There’s a story about a man in Wales who sought to win the affection of a certain lady for 42 years before she finally said, "Yes." The couple, both 74, recently became "Mr. and Mrs."
For more than 40 years, the persistent, but rather shy man slipped a weekly love letter under his neighbor's door. But she continually refused to speak and mend the spat that had parted them many years before.
After writing 2,184 love letters without ever getting a spoken or written answer, the single-hearted old man eventually summoned up enough courage to present himself in person. He knocked on the door of the reluctant lady and asked for her hand. To his delight and surprise, she accepted.
Imagine our problem from God's perspective. Time and time again He tried to get His message of love through to His human creation with little response. Finally, when there was no other way, He wrapped up His message in person. Jesus was and is that message.
(John 1:1 NKJV) In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.
(John 1:14 NKJV) And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we beheld His glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth.
Our text:
(Gal 4:1 NKJV) Now I say that the heir, as long as he is a child, does not differ at all from a slave, though he is master of all,
(Gal 4:2 NKJV) but is under guardians and stewards until the time appointed by the father.
(Gal 4:3 NKJV) Even so we, when we were children, were in bondage under the elements of the world.
(Gal 4:4 NKJV) But when the fullness of the time had come, God sent forth His Son, born of a woman, born under the law,
(Gal 4:5 NKJV) to redeem those who were under the law, that we might receive the adoption as sons.
(Gal 4:6 NKJV) And because you are sons, God has sent forth the Spirit of His Son into your hearts, crying out, "Abba, Father!"
(Gal 4:7 NKJV) Therefore you are no longer a slave but a son, and if a son, then an heir of God through Christ.
In order to understand what is happening here, you must know something about the plan of God to save humanity.
Anyone who reads the Word carefully must admit that at different times, God deals in different ways with different people.
(Heb 1:1 NKJV) God, who at various times and in various ways spoke in time past to the fathers by the prophets,
In this section of Galatians chapter 4, Paul explains that the period of Law was a dispensation, a special way in which God dealt with Israel for a special purpose.
The Bible refers to Jews as heirs (Romans 4:14), for God had made wonderful promises to them through Abraham, but it took many centuries before they received these promises. Paul is continuing his comparison between the Jewish child and the instruction period of the Roman or Greek child.
(Gal 4:1 NKJV) Now I say that the heir, as long as he is a child, does not differ at all from a slave, though he is master of all,
(Gal 4:2 NKJV) but is under guardians and stewards until the time appointed by the father.
The child, Paul reasons, might be heir to a fortune, but as long as he or she has not reached the legal age of inheritance, the child is no different from the slave.
We see this in some of the older "classic" movies where the house slave Aunt _________ practically reared the master's children and talked to them and disciplined them as if they were her own.
Paul writes, “…the heir, as long as he is a child, does not differ at all from a slave, though he is master of all, but is under guardians and stewards until the time appointed by the father.
Even though they would one day inherit all that belonged to their parents, they in many cases were treated no differently than slave children—that is, until that one day when their parents said this familiarity was to stop.
Paul is teaching that the Jews were in their “spiritual childhood” under the law. God had ordained that there would be a space of time where they would be indoctrinated or taught His Law.
Though one day they would inherit the land—that time had not come.
Though one day they would be rich in faith—that time had not come.
The Jews graduation into their full inheritance was kept at bay until God’s appointed time.
(Gal 4:3 NKJV) Even so we, when we were children, were in bondage under the elements of the world.
"We" - Paul is referring to Christians, Gentiles and Jews (Wuest).
"Children" - nepios, nay'-pee-os; one who does not speak, i.e. an infant (minor); fig. a simple-minded person, an immature one.
“Bondage” - douloo, doo-lo'-o; from to enslave (lit. or fig.):--bring into (be under) bondage; become (make) servant.
"Elements" - stoicheion, stoy-khi'-on; neut. something orderly in arrangement--element, principle, rudiment.
