Heirs of God - Part 1
Galatians 4:1-3 · Randy Peterman · Jul 4, 2010
Galatians (2010), No. 27
Holly Hills Bible Church
https://www.hollyhillsbiblechurch.org/teaching/messages/492628241962

Transcribed from the recording by SermonAudio, so expect the occasional misheard word.

What have we been talking about in Galatians chapter 3? Where did we leave off? Roger left off last week. It's been a week. It's been a week, I know. For me, sometimes it's been five minutes. Did we talk about the promise and the law? So Paul, as he's been talking to these Galatian readers, has been trying to communicate with them about why the law is irrelevant to their lives and is not applicable to the believer in the New Testament saint. Would everybody agree with that overarching statement about the Book of Galatians? It's not about the law, it's about walking in faith and relationship. Galatians 4, 1-7 is the passage that I've been tasked to teach this week and next week.

And this week we'll take a look at 1-3 and next week we'll look at 4-7. Paul, as he normally does in his writing style, is setting us up for disappointment in the first half, and then setting us up for relief in the second half. So he presents a logical problem and a logical argument that makes you go, oh no, what are we going to do? And then the second half here is, here's how God dealt with it. We're not going to do anything.

So, this morning we're going to take a look at verses 1-3 and I'm going to go ahead and read those out loud. He says, Now I say, as long as the heir is a child... Oh. Who are we heirs? Why are we heirs? From last week? The week before? Sons in Christ? Okay. Now, so he's left off with us being heirs of Abraham and heirs of Christ and sons of God in the last passage. But now he's going to come in and he's going to bring this concept of heirs in.

So now I say, as long as the heir is a child, he does not differ at all from a slave, although he is owner of everything. But he is under guardians and managers until the date set by the father. So also we, while we were children, were held in bondage under the elemental things of the world." Okay, so we have this heir that is a child.

When we talk about these things, we have something that he's building this on for these Jewish believers, or these believers who are formerly Jewish, okay? And He's talking about this airship. And by that I don't mean a Zeppelin. I'm talking an airship, h-e-i-r, space, or hyphen ship. Actually, I don't hyphenate it in the handout, but you'll know what I mean. An airship.

What are these people heirs of in the Old Testament saint context? If you're an Old Testament saint, what are you an heir of? promise okay and and he's talking about he's been talking about the Abrahamic Covenant right in chapter 3 the promise that's there what are the things that people are going to be heirs of under the Abrahamic Covenant what are the Jews specifically going to be heirs of Stan? Particularly the land. The land?

Okay. So we have three things, basically. I'm looking for three things. What are the three things? Okay, so we've got the land, the seed, and the blessing. That's a very special G. So we have the land, the seed, and the blessing that are coming, and that was given to Abraham in his covenant, and then three subsequent covenants were given. What were those three covenants?

Abrahamic David and the Mosaic New Covenant. Okay, so the Mosaic Covenant has to do with the blessing, okay? Anybody familiar with the Mosaic Covenant? What happens in the Mosaic Covenant? If you do this, evil will come true. Okay, so there's conditions and the nation of Israel has to do something and then they get blessings. Now, but what's the problem? What's the other half of the Mosaic Covenant? They're cursings. It's not just, hey, if you do this, it's going to be awesome. But it's also, if you don't, it's going to be not awesome.

And so if we take a look at Deuteronomy chapter 28, and let's quickly turn there just because I think it's good to remember the context that is given that these people were living under. So if we take a look at Deuteronomy chapter 28, 1-13, we're going to see the blessings. Let's see here, would somebody mind reading 1-13 out loud? I know it's a long passage. Oh, somebody would mind. Okay, so I will.

Now it shall be if you diligently obey the Lord your God, being careful to do all his commandments which I command you today, the Lord your God will set you high above all the nations of the earth. All these blessings will come upon you and overtake you if you obey the Lord your God.

Blessed shall you be in the city, and blessed shall you be in the country. Blessed shall be the offspring of your body, and the produce of your ground, and the offspring of your beasts, the increase of your herd, and the young of your flock. Blessed shall be your basket and your kneading bowl. Blessed shall you be when you come in, and blessed shall you be when you go out.

