Keep sharing good news without ads.
July 17, 2016 Beyond The Elements Galatians 4:8-11 Conley Owens (Deacon)
Good morning. Please stay in Galatians 4. We'll be referring to that shortly. In the 1960s, there was this philosopher named Thomas S. Kuhn who wrote a book called The Structure of Scientific Revolutions.
This book popularized the notion of a paradigm shift. If you've ever heard that phrase, that's the book where this comes from. And his idea was that most scientific revolutions happen where there's a paradigm, there's a way of thinking about the world, and then new data comes out, an anomaly that doesn't quite sit with the paradigm.
And so there must be a shift. There must be a paradigm shift to incorporate that new data. And what's pretty interesting about this is that this made it clear that science has an inherently subjective nature to it.
You usually think of science as being able to objectively gather truth, but there's some element of the way that we look at things that changes how we do science. This is, of course, true with all things.
This is true of even religion and the way we look at God, the world around us, at ourselves. So Paul, here in Galatians 4, is talking to a people who have had a paradigm shift. They have gone from being pagans, worshiping pagan idols, to receiving new data, to receiving revelation from God, and now being Christians that worship the Christian God.
However, that shift, that paradigm shift, has not been enough, and Paul is not happy with how it has gone. And we'll see why as we read. But let's begin in verse eight. Formerly, when you did not know God, you were enslaved to those that by nature are not gods.
So those by nature that are not gods, these, of course, are pagan idols. These are things like fertility goddesses, rocks and trees, things like that. In the next verse, he calls them weak and worthless.
Now, in what sense are they weak and worthless? Well, they're certainly not weak in the sense that they cannot enslave a man, because they obviously have that power. They're weak and worthless in that they can do nothing to provide a man value.
You know, men look to these things to give them value, to give them self-worth, and they do nothing for that. He also calls them elementary principles. The Greek phrase there is tastoikeia toukosmou, tastoikeia being the elements, toukosmou being of the world.
So these are the elements of the world. And in what sense are pagan gods elements of the world? Well, if you think about them, you know, fertility, rock, tree, these are just various bits of reality without any real sense of their meaning.
You know, the elements of chemistry, you have hydrogen, oxygen, they don't do a whole lot by themselves. You put them together, you get a molecule, you get something that does something. Think of the elements of language, you have A, B, C, the rest of the alphabet.
By itself, A's and B's and C's don't do a whole lot. When you put them together, you get words, you get something that has meaning. So these pagan idols, they're just elements. They do nothing. And they enslave people.
They enslave people because when you have this focus view where you only see these elements and you don't see the thing that gives the meaning, you then think, well, maybe this is where I get my meaning from.
Now, a pluralistic society, like the one that we live in, would say that, no, every paradigm is okay. Everyone's got their own way of looking at the world, and that's okay. But if you don't have something more, if you don't have an absolute truth, then you have no foundation for ethics, for reason.
When two paradigms collide, how do you resolve them? You have no way of saying that this one is right and this one is wrong. You need to have some absolute truth. For that absolute truth, you need to go to one who sits outside, who you need to be able to step away from the elements, see what they're really doing, see what their meaning is, or you need to talk to the one.
Talk to the one who created all things and knows all things, knows what their meaning is. You need to be able to see. You know, this word, he says, you did not know God. He says no several times, but the first time he says no, it's not just the word no, it's the word for to see.
So he's saying you did not see God, you did not recognize God, and that is why, that is why you are bound, you are slaves. See, people aren't slaves to these things that they think can give them value because they're in bonds and they're trying to break free and they just can't.
It's because they don't even realize that they are slaves. And so we have elements today that we become slaves to as well. You know, we don't typically bow down to rocks and trees, but we see things like work and relationships, and we look to these things to give us value, and we end up worshiping them.
We end up becoming bound to them, bound to our jobs, bound to certain relationships because we think it is from this, it is from this that I get value. But you have to be able to go outside of that. And so you have to go to something absolute.
