Galatians 4v8-31

Turn, if you will, to Galatians chapter 4. So if you've got a black church Bible, it's page 974. And if you want to grab one there just by the door. If you've come wanting a Christmas sermon, you're going to be very, very disappointed. Alright, but we're in Galatians and I need to get to the end of Galatians by the end of January and I'm struggling to get out of Galatians.

Galatians 4 · chapter mention

So I think I've got something, well I have got something to say tonight and it'll be a good sermon I hope for the end of the year. Galatians is pretty lively, isn't it? It's pretty fiery. And the Apostle Paul is giving a biblical and a theological argument step by step by step. And what you find with the Apostle Paul is his logic is unanswerable. Relentlessly logical.

And I think very often when we think of the Apostle Paul we think of this kind of cerebral, stern, logical man and we can ask the question, does anything get beyond his mind and reason?

And people might ask that of churches like ours. Do they feel anything? Seem like stones sometimes. The Apostle Paul, did anything move him? Did he feel?

Well look with me at verses 8 to 20. Look at verse 11. There he's saying this, I'm afraid about you. He's saying to the church in Galatia, I'm afraid that my whole work amongst you has gone down the drain.

Verses 15 to 16, he's saying I'm disappointed in you. I'm really disappointed in you. I've told you the truth and now you see me as your enemy.

And in verse 19 he says, it's as if I'm like a mother suffering birth pains. And I've not suffered birth pains. But neither is the Apostle Paul. And there's certainly feeling, isn't there, in birth pains.

He says, I'm like a mother suffering birth pains. And he ensures his aim until Christ is formed in you. He says, I'm in agony. I'm like an apostle with birth pains.

That's what he felt for the Galatian Christians. And three things tonight. As he speaks to them, he says to the church in Galatia, do not forfeit the freedom of Christ.

Don't forfeit the freedom of Christ. He begins by saying, before you came to know the Lord Jesus Christ, you were in bondage. You were in chains. You were enslaved.

It was the bondage of paganism. And he's saying that not knowing God isn't actually freedom. It is slavery.

When you didn't know God, you were slaves. And that's what they were in their paganism and their idols.

And then he says, that changed, didn't it? You came to the Lord Jesus Christ and you've had a taste of freedom.

Verse 9, when you came to know God.

And then he corrects himself.

And he says, when you came to know God.

Or rather, when you came to be known by God.

He said, you came to know God.

But the fact that you came to know God was not because of something that you did.

It was not because of an action that you did.

But you were known by God first.

And that is why you came to know God.

That's true, isn't it?

It's always his initiative that comes first.

You came to know God.

And that is freedom and wonderful.

But it is an even more wonderful thing to be known by God.

It is God's initiative.

You love God because he first loved you.

But he said to the Galatians, you've known that freedom.

You've known a taste of freedom.

And you've known a genuine, living relationship with God.

And you are known by him.

But now you are regressing back into bondage.

He says in verses 9 and 10, how is that?

How is it that you're turning your back on freedom?

How is it that you're turning back to the weak and powerless elementary principles of the world?

Why is it having tasted freedom you want to go back into slavery?

You're observing days and months and seasons and years.

Why are you going back to bondage?

And so what's going on?

What are these days and months and seasons and years?

They are days of special celebration in the Jewish calendar.

Holidays, Jewish religious festivals.

Some of them were Sabbaths.

But then there were months.

Every new month there was a new moon festival at the start of each month.

Seasons would be more prolonged festivals like perhaps Pentecost or the Feast of Tabernacles.

Some of the feasts and the years, the year of Jubilee.

And they were commemorated throughout the Jewish calendar.

And these teachers who've come to Galatia, they're invading the church and they're saying to these new believers,

if you really want to be part of the people of God, if you really want to belong and to know God, you've got to keep the Jewish observances.

Paul is not anti-Jew.

He was one.

He wasn't against observances as such.

As long as they were an expression, a voluntary expression.

But what he was upset by was these teachers were saying, this is essential.

That if you want to be one of the people of God, you've got to keep these observances.

