From Slaves to Sons

If you'll turn in your Bibles to Galatians 4, we start a new chapter today. I'm going to go ahead and read that for us, and then we'll pray and get into the sermon.

In Galatians 4, starting in verse 1, the word of the Lord says, Now I say, as long as the heir is a child, he does not differ at all from a slave, although he is owner of everything.

But he is under guardians and stewards until the date set by the father. So also we, while we were children, were enslaved under the elemental things of the world.

But when the fullness of the time came, God sent forth his Son, born of a woman, born under the law, so that he might redeem those who were under the law, that we might receive the adoption as sons.

And because you are sons, God sent forth the spirit of his Son into our hearts, crying,

Abba, Father, therefore you are no longer a slave, but a son. And if a son, then an heir through God.

Let's pray. Lord Jesus, we are so thankful for the promises of your word. Lord, it occurs to me that this morning, that this is one of those texts where what's demanded of your people is simply to hear and believe.

Lord, that you have done this work, that we were not orphans looking for a father,

Lord, but you were a father looking for children and sons. And Lord, through your only begotten

Son, you brought many other sons to glory. So Lord, help us to take that and to understand it today.

Help us to understand all that your word says in this passage. Help it to change our hearts. Lord, help us to go forth with the confidence of sons.

Knowing that's what you've declared us to be through Christ. It's in your name I pray these things.

Amen. I think of all the Christian walk, the thing that trips us up the most is the idea of grace.

Now, look, don't get me wrong. We love to hear about grace. We love to hear about how God, even though he owed us nothing, he gave us everything.

And how we didn't do anything to deserve us. How that's a balm and a calming influence on our soul is to know, hey, it doesn't matter what

I did. I wasn't trying to present things to God. God gave me grace and he loved me. But the problem is always in the application.

And it's always in the belief. Because grace is a thing that the human soul in the natural man rebels against.

Because what we think, in the words of Luther, is we are merit mongers. We like to take credit.

We like for people to know about our gifts, even if we let them know on the slide. We always want credit for what we do because we have a fundamentally flawed view of ourselves.

So the text this morning is a difficult one for us to live with as Christians because this text basically tells us who we are.

It's a statement of fact. It's not a statement of anything that we have to do to become what we are. God simply declares it and it happens, much like Cooper declared his membership.

It just happens. No one did anything to make that happen. It just happens.

And for us, especially in this culture, it's even more difficult because the idea of grace and the idea of sonship is transmitted through the natural relations that God gives through the family.

Namely, when a godly man loves a godly woman and they enter into a covenant, life -wise, together, with death doing them part, and they bring children into the world through this covenant, they raise those children in discipline and the discipleship of the

Lord, what happens is those children understand means of grace. They understand that they didn't do anything to become the children of those parents.

But in our society, where fatherhood gets ripped out of the mix far too often, we have sons and daughters who don't have that identity.

And when they hear of a loving father who has given the spirit of adoption so that we can enter into his presence with confidence, our soul thinks, that's not really possible because fathers leave and they hurt.

And so, in our culture particularly, I think we've lost the message of grace. But I get ahead of myself a little bit.

I think there's some setup to do. This sermon, this text, I think is fairly simple.

It has one technical element in it that I saw, and I'm going to try to restrain myself on that. We're going to start with point one, which is really defining terms.

Verses one and two tell us the definitions or the status of sons, slaves, and the father.

And all of those terms are important in the metaphor that Paul is setting up here. Because, well,

I'll read it and then we'll talk about it. Verse 1 -2, Now I say, as long as the heir is a child, he does not differ at all from a slave, although he is owner of everything.

But he is under guardians and stewards until the date set by the father. So we actually have four characters in this two verses.

We have sons, we have slaves, we have guardians and stewards, and we have the father.

And there's this relationship that, remember, this is a really bad chapter break. Bart and I were talking about this this week.

This really should be in chapter three for the American mind thinking, because Paul is not starting a new argument.

He's completing the argument that he started in chapter three. And he's taking us through the idea of the covenant of Abraham being to the seed of Abraham that is the last will and testament that can't be added to or can't be changed.

Once the will is put in place, then it can't be changed. Once the death has occurred, that would make people mad, right?

You can't change that. That's in verse 17 of chapter three. He talks about the law as being a prison in verses 22 -23 of chapter three.

Basically, that we are shut up in our sin, in the prison that the law has bound us in under its condemnation.

