3 of Galatians. It just blows
my mind that I could do that. Yes, there are some things that
could probably be slowed down and dealt with, but I think the
teaching in itself is pretty simple, or what is learned there
is fairly simple. But let's start there in chapter
3 and begin to read in verse 23 down through the first 11
verses of chapter 4, Galatians 3. Now before faith came, we
were held captive under the law, imprisoned until the coming faith
would be revealed. So then the law was our guardian
until Christ came, in order that we might be justified by faith. But now that faith has come,
we are no longer under a guardian. For in Christ Jesus, you are
all sons of God through faith. For as many of you as were baptized
into Christ have put on Christ. There is neither Jew nor Greek.
There is neither slave nor free. There is no male and female,
for you are all one in Christ Jesus. And if you are Christ's,
then you are Abraham's offspring, heirs according to promise. I
mean that the heir, as long as he is a child, is no different
from a slave, though he is the owner of everything. But he is
under guardians and managers until the date set by his father.
In the same way, we also, when we were children, were enslaved
to the elementary principles of the world. But when the fullness
of time had come, God sent forth His Son, born of woman, born
under the law, to redeem those who were under the law, so that
we might receive adoption as sons. And because you are sons,
God has sent the Spirit of His Son into our hearts, crying,
Abba, Father. So you are no longer a slave,
but a son. And if a son, then an heir through
God. Formerly, when you did not know
God, you were enslaved to those that by nature are not gods.
But now that you have come to know God, or rather to be known
by God, how can you turn back again to the weak and worthless
elementary principles of the world, whose slaves you want
to be once more? You observe days and months and
seasons and years. I am afraid I may have labored
over you in vain." Now I'm just going to stop there because I'm
getting into another aspect of this argument as Paul begins
to just really show the pulse of his affection for them. This,
if we're not careful, can can bog us down. And it can bog us
down because in our mind we are easily bogged down because there
is always some well-meaning someone out there with a video or a commentary
or a historical traditional point of view concerning the Bible,
or text of the Bible, and we can get so strapped into the
understanding of heirs, and Judaism, and the law, and all of these
things, that we begin to think differently. And we begin to
isogeet, or in other words, we read into the text, rather than
exogeet, which is to read out of the text, let the text read
for itself, the text interpret itself, the text teach itself.
And so what Paul is doing here now is continuing in this extremely
passionate letter to show that who we are in Christ, or specifically
who the Galatians are in Christ, is the work of God in His sovereignty,
is the work of God in His eternal decree, is the work of God by
His grace, and that that grace is powerfully sovereign, and
without it being sovereign, there is no hope in it. And so when
people conflate the law and grace, or people try to merge the law
and grace, we always hear certain levels of explanation. Some people
say the law is what God uses to bring us to the knowledge
of sin, but it's not. The knowledge of sin was around
long before the law was given. The knowledge of sin was around
for thousands of years before God ever wrote his law down.
So if the law was needed for the knowledge of sin, then no
one would know they were sinners, yet all people know what is good
and right and just. Some people say, well, the law
is used by the Spirit of God in adhering to the law. It's
to teach the person that they need salvation. And sometimes
I've seen that employed. And then they would further argue
that when the person knows they need salvation, they know they
have broken the law, they then look and begin to seek after
the answer. Well, that violates the very
thing that Paul talks about concerning the law in Romans 3. No one seeks
after God, so to seek out the remedy of righteousness according
to the law is to seek after God. No one seeks after God. As a
matter of fact, in the human condition, we count ourselves
righteous through obedience, through other things. That's
what's wrong with us now, is that we think we can stand before
God and be justified through something that we do. The verbiage
that's often used in the cultural Christian cults is that we find
people say, well, you need to accept Jesus into your heart. What does that mean? There's
no biblical stand for that. There's no biblical precedence.
There's nothing in the Bible whatsoever in context that would
teach such foolery. And some people would say, well,
you need to make him Lord of your life. What in the world
can the creature do to make the God of all creation Lord? What
does that mean? Do we set him upon the throne
of our hearts? Or do we put him upon the throne of our minds?
