No Longer Slaves (Galatians 4:1-6)

And today we transition into chapter 4, verses 1 through 6.

And this is important because there were people in the Galatian churches who had come to Christ by faith, and now we're being told that they weren't all the way just quite in yet.

The biggest problem was that this wasn't coming from cynics on the outside of the church.

When we're immature in the faith, we tend to think that the only wrong information, the only wrongdoing that will ever happen to me, are from the obvious atheists that are outside of the building.

And we can forget that even within the confines of the church, within the boundaries of this family, that there are serious, sincere, religious people who, just like in the Galatian church, can open the scriptures and make a case for why you need to be doing more.

More to belong, more to be at peace.

You need one more mark, one more action, something more on your calendar, more requirement.

And once you've done that, now you can be a full member.

Here's the problem.

In the Galatian church, it was working.

You and I are a lot weaker than we think we are.

We buckle under pressure most times.

And that pressure that was in the Galatian church is not this ancient pressure that stayed back there, but rather is one that has always been.

Some of you may have learned religion in rooms where you're standing, your capacity to peacefully enter the room, your capacity to peacefully leave the room and not have someone say a comment.

All rose and fell on how you performed that week, or how you presented yourself today.

The problem is that you and I never really fully stop checking to see if we're okay in a room.

There's always that nagging voice in the back.

People are wondering about how I look, how my children are acting.

They're probably they probably know I don't know that word that Pastor Dan just said there.

Paul answers the Galatian church that's crumbling under this pressure with a story that they know well.

And if you've read the book of Exodus, you know it as well.

That Israel was in Egypt.

They were in real slavery, and nobody there gone out by trying harder or by waiting long enough.

God bought them and then brought them out at the price of blood.

He then calls Israel his son in that moment.

He puts his own presence among them and started them toward an inheritance they didn't deserve and had never earned.

Slavery, purchase, sonship, presence, inheritance.

That is the shape of how God rescues.

It has always been and will always be.

Paul says, not only did this happen once, but now at a much larger scale, in these six verses, he will show it has happened again.

The burden of this text is that you are walking around working like a slave in a house that is already yours.

And no amount of effort is ever going to get you out of that.

Please read with me God's holy word.

Paul says, 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 a 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.

Our text will break down into the following outline.

Verses one and three, one through three will be restricted until the father's time.

Verses four and five will be redeemed by the Son, and verse six will be reassured by the Spirit.

We begin with verses one through three, restricted until the Father's time.

Paul says, as long as the heir is a child, he is no different from a slave, though he is the owner of everything.

In these three verses, Paul is pointing to the fact of where you were.

Before salvation, before grace came, you and I were an heir in name, and yet living like a slave.

He says, as long as the heir is a child, the word for child there in the Greek is not pointing to an immaturity or even to an age of any kind, but is rather highlighting a legal status, that of a minor.

But it's very important that we see that the word heir means exactly what it says.

The heir is truly heir, but he is a minor.

And it is restricted until the father's set date.

The heir has this moment where he owns everything and controls nothing.

And that is the tension that Paul brings us into.

He says he is no different from a slave, though he is the owner of everything.

But he is under guardians and managers.

In biblical times, guardians and managers had true and real authority over children.

It is a good and God-given role that they had at that time, where they could discipline and educate.

They were in charge of making sure that they didn't wipe their boogers on things, that they said thank you and please, and that they became the upstanding citizens the parents wanted them to be.

That the law is good, that God's Old Testament law is righteous.

It is good.

And yet it was a promise to keep for a season.

And now that Christ has come, the temporary season where that reigned is over.

The guardian's role was real, but it was not final.

He says, but he is under guardians and managers until what?

Until the date set by his father.

I have counseled many a parent of a teenager.

I have more than a decade of youth ministry experience, and I'm here to tell you it's rough.

But one of the hardest moments is shepherding parents through that season.

You see, most of us were not raised and taught biblical standards when it comes to parenting or understanding the relationship.

And so we do it the exact opposite way that God has designed.

