Turn, if you will, to Galatians chapter 4. So if you've got a black church Bible, it's page 974. And if you want to grab one there just by the door. If you've come wanting a Christmas sermon, you're going to be very, very disappointed. Alright, but we're in Galatians and I need to get to the end of Galatians by the end of January and I'm struggling to get out of Galatians.
So I think I've got something, well I have got something to say tonight and it'll be a good sermon I hope for the end of the year. Galatians is pretty lively, isn't it? It's pretty fiery. And the Apostle Paul is giving a biblical and a theological argument step by step by step. And what you find with the Apostle Paul is his logic is unanswerable. Relentlessly logical.
And I think very often when we think of the Apostle Paul we think of this kind of cerebral, stern, logical man and we can ask the question, does anything get beyond his mind and reason?
And people might ask that of churches like ours. Do they feel anything? Seem like stones sometimes. The Apostle Paul, did anything move him? Did he feel?
Well look with me at verses 8 to 20. Look at verse 11. There he's saying this, I'm afraid about you. He's saying to the church in Galatia, I'm afraid that my whole work amongst you has gone down the drain.
Verses 15 to 16, he's saying I'm disappointed in you. I'm really disappointed in you. I've told you the truth and now you see me as your enemy.
And in verse 19 he says, it's as if I'm like a mother suffering birth pains. And I've not suffered birth pains. But neither is the Apostle Paul. And there's certainly feeling, isn't there, in birth pains.
He says, I'm like a mother suffering birth pains. And he ensures his aim until Christ is formed in you. He says, I'm in agony. I'm like an apostle with birth pains.
That's what he felt for the Galatian Christians. And three things tonight. As he speaks to them, he says to the church in Galatia, do not forfeit the freedom of Christ.
Don't forfeit the freedom of Christ. He begins by saying, before you came to know the Lord Jesus Christ, you were in bondage. You were in chains. You were enslaved.
It was the bondage of paganism. And he's saying that not knowing God isn't actually freedom. It is slavery.
When you didn't know God, you were slaves. And that's what they were in their paganism and their idols.
And then he says, that changed, didn't it? You came to the Lord Jesus Christ and you've had a taste of freedom.
Verse 9, when you came to know God.
And then he corrects himself.
And he says, when you came to know God.
Or rather, when you came to be known by God.
He said, you came to know God.
But the fact that you came to know God was not because of something that you did.
It was not because of an action that you did.
But you were known by God first.
And that is why you came to know God.
That's true, isn't it?
It's always his initiative that comes first.
You came to know God.
And that is freedom and wonderful.
But it is an even more wonderful thing to be known by God.
It is God's initiative.
You love God because he first loved you.
But he said to the Galatians, you've known that freedom.
You've known a taste of freedom.
And you've known a genuine, living relationship with God.
And you are known by him.
But now you are regressing back into bondage.
He says in verses 9 and 10, how is that?
How is it that you're turning your back on freedom?
How is it that you're turning back to the weak and powerless elementary principles of the world?
Why is it having tasted freedom you want to go back into slavery?
You're observing days and months and seasons and years.
Why are you going back to bondage?
And so what's going on?
What are these days and months and seasons and years?
They are days of special celebration in the Jewish calendar.
Holidays, Jewish religious festivals.
Some of them were Sabbaths.
But then there were months.
Every new month there was a new moon festival at the start of each month.
Seasons would be more prolonged festivals like perhaps Pentecost or the Feast of Tabernacles.
Some of the feasts and the years, the year of Jubilee.
And they were commemorated throughout the Jewish calendar.
And these teachers who've come to Galatia, they're invading the church and they're saying to these new believers,
if you really want to be part of the people of God, if you really want to belong and to know God, you've got to keep the Jewish observances.
Paul is not anti-Jew.
He was one.
He wasn't against observances as such.
As long as they were an expression, a voluntary expression.
But what he was upset by was these teachers were saying, this is essential.
That if you want to be one of the people of God, you've got to keep these observances.
That they try to impose on the Galatians as necessary to salvation.
