Howdy, and good evening, everyone! For those of y’all who don’t know me, my name is Andrew Hall, and I’m a member here at Verse by Verse Fellowship. I’m a part of the Preachers Guild here at VBVF, and I’ve been so blessed to learn from the other brothers in the group. I’m usually not in here on Wednesday nights because I’m in the other room down the hall with Daniel and our youth group which has been a lot of fun. It’s such a privilege to be up here tonight, and I just want to say a big thanks for coming. If it’s your first time here tonight, I pray that you feel welcomed and loved, and for everyone else, welcome back! I pray that the Lord blesses each of us as we study His word together.

Before we dive into the text, let’s take a quick poll: how many in here have kids? Raise your hands. How many of you have kids who are older than me (you can take a guess of how old I am)? 

If you are a parent, I want you to think about your kids and what it felt like to raise them, and if you’re not a parent, I want you think about what your parents might have felt raising you, especially if you were raised by Christian parents.

Imagine you get married, and you and your spouse have this desire and goal to raise your children to know and love God. You ask the Lord to bless you with a child, and eventually God blesses you with a son. He’s precious to you. You can remember that moment when he’s born, so frail and yet so full of life. You change his diapers, you put him to bed at night, and eventually you start to see his unique, God-given personality. He’s like a walking, talking miniature version of you and your spouse. He mimics everything you do, and he believes everything you tell him. You have so many precious memories together of taking him to the park and playing games and having meals together, and every night you and your spouse pray together, that he would grow up to love and honor the Lord. He grows up a little bit, and you start bringing him to youth group at your church. He has a solid group of Christian friends, he starts reading the Bible and praying, and you start to see the Lord move in his life. He’s starting to look like a young man. And eventually, your son moves out to go to college, find a job, and enter adulthood, and then, you start to notice something—something different. He doesn’t call you very often. When y’all do talk, you realize he’s not involved in church anymore. When he comes back for Christmas once a year, the change is startling. Your child no longer has child-like faith. He rolls his eyes at the dinner table when you ask him to bless the meal. Instead of putting on his Sunday best, he wears a scowl on his face and crosses his arms during the service. And eventually, he asks you a question: “Why do you still believe in all that religious nonsense anyways?”

If you had a son like this, how would you feel? Confused, dejected, heartbroken?

You did everything right. You trained your child in the way he should go so that when he was old, he would not depart from it. You didn’t spare the rod, but instead you disciplined him out of love. You and your spouse prayed every night for his salvation, and now he’s left the faith and wants nothing to do with you. Was all of that time and energy spent raising him a waste?

Perhaps some of y’all have experienced this firsthand as a parent, or you know others who have experienced this, and maybe some of you were that kid who rebelled against your parents.

Why did I share this story? I want us to enter into the tone of this passage tonight.

We’re covering Galatians 4:8-20, and I’d invite you to turn with me to this passage if you haven’t already. In his 1519 commentary on Galatians, Martin Luther wrote about this passage, “These words breath Paul’s own tears.” Paul is pleading with the Galatians to return to the gospel and run from a false religious system that will destroy them. This passage is the voice of a father crying out to save his children from destroying their souls. I will do my best to communicate the weight and emotion of this passage as we go through it tonight.

To catch everyone up to speed, we’ve been going through the book of Galatians in a series titled “AWOL from Grace”. Throughout this letter, Paul keeps expanding on the idea of freedom and sonship through Christ versus bondage and condemnation through the Old Covenant Mosaic Law. 

Earlier in the book, Paul argues that we are justified by faith in Christ, not by works of the Old Covenant Mosaic Law. As we learned from Sergio a couple weeks ago, the Mosaic Law acted as a tutor, a paidagogos, a legal guardian who restricted God’s people until the promised inheritance in the gospel arrived. Sergio talked about the Mosaic Law being a disciplinarian, an ear twister, if y’all remember that. 

Now that Jesus has come, God’s chosen people are no longer under the authority of the Old Covenant Mosaic Law but are all sons of God through faith in Jesus, thus fulfilling God’s promise to Abraham (3:25-29). Paul expands on this with an analogy at the beginning of chapter 4: as a child does not receive his inheritance until the date set by his father, we too were not eligible to receive God’s promised salvation until God sent His Son to redeem us from the Mosaic Law so that we might receive adoption as sons of God. Last week, Tony spoke about this. He said that we are sons of God who have moved 1) from captivity to freedom, 2) from separation to adoption, and 3) from slavery to intimacy. 