That they try to impose on the Galatians as necessary to salvation.

He is saying, it's not like the paganism you've come from in one sense.

But it is the same bondage.

It is the same principle in thinking that outward observance is what really matters.

It's a form of legalism.

As if by doing, keeping certain days, that is going to claim you credit with God.

I wonder whether you realise how barren that is.

John Wesley, the founder of Methodism, the kind of great 18th century preacher.

In his early days, he graduated from Oxford University.

And he and his friends formed something like a holy club.

Well, that's what it was called.

Wesley was the son of a clergyman.

And John himself was already ordained.

He was quite sound and orthodox in his belief.

He was religious in his practice.

He was upright in his conduct.

He was moral.

Well, he was full, overflowing of good works.

He and his friends visited inmates in the prison and workhouses around Oxford.

John Wesley took pity on slum children.

He provided them with food and clothing and education.

In the holy club, they not only observed the Sabbath, but they observed Saturday as all hell.

They went to church.

They had holy communion.

They gave alms.

They searched the scripture.

They did lots of Bible studies.

They fasted.

They prayed.

But they were enslaved.

By the shackles of religion.

And they were trusting in their religious observances.

And their procedures.

And not in Jesus Christ alone.

And that is barren.

That is a dead end street.

When you're trusting in that stuff, it is barren and it is a dead end.

Can you see the difference here?

Freedom, Paul says, is knowing God and being known by him.

Bondage is you observe days and months and seasons and years.

There is a difference.

There is all the world of difference between having a genuine relationship with God

and keeping external religious observances.

You can carefully be in church and keep the days and keep the seasons, keep the months, keep the years.

I'm not no God at all.

25 years ago, we just got married and we went to Northern Ireland for Christmas.

I was running a youth group.

And the youth group gave me a present for Christmas.

And they said, don't open it until you get to Northern Ireland.

We were getting the earliest flight from Newton Airport a couple of days before Christmas.

And we arrived at Newton Airport.

It was absolutely rammed.

You know, easy jet, overbooking flights and all that.

Absolutely packed.

We put our bag through the security and the security alarm went off and started flashing.

Our bag went through.

They took our bag away.

They took it to the side.

He looked at me and he said, you've got a gun in your bag.

I said to him, I have not a gun in my bag.

He said, you've got a gun in your bag.

Two other men arrived.

The bag is there.

They say, you've got a gun in your bag.

I said, I haven't got a gun in my bag.

I haven't got a gun.

They opened it up very, very carefully.

And there in the wrapping paper is a potato gun from the young people.

I could have killed them.

I could have absolutely killed them.

On the x-ray, it looked like a real gun.

On the x-ray, you look at it and you say, you've got a gun in your bag.

But it wasn't a proper gun.

It wasn't a real gun.

There was the shape and there was the form.

But there was no reality.

And religious practice, even tonight, even coming to church on the last, on graveyard Sunday, Sunday night.

It can look real, but there'd be no reality to it.

And we need to be very careful as a church.

Do I really know the freedom of being known by God?

The reality of a relationship, of really knowing God.

We can say that.

Or am I caught up in the practice of religion?

Why is it that formal religiosity, if I put it like that, is so attractive to some people?

Well, for one thing, it's flattering, isn't it?

Because we think to ourselves, if I could throw myself into religious observance,

then it probably earns me credit with God.

God will see how much I'm doing for him.

But I think I can do something to earn God's favour.

But it's also safe, isn't it?

There are some people out there, maybe you tonight,

and you are afraid of the language of an intimate relationship with God.

You don't want God to get too close to you.

And religious observances and practices and formal occasions

provide just the right form of structured insulation

to keep us away from meeting with the living God.

And we have to be careful, don't we, and examine ourselves.

Do I know tonight, at the end of this year,

the freedom of knowing God?

Or more accurately, and more wonderfully,

of being known by him?

Or am I merely practising religion?

Secondly, Paul appeals to the church,

don't forfeit the freedom of Christ,

but he says to them, hold on to the truth of Christ.

That's verses 12 to 16.

