Sunday Sermon: Whose Slaves Will You Be? (Galatians 4:8-11)

You are listening to the teaching ministry of Gabriel Hughes, pastor of First Southern Baptist Church in Junction City, Kansas. Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday on this podcast we feature 20 minutes of Bible study through a New Testament book.

On Thursday is our Old Testament study and then we answer questions from listeners on Friday. Each Sunday we are pleased to share our sermon series, presently going through the letters to the Corinthians.

This is the sermon that was preached last week from our pulpit. Here's Pastor Gabe.

Galatians 4 verses 8 through 20. The Apostle Paul wrote, formerly when you did not know God, you were enslaved to those that by nature are not gods. 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. I am afraid I may have labored over you in vain. Brothers, I entreat you, become as I am, for I also have become as you are. You did me no wrong. You know it was because of a bodily ailment that I preached the gospel to you at first, and though my condition was a trial to you, you did not scorn or despise me, but you received me as an angel of God, as Christ Jesus.

What then has become of your blessedness? For I testify to you that if possible you would have gouged out your eyes and given them to me. Have I then become your enemy by telling you the truth? They make much of you, but for no good purpose.

They want to shut you out that you may make much of them. It is always good to be made much of for a good purpose. And not only when I am present with you, my little children, for whom I am again in anguish, in the anguish of childbirth until Christ is formed in you, I wish I could be present with you now and change my tone, for I am perplexed about you.

Let us pray. Our Heavenly Father, as we come to your word, I pray that you continue to illuminate to us the might of your will and the glory of your grace that has been given to us in Christ Jesus, that we may know the gospel of peace, and it is a peace that is more than just relaxation in the body.

It is a peace in our spirits, for we have peace with God. We know that the anger, the judgment of God is no longer upon us if we have faith in Christ, for the wrath that we were due because of our sin has been paid for by Christ.

So now we have peace with God. And may this peace that covers our souls not just be something that exists in some sort of ethereal way, but even knowing that we have peace with God gives us a comfort to our souls and to our bodies, that we may think with the mind of Christ and we may act with reason in this world, knowing that this world has nothing against us if God is for us.

We have been justified by Christ, and not only justified, we are also sanctified. We not only have right standing with God by faith in Jesus, but we are being made holy, being made into the image of Christ.

And this has been the work of God from beginning to end. And so let us continue to understand that all the more as we come to this text today. It's in the name of Jesus that we pray, and all God's people said, amen.

Thank you. You may be seated. We have come to a turning point in our study of Galatians now. In the first three chapters of Galatians, Paul has been driving hard on the doctrine of justification by faith alone.

We are come to right standing with God because of faith in Christ in no other way. And we reached the turning point in that letter last week. It just happened to be on Easter Sunday that we made that turn from talking about justification to now where we're headed is sanctification.

And Paul summarizes the arguments that he's been making related to justification by faith in Christ when we read last week in Galatians 4, verse 4, that 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 so that we might receive adoption as sons.

And you can read that as sons and daughters, children of God adopted into his family by faith in Christ, who by his blood has cleansed us from all unrighteousness and given us an inheritance with him in his father's kingdom.

And Paul says in Galatians 4, 6, because you are sons, God has sent the spirit of his son into our hearts crying, Abba, Father. So here's where the turning point is in Paul's theology and in the doctrine that he's laying out over the course of this letter.

The turning point is that we're now going from justification to sanctification. He's been talking about being justified by faith. It is not by works of the law. It is not by faith and works. It is not by any good deed that you do.

It's not because you're Jew or Gentile. It's not because of the words that you say. It's not because of an accumulation of these things over a period of time. It is by faith in Christ. Jesus did the work.

He accomplished it. And then by faith in Jesus, we stand before God declared innocent. The price has been paid. And now we become his sons and his daughters. And not just because of some conversion event that happened in time, but God has even poured his spirit into our hearts.

So there wasn't just a moment where we were justified and now we can just walk on like, okay, I can point back to that moment. I see that I'm justified. And now I can go live my life the way that I lived it before.

