Galatians chapter 4 and verse
15. So the Apostle Paul is speaking,
this is his letter, his epistle to the Galatians. And he says,
where then is the blessedness ye speak of? For I bear you record
that if it had been possible, ye would have plucked out your
own eyes and have given them to me. Am I therefore become
your enemy because I tell you the truth? They zealously affect
you, but not well. Yea, they would exclude you that
ye might affect them. but it is good to be zealously
affected always in a good thing and not only when I am present
with you. My little children of whom I
travail in birth again until Jesus be formed in you. I desire
to be present with you now and to change my voice for I stand
in doubt of you. Amen. May the Lord bless to us
this reading from his word. There was a time not long before
Paul wrote this epistle. when the believers in Galatia
had professed a love for the Lord Jesus Christ and testified
to possessing a deep and sincere blessedness. They were able to
say that they had been blessed under the ministry of the Apostle
Paul. They had had a response happiness
and joy to the gospel Paul had preached amongst them. They had
received the gospel, the gospel of free grace and embraced it
joyfully and as Paul had preached to them they had become aware of their sin, they
had been convicted of sin, they saw themselves to be debtors
to God under the law, and they realised the perilous state of
their eternal souls. These were men and women who
had been brought under the sound of the gospel and it had been
applied efficaciously to their hearts and souls. Paul had not
come to preach damnation under the law, but new life in Jesus
Christ. And the apostle introduced them
to the saviour in his message. He preached Jesus Christ, and
he preached Christ crucified. He preached justification without
works, He preached reconciliation by the blood of Jesus Christ,
and a full, free salvation for the cleansing of their soul,
the purifying of their heart, and the purging of their conscience. Paul was faithful to his calling,
and that message that he preached had been blessed to the hearts
and to the testimony of these brothers and sisters in Galatia. They had all been taught of God. They had been taught with spiritual
light. They embraced the Saviour in
conversion, and evidently enjoyed a confident assurance of divine
righteousness. They acknowledged the privilege
of having heard the gospel truth from the lips of the apostle
and they told him that it had made them happy. And this was
none other than the simplicity that is in Christ. What Paul
had preached to them was the pure gospel, the gospel of liberty
and freedom that comes with a knowledge of imputed righteousness. And
all this was true. It was all a matter of record
and experience. It had been the personal testimony
of the churches in Galatia. but now something was wrong.
Now they were being beguiled to give all this up, all that
happiness, all that blessedness that they had spoken of for the
weak and beggarly elements of ritual and ceremony and human
works and the religious self-righteousness that leads to bondage. And it
already appeared clear to the Apostle Paul that they had lost
their sense of the blessedness that they had exhibited and professed
to him in his presence. And that was all the more surprising
to Paul because of the vehemence, the forcefulness with which they
had professed faith in the beginning. They had professed their faith
in the gospel. And it seems to the apostle that
such was their fervour for the truth, their commitment to the
gospel and their dedication to the cause of Christ, that they
would have done anything to promote and to encourage and to support
the gospel that the apostle preached. Even, he says, to the giving
of their own eyes. We might say today, to the laying
down of their own lives. But the apostle speaks about
their eyes. And I don't know why he used
that particular picture. It's interesting, it may just
be that eyes are very sensitive and very precious. There is a
suggestion also, and I don't know whether we want to put over
much weight on it, but you will have noticed that the apostle
had spoken a little bit earlier, just in the previous verse actually
to which we read. He said, my temptation which
was in my flesh ye despised not. nor rejected. And it has been
suggested that this may have been the thorn in the Apostle's
flesh. Whether that's right or wrong,
we just don't know. But if it was the fact that the
Apostle had some eye disease, some eye infection, and the Galatians
here appreciated the difficulty that he had in his ministry,
in his going about his business, in his travels, in his reading,
in his writing. then they had so much been affected
by the apostle's ministry that they said we would have been
willing even to pluck out our own eyes and give them to you. Such was the value that we placed
upon the gospel. Such was the blessedness that
we had enjoyed. So he says, where is then the
blessedness ye speak of? For I bear you record that if
it had been possible, ye would have plucked out your own eyes
and have given them to me. Such was the value and affection
