Galatians chapter four, and I'd
like to read from verse one. Now I say that the heir, as long
as he is a child, differeth nothing from a servant, though he be
lord of all, but is under tutors and governors until the time
appointed of the father. Even so we, when we were children,
were in bondage under the elements of the world. But when the fullness
of the time was come, God sent forth his Son, made of a woman,
made under the law, to redeem them that were under the law,
that we might receive the adoption of sons. And because ye are sons,
God hath sent forth the Spirit of his Son into your hearts,
crying, Abba, Father. Wherefore thou art no more a
servant, but a son, and if a son, then an heir of God through Christ. Amen. The Lord bless to us this
reading from his word. The apostle has shown the Galatians
that they are heirs of God by promise. That's how he ended
the previous chapter. Of course, there were no chapter
divisions or even verse divisions when the apostle wrote his epistle,
but he ended the previous chapter by telling that the Galatians
that they were heirs of God according to the promise. And this means
that God had promised out of his own good pleasure to save
and to bless and to reconcile these people to himself and glorify
them eternally in his son. This is God's purpose, this is
God's work, the salvation of his people and in stressing this
aspect of promise, Paul is distancing himself and his ministry and
indeed the whole apostolic gospel, from all works religion, which
teaches that men and women can and indeed must do something
to ingratiate themselves to God, to obtain forgiveness, to secure
his mercy, and to earn his goodwill and his pleasure. So Paul is
distancing himself from that. He's saying these two things
are incompatible. These two things cannot be connected. You're either saved by grace
or you're saved by works. You either have the heirship,
the inheritance by promise, or you have it by your own labours. and grace is by definition a
gift and Paul shows that even the faith to receive God's gifts
is itself a gift from God because it's not even our faith that
saves us but rather it is Christ who saves us and Christ's faith
by which we are able to lay hold upon in believing the accomplishments
of our Lord upon the cross. And the Judaizers who had come
to the churches in Galatia, remember we've spoken about the fact that
these churches were in Turkey, so it's that little north of
Israel and round into the bottom part there, of sort of where
Europe and Asia start to join. Asia Minor is what it used to
be called. But the Judaizers had come into
the area of Galatia and they were disrupting the peace of
the Galatian churches and they were troubling these young believers
by speaking of creature duty and additional requirements that
were being put upon the young believers. And Paul strongly
opposed their teaching by insisting that salvation is all of grace
being founded upon the promises of God in the everlasting covenant
of peace. And this reference to being an
heir of promise is what he is continuing to speak about here
in chapter four. Being an heir of God by promise
is a reference to the cleansing, blood, and righteousness of Christ
by which God reconciles sinners to himself and makes them fit
for heaven and acceptable for his presence. or as Paul wrote
elsewhere, it makes them wholly unblameable. and unreprovable
in God's sight. What a catalogue of amazing blessings
that is. Holy, unblameable, and unreprovable
in his sight. And the apostle had used the
example of Abraham in chapter three because the Lord promised
Abraham that he would make Abraham righteous in Christ. And in believing God, Abraham
experienced and enjoyed the benefits and the blessings of being, as
the Apostle James tells us, the friend of God. So to be an heir
of God is to be an heir of God's righteousness, an heir of salvation,
an heir of all God's goodness, and an heir of his glory. All the gifts of God's grace
are our inheritance by promise because God promised to freely
give all good things to his elect, chosen and beloved people. And these promises come upon
the merit, come upon the grounds of Christ's accomplishments,
Christ's sacrificial work. So that's the gospel, that's
the message that the apostle has been stressing to these Galatians,
that they were not to give up, that they were not to forgo,
that they were not to deny by following the teachings of these
Judaizers. But Paul isn't finished yet by
expanding on this privilege of the church's inheritance in Christ. And he begins this chapter by
saying, now I say, So here he has stressed the fact that we
have this inheritance from God in Christ by promise and he is
building up this idea of what it means to be an heir. He wants
to teach us another gospel truth and he compares the status of
an heir while he's still a minor, before he comes to maturity,
with that of a servant and he explains how outwardly there
appears to be no difference. So although the child in a household
was heir to his father's property, while he was still a child, he
wasn't any different from a servant. He still had the limitations
upon him that a servant would have, someone who wasn't a son
at all. And Paul says, the child is heir
to all things, all of his father's riches, but until the time appointed
by the father, he does not have access to the benefits or enjoy
the benefit of what nevertheless belongs to him by inheritance.