And in doing so, instead of liberating our children at the end of the road and having spent all this beginning time forming and then letting them fall on their face, we wish to be sovereign and stop them from falling on their face.

Even though the best lessons that you and I have learned are often from failing.

We have a hard time not being sovereign.

Right?

We pray, God, your will be done.

But when I tell my kid to do something, it's my will be done.

And if you disrespect me in that, I'm not upset because you've disobeyed God.

I'm upset because you've disrespected me.

You and I were under guardians and managers until the date set by the Father.

God has never once been wondering when he was going to save his people.

He never once was confused or unsure.

From beginning to end, God has always been in control, and one day this finite mind will understand that God created time and he exists outside of it.

He is not controlled by it.

It has no authority over him.

And so the parent that labors in prayer for the child to be saved for decades rests in the fact that God's time is perfect.

You and I don't get to control time.

We live under time.

Which is why we believe that God and God alone saves, and you'll never believe that more until you preach the gospel to somebody that you love and they don't accept it.

Until the Father's time.

Now he creates a comparison here.

And he says, in the same way, verse 3, we also, when we were children, were enslaved to the elementary principles of the world.

So now he's creating this connection for us so we can clearly understand children here.

So again, we're learning how to read the Bible.

We can look backwards to this analogy he's painted for us and understand exactly what he means by child because he's explained it for us in verse 3.

The child is you and me before we were saved.

How is the child defined?

The child is defined as a slave.

That's not what you and I think of as ourselves.

And yet, it is the reality.

We were enslaved to the elementary principles of the world.

This is the same word that Paul uses earlier and later, and he uses it in Colossians.

And it really means like rudimentary.

It's this idea of like the ABCs of life.

So think of it like the natural rules and regulations of life.

Why does uh the teenager put on their best behavior whenever they're in class around their friends and have to get the A?

Well, the the elementary principles of the world have said if you don't do this, consequences and you can actually see it now.

Why does the toddler act fine at home?

You take him in public next to sweet things, and all of a sudden life is over, and you have never parented that child in your life.

Why does that happen?

It's because you and I are slaves to the pressures of this world.

You and I can't help ourselves.

The primal urgency underneath to get what I want because I want it.

We obey it and we call it freedom.

We say, no, no, no, I'm free, I'm finally free.

And everyone looks at them and says, No, you're miserable and just can't see it yet.

The elementary principles, this is one word in the Greek, and it's naming the old order of bondage.

See, for the Jews, this was life under the law's guardianship, right?

The Mosaic law is there, and every day it says do or die.

And every day they realize all we do is die.

But for those outside of the law, those who were not Jews, they realize that the pagan life is still under the world's basic forces.

See, both of them run on the same ledgers of do's and do-nots.

And they measure themselves.

And both treat God like a vending machine.

If I'm good this week, God will bless me because I've been good.

What does that sound like?

It sounds like this thing called karma.

I don't know if you've ever heard of it or not.

It's not in the Bible.

But it's exactly what the world believes.

Good things come to good people.

That's not in the Bible.

You and I can get to this point where it's like, Jesus will listen to me better if I don't freak out right now.

And we can miss the reality of you and I are living out of the ledger and not for the Lord.

This is why turning God's good law into a ledger is not climbing above paganism, it's actually walking back down into it.

And you and I are tempted to do it every day.

See, Egypt is the pattern that's already running underneath all of this.

Nobody aged out of slavery in Egypt.

So the minor does not grow into freedom, but rather must be bought to be free.

It's the same thing for you and I.

You have no chance to just get old enough and finally you'll figure it out.

Right?

The gospel will finally become clear.

You'll make it to heaven because you finally hit the perfect age and you settled down.

I want you to picture a man born into a debt that he cannot outwork.

And he holds the deed to an estate that he can't reach from his prison cell.

The man in bondage does not travel to his estate.

He does not get free to go and inherit his deed just because he turned 30 finally in jail.

Someone has to pay the debt for him to get out and to go and collect his inheritance.

If someone wants your week this last week, would they see a son at home in the father's house?

