More than Servants

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Transcript:

Turn with me to Galatians chapter 4. Galatians chapter 4. Just a few things I want to share with you tonight as we continue on with our study of Galatians.

We’ll go ahead and start by reading the passage. Galatians chapter 4, starting in verse 1, says, Now I say that the heir, as long as he is a child, differeth nothing from a servant, though he be lord of all, but is under tutors and governors until the time appointed of the Father. And what this passage is saying here to start out with, if you remember back to last Sunday night, We talked about the end of Galatians chapter 3, where Paul summarizes by saying that the law was a schoolmaster to bring us to Christ. It’s not as though God promised salvation to Abraham, as though God promised that he eventually would deal with the problem of sin.

He made this promise to Abraham, and then some 400 some odd years later, God said, Well, I changed my mind here, you deal with the sin problem, and gave the law as an alternate plan of salvation. If you can just keep this, you can go to heaven. No, the law, as the Bible says in Galatians chapter 3, there were a couple of different uses for the law.

One of them was to restrain us. One of them was to keep the people of Israel in line. The moral law was given to us because we are, by nature, lawless, depraved people.

And if God didn’t give us something to follow or something to try to follow, we would just run amok. Also, at the end of the chapter, he calls the law a schoolmaster that was there to bring us to Christ. It wasn’t an alternate plan of salvation. The law was a way of what they would call in law today codifying the standard, or codifying depending on what part of the country you’re from, putting the idea in some kind of legal form, showing that we did not match up to God’s standards.

See, by our very nature from the time of the garden, Adam and Eve, we were fallen sinful creatures. Even before the law came down through Moses, Abraham already was a fallen sinful creature. We had already fallen short of the glory of God before the law ever came.

And the law was a way of putting it in some kind of standard form where we could say, okay, we can’t meet up to this point, can’t meet up to this point, can’t meet up to this point. And it was a way of showing us how abysmally we failed when the standard was God’s holiness. And according to the end of Galatians chapter 3, that law was a schoolmaster.

It was kind of like the training wheels that would point us to our need for a Savior and that when we trusted Christ, when we came to him in faith, the training wheels could come off and we were no longer under that schoolmaster anymore. The schoolmaster I told you last week, but just in case you weren’t here, there’s not really a good one-word-to-one-word English translation for the Greek word there, so they put in schoolmaster and it’s as good a word as any, but we think of like a school principal. The schoolmaster was somebody, as I told you, who was like a tutor, like a nanny, like a surrogate parent, all rolled into one.

It was somebody under whose authority you were and under whose teaching you were until they had brought you to the point where you had learned everything you could, they had accomplished everything they were to accomplish, and then suddenly you weren’t under their authority anymore. Folks, the law is the same way. The law’s job is to point us to our need for Christ. And once we understand our need for Christ, those training wheels can come off, and guess what?

We’re not under the law anymore. The law is a tool from God to point us to faith in Christ. Well, he continues on here in chapter 4 with the same symbolism, the same metaphor, talking about being heirs and children and servants and talking about children being under the servants. He says that a child, as long as he is a child, an heir, as long as he is a child, differs nothing from a servant, though he’s Lord of all.

If you think about it, your child, let’s say you’re a very wealthy individual. Let’s just say I’m a wealthy individual. I’m not, but let’s just say I am. Benjamin someday would be the recipient of everything that’s mine when I pass on. Benjamin would be the heir.

I call him the heir to the throne anyway. Not that there’s a throne for him to inherit. I always tell him he better enjoy it because when I die, he gets the turtles and a salsa recipe.

That’s going to be his inheritance. But he’ll stand to inherit whatever is mine. But just because he’s the inheritor while he’s still a child, that doesn’t mean a whole lot.

Because even if we had somebody working for us, he’s still under them. You know, if we hired some teenage babysitter, they would be working for us. I wouldn’t want to say you’re our servant because that has negative connotations in our society, but essentially they would be working for us.

Well, Benjamin would be the heir. You see, he’s still a child, so he’s under their authority. And so what he’s talking about here, he says, Now I say that the heir, as long as he is a child, differeth nothing from a servant, though he be lord of all.

Even though one day it’s all going to be his, he’s still under somebody else, but is under tutors and governors until the time appointed of the Father. And folks, carrying the symbolism of the previous chapter forward, before we trust Christ, we’re these children. And yes, God foreknows who will trust him, and again, that’s not the same as predestining who will trust him, but God foreknows who will trust him.

