431: Slave to Son | Dave Sloop

Introduction

Hey. Let's give it up one more time for our fantastic choir. Isn't that fun? I don't know if you've noticed, but our choir is getting bigger. And I keep hearing murmurs of other people who are praying and thinking about joining the choir. I won't say any names — Sarah, Rachel, Daniel — but I'm excited to see how the Lord leads.

Tim, one other thing I would say is, I don't know if you noticed this or if anybody else noticed this, but Tim said, did it just get brighter in here? And I looked up from my seat, and my wife was walking in. And I thought, you know what? It did. It did just get a little brighter.

We're gonna be in Galatians chapter four. If you want to follow along with me, we're just gonna look at four verses — verse four, five, six, and seven of chapter four. But before we jump in, I wanted to tell you about an experience that I had back in 1999.

The Context of the Passage

I graduated from college, and I moved to Denton, Texas, where I went through a discipleship program at Denton Bible Church. And I got to hear the Bible taught every single day from one of my heroes, a man named Tom Nelson. Along with that, there were some other commitments that we had to make. We had to get involved with the ministry at the church, much like our fellows do here. I was involved with the junior high youth ministry.

And also, we had to participate in some personal evangelism training. And it was a class known as — you ready for it? — Evangelism Explosion. It was a great name. It was my least favorite part of the program, as we called it. And the reason that it was is because part of Evangelism Explosion involved going from door to door in Denton, Texas, and sharing the gospel with people who weren't necessarily asking to hear it.

And it was an incredibly uncomfortable thing to do, but it was so good for me. Because it taught me to ask some questions that could open doors for spiritual conversation for people who desperately — I think I, I actually believe this is true of everyone — for people who deep down wanted to talk about spiritual things but didn't know how.

I'll never forget the first time they sent us out to an apartment complex. We were sufficiently trained. We go to this apartment complex filled with North Texas University students. And I get to the door, and this guy answers the door, and he was your prototypical wild college student. And I thought to myself, this is a waste of time. He has no interest in hearing what we have to say. But I was like, just just do it.

So I said, hi. I'm Dave, and I'm here with Denton Bible Church. And we're just getting to know some people in the community. Is it okay if we ask you a few questions? And he said, sure. He was a whole lot more receptive to talking with us than I thought he would be.

I said, well, great. I was like, well, tell me your name. He said, Will. I wrote down his first name on my little survey card. And I said, Will, what's your last name? And he said, Parrish. And I said, Will Parrish. And I said, yes — you will, Will — unless you pay attention to what I'm gonna share.

That is a true story. I mean, his name — that is actually his name. It's not what I said. What I said to Will were the questions we were trained to ask. We called them the diagnostic questions, and here's what they were.

I said, Will, have you come to the place in your spiritual life where you would say that if you were to die today, you know you would go to heaven? Or is that something you would say you're still working on? And Will, like most people that we talk to, said, well, I hope to go to heaven, but — yeah, I think that's probably something I'm still working on.

He just wasn't quite sure. And our next move right there was to share with them first John 5:13, which says:

I’ve written these things to you that you may know for certain that you have eternal life. — 1 John 5:13

I would say, Will, did you know that part of the reason that God wrote the Bible was so that people like you and me wouldn't have to wonder where we were going when we die? Would you be willing to hear part of my story and how I came to know that when I die, I'll be with God in heaven? And I shared some of my personal story with him. And then after a while, I asked him our second diagnostic question, which is this.

I said, Will, suppose you were to die today and stand before God, and he were to say to you, why should I let you in to my heaven? What would you say to him?

It's an uncomfortable question. But Will answered like almost everyone who I ever asked this question answered. He said, well, I suppose I would say, I've tried to be good. I've — I've been to church, not every week, but often I — I go when I'm home with my parents. I — I try not to lie. I try to not cheat people. I — I — I try to be a decent person.

In other words, what Will said is, I — I think, or I hope at least, I'm good enough. We call these the diagnostic questions because an individual's answers to these questions reveal, pretty quickly, two things.

Number one, it reveals their relative certainty as to their eternal destiny. How sure is this person that they're going to heaven when they die? It would seem to be an important thing to at least have thought about.

But secondly, it reveals the basis upon which they think they're going there. Here's what we discovered. Most people, just like Will, weren't that sure. But if they were going, it was on the basis of their moral record.

In fact, I think we could flip it and say this. Because they were convinced the way to get there was their moral record, therefore, they weren't that sure. Because, see, here's the deal. Just like Paul is gonna say in Galatians 2, no one is justified by the works of the law. No one has ever been made righteous by trying to follow the law, and this was precisely the problem in the Galatian church.

