to his personal relationship to them. First, in the beginning
verses of the book of Galatians, he began this book by giving
them the commission that he had from Christ and from God the
Father to be an apostle. That in itself should have been
enough to convince them that they should hear him. The Lord
Jesus Christ from heaven on his throne, after having accomplished
our redemption, and God the Father sent Paul in order to take this
gospel of Christ redeeming work to his people, that they might
believe it. But they didn't, but that wasn't
enough. He went on and he uses several different ways in this
book of Galatians in order to bring the Galatians back to the
faith of Christ, several different ways. And the first one, as I
mentioned, he showed them his commission. But the second way
was in verse four of Galatians one, where he says, who gave
himself, the Lord Jesus gave himself for us that he might
deliver us, gave himself for our sins that he might deliver
us from this present evil world. So he appeals to Christ unspeakable
grace and love that he would give himself for our sins. And
that's a lifetime of sermons just in that one verse. And then
he goes on and he shows them his own experience and calling
how as an apostle he was called by Jesus Christ The Lord made
himself known to Paul without the agency of a man. He appeared
to him and then he equipped him to preach the gospel. Paul told
them that, that he gave him that revelation. Then he told them
that as he went to Jerusalem, to the apostles Peter, James,
and John before him, that they confirmed that the gospel he
preached was the true gospel. It was complete. It was the same
gospel they preached and they believed, by which all of God's
people are saved. And so he told them that too.
And then he told them how that Peter had fallen in his sin when
the Judaizers came or they sent Jews from Jerusalem. And they
came and Peter was tempted then to please men, fearing men. And so he moved from the Gentiles
to the Jews in order to separate himself from the Gentiles and
identify with the Jews so the Jews wouldn't think less of him.
And then Paul had correct him. It led Barnabas astray and many
of the other brethren when he did that. So Paul corrected him.
So Paul shows them that. He says, why would you Gentile
Galatians try to keep the law when we Jews, even the Apostle
Peter, had forsaken the law as a means of obtaining righteousness
and justification and sanctification before God. So he told them that
in Galatians chapter 2 verses 11 through 15. And then he stated
the gospel very plainly when he says, knowing that a man is
not justified by the works of the law, but by the faith of
Jesus Christ, even we have believed on Jesus Christ, that we might
be justified by the faith of Christ and not by the works of
the law. Three times he denounced the possibility that we're justified
by the works of the law, and he pointed us to the obedience
and faithfulness of the Lord Jesus Christ, which is the object
of our faith. And then he goes on further in
Galatians 2 and he says it's utterly impossible that we're
justified by what we do because the conclusion of that argument
is that if it were by something that we did that made us right
with God or improved our relationship, then Christ died for nothing.
And that's impossible. Nothing is more impossible than
that God would provide and require of His Son and not spare His
Son but give Him up for us all for nothing. And nothing is more
impossible than that the Lord Jesus Christ would give himself
for us and utterly fail. Because our own obedience would
somehow do what only his blood could do. And then in Galatians
3, the apostle speaks about how the Galatians had heard the gospel
and believed it. But it wasn't because of something
they did. The gospel they heard wasn't about works, it was about
Christ's work. But in hearing the gospel, the
Spirit of God had come upon them and given them life and faith,
and that was entirely of grace. So he asked them, did you receive
the Spirit by the works of the law or by the hearing of faith?
It was in hearing the gospel that the Spirit of God came,
and then they believed, and it was utterly outside of their
own contribution. And so he goes further in that
same argument. Again, this is another one of
the ways that the Apostle is earnestly trying to bring the
Galatians back. He asks them, have you suffered
for Christ so needlessly all the time when you heard the Gospel
at first? And you were ostracized because
of the Gospel. A lot of people suffer. But they're not Christians. But
a Christian suffers to the glory of God for Christ's sake. And
it's only when we believe Christ that we, if we suffer, it's for
Christ's sake. And so the Galatians had suffered.
And so we asked them, have you suffered those things in vain?