He knows that one day He knew from eternity past that you would trust Him. He knew before the foundation of the world, I believe, that on January the 24th, 1991, I would trust Him as my Savior. But up until that point, I hadn’t yet, and I was still under the law, and was still under condemnation.

One day I would be a joint heir with Christ, as the Bible said. One day I would be adopted as a child of God. But until that point, I was still the child in this scenario.

I was still under tutors and governors. I was still under the law to the Ten Commandments and everything else pointing me to the fact that you do not meet up to God’s standard. And folks, when somebody in children’s church taught the law, taught the Ten Commandments, taught that we had to keep everything absolutely perfectly or we fell short of God’s standards, I realized one day then in January 1991 that I had sinned against God and it terrified me as well it should.

And I realized at that point my need for Christ. Up to that point, I had heard that Jesus died for me, but I had no idea what that meant or why he died for me or why he needed to. It was just a story I was taught in Sunday school. But at that point, the law accomplished its task, appointing me to my need for a Savior.

And I trusted Christ, and the training wheels came off. And the law was not there for me to be good enough for God. The law was there to show me that I wasn’t good enough for God.

The same is true for each of you. And that’s what he tells us. As children, even though one day we would be heirs with Christ, one day we would inherit all of these things, at that point the law has not accomplished its task and we’re still under tutors and governors.

I want to talk to you tonight about really centering on verse 7 of this passage, which we’ll get to in a minute, talking about the progression that Paul indicates here of somebody’s spiritual life in Christ. That we start out being called servants here. Now, that doesn’t mean we start out in life as servants of God and we belong to Him. But carrying the idea forward of what he’s talking about with servants and children and heirs, to be a servant, we may be near the family of God, we may receive some benefit from being near the family of God, but we’re not actually a part of the family of God.

We’re not one of His children. And yet we go on to become His children, we go on to become heirs, and that’s the idea that Paul wants to get across here once we’ve trusted in Christ, once the law has accomplished its work, what happens? Verse 3 says, Even so we, when we were children, were in bondage under the elements of the world.

But when the fullness of time was come, God sent forth His Son, made of a woman, made under the law, to redeem them that were under the law, that we might receive the adoption of sons. Think over that passage right there, starting in verse 3. When we were children, and he doesn’t necessarily mean literal children, you know, under the age of 18.

He’s going back to before the training wheels come off, spiritually speaking. Well, we’re still under the law. We were in bondage under the elements of the world.

As I said this morning, without Christ, we are in bondage. We may think we call the shots in our own lives. We may think we’re in charge because, hey, I can go out and do whatever I want to do, but we don’t realize that sin is calling the shots.

In Romans chapter 6, Paul talks about us being slaves to sin, being servants of sin. Folks, we’re either serving Christ or we’re serving sin. But nobody is a free agent in this world.

As children, we were in bondage under the elements of the world. But, some of the greatest statements in the Bible follow the word but. But, when the fullness of time was come, in just the right time, God wasn’t a day late, He wasn’t a day early.

Just the right time, when the fullness of time was come, God sent forth His Son made of a woman. We’re indicated there that Jesus Christ is the Son of God and also fully human. God sent forth His Son made of a woman under the law to redeem them that were under the law that we might receive the adoption of sons.

We gloss over that word redeem when we see it in the Bible, but it means to purchase back and give value to. I’ve told you before, if you’ll remember the illustration about the coupons. It’s one of the main places we use the word redeem anymore.

Before we redeem that coupon, before we go in and buy their soup or their light bulbs or whatever and give them the coupon, that coupon is worth one-twentieth of a cent if they even say that anymore. I mean, it’s a worthless piece of paper. The paper itself, I’m sure, is worth more than one-twentieth of a cent.

And yet we go in there and we redeem that coupon. We buy their, again, whatever their product is. And suddenly it’s worth a dollar off on this, two dollars off on this, 55 cents here.

It has many, many times more value than it would have otherwise. I didn’t completely understand the word redeem until I started studying French and started reading French translations of the Bible. The word, I know that y’all aren’t going to care about this as much as I do, but I think it’s really cool.

The word in French that they use for redeem is rachter, which means it’s re, and then achter is the verb for to buy. That word in the French is to buy something back. And I remember being actually in a class at the University of Oklahoma, being the only Christian in my French class as far as I know, and hearing that word and almost exclaiming out loud because I realized, hey, that’s what that word means.

That’s what that word means in English, too. I went and looked it up myself. To redeem means to buy back, to give value to it.