The Lord shall cause your enemies who rise up against you to be defeated before you. They will come out against you one way, and will flee before you seven ways. The Lord will command the blessing upon you in your barns and in all that you put your hand to, and He will bless you in the land which the Lord your God gives you. The Lord will establish you as a holy people to Himself, as He swore to you, if you keep the commandments of the Lord your God and walk in His ways. So all the people of the earth will see that you are called by the name of the Lord, and they will be afraid of you. The Lord will make you abound in prosperity, in the offspring of your body, and in the offspring of your beast, and in the produce of the ground, and in the land which the Lord swore to your fathers to give you. The Lord will open for you his good storehouse, the heavens, to give rain to your land in its season, and to bless all the work of your hand.

And you shall lend to many nations, but you shall not borrow. The Lord will make you the head and not the tail, and you only will be above, and you will not be underneath, if you listen to the commandments of the Lord your God, which I charge you today to observe them carefully."

Alright, so that's the blessing side. That's pretty awesome if you think about that. If someone said, hey, America, we'll get more broad. This is arrogant if we were to take this. It is 4th of July though, right? here we have God, He wants to make a covenant with you, United States. If you do this, this is going to happen. Would anybody want to sign off on that? Do you think Congress would sign off on that? This Congress? This Congress, probably not. I knew I was going to bring politics into this. But you see, this kind of a promise would be compelling.

I mean, I think if you said, I've got 613 laws. A lot of them are about what you can eat and not eat and just, you know, taking care of general things. And if you obey them, I'm going to bless you with all these things. Sure. I mean, I hate to use the phrase, but it's a no-brainer. You take it on.

But the second half of this is that they're given the promise of a curse in Verse 15, he says, but it shall come about if you do not obey the Lord your God to observe to do all his commandments and his statutes with which I charge you today, that all these curses will come upon you and overtake you. Cursed shall you be in the city and cursed shall you be in the country. And he goes on and he basically presents a negative of the blessings. Okay, so he negates all those things that were coming.

Your crops will be destroyed. Your bread basket will be empty. You'll be under people. You'll be the tail side. It's not pretty. So, when you talk about the blessings in the Mosaic Covenant, God clarified and made a covenant with the nation of Israel, and this is part of the airship that these Jews were trying to build up. The Judaizers were coming and saying, this is great! Don't you want this? Now, the seed. Paul addressed the seed. in chapter 3. So we won't spend too much time with the seed, but the seed Paul emphasizes is Christ and the nation of Israel. But then also, what else did he say? We just finished it in the last verse of 3. In 29. Who else were the descendants?

The church, those who are saved by faith in the New Testament. So we have that one, I'm going to put a checkmark next to it. Now the land is another blessing. When is the land going to come and be fulfilled? In the millennium. In the millennium, okay, and that's in parcel with the new covenant, which is also in there.

I should clarify that the seed is also emphasized in what's called the Davidic, or the covenant with David. The Davidic covenant. The New Covenant, I'm going to abbreviate because I can, will address the land and many other things. But those three things are tied in with the promises to Abraham that Paul is talking about when he says, the heir is a child.

So that's a lot of introduction to just the heir is a child, but I wanted to make sure that we had this in some context. If you were a Jew at this time, that would be the context that you understood this in, and I wanted to make sure that as 2,000 years later, people from generally not too messianic or Jewish backgrounds, that we have that as a context.

The next thing you'll see here is a chart on the handout, and it has position, function, and temporally. This is a chart I borrowed basically from the notes of, oh shoot, this is why I put footnotes and I didn't do it on this one. Merriman, thank you. Anyway, so it's Ron Merriman who put together this. where he talks about the position of the airship, because Paul uses a secular argument when he's talking about this airship. The position is that this child is like a servant.

His lordship is perspective, but it's not actual yet. Have all of the promises of this covenant been fulfilled yet? to Abraham. No, they have not. What is prospective? It's future? Yeah, it's coming. It may come, or it's going to come at some point in time. But also, in the case of the secular situation, it's also tentative. Now, we know that God is faithful, so he's going to fulfill these covenants. But this is tentative in a secular context.