And so he prays, no, I pray that it's not in vain. But then he
goes on and he says, since they were wanting to follow the Judaizers,
and the Judaizers were Jews who claimed to have Abraham as their
father, he proved from scripture that Abraham himself was justified,
not by the works of the law, but by faith in the righteousness
of the Lord Jesus Christ. And he spends all of the rest
of chapter 3 proving that. That all of the blessings God
promised to Abraham were given to Christ, and are the possession
of all those who are in Christ. All who have been baptized by
the Spirit of God into Christ, they are Christ, and all that
is Christ is theirs. Because God gave it to them by
promise, and not by their works by grace, not by their works
by faith, and not by something they do, but in looking to the
Lord Jesus Christ. So that's all the first three
chapters of Galatians. It's Paul. reasoning with the
Galatians, reasoning with them and pleading with them. Now,
to Paul, the Galatians were his children in the faith, in the
gospel. He was the one God sent and had
ministered the gospel to them. The one through whom God had
brought the gospel and through whom they believed the gospel.
And so, as a father, he was pleading with them. And this teaches us
something very important about how fathers are to discipline
their children. Paul disciplined the Galatians
in the book of Galatians and how did he do it? He reasoned
with them every possible way. He reasoned with them concerning
God's will that he was sent for them. and sent to them, that
Christ gave himself, that God chose Paul just like a father
is given for his children's sake. He reasons with them along the
lines of the truth of God's word, the truth of heaven. And he reasoned
with them about the impossibility of their own obedience being
the cause of their salvation and had to be something outside
of them. and all these things. He reasoned with them from history,
from scripture, from the doctrine that he proclaimed, from his
own heart of love for them. And now in chapter 4, he reasoned
with them that they had been slaves and had been made free
by the redeeming work of Christ and had known their freedom in
the Spirit of God being given to them in this precious faith.
And so in verse 7, as I mentioned now at the introduction, Paul
is going to begin to reason with them now on his own personal
experience with the Galatians. So now he's stepping to a very
low place because he's making himself very vulnerable. He's
talking to them as a man to a man. And how He came to them, and
how they received Him, and why they received Him. And how they
received Him even as they received the Lord Jesus Christ. That love
they had for Him because of the Gospel that He brought to them.
And so he reasons with them along these lines in order to bring
them back out of the dream state. He says in Galatians 3.1, they
were like bewitched. They were in some kind of a spell
had been cast upon them by the Judaizers. The Judaizers had
appealed to their fear of man and their desire for the praise
of men. And they had twisted the truth
in order to make them afraid and bring them to give allegiance
to the Judaizers instead of to Christ. Paul had exactly the
opposite motive. His only goal was to bring them
to the Lord Jesus Christ. So I've given you that as an
overview here. And we're going to go through
the verses here so we can see the details of it. In verse 7
he says, Wherefore thou art no more a servant, but a son. And if a son, then an heir of
God through Christ. If you're an heir of God through
Christ, then why are you trying to live like a slave and earn
a wage like a slave would earn a wage? Slaves are in bondage
under the elements of the world. Slaves are not sons. If we serve
in bondage under the elements of the world, we serve an unknown
God, don't we? Because in the verses that follow,
in verse 9, it was as if they didn't know God. Because before they were converted,
they didn't know God. And so they served then as slaves.
Like he says in verse 3, when you were children, you were in
bondage under the elements of the world. So that bondage under
the elements of the world is idolatry. It's serving a God
that we don't know, but we imagine. We create him out of our own
imagination. We believe the God that someone
else has created out of their imagination, a false God, and
there's no salvation in believing a false God. No matter how earnestly
we do, the Jews knew the true and living God in the sense that
they had the Old Testament scriptures and they were very zealous for
the one God, but they served in error because they tried to
establish their own righteousness according to the law. And so
they were ignorant and their zeal didn't do anything for them.
