Why Turn Back? Pt. 2

I remember to do the little Forgiveness of Sins break. Okay, Galatians chapter 4. Last week we were on these verses, 8, 9. And I didn't get to 10, so this morning I'll get to verse 10, but Paul says in Galatians 4.8, however, at that time when you did not know God, you were slaves to those which by nature are no gods. But now that you have come to know God, or rather be known by God, how is it that you turn again to the weak and worthless elemental things to which you desire to be enslaved all over again? So that's what we had last week. So today we start with verse 10.

You observe days and months and seasons and years. I fear for you that perhaps I have labored over you in vain. I beg of you, brethren, become as I am, for I have become as you are. You have done me no wrong, but you know that it was because of a bodily illness that I preached the gospel to you the first time. and that which was a trial to you in my bodily condition, you did not despise or loathe, rather you received me as an angel of God, as Jesus Christ himself. That's what we're going to today. So let's start out with verse 10, Galatians chapter 4.

You observe days and months and seasons and years, and that observe is, I think it's paratereo, and it's you keep on keeping fast to these days, months, seasons, and years for your religious observance. It's in the present tense, you keep on doing it, and this is the middle voice, so they have this really intense interest or personal profit in their religious observance, just like these Judaizers are teaching them to do. So Merriman calls it, they keep these days and months and seasons scrupulously and meticulously. And Merriman says, legalists are always notorious nitpickers. They major in the minors, and they minor in the majors. So that's what's happening to the Galatians.

But what, we don't have, Holly Hills, we're grace-based, so we don't have any of these kind of observances that we do. We're not a religious church or a fellowship. But what are our majors, or what should be our majors? I had that question to myself, and I thought a good mission statement for us and the Galatians would be the one that Paul provided to the Colossians in Colossians 1. And Paul says, I ask that you may be filled with the knowledge of His will in all spiritual wisdom and understanding, so that you will walk in a manner worthy of the Lord, to please him in all respects, bearing fruit in every good work, and increasing in the knowledge of God, strengthened with all power according to his glorious might, for the attaining of all steadfastness and patience, joyously giving thanks to the Father, who has qualified us to share in the inheritance of the saints in light. That's that's it that's a good major you can major in that that's a good goal Yeah, what about Christmas I Yeah, we do.

Oh, and the Bronco game, which starts at 11. I wasn't thinking about that, actually. No, we do Christmas and Easter. We do Christmas, right? Well, we remember his birth, but I mean, that's a value. And when we do the breakfast. The Lord's table. And that's observance. So that's good. That's command. Or commanded to. Yeah, he's given several things.

Yeah, so not totally devoid of it, but it's keeping it in grace, yeah. There really isn't anything wrong with traditions as long as you don't base your faith, your justification and sanctification on it. Yeah, right. Yeah, it doesn't give you any saving value, both for justification or sanctification, right?

If you do it, you should do it with thanksgiving, right? Because you can. And it's a privilege to do, kind of, more. If you think about it, you know, the biblical approach to those two holidays, both Christmas and Easter, are incarnation. We really praise the Lord for coming as a human. And then, of course, Easter, the resurrection's everything to Christianity. So we put these in right perspective. There's nothing wrong with them, I think. But boy, much of Christianity doesn't. Right. Yeah, and I'm thinking of the part of Christianity or the denominations that that's it, that's what they do.

It's all the tradition. There's ones who are starting to recognize Advent right now. It's the first week of Advent, the second week of Advent, and they follow this prescription. things like that. There's other traditions. that are not as obvious. And you find those in our churches where you're not allowed to do certain things. And that's a tradition. And I think that's really what was going on with the Galatians.

The Judaizers were saying, OK, you're saved, but now you've got to do this, this, this, this, and this. In our churches today, you're not allowed to go to the movies, you're not allowed to dance, you're not allowed to, you know, all kinds of different traditions. Yeah, caffeine, all that stuff.

