Sermon Tone Analysis

Our theme for 2021 is “Redeeming the Time”

Last month I began a study of Paul’s letter to the Galatians

The Galatians were people who came to Christ on Paul’s first

and second missionary journeys and the churches that they started.

When Paul and Barnabas were sent out from Antioch, they travelled to Cyprus and were headed west until they turned north and then started moving east, back toward Tarsus and Antioch where they came from.

But then they turn around and retrace their steps and sail back to Antioch.

As we will learn from our passage today, Paul’s course was altered from what He expected.

But it was the course that God had for Him and as a result, these Galatian believers came to know Christ.

Meanwhile, there were these Jewish teachers that were following Paul’s trail trying to convert the people back to the old way of Judaism.

Maybe that is why Paul went back through the towns where he had already been?

They were causing these young Christians to doubt everything that they believed and were taught.

So Paul had to remind them of the powerful encounter that they had with Christ and that they are no longer deceived.

He had to tell them that they are no longer inferior - say it with me, “I am adequate, I am competent and my life is meaningful!”

He told them that they are no longer cursed because Jesus reverses the curses and because the blessing is stronger than the curse.

And he told them that they are no longer captive because they have the key to unlocking their inheritance in Christ.

Becoming a follower of Christ is not just a matter of following a religion, it is a supernatural transformation.

You are no longer what you used to be.

We ended last week with a powerful declaration:

I almost entitled this series “No longer slaves” because this is such a powerful statement.

But I thought that “No longer what you were before” is broader and captures the essence of what this letter is saying.

Besides, I’m not sure if many of us relate to being called slaves.

In Paul’s day, most of the population would have been slaves - people who literally belonged to other people.

Maybe they were from a country that was conquered by Rome and then resettled to a different area where they served the aristocracy of that town.

Maybe they sold themselves into slavery because they couldn’t pay a debt.

Or maybe they were sold into slavery by a parent or relative to pay their debts.

Of course people were regularly traded to different employers if they didn’t get along where they are.

Not all of the workforce were slaves, some were free-agents (indentured servants) who could negotiate their employers or even their salaries.

But most people had little control over their lot in life - it was a thing to be accepted.

When we think of slavery in America, we had a particularly nasty kind of slavery in our history because of popular beliefs at the time, our slaves where treated as less than human.

We still have a kind of slavery today, except that it is mostly economic slavery in which people receive so little from what they produce that they can only survive and have little chance to better themselves or their situation.

This is a good time to mention that today is a day of prayer for persecuted Christians.

Christians around the world face harassment, beatings and even death and imprisonment for their faith in Jesus.

But their are many more for whom becoming a Christian means being cut off from their family or community - which also means note being able to get a job or not finding anyone to marry.

We pray for those who really know what it means to sacrifice for the sake of the gospel.

In the Roman Empire however, slaves were often stronger, smarter and even sometimes more well-educated than their masters.

Some slaves might even appear wealthy, fat and well-dressed.

But nothing that they have actually belongs to them - they just get to enjoy it because they have a good job.

Being a slave might not be such a bad deal!

Or it might be a really bad way to live.

But you don’t really have a choice, and that is the point.

What makes a person a slave or a son?

Is it just a persons lot in life?

Completely beyond their control?

Or is it knowing who you are and where you come from?

Ultimately, it is knowing your heavenly Father and knowing the truth about yourself.

The question is - how are we slaves; and how do we not be slaves?

Slaves to the world

You gotta serve somebody.

The great theologian, Bob Dillon once said, “You got to serve somebody.”

But you're gonna have to serve somebody, yes

Indeed you're gonna have to serve somebody

Well, it may be the devil or it may be the Lord

But you're gonna have to serve somebody

We pride ourselves in freedom, but freedom isn’t just doing whatever you want.

Freedom means you have a choice, or at least you can decide between some alternatives - it’s not open ended.

You can’t just do whatever you want.

We have jobs, families, responsibilities and obligations.

Except for perhaps a few months or a few years in our late teens or early twenties - life imposes it’s limitations on us.

There are people who don’t like the idea of people telling them what to do.

And they especially don’t want God telling them what do!

But if you don’t let anyone, especially God, tell you what to do then where are you going to end up?

In debt?

In an addiction?

Maybe even in prison?

There is no such thing as being your own master, something will fill the vacuum.

Maybe lust or greed?

Maybe striving for success?

Maybe you believe that you have control over your own life, but if you believe that, there are forces beyond your understanding that are controlling you.

Paul says that when you did not know God, you were controlled by “not gods”

That could refer to idol worship, to gods that don’t really exist.

Or it could refer to demons which take advantage of their superstitions to control them.

Or you could say, like Dillon, that if you are not serving God it would be the devil instead.

The point is you are not serving your Creator, and in doing so, you are not doing what you were created to do.

I know there are some people who will be like, “I don’t know what you are talking about, I’m just going with the flow.”

Going with the flow will take you in circles.

Failure to make choices is also a choice.

I think most people just follow the crowd.

They do what they see everyone else doing, thinking that that must be the safest way to go.

These Galatian Christians followed Paul when Paul was with them, but now there are some other guys there and they follow what they are saying.

They are wandering aimlessly.

Have you ever been lost?

You keep walking or driving, turning where you think you should turn only to find out that you arrive at a place where you have just been?

That’s got to be frustrating when you think people really get what you are saying just to find out that they are just repeating whatever anyone says.

“You are going in circles!” Paul must want to scream.

Why would you go back to what you just left behind?

Maybe they didn’t realize that is what they were doing?

Maybe they were just going with, you know …whatever.

If you are lost, you need a reference point to be able to navigate by.

Knowing God is your reference point.

Notice how all of this hinges on knowing God or not knowing God.

If you know God and are serving God, you have a reference point that is fixed, steady, and dependable.

If you are your own reference point, well … that could mean anything.

You’re only as stable as your current mood.

But the Galatians didn’t think they were lost; they thought they were following God and the Torah by keeping all of the rules …all 613 of them.

Legalism turns a godly lifestyle into bondage.

Once again, we said this last week - there is nothing wrong with the Law - just as long as the Law doesn’t become your goal.

When the law becomes ultimate, we call that legalism.

Legalism.

The term “legalism” commonly denotes preoccupation with form at the expense of substance.

While it is now used metaphorically in all areas of human life, it appears to have had a theological origin in the seventeenth century, when Edward Fisher used it to designate “one who bringeth the Law into the case of Justification” (The Marrow of Modern Divinity, 1645).