We're all sinners. We all deserve the penalty under the law. And so we're all in the prison of the law. And then he moves forward and he talks about the law as a schoolmaster, as a schoolmaster or a pedagogue in verses 24 and 25, where basically we're in school and the law is teaching us.

The law is teaching us the righteousness of God. It's also teaching us our fallen state and how we've broken the law.

And now he moves on to really, I think, the most personal of these metaphors, of these examples of what the law is.

Because what he says here is that the law is a guardian and a steward. This is slightly different from the tutor or the pedagogue.

This is not implying an education. What this is applying is an administration of the rules.

So let's set up the scenario. Let's say you got a billionaire two -year -old who's sitting in a high chair.

His parents are alive, right? And this two -year -old has a bunch of house servants in the house.

There's butlers and there's governess, there's nannies, all of this kind of stuff. And so what's happening is the sons and daughters of those nannies and those headmasters and butlers, they're all living the same life in the house that the two -year -old billionaire is living.

Right? They're being held to the rules. They're being yelled at for when they throw tempers and throw things.

They're being held under this guardianship. And so what Paul is saying here is that while we were in the administration of the law, which is what the

Judaizers are wanting the Christian Galatians to go back to, he wants them to go back into the situation where you're the heir and you're being bossed around by the minimum wage nanny.

Okay? And so that nanny serves a purpose in the household because you have to have order in the household. And the servants or the slaves of the house and the heir or the son himself, there's no functional difference in the way they live their life.

That's the picture that Paul is setting up. And then the spring to this trap, and I think it's the focal point of this text, is until the date set by the father.

So there was a situation, and we have all this trouble. Look, I could geek out, but I'm not going to.

We have all this trouble with continuity and discontinuity between the Old and New Testament. Okay? How does it continue?

Where is it broken off? Some people say it's entirely broken off. That's a heresy. Some people say that there's a lot of discontinuity.

Let's suffice it to say right here, there is continuity between the Old and the New Testament, but there is a radical change that started from death to life.

So what's going on is in the old time where Paul was talking about during the law before Christ, the law was set up as a guardian, as a household manager.

And those who were slaves and those who were sons were all in the same situation. And in the

Galatians context right here, the Judaizers and the Galatians, the Judaizers want the

Galatians or the Christians to think that they're in the same situation today. We're all under this guardian, the law.

And this guardian's treating us both the same. But in the fullness of time, which we'll get there, everything changed.

And the date that was set by the father changed because the father owns everything in this metaphor, right?

While the father is alive, the two -year -old billionaire is not a billionaire. He doesn't even have an allowance.

He's walking around playing with toys. When he becomes a teenager, he's still not a billionaire. He has an allowance, and there's probably a trust set up.

And he doesn't become a billionaire even though he owns everything. He doesn't actually own everything until the father sets the date.

And so what Paul is talking about is this time is over. Here's what you got to understand. There was a time when the

Christians, and they were always Christians, Abraham was a Christian, Isaac was a Christian, David was a

Christian. They were saved one way. They were saved by the Holy Spirit through regeneration, and they were heirs.

But they were living among slaves, right? And the slaves were those who were circumcised, who were not regenerated, who were living in the covenant, right?

They were all under the Abrahamic covenant, living together under the law of Moses. And the law was the nanny.

The law was the administrator who was saying, you got to follow all these rules. And Abraham and Moses and David and every other bad guy throughout the

Old Testament was living in this same house. But the sons were Abraham, right? We know that because his seed was going to inherit everything.

But until that time came, it looked like the sons and the slaves were living the exact same life under the exact same rules, being yelled at the exact same way, doing the same sacrifices, the same ceremonies.

It's what Paul is talking about here that's going to change. So lots of ways that the slaves and heirs were the same.

We don't have to go through that. The most important way is that since the inheritance was not given yet, there was no real difference in riches or wealth in that sense, okay?

Hope you're following the thread. I don't want to stay there long, okay? The idea is this. Slaves and sons all in the same boat.

The father set a time out here. Until that time, the law is the guardian that's making sure the house is running smoothly.

And it's bossing around both the slaves and the two -year -old billionaire. All that kind of stuff, okay?

And then we get a pivot. And that pivot comes in verse 3, right?

Where Paul is going to make application. He's told the story. Now he's going to make the turn. He says, So also we, while we were children, were enslaved under the elemental things of the world.

But when the fullness of the time came, God sent forth his son, born of a woman, born under the law, so that he might redeem those who were under the law, that we might receive adoption as sons.