And he goes on, he builds on that. He says, actually, the
child is ruled by tutors and governors. who order his day
and direct his activities and discipline his behaviour. And
this is a picture of the church in its infancy, especially perhaps
under the Old Testament dispensation, as it waited for Christ's coming
and the fullness of time when the Messiah would be revealed. Then the church was ordered by
tutors and governors or prophets and judges and types and patterns
and symbols and sacrifices. And these pointed forward to
the coming of Christ in the fullness of time. But they did not give
to the church the full liberty of faith. Rather, the Jewish
church was, says Paul, kept under the law, shut up unto the faith,
which should afterwards be revealed, and were in bondage under the
elements of the world. That is, the tangible, visible
patterns of which Christ would prove to be the antitype or the
fulfilment. And I hope we realise that this
does not deny in any way the spiritual understanding or the
faith of the Old Testament saints. I hope in our studies in Isaiah
we are appreciating that those old believers had such a wonderful
view, such a depth and richness to their view of the Messiah
that in many ways it was comparable with our own, even us looking
in retrospect upon what the Lord Jesus Christ accomplished. They
had the gospel of Isaiah set before them in a beautiful and
in a profound way. But the Judaizers were now, in
the days of the Galatians, in the days of the New Testament,
They were trying to reimpose the schoolmaster or the tutor
or the governor, these elements of the world, over the son who
had come to maturity and who had received his full inheritance. And that was a completely inappropriate
and wrong thing to do. And there's another aspect of
this as well which I think is very comforting to us. Paul shows
how the church in Christ had a place of security and a position
of right so even as a child there still was this promise It never
was. Even the Old Testament church
never was a servant. Although it looked like a servant
in many ways, it never was because the promise was extant. The promise was always there. The church had a place of security
and a position of right. in Jehovah's love and in his
appointment in the everlasting covenant of grace and peace. So that the people of God, though
they were not even born yet, even before the world was created,
they were included in the covenant of grace as the beneficiaries
of Christ's sacrifice. they were heirs adopted very
early into the scheme of salvation in the eternal decrees of God
and into the plan of redemption as those who would be redeemed
and for whom Christ's blood would be shed. They were designated
the sons of God and made heirs in that covenant purpose. They
were elevated to a status not even enjoyed by angels or by
Adam in his state of innocence in the garden and this is an
an entitlement which is amazing and ought not to be missed because
it shows us that in Christ, before the world began, the whole church,
which is the union, the great congregation of every individual
believer of the mystical body of Christ, he being the head,
the whole church was chosen to holiness, to glory and predestinated
to be conformed to the image of Christ in those eternal decrees. And here's another interesting
point I think to note from these verses. We've been speaking in
our Isaiah studies about the anticipation of the Old Testament
church concerning the coming of the Messiah and how they waited
long for his arrival. Well that time of his arrival
is here given a name by Paul. It is called the fullness of
time. And he tells us it was when the
fullness of time was come that God sent forth his son. So this was the appointed time. This was the perfect time when
every minute detail of God's eternal plan to that moment was
fully accomplished. There's nothing random or uncertain
in God's timing, nothing extra, nothing missed. And that's an
important point for us to note. Paul also goes on to say that
there is a time for the church and for the Lord's people individually
to be blessed, a time of love for each of us. A time to be
favoured, a time to be blessed. A time when God, to quote the
psalmist, a time when God shall arise and have mercy upon Zion. For the time to favour her, yea,
the set time is come. That was the fullness of time.
That was what the Old Testament church waited for, longed for,
all through the years, all through the centuries, millennia indeed. There was this expectation, this
anticipation of Christ's coming. And one of the hymn writers,
John Kent, he says this, there is a period known to God when
all his sheep, redeemed by blood, shall leave the hateful ways
of sin, turn to the fold and enter in. There is a fullness
in time, the fullness of time when Christ came and the fullness
of time in which every event and eventuality comes to pass
according to the purpose of God. The years of our lives are measured
and numbered, like the hairs of our head. Our hours, our minutes,
our tears, our joys, our breaths, they're numbered. And this ought
to be a source of great comfort to us all, remembering that our
God loves us with an everlasting love. We shall remain in this
world not one moment longer than the Lord has ordained in love. And it's also a comfort to those
who have watched their loved ones pass into God's presence. They left us not a moment too
soon. And the Lord who ordained their
passing into his presence, ordained the days that we should be without
them, and how long until we join them in the presence of our Saviour. So let us take that as a comfort,
let us extend that indeed. We get so concerned about time
and when things will happen. But our times are in God's hands
and in the purposes of God there is nothing in the ordained will
of the mighty King will speed up or slow down the completion
of his purpose and the glory of his name and the well-being
of his people. Let us live our years, our days,
our hours, and our minutes in the knowledge that the passage
of time is in God's keeping, who loves us, who gave himself
for us, and who does the best for us, and that all things work
together according to the fulfilment of his timing and for our good. And here's just one more thing
that I want to say in these verses and then we're done. Let us note
also this little phrase that Paul uses in verse six. Because
ye are sons. The timing, the circumstances,
the dealings of God with us, and what he allows and does not
allow to enter our lives is determined by this one criterion. Because ye are sons. There's no free will in that
verse. Because ye are sons, God hath
sent forth the spirit of his Son into your hearts, crying,
Abba Father. Sons by adoption in the eternal
purposes of God and in his covenant plan. Sons by election. Sons because of God's everlasting
love towards us. Sons by redeeming grace. Sons
by conversion into the worldwide body of Christ. Brothers and
sisters, you and I have been brought to be the children of
God. The Spirit of Christ is in our
hearts by promise, because it was promised to those that he
set apart in their head in the eternal covenant of grace. And
all the blessings of God's grace and goodness are ours in him. We are able to say, Abba, Father. How sweet, how familiar and comforting
that term is. It is the tenderest of names
and it tells us that our father looks after us and watches over
us with constant, tender, loving care. David said in Psalm 31,
my times are in thy hand. Deliver me from the hand of my
enemies and from them that persecute me. And we read on Sunday past
in Isaiah 52, The Lord is before us and behind us. He's in our
future and in our past. He says to Isaiah, for ye shall
not go out with haste, nor go out by flight, for the Lord will
go before you, and the God of Israel will be your reward. Lord our God is before us and
behind us and he has us in the palms of his hand. What a beautiful
picture this is of God's care and comfort for his people. May
it be an encouragement to our hearts today. Amen.