He goes back in his memory, he says,

can't you remember, don't you remember how you first received me?

When I came to Galatia, don't you remember?

The reason I came was because of a bodily ailment.

I was unwell.

That's how I preached the gospel first to you.

What does he mean by that?

What is this bodily ailment?

We don't know.

It was some physical condition that he had.

It may well have been because he was persecuted.

That had bloodied him and disfigured him.

The Apostle Paul wasn't an attractive guy at all.

Or it could be that there's something physical

that he suffers with, that's alluded to in 2 Corinthians 12,

with a thorn in the flesh.

We know that there's loads of different views on this.

Did Paul have problems with his eyes?

Did he have a squint?

There's all sorts of theories out there.

No one knows.

But Paul says here in verses 13 and 14,

that although my condition was a trial to you,

you did not scorn me or despise me.

The word literally there is,

you did not spit at me.

There was something about my physical condition

that was repulsive to you.

But in spite of that,

you received me,

how did they receive him?

As an angel of God.

It's a beautiful description of a preacher.

As an angel of God,

a messenger of God,

as though I were Christ Jesus himself.

And you held on to the truth of the gospel

that I brought to you,

and you were not turned off,

and you were not discouraged

because of the package in which it came.

Because the package in which the gospel came to you,

Galatia,

was not very attractive,

was it?

And we live in a culture,

don't we,

that values the packaging

more than what's in the package.

Where appearance really matters.

And where personality really matters.

You think of advertising.

You think of the popular people in our culture.

You think of the social commentators.

It's very rare there's a bald one,

isn't there?

Bald men get a very, very hard time in our culture.

There'll never be another bald prime minister

or president.

Because the packaging matters,

doesn't it?

The packaging matters.

The church can begin to operate that way.

It'd be very empty, bald men.

There's very few bald men

are asked to speak at conferences.

I'm kidding, all right?

But we look for the minister,

don't we,

who's omnicompetent,

socially adept,

an executive,

somebody who gives off positivity.

And if the truth of the gospel

relies primarily on personality

and packaging,

well, oftentimes it would not be accepted

because Jesus Christ

does not use smooth operators.

Let me give you,

I've given this illustration this year

at the lunchtime talk.

I've given it every other year on a Sunday,

but I don't think I've given it this year on a Sunday.

It's the testimony of Charles Hamilton Spurgeon,

all right?

I love the story.

He's 15 years old.

Spurgeon says,

I was thinking about salvation one day.

He was exercised about his soul.

He realised there was a God in heaven

he wasn't right with.

And one Sunday morning,

he goes to a particular chapel.

He wants to go to one particular church

and congregation,

but it's snowing so hard

that it forced him to turn down a side street

and go into a primitive little Methodist chapel.

Spurgeon didn't know anything

about the primitive Methodists,

he says,

apart from he drew that they sung so loud

it made you a headache.

But he said he didn't care

if only he could learn how to be saved

and get into the kingdom of God.

He went in there,

but the minister hadn't come that morning

because of the snow.

He was probably snowed in.

It came to the sermon time

and a rather thin looking fellow

who must have been a shoemaker

or a tailor

made his way to the pulpit

and Spurgeon said,

it is well for ministers

to be instructed and educated,

but he said this man was really stupid.

He said,

he took his text from Isaiah 45

which says,

look unto me

and be saved

all the ends of the earth.

And Spurgeon said

that the man had to stick

to his text closely

because he didn't have much else to say.

He said he didn't even pronounce

the words of the text properly,

but he said that didn't matter

if only I could get a gleam of hope from it.

Spurgeon said he went on,

don't take a great deal of pain to look,

even a child can look.

It's not lifting a finger or a toe,

it's just look.

That's all the text says,

look unto me.

Jesus Christ went on and says,

look to me,

look at me sweating drops of blood in the garden.

Look at me hanging on the cross.

Look at me dead and buried.

Look at me risen again.

And so on.

After 10 minutes,

Spurgeon said he came to the end of his tether

and he had nothing else to say.