Maybe this isn't a good question, but When you talk about the New Covenant, you're talking about, as far as the Jews are concerned, Jeremiah 31, 31, right? Yeah. Okay, now that's not the same New Covenant, though, for the Church, right? Isn't it different? There's different aspects in the Jeremiah one than there really is for the Church, correct? Well, this is where there's lots of disagreement on what the New Covenant is and if there is a New Covenant for the Church.

But you're talking about Jeremiah 31. I'm talking about just for Abraham in this case. I'm going to avoid answering that question directly just simply because I think that's one that the elders need to handle because it gets a bit more technical than I'm ready to on the fly. But specifically you're talking about the Jewish covenant here. Yeah, this is just Jeremiah 31 for the Jews.

So the airship positionally is perspective. Now, under the law, they serve under the law, but it also has some perspective, or these things are going to come. If you don't fulfill the law, what do the Jews have? They've got a promise. What's the promise? It's the curse, okay? So there's some issues with position there. The next thing I've got on here that Ron put together was function.

In the secular airship, they were under the watch or care of a guardian or a steward. The law behaves as a guardian or a steward of those who are submitted to it. And we're going to go into what guardian and steward implies in the Greek as we move forward, but I just wanted to bring this chart out. ahead of time, so we kind of have some context. And then temporarily, or in the context of time, the relationship is presently, for a secular airship, of being powerless, guarded, and it continues until the point of time chosen by the Father. Now that's an interesting element there.

How many of you, when you think about becoming an heir, do you think of wills? Like, oh, I'm going to receive this from my parents, I'm in their will, I'm going to get... I don't know what it is I'm going to get, but I'm going to get the thing, the inheritance. But in this case, this has to do with a time chosen by the father to receive the fullness of the inheritance, or taking on the fullness of sonship. And so, this is a particularly Roman concept.

When did you become an adult in Jewish culture, does anybody know off the top of their heads? About 13, or Mitzvah? Yes, it's 12 or 13. When do you, in the Greek culture, you became an adult at 18. And you were fully an adult. In the Roman culture, it was when dad said so. Which is kind of a different context for us, because we tend to think of it as, oh well, here in the United States, 18 you're an adult, 21 you're an adult who can drink and gamble, And so we've got these things that are in play. But in this context, the Roman culture, it was when the father said.

That could be 27. I don't know why 27, but it could be 27. So you're at the mercies of the father for this statement of adulthood. Now I think that's actually kind of an interesting concept as a parent, but we're not going to go into that because that's a total ragged trail. Let's dig in more deeply at the different elements of this.

An heir was someone who received an assigned portion of another person's property. Paul is bringing that out again to draw out the weaknesses of the law in contrast to what? What is he contrasting the law with? with grace. So he's saying, hey, this is a problem that the law faces that God's already dealt with. Christ already dealt with this problem, and so I'm going to contrast this for you.

If you were being confused by somebody who's coming in trying to just put a little bit of law in, we're just going to bring a little bit of law in. If somebody says to you, hey, this thing comes with this state of being a subject instead of being treated as an adult. Would you get excited about that?

You know, it's later on in the notes, but one of the things as I was studying this, I was thinking, nobody wants to be called a child. Hey, baby! You know, if somebody calls you a baby in elementary school, that's a big deal. Hey, don't call me a baby, I'm not a baby.

I'm eight, you know, or however old somebody might be. But in this case, the young child word there would be basically from an infant on up until adulthood, right before adulthood. So it doesn't specify necessarily a specific age, but you're not in charge. So he's bringing out this negativity that comes along with the law. So we have this underage child, and if you're a Jew, and you know that at 13 I'm going to be an adult.

What are you doing before you're an adult with your life? You're being constantly under the supervision and the watchful eye of the people that you have as your parents and probably your grandparents and the rest of the town. And they're going to be watching you, and they're going to be watching you and lording over you poor decisions. You know, especially under the law. What happens if you get a kid that's too far out of hand under the law? They can be stoned and killed.

