240878 Un Crie De Coeur - Galatians

And you will see from the notes which were given to you that I've resorted to the French language for the title of our study this evening, and crie de coeur, a cry from the heart. That, in the language of our continental friends, is a way of expressing deep soul distress. Now, one of the things that might make anybody sad or despondent is if they had put an awful amount of time into doing a job and then discovering that they hadn't done it properly.

You know, you people who dab hands at decorating, there you were, hanging the wallpaper up in the lounge, and you'd done it so beautifully, and you put on the last piece, and you sat back and admired your handiwork, and discovered that the centrepiece, you'd inverted the paper as you pasted it, and you got the pattern therefore upside down. A great problem if you come to the end of doing a job and you find that, alas, it was done in vain. Now, this is the sort of dilemma that the Apostle Paul felt he was confronted with as he reviewed the spiritual condition of these people that he loved so much, these Galatian Christians.

And so, in the eleventh verse, there's this cry from the depth of his heart, I'm afraid of you, lest I have bestowed upon you labour in vain. One of the great concerns of Paul as he had news of the Galatians was that though they had committed their hearts and lives to the Lord Jesus Christ, they were being knocked off course in their spiritual pilgrimage by the teachings of others who did not admit to the simplicity of the gospel message that Paul and his colleagues had preached. They had said, as I've reminded you on several occasions, that the simple gospel was not sufficient in and of itself.

And these men had come along to Galatia, to this great tract of land where there were probably many local fellowships, and they had mesmerized, they held the believers in this area absolutely spellbound by their teaching. You remember we even come across that word bewitched in the first verse of the third chapter. These people were possibly somewhat flamboyant in their personality.

Maybe their dress was a little better than that of the Apostle Paul, their whole department was winsome. I say this not by way of idle speculation on previous occasions, back in the Corinthian epistle, Paul has to deal with this sort of thing. His enemies, those who were envious of him, they criticized his physique, they criticized his inability with words, and they said that his speech was contemptuous and so on and so forth.

Now it seems as though the people who interfered at Corinth had also gone into Galatia, and they were mesmerizing these Galatian Christians and directing them to other things. And you know, my dear friends, we could break off here by saying this, that the policy of the devil is always the same. Whenever there is a work of God going on, then he will introduce into it elements that will be divisive.

The early church, as I say, was riddled with this particular problem. You find it not only in Galatians, in that epistle, in the Corinthian epistle, you find it also in the Hebrews, the letter to the Jewish Christians. What was the reason why the author wrote that particular tract? Well, you see, there were certain people who were going to the Jewish Christians, and again they seemed to have a charisma that was all their own, and they were saying to the Jews, you've got it wrong, all this business about Mosaic legislation and the cultists offering sacrifices and so on, in no way has this been eclipsed by the gospel.

Return to these things. And it seemed as though those people there, those Jewish Christians, were mesmerized, were spellbound by these itinerant preachers. I came across, when reading Professor Bruce's commentary on Hebrews the other day, this little warning, and he makes it as a comment on the thirteenth chapter, one of the verses there, there would always be a tendency throughout the churches for visitors who come purveying new doctrines to be regarded as much more attractive and interesting personalities than the rather humdrum local leaders who never taught anything new, but were content with the conservative line of apostolic tradition.

Nevertheless, it was those local leaders, and not the purveyors of strange teaching, who had a real concern for the welfare of the church, and a sense of their accountability to God in this respect. Now, we get exactly the same, do we not, in the 20th century. There are some people who will flock to various meetings, various spectacular displays that are held ostensibly within the evangelical umbrella, and you will sometimes find crowds of people attending these meetings with the great personality and all the theatrical performance that often goes with it, and yet many participants, many members of the particular audience, if you trace them back to their own local fellowship, you'll not find them in a Bible study such as this.

You'll not find them in at the prayer meeting on a regular basis. Why is it? Well, it's not exciting enough. This is just the nitty-gritty of church life, and we don't really want to be involved with this.

We don't want the regular discipline of expository ministry, of working for God in the local church context. Rather, it's the dramatic personality, the big meeting. It has a magnetic draw.

Now, this isn't just a child of the 20th century. We've had it all the way down the centuries of the Christian church. Now, let me say, by way of qualification, in no sense am I arguing against the big meeting.

In no sense am I arguing against the fact that some men have a ministry to the body of Christ as a whole. But I am arguing against some of these theatrical performances that sometimes go on these days with the smart Alec preacher who goes from one joke to another joke, from one illustration to another illustration, and produces as a result a very immature type of so-called believer. Well, it was this sort of thing that was affecting the Christian churches in Galatia.

