SPEAKER_00 0:06

Thank you for joining us for a sermon from Sojourn North. We are in Galatians four, one through eleven. Galatians four, one through eleven. Now I say that as long as the heir is a child, he differs in no way from a slave, though he is the owner of everything. Instead, he is under guardians and trustees until the time set by his father. In the same way, we also, when we were children, were in slavery under the elements of the world. When the time came to completion, God sent his son, born of a woman, born under the law, to redeem those under the law, so that we might receive adoption as sons. And because you are sons, God sent the Spirit of His Son into our hearts, crying, Abba Father, so you are no longer a slave, but a son. And if a son, then God has made you an heir. But in the past, since you didn't know God, you were enslaved to things that by nature are not God's. But now, since you know God, or rather have become known by God, how can you turn back again to the weak and worthless elements? Do you want to be enslaved to them all over again? You are observing special days, months, seasons, and years. I am fearful for you that perhaps my labor for you has been wasted. This is the word of the Lord.

SPEAKER_01 1:40

Thank you, Chloe. Well, I'm very excited about this passage today. It's one of my favorite in all of Scripture. It hits on something that I've been going deeper in for the last 30 years, when I had a Grace Awakening in my 20s, and it's the doctrine of adoption. And this passage is packed with a lot of different things that would make us ask, okay, what does that mean? What does that mean? And I think one of the things that's most profound about this passage is a simple phrase, when the time came to completion, and it was the right time for Jesus to come. In other translations it says, in the fullness of time. It's like, okay. So I'm going to take you through my thought process. In the fullness of time, why did Jesus come at this point 2,000 years ago, in earthly form, to walk to the cross, to die a sacrificial death, to be raised again, and open up the church. Like it's it's just beautiful. But why? Well, I've got a slideshow presentation for you, and I know you're excited about it. The first thing we see is that the Roman world was connected for the first time in history because Rome had conquered so many different places. The empire stretched across vast regions, roads connected cities, there were traveling routes, you can see those in the seas, and so people could travel more freely. And it was a relatively safe time compared to other times in human history. There was still a lot of oppression, still a lot of bad things going on. But you didn't have to stay local anymore, so ideas could spread. Secondly, the world could understand because of the Greek world and the influence of philosophy and even the Greek language. There was a shared language, Greek was common across the regions, ideas could travel, and philosophers for generations had been asking questions like this: What is truth? What is the good life? What does it mean to be human? Those are great questions. But no matter how much they philosophized, that's the word I like, philosophized. I don't know if it's a word or not, but I use it strangely commonly. Okay, but they philosophized over and over again, but they could not find how to heal the broken human heart. No matter what they came to. The best ideas, the best philosophers. And then there's another aspect of what's going on. The third thing is the Jewish side of the story that they had received a promise from Abraham that we talked about in around 1950 BC. And then the law comes 430 years later, and so then they're underneath the law, and then the prophets are longing for Messiah to come. They go through all these cycles of like, we cannot fulfill the law. They rebel and they get put to exile and then they repent and come back and they're broken. And then Malachi speaks, and then there's silence for 400 years, and there was a longing because they would search the scriptures. When would Messiah come? And they didn't know, but they would be looking. And then the fourth thing it was a broken world. And people knew it. The deepest layer across all these things: power, philosophy, religion. There was a quiet convergence and the same conclusion. If people were honest with themselves, we cannot fix ourselves. We can't fix ourselves. And so this led where we can sit in this reality that God saw fit that this was the fullness of time. For the Son of God, God incarnate, to come, be born in humble means, to live amongst the poor, to march and die a criminal. And in doing this, bring redemption. So all of that I think is fascinating. I've got a little summary here. A world connected enough to hear the message, thoughtful enough to message, wrestle with it, hungry enough to long for it, broken enough to need it, but even all that's secondary to the fact that God wasn't reacting to history, he was writing it. He brought all these things to the culmination so that the time could be full, so that Jesus would come. And that's what this passage is about. What does Jesus' coming bring? It doesn't just bring redemption and the forgiveness of sins. If it did, if that's all it brought, praise be to God. But it brought so much more. It brought forgiveness, redemption of sins, but it brought adoption. So as we think about Galatians 1 through 3, Paul has been hitting them and saying, it's not about you working