In fact, it made them even more guilty. And so he talks about
that. Our imaginations are always wrong. To know God, he must make himself
known to us. That's the first principle of
scripture. That's the first principle. Jesus
said, No man knows the Son, but the Father, and no man knows
the Father, but the Son, and he to whomsoever the Son will
reveal him. This is a basic principle of
scripture. Men are in darkness. They're
dead in sins. They're blind. They're ignorant.
They don't seek God. They don't know God. And the
natural man can't receive the things of the Spirit of God.
They're foolishness to him. God has to make himself known.
And so the first principle here is that God made himself known
to us and he set us free from the idolatry we once lived in. As Gentiles, we lived in idolatry
because we didn't try to keep the law, at least the Gentiles
in his day. The Gentiles nowadays try to
keep religious things in order that they might be accepted by
God. They do all sorts of things.
They set up priests and popes and they set up preachers and
try to go through the motions, the outward motions of becoming
a Christian and trust in their decisions and their actions and
their prayers instead of in Christ. So we were once slaves under
the delusion of a false god. And so he says in verse 8, Verse
9. Verse 9 says, but now after that
you 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? Now, here Paul puts our knowledge
of God in the right order. First he says, but now after
that you have known God. And it's as if he's correcting
himself. But it's a way of saying that so that he draws their attention
to what he wants to emphasize. that our salvation comes to us
first because God knows us and then because he makes himself
known to us. How be it then when you knew
not God, you did service to them which are no gods, but now after
that you have known God or rather are known of God, how turn you
again to the weak and beggarly elements whereunto you desire
to be in bondage? Believers do know God. Believers
do know God. But this raises a question. How?
How do we know God? Do we know God? I asked myself
that question. Do I know God? How do we know
God? Well, Scripture says we know Him only one way. And Jesus
told us what that way was. He said, I'm the way, the truth,
and the life. No man comes to the Father but
by me. If you had known me, you should
have known my Father also. He that has seen me has seen
my Father. There's only one way to know
God. It's to know Him in the Lord Jesus Christ. He is the
only way, the only truth, the only life by which men can come
to the Father. There's no other way. God the
Father reveals Himself in no other way to His people than
He does in His Son. The truth about God is revealed
in the Son of God. And so we have to look to Him.
It says in John 1.18, no man has seen God at any time. The
only begotten Son, which is in the bosom of the Father, He has
declared Him. So there we have it. We can't
know God, we can't see God until we see Him in His Son. It says
in John 1.14, the Lord Jesus Christ is full of grace and truth.
And in verse 17, He said, and grace and truth came by Him.
And so if we've seen Christ, we've seen the Father. And in
Colossians 2.9, he says the fullness of the Godhead dwells in Christ
bodily. So there we have it. If you want
to know God in His fullness, you have to know Him in the Lord
Jesus Christ. He is the Word of God. All that's
true from God's Word is revealed in Christ. The knowledge of the
glory of God is seen in the face of Jesus Christ, according to
2 Corinthians 4, 6, and it is eternal life to know God in Jesus
Christ. John 17, verse 3. What could
therefore be more important to us than if eternal life is to
know God, truly to know Him personally, as He is in truth, as He reveals
Himself, Because that's the only way we can know Him. Then, how
important should it be to us to know the living God? There
should be nothing of higher importance. In fact, this should be our all-consuming
desire to know God. Paul said it. Oh, that I might
know Him. He says in Philippians 3 verse
9. And so this emphasis is placed here in order to show the Galatians
that they were idolaters. God had to make himself known
to them. God makes himself known in his
son only. And only those who know Christ
and him crucified know the living God. But how do we know Jesus
Christ and him crucified? How do we know this? Can we figure
it out? Do we go to a seminary? I remember
that was something they emphasized when I was a young person. You
need to go to seminary. Rick and I even considered going
to seminary together. I'm glad the Lord kept us from
that. It would have been a mess. He had a simpler way of bringing
us to Himself. It was just the way of the quiet
working of His Word over the period of our lives and showing
us repeatedly and unceasingly the all-importance of the Lord
Jesus Christ and Him crucified. Because knowing Him is eternal
life. He's the fullness of the Godhead. And so you can't find
Christ in seminary There is a way, though, that he makes himself
known. And how is that? Well, look at Galatians chapter
4. He says in verse 4, How do we know Jesus Christ? The Spirit
of His Son. He's sent into our hearts. He gives us life. He
gives us an understanding. He gives us faith. This is what
Nicodemus couldn't understand in John chapter 3. Jesus told
him, you can't see the kingdom of God. You can't enter it unless
you're born of the Spirit. Born of heaven. Born of God.