And that brings us to our text. The title of my sermon is “Worthless Religion Versus True Freedom.” There are 2 sections. The first section, verses 8-11, talks about slavery that comes from the gods of this world, and the second section, verses 12-20, is Paul’s personal plea to the Galatians.

This is a personal, emotional passage. Paul has already demonstrated his credibility as an apostle sent by God, and he explained why faith in Christ is superior to the Old Covenant. Now, it’s time to pour out his heart to the Galatians.

Let’s get started in verse 8. 8 Formerly, when you did not know God, you were enslaved to those that by nature are not gods.

Do you remember what your life was like before you heard the gospel? That’s how Paul starts this passage. Paul wants the Galatians to recall their days before Christ. Many of the Galatians came from pagan backgrounds. Emperor worship in the Roman Imperial Cult was popular in that day. There were also many temples to pagan deities like Zeus and fertility cults that engaged in prostitution to gain favor with the gods. You can find some of these groups in the book of Acts during Paul’s missionary journeys. Pagan religion was embedded into the culture of ancient Rome, and early Christians were known as “atheists” because of their rejection of these pagan deities. 

These pagan gods may have just been manmade statues, but I believe Paul is referring to something more sinister. In the West, we tend to explain reality through science and philosophy and human reason, but let’s not forget the spiritual forces at work in the world. In Ephesians, Paul describes how we wrestle not against flesh and blood but against “spiritual forces of evil in heavenly places” (6:12). There are demonic spiritual forces present in the world that oppose God and his people. 

Go ahead and write this down as the first bullet in your outline for verses 8-11: Saints & slave masters.

Although paganism is still prevalent in many cultures across the world today, we may not relate to what the Galatians experienced in ancient Rome two thousand years ago, but the so-called gods of this age are everywhere.

Think about this: what is a “god”? 

It’s the thing that controls you, the thing that captures your heart, your desires, your ambitions. It’s your “higher power,” your master, your lord, your ruler. It could be a person, an object, a feeling, an idea, or a supernatural deity. Look at how a person spends their time, talents, and treasures, and that will likely reveal who their god is. I believe that we were all created for worship, and we all worship something whether we realize it or not.

Think about your life before Christ, or think about people in your life who do not know Christ. What are some of the most common “gods” that you see today? Materialism is a popular god here in America. People love their stuff here. My mom often calls this “More’s disease.” You gotta keep having more and more and more. Others worship the god of success and ambition, faithfully slaving away to climb the corporate ladder, thinking achievements or status will bring satisfaction. Some of the most powerful gods use pleasure to enslave their victims. Sex addiction, drug addiction, and alcoholism enslave millions here in America. Many of us have been enslaved by these gods in the past or are currently being oppressed by them. Christians too. 

But there are also other types of gods that take on the form of spirituality and religion. The Galatians came from pagan backgrounds, but the main lie Paul was fighting against was the teaching of the Judaizers. This is one of the primary concerns in Galatians. The Judaizers were teaching that Christians had to keep the Old Covenant Mosaic Law to be saved, but as Paul has made abundantly clear in previous verses, by works of the Law no one will be made right with God. It’s totally and completely by faith in Jesus Christ. Paul says in verses 9-10, 9 But now that you have come to know God, or rather to be known by God, how can you turn back again to the weak and worthless elementary principles of the world, whose slaves you want to be once more? 10 You observe days and months and seasons and years!

Johannes Brenz, a 16th century Protestant reformer and contemporary of Martin Luther, shows the absurdity of what the Galatians were doing:

Righteousness has its basic elements, its own alphabet. This elementary ABC level of righteousness has its place in the law of Moses. But perfect righteousness is that which is found in Christ by faith. When Christ is known by faith, relapsing into a search for righteousness by observing the feasts of the law is nothing other than if someone who was a most learned professor and master of arts should lapse back into learning the alphabet. Who would not be astonished at such stupidity?