He is saying, it's not like the paganism you've come from in one sense.
But it is the same bondage.
It is the same principle in thinking that outward observance is what really matters.
It's a form of legalism.
As if by doing, keeping certain days, that is going to claim you credit with God.
I wonder whether you realise how barren that is.
John Wesley, the founder of Methodism, the kind of great 18th century preacher.
In his early days, he graduated from Oxford University.
And he and his friends formed something like a holy club.
Well, that's what it was called.
Wesley was the son of a clergyman.
And John himself was already ordained.
He was quite sound and orthodox in his belief.
He was religious in his practice.
He was upright in his conduct.
He was moral.
Well, he was full, overflowing of good works.
He and his friends visited inmates in the prison and workhouses around Oxford.
John Wesley took pity on slum children.
He provided them with food and clothing and education.
In the holy club, they not only observed the Sabbath, but they observed Saturday as all hell.
They went to church.
They had holy communion.
They gave alms.
They searched the scripture.
They did lots of Bible studies.
They fasted.
They prayed.
But they were enslaved.
By the shackles of religion.
And they were trusting in their religious observances.
And their procedures.
And not in Jesus Christ alone.
And that is barren.
That is a dead end street.
When you're trusting in that stuff, it is barren and it is a dead end.
Can you see the difference here?
Freedom, Paul says, is knowing God and being known by him.
Bondage is you observe days and months and seasons and years.
There is a difference.
There is all the world of difference between having a genuine relationship with God
and keeping external religious observances.
You can carefully be in church and keep the days and keep the seasons, keep the months, keep the years.
I'm not no God at all.
25 years ago, we just got married and we went to Northern Ireland for Christmas.
I was running a youth group.
And the youth group gave me a present for Christmas.
And they said, don't open it until you get to Northern Ireland.
We were getting the earliest flight from Newton Airport a couple of days before Christmas.
And we arrived at Newton Airport.
It was absolutely rammed.
You know, easy jet, overbooking flights and all that.
Absolutely packed.
We put our bag through the security and the security alarm went off and started flashing.
Our bag went through.
They took our bag away.
They took it to the side.
He looked at me and he said, you've got a gun in your bag.
I said to him, I have not a gun in my bag.
He said, you've got a gun in your bag.
Two other men arrived.
The bag is there.
They say, you've got a gun in your bag.
I said, I haven't got a gun in my bag.
I haven't got a gun.
They opened it up very, very carefully.
And there in the wrapping paper is a potato gun from the young people.
I could have killed them.
I could have absolutely killed them.
On the x-ray, it looked like a real gun.
On the x-ray, you look at it and you say, you've got a gun in your bag.
But it wasn't a proper gun.
It wasn't a real gun.
There was the shape and there was the form.
But there was no reality.
And religious practice, even tonight, even coming to church on the last, on graveyard Sunday, Sunday night.
It can look real, but there'd be no reality to it.
And we need to be very careful as a church.
Do I really know the freedom of being known by God?
The reality of a relationship, of really knowing God.
We can say that.
Or am I caught up in the practice of religion?
Why is it that formal religiosity, if I put it like that, is so attractive to some people?
Well, for one thing, it's flattering, isn't it?
Because we think to ourselves, if I could throw myself into religious observance,
then it probably earns me credit with God.
God will see how much I'm doing for him.
But I think I can do something to earn God's favour.
But it's also safe, isn't it?
There are some people out there, maybe you tonight,
and you are afraid of the language of an intimate relationship with God.
You don't want God to get too close to you.
And religious observances and practices and formal occasions
provide just the right form of structured insulation
to keep us away from meeting with the living God.
And we have to be careful, don't we, and examine ourselves.
Do I know tonight, at the end of this year,
the freedom of knowing God?
Or more accurately, and more wonderfully,
of being known by him?
Or am I merely practising religion?
Secondly, Paul appeals to the church,
don't forfeit the freedom of Christ,
but he says to them, hold on to the truth of Christ.
That's verses 12 to 16.