There's a law here. And this is the technical portion, okay? So stick with me. We're going to try to get the main sense of this.

And I think one of the key things here is this word that is translated elemental things. In the

Greek, it's stoichion, right? Which has the root word stoic, okay?

Elemental things. There's two senses here. And the Bible uses this word in two different ways.

One of the ways that it uses it is just rudimentary, basic stuff. Kind of like a two -year -old would be getting from the nanny, right?

Here's your ABCs. Now, if you came into this church and you saw Bart and I back in the kitchen, and Bart was making me recite the

ABCs to him, and I was like, A, B, C, F, and he's like,

No, no, start again. You'd be like, This guy, I don't think I want to hear this guy preach today. That's one sense of this word, rudimentary, elemental.

In Hebrews, this sense of the word is used in Hebrews 5. It says, For though by this time you ought to be teachers, you have need again for someone to teach you the elementary principles of the oracles of God.

And you have come to need milk and not solid food. The reason I read that text is because in this sense, the

Hebrews were falling into the same situation that the Judaizers were wanting the

Christians to fall into, which is to go back to something that didn't exist. And what Paul is saying in Galatians, and what

I believe Paul also said in Hebrews, was this thing right here. It's, You can't go back.

There's nothing to go back to. You're embarrassing yourself by making people recite the ABCs again.

You never understood what the law was even talking about. You don't understand the covenants. You don't understand the things of God, Judaizers.

You don't know what you're talking about. This is elementary. But wait, I'm gonna sit here and I'm gonna write this really long letter to show you how elementary it is.

And then for us, in our elementary Christianity in America, we don't understand Hebrews. And the reason why is because we don't understand the

Old Testament. We don't understand the functions of the law. And hopefully over the last few weeks, you understand the functions of the law better.

This is one sense. Rudimentary stuff. Rudimentary stuff. Now in context with chapter three, it seems to fit, right?

We had these tutors who were teaching us as children, teaching us the things of the law.

That was one of the purposes of the law. It was to teach us. But there is a limitation to sticking to this sense only.

And I think us as naturalists in America, we like to stick to this sense, right? Oh, it's just basic.

Don't worry about, like, you're just going back to all the basic things. But the problem with limiting it to only this sense is that,

A, Paul uses the word and he uses it elsewhere in a completely different sense. But also that this limitation is that there's not really this idea to move on that's coming from the outside here.

In other words, what Paul is doing here is we're always inside the house in these illustrations, right?

He's telling us to not go back. And when he uses this term, he's talking about how the law should have been teaching us, right?

And so I think there's this other sense. And this is the sense of the elemental spirits. Now, don't lose me.

I'm not going to go into a demonology thing here or anything like that, okay? But there is a sense.

And that word gives us the elemental sense of the world. Earth, wind, fire, and water.

That's how the Greeks would have understood that word. The elemental rudimentary parts of the world. He uses it in this sense in Colossians 2.

See to it that no one takes you captive through philosophy and empty deception. According to the tradition of men, according to the elementary principles of the world and not according to Christ.

So let's think about how we're born. We look at the world and we as modernists, we look at the world in a completely different way than our ancestors did.

We look outside and we know why the grass grows and we know why there's clouds in the sky and we know why the sun rises at a certain time.

We understand these things. And we look at it and we say, I have a scientific explanation for all of that.

But what we don't understand is that we are slaves by birth to the rudimentary concepts that what you see is all there is.

Now, there's applications where that can be good, right? Like we have a lot of science experiments where what we observe becomes repeatable and we start to understand the word through science.

Where this becomes deadly is when it applies to human beings and we do this all too often. What you see is what something is.

That's rudimentary. That's the elemental idea. That's what philosophers appeal to. Philosophers go into this state where they say, see, the world's always been this way.

Do you observe how humans are? Therefore, God doesn't exist. Or therefore, humans are basically good and we're always looking for our highest good.

Like all these philosophies. And they deceive us because they trick us by what we see and they try to connect that to an ontological truth that's not true.

So for us as humans, when we grow up, what we think is, if I act good,

I am good. And as children, that gets reinforced.

If I do good things, then people think I'm nice. And then when it gets a little more insidious, it gets to be like my three -year -old who, when he does something good, he says, do

I get a present now? Now, I hope you can see the treadmill of that situation.

If every time you do something good, you deserve a present. And when you apply that to human beings, relationship with their creator, it becomes deadly.

