Text: Galatians 4:8-11, Title: No More Christmas and Easter, Date/Place: NRBC, 3/35/07, PM
Opening illustration: “How many observe Christ’s birthday! How few, his precepts! O, ’tis easier to keep holidays than commandments.” –Ben Franklin, Christmas was not celebrated during the 1st 2 centuries after Christ’s life on earth. In AD 245, when a group of scholars attempted to pinpoint the exact date of Christ’s birth, a church council denounced the endeavor, declaring it wrong to celebrate the birthday of Christ "as though he were a King Pharaoh.…In 17th century England, puritans objected to Christian celebrations because they had no clear biblical basis. As a result, in 1643, the parliament outlawed Christmas, Easter, and other Christian holidays. However, December 25th was so popular as a festive day, that by 1660, the citizens reclaimed it. Their neglect of the religious aspects of December 25th resulted in a growing secularization of the holiday.
A. Background to passage: After Paul’s comment about being a son, not a slave, in v. 7, he jumps back to their former way of life again. And he wants to know why they are wanting to turn back again to that way. He wants to know why they want to turn from strength and maturity back to weakness and childhood, from freedom back to bondage.
B. Main thought: In our text we see Paul make three interesting statements about the situation there in Galatia.
A. The Nature of Idolatry (v. 8)
1. Paul first speaks about a time when they did not know God. Note the strong adversative. The verb he uses in not the regular word for know, but speaks of a fullness of knowledge coupled with adoration. This tells us a lot about salvation. He says that before that time (salvation), you served things that were not really gods. Whether they were being legalistic with the law or laws, or whether they were following pagan ritual with the Greco-Roman gods, Paul says that were living in idolatry. The very nature of idolatry is to replace the One true God with anything of your own design to worship. And the view that there is a god out there that grants people salvation and righteousness based on their performance is idolatry, because that god does not exist. There is discussion among the scholarly world as to whether Paul held an atheistic view of idols, or a demonistic view of them. Explain. And the answer is probably “yes.” Paul is teaching that all of these things are not gods, but they may be demons.
2. Eph 6:12, 1 Cor 8:5, 10:20
3. Illustration: “Idolatry is worshiping anything that ought to be used, or using anything that ought to be worshiped.” -Augustine. “Hypocritically, professing belief, performing rote rituals, calling oneself a member of a religion without attempting to follow holy prescriptions, participating in church … with a “social” country-club fervor – these can all be an evasion of holy duty, yet another form of idolatry, as practicing the “religion” becomes its own end point.” -Schlesinger, replaced Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God with a truncated God in the hands of angry sinners. one commentator mentioned that sometimes we strive so hard not to be charismatic, that we knock ourselves out of the spiritual battle going on by ignoring it. And maybe it’s not an all consuming desire at the moment – but I’m aware and I have been aware for some time that my relationship with food (if you can call it that!) is unhealthy. I have felt for some time that I am not in control of my eating – examples – can’t walk past a bakery, dreaming about food – and yet it seems normal – food is something I love – something that makes me feel good – when I’m down I eat – in fact when I’m ‘up’ I eat. I eat most of the time – when I’m not eating I’m thinking about when I will be eating – my favorite words are ‘all you can eat’ – I tend to take them quite literally. I just love to eat – I don’t eat because I’m hungry – I eat because I enjoy the sensual pleasure of taste. Eating makes me feel good and some foods make me feel better than others. I rarely get stuck on cabbage or wheat cracker, but I can put away some cheesecake and some pizza.
4. Genuine salvation is fully knowing and fully adoring Christ. Mental assent is not enough. Association is not enough. Knowledge in not enough. Genuine salvation involves completely breaking with idolatrous religion and pagan culture. The more things change, the more they stay the same. In Paul’s day unbelievers were still substituting all sorts of things for God. Do you have your own created gods? They could be self, pornography, food, baseball, deer hunting, boats, religious activity, computers, motorcycles, or people. Do you constantly use phrases like “my Jesus would never…” Do you value anything more than Him in practice? What overrides your passion for God? What draws you away from God? When you live your life to serve other things rather than God, you are an idolater, under the control of that which is not God, and enslaved to demonic influence. In fact, if you live your life under a list of rules and regulations of what to do, and how to live, you are under demonic influence. You are trusting in your own strength to earn God’s favor, and worshipping a God of your own design.