But Paul says, no, he has poured his spirit into your heart so that the way you live will be different than the way that you lived before. And the path that we are on is different than the way that the rest of the world is walking.

We are being guided by the spirit of God. We are being shaped into the image of his son. And the spirit that has been poured into our hearts causes us to call upon God as our father. He's not just some being that exists, some religious focus.

He's not some vending machine that gives us the things that we want, which was exactly the way that the Greeks thought of about the gods that they worshiped. They had a God for every particular thing that they wanted so that they could worship that God.

And hopefully that God would give them what it is that they wanted to have. But the Lord God whom we serve is not there for our beck and call to serve our will and our purposes, but rather he has called us according to his purpose that we might do his will and the spirit that has been poured into our hearts.

When we were justified, we call upon him as father. It is a title, not just of endearment, but also submission, that we would be in submission to his will, not to have him do our will. So you are no longer a slave.

Paul says, you're not a slave to the passions and pleasures of this world or the temptations and sins of your own body, but you are a son. You are a daughter. And if so, a son or a daughter, then you are an heir of God.

You are to receive the kingdom of God. So we've come to a turning point here in the letter, not just talking about how we are justified by Christ, but now what we are coming to understand is we are also sanctified by Christ.

And those whom Jesus has justified, he is also going to sanctify. It is a folly of any church to believe that we can go out and just make converts, and we don't therefore have the responsibility to grow them as disciples.

For what did Jesus say in his commission in Matthew 28, verses 18 through 20? All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Now therefore, go and make disciples. That doesn't mean make converts, but it means to preach the gospel to them, that they may know and believe and then grow them in their understanding of the gospel.

They become a member of the household of God, so they must be treated and regarded as family. Do we forget about our families? But we continue to serve and grow and experience together this walk of faith that we are on.

So Jesus said, make disciples baptizing in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And lo, I am with you always to the very end of the age, the spirit of his Son that has been poured into our hearts, crying, Abba, Father, God is with us even now.

And we don't pray for more God to come into the service. God has already given as much of himself to our gathering, to our congregation as we are ever going to receive. What we may need is less of ourselves, but we will never need more God than we have already been given.

For he has given his own Son for our sins. What more could we want or need or ask for? As Becky has been going through Psalm 23 with the kids, we begin Psalm 23 with, the Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want.

Everything has been given for us, everything provided by our Savior. And the contentment that we have in God through our Lord Jesus Christ falls into so many other areas of our lives. It should be filling up every area of our life.

We are content in our spirits with knowing that our sins are forgiven and we have right standing with God. Now, how much does that peace filter into every other aspect of our lives? How much does God demand of us that we give him all of ourselves in every area of our lives?

We don't compartmentalize our lives into church and work and home and friends and play, but all of these things should be in submission to the Father. You're not just a member of the family of God when you come to church.

You're a member of the family of God all the time. And so how much should you be a son or a daughter in everything that you do, behaving as one who is a recipient of the kingdom? And so that's where Paul is taking the letter next, to talk about the behavior of the Galatians, not just their understanding of justification, which they believed was by faith and works, thanks to some false teachers that had come in their midst, who had said to them, you can't just believe you also have to do this, this, this, and this.

And once you've checked off all these things on your list, then you can know that you are saved. Furthermore, there's this belief that they must continue in certain things to know that they are really saved.

And this isn't just something that has happened in first century Galatia, but it's something that exists even within our world today of people believing that they continually have to do things in order to merit their salvation.

And even at the end of their lives, they've never actually done enough. I don't know that I've even done enough to merit my salvation. So what do I have to do now? On my deathbed, I call for the priest who's going to give me last rites, and he's going to have me say certain things, and he's going to make a certain declaration over me, and I'm going to participate in the Eucharist.

And so maybe here at this point when I die in Passover, maybe now God will receive me. And according to Roman Catholic teaching, he doesn't even receive you then. You've got purgatory to go through. How many indulgences did you receive in your life to knock years off your purgatory sentence?