He didn't know. You're a master of Israel. You
claim to be and you're recognized as one and yet you do not know
the first thing about spiritual heavenly things. I've told you
the truth and you wouldn't have it. You rejected it. He was a
disobedient man, lost and blind to any truth of God. And so,
that's the way we are by nature. So the Spirit of God, Jesus told
Nicodemus, He has to blow upon us by the water of His Word and
by His own Spirit in our hearts in order to apply the Gospel
to us, to show us Christ lifted up upon the cross, causing us
to look to Him as a sinner, dying without hope, but looking to
Christ and finding all of our hope in what God has received
from Him for us. And so this is the work of the
Spirit of God. We know Jesus Christ when the Spirit of God
makes Him known to us and by no other way. And in knowing
Christ, we know the living God. But how do we know if we know
Christ? How do we know if we know Him?
Well, we know Him if we've been given life and the evidence of
life is that we trust Him. How do we know that we know Christ?
because we trust Him. Look at Psalm chapter 9 and verse
10. He says, They that know thy name will put their trust in
thee. If we know the person and work
of the Lord Jesus Christ, that's His name, then we'll put our
trust in Him. That's a wonderful thing, isn't
it? They that know thy name will put their trust in thee. Look
at Jeremiah chapter 17. First, in verse 5, he says, Thus
saith the Lord, Cursed be the man that trusteth in man, and
maketh flesh his arm, and whose heart departeth from the Lord.
That's what we were before we knew God. Verse 7 of Jeremiah
17, Blessed is the man that trusteth in the Lord, and whose hope the
Lord is. You see the difference there?
Look at John, the book of John, chapter 5. How do we know that
we know Christ? Because we trust in Him. We see
the truth of what God has revealed about Him. And God has persuaded
us this is the whole truth about the way things are between us
and God. And we fled to Him for refuge.
We laid hold upon eternal life by laying hold on Christ as a
needy sinner. clinging to him for our all.
John chapter 5 verse 24 says, Verily, verily, Jesus said, I
say to you, he that heareth my word and believeth on him that
sent me hath everlasting life. So, the evidence Christ says,
if you believe on Christ, you have everlasting life. And then,
in Ephesians 2, I'll give you one more verse. How do we know
that we know Him? In Ephesians chapter 2, look what this says.
I'm sure you know these verses, but I want to show you again
what it says here. Ephesians 2, for by grace are
you saved through faith, and that not of yourselves, it is
the gift of God. How do we know we're saved? God
has given us faith. So simple, and yet so profound. It's not of works, it's faith,
it's not of works. We didn't receive this faith
because of our works, and faith is not work. And faith didn't
come from us as a work of our own. It came to us from God.
It is not of works lest any man should boast. There's no way
that our salvation is anything we can boast in because it's
of faith. And faith is not of ourselves. And it points us to
Christ. What merit is there for us to believe God? Is there any
merit in us to believe the truth? You would be blameworthy for
not believing the truth. But that obedience of faith itself
has to be given to us. We are His workmanship, created
in Christ Jesus unto good works, which God has before ordained
that we should walk in them. So faith is that way that we
know. It's believing Christ and Him crucified. That's the only
way we know that we have this eternal life, that we know Jesus
Christ. Because in believing Him, we
see with eyes, God-given eyes, and understand with God-given
understanding. Galatians chapter 4, verse 9.
But after that you 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." Really? You want to go back to
that? You want to go back to the fear
of receiving a curse from God because you failed in your own
obedience? You want to go back to that? You want to go back
to the pursuit of a reward by your own sinful obedience? Which is not possible to have
a sinful obedience. There's only one kind of obedience.