Deadly. And that's what the Judaizers at their core are trying to do. They're trying to take you back to this elemental spirit that says, if you do this, then you get this.

And that's what we understand from birth. That's why it's elementary. That's why it's simple. That's why it's rudimentary.

And that's why it's devilishly tricky. Okay, now don't misunderstand. When Paul is using this word, and he's using it in context of law, right?

Is he saying that these elemental spirits delivered the law? No. We know that that's out of bounds because in verse 19, he already told us that the good angels delivered the law to Moses.

So we know it's not bad spirits that delivered the law, but we do know that the old enemy Satan has always twisted the word of God.

And the law was given by God through angels to Moses to write to us so that we can read it today.

And what happens is Satan takes what God says and he starts to twist it. So while the law shows us the righteousness of God, and while the law shows us the way to live life that's going to be good, what

Satan does is he twists that around and he says, what you should do is actually compare where you follow the law to where this guy doesn't follow the law and start thinking, hey,

I need some credit for my law following right there. And then take it a little further and say, I follow the law pretty much every day.

That's why John says that the person who says that he doesn't sin is a liar and he's not a brother.

That's because the deception of Satan takes the law, takes its good purposes, its tutoring, its pedagogy, its guardianship.

Notice all these stable words, right? Where they're keeping us between these fences. And what Satan does is he twists that into something that's extremely evil and misses the entire point of the grace of God, even in the

Abrahamic covenant. Satan takes the law and through our natural fallenness, he binds us in slavery to self -righteousness.

That twisting has always been Satan's most effective tool. Does he not come at us with the word of God?

That's what he does. And he twists it to our own ends. And in our fallen state, we're all too willing to allow the twisting to happen.

Consider Colossians 2 .20, using in the sense that this is going to be important. That's why I'm spending the time here.

Colossians 2 .20 says, if you have died with Christ to the elementary principles of the world, why, as if you were living in the world, do you submit yourself to decrees?

Do not handle, nor taste, nor touch. I think that this sense of the word of elemental spirits, of the trickery of Satan, of this idea of having these

Greek earth, wind, fire, water, pillars of the world ideas in place of saying, that's what's slaving you.

That's what you're under a guardianship to. You need to break out of that. I think that he was warning us in verse four of chapter two, where he said, but it was because of the false brethren secretly brought in who had sneaked in to spy out our liberty, which we have in Christ Jesus, in order to bring us into bondage.

The main tool of the Judaizers was preaching the philosophy of elementary principles. And these elementary principles in the light of Jesus Christ are vain, and they will enslave us.

And that is the whole point of them. Sounds like a grim picture, right? Because we look around us today and we can ask, is the

American church enslaved to the bondage of the elementary principles of the world? All too often.

And lest you start thinking that you're self -righteous, it is your constant temptation to enslave yourself to the elementary principles of the world.

This person, I don't like the way they dress, so they're probably poor and worthless. Now, look, you would never say it out loud because our culture condemns such snobbery.

But if our culture uplifted it, you would feel the temptation to say it. More on that later.

This time had an end though. This time had an end. We were enslaved to the elemental things of the world.

But what happened is, at a fullness of time, that means in God's time, God had been using the

Old Testament to build this history, right? He's giving us shadows and types.

He's giving us styles and promises and prophecies. And he's giving us sacrifices and pictures of who he is.

And as it grows, and it grows, and it grows, and then he's silent for 400 years. And the people of God wonder, has

God abandoned us? What's going to happen here? He was our God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, but where are you now,

God? And in the fullness of time, what did God do? It didn't say he sent forth a prophet.

That's what he had always done with Israel. It's not that he sent forth a prophet. He sent forth a

Son, a capital S, Son. The only begotten

Son, eternally begotten. The second person of the Trinity, the

God -man Jesus Christ. And don't miss this at this time of year. God sent forth his

Son, who is more precious than we can possibly imagine. We have no way to understand

God except through the Son. And this Son was born of a woman, and he was born under the law, under the law.

So before the fullness of time came, Jesus was born under the law, and he perfectly fulfilled the law.

We're not only talking about him going and being circumcised on the eighth day.

We're not talking about him being cleansed in the temple. We're not talking about that. We're talking about every single jot and tittle of the law.

Jesus was born under that time, and like the second Adam, he fulfilled it completely.

Do you realize the separation, right? Adam was born into paradise, was he not?

He was created into paradise, into a garden where no sin existed, where there was no sweat of toil.