What do we do? We don't put Jesus anywhere.
He is God Almighty. He is the Lord of the living
and the dead. The Lord of the reprobate and the elect. He is God. No one tells him what to do.
He does what he wishes. So where is this point of view,
that there's some type of massaging the human mind and the volition
of humanity through these means that they can come and stand
righteous before God. It all ties to some work. So
the work of the law, whether it be obedience, whether it be
the precepts of religious liturgy or whether it be the precepts
of Moses or the working of Judaism, the shadows, and the antitypes
and all of these different things. None of it counts for anything. None of it ever justifies. There
is no work that a man or woman or child can do that can ever
set them in a good place before God. None whatsoever. It is only
what Christ has done as we've seen over and over and over again. And so Paul wants to help bring
confidence in the life of these hearers. And in verse 1 of chapter
4, he begins to express what it truly meant to be an heir,
an offspring of Abraham. And he says there, I mean that
the heir, what is an heir? Someone who is due. to receive
all the wealth and property and benefits and prerogatives, things
that are guaranteed to the heir. Comes from the father or the
parents, etc. And when they die, it's all yours. But an heir, as long as he is
a child, what does he say there? He's no different than a slave.
Why? Because he has a master. He has a master. He has a guardian.
He has a manager. I mean, you see how people are
often ruled by their children in our day. And yes, when they
get to a certain age, we let them take a little bit of the
reins. We allow them to sort of push back some. But when it
comes down to it, as parents, and they're living in our home
and eating off of our income and living by our will, we're
the boss. And parents that are not the
bosses of their children are the slaves to their children.
And so it's an absurdity, but even in our day, it is still
something that's odd to the common mind that's well and healthy
and logical and brilliant that a child would dictate to a parent
what will and won't be. I know as a child, as I was growing
up, you didn't talk back. You didn't speak, you didn't
frown, you didn't whine, you didn't make noises. If they told you to go to your
room, you never yelled out, can I come out now? Because you got
the death beat out of you. You didn't do these things. It
was expected of you to obey and be quiet. In my kindergarten
year, I kid you not, me and one of my classmates, his name is
Jimmy, were talking. And you line up and you line
up in alphabetical order, and I'm a T and he's an S. We were
together, we were talking, and my teacher says to us, James,
Jimmy, sit back down in your desks. So we sit down in our
desks, and Mr. Whatever, the last person in
the room, was supposed to turn off the lights and shut the door,
and our class went to lunch. The teacher didn't say, sit down
in your desk until everybody's done and then follow us out.
She said, sit down in your desk. So the way we were trained is
that was the command, this is what we do, and we did it. 35
to 40 minutes later, the teacher is the first one to open the
door. She says, what are y'all doing in here? And I raised my
hand. What, James? You told us to sit
down in our desks. And you could tell either it
was rage or fury or frustration or whatever, but this fine woman
did not lose her temper. And she said, well, thank you
for obeying. Now stand up and go to the lunchroom
and bring your trays back. And we had to eat in the classroom. That's the type of obedience
that children are supposed to give. And I can't say that I
expect like that out of my own children, but it was surely expected
out of me. Now, managers of children, bosses,
leaders, guardians, Not only are they to teach and oversee
and obedience is expected, but they are to care for, they're
to look after. So we can't take this illustration
and this metaphor and paint it. The Bible's not saying here that
the law is like a parent. As a matter of fact, we understood
in the context there, we are imprisoned. You're not imprisoned
as a child, though you may feel it. And I remember as a child
I felt like I was in prison sometimes. Though we may feel imprisoned,
our guardians and our managers were not our prison guards. But
in some sense they were. They didn't let us get out and
go do whatever we wanted to. So this strict obedience governed
us and the consequences thereof governed us. But so this is not
a perfect parallel. but it is an explanation. So
Paul moves from the law and what it produced, which was prison
and death, to the grace of God, which is what it produced, which
is being heirs, baptized into Christ, found in him and his
righteousness alone, and therefore we are now Abraham's offspring.
