Server Outage Notice: TheSeed.info is transfering to a new Server on Tuesday April 13th
| Order Of Worship (Liturgy) |
GALATIANS 4:4d
(Readings: Rom.9:30-10:4; Luk.2:21-40; Gal.4:4)
Perfect Passion
Congregation of our Lord Jesus Christ…
The key word in this text is “law”.
In fact, the key word in this whole letter of Paul to the Galatians would have to be “law”.
You see, the Galatian churches, among all the churches, were especially concerned to live by the “law”.
Now, we have law in our country too.
It’s the law which Parliament votes on.
It’s the law which they are so certain is going to make all the difference.
It never does, though, does it?
Because the law they are making is man-made law.
The next government elected in might just change it – and actually with many laws they will!
However, the “law” in our text, which is “the law” this letter is all about, is something quite unchangeable.
For this law is that set down by none other than God himself!
This is the law which we know as ‘The Law of Moses.’
That’s what is found in the five books of Moses - the first five books of the Bible.
This is the law which we would see even more specifically as that given to the Israelite nation.
In the wilderness this was what came from the Lord through Moses the mediator.
It was God’s Law which very much affected the faith of those Galatian believers.
So that should be okay then, shouldn’t it?
Anyone that keen to do what the Lord tells them must be doing something right.
Aren’t they?
Well, not always, is it?
History is full of deviations and variations in the church.
And they all said they were following God’s Word – whether by the letter of the law or by the spirit of the law.
So, the kind of interpretation the Galatians had keeps occurring throughout the generations.
It was some years ago that a view, called ‘theonomy’, became the source of some dispute amongst Presbyterian and Reformed Christians.
That name ‘theonomy’ actually means “God’s law”.
We see this with the Greek word for law in our text being ‘nomos’.
With ‘theo’ being the Greek word for God, there you have ‘God’s Law’ – ‘theonomy’.
This is something we should all believe in – shouldn’t we?
But like other movements which began as strong reactions, ‘theonomy’ could also become exclusivistic and literalistic.
Like the zealous young man who travelled over 450 kilometres to go to a theonomist church, instead of his local church.
He was driving back one Sunday night and stopped his car at five to twelve outside an all-night hamburger store.
To his companions he said, in all seriousness, “Just five more minutes and we can buy something to eat!”
Well, he thought he would have been sticking to the letter of the law!
Or would he?
The Jewish law actually says the Sabbath runs from the dusk, the evening, before the Sabbath, to the dusk of the Sabbath day.
So he didn’t need to wait to buy the burger!
But, even if he had been right by the letter of the law, he had forgotten altogether the essence of the law.
It was to such self-righteous people that Jesus had replied in Mark chapter 2.
There in verse 27 and 28, he had said, “The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath.
“So the Son of Man is Lord even of the Sabbath.”
You see, far more important than the letter of the law is the point to the law.
This is our first aspect to this sermon.
THE POINT TO THE LAW.
Congregation, here it helps us to listen to what the apostle says in the chapter before the text.
There, in the verses 1 till 5 of chapter 3, he says, “O foolish Galatians!
“Who has bewitched you?
“It was before your eyes that Jesus Christ was publicly portrayed as crucified.
“Let me ask you only this: Did you receive the Spirit by works of the law or by hearing with faith?
“Are you so foolish?
“Having begun with the Spirit, are you now being perfected by the flesh?
“Did you suffer so many things in vain – if indeed it was in vain?
“Does he who supplies the Spirit to you and works miracles among you do so by works of the law, or by hearing with faith...?
No wonder Paul has already accused them in chapter 1 of preaching a different gospel.
Because it is!
But we do have to be careful here.
It’s easy to go to the opposite view and reject the law altogether.
Then we would be antinomians, which is literally anti–law.
They believe that in Christ the whole Old Testament law doesn’t serve any purpose any more.
They say that Christ’s Spirit in us is all we need.
‘Throw out the law’, they say.