They were a group of Gentile believers who had accepted Christ by grace through faith, but then someone had come in and corrupted the gospel. In the very first chapter, and I think the sixth verse, Paul is going to say, I am astonished that you have so quickly deserted the one who called you by his grace, by adopting another gospel, which is not really a gospel.

And here was that other gospel. They had believed that they, even though they had started by faith, that they were going to be justified by following or keeping the law. And Paul said, this is equivalent to departing from the one who called you. This theological, in Paul's mind, was so wrong and bad. It was as if they had left Christ. Because if there is to be grace, there can be no earning.

Not to mention, Paul is going to tell them, the law never came to produce righteousness, but to reveal to you and to me that we won't ever be righteous. We don't have the capacity to be righteous in our flesh. It makes us conscious of something. It makes us conscious that we are slaves to sin. It makes us aware of our desperate need for a savior. That is the purpose of the law. That's why God sent the law, so that we would know we need a savior.

Paul is going to say to them, you were slaves. But then in verse 26, he's gonna say, but anyone who is in Christ is now a son of God. And he uses that word son very strategically. It's not because he's sexist. It's because in Paul's day, the only people who were heirs were sons. And he says, if you're in Christ, you're a son. You're no longer a slave, you're a son.

And then in verses 4 through 7, he's going to tell us how this happens. And I believe that it is perhaps the most succinct and efficient explanation of the gospel in our entire Bible. In fact, many people believe this was taken from the early liturgies of the church.

Paul is going to tell us who Jesus is, what he came to do, by what means he accomplished it, how that impacts us, and how we can know for certain that it's happened to us. Let's take a look at what he says.

I'm gonna read the whole swath, this 4 through 7, and then we're gonna just look at one phrase at a time. Okay? Let's start in verse 4.

The Gospel in Galatians 4:4-7

But remember, he said, you were slaves. But when the fullness of time had come, God sent forth his Son, born of woman, born under the law to redeem those who are under the law, so that we might receive adoption as sons.

And because you are sons, God has 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, an heir through God.

These are powerful words. He starts by saying, but when the fullness of time had come. What is that phrase? The fullness of time.

It suggests that they had been waiting for a long time. Is that rain or is that air conditioning? Rain. Okay. Thank you, Lord. They had been waiting for a long time. The fullness of time suggests that there were some things that needed to happen before he could come, but the time had finally come.

Do you know what Ephesians 1:4 says? It says, we were chosen in him before the foundations of the earth were laid. I want that to sink in for a second. Here's what he's saying. Before there were angels, before there was light, before there was separation of land and sea and sky, and birds and fish and beasts and Adam and Eve in a garden and a tree. Before any of that, you were chosen in him before any of that came to be.

I just I want us to understand the significance of what that means. It means that God sending his Son was not plan b because Adam, plan a, messed up in the garden, and so he had to come up on the fly with some other plan to save us. No. No. Before Adam, he was choosing you in him.

This was always his plan, that at the fullness of time, God would send forth his Son. Notice it doesn't say he sent his Son, but he sent forth his Son.

God sent a lot of people. You know, he sent Jonah the prophet to Nineveh. Took him a while to get there, but he eventually got there. God sent John the Baptist out into the wilderness. God was constantly sending people, but this says he sent him forth, meaning the Son existed before he was sent. He was sent forth, meaning he was sent from somewhere, namely he was sent from God.

He was not sent from Bethlehem to Nazareth or from Capernaum to the cross. It's not what he was saying. Paul is saying, he was sent from heaven to earth.

I didn't realize until the first service that our gospel reading today was John chapter one. The beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.

And then skipping ahead to verse 14, and the Word became flesh. That's what Christmas is all about. It is the incarnation of God. It is not just God showing up appearing as a man. It is God showing up literally as a man.

There are times throughout the Old Testament, they're called theophanes. It is when God appears as a man, but he's not really a man. It's really God. The miracle of the incarnation is that God actually became a man, that at the appointed time, at the fullness of time, the eternal begotten Son became a man.

What this is teaching us is that Jesus didn't become the Son of God. He was always the Son of God. But at the appointed time, God sent him forth. He was fully God, but he was fully man too. And that's why Paul says, born of woman. He's not pointing to the fact necessarily that he was born from a virgin, miraculously, though that is true.