But before we come to the age of being released by our parents
into the world, we are just like a slave would be. So here's that
comparison that Paul gives. Because even though I am the
heir of everything that my parents may have, or even though I may
be at one day when you become a man or a woman, you become
part of the family business or whatever, when you're two and
three and four and five years old, you aren't making executive
decisions even though you are the rightful owner of it all.
This is the picture he's painting. It's different for us because
we don't even have an economy that works that way whatsoever.
It's different. So we have to put ourselves into
that feeling or into the shoes so that we can feel and sense
how these early Christians understood this. So until the date was set
by the father, the child, though he was the owner of everything,
was just like the slave. The slave was taken care of,
the slave was fed, the slave did what he was told, and the
child is the same way. Verse 3, in the same way, we
also, when we were children, were enslaved. So now he makes
the parallel that when we were children, when we were children,
we were enslaved to the elementary principles of the world. What
are these elementary principles? Don't touch this, don't do that,
don't say that, walk this way, act this way, live this way,
go sit down in your seat. Yes ma'am, sit down in the seat.
And you better say yes ma'am in a good tone. Yes ma'am, you
get your head knocked off. You just, you know, things are
different for this day and time. It wasn't even harsh really,
it was just expected. You see the one guy die in front
of you, the whole class just obeys, you know. The older sibling
dies because he disobeys, and the rest of the kids just sort
of line up. I mean, this is the way it was. And that's a joke. The FBI's investigating this
now for my grandparents' life. They are abusers. Elementary principle of the world.
And so here we are, enslaved. We're enslaved to follow these
procedures. We're enslaved to follow the
law. We're enslaved to do this and to do that. We're told to
do it, and we do it. And even when we're adults, before
the grace of God sets us free, we see religion, and we see Christianity,
or we see the worship of God through all the different precepts.
You gotta walk this way, you gotta say these things, you gotta
wash this way, you gotta do this, you gotta do this with the bread,
you have to bring this sacrifice, you have to have this type of
attitude, you gotta be at this festival and that festival, and
you gotta do all these things. And nothing's really changed
in the context of unconverted people. Because they get real
intense when it comes to making sure all the rules are followed.
And that the prescription is taken as directed. Because they
don't want to offend God in any way. Newsflash. We are offensive
to God. Because we have rebelled against
Him. Because we've been born as sinners. We've been conceived
in sin and we are in front of Him guilty. But now, We know
that we are actually heirs. And even though we were enslaved
to the principles of the world, we are now set free, and that's
what Paul's saying. but when the fullness of time
had come. And there's so much more here.
We're talking about the incarnation here, we're talking about the
sending of Jesus Christ, God coming into the flesh, being
born of a woman as it says here, living a life, obeying the Father
in all things, even through the submission to his own earthly
mother and surrogate father. And all of this stuff, the point
of this in this context is for us to see what God has done to
set us free. and that there is no working
of the religion of humanity that could ever satisfy Him. It doesn't
even cause Him to gaze and to go, oh, that's pretty good. But
the fullness of time had come and God sent forth His Son, born
of a woman, born under the law. Born under the law. The reason
that Jesus was born to a virgin is because had He been just a
man, He would have been guilty and He would still be in the
grave. And what did Jesus come to do,
verse five, to redeem those who were under the law, so that we
might receive adoption as sons. Adoption as sons. Now when we think about adoption,
we often think about people who are orphaned. Think about people
who are in a program where they're no longer able to stay in the
home that they're in because of abuse or death or something
of that nature. And it's hard for us to fathom,
we who have grown up with a family, even if it's been rocky or frustrating,
it's hard for us to fathom what it must be like to be a child
and feel unwanted. And sometimes people take this
as a gospel offer which is wrong. And they use this reality of
adoption in a way to prick the hearts. I want you to follow
me here for a second. A way to prick the hearts of
crowds who have gone through times of abandonment, who have
gone through times of hardships, who have gone through times of
feeling alone without love. And they use this reality of
adoption by God as a way of pulling the heart strings for someone
to come into the presence of God and make decisions concerning
their eternal rest, to which I call foul. Because adoption is not an offer
of God. Adoption is a legal work of God. Just like today, I can't get
on Facebook or YouTube and put a little 20-minute video out
there explaining how awesome it would be for someone to be
my child, and all of you infants out there who are orphaned or
in rescue homes, just give me a call, ring my doorbell, I'll
come get you. The absurdity of that is manifold. First, the
law restricts that. You can't just call for orphaned
children and take them in. The law prohibits that. Secondly,
infants don't watch YouTube and Facebook and if they did they
couldn't understand what was going on and probably wouldn't
know they were orphaned in the first place so they would not
understand the communication I was giving them in the offer.