So the Jews, when you say, you know, here's boundaries and here's the law and this is a big, you know, this is a curse, not just a nice blessing that comes along with this inheritance, that's a big deal. It's not a small thing to be told that you're a child and that you're under this supervision.

And then he goes on to say that even though you are owner, it is though you are a slave because you do not have the full rights to this inheritance. As a believer, do you have full rights to the inheritance? We're going to go into that more next week. But if somebody said, hey, you can have full rights to your inheritance or you can have potential rights to your inheritance. Which one are you going to pick? You know, it would be pretty silly to just do a half. Oh yeah, well, I'm okay with not having full rights to the inheritance.

And so Paul, he's emphasizing this. I've got a quote from Chester McCauley here that I want to read. I just thought it was really clear and useful information. He says, Galatians 4, 1 through 7 must be viewed historically to be understood. In antiquity, the moment of growing up was a climactic event.

How many of you remember turning 18 in the United States? Felicia, is it 18? 18. Okay. All right. How many of you remember turning 18 and it was a big deal? My dad scared the crud out of me about turning 18.

See, my dad is, have any of you noticed he's a detail guy? If you ask him for information, he can usually give you way too much. If you ask him about the New Covenant, he'll probably be able to send you 37 documents. Your inbox will be flooded, and you'll be like, it's too much. I just wanted the one document with the easy handout. In other words, he's a data dump dude. Yeah, he will definitely give you all the data. Although he's getting better at that, I will say that he gives you less information.

But at turning 18, I was scared. Because my dad had told me, you will be legally responsible for yourself. You can go out and crash the car and that burden and weight falls on you, not on me as your father. Oh, and you can sign legal contracts and sign your whole life away and you can be in debt for the whole rest of your life. You can lose all your possessions. All of these things will be yours. And so at 17 and 364 and a half days, I was scared of midnight. because I was going to turn 18, and this was a monumental moment where I suddenly was going to have to be fully responsible for myself.

And your dad was, whee! My dad actually was tremendous through all of it, but he had always told me that, well, starting at about junior high, I remember him saying, It is your mother and myself's responsibility to prepare you for adulthood so that at 18, the government considers you an adult and we can consider you an adult too. And so for me, 18 came with a lot of weight in part because I knew what was expected of me.

But anyways, I've totally stopped reading Macaulay's quote. But in antiquity, the moment of growing up was a climactic event. And I think that that is generally the case for most adults, or for most people. But how many of you have seen people who are in their 20s or 30s or 40s or 50s or 60s who still haven't figured out that they're grown-ups yet?

The thing is, I remember at about 31 thinking, you know what, I should probably figure this maturity stuff out. I have young children, and I have commitments, and I have things that I've got to figure out. I'd let my finances go to heck in a handbasket, I'd let a lot of things go way out of line, and I had not figured out growing up.

It carried both religious and legal significance. In Judaism, a boy entered manhood after his twelfth birthday, becoming Oops, I have a typo there. A son of the law. Okay, so legally, in the eyes of the law, he was a son in the Jewish culture. In the Greek world, this occurred at age 18. The same emphasis was upon the assumption of full responsibility as an adult. Under Roman law, there was a time for coming of age. There is evidence that this was not as fixed as others with the age of maturity left the judgment of the father.

It is probable that Paul is using the Roman custom as his illustration. It makes sense based on his illustration that, especially since the time of the father is mentioned, that it's the Roman mindset. Furthermore, it should be understood that being a son or daughter, and this is Adam Macaulay's quote, in Roman culture did not guarantee a part and parcel and that it was not a full sonship until after the father went through the ceremony of making you the son.

What does that mean for you if you are not sure if you're going to be the heir? Full uncertainty, butterflies, everything that goes almost with the full negative thing because you're just, you just feel like it's so doggone conditional, I don't know if I'm going to stand it. Sure.

Maybe you are trying to please him in various ways, but there's the motive of, if I don't, I don't get it. Yeah, so it might be selfish motivation and it's not necessarily out of love. How many of you, I'm just going to bring this up because it's related to what Alicia just said, how many of you have ever found yourself thinking, what's the minimum I have to do to make God happy? When I was a babe in Christ, I was thinking, I need to figure out what God wants so I can do it, so I can at least make him happy. Get him off my back so I can go to heaven fun. I remember thinking that, and I'm glad that no other hands are raised, but I had that problem.