These people with a flamboyant approach had come along to these believers, and they had said, this Apostle Paul and the gospel that he preached and the sort of church structure that he has evolved here in Galatia. Well, it's all right in as far as it goes, but we've got something better to tell you. We want to introduce new ideas to you.

And so the Apostle hears of this. He hears of the disquiet in Corinth, he hears of the disquiet in Galatia, and he writes against it. And he brings these people back to the basic essentials of the gospel, and he spells out, as we have worked through his argument in the opening chapters of this epistle, the glorious doctrine of justification by faith.

He brings them back to the centrality of the cross. He brings them back to the authority of his word and of God's word. And it's his desire that these people shall absorb the word of God, so that they shall be able to combat heresy when others come along and teach those things which are alien to the gospel.

So Paul, somewhat timid now, somewhat afraid, not too sure of himself, at least not too sure of the Galatian Christians, says, I'm afraid of you, lest I have bestowed upon you labour in vain. You get the same heart cry, that same cri de coeur in the 19th verse. Look at it.

My little children, of whom I travail in birth again until Christ be formed in you. This man is no pure academic. This apostle has a warm pastoral heart.

There's nothing that matters more to him than to see his spiritual children maturing in the things of God and not being dislodged by every wind of doctrine that's blown, not going after every particular meeting that's called, but rather putting in their attendance in the local church and working for the advance of the gospel through their own particular fellowship. Now a lot more could be said about that, but I've already heard the clock strike eight and we're hardly yet into the beginning of these few verses and I've got an appointment at nine o'clock, so let's really start moving now. As we look at the first three verses, and what I'm doing this evening is simply taking you all the way through these 21 verses.

I'll spend most of the time on the first 11 and then just a of the last few verses because there the teaching is more easily comprehended, easily understood. In the first three verses then, what do we find? Well we find reference made to the child heir, to the child heir. Look at the first verse.

Now I say that the heir as long as he is a child, differeth not from a servant, though he be lord of all. Now what is Paul referring to? Well those of you who stayed the course of this series of studies will know that we were introduced to this child heir in the last chapter, in the 24th verse. The concept of the schoolmaster, the pedagogue looking after the infant, looking after the young boy and teaching him.

Now says Paul, in one sense every believer before he became a Christian was like that, whether he was a Jew or whether he was a Gentile. He was immature in the things of God. It's just like someone who's been left a million pounds.

Father has died and junior is only seven or eight years of age. And father has said in the will, as he wrote it out quite wisely, quite correctly, that his son couldn't enter into that money until he was 21. So a trustee is appointed or the help, the administrations of a solicitor or a bank manager are employed.

And until the child reaches the age of majority, he cannot have the blessing of the money. He can't enter into his inheritance. Now says Paul, that's just like you Galatians were in your heathendom as Gentiles.

That's just like the Jews were during the period when they were under the law. Tremendous promises have been made to Abraham, duplicated in the ministry of the prophets. One day God was going to pour his blessing upon the Jewish nation and through the Jews it would spill over into the whole world.

And that came about when? Well it came about when Jesus came into this world. So we have reference to the coming of Jesus in the fourth verse, the fullness of time, the occasion when a cry was heard in the manger in Bethlehem and the era of the gospel was ushered in. But before that time, historically, and before a person is converted in contemporary times, in what condition do they find themselves? Well verse three tells you the answer.

Under the elements of the world, or as verse nine takes up the same expression and amplifies upon it, the weak and beggarly elements which bring a man into bondage. What is meant by that? Well let me give you an example. Let's not go back in history, let's stay in the 20th century.

Let's get on board an aeroplane and fly out to Bombay and see what it's like in Bombay city at night. Hundreds and hundreds of people, as you've learned, who sleep on the slabs of the pavements where there are pavement slabs. What do they do before they actually lie down and try and get some sleep amidst all the racket of the noise from the animals and the passing cars and vehicles? Well many of them will create their own little altar.

They'll get their candle, they'll get their garland and they will try to placate the gods for safety that night, believing that there are hundreds and hundreds, indeed in the concept of Hinduism, thousands and thousands of gods who need to be placated, who need to be won over. And here is a society that's under bondage, under fear, under the elements, if you like, of a pagan superstition. Now from that, the Galatians had been delivered through hearing the gospel of Jesus.

They were like children in their heathenism, waiting and hoping and believing that somehow they may be broken out of this terrible grip and introduced into blessings untold, that the gospel message had forecasted. Well that, in the third verse, deals with the Gentiles. In the ninth verse, it deals with the Jews.