It's perfect obedience. Do you really want to go under
the delusion that your works bring you somehow to God or improve
your relationship with Him, make you holy? He says that's turning
again to the weak and beggarly elements. What did I explain
to you? The difference between faith
and works. No man is justified by works that just live by faith
in so many ways. So he cites, he tells us the
ways that the Galatians were doing this. He says, you observe
days and months and times and years. You're observing all these
Jewish ceremonies and things. Why are you doing that? Why? Well, because the Judaizers told
us we had to do that in order to receive these blessings from
God or to something. But it was false. And he's trying
to correct them. And now he's going to appeal
to his own personal experience with the Galatians. He says,
I'm afraid of you, lest I bestowed upon you labor in vain. Brethren,
verse 12. Brethren. That's a very optimistic
word, isn't it? Brethren, I beseech you. That's
a begging term. I beg of you. Be as I am, for
I am as you are. You have not injured me at all.
Now, that's kind of a difficult sentence to understand. In the
King James Version, several words are in italics. And when they're
in italics in the King James Version, it means that the word
wasn't in the original, but they were added by the translators
to help us understand the sense of the words, the sense of the
meaning of the sentence. So if you read it without those,
it says, brethren, I beseech you, be as I, for I as, and that's
it. So it needs something to fill
it in. And what he's really saying here
is that when I came to you preaching the gospel, when I came to you
Gentiles preaching the gospel, I was a Jew sent by Jesus Christ. I became as you. And what were the Gentiles like?
They were without law. They were not observing the ceremonies
of Moses' law. They weren't looking to their
obedience to Moses' law for righteousness before God. And Paul came to
them in the same way. I became like you were then.
That's what he's saying here. And so, why would you, after
I came to you in that way, stooping and lowering myself to your level,
for your sake, why would you go on now, back to the very thing
that I was willing to forsake for your salvation? It just doesn't
make any sense, does it? Listen to these words the Apostle
Paul tells the Corinthians. In 1 Corinthians chapter 9, In
verse 18, what is my reward then? Verily that when I preach the
gospel, I may make the gospel of Christ without charge, that
I abuse not my power in the gospel. For though I be free from all
men, yet have I made myself servant unto all that I might gain the
more. He wanted to gain disciples to
Christ. He didn't want them for himself.
He wasn't like the Judaizers. They were trying to get disciples
for themselves. Verse 20 of 1 Corinthians 9,
he said, And unto the Jews I became as a Jew, that I might gain the
Jews. To them that are under the law,
as under the law, that I might gain them that are under the
law. To them that are without law, as without law, being not
without law to God, but under the law to Christ, that I might
gain them that are without law. To the weak I became as weak,
that I might gain the weak. I made all things to all men,
that I might by all means save some. And this I do for the gospel's
sake, that I might be partaker thereof with you." In other words,
he put himself on the same level as these Galatians. And he's
reminding them of that. Now he's asking them, when I
did that, back in Galatians chapter 4, He said, Brethren, I beseech
you, be as I am, for I am as you are, or really should say,
I am as you were. You have not injured me at all.
You haven't injured me. Remember when I came to you?
Remember when I preached the gospel to you freely? And I didn't
require of you any obedience to Moses' law, but I just pointed
you to Christ? I set forth Christ, evidently
crucified among you. And when you heard it, you believed
Him. And then you were justified. You received the justification
that God promised to those who believed Christ. And you were
so at peace with God. Remember the joy you had then?