that you placed upon this word. And so the apostle here is earnestly
speaking to these people with these words. And he's concerned
because now they seem to have cooled considerably towards the
apostle at the instigation of these Judaizers that had come
amongst them. So much so that the apostle asks
them, am I become your enemy because I tell you the truth? And we remind ourselves, the
truth of which the apostle is speaking here is the truth that
he had preached in their immediate presence. You remember we said
that the letter is addressed to the churches
of Galatia. So it was probably little congregations
dotted around the region of Galatia into which Paul had come in his
ministry, his missionary journeys, and where he had preached and
established these little churches or discovered believers that
were there and helped form them. together as churches. But what
he had done there was having come and preached in their presence,
when he came into their towns and their cities and preached
the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ to them, now once again
he was having to restate and redeclare in this letter the
truth that he had once preached to them. He preached it once
and now he was coming back to the same truths and we've been
reading about them in Galatians 1 and 2 and 3. And he's going to go on still
in chapter 4. We're about to encounter a lovely
analogy by which we will see the apostle once again emphasising
the nature of the gospel, especially in the context of legalism and
the role of the law. But here he says, I have to repeat
this, I'm going to have to re-emphasise this to you again, this truth,
the covenant of grace, the sacrifice that formed the foundation of
God's way of salvation. and he declared the peace of
God. He declared the promise of God. He declared the gospel of God. He declared righteousness imputed
without works and the wonderful gift of faith by which all the
rich blessings of salvation are received and enjoyed. He preached the truth of Jesus
Christ who is himself the truth. That is, Christ crucified for
the remission of sins, risen for the justification of sinners,
and ascended into glory there to intercede on behalf of his
people. He preached salvation, liberty,
and the deliverance of sinners from hell and judgment. and having
preached these glorious truths to his congregation, his audience,
his friends and his brothers and sisters in the faith, was
he now their enemy for having declared these glorious truths
to them? So here the apostle then returns
to the damaging and detrimental effect that these troublesome
teachers, these false apostles, were having on the Galatians.
And he doesn't name individuals. And that's probably a wise thing
in his letter. He doesn't name individuals,
perhaps because they were unworthy of any consideration beyond the
fact that he would expose and contradict their heresies. But
he does say that these people were zealous. They were enthusiastic,
even fanatical in their efforts amongst the Galatians. These
were busy people trying to gain the ear and the attention with
some success of the Galatian churches. And as I was thinking
about it, I thought that there's a lesson here for us all. Because I think that just in
the nature of things, sometimes we become distracted by activity
and busyness so that we're tempted to overlook error for the sake
of zeal. And maybe we hear of a church
doing lots of outreach over here and we feel that that's an admirable
effort. Or we encounter an organisation
that's building bridges over there that seems to be a useful
labour. Or a missionary work that is
apparently making inroads into a previously inaccessible place
and we're tempted to bid them Godspeed on account of their
zeal without questioning the message that they're preaching,
without questioning the gospel that they carry with them. Or
sometimes we hear about a believer joining this church or that church,
and although we know that it preaches a false gospel, a gospel
of works and free will, we don't say anything because we're just
happy to hear that the person is going somewhere. Now, I'm not advocating that
we go around with a critical spirit finding fault anywhere
we can. I'm simply pointing out what
Paul is pointing out here. Zeal is no substitute for truth. The Judaizers were zealous, but
they were zealous in an unholy cause. The important principle
was the essential nature of the gospel. And I think we can put
up with a lot of things if the heart of the gospel is there
in a congregation, or perhaps we might say more particularly
in a pulpit. But we can't put up with anything
if the gospel isn't present. And Paul was not willing to allow
these infiltrators a free hand when he knew that it wouldn't
turn out well for the spiritual well-being of his friends. He
knew that works religion brings men and women into spiritual
bondage and into fear. And I think that we are entitled
to ask pertinent questions of each other and of any professing
brother and sister who opens themselves to error by forgoing
the simplicity of Christ when they have been taught better.