These people were not under the same superstition as the Galatians had been in their heathendom as the Hindus today in India. But nonetheless, they were under a bondage. The weak and beggarly elements of the law, not that there was anything wrong with the law of Moses, but it was weak in as much as it couldn't break the grip of sin on their lives.

It was beggarly in as much as the law had no inheritance to grant to the ordinary Jew who was kept under by the law. The law was never intended to save. The law's designation was to show just how sinful sin really was.

So you've got the heathen in bondage here. You've got the Jews under the tyranny of the law here. And the gospel message is now broadcasted.

It comes in the person of the Lord Jesus at the right moment historically. Verse 4, God in an act of uncommon mercy sends forth His Son. Born, verse 4, still with that of a Jewish woman, keeping the Jewish law.

Jesus was successful where everyone else had been an utter failure in Judaism. Everyone else had broken the law and therefore come under its penalty. But Jesus, born of a Jewish woman, kept the law and was preserved righteous by His Father.

And the righteousness of Jesus was made over to anyone, Jew or Gentile, who would trust His death on the cross as being the means whereby their salvation is ensured. So, here is a tremendous concept. Here is something that's almost mind-blowing.

My Hindu in Bombay, my capitalist pagan in Europe, my Jewish friend in Palestine can come to the gospel of Jesus and be elevated from minority, from being a mere child with no inheritance, into majority where because God is a loving Heavenly Father, He has enriched all who come call upon Him in the name of Jesus with all the spiritual blessings that are possible. Now that's what is referred to in these first three verses. The child heir who, as you go into the fourth verse, becomes mature and enters into blessing as a result of the ministry of Jesus.

Now that ministry of Jesus is further amplified in the fourth and in the fifth verses. How did He make us rich? How is it that you and I this evening can bask in gospel blessings and could sing, if you were prepared to, that lovely little chorus, I'm richer than a millionaire just because he cares. Well, we're enriched by the act of Jesus in redeeming us.

Verse five, that word there in the original is a commercial term. It's the word that's used to describe a business transaction. I want a watch from the jewelers down the road.

I pay out my 50 pounds, the watch becomes mine. I redeem it through the handing over of currency. Here are you and me.

Here are Jews and Gentiles, all sinners, in the bondage, in the tyranny of iniquity and Jesus redeems us. How? Well, by spilling his blood on the cross. He purchases the church of God unto himself.

Redeems us and the consequence, my friend, of our redemption is spelt out in the fifth and the sixth verses. What are they? Well, they're twofold. We are redeemed to the extent that we're adopted into the family of God.

Notice that expression, that we might receive the adoption of sons. Verse five, and the second aspect of our redemption is this. God hath sent forth the spirit of his Son into our hearts, crying, Abba, Father.

Let's take the first thing then that Jesus has done for this mature heir. He has caused him to be adopted into the family circle of God. Now, it's interesting, again going back to the original language, that Paul is now using a Greek term.

He can't say it in the Hebrew language. As far as I know, there isn't a word that is equivalent to this term adoption. Well, from where did he pluck it? What was the context in the Greek stroke Roman world that he has plucked this from? Well, imagine a rich Roman who's childless and he's got a handsome looking little boy in his household who's a slave.

Now, it is possible for that rich Roman who has born no children, has fathered no children, it is possible for him to adopt that slave and to make him therefore in the line of inheritance so that he becomes a son by adoption and therefore ultimately will be blessed with all the material possessions of his father. That's the context of this particular word which Paul uses and indeed the whole illustration he imparts into the gospel message. Let's update this.

Let's say that I adopt a son. So, we have a son in our family and legally speaking he belongs to me. On my death, on the death of my wife, he will receive, assuming we've made our will out in his favor, all that we owned.

But there the analogy falls short of what God has done for us. Because for you people who know that my son is adopted, you would see that there are none of the physical characteristics that are evident in me or in my wife which are duplicated in our son. Because he would be a son by adoption and not a son naturally born through us bearing some resemblance, some similarity to his parents.

Now, the difference between becoming a spiritual mature heir of God and ordinary adoption is worked out in verse 6. Not only are we adopted into the family circle of God, but the very characteristics of our Redeemer break forth in our lives. How can that be the case? Well, by the imparting of the very life of God into our nature. So, the apostle says, God hath sent forth the spirit of his son into your hearts crying, Abba Father.