You didn't injure me at all. Because now, you're going back
to those weak and beggarly things. It didn't cause me any injury
to lay aside Moses, trusting him for righteousness when I
came to you. And so therefore, when you go back to the law,
you're not injuring me. He's pleading with them. Son,
it's like he's saying to his little boy. Son, when you did
that, did it hurt me? No, it only hurt you. I learned
not to do that a long time ago. And I'm pleading with you now
not to do that. You're hurting yourself. You're
doing the very thing that I taught you not to do. In verse 13 he
goes on. He says, You know how through
infirmity of the flesh I preached the gospel to you at the first,
and my temptation which was in my flesh you despised not. Neither
rejected, but received me as an angel of God, even as Christ
Jesus." These are tender words here. I want you to consider
this very carefully with me as we look at this. Because what
Paul is saying here is that when he came to the Galatians preaching
the gospel, that he came to them in great weakness and infirmity
of the flesh. And when you see someone with
a, let's say they have a, they're deformed in some way. Maybe it's
evident their face is deformed or their body is twisted or something
like that. And you see that, it's kind of
like, ooh, it's kind of different. And you naturally recognize that. You may not think much about
it, but in those days, those things were an evidence that
maybe there was something wrong with them. that maybe somehow
God wasn't, that they weren't really blessed of God, because
how could someone suffer such infirmities of the flesh if they
were truly blessed of God? Now this guy doesn't have, he
can't see. In John chapter nine, remember,
the disciples asked, Lord, who sinned, this man or his parents,
that he was born blind? It must have been some cause.
And Jesus said, neither this man nor his parents, but that
God might be glorified in him. And so, when Paul came to the
Galatians, he didn't come all healthy and handsome. And having eloquence like an
orator. He didn't come that way. He came
in weakness. He came in natural infirmities
of his flesh. And I don't know exactly what
they are. They were. But he was beaten many times. And he was stoned and left for
dead. He was shipwrecked. He was imprisoned. He was all these things throughout
his ministry. So it might have been those infirmities
that were a result of all that. Or it might have been a natural
infirmity of his flesh. Whatever it was. Because he preached
the gospel to the Galatians and they saw in that preaching, they
saw Christ. And as sinners, they were so
endeared to the Lord Jesus Christ, that when they saw Paul in his
weakness, it actually served to draw a contrast between that
weakness and the power of the gospel that he preached, so that
they only saw the gospel even though he was weak. And they
received him as an angel of God. They even received him as the
Lord Jesus Christ himself, in spite of his weaknesses. And
so he's talking to them now in a very vulnerable condition.
I came to you like a father preaching to you the gospel in the weaknesses. And think about those preachers
who are given grace to preach his gospel and do so with great
weaknesses. And how much that actually serves
not to distance their hearers from them, but actually draws
them near and causes them to be even more dear to them. And
so Paul is speaking to them. You know, he says, verse 13 again,
how through infirmity of the flesh I preached the gospel to
you at the first. When I first came to you, I was
in weakness, and my temptation, which was in my flesh, you despised
not, whatever it was. Nor rejected, but received me
as an angel of God, even as Christ Jesus." There's something very
important in those words, even as Christ Jesus. What he's saying
is that, just like in the beginning of the book of Galatians, he
said, I was an apostle, not of man, neither by man, but by Jesus
Christ and God the Father who raised him from the dead. I was
sent to you by God himself. And so that the one who brings
the gospel, by which we believe the gospel, and the one who sent
him, it's all as if we're hearing from the same one. We're hearing
from Christ, by this man who made himself a servant to Christ
for us. God sent him, made him his servant,
and he himself is serving us. And so he's drawing from that.
His low service to the Galatians, coming to them in all the weakness
of his bodily infirmities. But bringing with them, he said
it in 2 Corinthians 4, we have this treasure. We have this treasure
in earthen vessels that the excellency of the power may be of God and
not of us. We're trouble on every side,
yet not distressed. We're perplexed. but not in despair,
persecuted, but not forsaken, cast down, but not destroyed,
always bearing about in the body the dying of the Lord Jesus,
that the life also of Jesus might be made manifest in our body.
We which live are always delivered to death for Jesus' sake, that
the life also of Jesus might be made manifest in our mortal
flesh. So then death works in us, but life in you. See that?