Imagine a world, men, where you work and you don't sweat with toil, where work is just fun, is just glorifying to God.

That's the situation Adam was born into and sinned against his creator. But Jesus, the only begotten, was born into chaos.

He was born into a Roman emperor that declared himself to be God and spread the good news, the gospel, the evangelion of Augustus Caesar.

And the world was in torment, and the Jews were under bondage and oppression to this Roman empire and this

Caesar, and Jesus was born at this time. And he went into the desert, and he wasn't tempted with fruit.

He was tempted by twisting the very word of God to take the things that were already his. Remember when

Satan went to Jesus and tempted him three times, he tempted him with everything that Jesus already owns. Jesus just had to submit to the

Father and wait for those and wait for that inheritance. And so there was a greater fulfillment. Jesus perfectly fulfilled the law, which made him the only possible sacrifice and atonement for us under the law.

Why? We see it. He redeemed those who are under the law, and this is the craziest thing, that we might receive the adoption as sons.

Here's the picture. Here's the picture. You walk into a slave market, and there's a bunch of slaves in chains in the

Roman world. This is how this would have been understood, okay? They might've been captured from war. They might've just been stolen from Northern Africa or from East Europe or somewhere that was undesirable.

They would steal these slaves, and they would bring them into the open market. And in the open market, someone would come and buy slaves.

And that was called redeeming, if you set them loose. So understand that we would have been thankful enough as slaves under the law, that if Jesus had come in and said,

I'm gonna buy him and set him free, and I'm gonna buy you and set you free, and I'm gonna buy you and set you free.

And we would have been like, wow, we're free. That's great. But that's not what happened. Jesus did something that was unimaginable.

As he looked in and he said, I'm gonna buy you, and I'm gonna set you free, and I'm gonna give you everything

I own. And I'm gonna buy you, and I'm gonna set you free, and I'm gonna give you everything I own. I'm gonna make you my sons, where you have the legal privilege of being my family.

And when I pass, when I die, you're going to receive the kingdom of God.

And what is that? The kingdom of God. It's everything that has ever existed and ever will exist.

And when Jesus died, the inheritance was passed to his sons.

And then Jesus rose again, because what he's going to do is he's going to lead his sons to put all of his enemies to open shame.

And that is the inheritance we have. So Paul paints this picture. And he says, you know what the Judaizers are trying to get you to do?

They're trying to get you to say, you know, that sonship, that was a nice offer, but I don't want that.

Actually, would you please just clamp the chains back on me and bring me out to the slave market so that I could get whipped a little bit more by the guardians and the foremen?

So it's no wonder that Paul says, foolish Galatians, who has bewitched you? It's no wonder that Paul calls them moronic, empty -headed.

It's no wonder that the language is strong, because what has happened is to rebel against what

Jesus has done. And he's obviously done it. I think the key point of this first section is at the start of chapter three, where Paul says that you have seen

Jesus Christ crucified, publicly portrayed. You know what you're talking about.

You do not get to plead ignorance here, Galatians. You understand what you've been saved from, and you understand what you've been saved into.

So let me highlight it. So Jesus, the Lord of glory, came into the slave market, and he bought the slaves, and he made them his sons and daughters, and he gave them everything that belongs to him.

And it thinks, and we think, man, that is fantastic. But as the commercial would say, wait, there's more. There's more.

Let's read the second part of verse five through seven, that we might receive the adoption as sons.

And because you are sons, God sent forth the spirit of his son into our hearts, crying, Abba, father.

Therefore, you are no longer a slave, but a son. And if a son, then an heir through God.

All right, a little tough stuff first, okay? We know, we know this.

And yet still, we recoil at it. Because when we hear the grace of Christ, we often feel a thrill, and then we think it's too good to be true, and we get tempted to go back into slavery.

Such is the case with many who are adopted. So let's talk about adoption a little bit. Adoption is a fundamentally unnatural thing.

Remember the start of the sermon? The natural thing is for a man and a woman bonded in marriage to have children.

Those kids never doubt their status as being sons and daughters, because they were naturally born.

But in adoption, we have to understand that adoption always comes from a troubled, traumatic situation.

It's where babies or children are neglected. It's where criminality abounds.

There's unspeakable cruelty that leads to destitution in children. If you've ever been around an adopted, if you have an adopted one, you'll understand that it's very difficult, it's very difficult for them to accept sonship or daughtership.

What they do is they push away all the time. Because they think, my natural father or mother abandoned me, you will too.