You have to go through fire before you can even enter into the presence of God. This is not just Roman Catholicism, but is exemplary of the religiosity that exists within our society. You've never quite done enough.

And boy, if one thing that social media has reminded us is that your sins never go away. And everybody is willing to remind you of the stuff that you've done in your past. I can't even tell you the number of tweets from Donald Trump from like four, five, six years ago that I see resurfacing all of a sudden.

Everybody reminding us what Donald Trump said so many odd number of years ago. But then people continue to do that with you as well. And you may even have members of your own family who are saying to you, this thing that you did to me and holding grudges and reminding one another of our sins.

The way of the world is that you can never quite do enough. And we see even within our own culture and our society right now, the rights that have been afforded to us as American citizens aren't enough.

It's not enough that everybody has the same rights, got to have the same amount of money too. So let's take what the rich people have and we'll disperse it out among everybody else. Nobody's ever content.

And everybody's always evil and you always have to give me something paying penance for the evil that you have done that you owe to me. And I'm never actually going to forgive you because you're always continuously going to need to owe me.

That's the way of our society. It is the direction of our culture. It is the way of a lost people. It is the way of a group of people that does not understand that it's by Christ that we have been justified.

It is not to your credit at all, but it is praise to our God and King. 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, to buy them back.

And Christ paid that price with his own life, with his own blood. And so there is a time and a place for each one of us as Christians, as believers, when we came to faith in Jesus Christ. We turned from our sin and we came to believe.

We went from enemy to friend. We went from condemned to justified. And Paul says in verse 8, formerly when you did not know God, you were enslaved to those that by nature are not gods. What is he meaning by that?

Well, before we came to God, we worshiped something. Everybody worships something. Even Bob Dylan, who has said that he's not a Christian and doesn't believe that he's going to heaven. He's said that.

I pray that he still comes to know the gospel and will repent before that day comes for him. But Bob Dylan has said, even though he is not a believer or a follower of Christ, he has said, everybody's got to serve somebody.

Some of you remember that song. Everybody will worship someone or something. There is always a God that we worship. And before we came to God, we worshiped false gods. Maybe there was a particular pagan God that we thought of as being a deity that would give us the things that we want or the blessings that we believed that the cosmos should bestow upon us.

Maybe there was a certain philosophy that you worshiped. Maybe it was just the passion of your flesh. I just want what I want. I want to have it now. I want to have it the way that I want to have it. I want my own hopes and dreams.

I want my own ambitions. I want to be the man that I want to be. I want to be the woman that I want to be. And in our culture today, you even have men wanting to be women and women wanting to be men. Everybody wanting to do their thing, their way, serving their own God to give them the thing that they want the way that they want it.

We all worship false gods before we come to Christ. There is always something that we have raised up in our minds and in our hearts in the place of God and have given our devotion to that thing or idea instead of giving it to the Lord who alone is worthy of our worship.

In Ephesians 2, beginning in verse 1, the apostle Paul says to the Ephesians there, you were dead in the trespasses and sins in which you once walked, following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience, among whom we all once lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the body and the mind, and were by nature children of wrath like the rest of mankind.

You were following. You were following the course of the world. You were following the prince of the power of the air. In other words, you were worshiping false gods. You will either follow God or you will follow the way of Satan.

Those are the only two ways that a person can go. It's linear. It's two-dimensional. We're on a single line when it comes to our spiritual walk. You are either walking after Satan or you're walking after God.

Whether or not you are aware you're walking after Satan, and you must be aware that you're walking after God. To those who came to Jesus and declared that they were saved by way of their lineage, we're saved because we're descendants of Abraham.

Jesus said, well, I tell you, if you were children of Abraham, you wouldn't be trying to kill me because that's not what Abraham did. Then he said to them, you are of your father, the devil, and your will is to do your father's desires.