And then another thing to think about too is that the legality
of an adoption, even if the first two were true or able or possible,
it still restricts the engagement. In the same way, God adopts those
who are his children. He adopts those who are heirs
to the promise. He adopts those who he has already
decreed to adopt, and what we learn is that he has adopted
them long before they were. And even though we may not know
it in certain seasons of our lives, when we see the grace
of Christ through the Spirit of God and we perceive Him for
who He is in all of His glory, we know that we are saved by
His grace and His work and His life and we know that He has
effectually satisfied the wrath of God for His spiritual siblings. and only for His spiritual siblings. And that all of us were born
under the law, so in that redemption, Christ was born under the law,
yet not guilty according to the law, because the law pointed
to Him. So if the law is to teach us,
it is not to teach us that which pleases God. except that it points to the
one with whom God is pleased. I want you to think about that
for a second. The baptism of Jesus, God speaks. This is my
beloved son in whom I am well pleased. God has never said that
of anyone but his son. So if we are to be found pleasing
to God, we must be found in Christ, in Him, by Him, by the authority
and the power of Him, lest we die thinking we're in error and
miss the inheritance. What is the inheritance of being
adopted and being a child of God? And by the way, the word
sons there is a plural way of dealing with children. You don't
have to go sons and daughters. It's implied clearly. God has adopted us in Christ
for if we are the children of God, then we must display the
character of God. In order for God to have a people
for himself, to call them his beloved, to say he is pleased
with them, we must be as he is. We must be set apart in such
a way that we have never sinned. That every reality of our existence
has been absolutely holy and perfect and that there is nothing
that could ever put a spot on our record in front of him. That's not true for me in real
life. It's not true for you in real
life. In our own flesh. In our own lives. But it is true
for us in reality because Christ is our righteousness. So the
law is a shadow of the righteousness of God to show us just how holy
Jesus is and just how holy we are in Him. If you haven't listened to week
73 of our reading of Romans, I deal with the obedience of
faith. Most of you all were here. But if you've forgotten it, you
need to listen to that message again. We do not obey God. We have not obeyed God. Jesus has obeyed God. Why? Because he is righteous. God says, James, turn the page,
and I turned the page. People say, see, you obeyed God.
No, I didn't. I followed directions, which was my duty. Child, get
up out of this line. You're talking. Sit in your chair.
I followed directions, which is my duty. It doesn't make me
good because I obeyed the teacher when the whole point of me being
told to do that was because I disobeyed the teacher. And when I did those things,
though I was smart enough to keep my mouth shut, the cynicism
as a five-year-old is just as strong as it is now, I had a
lot of incredible thoughts of how I could have answered her.
But I wasn't dumb enough to do it. Just the inquisition of my own
mind. Why am I having to sit down if
we're having to go to lunch? What is this supposed to do? How is
this gonna teach me not to talk? I can't help it. Because even if I follow the
easy rules, do not take the life of another human being and murder.
Okay, but boy, I hate them. Boy, they aggravate me. Oh, I
said too much to the person next to me. I shouldn't have gossiped.
