Paul saying, the whole point of the day of Atonement that was celebrated every year, century after century after century after century after century, is a point of the head to the ultimate sacrifice and the blood of the Messiah that would be offered once and for all, never again, to be repeated. And after that finished work of Jesus was accomplished, you want to go back to the shadows? You want to go back to those observations? You're not under that obligation now. You know, it's easy for us in the 21st century to scoff at those early Jewish converts in the Galatian church. They were tempted to add to the gospel as they looked back to the Old Testament ceremonies, and this stands as a reminder to all of us to examine if we have begun to add things to the gospel. Hi, I'm Nathan W. Bingham, and this is the Sunday edition of Renewing Your Mind. If you live near Houston, Texas, I'd like to invite you to renew your mind live on Tuesday, March 17. Whether you're a long time listener or you've only recently discovered this daily program, I want to connect with you and thank you for listening. You'll have an opportunity to meet me and our guest teachers during a night filled with biblical teaching, fellowship and giveaways as we seek to have our minds renewed according to the Word of God. You can learn more and register at renewingyourmind.org slash Houston. Well, RC's world is making his way through Galatians chapter 4 on Sundays, and I'm glad you're with us today. But if you'd like to study all of Galatians with Dr. Sprawl, I do encourage you to request his single volume commentary when you give a donation and support of the proclamation of the biblical gospel to the nations at renewingyourmind.org. If you have your Bible with you, here's Dr. Sprawl in Galatians 4, beginning in verse 8. Formerly, when you did not know God, you were enslaved to those that by nature are not gods. But now that you have come to know God or rather to be known by God, how can you turn your back again to the weak and worthless elementary principles of the world, whose slaves you want to be once more, you observe days and months and seasons and years? I'm afraid that I have labored over you in vain. Others I treat you become as I am, or I also have become as you are. You did me no wrong. You know it was because of a bodily ailment that I preached the gospel to you at first. And though my condition was a trial to you, you did not scorn or despise me, but receive me as an angel of God, even as Christ Jesus. But 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. Have I then become your enemy by telling you the truth? They make much of you but for no good purpose. They want to shut you out. You may make much of them. It is always good to be made much of for a good purpose, and not only when I am present with you, my little children, for whom I am again in the anguish of childbirth until Christ is formed in you. I wish I could be present with you now and change my tone for I am perplexed about you. Paul begins this section giving us two distinct contrasts. The two contrasts are these, the contrast between freedom and bondage and between knowing God and not knowing God. And beloved, the two are inseparably related. If you don't know God in a saving way, you are in bondage. You may think that you are free and enjoy vast liberties in your life, but in the final analysis, if you don't know God in a saving way, you are in chains and you suffer from severe bondage. That is why it was said, I believe, by thorough that most people live lives of quiet desperation. Without Christ is to be without hope. Now the other contrast is this, that Paul says that you did not know God or you did not know God, and instead you gave service and obeisance to those things which are not God. That is two idols. You served and worshiped things that were made by your own hands, things that are creatures and all the while you did not know God. Now that is sort of perplexing because the Apostle Paul the same Apostle when he wrote his letter to the Romans begins his study of Romans and the unfolding of the Gospel by saying in the first chapter that the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all unrighteousness and all ungodliness of men. And what was that combined unrighteousness and ungodliness? Paul goes on to explain because God has revealed Himself plainly and manifestly to every person in this world. And so through the things that are made we know even His eternal power and deity and falseness. Therefore they are without excuse. Paul goes on to say for knowing God they did not worship Him as God. Neither were they grateful, but what happened? They exchanged. They traded. They swapped. The glory of God for the creature and served and worshiped the creature rather than the God and the creator who is blessed forever and they began to bow down to four-legged things and creeping things and all sorts of man-made idols. So Paul makes that abundantly clear that no man has an excuse because everybody already knows that God exists. And yet here He is He says, and He don't know God. Now this Paul conscious dict Himself, no not at all. In His first letter to the Corinthians He said that by human wisdom you knew not God. Now when He talks about the knowledge of God He uses a word that is very important in the New Testament. It has the same nuances to the Old Testament. It's the word for knowledge. We get the word noces, diagnosis, prognosis. The word nozzles is from the Greek word noces. The word agonosis, meaning without knowledge and Latin for that word is what bested. Ignoramus. This word nozzles has two different references. On the one hand it refers to a cognitive awareness and every creature in the universe as an intellectual or cognitive awareness of God. And yet at the same time it has a much deeper meaning where it talks about a meaning of knowing by way of personal intimacy. When the Bible says that Adam knew his wife and she conceived, we aren't to believe that the minute he was introduced to Eve that he now had a cognitive awareness of her identity and therefore she got pregnant. No. Or Abraham knew his