Or a servant anxious about keeping his position.

You know, like uh the kind of son who goes over to dad's house and sees there's only one recliner in the room, it's obviously dad's recliner, and like makes a beeline for it, throws the feet up before anyone else is even through the door.

Are you resting in Christ like that?

Or are you awkwardly shuffling at the door, trying to figure out are we a shoes-on, shoes off house?

How do I not offend?

Are you waiting to feel mature enough to belong in God's family?

As though God's house has a minimum age.

You and I are good at that.

We're good at the comparison game.

One day I will belong in here just like Pastor Dan, because I'll be able to say those words like that.

Or I'll have I'll have a Bible verse in my head, and then I'll be able to do it, and then I'll feel like you know what?

Maybe I do belong here.

Is that the price of admission?

I want you this week to name the one place that you're still trying to earn a standing that you cannot earn.

It could be the sin that you keep re-promising to fix before you'll face God.

Or the discipline that you keep in order to buy peace as opposed to living from peace.

Stop treating your discipline and your promises as the price of admission to be in God's family.

The most immature, the most undisciplined, the most unbiblical person in this room who has trusted in Jesus Christ alone for the forgiveness of their sins is saved and is just as saved as all three of the elders of this church.

Period.

Do we act like that?

Because you cannot outwork this slavery.

You can only be bought out of it.

And that leads us into our second heading, Redeemed by the Son, verses four and five.

Paul says, 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.

Paul is highlighting how in the world did you get out?

Like what was the mechanism that got you from point A to point B?

And he says it's not by growing up, it wasn't by self-improvement, but by the Son being sent down to buy you.

The words fullness of time there, but when the fullness of time had come, points to the Son who comes at the Father's appointed time.

This is not a human achievement or an accident of history.

It is the same fixed date that we talked about in verse 2.

Jesus was always going to come on the day that he came.

And salvation has always been through him and in him alone in this way.

When the fullness of time had come, when God's perfect plan was going to be enacted, what did God do?

God sent forth his son.

Now, speaking of submitting to God's timing, do you think the couple of hundred years in between Malachi and Matthew, people were like, it's God's perfect timing?

Like the third generation of God not talking to his people.

Do you think they were just like, it's all in God's timing?

It's okay.

I wouldn't.

I'd be upset.

God spoke for thousands of years.

We had all this terrible stuff happen, we finally get back, and now nothing?

We're just kind of waiting on some promises.

How many hundreds of years can you wait patiently?

When your great-grandfather looks at you and says, God promised this, you might at least be like, ah, maybe, maybe, grandad.

Maybe, maybe, but it's been it's been a little bit.

If the original promise of the gospel came all the way back from Genesis chapter 3, how long would you wait?

Genesis 3 · chapter mention

It was the fullness of time.

It was the perfect time.

And in the fullness of time, God did not then demand better slaves.

He didn't demand that you finally step it up.

He didn't demand that you finally get your life together.

He sent down his son.

The verb there, born of a woman, is actually not the word born, but rather is the idea of becoming.

It's the same one that we get from Philippians chapter 2.

Philippians 2 · chapter mention

And so what that is trying to communicate to us is the eternal son entered a condition.

He did not originate at Bethlehem, but rather entered the condition of being fully God and fully man in one moment.

God sent forth his son.

What?

Born of woman, fully human, born under the law.

For what purpose?

To redeem.

Now that word redeem there, it doesn't mean that God came to make you a little better.

It means to buy out of the slave market by price.

It's the same word that was in chapter 3, verse 13, where Christ becomes a curse for us.

Jesus bought you.

You are his, which is why in Romans, Paul says, look, there's two options, okay?

You can be slave to sin, or you can be slave to Christ and righteousness.

Those are your two options.

And you might be like, is there a no-slave option?

And the answer is no.

As a created being, you don't get to make a third option.

It's kind of the whole thing.

He came to redeem those who were under the law.

So that, what does so that mean?

Yeah, it means here's why.

So that, here's why we might receive adoption as sons.