Returning to the Old Covenant Mosaic Law for righteousness was an absurdity in Paul’s mind because, as Paul mentions in 3:1-6, how did the Galatians come to experience God? By strict adherence to circumcision, sacrifices, and festivals, or by simply believing the gospel? It wasn’t by keeping the Mosaic Law; it was by believing in the good news!

But the Galatians didn’t think the Judaizers’ teachings were absurd. They thought observing these additional commandments completed their relationship with God. And that’s how all cults and false teachings work. They propose new requirements to the gospel that “have the appearance of self-made religion and asceticism and severity to the body, but have no value in stopping the indulgence of the flesh” (Colossians 2:23). All cults in some way seek to tarnish the pure grace of Christ and institute some form of law-keeping and self-effort contrary to the gospel, and all these cults are unable to remove the power of sin residing in the human heart.

And it’s not that these additional Mosaic law-keeping requirements were merely worthless or useless, as Paul says in verse 9. Adding these requirements to the gospel sends people to hell and enslaves people to sin.

Remember how Paul started his letter: “But even if we or an angel from heaven should preach to you a gospel contrary to the one we preached to you, let him be accursed” (1:8), meaning anathema, condemned to hell. He repeats that same statement. Then, in chapter 3, Paul says, “For all who rely on works of the law are under a curse; for it is written, ‘Cursed be everyone who does not abide by all things written in the Book of the Law, and do them’” (3:10). Anyone who tries to earn a right standing with God under the Old Covenant Mosaic Law is cursed and condemned. Paul hammers this point throughout his letters in the New Testament. Paul describes the Old Covenant as “a ministry of death” (2 Cor. 3:7) that produces condemnation. He says, “The letter [the Old Covenant Mosaic Law] kills, but the Spirit gives life” (3:6).

When I’ve gone out to share the gospel with strangers, I’ve heard many self-professing Christians tell me that you have to keep the 10 Commandments to be saved. I still remember meeting a woman in Bolivia who told me this. She was a devout Roman Catholic and told me all kinds of stories about how she was a good person. But after I pointed out that none of us are righteous, that all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, she still believed that she was saved based on her ability to keep the 10 Commandments.

This is not the good news. This is actually horrible news. What people don’t realize is that we can’t keep the 10 Commandments. It’s impossible. The 10 Commandments condemn us. Paul says that the Old Covenant Mosaic Law, which includes the 10 Commandments, is the power of sin (1 Cor. 15:56). Think about that. The Mosaic Law gives sin its power. It enslaves us. If y’all are familiar with Paul’s famous dilemma in Romans 7, this is what he is talking about, that the Old Covenant Mosaic Law actually causes sin to come alive in us!

Please hear Paul is saying in these verses. “How can you turn back again to the weak and worthless elementary principles of the world? You observe days and months and seasons and years!” This is shocking. C. K. Barrett writes, “[This is] as extraordinary a statement as is to be found anywhere in [Paul’s] letters.… Here in Galatians he virtually equates Judaism with heathenism. To go forward into Judaism is to go backward into heathenism.”

Paul is not saying that observing special days or traditions is wrong. Let’s be careful about not falling into this. As devout and godly as the Pilgrims were, they messed up in this arena. After they migrated from England and came to America, they banned Christmas because they viewed it as a manmade, legalistic, Roman Catholic tradition. There is nothing wrong with celebrating Christmas or observing traditions like Advent! Paul says in Romans 14:5-6, “One person esteems one day as better than another, while another esteems all days alike. Each one should be fully convinced in his own mind. The one who observes the day, observes it in honor of the Lord.”

Traditions and holidays are morally neutral, but the problem comes when we make theses traditions requirements for a right standing with God. In medieval times, Roman Catholics believed that the ritual of annual confession and Easter communion was a minimal requirement for being a saved member of the church, and today there is a phenomenon where many Christians go to church on Christmas and Easter thinking this is all the Lord requires of them. Both of these ideas are wrong.

Back to these “weak and worthless elementary principles of the world.” Paul uses this phrase in chapter 4 verse 3 to describe the slavery of the Old Covenant Mosaic Law in Judaism before Christ. Paul also uses this phrase in Colossians to describe heresies as “philosophy and empty deceit, according to human tradition, according to the elemental spirits of the world” (Col. 2:8). This term includes not only Judaism but all other religious systems that are based on human ideas and traditions and not what we have in the New Testament revelation.