And we have good reason to believe that they know better, as Paul
did with these Galatians. It's the easiest thing in the
world to fall into religious formalism, and the devil is delighted
when we do. If these Galatians, who'd been
taught firsthand by an apostle, could make such a mistake as
to tolerate the false gospel of work's righteousness, then
which one of us is above temptation? Now, zeal is good when it is
focused and directed in a good thing, but zeal in a bad thing
is dangerous. And we probably all have personal
experience of misplaced zeal. And we know how enticing it can
be. People get meticulous about details
and painstaking about form and practice. And then as that develops,
they become exclusive of anyone who doesn't sign up to their
particular system and follow their own pattern. And by such
methods denominations come into being and division and barriers
get raised amongst the family of God, amongst true believers.
Paul's zeal was for the gospel and that was good. And it necessitated
him contending for the truth and fighting for the spiritual
safety and the well-being of his friends. It justified him
exposing inappropriate zeal on the part of these false teachers,
who though active and enthusiastic about their own doctrines, were
damaging the Galatian churches and corrupting the faith once
delivered to the saints. They were tarnishing the reputation
of the gospel. And error and heresy can readily
be disguised as zeal. And we shouldn't be deceived
as the Galatians appear to have been. And there's another aspect
to this as well. We all ought to be able to give
a reason for the hope that is within us. Peter says, sanctify
the Lord God in your hearts and be ready always to give an answer
to every man that asketh you a reason of the hope that is
in you with meekness and fear. We're not to do it pompously,
we're not to do it with any pride or that we're better than you,
with meekness and fear, but it's important that we're able to
give a reason for the hope that we have. And this means that
we ought to be able to explain something of that hope, the hope
that we have in Christ, with a degree of certainty and a degree
of conviction. I taught people is what we should
be and not easily swayed by the next new idea or the latest religious
novelty that happens to come along. These Galatians were 100%
behind Paul when he was amongst them, but now he being gone from
them, they seem to be amenable to whoever came along next. And
this suggests a lack of depth in spiritual understanding, an
immaturity on their part. And individuals and congregations
can be like this. I sometimes wonder how can a
people listen to a free grace preacher and relish the ministry
that he preaches amongst them, sometimes for years. and then
quickly revert to listening to a legal duty gospel when the
old preacher dies or moves on. And we look sometimes, we look
on and we wonder how these things can be. The final couple of verses that
we have in our passage today convey a pathos, an anguish in
the Apostle's mind, I think, that perhaps all was not what
it seemed with the Galatians. Paul's words, my little children,
suggests both that Paul feels a personal affection and a parental
obligation for the Galatians, but also that he perceives a
need for them to be retaught the first principles of the gospel,
a task that he is willing to fulfil himself. He had hoped
better of them and yet their foolishness in this matter of
allowing the gospel among them to be subverted made him question
how deeply they had grasped his message. And he longs that he
might be able to come among them again in order to meet their
need head on with a voice that is suitable to the trouble of
the day. And sometimes a preacher has
to change his voice and his emphasis, though a gospel preacher never
changes his message. These brethren wanted to hear
the law. Really? They wanted to go back
to the law? Is that really what they wanted
to hear? then Paul would come amongst
them and preach the law. And if he did, it would not be
as a means of salvation or a vehicle of grace, but that they might
once again be caused to tremble in their souls and once more
flee to the gospel for peace. These people had looked over
their shoulder. They had looked back at where
they had come. They were a little bit like Lot's
wife. hearkening for something that
was done. The apostle says that he longs
to come amongst them to preach once again to them that they
might have a clear sight of Jesus Christ and a clear appreciation
of the gospel. I think we're blessed, brothers
and sisters, to have such an epistle as this before us. And
as I've said before, and let me just repeat in closing, we
sometimes think, how could the Galatians do this to the apostle? How could they do it to the Lord
Jesus Christ? But we are blessed that even
the failures and failings of these brothers and sisters in
Christ were the cause and the reason for Paul writing as clearly
as he did this wonderful gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ. And
the weakness of the Galatians is our blessing even today. May the Lord bless these thoughts
to us. Amen. Amen.