He goes back in his memory, he says,
can't you remember, don't you remember how you first received me?
When I came to Galatia, don't you remember?
The reason I came was because of a bodily ailment.
I was unwell.
That's how I preached the gospel first to you.
What does he mean by that?
What is this bodily ailment?
We don't know.
It was some physical condition that he had.
It may well have been because he was persecuted.
That had bloodied him and disfigured him.
The Apostle Paul wasn't an attractive guy at all.
Or it could be that there's something physical
that he suffers with, that's alluded to in 2 Corinthians 12,
with a thorn in the flesh.
We know that there's loads of different views on this.
Did Paul have problems with his eyes?
Did he have a squint?
There's all sorts of theories out there.
No one knows.
But Paul says here in verses 13 and 14,
that although my condition was a trial to you,
you did not scorn me or despise me.
The word literally there is,
you did not spit at me.
There was something about my physical condition
that was repulsive to you.
But in spite of that,
you received me,
how did they receive him?
As an angel of God.
It's a beautiful description of a preacher.
As an angel of God,
a messenger of God,
as though I were Christ Jesus himself.
And you held on to the truth of the gospel
that I brought to you,
and you were not turned off,
and you were not discouraged
because of the package in which it came.
Because the package in which the gospel came to you,
Galatia,
was not very attractive,
was it?
And we live in a culture,
don't we,
that values the packaging
more than what's in the package.
Where appearance really matters.
And where personality really matters.
You think of advertising.
You think of the popular people in our culture.
You think of the social commentators.
It's very rare there's a bald one,
isn't there?
Bald men get a very, very hard time in our culture.
There'll never be another bald prime minister
or president.
Because the packaging matters,
doesn't it?
The packaging matters.
The church can begin to operate that way.
It'd be very empty, bald men.
There's very few bald men
are asked to speak at conferences.
I'm kidding, all right?
But we look for the minister,
don't we,
who's omnicompetent,
socially adept,
an executive,
somebody who gives off positivity.
And if the truth of the gospel
relies primarily on personality
and packaging,
well, oftentimes it would not be accepted
because Jesus Christ
does not use smooth operators.
Let me give you,
I've given this illustration this year
at the lunchtime talk.
I've given it every other year on a Sunday,
but I don't think I've given it this year on a Sunday.
It's the testimony of Charles Hamilton Spurgeon,
all right?
I love the story.
He's 15 years old.
Spurgeon says,
I was thinking about salvation one day.
He was exercised about his soul.
He realised there was a God in heaven
he wasn't right with.
And one Sunday morning,
he goes to a particular chapel.
He wants to go to one particular church
and congregation,
but it's snowing so hard
that it forced him to turn down a side street
and go into a primitive little Methodist chapel.
Spurgeon didn't know anything
about the primitive Methodists,
he says,
apart from he drew that they sung so loud
it made you a headache.
But he said he didn't care
if only he could learn how to be saved
and get into the kingdom of God.
He went in there,
but the minister hadn't come that morning
because of the snow.
He was probably snowed in.
It came to the sermon time
and a rather thin looking fellow
who must have been a shoemaker
or a tailor
made his way to the pulpit
and Spurgeon said,
it is well for ministers
to be instructed and educated,
but he said this man was really stupid.
He said,
he took his text from Isaiah 45
which says,
look unto me
and be saved
all the ends of the earth.
And Spurgeon said
that the man had to stick
to his text closely
because he didn't have much else to say.
He said he didn't even pronounce
the words of the text properly,
but he said that didn't matter
if only I could get a gleam of hope from it.
Spurgeon said he went on,
don't take a great deal of pain to look,
even a child can look.
It's not lifting a finger or a toe,
it's just look.
That's all the text says,
look unto me.
Jesus Christ went on and says,
look to me,
look at me sweating drops of blood in the garden.
Look at me hanging on the cross.
Look at me dead and buried.
Look at me risen again.
And so on.
After 10 minutes,
Spurgeon said he came to the end of his tether
and he had nothing else to say.