"World" - kosmos, kos'-mos; orderly arrangement, mankind (cp. John 3:16)
The "elements of the world" (according to Wuest) refer to the first principles of non-Christian humanity.
* In the case of the Jew, they were enslaved to the symbolic and ceremonial character of Judaism and its legal enactments
* In the case of the Gentiles, they were enslaved to the ceremonial and ritualistic observances of the pagan religions.
Paul wants us to know that both Jews and Gentiles, when they were children, were in bondage under the elements of the world.
The Jews were in bondage to keeping the letter of the law to obtain salvation. For example, In Luke 6, the Jewish religious leaders taught that it was against the law for Jesus to heal a man on the Sabbath. In Matthew 15, the disciples of Jesus were scorned for failure to ceremonially cleanse their hands before eating.
The Gentiles were in bondage to their pagan rituals. In Acts 19, silversmiths were getting rich off selling little silver shrines of the Roman goddess Diana (Greeks called her Artemis).
Diana was the goddess of fertility. Pagan beliefs stated that in order to realize fertility in crops, animals, and humans, the fertility gods had to be aroused, and such arousal was accomplished through sexual activity. Temple prostitution was considered an acceptable and necessary part of worship to Diana.
Before Jesus Christ came on the scene, both Jew and Gentiles were in bondage to their ceremonies and rituals and though Paul wrote 2000 years ago, his words (inspired by the Holy Spirit) are still relevant today.
Did you know that outside of a saving relationship with Jesus Christ you and I are in bondage under the elemental things of the world?
I can remember my life before Christ how my peers and I used astrology to guide our lives. There was a song that we used to sing that has the words,
What’s your sign, girl
Is it compatible to mine, oh, girl
I’m a Capricorn, we believe in life for loving
We trip on love and giving
If you’re a Virgo, we can make it from the start
Miss Leo, you foxy lion heart
If your sign matches mine, think of what we’ll have
We’ll be makin’ babies together forever
What’s your sign, girl
Is it compatible to mine, oh, girl
I like Scorpio, they believe in love and devotion
For them I’d swim an ocean of love
Now Libras, they like security
And you can get plenty of that from me
Now Tauruses are stubborn and I know that it’s a fact
But baby, I swear I can deal with that
What’s your sign, girl
Is it compatible to mine, oh, girl
And, even today, there are people who are looking for love in the personal ad sections of the newspaper and promoting themselves using their sign. Paul says, "When we were children…"
There are those even in prominent places of leadership who look to tarot cards and spirit guides for advice and direction. Paul says, "When we were children…"
Millions of women tune in for worship at the shrine of Oprah. While Oprah does not, as a rule, announce the details of her own particular religious beliefs, her guests reveal her decidedly New Age beliefs majoring on a mixture of Christian terminology and pantheistic philosophies, reincarnation, the divinity of self a.k.a. Christ Consciousness, evil as illusory, love as all that is real, and so on.
One can find a profile of the average Oprah addict in Robert Bellah’s classic sociology study, Habits of the Heart. In it, he includes the following description of Sheila Larson, a young woman who describes her faith as “Sheilaism:”
“I believe in God. I’m not a religious fanatic. I can’t remember the last time I went to church. My faith has carried me a long way. It’s Sheilaism. Just my own little voice.” “My own Sheilaism,” she said: “it’s just try to love yourself and be gentle with yourself. You know, I guess, take care of each other. I think He (God) would just want us to take care of each other.”
Sheila is the kind of woman that Winfrey woos. Winfrey enters Sheila’s spiritual vacuum and attempts to do her a favor by filling the void with (not the Scriptures but) her own set of New Age prophets such as Gwenyth Paltrow, Marianne Williamson, Iyanla Vanzant, Gary Zukav, Caroline Myss and Deepak Chopra and others.
Our text reads, “Even so we, when we were children, were in bondage under the elements of the world. But when the fullness of the time had come, God sent forth His Son, born of a woman…”
Paul is referring to the incarnation. He is writing about the true meaning of Christmas, God giving His Son as a baby who would grow up to me the God-man who would die for our sin.