Why is it that you cannot bear to hear my word? Because they were of Satan and not of God. They thought with the mind of a man that had been corrupted by the deceitfulness of the devil, rather than having a mind that had been transformed and renewed by the Holy Spirit.

And all of us once lived this way. So my brothers and sisters, none of us should ever boast of the salvation that we have or the knowledge that we've been given according to what has been shown to us by the Spirit of God through his word.

None of us should ever brag about this. Like to somebody who is an unbeliever, we must learn what it means to respond to those who are unbelieving with gentleness and respect, as Peter instructs in 1 Peter 3 .15, or the way that Paul instructed Timothy in 2 Timothy 2 .25, the Lord's servant must not be quarrelsome, but kind to everyone, able to teach, patiently enduring evil.

Why is it that we must be kind to everyone the way that we teach? Because the Lord was kind to us. Romans 5 .8, God shows his love for us in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. And so even when we were an enemy of God, our Lord Christ died for us.

So we must even be willing to serve our enemies, that they may know the gospel of Christ and live. Again, Becky sharing with the kids this morning from Psalm 23, he prepares for me a table in the presence of my enemies.

When you think of this in a spiritual sense of delivering the gospel to other people, we have a table prepared before us, even in the presence of our enemies, that we may serve our enemies the bread of life that is Jesus Christ through the teaching of the gospel and the sharing of the gospel with them.

As we consider an evangelism class that we have coming up soon, and maybe praying for yourself that you might have a passion for wanting to go into Junction City to spread the gospel of Christ, to share it with others.

Pray that God would give you a spirit of humility, that you would not be combative and argumentative and fighting with those who do not believe, but you would have compassion for them. That you may weep over the city of Junction, just as Jesus wept over Jerusalem because they would not believe in Him.

We would have that kind of heart for the lost. And we have that kind of heart for the lost because we know that we were once lost and Jesus wept for us and laid his life down for us. And he said of us on the cross, Father, forgive them for they don't know what they're doing.

We had been blinded by the ruler of this world, as Paul had explained it with the Corinthians. We didn't know. We didn't know that we were enemies of God and that we were going to fall into destruction if we had continued in that way of rebellion that we were in.

Yet Romans 1 .20 tells us that no man has any excuse. Romans 1 .18 says that we suppress the truth with our unrighteousness. So it's not like God is going to give everybody a pardon on the day of judgment because, well, you didn't know, so come on in.

No, it's because we suppress the truth with our unrighteousness, continuing to be deceived by Satan because we wanted the passions of our flesh. But the Holy Spirit of God has awakened us to the truth of his word and it was in the fullness of time when God had ordained it for us to become a follower of Christ.

Formerly, when you did not know God, you were enslaved to those who were by nature are not gods. But now that you have come to know God or rather to be known by God, that's very interesting the way that Paul puts that.

It's almost like he corrects himself in the middle of the statement as he's giving it to the Galatians. But now that you have come to know God or rather to be known by God. Because, see, what's more important for us than to know God is to be known by him.

That he knows us. And when we say no, when we're saying known by God, we're talking about an intimate knowing. Does God know about every person on earth? Of course he does. It's not like there are people that he's turning around going, oh, hey, didn't even know you were there.

God knows where every single person is. He knows what every single person is doing at all times. He knows the heart of every man. It is he who searches mind and heart according to the scriptures. But when we talk about being known by God, we're talking about an intimate affection and relationship that we have with God.

When we read about foreknowledge, the foreknowledge of God, according to the foreknowledge of God, in Romans chapter 8, verse 29, we read that we are being shaped into the image of the Son according to the foreknowledge of God.

It's Romans 8, 28, that you surely know. And we know that for those who love God, all things work together for good for those who are called according to his purpose. And in verse 29 tells us the good that he is working out in each and every one of us.

For those whom he foreknew, he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son in order that he might be the firstborn among many brothers. Now, when it says here that he foreknew us, it does not mean that God looked down the tunnel of time to see a decision that we were going to make one of these days, and he sees that we made the right decision, and he goes, okay, I'm going to love that person.