Until a child was of legal age and had gone through the receptions of the Son in the Roman culture, it would be viewed as a child and needing to be under supervision. Now, Paul gives us two different kinds of supervision in this passage. He says a guardian would be set over the child. and that guardian would represent the father. If you went out, okay, think of this as a nanny, if you will.

Jessica's sister Kelsey is a nanny and she goes out there and she's responsible for those children and the decisions that they make when she goes out. Apparently they go to Target quite frequently and fortunately she hasn't had to buy them stuff that they've accidentally broken or whatnot, so that's good. But this person would go out and have legal responsibility and would be in charge of making final decisions for what that child had. So who is the owner of the finances when they go out on this errand?

Let's have a pretend errand. They need to go buy a clay jar. The father is the owner of the money and he's Given some for this child, but the steward this guardian is the one who's going to go make the decision the child Might say I really like that one. It has cool horses and the steward says no we're gonna spend we're gonna buy the $5 pot and It doesn't have any horses on it, but that's what you get So the steward gets to make or the guardian gets to make that decision and today that's the government, right?

I have a feeling that as this class progresses it's going to get more and more political. So he mentions the Guardian and then he mentions a manager, and the manager was over a household. He would be in charge of the household and probably also the financial stewardship. Now here's an interesting thing. Why is it that in our culture this doesn't sound like a normal idiom?

How many of you at home have a separate person under you that is not your spouse that makes these decisions? Okay, under you is probably not the right word there to use in spouse context, I apologize. But we don't have another person. I don't have a chief steward in my house that I assign making sure that they're in charge of the finances. Nor do I have a guardian that I send out with Abigail or Evelyn. We don't do this in our culture.

It was not always the case where this was happening in New Testament times, okay? But this was something that would happen in the wealthier households, and it was not abnormal, so people would be familiar with the context. But the steward would be in charge of the whole household, this manager, And it was his job to oversee that things were continuing to grow. While the upper class person that was in this household, the man would be able to go out and do whatever. Apparently that's why they had mistresses and other things like that that were culturally acceptable. He's apparently got time for those kinds of things.

So this is a guardian and a steward that are over this young child who's an heir. When you think about When you think about that weight and that responsibility being an heir that has these people over you, you've got at least two layers between you and dad now. You've got your guardian and then you've got the household manager or steward. That's a lot of weight that has to come on. And Paul is piling it on. This is not by accident. Paul is piling this on to remind these people that they have these responsibilities.

How many of you remember the story of Isaac and Rebecca? Where did Abraham find Isaac's wife, Rebecca? Back in his home country. And who went to get her? Did Abraham go get her? No, his servant did. His servant would be like this household manager. He was someone very trusted. He was on the inside. And he had access to Abraham's wealth. and Abraham sent him specifically to go out and find a bride. He was responsible for making a decision for his son.

Now that's an interesting thing. If you're Isaac, it's not even your dad that's going out and doing it. It's your dad's servant. But it's your dad's trusted servant. So that's a little rabbit trail. That's a positive look at being of this manager or this guardian. So the significance of legal adult son heirship cannot be overstated. Paul's accusers were trying to make these New Testament saints straddle a line that they could not straddle.

How many of you have heard people say something like half-pregnant? Okay, anybody heard that phrase? You can't be half-pregnant. You either are or you are not. You can't be the full Son of God, as Paul has already stated, and this not-quite-full Son of God that the law brings about. You can't be straddling that line. You either are or you are not the Son of God in the full Sonship. And Paul is saying, you guys are trying to go backwards!

So he's emphasized this nature of being an adult. You cannot be a half-adult. You either are an adult or you are not an adult. I know somebody's going to try to get technical on me. Technically you can be 18 and not 18. It's a chronological thing. But you can be halfway 18. I know you're saying that. Halfway 18. But that's not what we're talking about here. So let's ask some questions and have some discussion real quick before we move on to verse 3.