When it comes to the celebration of the birth of Christ, Christians used to get angry when Christ was “X’d” out of Christmas. Now we celebrate nothing—it’s just “Have a good holiday!”
There are some groups going around teaching that Christmas is a pagan holiday. The Muslims will tell you that Christmas is a pagan holiday and so will the Jehovah’s Witnesses as they knock on your door this month. And guess what? They are right!
The roots of our modern Christmas are ancient--in antiquity the winter solstice was celebrated on the 25th day of December, as the `Birthday of the Unconquered Sun'. This midwinter festival was a joyous time marked by festival fires to celebrate the slow departure of Winter, and to usher in fertility and good fortune.
It was only around the beginning of the 4th Century that Christianity assigned the Nativity of Christ to the date of the existing pagan festival. The revamped festival soon absorbed influences from other sources, including those of the Germanic midwinter feast of `Yule'.
It’s like “Earth Day.” This New Age holiday where men, women, boys and girls worship the “mother” earth. Perhaps one day well-meaning Christians will devise an alternate celebration for April 22 called “Creation Day” so Christians won’t be caught up in the idolatry of Earth Day.
By the 11th Century `Christ's Mass' had solidified into an uneven fusion of the Christian Nativity with Yule, Roman and pagan customs. Many of these traditional elements were condemned as superstitious by the Protestant Reformation.
Today, the `Christ's Mass' as celebrated by Americans is nothing more than a pagan ritual where an imaginary fat man in a red suit is loved, honored, revered, trusted and expected to “come again” to give gifts to those who aren’t naughty but nice.
Am I saying that we should not celebrate Christmas? Yes, if your celebration amounts to nothing more than lights, tinsel, decorations and presents with no acknowledgement and worship of the God who gave His Son, Jesus Christ as Immanuel, God with us, to save us from our sin.
Is Christmas wrong?
* It is not wrong to celebrate the Incarnation—that is, God coming to earth as a man in the person of Jesus Christ.
* It is not wrong to reenact the Christmas story and sing the kind of Christmas songs that teach the wonderful truths of the birth of Christ.
* It is not wrong to “Go tell it on the mountain, over the hills and everywhere, that Jesus Christ is born!”
But if your celebration of Christmas is nothing more than attributing the glory of Christmas to an imaginary man or even a historical saint and not to God, then you are still a child and in bondage and haven’t grown up into the things of Christ.
Please don’t get me wrong, it is not my desire to rain on your Christmas parade. It is not my desire to place on you a legalistic list of do’s and don’t concerning the holidays.
It is my desire to put Christ back into Christmas. If you are going to celebrate Christmas you may as well do it right and do it biblically and for some of us this might require us to rethink how we do Christmas.
This isn’t the first time when the Christian community is challenged with putting off their old manner of life taken on before they knew and served Christ.
(Eph 4:21 NKJV) if indeed you have heard Him and have been taught by Him, as the truth is in Jesus:
(Eph 4:22 NKJV) that you put off, concerning your former conduct, the old man which grows corrupt according to the deceitful lusts,
(Eph 4:23 NKJV) and be renewed in the spirit of your mind,
(Eph 4:24 NKJV) and that you put on the new man which was created according to God, in true righteousness and holiness.
Some of us have no problem putting away the booze and other worldly ways we celebrated Christmas before coming to Christ. But there are other things that do not honor Christ and these we practice and I’m not going to stand here and give you a list—this is between you and God.
The Apostle Paul says, "We, when we were children, were in bondage under the elements of the world.”
Paul's day, the Jews to their symbolism, legalism and ceremony; the Gentiles to their pagan rituals.
But our text tells us that this time of symbolism, legalism, ceremony and pagan ritual would run its course, having prepared the way for Christ.
(Gal 4:4 NKJV) But when the fullness of the time had come, God sent forth His Son, born of a woman, born under the law,
Warren Wiersbe says, "Christ was born at the right time, in the right manner (of a woman—a virgin birth), and for the right purpose—to set us free."