For God to foreknow us means that he placed his love and his affection on us before the world was even created. Foreknowledge is not about being privy to some sort of knowledge that the rest of us don't know.

Foreknowledge means that God did know us from a time past and had placed his affection on us before we had been born and had made any decision good or bad. As Charles Spurgeon has said, I'm sure glad that God placed his love and his affection on me before I was born because he surely wouldn't have after I was born.

Foreknowledge is God knowing us before we were born, God loving us before we were born. And as we read in Romans 3 in his divine forbearance, looking past our sins, he placed his love and his affection on us.

Every single person is known about by God, absolutely, but only those who are followers of Christ are known by him affectionately. And that's contrary to a philosophy that you will hear in this world.

Even Oprah has said that we're all God's children. Everybody is a child of God. Doesn't the Bible say that we're created in the image of God? Of course it does. But Romans 3 .10 says that we have become worthless because in our sinfulness, we desecrated the image of God.

And what we deserve for that is judgment. But God in his divine forbearance had looked past our sinful nature to give us instead a new nature. And that was the nature of his son, whom he is shaping us in the image of.

And this is our sanctification. It was not just in justification, but also in sanctification, growing in holiness and righteousness. And this is the work of God. It is not by our works that we accomplish these things.

It is not a checklist of things. You have to do this, and you have to do this, and you have to do this in order to have right standing with God. We already have that because God has placed his affection on us because of what he has done, not because of what we have done.

And the reason why you have come to know God is because you were first known by God. In 1 John 4, this is love. Not that we have loved God, but that he loved us and gave his son to be the propitiation for our sins.

In this is love, not that we have loved God, but because he first loved us. Because God first loved you, you now love God. Because he first knew you, now you know God. And knowing God in an intimate and in a friendly and in an affectionate way.

You have come to know God or rather to be known by God. If this is your condition now before the Lord, how can you turn back again to the weak and worthless elementary principles of the world whose slaves you want to become again once more?

And the weak and worthless elementary principles of the world is works. Believing that by your works, you can be saved. Believing that by your works, you can be justified. Believing that by your works, you can be sanctified.

Paul has been laying out emphatically a doctrine of justification by faith alone. And my friends, there is no other way that we come to salvation. There is no other way that we come to sanctification except by faith in Jesus Christ.

And beware because this doctrine continues to be under attack every day. And every generation or so, we will have somebody try to introduce some new heresy. Probably, you know, the way that the world works anymore, how fast information travels around the globe today, it happens even more quickly than every generation now.

It's about every six or seven years. We've got some new false teaching that'll come about trying to pervert the gospel of justification by faith. One of those perversions came about in the 1960s and 70s and is referred to as the new perspectives on Paul.

Anybody ever heard of the new perspectives on Paul? Basically, the new perspectives on Paul is this idea that justification by faith alone is a medieval concept. It came out of the Protestant Reformation in the 1500s.

But it's not justification the way that Paul understood it in a Jewish context. Paul was more concerned with covenant community than he was with individual guilt and conviction and salvation. So when we're reading about justification by faith alone, according to those who adopt this perspective that's called the new perspectives on Paul, what Paul is really concerned with is that you just be a part of the covenant community.

You do the stuff that covenant community people are supposed to do. You be liturgical. You come to the Lord's table. You partake in the body and the blood. That's the kind of stuff that you need to be concerned with, not individual guilt, not individual faith in Christ.

That's seriously what these people are preaching. There's a book that was written on it in 1977. It gained new traction and ground in the 90s. And one of the foremost purveyors of this concept of the new perspectives on Paul is a man by the name of N .T. Wright, one of the most influential theologians in the world today.

And he believes that when we're reading about justification by faith alone in Galatians, it's not really justification by faith alone. It's really a difference between the Jewish works or those things that identified Jews and the things that identified Gentiles.

Really a difference between Jew and Gentile. N .T. Wright argues that justification is not about being declared righteous in God's sight. Rather, it's about who is part of the covenant community known as the church.