Let's compare and contrast the differences between being a minor and being an adult in the United States. What rights do you have as a minor in the United States? store and get itty bitty things and nobody's going to blink an eye at you. They're going to generally not worry about a young child doing something. But as far as rights are concerned, do you have any rights?

Public education. Okay. Do you have any responsibilities? Do your homework. Well that might be loosely in play. Hopefully the parents are backing that. Trust me, Abigail does not like it how much we're concerned about her getting her homework done. But you don't get that.

As an adult, aside from at 21 being able to drink and gamble, what are the rights and responsibilities that come with being an adult in the United States? You can be drafted and spend time in the military. You can be drafted, but basically we have a lot of rights and responsibilities as an adult. We can have guns, we can have houses and horses and all kinds of other things if we want.

Or we can choose not to. But we have those rights and we have those opportunities. There's a big difference between having those rights and not having those rights. And even though our cultural comparison isn't identical between the New Testament saints that were living at the time of Paul, when he was writing this, there was still a pretty radical difference.

What legal contracts exist in the United States to cope with errors that are children? What do we have? How many of you would love to see a 14-year-old with billions of dollars and no restraint? No guardianship? That would be pretty awkward. You don't want to buy so many Xbox 360s and stuff like that.

But the problem is that in this country we have all kinds of things that we put in place legally because we realize that A young, non-adult can probably not cope with a lot of resources. Of course, if you watch very much of the news, you can tell that there are lots of adults who also can't cope with those resources. But, you know, Mrs. Paris Hilton is a Hilton Hotel heiress, and she was recently arrested at the at the World Cup games because she had illegal drugs or something like that. So apparently she can't cope with being an heiress herself even though she is legally an adult.

Why is it that Paul would describe the law as being like a child that has not received sonship? Why does he use that comparison? Anyone? Well, the law becomes a steward in this analogy, right? Okay, yeah. The law becomes a steward. That's a big difference in looking at the law as a revelation of God's righteousness without the context of man's failure that comes along with it. If you just look at the righteousness of the law, it is the righteousness of God revealed, that's good. But it comes with a stewardship over us. Well, not over us, because we're believers, but it comes with a stewardship over those who submit themselves to it.

And that's a big weight. If you're a Judaizer and you're coming in and you're talking about the law, are you going to be talking about that stewardship or are you going to be talking about the good stuff because you want to woo these people back into your fold?

So Paul has to accentuate these flaws so that, well flaws is the wrong word, these responsibilities that come up with trying to take on the law. Now why does Paul attack the Judaizer's definition of sonship? We talked about this person being a son and this person being an heir, a child and an heir. He attacks their definition of sonship. It's totally revocable upon the least violation. The father can still say, hey, this is coming in some future time, and he can still say, ah, no. There's conditions on this blessing.

You guys are saying we're sons of God or we're sons of Abraham. We're sons of Abraham. We're good enough. In fact, there was a tradition, and I believe this is no longer the case, or I hope it's no longer the case, but there was a tradition amongst some of the Jews that Abraham was there in heaven waiting to make sure that no Jews accidentally made their way to hell. Obviously, that's not revealed in scripture, but It was a big deal to be a son of Abraham, a descendant of Abraham. So in a way being a son of Abraham meant being a Jew, which means being in the Lord, but at the same time son of Abraham could have a different meaning, meaning like to be son of a faith? Correct, and actually we went over that the last two weeks and you weren't here, but that's correct, you picked up on that and that's right.

So being a son of Abraham biologically was a big deal for these folks. And see what they did is they said that if it was biological it carried over into the spiritual realm. They said, biologically I'm a son of Abraham, spiritually I'm a son of Abraham and I'm in.

So it carried a lot of weight. So Paul had to attack the Judaizers definition of sonship so that they wouldn't misconstrue what it meant to be biologically a son of Abraham and what it meant to be spiritually a son of Abraham. Now, who were Israel's guardians and who were Israel's managers under the law? Okay, so the Pharisees and chief priests, but who else was put in place to be managers? They basically were in charge of one another as well. Always be talking to one another about these things. Always be bringing these things up.