So the child of adoption mistrusts the benevolence and the grace of their new father.

So that child will lash out. They'll feel awkward in the family. They'll feel unwanted.

They'll question the very love of their father and mother who sacrificed much to bring that child into their home.

And the desire of that father and mother is a love and desire for a new son or a new daughter.

That's the way adoption happens. Understand what's happening here. Adoption happens to a child.

It happens to a child, okay? Children are not going around trying to try out parents.

That's not the way it works. Adopted children are adopted by the love of a father and mother.

In the kingdom of God today, we face trials, we face hardship, we face sickness, we face broken, messed up relationships, we face our own sin.

And our natural reaction, our natural reaction is often to lash out at our loving father and to question his love for us and to question his devotion to us because we don't understand grace and we often don't understand the love of a heavenly father.

And so what we do is do something that on the surface seems incredibly stupid, which is try to throw off our father and go back to slavery.

But Jesus conquered this problem too. That's what I see in this verse.

If it had just been adoption, if it had just been becoming heirs, then we would have this idea that's like, he might ride us out of the will.

I know we're his sons, but we're adopted sons. We're not like Jesus, his only begotten.

But what happens is, is that the father is so kind that he puts the spirit of his son, who is our rescuer, right?

The son who came and redeemed us, he puts that spirit into our hearts. And that spirit doesn't say

Abba Father, that spirit cries Abba Father. A lot of people like to translate

Abba Father as being daddy. It's not far off in the translation.

I think what needs to be understood here is that the spirit puts into our hearts a familiarity, a familiarity to cry out to our father like he is our dad.

My son does not hesitate to cry out for his dad. And he says, dad, he doesn't say

Mr. Rice, or he doesn't say most honorable, esteemed father, Mr.

Rice. He doesn't say that. He says, dad, dad, can I have this?

Dad, will you help me with this? And that's the spirit. And so what the spirit does that's been put inside of us is it not only is the seal that we actually have been adopted, but this spirit makes us love and teaches us to love our adopted father so that we would not recoil from his grace, but instead that we would trust it, that we would trust it.

It was the Trinitarian work of God and his good pleasure to save us, not as Romans 8 says, not receiving a spirit of slavery, which is what so many in our country want, is we want a spirit of gaining pleasure that can be obtained in a prison cell.

Instead, what God has done is he has given us a spirit of freedom because that is a spirit of adoption.

And we cry out, as it says in Romans 8, we cry out. Do you know when Jesus cried out,

Abba, Father, it's used in Mark 14. It says, Jesus was saying, Abba, Father, all things are possible for you.

Remove this cup from me, yet not what I will, but what you will. Seems like a strange place for Jesus to say,

Abba, Father, doesn't it? Dad, is this really what

I have to do to save our people? Is this really it, Dad?

Do I have to do this? But what you want is what I'm going to do.

I know you can remove it from me, but not what I will, what you will. The spirit has given us comfort and surety, and that's what an adopted child needs.

An adopted child needs the comfort of knowing that their father is never going to leave them. My biological children don't have an idea in their head that I would ever leave them, but adopted children have that idea.

And so with us, we have to believe the promises of God. We have to believe because here's where we'll end it.

If we don't believe, if we don't believe that God has adopted us, that he has given us the spirit of adopted sons, and we throw that off to go back to slavery, what we will do is we will become sons of hell.

I'm going to connect the dot here. Matthew 23, talking about the scribes and the Pharisees. This is what the Judaizers want the

Galatians to be. It says, the scribes and the Pharisees have seated themselves in the chair of Moses.

Therefore, all that they tell you, do and keep, but do not do according to their deeds, for they say things and do not do them.

And they tie up heavy burdens and lay them on men's shoulders, but they themselves are unwilling to move them with so much as a finger.

But they do all their deeds to be noticed by men, for they broaden their phylacteries and lengthen the tassels of their garments.

And they love the place of honor at banquets and the best seats in the synagogues and respectful greetings in the marketplaces and being called rabbi by men.

The church is under judgment today in America because what I just read defines the celebrity pastors of America.

They will not lift a finger for the people in the pews. They will not meet. They will not descend from their lofty seat of Moses.

They will lengthen their garments and they will sharpen their social media one -liners so that they will draw crowds to themselves.

And they sit in places of honor. And what they do is they want to bring us in to the slavery that they've already inhabited.

And this is the slavery to legalism. We're not immune to it in the

Reformed church. And it ravages. And I think that there's three ways.