Nobody, my friend, can ever be a Christian by intellectual ascent. You become a Christian by admitting the lordship of Jesus and knowing the infilling of the Spirit. I know the doctrine of the Spirit or certain aspects of it is very controversial in the 20th century, but I believe with all my heart, having put hours and hours of study and prayer into this subject, that the place to start your doctrine, your understanding of the doctrine of the Holy Spirit, the experimental aspect of it, is Galatians chapter 4 and verse 6. Because you are sons, God hath sent the spirit of his son into your heart crying, Abba Father.

God has sent his son, remarks John Stott, in a very perceptive comment. God has sent his son that we may have the status of sonship and his spirit that we might have the experience. So, I'm not just a child of God because the Bible tells me so.

That's sufficient in and of itself. But bless God, in his economy, in his dealing with me, there's another witness. There are two witnesses to my salvation.

There is the witness of the word, and there is the witness of the spirit. And when the spirit indwells me, evidence of that is given in as much as I cry, Abba Father. I recognize I'm in a personal relationship with God, to the extent that if there's no other Christian in Worthing, and if they'd burnt every religious book that I own, including my Bible, there's nothing that could convince me otherwise.

I know that I'm a child of my heavenly Father, as much as what I know I'm a child of my late earthly Father. So then, verse 7, I'm no more a slave of God, but I'm a servant, I'm a son of God. And if I'm a son of God, then I'm an heir of God through Christ.

And so many tremendous blessings are accorded to me, because I have been made a son of God. Adopted into the family circle of God, and given the very characteristics, in some degree, of the Lord Jesus, in as much as the Holy Spirit has been sent into my heart. And incidentally, before we go on to verse 8, have you noticed how tremendous the Trinitarian doctrine, the teaching of God, Father, Son and Spirit, is in these few verses? Verse 4, God sent forth His Son into the world.

Verse 6, God sent forth the Spirit of His Son into your hearts. The Father, the Son and the Spirit, always combining to bring about our salvation. How anemic, how repugnant, then is this Jesus-only theology that is taught by some of the sects.

God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Spirit, all combining to act in bringing forth my salvation and yours. Now then, from verses 8 and to verse 10, what is the Apostle saying? Do you Galatians tell me, recognizing all this argument, that having been delivered from the bondage of heathenism, you want to go back into it? When you, verse 8, when you didn't know God, you served other gods who actually, as the Apostle Paul in a wry comment, don't exist. You were under bondage to the pagan gods.

When you didn't know God, your life was awful. Verse 9, but now, after you've known God, the freedom that God has brought through the gospel, the assurance of the Holy Spirit, blessing upon blessing, grace upon grace, are you going to tell me that you want to return to those weak and beggarly elements which held you bound in your heathendom? To the extent, verse 10, that you observe days and months and times and years, so that you reduce the evangelical gospel to prohibitions and regulations? Are you going back to that? How up-to-date is the Galatian epistle? Why do I say that? Well, do you remember just, what was it, three months ago, two months ago, I was lecturing here on the Moon Church, the Moon Unification Church, and you know that this man, Mr. Moon, son Moon from Korea, has just been allowed by our government to stay longer in this country, instead of going back to America, where apparently certain of his affairs are being investigated by the, by certain legal bodies there. Now, when you examine the teaching of the Moon Unification Church, as we did together for half an hour or almost an hour, what did we discover? Well, these people who are submissive to the teachings of Moon have been brought under bondage.

This is not a religion of joy, it's a religion of fear, it's a religion of works. Sister Helen Jacobs was telling me the other day that she was wandering down, was it Montague Street or the Gilborne Center, I rather think the latter, she came across a young woman who was a member of this Moon Unification Church. They've had some workers even here in Worthing, which again illustrates the necessity for that lecture that I gave you on this cult.

And this girl offered Helen Jacobs some literature and she immediately, Sister Helen recognized what this girl was and what she was standing for. And she phoned me up later on and she said that, she said to this girl, though she hadn't time to converse with her, she got another appointment, how sorry I am that someone as young and as nice-looking as you are happens to be linked up, enslaved by this particular thing. And Helen told me that the girl's eyes just flooded with tears.

Well, the Moon Doctrine is a doctrine of regulations. It's a justification not by faith but by works. The Children of God sect, you remember I brought you up to date with this movement that is affecting students around the world, that has colonies all over the place.

Again, they've been in Worthing, you may not have heard of them, but they've been here. And what does the Children of God, theology, say in essence? Well, you must do this, you must do the other, you must obey the dictates of Brother Moses who sends his letters around the world in their tens of thousands. Turning again, you see, to the elements, the beggarly elements which bring you into bondage.