I hate to use this because of its negativity, so please don't take the strength of the negativity, but you remember the KGB in Soviet Russia? There was always people who were secretly out there moving around and you could turn one another in all the time. and get caught and be in trouble for things. And you didn't know who was and who wasn't an agent of the government who might do something to you. And so there's constantly this fear that would come along with that.

Instead of it being just accountability, it came with a lot of fear. And so the Jews were constantly bringing these things up to one another all the time as well. And so that came with some weight. So these guardians would be the priesthood and and they would come and they would intercede. The managers of a household were the priesthood and they would intercede for the nation of Israel. Alright, so we have this concept that we've... if you don't understand it yet then the airship has set sail.

But Galatians 4.3 he continues on And he says, so also we, while we were children, were held in bondage under the elemental things of the world. So Paul was formerly a Jew, so he says we, and these readers were formerly Jewish or Judaic in their religious beliefs, so he says we.

They were held in bondage. So before he said it is though It is as though you are like a slave because you're an heir who has not received full sonship. You might as well be a slave. Now he says you are a slave to the law. We're under bondage. If you take on the law, you are taking on bondage.

And so he's meant no words. Here you go. Have some bondage. It's not going to do... Let me make sure I've got time. We're running out of time. He says we've got this bondage, but what does he say that they're under bondage to? He says elemental things. He doesn't say just bondage to the law. He says elemental things of the world, or first things.

Now, for us that may not have a lot of context, but in the times of the New Testament saints that were reading this, that would be a reference to the Greek philosophical idea of the four elements. Anybody know what those four elements are? Earth, Air, Fire, and Water. Okay, so those are the four elements. Those were the things that were revered as having made up the universe. Turns out they were wrong, but that's okay. Paul emphasizes that they are distracted by these earthly elemental things.

If we were to take a look at Colossians 2.8, I'm going to jump there, and hopefully if you've got your Bibles with you, you'll also flip there.

Colossians 2.8, he says, See to it that no one takes you captive through philosophy and empty deception, according to the tradition of men, according to the elementary principles of the world, rather than according to Christ. So, we have this concept of philosophy and this concept of man-made and humanistic ideas that are part of the elemental things of this world that are a distraction.

If you had just said the problem is the law, where is this Judaizer going to go? Chronologically. He's already gone backwards. Where else does he have left to go? But further back. So if your first argument is the law, then you go back and you say, ah!

But God created us, again, with a conscious, and he created us with things before that, and so we can still go to those things and prove that we need the law. But Paul is saying, no matter if you go to the law or before the law to prove that you need the law, you still are wrestling with earthly things. Whereas Paul, if we look at the rest of the epistles in the New Testament, where does Paul want us focusing and setting our minds?

On Christ. Setting our minds on things above. Colossians 3, set your mind on things above where Christ is seated in the heavenlies. So if you have been distracted by these earthly things, that's a problem. What have human beings done for the last six to thousands of years old the earth is? What have we done to try to learn about God? Outside of God. Rationalizing. We will use our minds and we will reach God without God having to reach to us.

That's why Paul talked about philosophies and genealogies and things of that nature, because that's where people would go if they were under the law, and then the law no longer was the guardian, then you go to man's principles, which is what you're talking about, like philosophies and genealogies, and that's why Gnosticism probably had such a great impetus back during that period of time, because these were people with special knowledge, so why wouldn't you follow them?

And what you end up coming into is that without God specifically revealing things and regarding God's revelation to us about the creation and things, you come into what's known as the creator-creation distinction problem. And what you have if you don't have a creator-creation distinction, as Romans 1 tells us about a little bit, is you have something called continuity of being. And this could be an entire class unto itself here. But the creator-creation distinction is what scripture reveals. Humanism has a continuity of being. Continuity of being is a concept where you have no distinction between God and man in type.

How many of you are familiar with Greek mythology? A little bit? In Greek mythology, what is Zeus? He's a god. And what is Hercules? He's a demigod. He's half-man, half-god. And there's really not a problem with those two different types intertwining, because there's a continuity of being. There is this concept that this is there. Evolution is actually not that far off from the Greek mythology, because instead of what you have the gods coming down to man, you have man coming up to God. I'm going to get better and better and evolve until I basically reach this perfect God-like state through what could be billions or trillions of years of evolution.