He turned
and looked at 15 year old Spurgeon
sitting under the gallery
and said,
young man,
you look very miserable.
and you will be very miserable in life
and miserable in death
unless you obey the words of my text.
And then Spurgeon said,
he lifted his hands
and he yelled as only a primitive Methodist could,
look to Jesus Christ,
young man.
Look to Jesus Christ.
Look, look.
Spurgeon said,
even though the packaging was offensive
and repulsive
and not refined at all,
I went out of that primitive Methodist chapel
having entered the kingdom of God.
Now come back to our text.
Paul is saying,
hold on to the truth of Jesus Christ.
There was that time
when the Galatians,
in spite of the packaging,
in spite of how repulsive the Apostle Paul was,
received the gospel.
You nevertheless received the truth of it.
And now he says,
we're in another situation.
Look at verse 16.
It shouldn't be a question mark there.
It should be an exclamation mark.
So then,
have I become your enemy
by telling you the truth?
What does he mean by that?
He's saying they've come now
to another situation
in which I've conveyed the truth to you
and the truth is unattractive to you.
This time it's not the packaging so much,
it's what he said.
I brought you a chastening word.
I brought you a correcting word,
a rebuking word.
I rebuked you for that tendency
to depart and drift from the good news
of the Lord Jesus.
And so now you regard me as your enemy?
The truth again is unattractive.
But Galatians,
remember how you originally received it
when there was nothing to commend it
as far as beauty or attraction or glitz.
Am I your enemy?
Am I your enemy
because I put you under the criticism
of the word of God?
He's saying hold on
to the truth of Jesus Christ
even when it criticises you.
And that's a great challenge to us, isn't it?
Do we hold on to the truth of Christ,
the word of God,
even when that word rebukes you
or criticises you
or corrects you?
Are we willing to receive that?
Are we willing to receive the word of Christ
when it comes to us
in an unattractive form?
When it doesn't comfort
but it corrects.
When it wounds
and when it bruises,
do we still receive it
as Christ's truth?
Proverbs 27, 6 famously says,
doesn't it,
faithful are the wounds of a friend.
And so for us as a church family,
do we hold on to the truth of Christ
even when it corrects us?
When it cuts us,
when it pulls us up short,
do you submit to it?
Thirdly,
it says something else that you must do
and this is,
what's helped me this week is
you must evaluate the servants of Christ.
That's verses 17, 20.
You must evaluate the servants of Christ.
You've heard this before.
The pastor,
the vicar,
the minister,
whatever we call him,
it's still a tough job.
If he visits the flock,
he's nosy.
If he doesn't,
he's a snob.
If he preaches longer than 10 minutes,
it's too long.
If he preaches less than 10 minutes,
then he can't have prepared his sermons
and what are we paying for?
If he runs a car,
he's worldly.
If he doesn't,
he's always late for appointments.
If he tells a joke,
he's flippant.
If he doesn't,
he's far too serious.
If he starts the service on time,
his watch must be fast.
If he's a minute late,
he's keeping the congregation waiting.
If he takes a holiday,
he's never in the parish.
If he doesn't,
he's a stick in the mud.
If he runs a gala or a bazaar,
he's money mad.
If he doesn't,
there's no social life in the parish.
If he has the church painted and redecorated,
he's extravagant.
And if he doesn't,
the church is shabby.
If he's young,
he's inexperienced.
If he's getting old,
he ought to retire.
But when he dies,
there's no one like him.
Well,
Paul speaks about himself here
and he speaks about
the difficulties of ministry.
And he contrasts himself
with these false teachers.
And I find this very,
very helpful.
Look what he says in verse 17 and 18.
He says,
they make much of you.
And they zealously seek you.
Not out of a good motive.
Why do they make much of you?
Why do they make a fuss of you?
Why do they seek you
in order to shut you off
and to shut you out?
And that's what they want to do.
They want to shut you out from me,
says the Apostle Paul.
They want to shut you out
in order that you might zealously seek them.
So verse 17,
evaluate these teachers.
Evaluate those who come to you.
Evaluate those people
who aren't seeking you
out of a proper motive.