This is the principle. What did Paul say in 2 Corinthians
chapter 12 verse 9 and 10? He says, And so the apostle Paul
came in weakness, preaching the gospel. The treasure, the precious treasure
from heaven. And his feet to the Galatians,
his feet were like beautiful. Even the worst and most, you
know, the part of our body, we don't want to show our feet,
do we? Cover it up. It's all twisted and dirty. My
toenails don't look good. It's just filthy. Don't look
down there. It's just my feet. But the feet
of those who bring the gospel are precious because they bring
to us this treasure from heaven of eternal life outside of our
own work but in Christ's work. And you can get a sense of this
in your own experience, can't you? As I was thinking about
this, I thought about this. Feet are usually dirty and usually
ugly. Some people's feet aren't so
ugly, but mine are. And we like to keep them covered
up. They're usually the farthest thing from our eyes, aren't they?
Farthest thing away from our eyes. It's a good thing. But
I remember looking at my mom's feet, because her feet also were
twisted. And I thought about those precious
feet that carried me when she carried me in her womb. And those
feet that carried her when throughout her life she labored for me.
And I realized that the toes on her feet that weren't so straight
didn't matter because they were actually emblems of her love
and laying down her life for her children. And so that those
twisted toes were simply evidence of her labor of love for us and
how God had provided her for me. And those calluses on her
knees and the hands that were made red in the hot water, washing
diapers and dishes and floors, and the wrinkles of her old age,
and the bent in her back were only signs of her giving herself
to bear me and raise me. And oh, how precious those things
appeared. Because when we see the weakness
of the man, and we hear the preciousness of the gospel, then we realize
how precious the weakness is, because God has raised up a servant
of his, even in his weakness, to bring us the gospel of Christ.
And so, here in Galatians 4, verse 13, he says, you know how
through infirmity of the flesh I preached the gospel to you
at the first. And my temptations, which was
in my flesh, you despised not, nor rejected, but received me
as an angel of God, even as Christ Jesus. You saw Christ, you heard
Christ, and you received Christ when you received the gospel
preached to you by me, the one he sent, even in spite of my
weaknesses, including all of his sin. And then he really draws
our attention to what we think when we see the nail prints in
the hands of our Lord Jesus, and that place where the spear
pierced his side, and the place where the thorns pierced his
brow, and the place where his back bore the stripes, and his
face, the beating, and all the things that he endured for what? that he might bring us to God.
This is the servant of the Lord. He laid his life down that we
might have life. There's nothing more beautiful
in all the world, I don't think, than lowliness. I don't think that anything disarms
us in our pride. and in our hiding from God, then
when God bears himself to us in transparency and in vulnerability,
this is the way the gospel comes to us. Christ makes himself known,
first not in his glory, but first in his lowliness. And that's
something that the one we offended by our sins Instead of bringing
condemnation upon us and beating us, He came to us in order to
make peace through His own blood. And to bear our stripes in order
to make our peace. And so this is what they saw
when they saw Paul. This is the Lord Jesus Christ
coming to me. You see those wounds? You see
that suffering of my substitute. You see the lowliness of his
heart. Come unto me, all you who labor and are heavy laden. I will give you rest. Take my
yoke upon you and learn of me, for I am meek and lowly of heart,
and you shall find rest for your souls. Because in the Lord Jesus
Christ, in his humility, he stooped from the highest place of heaven,
lower than men. He said, I was a worm and no
man. He took upon him the form of a servant, bore the sins of
his people with all the shame and all the sufferings. And you
know what? By the Spirit of God, he is dear
to us. Christ is precious to us who
believe, isn't he? 1 Peter 2, verse seven or so,
he says, to you he is precious. To you who believe, he is precious.
And so he is precious. And so Paul was precious to them.