He turned

and looked at 15 year old Spurgeon

sitting under the gallery

and said,

young man,

you look very miserable.

and you will be very miserable in life

and miserable in death

unless you obey the words of my text.

And then Spurgeon said,

he lifted his hands

and he yelled as only a primitive Methodist could,

look to Jesus Christ,

young man.

Look to Jesus Christ.

Look, look.

Spurgeon said,

even though the packaging was offensive

and repulsive

and not refined at all,

I went out of that primitive Methodist chapel

having entered the kingdom of God.

Now come back to our text.

Paul is saying,

hold on to the truth of Jesus Christ.

There was that time

when the Galatians,

in spite of the packaging,

in spite of how repulsive the Apostle Paul was,

received the gospel.

You nevertheless received the truth of it.

And now he says,

we're in another situation.

Look at verse 16.

It shouldn't be a question mark there.

It should be an exclamation mark.

So then,

have I become your enemy

by telling you the truth?

What does he mean by that?

He's saying they've come now

to another situation

in which I've conveyed the truth to you

and the truth is unattractive to you.

This time it's not the packaging so much,

it's what he said.

I brought you a chastening word.

I brought you a correcting word,

a rebuking word.

I rebuked you for that tendency

to depart and drift from the good news

of the Lord Jesus.

And so now you regard me as your enemy?

The truth again is unattractive.

But Galatians,

remember how you originally received it

when there was nothing to commend it

as far as beauty or attraction or glitz.

Am I your enemy?

Am I your enemy

because I put you under the criticism

of the word of God?

He's saying hold on

to the truth of Jesus Christ

even when it criticises you.

And that's a great challenge to us, isn't it?

Do we hold on to the truth of Christ,

the word of God,

even when that word rebukes you

or criticises you

or corrects you?

Are we willing to receive that?

Are we willing to receive the word of Christ

when it comes to us

in an unattractive form?

When it doesn't comfort

but it corrects.

When it wounds

and when it bruises,

do we still receive it

as Christ's truth?

Proverbs 27, 6 famously says,

doesn't it,

faithful are the wounds of a friend.

And so for us as a church family,

do we hold on to the truth of Christ

even when it corrects us?

When it cuts us,

when it pulls us up short,

do you submit to it?

Thirdly,

it says something else that you must do

and this is,

what's helped me this week is

you must evaluate the servants of Christ.

That's verses 17, 20.

You must evaluate the servants of Christ.

You've heard this before.

The pastor,

the vicar,

the minister,

whatever we call him,

it's still a tough job.

If he visits the flock,

he's nosy.

If he doesn't,

he's a snob.

If he preaches longer than 10 minutes,

it's too long.

If he preaches less than 10 minutes,

then he can't have prepared his sermons

and what are we paying for?

If he runs a car,

he's worldly.

If he doesn't,

he's always late for appointments.

If he tells a joke,

he's flippant.

If he doesn't,

he's far too serious.

If he starts the service on time,

his watch must be fast.

If he's a minute late,

he's keeping the congregation waiting.

If he takes a holiday,

he's never in the parish.

If he doesn't,

he's a stick in the mud.

If he runs a gala or a bazaar,

he's money mad.

If he doesn't,

there's no social life in the parish.

If he has the church painted and redecorated,

he's extravagant.

And if he doesn't,

the church is shabby.

If he's young,

he's inexperienced.

If he's getting old,

he ought to retire.

But when he dies,

there's no one like him.

Well,

Paul speaks about himself here

and he speaks about

the difficulties of ministry.

And he contrasts himself

with these false teachers.

And I find this very,

very helpful.

Look what he says in verse 17 and 18.

He says,

they make much of you.

And they zealously seek you.

Not out of a good motive.

Why do they make much of you?

Why do they make a fuss of you?

Why do they seek you

in order to shut you off

and to shut you out?

And that's what they want to do.

They want to shut you out from me,

says the Apostle Paul.

They want to shut you out

in order that you might zealously seek them.

So verse 17,

evaluate these teachers.

Evaluate those who come to you.

Evaluate those people

who aren't seeking you

out of a proper motive.