But they're seeking you
that you would be zealous
after them
and their ministry.
And they are seeking you
for their own repetition
and for their own ego.
And they are seeking
your loyalty.
And I think this is something
really, really subtle
and it can happen
in churches like ours
and we can fall for it
so easily
and it happens in our constituency
if that's the right word.
That we can be made
to feel special
by Christian leaders.
C.S. Lewis has got this
beautiful article,
isn't it,
about the inner ring.
And all of us
want to be made
to feel special.
To be made
as if we're
one of the favourites.
And in doing so,
what happens
when Christian leaders
do that
is they are demanding
loyalty.
And Paul says,
in contrast,
he says,
let me show you
in contrast
the heart
of a genuine apostle.
And so in our constituency,
in churches like us,
how's it been done?
It's been done
on special trips,
it's been done
by giving cards,
it's been done
by lots of things
where people are made
to feel,
I'm in,
I'm in with the minister.
But Paul says,
let me show you
the heart
of a genuine apostle
and it's as if
he rips open.
He throws up his hands
and he pleads for them
and look what it says,
it's an incredible thing,
he says,
my little children,
for whom I'm
again in the
anguish of
childbirth
until Christ
is formed
in you.
That's what we're about,
that's what he's saying.
And so you want to know
if you're a genuine
servant of Christ
or not,
or whether you
yourself
are genuine,
then you ask
in the case
of a minister
for instance,
Calvin says this,
if ministers
wish to do anything,
let them labour
to form Christ,
not to form
themselves
in their hearers.
It's a remarkable phrase,
let them labour
to form Christ,
not to form
themselves
in their hearers.
So the apostle Paul,
he's not content
that Christ
should just dwell
in their hearts.
That's a wonderful truth.
That Christ dwells
in their hearts
by faith,
that is a glorious truth,
but he's not content
with that.
He wants to see
Christ
formed in them.
He wants to see
Christ
formed in his hearers
so that they
take on
maturity
and wisdom
and his likeness.
He wants them
to be growing
into the shape
of Jesus Christ
and the character
of Christ
and he says,
I have birth pains
over that
until Christ
is formed in you
and that is the motive
that must dominate
Christ's servants.
I think many of you
here know that.
If you are a Christian
parent here tonight,
you know what it's like
to have birth pains.
If you're a Christian
parent or you grew up
in a Christian home
and you had Christian
parents,
let me tell you,
in your home
your parents had
birth pains.
All over again
for those you love.
Isn't it true
that there are
Christian parents
who in one sense
they felt this,
they feel the agony
of it,
they feel the birth pains.
We pray,
like we prayed
earlier,
the sex petition
of the Lord's Prayer
of the Heidelberg
Catechism
for our children,
don't we?
We pray,
lead them not
into temptation
but deliver them
from the evil one.
And isn't it true
that some of you
tonight,
you know,
tonight even,
those birth pains
that you long
for Christ
to be formed in them.
That they would walk
in His wisdom
and in His maturity
and they'd show
His likeness
and surely
that should be
our desire
as a church,
isn't it?
As individual believers
within the church,
what are we aiming at?
What are we driving at?
What do we want
you children
and young people
to grow up like?
That Christ
would be formed
in you
and me
and others.
And so as we finish
the year,
Galatians,
I think,
for us
some really
pointed questions
at the end
of the year.
It asks you
tonight,
do you genuinely
know God
or are you
merely practicing
religion?
And then secondly,
Galatians 4
asks us,
when the word
of God
brings criticism
to you,
which it inevitably
does,
do I turn away
from it?
If you're like me,
you tend to really
welcome the comfort
of scripture
but refuse its
criticism.
And can you say
that the supreme
yearning
of your own life
is that Christ
be formed in you?
Because that was
the apostolic
priority.
Because the Holy
Spirit and the
apostle and his
word
and his appeal
leap over the
centuries,
tonight,
not later,
the end of 2025
and they investigate
our hearts
that Christ may be
formed in us.
let's pray.
Let's pray.
Thank you.