for anything, adding anything to the gospel, let anyone who adds anything to the gospel that we've been given, let them be accursed. He's gone strong on this. He talks about the pillar Peter, who's who drifted. And the essence of all of this is that we will drift, but how do we come back? Not in shame, but in the sense of like, yeah, we drift. That's why we do life together. So we don't drift as far. And so it's not just you are forgiven, you are family. And so I want to slow us down here because as I even reflected this week, this truly is one of the most, if not the most foundational doctrine in our relationship to God and with each other. If I see you as an eternal brother and sister, and I live like that, I will treat you differently than if I see you as a stranger, as someone that I can just push off to the side. If I see God as master and judge versus Abba Father, do you think that affects the way that I react to him in relationship? You can bet your cookies it does. I just made that statement up. How you like that? I'm sure someone else has said it. But here's a note before we jump in. It's a note about sonship, and I just want to read. When Paul says sons in this passage, he's not excluding women. He's saying that everyone who is in Christ has full status of an heir. Because in that culture, who received the inheritance? The sons. And so he's saying, Men, your sons, children, your sons, women, your sons, Greeks, Gentiles, Jews, your sons. Slaves, your sons, free, your sons, all of it. So when I say sons today, it's all of us. So raise your hand if you're in the status of sonship. That should be everyone who trusts Christ. All right. So here's our outline. From slavery to sonship, your status has changed. All right, so the first thing in verses 1 through 3, what Paul is doing here, he's giving us a little analogy about being a slave and being a son. And he's tying it back to the previous passage as well, where the law was our guardian. So let's walk through his argument. So in both Jewish and Roman cultures, what would happen is that children would come of age and become adults. Now in the Roman culture, there was a set, I'm sorry, in the Jewish culture, there was a set age. In the Roman culture, it was up to the father. So when they saw that the son was old enough to go through this rite of passage, then they were said to be a man. So this is at an appointed time. And so Paul's using this as an analogy here. And he's comparing this too. When you're a child, even though you're going to inherit everything, you don't really have anything practically more than a slave until the inheritance is given. And it's really even interesting, a high-ranking slave in the household actually has more freedom than the child does. So we were never meant to remain without an inheritance. And so this goes back to last week. The law was our guardian to watch over us while we were still children. And the law was supposed to show us our deep need, our corrupt nature. And he's going to be talking about the elemental principles of the world here in just a minute. But before Christ, we lived under these elemental principles. And these principles were saying, if I do this, then I can fill my void. If you work hard enough, you can make yourself right before God. Trying to make a name for ourselves. If I can just have enough people like me, then I will be filled. These are the elementary principles of the world. They're the ABCs. It's a lot of if-then. If I do this, then I'll get this. But you do it over and over and over again. It breaks down every time because it cannot work. Because it's a broken system. And so therefore, we are slaves to that system, whether you know it or not, before Christ. We're slaves to whatever we put the most value on, that we go for it with all our heart. Even if you think about dear people who go down the path of addiction, what are they longing to do? Some are trying to escape the pain. They see that as the greatest need, and they may be suffering great pain. It leads to destruction. But you can dress that up to a workaholic who's trying to get the next paycheck increase. I guess they call that a raise, don't they? The raise. It's like, keep on going up the next promotion, and it's like, I want to update my LinkedIn page, because then only two people ever look on LinkedIn in our church, but everybody else in the world does, and it's like, man, they're gonna think so good about me. And then someone gives you a compliment, it passes through you, and it's like that feels good, and it goes into a black hole, and it's like, oh, where's my next compliment coming? So we're trapped, we're slaves. But God in his grace, in the fullness of time, in verse 4 again, the way uh our translation puts it, when the time came to completion, God sent his son, born of a woman, born under the law, to redeem those under the law. And what did this redemption accomplish? We were brought fully in. And that leads us to point two. We were brought from a distance into a closeness, into an intimacy where we can cry out, Abba Father. And I love this. So that we might receive adoptions as sons. So you're no longer a slave, verse 7 says, but a son, and if a son, then God has made you an heir. So let's just walk through this slowly. My prayer this week has been this. We've hit this subject many times. If you've been around me, we talk about it a lot. But this is one of those fundamental things that it we have to let it go down deeper into our souls because it