It’s amazing what God can use to teach you things. I doubt that teacher thought that day that she was going to be teaching me a truth of God’s Word, because I don’t think she believed God’s Word, and yet God used her. He was made of a woman, made under the law to redeem, to purchase back, and to give value to those that were under the law.

We weren’t just under the law. It calls it in Galatians chapter 3, the curse of the law. Those that were under a curse, under condemnation, that we might receive the adoption of sons.

He came to make the payment to purchase us back so that we could go from being servants, from being outside the family of God to actually being adopted as sons. He went and bought us. I think we’re familiar with the stories of the slave trade from the early days of this country.

And you would go and buy a slave at the market. Terrible practice, but it teaches us something today. Imagine if you would, what it would mean for somebody that had been in slavery their whole lives, had been mistreated to have somebody go and pay for them and not just take them home, not just put them to work, not just give them one of the better jobs they could have had, and not even just to set them free, but to take them home and say, you are now my child, and you have the same rights and privileges afforded to all my children.

Folks, the slave wouldn’t know what to do with himself, would he? He couldn’t do anything to earn it or to deserve it, and yet the master, out of the goodness of his heart, redeemed us. He purchased us to make us His sons and His daughters.

When it says sons in here, kind of a general Old English usage for both genders. To make us His sons and His daughters. And because ye are sons, God hath sent forth the spirit of His Son into your hearts crying, Abba, Father.

And if you don’t know that word Abba, we would use the word Daddy in place of it. It’s an intimate word. It’s one thing to call God Father.

It’s one thing to say He’s our Father. And we get the idea that God is cold and distant. But He, by His very own Spirit in our hearts, leads us to call forth Daddy, an intimate relationship.

Wherefore, verse 7, thou art no more a servant but a son, and if a son, then an heir of God through Christ. And everything we’re going to talk about tonight, this whole passage centers on this verse here. Wherefore, thou art no more a servant but a son, and if a son, then an heir of God through Jesus Christ. That illustrates the progression. We start out as servants outside the family of God, Then we’re adopted as sons, and not just any sons, we are made heirs.

The Bible says in another place, join heirs with Jesus Christ. Howbeit then, verse 8, when you knew not God, ye did service unto them which by nature are no gods. He said, before you knew God, you gave service to idols and pagan deities. And folks, whether we actually bowed down to wood and stone or not is irrelevant, because before we came to Christ, all of us had idols, even if it was self.

we did service unto them which by nature are no gods. But now, after that ye have known God, or rather are known of God, I’m going to stop right there, that’s an incredible thought too. He tells them, he points out to us too, that it’s not just now that we know God, now we are known of God.

It’s one thing to say we get to know God. God gives us his word and he tells us about himself, he reveals himself to us, And that’s incredible enough as it is because we don’t deserve it, as much as the human race has spit in his face over the years, to think that we get to know God. But folks, it’s that much more incredible that God chooses to know us.

But now, after that ye have known God, or rather are known of God, how turn ye again to the weak and beggarly elements, whereunto ye desire again to be in bondage? Now that you know God, and now that you’re known of God, he says, why would you want to go back to these weak and beggarly elements? Why would you want to go back to being just a pauper on the street as opposed to being an heir in God’s family?

Why would you desire again to be in bondage, he asks. And again, the people he’s writing to in Galatia, this is not just a theological argument. It’s not just an abstract theological debate he’s having.

These were people who really had fallen into the idea, some of them, that we’ve got to go back and follow the Old Testament law to be saved. He’s not just having an argument with them. He’s trying to straighten them out with some issues they really were dealing with.

And he’s asking them, not just a rhetorical question, he’s actually asking them, now that you know God and he knows you, why would you want to go back to any other state of affairs? Once you’ve been in the master’s house and you’ve been his child and you’ve been his heir, why would you want to go back to begging on the street and being a slave. You observe days and months and times and years.

And that’s talking about, we all observe days and times and months and years. What he’s talking about with observing them is not just counting the hours on the clock. Not everybody had clocks back then or calendar.

What he’s talking about is the observance of the feasts and the rituals. He says you observe days and months and times and years. You’ve got this Jewish law calendar down.

You’ve got it. And you follow it to the letter. I’m afraid of you, lest I have bestowed upon you labor in vain.

When he says I’m afraid of you, he doesn’t mean I’m afraid you’re going to hurt me. I’m terrified of you. If I was translating this, I might have said I’m afraid for you, lest I bestowed on you labor in vain.

And lest the gospel I preach to you has been in vain. And lest all of the time and the energy and the resources that I’ve invested in you, not only bringing you to conversion, but also growing you up in the faith, unless all of that has been in vain and you never really were in the faith to begin with. Brethren, I beseech you, be as I am, for I am as ye are.