They didn't despise his infirmity, but they received him even as
Christ. Verse 15. Where is then the blessedness
you spoke of? For I bear you record that if it had been possible
You would have plucked out your own eyes and have given them
to me. You were ready to give me your
own eyes, because you were so happy, so overjoyed. You were ready to let go of everything
else, because by God-given faith, you could see Christ, that your
whole salvation was in Him. Where is that blessedness? that
you spoke of then. You see how Paul is appealing
to them on a personal level? And yet he's pointing them to
Christ because the Judaizers did the opposite. Which is what
he says in the next verse. He says, verse 16, Am I therefore
become your enemy because I tell you the truth? The Judaizers
said, Paul is telling you to forsake Moses and therefore forsake
a blessing. But no, that's the devil's ploy. He made black white and white
black. What do you mean? To forsake
Moses is to forsake a blessing. No, the opposite is true. If
you do not forsake Moses for Christ, then you receive a curse,
you see. And if you forsake Moses for
Christ, then you receive everything. But the Judaizers twisted it
to shine a bad light on Paul and the gospel. And so he says,
am I therefore become your enemy because I tell you the truth?
That's what liars do. They twist the truth in order
to dupe you, in order to fool you. And so he said, verse 17,
they zealously affect you, but not well, yea, they would exclude
you that you might affect them. Now, this verse is confusing
because we're not, I didn't know what it meant. I look up these
words. What does it mean to affect you?
Well, he's saying here the Judaizers are trying to win you. They're trying to gain your devotion
to them. They're trying to gain your confidence
and trust so that you will follow them. And by following them,
they actually gain from you. First of all, they gain your
honor because you're coming to them for the knowledge of the
truth. Have you ever been under a preaching
where you felt like you couldn't go anywhere else because that
was the only preacher who seemed to have the truth? And that's
a very dangerous thing, by the way. It's a very dangerous thing
because God's servants don't point to themselves. They point
you away to Christ, like Paul is doing here. You see, you need
to, like John the Baptist, look to the Lamb of God. I'm not here.
It's not about me. It's about Him. And so a true
servant of Christ brings God's people to the shepherd, not to
himself. And so that's exactly what the
Judaizers were doing, though. They acted like shepherds in
order to bring the flock to themselves, rather than a true shepherd under
Christ, which brings His sheep, Christ's sheep, to the Lord Jesus. The true shepherd of the sheep.
And so Paul is telling them, they zealously pursue you, they
affect you, that you, but it's not well because they would exclude
you. They want to isolate you from the truth so that you might
look to them, trust in them, and compensate them because they
want the control, they want the power, they want the honor of
men. And so in verse 18 he says, but it is a good thing to be
zealously affected, always in a good thing. Remember, when
I came to you and I exhorted you concerning Christ, that was
a good thing, remember? And you received it, not only
when I'm present with you. My little children, of whom I
travail in birth again until Christ be formed in you, I desire
to be present with you now and to change my voice, for I stand
in doubt of you. And then it's going to segue
into the next part here. So you see what Paul is doing
here? He's pleading with God's people concerning Christ. He's
warning them of the dangers of those who come. presenting themselves
and the false gospel in order to entice men like the devil
away from God, away from Christ, to his own honor, feeding them
lies, not caring about the sheep. trying to live off the sheep,
live by the honor they give to them, the control they have over
them, and the benefit they receive from them. That's what a false
prophet does. But true servants of Christ are like Paul. No matter
what the cost, they come bearing Christ, not for gain, not for
personal gain, but to win Christ's sheep and bring them to the Lord
Jesus Christ. And what a beautiful thing it
is when they bring the gospel of peace in order to drive us
to the Lord Jesus Christ, The One who is so lowly and in His
lowliness to us is so lovely. Let's pray. Dear Lord, we pray
that we might be so enraptured with the lowliness of our Lord
Jesus Christ that we would see that He's altogether lovely. And we would be so drawn to Him
that we couldn't help ourselves. We would flee from all others
because He's the only one who is righteous. He is the one who
has all the fullness of the Godhead in Him. And in Him we know God. And in knowing Him, oh, how beautiful
He appears to us in His humility, in His loving grace, and His
saving work of grace, giving Himself for us. Lord Jesus, we
thank You. We pray that You would raise
us up to live to You. Don't leave us in our sins. The
dead shall not praise Thee. The living shall praise Thee.
Lord, give us this life in our souls that we might so praise
You. In Jesus' name we pray. Amen.