can affect every aspect of our being. I have a quote from Sinclair Ferguson's book, Children of the Living God, and I want to read it twice. The notion that we are children of God, his own sons and daughters, is the main spring of Christian living. Our sonship to God is the apex of creation and the goal of redemption. So St. Clair is basically saying, it's important. I'll read it again. The notion that we are children of God, his own sons and daughters, is the mainspring of Christian living. It's where life comes. Our sonship to God is the apex of creation and the goal of redemption. Jack Miller, his name was uh C. John Miller. Jack Miller, he taught at Westminster Seminary and was a pastor at Presbyterian churches, and he was the mentor of Tim Keller. That's how I know him, and I've read some of his books. He was noticing in this Presbyterian denomination, and we love precious Presbyterian brothers and sisters, he was noticing that they had theology solid, so solid. But Jack Miller was also a missionary. He'd travel over to Spain and other places. But as he traveled and came back, he'd noticed that people weren't experiencing the life that God had for them. They had it all here, and it was just like, he was, it's like, it's just not affecting our love and our passions and everything else. And so he started studying and praying and going through Romans. He got stuck in Romans 8, Romans 12, and this Galatians 4. He was reading some Luther, and it came to him that this doctrine of sonship was so essential. So he developed a program called Sonship. It brought about revival in his denomination so much that it birthed a missions organization called World Harvest Mission, which became Surge, which still exists today. We've uh personally, as a church, have funded Surge missionaries, and we do as a couple, me and Ginger. So great effect. But what he noticed is that this is so important. Yes, get the knowledge down, get the theology down, grasp the doctrines. But we must somehow, by God's grace, soak these things down to our hearts so that it affects every core of our being. So the first thing is that you're no longer a slave. You were a slave, but now you're an adopted child of the king. Hard stop right there. Adopted child of the king. Therefore, as adopted children of the king, we have the privilege to cry out, Abba, Father. And this word Abba is a tender word. You can study it. It is a little child with a lisp. When this little child who's crying out learns the first words, it is daddy, mommy. It's like a lisp on the tongue crying out, Daddy. And this cry word is a guttural word, too. It's not like you get to say, Dad, Dad, it's dad! In times of trouble or in joy when you say it's like daddy, daddy's home. We get to cry it out. We don't cry out, master or judge. We cry out, Ah, but father. This parable came to mind this this week, kind of an image of parents and children coming to a house where there's a big party, but it's a lot of important people, a lot of serious people. So the adults get in one section and they're mingling, and the kids are ushered off to a different section, and they even hire childcare to keep the children wrangled. And so the parents are in these important conversations about politics and economics and uh what's going to happen in the next episode of their favorite show. You know, it's like, man, what's going on? Well, one of the kids, who's four years old, little boy, sneaks past the sitters and just peeks around. He's getting a little honri. And so he just sneaks out, he sees all these people wandering around. But then he spots his dad in this serious conversation with these people. And so his dad has his back to him, and his son sees him and just beelines it as fast as a four-year-old can run. It's usually bow-legged, you know. And he runs up to his dad. His dad's not watching, but his dad feels this hug on the leg. The dad looks down. His son's smiling up at him. He picks up his son, kisses him on the forehead, smiles real big, holds him to his heart. This is my son. That's what I want to call Abba behavior. We know in our minds how Abba will behave towards us. But how do we behave towards Abba? I feel like this, as praying this week, I feel like we we kind of need a revival that we become more childlike in our relationship with God. We need a, you know, Jesus even said, unless you become like a child, what would it be like for you to say, I want to be more like a child with God? I just let you sit with that. Would you run up to his leg? Boom. Because I guarantee you this, my brother and sister, he will pick you up, kiss you on the forehead, and hold you close to his heart. You are in his eternal family. He gave Jesus much joy to endure the shame of the cross? Why? How? How? Because he was redeeming a people to himself. And here's what happens when this clarity comes. We start seeing the way that we live because we do drift. Because the elemental and elementary principles of this world pull us away from that because everything in this world says, that's not true, that's dumb. It's like, no, this is reality, this is truth. This is what I'm gonna build my life on. I live on this, I will die on this. So when Paul is making his argument, he's saying, like, guys, this was the plan of God for redemption, to be children of God, and now you're going against daddy and saying you gotta add the old stuff back again. The days and circumcision and stuff, we gotta live like we did under the old system. He's like, no, no, no.