You have to go to the word of God. And so if we look at verse nine, but now that you have come to know God. So these Galatians, they have gained this new information. They have come to know God. And isn't that a wonderful thing when you do finally discover what God says about these elements, what he says about the world around us?
You know, just to take the examples I gave a minute ago of work, relationships. Think about what God says about work. He doesn't put it way up here where it can oppress us. He doesn't denigrate it way down here where it's a waste of our time.
Instead, he places it right where it should be, where it's an instrument, a tool that can bring him glory, and isn't something that can bind us. That's a wonderful thing. And so we need to, as 1 Corinthians, excuse me, 2 Corinthians 10 five says, we need to take every thought captive to obey Christ.
We need to subject all our knowledge to him. And then it'll be like we were in a dark cave, but suddenly we can see his lamp will be a light to our feet. Excuse me, his word will be a lamp to our feet and a light to our path.
However, even though the Galatians have had this paradigm shift, it's not enough. So let's look at verses nine and 10 again. 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. You can really hear the exasperation in his voice here. He's saying you've turned back again, once more. There's actually another again in this verse, but it becomes too repetitive so the translators don't include it.
But he says you've turned back again, again once more. So something's wrong. What's wrong? If they've started seeing what God has to say, if they've started obeying his law, what's the problem? Well, we get a hint here.
He says you observe days and months and seasons and years. And so in order to understand that better, I'd like us to turn a few pages over to Colossians 2 and we'll read that. I'll be reading from verses 16 down to the end of the chapter.
And this will explain what these months and days and seasons and years are, and what these elements are that they're bound to now if they're no longer bound by pagan gods. Colossians 2, verse 16. Therefore, let no one pass judgment on you in questions of food and drink or with regard to a festival or a new moon or a Sabbath.
These are a shadow of things to come, but the substance belongs to Christ. Let no one disqualify you, insisting on asceticism and worship of angels, going on in detail about visions, puffed up without reason by a sensuous mind and not holding fast to the head from whom the whole body, nourished and knit together through its joints and ligaments, grows with a growth that is from God.
If with Christ you died to the elemental spirits of the world, why, as if you were still alive in the world, do you submit to regulations? Do not handle, do not taste, do not touch, referring to things that all perish as they are used according to human precepts and teachings.
These have indeed an appearance of wisdom in promoting self-made religion and asceticism and severity to the body, but they are of no value in stopping the indulgence of the flesh. So you see in verse 20, he talks about the elemental spirits of the world.
Now, elemental spirits sound a lot different than elementary principles, but these are the same Greek phrase. Once again, it's tastoikeia tou kosmou, the elements of the world. These are the elements of the world.
Now, while Galatians 4 talked about days and months and seasons and years, Colossians 2 is talking about festivals, new moons, Sabbaths. These are the same thing. These are these Jewish observances, these things that God had given in the Old Testament to the Israelites to worship him.
And these Galatians have become enslaved to these things because they think that it is through these observations that they have worth before God, that they have value, that they have righteousness. But that's not the case.
You know, Jesus in Mark 7, 18 and 19 said, then are you also without understanding? Do you not see that whatever goes into a man from outside cannot defile him because it enters not his heart, but his stomach and is expelled?
These ceremonial observances, these festivals and Sabbaths and new moons, these laws about what you eat, your diet, these things do nothing to produce righteousness in a man. And it's not just the ceremonies.
The focus in Galatians is, you hear it many times, it's between faith and works of the law, faith and works of the law. It's never, you know, one kind of works versus another kind of works. The law, even those moral regulations can do nothing to produce righteousness in a man.
Once a man is unrighteous, how can you become righteous? If a murderer, if someone kills, if someone murders another man, what amount of community service can resurrect the dead? Nothing can undo that.
And so you see the problem here is that while they've had a paradigm shift, while they're beginning to think about God's things instead of just these things out in creation and nature, they're still focused on elements.
You see, these laws of God, these ceremonies, these moral regulations even, even things like not stealing, not murdering, even those are just elements of God's reality. They may not be physical or social elements like these pagan gods would worship, but instead they are moral elements.