This is the other extreme.
What we should be realising, however, is the point of the law.
Why are those words given to Moses found in the Scriptures we have before us today?
What are they doing in the Bible?
Geoffrey Wilson says, “It was with the express purpose of liberating those who were under the curse of the law that Christ by his birth became subject to all the law’s demands.”
All those continuous sacrifices and other ceremonies of the Law showed that something wasn’t yet right.
The failure of God’s people to live up to the standards of God’s Law also showed that things were far from right.
The prophetic books – from Isaiah to Malachi – all seventeen of them, anguish over the state of Israel’s unfaithfulness.
Because of the nation’s sin, they declare God’s judgments, with the ultimate disgrace in the exile of seventy years in Babylon.
None of the kings of Israel and Judah could ever do!
But all this proved the point.
The only Saviour could be the Lord God himself!
The blood of bulls and goats couldn’t take away sins.
Christ had to do that.
So in God’s loving plan, his Son took upon himself our human nature.
He was conceived by the Holy Spirit, born of the virgin Mary.
He had to be like us in all things, except for sin.
He was to be born of the human race, for otherwise we wouldn’t have any part in him.
In the words of Hebrews 2:17, “he had to be made like his brothers in every way, in order that he might become a merciful and faithful high priest in service to God, and that he might make atonement for the sins of the people.”
Just as his people were born under the Law, so he too was born under the Law.
As we read in Luke 2:21, like all other Jewish boys he was circumcised on the eighth day.
Congregation, the Law personified is the Lord Jesus Christ.
The Living Word is the Living Law!
We read as much in Romans 10.
As verse 4 said there, “Christ is the end of the law so that there may be righteousness for everyone who believes.”
You see, the Law nailed us to our sin.
As a prison holds the prisoner, as a teacher keeps a student under his authority, so we are shut up by the law under sin.
The law assigns, seals, and delivers what our position really is before God.
It is the Law which definitively proves that anything we try to do to be right with God cannot succeed, apart from faith in Jesus Christ and by the pardoning grace of God.
That faith was the way Abraham was saved, and it’s no different today.
It was through the example of Abraham that Paul proves this point to the Galatians.
In chapter 3 Paul writes that Christ redeemed us from the law by becoming a curse for us.
And the apostle goes on in verses 13 and 14, “Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us for it is written, ‘Cursed is everyone who is hanged on a tree’ – so that in Christ Jesus the blessing of Abraham might come to the Gentiles, so that we might receive the promised Spirit through faith.”
Then Paul uses the example of the promise to Abraham to show that the Law was only proving how much the promise was needed and the fact that it would come true.
Galatians 3 verse 22 puts it, “But the Scripture imprisoned everything under sin, so that the promise by faith in Jesus Christ might be given to those who believe.”
And so we come to the second aspect to the text this morning.
From THE POINT TO THE LAW we see now … THE PROMISE BEHIND THE LAW.
Friends, the Law, which came after the Promise given to Abraham, was only part of the process leading up to Christ.
It wasn’t the point itself!
In the words of Galatians 3, verses 24 and 25, “the law was our guardian until Christ came, in order that we might be justified by faith.
“But now that faith has come, we are no longer under a guardian…”
The position of equality in Christ, through the gospel, which is stated just before our text, proves this.
For those Gentiles didn’t previously have a clue, as such, about the specific Mosiac Law.
Yet they and the Jews were both under the Law to some degree and also delivered from the same curse it had cast over everyone!
Simeon, after all those years waiting for the fulfilment of the Law in the temple precincts, says it.
He declares in Luke 2 verses 30 to 32, “...for my eyes have seen your salvation that you have prepared in the presence of all peoples, a light for revelation to the Gentiles, and for glory to your people Israel.”
Here Simeon expresses the implicit, if not explicit, future anticipation of the Old Testament prophets.
When the time is right, how bright will be the light!
Congregation, we need to see the birth of Christ as the absolutely crucial event it was!