unknown 21:59

Verse

SPEAKER_01 22:00

Verse 9, the second half of it. How can you turn back to the weak and worthless elements? Do you want to be enslaved to them all over again? You've been freed. And the picture we have sometimes is that some people, and I've done this in my life, you can sit by your shackles and live as if they're still attached, but they've been broken free. They're not attached to you. But we can gently form them around and they'll fall off because they're not attached. You are observing days, months, seasons, and years. I'm fearful for you that perhaps my labor has been wasted. It's like I've given you this. He's saying, don't forget your position in Christ. Don't forget that you're called to live like sons and daughters of the king. Don't go backwards. The Christ that we worship is the one that completed the work necessary for us to be children of God and to be free. And in chapter 5, we're going to hit freedom and we're going to hit the fruit of the Spirit and how all this works out. And finally, Paul, as if the ultimate identity isn't good enough, Paul reminds them and us what being part of the eternal family is. And this is point three. We move as we are children of God from poverty to an inheritance. You are an heir through God. So you're a child of God. Other passages say you're co-heir with Christ. Concerning your inheritance, we want to set our eyes here because in this passage it says, so you are no longer a slave, but a son. And if a son, then God has made you an heir. An heir. If you receive an inheritance, just a side note, it's cool to be in a state where there's not an inheritance tax. I tell you that. Got to experience that. I don't think there'll be an inheritance tax in heaven. I just thought I'd say that. All right. I started thinking about taxes. Two things are certain: death and taxes. There's a third. Your pastor will get distracted as he preaches sometimes. Your inheritance, what does that mean? Everything that's Christ's is yours. Namely, God Himself. What do we get in the end? God. That's going to be mind-blowing. The God who spoke all things into existence. Treasures. I think at the end of the day, all these things, like even the idea of crowns with jewels, like those things will not be of prime importance. It's just something we can offer to the king. It's like God Himself. That's what we long for, to be reconnected with God. Broken in the garden. Jesus brings to redemption. And we experience it some, but it's already not yet. We will one day when we see Jesus face to face. But here's where the drift is, and this is where I'd like to close our time together. I put a little handout in your bulletin. Would love for you to pull it out. And I subtitled it A Gentle Invitation to Notice Where You're Living From. Now, with everything we do, I want to remind you, I want you to hear me clearly. You're going to drift. The point of the Christian life is continual return. We're pilgrims. We're not on a linear path. Remember how I talk about that house illustration where my house was survival and suppression, and now I've moved to a different neighborhood of kind of what I'd call non-judgmental observer. And it's like it's a good place to be compared to just living in survival. Well, sometimes I will go back to that yard and camp out and be like, oh, I feel like I'm in survival mode right now. And then it's like, oh, I don't live here anymore. I want to go back. So it's it's like a deepening, and I want to keep on moving to some different neighborhoods. So wherever you are, this is just something for us to observe, to be a non-judgmental observer and just say, hey, this is what's going on. What is, is. And if you want a good phrase, what is is the teacher. What you're experiencing, what is, is going to show you something. So it's not a test, not a way to measure how spiritual you are. It's simply an invitation to notice. And my prayer is that each of us could maybe see some depth of one of these things as we go through them, of saying, Well, I'm living more like a slave in this area, and maybe your thing's not on this list. And the invitation is God just graciously with a smile on his face saying, Hey, in that area, come on, let's come with me. Let's work on that. Let's see what we can do as you sit with me, as you do this in community. So we want to gently bring it before the Father. He already knows it. So this, let's see, let's see as we shine this light on ourselves together, or look in a mirror together. Do you feel like I have something