Sounds like Pollyanna. I hate to say it, but I have no idea about Pollyanna. That's just my own personal opinion. It's going to get better and better. That's right. It's going to be rosy. Alright. Stan? So is this where pantheism and New Age falls in also?

Well they all, yeah, they have a continuity of being. They have this idea that there is no distinction between the creator and the creation. They're all one. From an evolutionary standpoint, they all came from the same goo. From a polytheistic standpoint, they all basically are intertwined and there is no distinction that way. So it's a big difference.

If you ignore scripture and the creator-creation distinction, you're going to be worried about the elementary principles, the elementary things. Because you have this concept of continuity of being and humanism, and we're going to tie ourselves all together through logic, and we're going to somehow reach truth outside of the source of truth. It's fundamentally what we have.

Isn't it basically kind of like, we create God based on what we are like and we want him to be like us, therefore we can deal with him on our own terms. Yeah, well I think Mark Twain put it well, he said, God created man in his image and man returned the favor. It's one of those things that, I love that quote, it's pretty witty, but the problem is that if you make God in your own image, and in my own life I have a several people I know who are in AA, and AA teaches you that you need to trust in your higher power. Not God, certainly not the God of the Bible.

You could if you wanted to. But if you've got this higher power, then you're going to go to the higher power and know that only he can help you lick this problem you've got. Except for that you get to create this higher power in your own image, or make him who you want. And that's a real problem.

Let's say that, just for fun since you brought this up, Gail has this inside scoop on who God is. She knows. Gail, how can I learn about your God? I've been trying, I don't know. The thing is that if you're the source, I can't come to you and say, you can't say affordably, oh well you know what, here's this revealed scripture. Here's thousands of years of documents that are consistent and revealed by God because He wants to know you. If you're the source, then suddenly you're my guru and I might come to you and I might follow you on Facebook or whatever else to be my spiritual leader, but it still comes up short. It's just a slip of the tongue, but it isn't that He wants to know you, but He does know you. Well, and He does know you, yeah.

And that's a tremendous element of the God of the Bible verses this sort of a model, the continuity of being model, there's a lot of stuff that can be brought out of the nuances when you start to think about the details of the earthly principles or the elementary principles that are there. Yeah? Yeah, with the continuity of being and God being the way I think he is, Then the person next to me has God the way he thinks he is.

And when a person comes to a point in their life where they really are seeking, needing stability and something they can rely on and they really want that, all they have around them is confusion. And how do you then determine which one is correct? So you can place your faith in it.

It's impossible. Well, what you end up coming to is various strange, new-agey coping strategies. You know, Gaia, to use a secular, new-age term, Gaia, really couldn't help that your kitty got run over. It's just out of Gaia's control. But Gaia loves you and your kidney. Or the yin and the yang. Yeah, all of those things. So you come up with these strategies.

What does the Bible say about trials and suffering? Jessica and I have been listening to Hal's series on trials and suffering from several years back, and it's been tremendous, and it's good material. Why? Because it's God's Word revealed. So my coping strategy is not to turn to myself and find inner peace. My coping strategy is to say, what does the creator of the universe say? Coping strategy is a psychology term, so I hope you'll forgive me for using that, and hopefully you'll understand that in the context of life as a believer. But we have this problem. of wrestling with these elementary things.

That's what the flesh wants to do. Next week, when we continue on and we look at 4-7, we're going to take a look at what Paul offers us, the hope of this being sons of God and not being half-pregnant, not being half-dealing with these this legal system instead of being full on sons and daughters. Alright, let's close in prayer and then we'll move on and mosey on towards the sanctuary. Heavenly Father, thank you for your grace and your mercy. Thank you that you have Good. Preserve this letter from Paul to the Galatians that we can understand the weaknesses of humans trying to understand the law and instead continue to learn and know about grace and how we walk in that as sons of yours. We thank you and praise you for all that you have given and blessed us with. In Jesus' name, Amen.