I'm still murdering. Pray and read your Bible and
focus and pursue righteousness. And when we think that those
are things that we do in our flesh, in our lives, we've missed
the point of grace, we've missed the point of faith in Jesus.
Pursuing righteousness is believing in the finished work of Jesus,
being found in Him and His perfection. And that if by some Amazing thing
that I do in my life model certain attributes of my Savior in my
flesh. It is still not obedience because
obedience by definition is absolute perfection. Delayed obedience is disobedience.
Disgruntled obedience is disobedience. Ill-motivated obedience is disobedience. We don't love the Lord the way
we ought to. Friends, I don't have to belabor this. We're not
adopted because we get it right. And we don't get it right because
we're adopted. We're adopted because God has
mercy on us. His grace is sufficient. He's caused us to be born again
to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ
from the dead. 1 Peter chapter 1 verse 3 and
4. That's part of it. So we would receive adoption
as sons, as daughters, because Jesus came to redeem us. We are
His. And because you are sons, verse
6, because you are sons, God has sent the Spirit of His Son
into our hearts. Now what does it mean to have
the Spirit of His Son? Now, we could talk in the sense of the
Holy Spirit, But what is it that Jesus does in His ministry? To whom does He yield? To whom
does Jesus rest in? The promises of the Father. He
forever and always, throughout the Scripture, we see in those
three and a half years, even when He was twelve, do you not
know, Mother, that I'm to be doing the will of My Father?
Do you not know My Daddy is the One who sent Me to do these things?
And then there's a man, in his ministry at the age of 30, he
teaches the very same thing. My father, my daddy sent me here. My dad sent me here. The words that you don't like,
that you hear me speak, they're my dad's words. He put them in
my mouth. And when I'm in trouble, when
I'm in trial, when I have angst, I cry, Dad, where are you? Dad,
I hold to your promises. Dad, I know that you're going
to bring me to glory. Dad, give me the glory I had
before the world began. See, it sounds different when
you hear the word Dad, doesn't it? It's personal. It's intimate. It's
perfect. And for Jesus to be the Son of
God and call Him Dad, when we see that and we can call the
Father Dad, That's the Spirit of Christ. It is only by Christ's
intimate essence. It is only by the Father's love
for the Son that we can call Him Dad. And in the same way, you see
John 17, this all sort of goes together, doesn't it? We're no
longer a slave. Because to be a slave is to be
a slave to doing. To be a slave to being. To be
a slave to death. And as Jesus says in John's Gospel,
if the Son sets you free, you're free. Because the slave, though he
may live in the house, is not the Son. And he can't stay in
the house forever. But the Son stays in the house
forever. And if the Son tells the slave
he's a son too, he stays in the house forever. You see that picture?
Who tells me I can live in the house? My daddy tells me I can
live in his house. And if he's my dad, nobody's
kicking me out of his house. Folks can visit, folks can come
over, but at the end of the day, this is my house. You ain't gotta
go home, but you can't stay here. If you live here, you can stay
here, you see. If you're home, you're home. So we're no longer a slave when
we're in Christ. We're no longer a slave to the
law. We're no longer a slave to trying to figure out what
we should do. Could you imagine the constant
stress and anxiety and divisiveness and dichotomies of Abraham? Told
the promise. And then years later, Ishmael,
And years later, the son of promise. And 430 years after the promise,
the law. And those who are in the law
and under the law are slaves. Those who are in the law and
under the law and live according to the law and use the law as
a guide and use the third use of the law as a rule of life. I'm going to tell you, I've been
very careful through the years on my language and how I use
these phrases. But the more I see what scripture
teaches in itself and forsake the historical theology that
I'm so accustomed to, I can say very clearly that if
the law was our guide to the pleasures of God, I'm not a son
of God. Because what God does in His
adoption is give us the spirit by which we cry, Daddy. That's what the word Abba means,
Papa, Dad. My children call their grandfathers
poppy and pop-a-tip and granddaddy. They don't have to go and use
formal names and formal titles and speak the king's English. They don't have to call, my children
don't have to call me up and make an appointment for an audience
and plead to my status in the household. Just say dad. And we who are dads in the room,
when we're out in public, somebody says, dad, we're all just like,
what? Same thing with mom. Daddy. Oh, that's not my child. Because formerly, look at this
verse eight. Formerly, when we did not know
God, you were enslaved to those that by nature are not gods. You're enslaved. You're enslaved
to those who do not belong to him, who are not his offspring. You are slaves to those who are
in the world who do not know God, because to know God is to
know his grace. To know God is to know his grace. Now, what is the grace of God?