I think there's three ways that this legalism, and we'll call it the spirit of the Judaizers. Let's make this real.

What are you tempted to do? You're tempted to go back to slavery. How are you going to go into the slavery under the law?

One way is the traditional way. We'll call this old school legalism. In the Judaizers day, it was get circumcised and do these ceremonies.

Otherwise, you're not right with God. And Paul says, to hell with that. For us today, it goes back to the old

Colossians 2 thing. Or sorry. Yeah, Colossians 2 thing that says, do not handle, do not taste, do not touch.

It could be alcohol, could be tobacco. I think more insidiously, when

I was a kid, it was that stuff. I think more insidiously, it's this. We'll read articles on the gospel coalition that fervently warn

Christians of the idolatry of family. What is that if it's not, do not taste, do not handle, do not touch?

You guys having trouble worshiping your family? But this is what the Pharisee does, is he comes up and he says, probably loving your wife a little too much.

You're not loving God enough. Did you not know that you're the bride of Christ? And they do what's called

Jesus juking you, right? Where they're like, well, I'm only a slave to God, right?

Well, yeah, we all are. But the problem is, is this is legalism and it disrupts people and it messes with families.

Because what we start to do is we start to think, man, is it a sin to like eat this steak? Like, I'm going to take my wife out and it's going to cost me like $75 to eat this dinner.

Like, should I be feeding the poor with that money? I mean, I think the disciples got upbraided for just a similar question with a woman who extravagantly poured perfume and anointed

Jesus, right? Do not fall into traditional legalism that looks at the external, that says, what are you doing that's going to make you right with God?

But the second one, this is even more insidious. There's group therapy legalism. Group therapy legalism that says, we must jump into the river with all those who are drowning in order to show how much we care.

It's a loving thing to simply drown together while affirming every whim of the victim.

And the group mentality says that the highest thing you can be is a victim because victims aren't at fault for anything and victims are the most holy.

This is legalistic group therapy. I am pure because I land in this class.

This is also shades of the Judaizer heresy. The tables in chapter two, I am pure.

Peter said, I am pure because I'm sitting with these Jews, not with these dirty dog Gentiles.

And Paul says, you're a hypocrite. And I say the same. If you're engaging in group therapy legalism, you're a hypocrite.

Don't drown in the river with people who are sinning. Stand on the bank and throw them the rope of the gospel and teach them what

God commands and pray for them and intercede. And the third, and I think this is the worst in our camp.

Look, if you're keeping this, I don't wanna be too subtle. Number one is just old -fashioned Pharisee legalism.

Number two is basically like critical theory, okay? Number three is this one, purity tests.

They exclude others from fellowship because of not reaching a desired standard of doctrinal purity. Who holds the standard?

Well, I'm glad you asked in your mind, who holds the standard? I hold the standard and all of my friends who agree with me.

And if you don't agree, then you fail the doctrinal purity test. And while I may not say that you're not a

Christian, I'm definitely gonna treat you like you're not. And this legalism infests the

Reformed camp. You can't go three inches on the internet without seeing this one.

It's everywhere. It's you're outside of the camp because you don't sprinkle babies. Or you're outside of the camp because you do sprinkle babies.

Or, oh, you don't think Jesus is coming and gonna rapture his church? You're out, heretic.

Oh, you do think God is going to rapture his church? Heretic. You believe in natural classical theology?

Golly, you don't even believe the Bible, do you? You don't even have Sola Scriptura. Vantillian presuppositionalism?

What is that stuff? That's denying everything we've known our whole life. And you think

I'm joking. I'm not. These are the doctrinal purity tests in the Reformed church. And we have to look at ourselves in the mirror at some point.

And we have to ask, are we just committing the sin of the church in Galatia? Are we being Judaizers?

We have developed a culture where all of the thing for a guy in my position, everything in my position, is to hear, well done, good and faithful pastor.

You have tickled our ears with many things that we agree with. We will make you master over the whole thing. That's what we've done.

And we like to be respectable online. And it's always within our own crowd. And when we get respectable online, it puts us in an incredible position to fleece the sheep.

Because when we're respectable, and I sit on the seat of Moses, I want you to look at how the people reacted to the

Pharisees. What did they do? They did everything they said because the Pharisee could throw them out of the temple.

And if you got thrown out of the temple, you were thrown out of the society. And you were a dog.

And you were going to hell. Our evangelical elites are accountable to no one.

And they use their knowledge of doctrine to confuse and trouble people in their faith. The goal always boils down to securing power and creating loyalty.