wife and she conceived. The word to know there is used for the deepest knowledge of intimacy. And that's the word that is used for us in the New Testament in terms of a saving knowledge of God. And so Paul says you didn't know God in that sense. But now you know God. But then he corrects himself in midstream, not really a correction as if he made a mistake but he wants to clarify what he was trying to say when he says, but now that you have come to know God or rather to be known by God. What's the difference? Isn't that the same thing to know God as it is to be known by God? Remember how Jesus ended the sermon on the Mount, the severe warning that he gave at the end of that when he said, many will come on the last day and say, Lord, Lord, didn't we do this in your name? Didn't we do that in your name? In Jesus' warns then that he will say to them, please leave. Go. The part for me, for I never knew you. I never knew you. You who were workers of an equity. In the final analysis, not do you know Jesus? It's Jesus, no you. It's not do you know God, but does God know you? He knows all about you obviously, but does he know you in a saving way that from time eternity, he chose you in the beloved and knew you in Christ. And so Paul's saying in the most powerful way, you're saying, you know God. You heard the gospel, you embrace the gospel, you're known of God. How then could you turn away to the weak and beggarly things of this world? You want to be slaves to them once more. You observe days, months, seasons, and years. All that stuff is of great importance to you. Now what's your referring here? He's not obvious. He's not referring to the natural distinctions of days and weeks and years that are determined by the rotation of the planets and the sun and all of that. He's talking about days that have been set aside, months that have been set aside, seasons that have been set aside, in redemptive history, the Jewish feasts, the day of atonement, the feasts of weeks, that sort of thing, the year of Jubilee. He said, these were the elementary things. These were the things that God gave to His people to observe in the history past, but they were the shadows of things that were to come. Yes, it was obligatory for every Jew and the Old Testament to celebrate the Passover and to celebrate the Yom Kippur the Day of Atonement. And now Paul's saying, if you want to insist upon its celebration, now you've missed the whole gospel. The whole point of the Day of Atonement that was celebrated every year, century after century after century after century, he said, point it ahead to the ultimate sacrifice and the blood of the Messiah that would be offered once and for all, never again, to be repeated. And after that finished work of Jesus was accomplished, he wouldn't go back to the shadows. You want to go back to those observations. You're not under that obligation now. No wait, just a minute. Time out. When God establishes a law, doesn't it last forever? No, it doesn't. Here's where I have to make a little theological distinction. We distinguish in theology between God's natural law and God's propulsive law. Now be careful that you don't misunderstand what I'm saying because we have another way of speaking of natural law. We talk about the likes, not the rules, the law of nature that nature itself reveals the survival of the fittest, that sort of thing, or the use of gentium, the law of the nations, where there's a universal agreement among all peoples that certain things are right and certain things are wrong. Nature itself teaches us that. But when I'm talking now about the law of God's nature, I'm talking this way. Here we're saying by the law of God's nature that there are certain laws that God reveals and legislates based upon his own nature, his own character, and his nature and his character are immutable. They never change in the slightest. But then there's a second set of laws that God gives in history that we call the propulsive laws of God, namely that God legislated particular items of legislation for a specific defined purpose, for historical purpose, that when that purpose was finished and fulfilled, then that law was abrogated. They don't celebrate, y'all I'm a cacupur, anymore, we celebrate the Lord's supper. We don't celebrate the Passover, the feasts of weeks or any of those things. But God doesn't change the prohibition against idolatry when He says, I also have no other gods before me, now that the new covenant has come in and the law, we're not under the bonnish of the law, then it's okay to serve in worship, I don't know. For God to okay idolatry would be for Him to deny Himself, to deny His very character and deny His very being. So God's natural law never changes. But here Paul is talking about the historical purpose of laws of the Old Testament that governed the days and the times and the seasons. And he says, that's all going. And he said, brothers, I beg you, become as I am. What's He say? I'm not subject to that old economy anymore. I don't observe those days and seasons and all that anymore. I'm a Jew, I'm a Jew of Jews, a Pharisee of Pharisees. You can't get more Jewish than I am, but those things have been fulfilled. And I'm not in bondage to that anymore, I'm free in Christ. And he said, you know, you didn't me no wrong when I came to you, you know it was because of a bodily element or a physical infirmity that I preached the gospel to you at first. So this phrase, physical infirmity, your bodily element, it's almost intoxicating to scholars. They want to dig and find out. It was the bodily element he was talking about. He talked about, I mean, a thorn in the flesh in another case, he talks about writing with big letters because his vision was impaired. I frankly don't know, but I have to think that what Paul's talking about because something that was obviously visible, anybody that could see him would immediately recognize that there was something wrong about the man. Well, and the second letter to the Corinthians, Paul gives a quick autobiography. He said, I don't want to indulge in this kind of discussion. He says, if I speak as a fool, some of