His son. and who He is and what He accomplished
and who He accomplished it for. This is the basic building block. This is the ABCs of salvation.
The real ABCs. Jesus brings us into the presence
of God, establishes the fulfillment of the promise of God for His
people. That's the whole point of Christ coming to save His
people from their sins. His words, not mine. And these Galatians, they weren't
always taught this. They were taught all sorts of
things, but the Jews were taught this and then they couldn't see
it when it came because not, they weren't the sons of promise
just because of their bloodline. They were the sons of promise
only when they'd been, because they'd been given to the son
of God. Through Christ will all the nations
be blessed. And I love what Paul says here
in verse 9, he says, but now that you have come to know God.
And he doesn't correct himself, but he reiterates what he really
means. He says, or rather to be known by God. See, Jesus says this in John
17 verse 3, this is eternal life that they know you the one true
God and the son whom you have sent. The works of God that we
are to be doing is to believe in the son that he has sent.
John 6. We who believe and are the believing
ones who believe in the son whom he has sent and everything that
he's accomplished for his people, when we have the faith to see
and been given the gift of sight, we have eternal life because
that's the promise. Eternal life is the promise.
It's not our faith that gives us life. It's that we have faith
that God has given us life. It's a big difference. It's a big difference. You've been known by God. You
have come to be known by God. How can you turn back again to
the weak and worthless elementary principles of the world? How
can you turn back there? How can you go back there? And
beloved, let me tell you something. From a pastoral perspective,
this is the greatest enemy of the cross right now. Because there's a lot of people,
a lot of people, who can stand with the same Bible, who can
stand with the same version, stand and read the same words,
and then they will tell the congregation, you need to talk and walk like
Jesus, if you really belong to Him, or else. And that's beyond foolishness. It's sinister. We don't walk back into the worthless
principles of the world. But that's what was happening
to the Galatians. The shadow of covenant. Of the new heart. What is circumcision
all about anyway? I mean, what in the world is...
Taking the foreskins off the male member have to do with salvation. It's a barbaric picture of an intimate ripping of the
flesh. Cutting it off and what did they do with it? Threw it
away. Grace throws away the works of
the flesh. And if we're not in Christ, it's
still on. Even in striving for obedience. And the true circumcision of
the heirs of God is only found in the ripping off the flesh
of Jesus. Baptism is such a different picture,
isn't it? How can we turn back again to
the weak, worthless, elementary principles of the world, whose
slaves you want to be once more? See how Paul does that? See his
rhetoric there? He makes an assumptive question without having to give
much answer to. What you're doing is you're becoming
a slave to the world again. The pictures of Christ are not
your hope. The precepts of Christ are not
your hope. The promises and the shadows
of Christ is not your hope. Christ is your hope. Christ is your hope. Abraham, Abraham, Abraham. You
always hear him. What did Abraham do? A whole
lot. Yes, he was faithful by the word
that we have. He was faithful by the Spirit
of God to take Isaac up to the mountain to put a knife through
his throat and to bleed him dead. Why could he do that? Hebrews
12. Hebrews 11. By faith, Abraham
believed that God could even raise Isaac from the dead. God
had promised Abraham that through Isaac the nations would be blessed.