Here's what's important is that God didn't stop right here.

God could have said, You were a slave to sin, I bought you freedom.

Now go be the janitor in heaven.

He could have said, uh, I set you free, now choose the right path now that you're free.

But he didn't.

God loved you enough not only to save you, not only enough to keep you, but enough to promise you a place in the family.

Adoption was Israel's own category.

It was Israel's moment where they were the Son of God, but now it's given in full and extended to the nations.

I want you to see that in these two verses, the movement runs in only one direction.

It's not the slave climbing up to God, but the son climbing down to the slave.

Born of a woman and under the law, into the place of the crushed, to stand where we failed and to bear what we deserved.

The religions of the world will tell you to ascend.

They'll tell you to be good enough, or you already are good enough.

They'll tell you to work harder, they'll tell you what to do and what to not do.

Jesus is the only one that looks at you and says, Look what I've done for you.

The word under in these verses is one of the most important.

Under is the letter's word for imprisonment.

In chapter three, we saw the words under a curse, under sin, under a guardian.

Now we see under the elementary principles.

And one of the most important things for you and I to understand is that Jesus is the only one who ever volunteered to be under the law.

He's the only one who steps under by choice.

And he went under so that you and I could come out from under.

All I can think about is the moment where Jesus is correcting Peter.

Peter chops someone's ear off and is like, we're gonna defend Jesus.

And he looks at Peter and is like, Do you do you not get it?

Like, if I wanted to, one word, and legions of angels come down.

You're missing the point.

In the same way, did Jesus need to do anything other than say a word to save all of humanity?

And the answer is technically, no, he's God.

If you want, he could say a word and be done.

What did he do?

Why he came down into the bondage himself.

He took the shackles off of your wrists and put them on his own.

And he cleared your account from the inside.

And then after he paid the debt, he holds your hand, and as a freed person, he walks you not just out into the street, but welcomes you into the Father's house.

Now that is amazing grace.

That is the gospel.

At the fullness of time, the Father did not send better slaves, he sent his son down to make slaves into sons.

So where are you still trying to climb to a place that the Son came down to give you?

And in a different sense, is there perhaps someone in this room that the Spirit calls your brother that you do not?

I want you to receive the full comfort of adoption today.

Do not shrink the gospel down to just the pardon without the family name.

And then I want you to act like it.

I want you to come to the table without rehearsing whether you earned the seat or not.

And I want you to eat with the brother that you may have quietly filed as probably not one of us.

And the beautiful thing is that we get to practice this in a wonderful way in just a few weeks with the Lord's Supper.

With what heart posture do you come?

One of the anxious servant or one of the resting son?

The father did not pay to bring sons out of slavery so that they could just walk right back in.

And that leads us into our final heading, reassured by the Spirit, verse 6.

Paul says, And because you are sons, God has sent the Spirit of His Son into our hearts, crying, Abba Father.

Paul is showing you what you now hold, what do you currently possess?

And it is the Spirit of God's Son that cries Father within you.

Now I want you to notice something here.

Uh, he doesn't say, and if you are sons, he doesn't say, and one day when you are sons.

He says, because you are sons, because you are already in the family, no matter how messy your life is, no matter how much you do or do not know, no matter how perfect you look on the inside or the outside, because you are in the family.

Because you already belong, because you are already worthy, and not because of what you've done, but because of what he has done.

Because you are sons.

This is marking the order.

The Spirit is sent not to make you a son, but because you already are one.

And this is important because assurance flows out of sonship.

You and I don't get to create it.

We can get very confused with that and confuse personal confidence with assurance.

And be like, all right, I just need to work really hard to like assure myself that I'm good to go.

It's like, no, no, no, no.

The Bible says the Spirit lives inside of you.

And then in your deepest and darkest moments, he is crying out, saying, Father to God.

Assurance flows out of sonship.

As you and I see the marks of sonship in our lives, as we see God's work in our lives, as we see others continue to communicate into our lives God's truth, we are reassured.

Not because we're working harder to be assured, but because the spirit is always working to assure us.