So, the days are the weekly Sabbaths, is what that refers to, Jewish Sabbaths. The months are the Jewish New Moons, that makes sense, because the moon renews itself every month with the full moon. The seasons, there's an annual schedule of feast weeks. There's Passover, Feast of Unleavened Bread, Day of Atonement. So that's what days, months, and seasons means in verse 10.

A bonus question is, why Christians, and like, we have a Seventh-day Adventist friend, and so my question is, why don't Christians recognize Saturday as their day of Sabbath or rest, or use that as their day of worship? It's commanded in the Old Testament, and the Adventists are really adamant about that.

And this is Merriman, this is the answer he gives. It's our Sabbath is now every day of the week. Hebrews 3 and 4, we are now entered into rest, and our rest is Christ himself. In Matthew 11, 28, he says, I will give you rest, and he has given that rest. He is our Sabbath. He is our rest, I think, is the best answer to that.

And I didn't credit him, but this is credit of Bob Eccle. The little spin around there. You see that? In fact, in PowerPoint it was labeled the Eccle effect. It makes me dizzy. So, on to verse 11, he says, I fear for you that perhaps I labored over you in vain. And that's, again, a present tense, I'm fearing for you. Again, middle voice. Now, Paul has great, intense interest personally in the fact that they're turning away from the grace-promise-faith way of salvation and sanctification over to law, work, and effort. He says, maybe all my labor was all a wasted effort.

And it echoes Galatians 3.4.

In Galatians 3.4 he asks, did you suffer so many things in vain, if indeed it was in vain? Same sort of construction there, was this in vain? Like in verse 11, is his labor in vain? And did you, Galatians, suffer things in vain? I'm sure they suffered for becoming believers up there in Galatia with all the the paganism and things, and the sufferings that they experienced from the Judaizers.

Paul's rhetorical strategy here, and it's lasted now all of chapter 3. is it's all reasoned arguments and it's forensic reasoning, so forensic meaning Greek logic is what his letter is all kind of couched in that. So in chapter 3, 1 through 5, he argues from their personal experience. How did they receive the Holy Spirit? You know, was it by the law or was it by grace? And he says, Christ was displayed as publicly crucified before you. That's from their personal experience.

And then he starts to argue from Old Testament teaching. Chapter 3, verse 6 through 14, Abraham believed God and it was reckoned to him as righteousness. Then he moves on to the priority of Abraham's promise over the law, the law was inferior, in verses 15 through 22. And then, kind of last week, we looked at And the week before, he argues rhetorically or forensically from a perspective of the superiority of maturity as a fully grown son in in God, and not from being a child. And he went through all of that.

So that's all rhetorical strategy. But then now he's switching in this little, this is a little transition verses that he's in. It contrasts that with, this is an argument from a personal standpoint. argument from, he's making a plea, he's pleading with him, I beg of you, become as I am. You did not loathe or despise me, but you treated me as an angel, here in chapter 4, verses 11 through 14. After a little bit more of this personal plea next week, he reverts back to the rhetorical reasoning, because he goes into law versus bondage, and Sarah versus Hagar. So he goes back to that. But today is just a very personal argument. So has it all been in vain, his labors? He was working to the point, he says, to the point of exhaustion. That's the force of that word, labored. Was it all fruitless?

He did not want his efforts to be without lasting effect or devoid of lasting value due to the Judaizers pulling the Galatians away from them, pulling them away from grace and into their system of law, merit, works. Quotation from Merrill Tenney here, he says, such a reaction from the higher way of faith to the old way or back to the old way of ritual could have only a damaging effect on the lives of these Galatians. There is no spiritual darkness more dense than the darkness brought on by light rejected. The return to bondage would be fatal to their spiritual progress and would produce a result quite opposite to the one which they sought. in turning to legalism for perfection.

And I take that perfection to mean sanctification. But the Galatians, I was thinking, someone brought this out, I think it was, let's see, Strauss, Leland Strauss, he brought this out, he compared it to the Jews, and so their desire to turn back to legal things, to the law, or to law merit works. They're in good company here, he says, from the very people who are supervising this reversal, the Jews.