to prove? Or are you resting in what has already been given? When it comes to your relationship with God, do you feel like you got something to prove, or are you resting in what has already been given? One is like a slave, one is like a child. A slave is working for approval. A child is living from approval. Living like a slave, you fear quietly, or fear quietly drives my decisions. This is and it's just this hum inside that I gotta do this, I gotta do this, versus the child, trust slowly shapes my steps. And there's an entrustment, there's a release in that too. It's like, I can't figure this out. Lord, I have to trust you in this and keep walking. A slave hides weakness and failure. A child, I remember becoming a child, and this is interesting when you think about our children being younger when they confess stuff to us, when they don't hide, maybe you've experienced that. Um bring it honestly to the Father. Controlled by what others think versus anchored in what God says, keeping my distance from God when I struggle, and trying to say, I gotta fix it before I can go to God. That's slave mentality versus moving toward God in my struggle. The slave measuring myself constantly, where am I? The child receiving my identity is given, it's been spoken and placed over me. It does not ebb and flow. The slave trying to manage how I'm seen versus the child being known and still loved. One of the things I love about y'all, through the ups and downs of my journey, uh I have been loved by you guys. Amazing. Amazing. Everybody look at me in the eyes. I can't match everyone's eyes. Thank you. It really means the world to me. It's beautiful. It's been able to transition me from a lot of chaos to the last nine months of being like, oh, this is beautiful. This is what I want to do. And I can see myself as an old man. And some are saying, Chad, you're already an old man. I can see myself as an older man, just breathing deep and being like, hey, let's do this. This is good. So maybe you got 40 more years with me. I don't know. We'll see. You're doing the math, and so am I. That would make me 91. So feeling anxious about losing my place versus secure and belonging, relating to God mostly through effort versus relating to God as Abba Father. Maybe there's one of those, maybe there's many of those that just spark in your heart. And guess what? Guys, when you hear that, you're safe. You know why? Because you're already a son or daughter of the king. Your identity is secure. So I'd invite you to take it this week and just reflect on it. Which of these feel most familiar right now? Where do you sense pressure for your striving? Where might God be inviting you to remember that you already belong? And when you notice yourself acting like a slave this week, and and there will be times, just stop in your tracks if you can. Put your hand over your heart and just say, Abba, Father, I belong to you. Can you imagine doing that for a month? When you feel yourself striving, you feel like it's all up to you. Abba, Father, I belong to you. If you're like me, this is what happens when I practice this. I'm all worked up, I'm striving. Abba, Father, I belong to you. Five minutes later, I feel the strive come back. You know, it's like I heard uh Dawana say uh we lay things down on the altar and it keeps crawling back to us, and it's like we got to go back to the altar and lay it back down, and that's okay, that's reality. But that's faith, that's the life of faith. I want to share a story I've shared several times over the years, and this is a story from moving from distance to closeness, and this is the Abba behavior that I'm talking about. So the story goes like this. It's funny, I read it in a book 30 years ago when I was having my Grace Awakening, at the same time, these passages, beautiful grace of God. But the author was writing, he said, There was a young lady who came to him and said, she knew he was a Christian author and a pastor and a speaker, and said, Would you go visit my dad? He's he's very sick and he's dying in the hospital. And she said, My pastor at our church is just too busy, he's not getting over there, and I'm afraid he's gonna pass. And the Christian speaker and pastor said, Sure, I'll go. So he goes and visits, he finds out the room number, he goes into the room, and the older man has a chair pulled real close to his bed, real close. And so the pastor comes in and says, Oh, were you expecting me? And he said, Um, no. And he said, Well, why is the chair like so close? And he said, Well, shut the