So if God wanted to kill Isaac today, yet God's promises are
true, then God must be going to bring him back to life. That's
what Abraham believed. How did he believe that? Did
God explain it to him? No. God granted him the faith
to believe that it was all by the mercy of God. And that story, Genesis 22, I
believe it is. I can't read it without getting emotional. Because
of the perfect picture of what it looks like in the sense of
Christ and how it points to our savior, that God will provide
for himself a lamb. That's what he asked his dad
several times. Dad, where is the sacrifice?
Son, God will provide for himself a sacrifice. What are you and I gonna stand
before God with? What are we gonna cut off of our body to
present ourselves pure? What kind of washing and working
and hope, hopeful, you know, maneuvering our morality or our
works, what can we do and stand before God and say, okay, look
at all the work I've done, God. Look at how much I've tried.
What is a try but a failed attempt? That's all it is. No one's ever
said of something they've accomplished, I tried it. They say, I did it. You can't turn back. Because
if you do, you're just going to be slaves to the world. You're
going to be slaves. You're not slaves. Friends, it's easy for
a Christian to get really inundated with legalism. Because sometimes
we want that tangible. Sometimes we want to see That
which can't be seen. Sometimes we want to hold on
to something that's real. I have that problem as a father.
And raised up in my generation, we were raised to work. You get
up early, you work all day, you come home, you go to bed, you
get up early, you work. You work, you work, you work, you work,
you work. And until two years ago, I never felt free in my
spirit to even go on a vacation unless it was coupled with work. For real. Ever. And yet, what does it do for
you? What does work bring you? It brings you the wage you earn. We do all that we do. We're taught,
we're managed, we're governed, we're instructed, and we work. And going back to the law, says
that I can work and prove and pursue and live. What is the end of work in this
world? Just from an economical point of view. Retirement so
you can save for your funeral. I'm sorry, that's what it is.
By the time I die, if I make it to my 80s or 90s, an average
burial is going to be $20,000. in this area. Or more. Throw me in a field, light it
on fire, roast some marshmallows, hoo-yah. Let's do it. I don't care. This meat suit,
you can do what you want to with it. I don't care. That's what
life is. And yeah, there are some who
like really succeed. Then they get really old and they got more
than they can ever handle and they leave and then people fight
over or it goes to somebody else who just keeps on spending the
same old wealth over and over again. Friends, work always ends
in death, even if it yields for a short time, food and shelter
and clothing. There's nothing wrong with good
work. There's nothing wrong with a work ethic. But not concerning
righteousness. Because if we are a slave, all
we're doing is observing days and months and seasons and years
for nothing. And then Paul says, I'm afraid
because you've followed all these things. Now listen to what he's
saying. And some of you are falling prey to this type of teaching
and going after it passionately. I'm afraid that I worked with
you in vain. that I labored over you for nothing.
That's tough, isn't it? It's tough. He pleads with them to listen
to the truth of grace and not pursue righteousness through
the flesh. At all. Ever. For any reason. And just to deal with the elephant
that's in the room. Nowhere have I or the scripture
said, So, Que sera, sera. Carpe diem. Whatever will be,
live the way you want to live. Nobody said that. There's no
instruction in the scripture. It's the exact opposite. But
do not confuse it, beloved. The Judaizers added works for
confidence. which condemned them, which condemned them. Christ
has set us free. And when we see scripture and
we see over, we get into chapter 5 in a couple of weeks, we see
what's taught there. We are led by the Spirit because
we believe in the grace of God. The Spirit testifies to our spirit
that we're His children through which we cry, Abba, Father, Daddy. And we see what the works of
the flesh are. And he lists a bunch of them over there. But this
is not who we are. That's not who we are. So there
is some practical truths that are coming here, but Paul never
conflates the gospel with maturity and wisdom. Because Christ is
our wisdom. Christ is our hope. Christ is
our sanctification. And that's it. Or it's nothing.
Which is it? Let's pray. We thank you, Father,
for this truth and for your word, Lord, that we might live to the
praise of your glorious grace, trusting in you by the Spirit,
by faith, fully and forever in the finished work of Jesus. In
his name we pray. Amen.