So we go to Numbers 11, verses 4 and 5, and we have the Israelites in the Sinai Desert, And that says, the rabble who were among them, the Israelites, had greedy desires. And also the sons of Israel wept again and said, who will give us meat? We remember the fish that we used to eat free in Egypt, the cucumbers and the melons and the leeks and the onions and the garlic. But now our appetite is gone, sadly. There's nothing at all to look at except for this manna. They're complaining about the manna. Does anyone know how that ends up, this little complaint?

I think they have the quail for the rest of the 40 years, don't they? Every once in a while they get, so they get quail, so they get their meat. And then I was thinking, boy, I'm gonna do a little visual of this here. So here's where they were, the Israelites, they were in Egypt there in the Nile Valley. And there they are. God brings them out of Egypt. along their journey. And so what they get by going into the land of Canaan, the promised land, they get the promised land, they get land flowing with milk and honey, they get God's protection on every side.

They get adoption as sons, it says in Romans 9.4. They get the glory and covenants, they get the giving of the law, the temple service, the beautiful temple, Solomon's temple, think of that. And they get all the promises that God gives them. So there they are. But then they say, wait, this is kind of hard, on second thought, Maybe we should go back. Let's stick with what we had in Egypt. We had bondage, we had toil. Egypt was our state sponsor. We had suffering over there. This mana is boring. If we go back, we get this. some fish, and we get cucumbers, and we get some melons. Yeah. You know, Andrew, I heard... How much did they get?

You know, ultimately, Jay Verna McGee said once, and I didn't try to document this, maybe others have some insight, that manna came in all different forms and flavors, that it was not just one kind of stale, Oh, really? Nutrient item. I don't know. Does anybody else know anything about that? Jill said it provided all the minerals and nutrients they needed for sustainability. But the palatability he claimed was there was not just a boring kind of substance. I don't know whether that's true or not.

It needed some cumin. Yeah. It does deserve some spices. Tasting like honey, right? A honey wafer or something? Anyway, let's go on. Yeah, it's pretty sweet. I think that, let's see here. Yes, there's one more. There's the leeks, garlic, and onions. Boy, that looks like it. You want to show us the manna next? Good. No, because they were bored of that, right? Plus, I don't think we... Yeah, you have a picture of the manna. That'd be good. We don't know.

I'm pulling your leg. I'm pulling your leg. So, as the Israelites did this, you know, the Galatians were, it's very parallel to what they were doing, in what they were doing with Paul. So he says in verse 12, I beg of you, brethren, become as I am, for I have become as you are.

You have done me no wrong. And I kept thinking of this song this week, working up this lesson. Such a personal plea, but it's almost like they've lost their loving feeling for Paul. You remember that song, The Righteous Brothers? It's kind of the same thing if you apply that song to this situation. You've lost that love. He's really crying about this, Paul, in very tender terms.

And he calls them brothers here in verse 12, whereas before, in I think 3.1, he calls them foolish Galatians. And now he's back to brothers. So he says, become as I am, and he's free from legalism. He's accepted in the Beloved. Paul is blessed with every spiritual blessing. He's heavenly, and we are heavenly, and I got this from Ephesians 1. He holds on to his inheritance. He's before the Father, holy, blameless, before the Father in love. He's sealed with Christ in the Holy Spirit of promise. And that's from Ephesians 1.

But when he came to them, he came to them as they were. He arrived to them and lived among them as a Gentile. He did not reference the Mosaic Law in any way in his living with them. And think of how Peter failed in this. We've looked at that several times earlier in this book of Galatians. Paul became one with them in Christian compassion. He gave up his Jewish credentials, he ate with them, suffered with them, etc. And think again of Peter pulling away when he did. they may see Christ in him and become imitators of Paul." So that's what I have for the become as I am, for I have become as you are. So he identified with him. So he's asking them to identify with him.