Think about the millions of people who are enslaved in all the different systems of religion. Think about the people you know in these religions, who are trying to be good, trying to deal with their guilt, but are ruled by fear and shame. Think about all the people who have been deceived by some leader or system that claims to be divine in some way. Do you have coworkers, family members, neighbors, or friends who don’t know Christ, and not the Jesus of Mormonism or Jehovah’s Witnesses or some Americanized version of Jesus? The eternal, uncreated, only begotten Son of God, King of Kings and Lord of Lords? Think about all the people who haven’t experienced the forgiveness of Christ in the gospel. What hope is there for them? Some say all religions lead to God, but that’s not what Scripture says. 

This is why Paul is pleading with the Galatians. They are going “AWOL from Grace.”  He says in verse 11, “I am afraid I may have labored over you in vain.” Paul is the one that brought them the good news of Christ to deliver them from their sins, and they joyfully received it! And now, they’re considering abandoning the gospel and turning to something that will lead them into eternal damnation. This is a matter of life and death, of heaven and hell. 

Go ahead and write this down as point #2 in your notes for verses 12-20: A father’s anguish. You can also write this down under point a. for verses 12-14: A joyful reception.

Starting in verse 12, Paul says, 12 Brothers, I entreat you, become as I am, for I also have become as you are. You did me no wrong. 13 You know it was because of a bodily ailment that I preached the gospel to you at first, 14 and though my condition was a trial to you, you did not scorn or despise me, but received me as an angel of God, as Christ Jesus.

In verse 12, Paul tells the Galatians to live like he does, as a Gentile, not as a Jew. Paul was no longer under the Old Covenant Mosaic Law with its commandments and regulations. In Chapter 2, Paul said he died to the Mosaic Law, and he now lives for God through Christ living in Him. We should listen to Paul on this, not just because He is an apostle commissioned by God, but because of his pedigree as a Jew. If anyone could boast in his performance under the Mosaic Law, it was Paul. He was a “Hebrew of Hebrews.” His standards of Mosaic Law righteousness were better than anyone. But he counted all of that as loss in exchange for the surpassing worth of knowing Jesus Christ. He gave up his former life in Judaism and counted it as garbage. And because true, perfect righteousness comes through faith in Jesus Christ, not through keeping the Mosaic Law, Paul is telling the Galatians to live like him, like a Gentile not under the Mosaic Law.

The Galatians initially embraced this message. They welcomed Paul, and they even took care of him while he was sick. They treated him like he was Jesus Christ in the flesh.

But something happened. Paul says, 15 What then has become of your blessedness? For I testify to you that, if possible, you would have gouged out your eyes and given them to me. 16 Have I then become your enemy by telling you the truth?

You can write this down under point b. for verses 15-16: A shocking rejection.

Paul uses some hyperbole to show how much they cared about him. Have you ever been willing to gouge your eyes out for somebody? That’s how much the Galatians cared about him. But all the sudden Paul’s status went from beloved apostle to arch nemesis. What happened?

It’s like when Christian parents send their kids off to college, and they come back doubting if God even exists. All the years you spent investing in them, and it takes just a few semesters to seemingly undo everything you taught them.

I went to a Christian school here in town, and I remember one day in chapel, we had a speaker that warned us of this very thing my senior year. There was a statistic from the Barna Group that said 80% of kids that grew up in the church left the faith after going to college. I saw it happen with some of my friends. After college, I reconnected with a friend from who I hadn’t seen since high school. We were playing frisbee golf at a park, and I was telling him how much the Lord had done in my life since graduation, and he basically said that he wasn’t so sure about all that God stuff anymore. He said the Bible had a bunch of mistakes, and he told me some half-baked theory that the tabernacle had this psychedelic compound that was emitted whenever the Israelites offered sacrifices which caused them to hallucinate, and that’s where a bunch of the Bible stories came from. Can’t make this stuff up. It broke my heart hearing that. I’m not sure why he left the faith, but regardless of the reason, apostasy from Christ is a real and tragic thing.