Because you are sons, God has sent the spirit of his son.

It's the word sent forth again that we had earlier.

The Father who sent the son now sends the spirit of his son.

This is a double sending.

It's the same kind of concept we find in Isaiah 48, 16, where there's this double sending of God the Son and God the Spirit.

And we notice that there are no persons in the Trinity that are not involved in your salvation.

That every person within the Trinity has fully loved you and kept you and worked for your salvation and for your good.

Now, this is important for us to clarify.

God sent the Spirit of His Son into our hearts crying, Abba, Father.

I don't know about you guys, but I grew up hearing many a sermon telling me that Abba was baby talk or toddler speak, and that it was translated as daddy or dada.

And that's super not true.

So let's clarify this.

Abba is not baby speak.

It is the exact same word that a 40-year-old man who has his own children would look at the patriarch of his family and call him.

So why does Paul say Abba father?

He says it because Abba is Aramaic.

So that's the language that they would have spoken in Israel at that time, primarily.

And number two, Abba was a term for father that was warm and was personal.

So in your life, right, it might be the difference between father and dad, right?

For me and our family, like father was distant.

Like father, like it was it just felt weird, like like I'm talking to somebody that's not mine.

And dad felt personal.

But no one would look at the 40-year-old who said dad and be like, what are you doing, you baby?

That's weird.

Like that you would never do that.

But you might say it's more personal, it's more specific, it's more intimate.

And that is the that is the point here.

And it's actually the same word that Jesus cries out in his prayer at Gethsemane.

And the beautiful thing is that the Spirit puts the same words from the Son onto the lips of slaves like you and me.

And that the words that were spoken perfectly by him are not only placed in our heart, but get to come out of us.

Not because we worked really hard to create it, but because God, in his great love, knows that you and I are unable to create it.

The word for crying there needs to be also explained.

In the Greek, this is not the idea of whimpering or of sadness.

The word for crying there is the same word that we would use for a shout.

It's the word used for a crowd.

And it's very important that we understand that this cry that the spirit does is not only crying whenever you're agreeing with it.

The cry is not designated to the moments where you're doing well.

The cry is not limited to the moments where you have everyone's approval.

But rather, if we were to push this anywhere, we would say that the shout is loudest when our strength and our feelings are weakest.

The Spirit is not only proof of our sonship, but also of the inheritance that's beginning to arrive.

He is the first installment of our inheritance.

And that's important for you and I to understand because, again, the picture that was painted for me was if there is an inheritance, it's one day heaven.

Heaven's the inheritance.

The Bible's very clear, heaven is not the inheritance, God is the inheritance.

And the Holy Spirit is the promise ring.

He is the first installment of that inheritance.

And one of the weakest moments in our lives is when we hear the word inheritance and we hear that what we're going to earn is God.

And we say, eh.

Could have been better.

Doesn't feel like a lot right now.

It's hard to compare that inheritance that is spiritual to my temporal and physical suffering currently.

How does that work?

How does that rectify itself?

And what we see is very simply this.

Later on in the letter, Paul will explain to us what we benefit today with this first installment.

And it's the verses that are Dan Ashton's favorite in the entire world.

They're referred to as fruit.

And I don't think until you go through enough suffering that you understand that love and joy and peace are so much more valuable than having thousands and thousands of dollars.

That patience and kindness and goodness and faithfulness and self-control are worth so much more than a career that you enjoy.

The fruit of the Spirit is not something that you earn or that you get to grow.

It is rather God's work in you, mainly in spite of you.

And that's the beauty.

Is that no one gets to look at their fruit and say, that person has more fruit than me, and they're like, Yeah, you should be more like me.

You should work harder like me.

It's because I read one hour of my Bible every day.

One of the most beautiful things over years of ministry that I've ever seen is the fact that you can pour hours and hours into one person, and you slowly but surely see fruit.

And the same person can pour just a few hours into someone else, and you can see a mountain of fruit.

And what you see is that it's not me building the fruit in them, and it's not them creating the fruit in their lives, but rather the God that gives perfectly good gifts gives to each how He wishes.