He says, you have done me no wrong. And that just means that I don't have any personal grievances with any of you in this matter. This is from Merriman, in the matter of why you're reverting. I'm not striking back at anyone personally. is what that little phrase means. So it's not a personal attack on anyone.

He's just trying to get them all to turn back around. In fact, he pleads with him, do you remember how you first received me? Then he goes into verse 13, and this is how he first came to them, it was because of a bodily illness that they preached the gospel to you the first time. Now what is this bodily ailment that you have all suffered? It could be malaria. It could be eye problems. There's lots of speculation. Yeah, good. Yeah, exactly. A lot of speculation on a lot of theories. I was surprised that Wiest is adamant about this eye problem, ophthalmolia. Yeah, he really brings, he stakes his claim on that. Because it's in the location, the region where it occurred a lot, the lowlands along that coastline of Asia Minor.

And that's where he first went in the first missionary journey. Paul and Barnabas set out from Antioch in Syria with John Mark to reach Perga, and first they went to Cyprus. But instead of hopping along the coastline, they go up north to Antioch of Pisidia up there in Galatia. So, a lot of scholars think that he went up there to get north because the theory is that people with this condition they can recover in the drier northern climates. It's probably a little higher elevation, too, away from the sea.

So, this optothymolium must have been some sort of virus or something or bacteria. Dr. Bob? Yeah. Ophthalmia just implies a disease of the eye. Oh, it's a general thing? It doesn't specify it. Okay. So, another piece of evidence is Galatians 4.15, you would have plucked out your own eyes and given them to me. But some say that's a common Greek phrase, like, I'll give you the shirt off my back. Very common in Greek sayings.

And then Galatians 6.11, he says, see what large letters I am writing to you with my own hand. As evidence, his eyesight is somehow compromised.

He had a repulsive appearance, because we learn in verse 14 that they did not despise him or loathe him. Hey Andrew? Yeah. In 1 Corinthians chapter 2 we read, And when I came to you, brethren, I did not come with superiority of speech or of wisdom. It goes on to say, He came in weakness and fear and in much trembling.

His physical appearance wasn't that of a Charles Atlas. And that may have had something to do with what they were talking about. As a matter of fact, when Paul and Barnabas first started out, it was Barnabas and Paul. And I think Barnabas was the head guy for a while, because Paul didn't speak that well.

But then suddenly it changed. Yeah, right. And we'll look at that. When they get to Lystra, they called Barnabas Zeus, and they called Paul Hermes. Hermes, Paul was speaking by that point. They could tell that Barnabas was the kind of head honcho, but Paul was doing all the speaking at that point.

You know, Andrew, I find it interesting that we have no physical description of the Lord Jesus Christ. And for Paul to be humanly apparent for people to notice him, would have been a mistaken option for the Lord. We do have somewhat of a description of Christ in Isaiah 53. On the cross.

Well, he is said to have been a man of comely appearance. He didn't look outstanding. And you get that same impression about Paul, but there's nothing about him that is personally and entertaining, right, or attractive. Even the name Paul means little or humble.

Yeah. So it's kind of an interesting idea. Yeah, he might have been short of stature and things like that. And then maybe something, the thorn in the flesh might have been something with his appearance. I don't, yeah, it's all speculation. So this map I'm just showing you where he, can you see my cursor there?

He starts out in Antioch, Syria. They go to Salamis. Cyprus, Paphos, and then they go to Perga, and that's what this first missionary journey started out as. But then, instead of going this way, they go up north to Antioch of Pisidia. So they were thinking that's because he needed to buck this eye condition. And then they hop over to Iconium and Lystra and Derby. So this right here is what I call the danger zone, I guess, of this eye condition that people get.

So there's just a... So does Weisquiet quote some things of the time period he sees about that? Yeah. Yeah, he really does. And then he looks at it from the Greek, and he says there's nothing in the Greek that would go against that interpretation. So he kind of likes that. And then everyone else is up in the air about it.