That’s very similar to what’s going on with Paul right now. Like a father learning how his son’s apostasy, he can’t believe that his spiritual children have abandoned the gospel for something that will destroy them.

Now that Paul has expressed his concern for the Galatians, he addresses the source of the problem. Write this down under point c.: A deadly deception. 

Picking up in verse 17: 17 They make much of you, but for no good purpose. They want to shut you out, that you may make much of them. 18 It is always good to be made much of for a good purpose, and not only when I am present with you. 

Paul is so caught up in the moment that he doesn’t even explicitly mention who he’s talking about, but he is talking about the Judaizers. The Judaizers were trying to turn the Galatians against Paul and his gospel. The words in the ESV were a little confusing to me at first, but I like the NLT version: “Those false teachers are so eager to win your favor, but their intentions are not good. They are trying to shut you off from me so that you will pay attention only to them. If someone is eager to do good things for you, that’s all right; but let them do it all the time, not just when I’m with you.” 

Like all false teachers, the Judaizers had false intentions. They didn’t love God or His people; they wanted to build a following. They had a love for power and praise, and they wanted to use the Galatians for their own selfish ambitions. They used flattery to lure these Christians away from the purity of the gospel. They were trying to discredit Paul who was commissioned by God, who actually loved the Galatians!

And then we come to our final point for verses 19-20: A divine conception. 

Paul says, 19 my little children, for whom I am again in the anguish of childbirth until Christ is formed in you! 20 I wish I could be present with you now and change my tone, for I am perplexed about you.

Alright, I have been waiting for 2 months to get to this verse. Believe it or not, Galatians 4:19 is one of my favorite verses in the New Testament. If I’ve lost you since we started, come back in!

Paul’s goal for the Galatians is for Christ to be formed in them. This is such an amazing verse.

This truth changed my life several years ago. When I was in college, my roommate came back to the apartment one day and told me that I should check out his professor’s Bible study. I decided to go, and I remember showing up to a conference room in the business school. There were probably 3 or 4 people there, and at the first meeting I went to, he passed out sheets of paper that had a bunch of verses from John and the New Testament talking about Christ living in you, verses like Galatians 2:20 and 4:19.

I kept going to the Bible study, and I started to realize something. Growing up, the gospel to me was, “Jesus died for my sins, and one day I’ll go to heaven,” and I think that’s a pretty common understanding among most Christians. It’s an accurate but incomplete statement. I had missed so much more to the gospel. Jesus didn’t die merely to forgive us and bring us to heaven one day, as amazing as that is. Jesus died to give us His eternal, divine life now. Every Christian has the life of God through their co-identity in Christ. In 1 John, John writes, “I write these things to you who believe in the name of the Son of God, that you may know that you have eternal life” (5:13). 

And the Old Testament prophesied about this new life! In Ezekiel 36, God promised to give His people a new heart, a heart of flesh that loves Him, and to put His Spirit in them causing them to follow God and keep His commandments. In Jeremiah 31, God said He will write His law on our hearts. We now have the ability to love God and love our neighbor because we have a new life to live by, the eternal, divine life of God in Christ.

The New Testament uses so many different metaphors to describe our co-identity with Christ. Jesus commands us to abide in Him as a branch grafted into a vine, and Paul uses rich pictures like being rooted in Christ and clothing ourselves with our Lord Jesus Christ and now giving birth to Christ in this Galatians text.

Back to my story. So I’m going to this Bible study, I’m seeing all this truth about Christ living in me by the Holy Spirit, and I’m just blown away. Remember, I had believed in the gospel at a young age and went to a Christian school growing up. I had a lot of Bible knowledge, but my experience of Christ was so lacking. 

And then, I found out the most shocking news that I had ever heard—one of my best friends committed suicide. I remember it so vividly. I was sitting in my apartment studying on a Saturday morning, my college roommate coming into my room, and the shock that hit me. It was on my dad’s birthday, and my parents were visiting me to celebrate. I told them the news, and the next day I went to a Sunday night college service that a friend had invited me to. The pastor was giving a very powerful sermon about how to be innovative in the church, and he lamented at the fact that so many young people let their 20s go by and they never serve, they never get involved, they never share their faith, and I was thinking in that moment, “You know, my best friend was 20 years old, and his life is done. If I died today, would I be ready to stand before God? I say I’m a Christian, but I hardly read the Bible, I’m not very active in my church, I never share my faith, I spend more time sinning in private than I do worshipping Jesus who I claim to be my God and Savior.”