"Fullness of time…" - not the Greek word, kairos, kahee-ros'; meaning a fixed or special occasion, or aion, ahee-ohn' which denotes a particular period or interval, but chronos, khron'-os; a space or lapse of time.
The meaning is that when that moment came which completed the period of time designated by God that should elapse before the coming of the Son of God in incarnation, then He would send forth His Son (Wuest).
It is like God was a setting timer for the exact time in which He would send Jesus. It would be in this fullness of this time where---"tick, tick, tick, tick"--then BOOM--God sends forth His Son!!! And there would be some unique events that would occur as God ordained during this space of time:
It was the moment that God had ordained for Messiah's coming. Daniel was given the date of His coming, 483 years after the edict of the Medo-Persian government to rebuild Jerusalem.
(Dan 9:24 NKJV) "Seventy weeks are determined For your people and for your holy city, To finish the transgression, To make an end of sins, To make reconciliation for iniquity, To bring in everlasting righteousness, To seal up vision and prophecy, And to anoint the Most Holy.
(Dan 9:25 NKJV) "Know therefore and understand, That from the going forth of the command To restore and build Jerusalem Until Messiah the Prince, There shall be seven weeks and sixty-two weeks; The street shall be built again, and the wall, Even in troublesome times.
From the time of the decree to restore and build Jerusalem until the coming of the Messiah would be 7 weeks (49 years) plus 62 weeks (434 years), yielding 69 weeks or 483 years, all but 7 of the 490 years involved in the 70 weeks.
God had ordained His Son, the Messiah would come to earth and the clock was ticking.
God ordained that the Mosaic Law would do its educational work, showing to the world that the most highly-favored nation on earth, the Jewish nation, was depraved, giving the Gentiles a picture of their own totally depraved hearts.
Paul says in Romans 7:7, “For I would not have known covetousness unless the law had said, "You shall not covet.””
(Gal 3:24 NKJV) Therefore the law was our tutor to bring us to Christ, that we might be justified by faith.
(Gal 3:25 NKJV) But after faith has come, we are no longer under a tutor.
Also during this space of time God ordained that the Mosaic law in its three sections, the Ten Commandments, the laws governing social relationships, and the Levitical system of sacrifices, would be done away with as a legal system, to be superseded by the Gospel of grace.
Paul writes in Galatians 2:16, “…knowing that a man is not justified by the works of the law but by faith in Jesus Christ, even we have believed in Christ Jesus, that we might be justified by faith in Christ and not by the works of the law; for by the works of the law no flesh shall be justified.”
In Ephesians 2:8-9, “For by grace you have been saved through faith, and that not of yourselves; it is the gift of God, not of works, lest anyone should boast.”
1.) God had ordained that after a space of time of 483 years after the edict of the Medo-Persian government to rebuild Jerusalem, the Messiah would come.
2.) God had ordained that during this space of time the Mosaic Law would show the world that mankind was depraved.
3.) God had ordained that this space of time would occur before the Law as a legal system would be done away and the Gospel of grace would take its place.
During this lapse of time God ordained that:
* The Roman Empire would maintain world peace.
* Roman roads made travel for missionaries easy.
* The universal use of the Greek language made the speedy propagation of the Gospel possible.
The earth-stage was all set for the greatest event in the history of the human race, the incarnation, sacrificial death, and bodily resurrection of God the Son--"In the fullness of time God sent forth His Son."
On the Day of Pentecost Acts 2 tells us that “there were dwelling in Jerusalem Jews, devout men, from every nation under heaven… "Parthians and Medes and Elamites, those dwelling in Mesopotamia, Judea and Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia, Phrygia and Pamphylia, Egypt and the parts of Libya adjoining Cyrene, visitors from Rome, both Jews and proselytes, Cretans and Arabs…”
(Gal 4:4 NKJV) But when the fullness of the time had come, God sent forth His Son, born of a woman, born under the law,
"Sent forth…" - The word translated sent forth is exapostello - ex-ap-os-tel'-lo; to send away forth, i.e. (on a mission) to dispatch, or dismiss.