B. The Nature of Salvation (v. 9)
1. Paul makes a strange comment here as he turns their “knowing God” on its head. Speaking of genuine salvation in terms of knowing (different Gr. word here), he says that “rather they are known by God.” He equates salvation with being known by God. This is a great example of the active vs. passive for those of you in my discipleship class. This word “know” means to know something experientially. Paul could be confronting an early Gnostism that focused on having a special knowledge to be saved. So, he was clarifying that salvation is more about God knowing a person, than about the person having knowledge of God. Shows that salvation is a relationship, not a religion, a set of regulations, nor a body of facts. Then Paul demonstrates that unbelievable nature of their turning away. He asks why they would go back to weak and beggarly childish bondage, when we could have Christ?
2. Ex 33:17, Nahum 1:7, 1 Cor 8:3, John 10:14, 27, 2 Tim 2:19, Matt 7:23, Luk 10:22, Isa 53:11,
3. Illustration: “God knew them before they knew Him, and His knowing them was the cause of their knowing Him.” Dean Stanley remarks that “Our knowledge of God is more His act than ours.” “If God knows a man, that means that an activity of God has passed over to man, so that the man, as the subject of God’s knowledge, enters into the knowledge of God.” –Kenneth Wuest,
4. So maybe the question that we should ask is not so much, “do you know God,” but “does God know you?” This is not to say that God lacks knowledge of unbelievers. This is to say that God doesn’t have a relationship where he has come unto them, initiated salvation, and given them an intimate knowledge of Himself. And as we said last week, by nature men cannot come to God on their own. They must have divine assistance. Why do we go back to rules and regulations, demons and idols, harsh bondage and slavery? All of these things are weak. Freedom in Christ is not for the weak, it is for the strong. And when we know God and are known by Him, we stand in freedom of conscience against legalism, mysticism, and idolatry. But remember that your freedom in Christ is not license to sin, but freedom to do what God wants, and desire to love Him without a list of things to do, obedience from the heart.
C. The Nature of His Fear (v. 11)
1. Explain the title of the message again related to v. 10. But Paul makes what should be a scary statement. He says that he is afraid that he has worked in them in vain. Literally he says he has labored to the point of exhaustion in you for nothing. Paul is not concerned about his eternal reward for his labor; God’s faithfulness endures to all generations. He is worried about their lack of perseverance and fruit of righteousness. He is afraid all the work that he did produced no real transformation, no genuine conversion. This implies that genuine believers should endure in the true faith and bear fruit worthy of repentance. It is also good for believer’s to examine their own faith. Paul questions their salvation out of love.
2. I Cor 15:58, 1 Thess 3:5, Phil 2:16, Col 1:23, Heb 3:6, 14, 4:11, 6:11, 10:23, 26, 35, 38-39,
3. Illustration: the man who got upset with me because I stated that there were probably people in this room that didn’t know Christ even though they thought they did, The NT never teaches a doctrine of unjustification, reimpartation of sin, taking back of righteousness or forgiveness, unadoption, unredemption or selling off of saints, taking back of the Holy Spirit, nor of the spiritual killing of one who has been made alive! Charles Templeton and Ted Turner, I heard of a young man who came to a pastor and confessed all these sins in his life, and the pastor led him to Christ, then began to talk about what next steps needed to be taken, and the guy didn’t realize that Christ would mean all that.
4. Those that fall by the wayside may be demonstrating the fact that they really don’t know Christ. Again, this is not to confuse being faithful with earning or maintaining salvation. But simply to say that you may prove that your profession of Christ was never a real possession of Christ by your forsaking Christ. This also doesn’t necessarily say that everyone who has a slip-up, a time of backsliding, or a theological error is lost. But it does open the door to ask the question. And when we feel that we must examine our own faith, or when someone calls us to examine our faith, do become angry or defensive, for they are following Paul’s (and Jesus’) example.
A. Closing illustration: In the Shawshank Redemption the former prisoners couldn’t handle freedom and they went back to bondage in prison or death.
B. Question and Answer