What does the Roman Catholic Church stand for? With its penances and its indulgences and its supererogatory grace and its its popes and its purgatories, an addition to the gospel, bringing back men and women to weaken beggarly elements. All these things, you see, they're constantly being imparted, reintroduced by the devil into the Church of Jesus Christ to enslave men and women like you and me. Now, how do you offset this? Well, there's only one way that you can offset it, and that is by knowing the gospel.

It's by being aware of the New Testament. I spent a couple of hours with a lady, she won't mind me saying this in any case, she don't know who it was, who came to see me this morning, very, very concerned because of some particular religious group that's starting up in Worthing, and someone very, very close to her had got embroiled in it. Why was the reason that this particular person had got enslaved by this group? Simply because he was defective of the contents of the New Testament, and someone had come to him and pointed a verse in Genesis and pointed out a verse in Isaiah, then one through in John and another through in Revelation, and they had presented something which was completely contradictory to the main teaching of Scripture.

But there were one or two verses which had been interpreted in a certain way, and this poor fellow had got no grasp, no full grasp of the doctrines of grace to be able to correct the heresy which was being pumped into his mind, and as a result of that he's being slowly sucked into this particular sect. Oh, I tell you, I'm not exaggerating when I sometimes say on a Sunday night that some of our young people, and indeed some of our older friends, they bring me to my knees during the day, God is my witness, with tears in my eyes, when I think of the appalling lack of knowledge that some have concerning the New Testament, and how exposed therefore they are to some of the teachings that are being peddled today. Some of you may have thought that that series on the sects has got nothing to do with us in sleepy old coastal resort of Worthing.

It's got an awful amount to do with us, my friend, and will increasingly have until the day when our Lord Jesus Christ comes back again. So what do we have to do? Well, we must ensure that we don't go back to this slavery from which we have been delivered. The prodigal son was quite right when he said, in the far country, I must arise and go back to my father and say, father, make me as one of your hired servants.

But the prodigal son nowhere, having become a son, having been reinstated into the family circle, is recorded as then saying, make me a slave. Let me be someone who is governed by the regulations and the prohibitions of the household. No, to him was by the grace of his father given a much better destiny.

He had been made a son again. The robe was on his back. The ring was on his shoulders.

He entered fully into his inheritance, and he was proud to live as his father wanted him to live. Now that applies, my dear friends, to you and to me. We've been liberated from the slave market of sin.

A new spirit has been put within us. We are no longer under a bondage, under the tyranny of any legislation at all. Rather, the spirit of Jesus has come into our hearts and lives.

And we want, not out of compulsion, but out of compassion, not of love, to live as he lived and to do what is compatible with those who bear his name. So the apostle Paul has this heart cry, this cri de coeur. I'm afraid of you, verse 11.

I've bestowed labor in vain upon you, my little children. I travail in birth again until Christ be formed in you. So I think we'll leave our study just there for the time being, with this impassioned plea on the part of Paul for the Galatian Christians to return to the elements of the Christian faith.

And I make this my final observation, and one that's already been alighted on this evening. What is necessary to preserve you and me in the day of temptation, in the day when the cults are peddling their pernicious doctrines, is a knowledge of the Word of God, coupled with an experience of the Holy Spirit. It's these twin things which will anchor our souls and keep us close to the Christ of God.

Don't go after novelties. Don't go after necessarily flamboyant personalities. Be involved in the regular, day-by-day, week-by-week worship of the local church, indulging in Bible study, corporately coming together around the throne, around the Word of God, coming together in fellowship around the throne of grace, building one another up, encouraging one another in the holy faith, and taking the gospel of redeeming grace to those who need it so desperately in our locality.

That is the burden of the Apostle Paul for the Galatians, and it's a burden which the Holy Spirit puts on my heart for you, as well as for me now in 1978. Well, we say these things to the praise and honor of the God who delivered us from the slave market of sin. And our great God and Father, we thank you for the assurance that Jesus does live.

We bless you for the way your Word has underlined this evening that God sent his Son, and then God sent his Spirit. We praise you, Lord, for the way that the Trinity is involved in our salvation. We thank you for the record of it in this book.

We praise you for the experience of it within our hearts. We know that Jesus lives. Lord, we pray as we bask in the blessings and the freedoms of the gospel for those who are under the tyranny of apathy, those who are held enslaved by pagan religion, and those who have succumbed to the teaching of the sects in these days.

Lord, send to us another Moses. Send to us many deliverers who shall lead people from a greater bondage than there was in Egypt, out of the tyranny, into the freedom of gospel blessings, and in the role of emancipator. Use each one of us here for the sake of the Savior.

Amen.