And you and I are the fools that compare gifts we didn't earn, and we can barely steward and say, You wish you had a gift like me.

The Lord has done the work and he gets all of the glory.

You and I are much like the adopted child in a family.

See, Jesus is son by birth.

He is son by right, he is son fully and surely, and you and I get adopted in.

And the adopted child, even though the paperwork might be done and the name might be changed, it takes weeks and months and sometimes years of gently, tenderly loving that adopted child before they begin to actually agree and accept with the fact maybe I do belong here.

In the Christian life, it seems often the same way.

Or those that have the greatest testimonies sometimes feel the furthest from God, the most unworthy.

They feel despicable, they despise their sin.

They feel like they're weaker than they've ever been in some ways.

And in that moment, the paperwork never changed.

You were just as saved the first day when you were a complete idiot as you are today.

When you still are, you just might look a little better.

And that's the beauty of the gospel is that even when I am weak, God is always strong, and that his strength is made perfect in my weakness, because then people see my Christian life is not about me.

I didn't do it.

God has always done it.

And it's never more clear to people than when I'm broken and needy and unable.

In that moment, as a broken human being, arms wide open, holding on to nothing, people only see Jesus.

One of the most dangerous places to be is right here.

It's in the pulpit.

Because you stand between God's people and God.

And that is a weight that no one can bear.

Because every bit of my personality that gets in the way, every time I don't have my notes down just right, every time your attention wanders or I slip, I am the one standing in the gap.

There is a true rest that can only happen amongst that pressure when I realize that God is the one that does the work.

Not me.

If I'm eloquent, or I mean I'm like, I mean, I'm like eloquent, like it doesn't matter.

Should I be winsome?

Should I be clear?

Should I be compelling?

Of course.

This is God's word.

But at the end of the day, I rest in the fact that I could read this paper to you in a monotone voice, and God could do something much more miraculous than if I were to be the most artistic and wonderful orator you've ever listened to.

I want you to walk in your life the same way.

Because every day you stand in the gap.

As an adopted son or daughter of the Most High King, you stand in the gap as a light on a hill, as salt to a dying world.

And you should feel the weight of that.

The seriousness of this life and be a good steward.

And yet you and I rest.

And that's the whole tension of the Christian life is Pastor Dan, I don't know how to both rest and run.

And that's how that's what we're learning through God's word.

It's not by effort, not by discipline, but by God's will and his word.

One day the adopted son is able to say dad, and he doesn't flinch when he says it.

And that's the goal for you today.

The spirit in your chest is not the receipt for your inheritance, but is just the first installment of it.

Do not settle for slave-like fear when God has given you the spirit of his son.

This week I want you to bring your anxious conscience.

I want you to bring your weak faith, your fear of rejection.

Just get them all, all the uglies, all together.

And I want you to bring them to the Father.

And if you will humor me, I want you to do it out loud and say, God, this is my mess.

I can't fix it.

I'm not good on my own.

I'm not strong and independent.

I am weak and unable.

And I need you.

And when you cry out like that, you sing in harmony with the spirit in your soul that's crying out all the day long, Abba, Father, to the King of the universe.

And that is the best place for you to land today.

Let's pray.

Father, we come before you.

And Lord, we ask that you would help us to live as sons and daughters.

Lord, we have been raised in a generation that has taught us to be self-sufficient, to be proud, to compare, to worry.

And Lord, we ask that you would help us to live this Christian life for you.

That you'd help us to rest in your perfect and amazing grace.

And then from that place of rest to run, to run the race that's set before us.

Help us to work hard in this life for you, not out of trying to keep a place with you, but rather just out of gratitude and thankfulness and love for you.

Lord, we ask that you would continue to change our hearts, that you would make us new, that you would save many through the ministry of Sovereign Grace Bible Church, and that when anyone looks in, they would see broken people in need of a savior who point only one direction, and that's to the cross.

May you get all the glory and the honor and the praise in this place.

In Jesus' name we pray.

Amen.