Oh, we can thrill to the choirs of angels, and wonder how much those wonderfully trained school choirs sound like them, but the event being announced is that God’s Word is here!
The Promise has come in Person!
This is the coming of such earth-shattering consequences that things will never be the same again!
And they can’t be the same again!
Paul touched into the essence of this at the end of his letter to the Romans.
In chapter 15 he says in verses 8 and 9, “For I tell you that Christ has become a servant of the Jews on behalf of God’s truth, to confirm the promises made to the patriarchs so that the Gentiles may glorify God for his mercy.”
And then the apostle quotes David and Moses and Isaiah to prove the new age they were in.
You see, Jesus Christ had come to serve others.
Those church members in Galatia, though, were only serving themselves.
It was their foolish pride in what they thought they could do!
Not only had they missed the point altogether, they couldn’t see the more glorious promise the Israelite people had been specially chosen for.
Paul illustrates this through a child’s coming of age.
So he compares it with a certain stage of life.
Young people, you are going through many stages in your life.
One of those is when you’re old enough to get a driver’s licence.
Another is when you’re 18 and old enough to vote.
Then you are considered an adult.
Perhaps your parents have said to you, “Well, you’re an adult now.
“We can’t treat you as you once did.
“Now you have to show more responsibility.”
You see, children are essentially helpless - physically, emotionally, and spiritually.
We naturally get upset if that weakness is taken advantage of.
But when you’re grown-up – in body and in mind – you can take responsibility for your own actions.
Charles Spurgeon showed the difference Paul means by a similar illustration.
He told of a young woman, fair to look at, who was seen by a very wealthy gentleman who was determined to make her his wife.
Now, she had been brought up in a family which didn’t have much money.
Her father wasn’t one of the poorest, but, still, poor enough.
On her marriage day he gave her all he could, which was five pounds to her bank account.
On the same day her husband also put money into that account.
But that was a thousand pounds.
And he handed the cheque book so she could use it as she liked.
Well, having been properly brought up, she spent her money very, very carefully.
She soon found that five pounds gone, however, because of the new social group she was in.
Then she went and drew out ten pounds, very much afraid that they would give her all that money at once, because to her it seemed so much.
When she got that money it was like, “Wow!”
She was surprised and quite thrilled.
She soon ran through that money, and withdrew again until the amount had reached fifty pounds.
One day her husband said to her, “You little goose, I thought you didn’t know how to manage a cheque-book?”
She replied, “Why, have I been too extravagant?”
“No,” he said, “most women would have drawn and spent a thousand pounds.
“But instead of that, you have spent only fifty pounds; you can’t live as my wife on such a pittance.
“Remember, you may be a poor man’s daughter, but you are a rich man’s wife; so just begin to spend according to my riches, and not your father’s economy.”
It was exactly this concept Paul was relating to those Galatians.
Israel had been in a limited way.
It had been hemmed in by all kinds of restrictions.
But now, through her marriage to the Lord Jesus, the Church has in her hands the cheque-book of promises complete!
The bank account has been filled by his blood.
Out of the riches of that divine grace we can draw as much as we’ll ever need!
Congregation, let’s do exactly that!
Let’s so depend on our credit in Christ that we’ll never bank anywhere else!
Because then we’ll never need to!
Amen.
PRAYER:
Let’s pray…
Dear Lord Jesus, it is you who did it all.
You from beginning to end have brought us into this most special position that we have!
We are yours – you bought us by your blood.
O Lord, make us to live as rich in you.
And please make us look even more to you and be reminded of all that you did.
You who is the fullness of all things became the smallness of a newborn baby, that we would become grown-up in you to all eternity!
We thank and praise you, forever.
Amen.
* As a matter of courtesy please advise Rev. Sjirk Bajema, if you plan to use this sermon in a worship service. Thank-you.
(c) Copyright 2024, Rev. Sjirk Bajema
Please direct any comments to the Webmaster