door, and I want to tell you a story. And he said, I hope you don't think I'm crazy after it, but I'm just gonna tell you anyway. He said, For my whole life I struggled with prayer. I felt like God was distant. I felt like I would pray up and the prayers wouldn't even get past the ceiling, they'd fall back down. And I just I'd try, I'd try, but I just felt such distance. So I went to my pastor, and my pastor, who's so smart, went to his bookshelf and pulled off this huge book and gave it to me and said, This is the treatise on prayer. You read this, it will answer every question you've ever had. So the old man takes it, opens it up, reads the first page, has to look up several words in a dictionary, and he's like, Thanks, but no thanks. This ain't nothing for me. So he gives it back and then just thinks this is what my life's gonna be. He meets with another one of his old friends and is just sharing the story about the pastor getting him this huge book and just like, man, this guy's out of touch. And and his friend said, Oh man, I used to have a lot of trouble praying too, but I started doing something that really helped. He said, I would take a chair and set it in front of me. And I'd pray. And he said, I'm not praying through the chair, you know. It's I imagine Jesus in the chair. Because Jesus said he'll never leave us or forsake us, he's always with us. Jesus is here right now. Do you know Christ is in you? We just read in the passage the spirit of Christ is in you. You are in Christ and Christ is in you. If you think you're not sealed enough from that, it's like that's that's pretty complete. But he said, I just found as I know that Jesus is with me, I could just talk and I could talk verbally out loud. And I just poured my heart out to him. He said, if you want to try it, it can be good for some people. Doesn't work for everybody. So the old man started doing that, and he said, for the first time in my life, I felt a closeness, I felt an intimacy. And I've been doing it every day since. And he said, Pastor, am I crazy? And the pastor said, No, you're far from crazy. You're experiencing Jesus. It's ABBA behavior. Well, I'll stay here for the final part of the story. That the pastor leaves, blesses, and prays for him, and then he sees the young lady soon after, a few days later, and says, Uh, how's your father doing? She said, He passed, but he passed peacefully. And uh she said, but there were a couple interesting things because he called me over, I guess he knew it was close to the end, and he whispered a corny joke to me. He was always telling corny jokes, and then he said he loved me, kissed me. I left the room, and when I came back, he had passed, but he did something strange before he passed. He had pulled a chair real close to his bed and he laid his head on the chair. I don't know why he did that. And the pastor was able to say, I do. The same prayer chair where Jesus sat, where he'd poured out his heart. He laid his head in the lap of Jesus before he awakened to see Jesus face to face. That's Abba behavior. That's our right as sons and daughters. So as we come to the table today, we think about this. Maybe today you don't need to do much at all as you come. Maybe you just need to have on your mouth these words. Abba Father, I belong to you. Think of the great costs it took. For the joy set before him, Christ endured the cross. If you are a Christian here today, this is what I invite you to do. I'd invite you to come, take some juice, take some bread, back to your seat, and just hold on to it. And let these words come into your heart, into your mind, even on your lips. Abba Father, I belong to you. And let that be enough. Let me pray, and after that you may come. Father, thank you, Abba Father. We do belong to you. And there's a tenderness that we often don't experience. I just pray for that gift right now as we partake in communion that there would be a tenderness that we sense in our spirits. Because none of this is based on what we do or how we perform. It is based on your work, your grace, your power, your love. And we know and we believe as we embrace that more, as it grows down deeper into our hearts, that we will love others more and love you more and cherish you more and live more to share the gospel with others. But Lord, in this moment, I pray that we could come today and just say, Abba Father, we belong to you. And more than that, personalize it. Abba Father, I belong to you. Move in our midst here in these next moments. We ask this in Christ's name. Amen.