Its root, apostello refers to the act of one who sends another with a commission to do something; the person sent being given credentials. Our English word apostle comes from it.
The prefixed preposition apo means "from," "off." This means that the person sent is to represent the sender. He is his ambassador. Our Lord is called the Apostle and High priest of our confession in Hebrews 3:1. Jesus was sent from or off by the Father as His Ambassador to humanity.
In John 5:30 Jesus says, "I can of Myself do nothing. As I hear, I judge; and My judgment is righteous, because I do not seek My own will but the will of the Father who sent Me.”
Jesus says in John 14:10, “The words that I speak to you I do not speak on My own authority; but the Father who dwells in Me does the works.”
Jesus was sent forth from God the Father as His ambassador.
Not only was our Lord sent off from the presence of the Father, but as the Greek word in our Galatians 4:4 text, exapostello, signifies the ex prefixed preposition signifies He was sent out from the presence of God.
(Heb 1:5 NKJV) For to which of the angels did He ever say: "You are My Son, Today I have begotten You"? And again: "I will be to Him a Father, And He shall be to Me a Son"?
(Heb 1:6 NKJV) But when He again brings the firstborn into the world, He says: "Let all the angels of God worship Him." He was sent forth!
(Phil 2:5b-6 NKJV) Christ Jesus, who, being in the form of God, did not consider it robbery to be equal with God,
(Phil 2:7 NKJV) but made Himself of no reputation, taking the form of a bondservant, and coming in the likeness of men. He was sent forth!
Jesus, God the Son, Creator of the heavens and earth left his home in glory and came to earth as a weak, vulnerable babe wrapped in swaddling cloths---He was sent forth!
He was sent forth to the Cross.
Isaiah 9:6 says, “For unto us a Child is born, Unto us a Son is given…”
Isaiah 53:5 says, “He was wounded for our transgressions, He was bruised for our iniquities; The chastisement for our peace was upon Him, And by His stripes we are healed.”
He was sent forth to suffer.
Hebrews 13:12 tells us, “Therefore Jesus also, that He might sanctify the people with His own blood, suffered outside the gate.”
He was sent forth to die for our sins.
Paul writes in 1 Corinthians 15:3, “For I delivered to you first of all that which I also received: that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures…”
He was sent forth to be raised from the dead!
In Luke 9:22 Jesus says of Himself, "The Son of Man must suffer many things, and be rejected by the elders and chief priests and scribes, and be killed, and be raised the third day."
He was sent forth to conquer sin and the grave!
(1 Cor 15:55-57 NKJV) "O Death, where is your sting? O Hades, where is your victory?" The sting of death is sin, and the strength of sin is the law. But thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.
He was sent forth!
There is a Christmas hymn that expresses the essence of "Sent forth…" - exapostello.
Thou Didst Leave Thy Throne
Thou didst leave Thy throne and Thy kingly crown,
When Thou camest to earth for me;
But in Bethlehem’s home was there found no room
For Thy holy nativity.
Heaven’s arches rang when the angels sang,
Proclaiming Thy royal degree;
But of lowly birth didst Thou come to earth,
And in great humility.
The foxes found rest, and the birds their nest
In the shade of the forest tree;
But Thy couch was the sod, O Thou Son of God,
In the deserts of Galilee.
Thou camest, O Lord, with the living Word,
That should set Thy people free;
But with mocking scorn and with crown of thorn,
They bore Thee to Calvary.
Refrain:
O come to my heart, Lord Jesus,
there is room in my heart for thee.
Luke 2:7 tells us that Mary “brought forth her firstborn Son, and wrapped Him in swaddling cloths, and laid Him in a manger, because there was no room for them in the inn.”
Is there room for Him in your heart today?
John 1:11 lets us know that “He came to His own, and His own did not receive Him.”
Is there room for Him in your heart today?
Are you still in bondage to the elemental things of this world?
Make room for Jesus, in your heart, your home, your Christmas.