But they're seeking you

that you would be zealous

after them

and their ministry.

And they are seeking you

for their own repetition

and for their own ego.

And they are seeking

your loyalty.

And I think this is something

really, really subtle

and it can happen

in churches like ours

and we can fall for it

so easily

and it happens in our constituency

if that's the right word.

That we can be made

to feel special

by Christian leaders.

C.S. Lewis has got this

beautiful article,

isn't it,

about the inner ring.

And all of us

want to be made

to feel special.

To be made

as if we're

one of the favourites.

And in doing so,

what happens

when Christian leaders

do that

is they are demanding

loyalty.

And Paul says,

in contrast,

he says,

let me show you

in contrast

the heart

of a genuine apostle.

And so in our constituency,

in churches like us,

how's it been done?

It's been done

on special trips,

it's been done

by giving cards,

it's been done

by lots of things

where people are made

to feel,

I'm in,

I'm in with the minister.

But Paul says,

let me show you

the heart

of a genuine apostle

and it's as if

he rips open.

He throws up his hands

and he pleads for them

and look what it says,

it's an incredible thing,

he says,

my little children,

for whom I'm

again in the

anguish of

childbirth

until Christ

is formed

in you.

That's what we're about,

that's what he's saying.

And so you want to know

if you're a genuine

servant of Christ

or not,

or whether you

yourself

are genuine,

then you ask

in the case

of a minister

for instance,

Calvin says this,

if ministers

wish to do anything,

let them labour

to form Christ,

not to form

themselves

in their hearers.

It's a remarkable phrase,

let them labour

to form Christ,

not to form

themselves

in their hearers.

So the apostle Paul,

he's not content

that Christ

should just dwell

in their hearts.

That's a wonderful truth.

That Christ dwells

in their hearts

by faith,

that is a glorious truth,

but he's not content

with that.

He wants to see

Christ

formed in them.

He wants to see

Christ

formed in his hearers

so that they

take on

maturity

and wisdom

and his likeness.

He wants them

to be growing

into the shape

of Jesus Christ

and the character

of Christ

and he says,

I have birth pains

over that

until Christ

is formed in you

and that is the motive

that must dominate

Christ's servants.

I think many of you

here know that.

If you are a Christian

parent here tonight,

you know what it's like

to have birth pains.

If you're a Christian

parent or you grew up

in a Christian home

and you had Christian

parents,

let me tell you,

in your home

your parents had

birth pains.

All over again

for those you love.

Isn't it true

that there are

Christian parents

who in one sense

they felt this,

they feel the agony

of it,

they feel the birth pains.

We pray,

like we prayed

earlier,

the sex petition

of the Lord's Prayer

of the Heidelberg

Catechism

for our children,

don't we?

We pray,

lead them not

into temptation

but deliver them

from the evil one.

And isn't it true

that some of you

tonight,

you know,

tonight even,

those birth pains

that you long

for Christ

to be formed in them.

That they would walk

in His wisdom

and in His maturity

and they'd show

His likeness

and surely

that should be

our desire

as a church,

isn't it?

As individual believers

within the church,

what are we aiming at?

What are we driving at?

What do we want

you children

and young people

to grow up like?

That Christ

would be formed

in you

and me

and others.

And so as we finish

the year,

Galatians,

I think,

for us

some really

pointed questions

at the end

of the year.

It asks you

tonight,

do you genuinely

know God

or are you

merely practicing

religion?

And then secondly,

Galatians 4

asks us,

when the word

of God

brings criticism

to you,

which it inevitably

does,

do I turn away

from it?

If you're like me,

you tend to really

welcome the comfort

of scripture

but refuse its

criticism.

And can you say

that the supreme

yearning

of your own life

is that Christ

be formed in you?

Because that was

the apostolic

priority.

Because the Holy

Spirit and the

apostle and his

word

and his appeal

leap over the

centuries,

tonight,

not later,

the end of 2025

and they investigate

our hearts

that Christ may be

formed in us.

let's pray.

Let's pray.

Let's pray.

Thank you.