That's what the Judaizers were doing. They wanted to create a power base. Paul was getting too powerful for them and too influential.

And so they followed him around everywhere talking about how he was sinning and how he was not a real pastor.

He's not a good prophet. He's not a good guy even. He's telling you to throw away everything that your father's taught you.

And Paul says, I got the message from God himself. You have to look at the motives.

But for us here at CBC, the call goes out to us like the

Galatians. We have to remember that we're free. We have to remember we're free. Don't go back to the slavery.

Don't believe what I say just because I say it. To the word we go.

We're Baptists. We're Baptists. And Baptists are Biblicists. Now we're not mere

Biblicists, but what we do is we base our practice of life on what the scripture says. So we want to go back to the scripture.

And when I say something and it sounds a little bit off, let's go to the scripture and let's go there together. And if I'm off,

I don't sit in the high chair of Moses like a Pharisee, I repent. That's what we have to do.

Why in the reform camp are we not evangelizing the nations? It's because we're too focused on our own belly buttons.

It is. We like to get neurotic and we like to look inside as much as we possibly can and sift everything out and spend hours and hours and hours talking about the most minute doctrine that you can possibly find.

Okay, we do this. And it's good to look at doctrine. That's what makes it so dangerous.

Do you understand? The Judaizers, the temptation was so dangerous because the circumcision made so much sense, right?

Their fathers did always do it. God did command it on the eighth day. It was confusing for the people in the church.

So when the Judaizers came and said, if you want to know Christ, you got to be circumcised. That was a deceptive message. And it was based on the elementary principles that Jesus in the fullness of time had abolished.

For us today, it's deceptive because learning doctrine is a great thing and having core convictions is an awesome thing.

And look, I wouldn't preach the doctrinal distinctives if I do if I didn't believe that they were right. I do believe that they're right.

But at the same time, I also believe that I could be wrong because if I couldn't be wrong, then you can't be a real

Christian if you don't agree with me. Do you see how it works? It's so dangerous.

A great distinctive of CBC, if we want to plant churches, and that's what we're going to talk about next week, if we want to advance the battle all over Northwest Arkansas, it cannot be that we are defined by our second and third tier doctrinal beliefs.

We have to be defined by one faith delivered by Jesus that has freed us forever to be united in serving him.

The whole problem with the Galatians is they forgot what Jesus did. And so the slavery chains were tempting.

We can't forget what Jesus did. And we have to remember what unites us.

The one that unites us is the one who was crucified for us. And it didn't stop there.

He rose again and he reversed death and he turned it to life. And it didn't stop there.

He invited us into his table and he made us his sons and he wrote us into his will.

And we inherit everything, as Ephesians says, that God lavished all of his riches and kindness on us.

And it didn't stop there. He gave us a spirit that cries out, Dad, when we pray to God, we come with confidence as sons who know that our father is never going to leave us.

So when we pray to our father, he doesn't deliver us scorpions. He answers our prayers as we abide in him.

And then it doesn't stop there because eventually this king is going to fully and physically come into his own.

And we're going to be at that table physically with him. And we're going to cry out, Dad, because the relationship doesn't change at all.

It only increases. And we are made completely holy because we look on the face of Christ and we see him as he is.

And sin will be no more. And this strife will be no more. And many sons and daughters who fought and made a mess of it on Earth are going to be at the same table with him.

And we're going to love each other. And we're going to hug each other. And we're going to thank the

Lord for the mysterious way that he worked, that even in our fractiousness, he still won the battle.

And that's something for us to hope in. Let's pray. Lord, your promises are grand.

They sometimes are so high and lofty and so unbelievable that it's difficult for us to believe them.

Lord, if there's any here that struggle with that belief, I pray that you would help us in our unbelief.

That we would know that we are adopted sons. We would know that you've given us free reign to call on your name.

That we don't use the Lord's name in vain by calling out Abba, Father, because you are our true father and we are your true sons.

Lord, there's so many things that you've brought us into. You call us friends. You call us family.

And you invite us to your table. Lord, I pray that we would go forth in 2024 as a church at CBC, that we would be a church that loves your people.

That we are united with your people. That we don't get defined by the different doctrinal distinctives that we hold, but we are defined by what you are doing here.

Or we are defined by your faithfulness and by the worship of your holy name and all the great things that you've done.

Lord, strengthen our faith in this next year. Help us to trust you more. Help us to follow you more zealously.