Righteousness is not about doing justly as God declares that you should walk in righteousness. Rather, righteousness is just about covenant faithfulness. And honestly, when I hear that description, according to N .T. Wright of what he believes justification to be, I look at that and I go, what's the difference?

You can't be a part of the church unless you have been justified. So you can't even concern yourself with those things that pertain to the church and covenant faithfulness until you have first come to faith in Jesus Christ.

You're not even part of the church until you've been justified. Those who are justified, God makes a part of His church. And yet we have this heresy that is going around now from even prominent theologians that sound teachers will cling to who are saying that justification is something else other than by faith alone.

They deny justification by faith alone. Those who are part of the new perspectives on Paul. And you will encounter this someday if you go to another church other than this one, you may run into somebody who believes that the point of the letter of Galatians is not justification by faith alone, but the point of the letter of Galatians is that you just be part of the covenant community.

Denying that we have any individual responsibility to conviction of sin and obedience to our Lord God by faith in Jesus Christ alone. Quoting from Spurgeon again, there's no such thing as new theology.

There's simply old heresies with new titles on them. And what we're reading about and coming to understand about justification in Galatians is not something that the Protestant reformers came up with.

It's something the reformers returned to because the church had become so corrupted and fallen away from these things. They started teaching that justification was by your works. Same problem that Paul is addressing here in Galatia.

Justification by works instead of justification by faith. If you've been justified by God, how can you turn back to the weak and worthless elementary principles of the world whose slaves you want to become once more?

In Romans, Paul says that the law was powerless to save anybody. Yet the Galatians are turning back to the law for their salvation. Paul says, you observe days and months and seasons and years. I'm afraid I have labored in vain over you.

What does he mean by days and months and seasons and years? Well, it's that checklist once again. It's going down that list of believing that if I do all of this and I do it exactly as I'm supposed to do it, then God can't help but show his favor upon me.

But Romans chapter 11 tells us who has given unto the Lord that he must be repaid. God doesn't owe us anything, but he has given to us by his grace. Regarding days and seasons and years, the apostle Paul said the following to the Colossians, 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 the things to come, but the substance belongs to Christ. In other words, days and seasons and years, these things were pointing to somebody who was going to fulfill all of this, which were just types and shadows of the salvation that was to come.

And that person who fulfills those things is Christ. So you don't gain greater holiness by observing Jewish holidays. In fact, Jesus even took one of those Jewish holidays and recommissioned it into something else.

He took Passover and made it the Lord's table so that those who could participate in it are not just the Jews, but Jews and Gentiles alike who come to partake in the bread that was broken and the blood that was spilled for the forgiveness of sins.

It's no longer about holidays that mark a particular ethnic people, but we're talking about something that we can enjoy in remembrance of the body that was given for the forgiveness of sins for all who believe in him.

And it is only by that belief that we become part of that family, not by who we were born to or the color of our skin or the language that we speak, but by the body that was broken for us. And by faith in that sacrifice are our sins forgiven, and we have fellowship with God at his table.

So it's not about observing days and months and seasons and weeks and years. And Paul says, if that's what you think, then I'm afraid that I've labored over you in vain. Paul, in other words, saying, I've just done this for myself.

I've just been speaking for my own good, since your good has not come about as a result of the preaching that I first gave to you, the gospel that was first declared. You're still continuing to behave in certain ways, thinking that it is your behavior that is going to make you right before God.

I tell you, it is God who makes you right before him. He does demand righteousness, but he gives the righteousness that he demands and clothes us in it that we may stand before him justified. And this is the work of God from beginning to end, from the moment of your conversion to the moment that you go to heaven to be with him.

God is the one who works out your salvation. It's to the Philippians that the apostle Paul said, I am confident of this very thing, that he who began a good work in you will be faithful to complete it on the day of Christ.

But then in chapter two, he says that in the fear of God, you should work out your own salvation with fear and trembling. So it is God who works this in us. But then when we are working it out, we are displaying that God has done the work in us.