They are still elements of God's reality. You cannot truly understand their meaning on their own. You need something more. And it invariably becomes the case when you are focused just on the elements and you don't see them the way that God sees them.
It invariably is the case that you will begin to develop superstitions. And that's why people have their totems that they carry when they pray, or they have certain things that they do that they feel like, ah, this will make me more right before God.
And I know many people who try to pray in the morning, and when they don't pray in the morning, they tell me that they miss their prayer in the morning and they feel like this whole day is just not going right because of that.
Well, while it's wise to pray in the morning, that God will bless your day, it is not as though God appreciates prayers in the morning more than He does at night. If you don't pray in the morning, you can pray in the afternoon.
You can pray in the evening. His love for you is not based on that. So do you feel that your self-worth is based on your performance at work, your obedience to God's law? Do you feel like His love for you varies based on the variance of your obedience?
If that's the case, then vacillate no more. You have to recognize that God's love for you is not based on you. It's instead based on Him. And so in verse nine, we see, I've, I'm in Colossians. In verse nine, we see, but now that you have come to know God, or rather to be known by God, why does He switch that?
Why does He change what He says? Know God versus being known by God. The reason is because God's knowledge of us is primary. We love Him because He first loved us. We know Him because He first knows us.
And when He knows us and He loved us, He sent His son, Jesus Christ, to die for us. And it's because of Jesus' death and His resurrection and taking the penalty for all our sins, bearing the wrath of God that was due to us because of what we did wrong.
It is because of that that God looks on Him and His merit is credited to us. His righteousness is credited to us. So it's not our obedience to the law that gives us value, gives us merit before God. It's His.
And there's a very real way in which Jesus didn't die just for sins like not being a thief, or for being a thief or being a murderer. He also died for this sin, this sin of not considering His reality rightly.
Think about who it was that killed Him. It was Jews who, according to Romans 3, 2, had been entrusted with the oracles of God. They had all these elements. They had all the elements of God's reality. You know, the end of Hebrews 5 calls these oracles of God, the first principles of the oracles of God.
It actually uses this word again. It calls them the elements. They had all these elements and they didn't put them together rightly. And so they killed the son of God, the one who gives all the elements meaning.
And so Jesus died for our sin of not understanding His elements rightly. So you see, this is the solution to the problem. We don't need a paradigm shift between one set of elements to another set of elements, between things like rocks and trees, work and relationships, the thinking about obedience to various laws that God gives us.
Instead, we need something that can unify all these elements and give them all meaning. And that person is Jesus Christ and His gospel. He is the one who gives all these elements meaning. It is in Him that we can begin to understand them.
Colossians 2 spoke of festivals and new moons and Sabbaths. And it said that these things were not according to Christ. You see, if the purpose of them is, if it says that these things are a shadow of the things to come and that the substance of them is Christ, then that means their purpose was to point forward to Christ and now that Christ has come, there's no need to participate in them more.
He gives meaning to those ceremonies that when rightly understood, they can no longer enslave you. And the moral law, you think about the moral law in relation to Christ. Galatians 3, before we were reading, or just look at Galatians 4, 3, it says in the same way, we also, when we were children, were enslaved to the elementary principles.
Once again, that's the elements of the world. He's talking about the Jews when they were, the Israelites when they were early, before Jesus came. They were enslaved to these elements because they didn't have Jesus, they didn't have Jesus to bring them their true and perfect meaning.
And so when he says in chapter three that the law is a tutor to point us to Christ, that means that the purpose of the law is not that by fulfilling it, we gain righteousness before God. It's that the purpose of the law is to point us to Jesus Christ, show us our need for him, and that yes, it is to be followed, but it's not to be followed so that God will love us.
It is to be followed so that we can become more like Christ and understand him better. Then the moral law cannot enslave you if you understand it in light of Jesus Christ. Neither ceremonies, neither moral regulations, none of these things can enslave you.
Colossians 2 spoke about worshiping angels. What was the problem with angel worship in Colossians 2? It doesn't say don't do this because Scripture doesn't talk about it. It says don't do this because it is not according to Christ.