Ye have not injured me at all. Ye know how through infirmity of the flesh I preached the gospel unto you at first. And my temptation, which was in my flesh, ye despised not nor rejected, but received me as an angel of God, even as Christ Jesus. And I don’t know that that means they thought he was an angel.

That word there could, as I’ve told you before many, many times, The Greek word that is translated as angel is angelos, which means messenger. And sometimes it’s a spiritual being like Gabriel. Other times it can mean anybody that speaks for God.

But what he says here is that he beseeches them to be as he is because even in the midst of difficult circumstances, persecution, deprivation, he preached the gospel to them and they received it. They received the gospel and they received him and they received his message. And what he’s doing is he’s telling them, he’s explained, as I said, the progression that we go from being servants to being children to being heirs.

And he’s asking them, why would you want to go back? If you’ve really been in the faith, why would you want to go back, being outside of God’s family? Why would you want to go back to following the law?

And then he begs them to join him where he is. Not in a physical geographical sense, but to join him in remembering what the gospel means, that it set them free from the law. First thing I want us to see tonight is that we’re born as servants.

I’ve already talked about this just a little bit, but folks, there were people in the days that they had servants, there were even people in the days that they had slaves that people talk about and say it was like they were part of the family. And sometimes the servants would be close to the family. That’s why I say as servants, we may be near to the family of God.

There may be people around us that are not believers, yet they’re around us and they receive some kind of spiritual benefit. They receive some kind of blessing from being around us, from coming to church. They receive some kind of benefit, even if it’s just feeling better about themselves.

Folks, as servants, we may be near to the family of God, and we may receive some benefit from being near to the family of God, but being near to it is not the same as being in the family of God. And just the very fact that somebody is like family, if they were a servant, doesn’t change the fact that they are not a relative, doesn’t change the fact that there’s of business relationship there. And the servant may be near to the family, but the servant is still on the outside.

And each of us is born a servant. Again, I’m not talking about being a servant of God in the sense that I meant this morning. But a servant is somebody who is outside the family.

Maybe near to it, but still outside of it. He points this out in verses 1 through 3, and even explaining that we as children, we were in bondage to the world. Folks, every one of us starts out outside the family of God in our lives.

I love the quote that I’ve heard so many times that God doesn’t have any grandchildren. It’s true. God does not have grandchildren.

I wish somebody would explain that to those who believe in infant baptism. Some of the most brilliant men, some of the most brilliant minds of the last 200 years in theology have also accepted the idea of infant baptism as though that fits into the Bible anywhere. And I think, you’re up here, and I’m here, and I can see this.

How do you not? But there’s nowhere we’re indicated in the Bible that somebody gets to be part of God’s family just by being born to somebody who is. It doesn’t work that way.

This passage here indicates that none of us are born into the family of God. We start out as the servants. We may have some knowledge of God.

We may have some knowledge of His family, but we are still on the outside. Well, verse 7 tells us that when we’re no more servants, we’re sons. You see, we’re adopted as verses 4 through 6 tell us, when the fullness of time was come, God sent forth His Son made of a woman, made under the law to redeem them that were under the law, that we might receive the adoption of sons.

We talked some this morning in our Sunday school class downstairs about the eternal purpose of God. What chapter is that? Ephesians 3?

Okay, Ephesians chapter 3, and I want to say verse 11, somewhere in there. Talked about what the eternal purpose of God is. And we can learn from some of Paul’s other letters that the eternal purpose of God has always been His reason in creating us, His reason in watching over Israel all those years, His purpose in sending His Son, His purpose in all that He’s done was to create and redeem unto Himself a people who would be His and would love and worship Him of their own free will.

That’s been His purpose from before the foundation of the world. God, knowing that we would fall and sin, could have very easily just created mindless robots. He could have just stuck with the animals if he wanted to create something here on earth.

And yet his purpose wasn’t just to have us obey, wasn’t just to have us love him, but to love him by choice, but to obey by choice. And we couldn’t handle that, and so his purpose was always to redeem a people who would love him and serve him and be his. His reason in sending Christ was so that Christ could die for our sins, so that we could have forgiveness, and not just so that we could be forgiven and God sends us on our merry way, but then we could be adopted as sons into His family.

As believers, we become children of God. That’s why I’m bothered in some of the newer translations of the Bible. In John 3.