So it's because of this bodily illness that I preach to you the gospel the first time in verse 13, and he goes on in verse 14, and that which was a trial to you in my bodily condition, you did not despise or loathe, but you received me as an angel of God, as Christ himself.

But I have a theory, and my theory is what about this Lystra, this town of Lystra? Paul was stoned there and left for dead in Acts 14. So, I'd say that would have left a mark, right? If you were stoned and they thought you were dead, and maybe they had to nurse him back to health. He had open wounds, and so the people there felt compassion for him, and they took it upon themselves to nurse him back to health. Maybe that's it. You know, maybe it's due to the stoning that he came to them.

So, another thought too I had is, let's go with the eye condition. Maybe these people up there, the Galatians, they were expert caregivers in this. eye condition thing, you know, because everyone was going up there to beat this optothomalia. Maybe they were like the Saratoga Springs, New York. And, you know, they had the balms and the spas to get rid of this condition. Who knows?

But anyway, they cared for him. And I note that that word trial, That which was a trial to you in my bodily condition, that's perosmos, that's a perosmos trial, a fiery trial. Not a trial with view towards approval, but I think in caring for Paul and then becoming believers, right, that kind of turns into a document trial, a godly approved trial, does it not? So before they were believers, it was a fiery trial for them. So, for whatever reason, they nursed Paul back to health, and they were not reforced by him.

And here's an interesting point of comparison here regarding them receiving Paul as an angel of God, as Christ Jesus himself. And that comparison is this. In Acts 14 at Lystra, Paul and Barnabas healed a man lame since birth. He heals him in verse 10 of Acts 14.

And the people's reaction there is they're gods. The gods have become like men and have come down to us. And they called Paul Hermes and they called Barnabas Zeus. Paul and Barnabas react by saying, men, why are you doing these things? We are also men of the same nature as you and preach the gospel to you that you should turn from these vain things to a living God who made the heaven and the earth. and the earth and the sea and all that is in them. So that's the reaction of the Galatians when Paul and Barnabas first came.

And the ones who believed treat Paul and Barnabas not as gods, but they correctly perceived that they were sent as messengers from the one true God, and even Christ himself. So you see those two sides there, either they're worshipped as Greek gods, Or, they're correctly perceived as being sent from the one true God. So, Paul, I think, is saying, where is that zeal that you had, even when you were wrong in calling us Zeus and Hermes? Where is that zeal?

Why are you pulling away from us and being aloof now?" It seems to be the force of what he's saying in these verses. Again, I reference the Righteous Brothers song. Yeah, because they are holding themselves aloof from him. So, final thoughts, and I made a new man here. Yeah. Is that AI generated? Deep thoughts. Yes, I did. And then they gave me these people who were doing this Zen meditation. I said, no, no, give me an American. I'm from the US. So they put a cowboy hat on. So there he is.

So why turn back to marking religious milestones, days, weeks, months, years, formalism, sacrifices, laws, codes of ethics, traditions, principles of religion, and knowledge, and the kind of touchstones of wisdom? Why turn back to food, drink, and drink, and festivals, self-abasement, and this is from Colossians 2, worship of angels, visions. This is what Paul was warning the Colossians against, visions, decrees. And in doing so, you lose Christ. And that comes out in what he says, he tells the Philippians in 3.8. Yea, verily, I count all things to be lost for the excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord, for whom I have suffered the loss of all things, and do count them but refuge or garbage, that I may gain Christ.

And Colossians 2.20, if you have died with Christ to these elementary principles of the world, why, as if you are living in the world, do you submit yourself to decrees? And I add there, why do you submit yourself not only to decrees, but the list on the left there, all those things. Because we have Christ now. Go for those old things, you lose Christ. You do away with those things, and you gain Christ. So, there it is. So, that's it.

I'll close us up in prayer here. Our Heavenly Father, we thank you for what you have for us in your word, and the richness of your word, and it's meant for our instruction, and we can depend on it. And we can greater depend on you. And we thank you that we have the living Lord Jesus Christ in our hearts. And we pray these things in Jesus' name. Amen.