you bragging about Jews, so am I. And all of that, he says, you want to boast? I'll tell you what, let me tell you what I've gone through to be an apostle. Five times I was last, 40 lashes minus one. That's 195 lashes with bits of stone and metal in that whip that tears the flesh to the bone. Can you imagine anybody walking around still alive who's been last five times? Three times I've been beaten with rods. Once I was stoned and they dragged what they thought was my corpse to the outside gates of the city and they left me there for dead. Three times I was shipwrecked a day and a night I spent in the sea. I think Paul's body was one mass of scar tissue. I don't think he walked boldly into the Galatians. He limped, barely moved. Mass of scars all over his body. Most people would look at this figure and look at how grotesque he appeared and would shy away from him an embarrassment. Paul said, you didn't do that. You didn't do me any wrong when I preached the gospel to you at first. Though my condition was a trial to you, you didn't score in me or despise me. But you received me as if you were receiving an angel of God, as if you were receiving Christ himself. What now has become of your blessedness? Where I testified to you that if possible you would have gouged out your eyes and given them to me. Now I've become your enemy because I tell you the truth. No quicker way to make enemies than to tell your friends the truth. They make so much of you but for no good purpose. He's talking about the false teachers. They want to shut you out that you might make much of them. Now it's always good to be made much of our good purpose. Now not only with you, when I'm present with you, he says, my little children. It doesn't call them foolish Galatians now. It doesn't call them the bewitched ones. Now the pastoral heart of the Apostle Paul is beginning to come out. And he says possessively. Not little children, not that you're acting like kids. You say, my, my little children, you're my babies. Now he says, for whom I am again in the anguish of childbirth until Christ is formed in you. You've begun in Christ. You're born in Christ. But now you need to grow up in Christ. That Christ may be formed in you. This message is for us. The whole point of our sanctification is that Christ may be formed in us. It's not something that Paul is teaching to the Galatians that's different from what he would preach to us if he walked in this church this morning. He would say to us, you're reading my epistle 2000 years after I wrote it. But where are your heads? Where are your hearts? You've been known by God. What are you doing? Why are you moving away from the gospel? Because we all do it. We can't just say, nah, nah, nah, nah, the Galatians. We're the Galatians. And we have been brought to bear by the travail and the birth pangs of Christ himself. Does he have to go through that again? That we may grow up to maturity in him that he may be formed in us. That's what he wants, the formation of his people, that he himself may be formed in you and me. That's what the Christian faith is all about. It's not just about conversion and then you're done. No, conversion's the beginning. Then we have our whole lives where he is making us and molding us and shaping us and forming us in his image. And Paul concludes this section by saying, oh, I wish I could be present with you now, like I was then. And changed by tone. Yes, you have heard in this letter the tone of my anger, but like almost 100% of all anger of all people at any time, anger is born out of pain. So the now Paul is pouring out his heart. Say, I'm not angry with you. I'm hurt. I'm devastated. And I wish I could be with you now that I can change my tone because right now I'm perplexed. I'm confused. I don't know where you are. I see what you're doing. I can't understand it. How is it possible? I want to come back to you. And I want to talk to you again about being my children, not in severe tones of anger, but in loving tones of peace and comfort. That's what he wants from us. That the Lord himself would speak to us, not an anger, but in tenderness because we are in love. The Apostle Paul's words were strong, but his heart was the heart of a pastor. R.C. Sproul's heart was the heart of a pastor as well. Dr. Sproul preached through this book because he wanted the sheep under his care to understand these great truths that there is no way that we can add to the gospel. We must trust in Christ and Christ alone for our salvation. This is renewing your mind on this Sunday. I'm Nathan W. Bingham. Sitting under Dr. Sproul's preaching through Galatians was a great help and encouragement for me and my family, and all of those sermons came together to form his expositional commentary on Galatians. If you'd like a copy to read whether for Bible study or in short sections for use in your devotional reading, you can request a copy when you give a donation before midnight tonight at renewingyourmind.org. You'll sense R.C. Sproul's pastoral heart as you read his commentary and explanation. So add this to your collection today when you show your support with a gift large or small at renewingyourmind.org while by using the link in the podcast show notes. And if you live outside of the U.S. and Canada, the eBook edition is waiting for you at renewingyourmind.org slash global. Thank you for all the ways you support this daily outreach and help Christians around the world to better know the Word of God and the God of the Word. As it's Sunday, if you don't listen to Reffnet, today would make for a great day to download the app to hear further sermons and trusted teaching. It's 24-7 Christian Internet Radio. With all the noise out there today, this is a trusted destination for quality teaching that is faithful to the historic Christian faith. Simply search for Reffnet wherever you download your apps or visit refnet.fm slash app. While the Apostle Paul isn't through making his earnest plea to his fellow believers there in Galatia and next Sunday, Dr. Sproul will continue his series in Galatians chapter 4. To hope you'll join us then, here on renewing your mind.