That night began what would be the worst week of my life. Before that, I had lived a very comfortable life. I was a happy kid, didn’t experience much heartache or suffering, never experienced depression or anxiety. But that sermon wrecked me. For the first time I experienced the weight of the Law, to feel like a guilty sinner condemned to hell and separated from God for eternity. There was no escaping my hypocrisy and guilt.

Every day kept getting worse and worse. I was drowning in despair. By Thursday that week, I reached the end of myself. I was in my room and cried out to God like I never had before. I said, “God, I give you everything. My time, my thoughts, my career. I can’t live this way anymore. I need you.” The next day, I was in math class, just trying to keep up with the lecture, still incredibly depressed and hopeless, and I remember a quiet, still voice say, “Trust me.” It’s still the most amazing thing that’s ever happened to me to this day. I don’t know how to describe it. It wasn’t an audible voice, and it wasn’t a thought. But I knew it was the Lord. It was this glimmer of light in this pit of darkness I was in.

That weekend, I went home and just grieved over the loss of my friend. Then I went to his celebration of life service and came back to school, and I was a totally transformed person. The depression and anxiety were replaced with the most indescribable joy and peace like I had never experienced before. It felt like I was on a cloud for the next several months. It was pure euphoria. The Lord became so real, so desirable, so amazing to me, and so many things in my life changed spontaneously. The fruit of the Spirit that I had read about as a kid finally became my reality. I went from hardly reading the Bible to devouring Scripture. For years, I had shackled by an addiction to pornography, but after that experience the desire completely left me. I still remember being in my room several months later studying with my laptop and phone and realizing that I had no desire for it anymore, and just falling down and praising God that He would deliver me after all the evil I had done. I stopped cursing and speeding and being obsessed with my appearance, and I wanted to start sharing the gospel, this wonderful salvation I had experienced.

For years and years, I lived as a powerless, condemned, defeated Christian, and it wasn’t until I fully surrendered and made Him Lord of my life that I experienced this amazing salvation.

We preach Christ Jesus! Him, a Person, a resurrected, living Savior, the most precious Person in the universe. He alone can save you from your hypocrisy and sin, from addiction, from despair, from the fear of death and judgement, from hopelessness, from the never-ending rat race of striving and self-improvement. But you have to submit and surrender your life completely to Him.

You can try being righteous on your own. You can try putting on an exterior façade of good works and morality and religious rituals, just like the Pharisees of Jesus’s day, and just like many “moral” people of our day, but those things can’t take away the evil that is in your heart, the selfishness and pride, the apathy and disdain for others, the lusts for pleasure and power. You’ll either become prideful and elitist, thinking that you’re better than other people, or you’ll drown in despair when you realize you can’t measure up to the standard that your conscience demands.

God gave us His only begotten Son to accomplish redemption—to forgive us of all our sins, to adopt us as His sons, and to transform us from sinners into saints by His Holy Spirit living in us.

If you’ve never experienced this transformation, this pouring out of God’s Spirit into your heart, I would plead with you to cry out to Him. He is the only One who can deliver you from the slavery of the gods of this world. Don’t fall for manmade traditions and self-help gurus who can’t deliver on their promises. You are absolutely nothing apart from Him, and He will receive all who come to Him by faith. He alone has the power to save you from addiction, from condemnation, from the fear of death. He conquered sin and death on the cross and offers His divine life to all who call on His name.

For those of you who know the Lord, who have tasted and seen that He is good, keep seeking Him. Don’t fall into system of human striving, of self-reliance and self-effort. It’s so easy to fall back into that mindset. But reject all of that and abide in Christ! Live in the reality of the New Covenant, in the freedom that Christ offers! Seek Him, love Him, enjoy Him, trust in Him. He is the heavenly vine, and we are the branches. It’s only through abiding in Him that we can glorify God. And if you continue to abide in Him, you will experience a joy unspeakable and full of glory. Let’s pray.