16, they will say His one and only Son. That’s not only an inaccurate translation of the word monogenes there, where the King James says his only begotten son, it’s not only an inaccurate translation of that, but it also works against the idea that God adopts us as his children. Jesus is one of a kind, but he’s not the one and only, because God adopted others.

He’s the only begotten son of God, but God has millions and millions of others that he’s adopted. He sent Jesus to redeem them that were under the law, and then to provide for our adoption as sons. So we go from being servants, and it’s by nothing that we deserve, nothing that we do on our own.

It’s because God is gracious and sent Jesus to die for us. God could have just wiped us out and started over. And yet He chose to love us.

He chose to extend grace to us. It would have been enough. Folks, if all He had done, I say it as though it’s a light thing, it’s not.

But if all He had done was to die so we could be forgiven of our sins and not spend eternity in hell, that would be reason enough to praise God for all eternity. And yet there’s so much more. He adopts us into his family.

We become the children of God. It’s incredible. Like I said earlier, it’s as though somebody would go to the slave market and purchase a slave and then say, you’re now my son.

Can’t even imagine what that would mean to somebody. We’re born as servants, we’re adopted as sons, and finally tonight we’re designated as heirs. Even if we were God’s sons, even if he adopted us as his children, his sons and daughters, if God were to treat us the way we deserve.

Oh, heaven forbid God should ever be fair with us. Heaven forbid He should ever give us what we deserve. If God were ever to give us what we deserve beyond adopting us as His sons and daughters, we would at best be some kind of second-class children in His family.

We would be the wicked stepchildren, or what does it say back home, the red-headed stepchildren, that we just would not matter, we would not be entitled to anything that he has to offer. We’d be there, but it’s like we’d get the table scraps that were left over. Folks, that’d be enough, but God is so much more merciful than that because God gives us at every step beyond what we deserve.

See, we’re not just adopted as sons and daughters. We’re designated as heirs. And as the Bible says in other places, we are joint heirs with Jesus Christ. That does not mean we are exactly the same as Jesus Christ. We do not become gods.

Some churches I’d like to explain that to. We do not become gods upon our adoption by Christ or by God the Father. We don’t suddenly attain sinless perfection.

We don’t become something that we’re not, but our position, our adoption in God’s family and our position as heirs is based on the work and the person of Jesus Christ anyway, and so we are given every spiritual blessing that God affords him. Again, we don’t become God. I’m not saying name it, claim it, you can create things, you’re little gods.

And when I said that, there’s some churches I’d like to explain that to. It’s not just the Mormon church. I did have them in mind, but I hear charismatic preachers on the radio saying, you’re like little gods.

And I think, no, we’re nothing like little gods. If we were anything like God, if God was anything like us, oh, I don’t know about that. Thank God he’s not anything like us.

He’s completely different. But folks, we are entitled, and I hate even using that word because it’s taken a negative connotation in our world, but we are entitled to the spiritual blessings that come as a result of being God’s children. Because He has not only adopted us, but designated us as heirs.

He doesn’t just take us into His household and treat us like second-class citizens. We are His children, and we are His children in every sense of the word, not relegated to black sheep status in the family. And so He asks them.

Seeing that you started out as servants and you were adopted as children and designated as heirs, why would you go back? And he talks about the weak and beggarly things of the world. Why would you go back to scrimping?

Why would you go back to being a pauper on the street and begging and being a servant? Why would you go back to those things? The question to them is why would you go back to trying to earn your own way?

And folks, even after we trust Christ, it’s so easy to go back and think, I’ve got to do X, Y, and Z. I’ve got to cross everything off on the list or God is not going to love me. Folks, our position in God’s family is not based on our righteousness in the first place.

And it’s not changed by our righteousness. We need to understand that He has not only called us to be His children. Well, we need to understand that to begin with.

He’s adopted us as His children when we trust Christ. But He’s made us joint heirs with Christ. It’s an incredible truth of God’s Word. And we need to realize that once we’re in His family, He doesn’t kick us out. He loves us like His children.

But we also need to understand, we don’t start out as His children. We don’t start out in God’s family. We start out on the outside.

And until we trust Christ, until what He did on the cross, until we take ownership of that, so to speak, until we say, that was for me. And He was my Savior, it was my sin that put Him on the cross. until we trust in Him, we’re outside the family.

If you’ve never trusted Christ tonight, I want to invite you to trust Him. I want to invite you to claim what He did for you on the cross. Folks, I want to invite you to trust Him and say, yes, that was my sin that put Him there.

He died for me because I couldn’t die for myself. I couldn’t earn my own forgiveness.