If you think about the gospel in relation to angel worship, what do the two have to do with each other? Nothing. The only thing that angel worship would do to teach you about the gospel is to denigrate it and lower it down.
That is the problem with angel worship. If you have this view of reality where all things are centered in Christ, then suddenly, suddenly all things have the right meaning and nothing can enslave you.
I spoke earlier about the elements of language being letters. So if you've got these letters, you put them together, you get words. Then you put words together and you get sentences, and then you put those sentences together, and suddenly you have beautiful poetry.
And so instead of a world where you have these elements that are colorless and void, and you're looking to them for value, instead, if you have Jesus Christ, suddenly all these things have the right meaning.
Suddenly they all have this right color, and the world becomes a beautiful poetry, and it can't enslave you. And so you must look to Christ. You know, Hebrews 6 .1 says you must move past the elements.
And Colossians 2 .8 says, see to it that no men take you captive by philosophy and empty deceit. According to human wisdom, according to the elements of the world, that phrase once again, and not according to Christ.
It is through knowing Christ that these elements, these bits of your reality cannot enslave you because if you know him rightly, you will know them rightly. Let's look at this last verse, verse 11. I'm afraid I may have labored over you in vain.
This tells us two things. This tells us one, that it is a very, very big deal if we do not understand God rightly. It is a very big deal if we do not think of all things according to Christ, because we will become enslaved to these elements.
We will be in bondage to them. It will be something that makes Paul's work void. It would make all the hard labor that goes into the preaching and teaching that comes from this pulpit, it would all be in vain if we did not have this understanding.
But what this also tells us is that if we do understand Christ and by that understand his reality, then that fruit, that labor will have fruit. It will bear something. And that is a beautiful thing. And suddenly in our lives, we can see the fruit.
We can see God's holiness displaying itself in our lives through the sanctification that he brings us. You know, Paul will go on later in this epistle to speak of fulfilling the law of Christ, to speak of having a faith that works out in love, to speak of being a new creation.
All those things begin to happen not by pursuing obedience for the sake of obedience, but by understanding obedience's right place in light of what Jesus Christ has done at the cross. And it's by that, this fruit will begin to bear in our lives.
Ever since Satan spoke the first lie, mankind has been confused about the world, about what God desires of men, about the meaning that these various elements are supposed to have. And when Jesus Christ came, he changed that.
John 1, 18 says, No one has seen God, but the only God who is at the Father's side, he has made him known. And it's so by knowing Christ that we can know God, that we can know his reality. And if you struggle with this still, even as a Christian, there's still a greater hope that awaits us.
Paul says in 1 Corinthians 13, 12,. For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part, then I shall know fully, even as I have been fully known. You see, once again, God's knowledge is primary because he knows us, we can know him.
Because he loves us, we can love him. Because Jesus Christ died for us, we don't need to worry about the elements in and of themselves, looking to them to give us value. Instead, we can look to Jesus Christ.
And on that day, when we are reunited with him, we will know all things fully, and we will not even have the little bits and pieces of slavery that we even as Christians experience today. And that is a wonderful hope.
And so, as I close, I'd like to ask you, what is your paradigm? Do you have Jesus at the center? Or instead, are you looking to probably not rocks and trees, maybe work in relationships? If you're looking to these things for value, then you're missing out on the beautiful poetry that is experiencing reality in Christ Jesus.
You're missing out on that, and you're in bondage, and you don't even know it. So I beg you to submit your knee, bow it, bend your knee, excuse me, bend your knee to him, submit your life to him, and he will set you free.
And if you already do have this truth, if you already know Jesus Christ, then see him all the more. See him all the more and recognize this reality. Don't let these various elements take you captive. And it'll be like Paul said in verse seven, so you are no longer a slave, but a son.
And if a son, then an heir through God. If you are an heir through God, do not live as though you're a pauper. Recognize that you are a prince. You have a wonderful inheritance. You have a wonderful freedom that is in Christ Jesus.
Amen.