The point that Paul is making here is that Jesus was born just like every other human being on planet Earth was ever born. By way of a woman, he was born in the flesh as a little baby. He was fully God. He was fully man, born of a woman. But not just that. He was born under law, the same law that you and I were born under. And everyone since Adam on couldn't keep it. We were slaves to it. We were born under law.

And here comes one who is fully God and fully man, and he was born under law. And yet, though he was tempted in every way, yet he was without sin. You see, Jesus came and was faithful where Adam failed. This is why he is called the second Adam. And as such, he is qualified to redeem those under the law.

That word redeem is going to teach us something about you and I. It's going to teach us something about Jesus. What does it teach us about us? That word redeem means to purchase someone out of slavery. It means that we belonged to another.

Paul would describe salvation this way in another place. He would say, we have been transferred from the dominion of darkness to the kingdom of his dear Son. We had to be rescued, purchased, redeemed. We belonged to someone else.

That word redeem also suggests that there was a payment that needed to be made. There was a debt owed. What was the debt? In the day that you eat of it, you shall surely die. Romans 6:23, the wages of sin is death. And everyone from Adam forward has died as a penalty of sin.

But here comes Jesus as one under the law, yet who kept the law. And in so doing, he becomes a perfect sacrifice. See, for someone to take our place, it had to be someone that was born as a human being, a real human being, not someone just pretending to be a human being, and it had to be someone who was perfect. Otherwise, they would have deserved the penalty too, but he didn't because he was perfect.

Jesus gives us credit for his record, and he takes credit for ours. He redeems us, but it doesn't stop there.

It says, he redeemed us in order that we might be adopted as sons. We tend to think a whole lot more about our redemption in our salvation than we do about our adoption. But that is the word God uses to describe what has happened to us. Do you know why? Because we are not naturally his children. We come into this world belonging to another, to the kingdom of darkness. We have to be reborn.

We have to be purchased out. We have to be adopted. And what a beautiful picture. Some of my favorite people, by the way, are adopted. And do you know what that means? It means that that parent has set their love on that person. They've set their affection on that person.

You might look at your natural born kids and say, I had them, but I chose you. That's what it is for us. God has adopted us. In ancient Rome, if you were a wealthy man and you had no heirs, you could adopt one of your slaves, and they would become your legal heir. Everyone would have understood what Paul meant by this term. The idea was that you were adopted. Though you were a slave, suddenly, overnight, you had a new status, and you were entitled to everything that the father owned.

You were adopted. You had a new status, not just redeemed, not just a clean slate and good luck on your own. No. No. Clean slate and now you're mine. And everything that I have, it's coming to you as if you were my one and only son. That is the ministry of the son.

God sent forth his son, and he redeemed us, and he adopted us. But he's not finished. In verse 6, we're gonna hear that same language of sending. Look at what it says.

The Spirit of Sonship

It says, and because you are sons, God has sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts crying, Abba, Father.

He sent his Son, the Spirit of his Son, because you are sons. In other words, it's not as if there are some sons that have the Spirit and there are others who do not. It is a package deal. To all who are adopted, God sends forth the Spirit of his Son to live in your hearts.

And what is the job of the Spirit? What is the ministry of the Spirit? It is to cry, Abba, Father, in your heart. In Romans chapter 8, which is the parallel version of this same idea, Paul is just writing to a different church. He says, we have not received again a spirit of slavery or spirit of fear which leads to slavery, but rather we have received a spirit of adoption by whom we cry.

Understanding those two passages together, here's what Paul is saying. The Spirit comes into your heart so that his cry, meaning Jesus, becomes your cry.

In verses 4 through 5, we have a new status. In verses 6 and 7, no. 6 and 7, we experience our adoption. If you have ever experienced love in your heart for God, it is because God put it there. We don't have the capacity to love God apart from God in us by his Spirit producing affection and love.

And do know what this is called? It is called assurance of salvation.

Ephesians 1:14, Paul would put it this way. God sent his Spirit as a deposit, guaranteeing your inheritance. In other words, when we sense love for God, it is that reminder that he's in us because we wouldn't be able to love him otherwise. It is the assurance that everything he promised in the ministry of the Son, our redemption, our adoption, it is going to come to pass because I sense him in my heart loving me.

He did the work. The Father sent the Son. The Father sent the Spirit. The work of salvation belongs to the triune God. And you know whose name isn't in that list? Yours. You did not contribute.

As my mentor, Tom Nelson, used to say — I've said this before here, but it's one of my favorite things he used to say. — He said, the only thing you contributed to your salvation was that you sinned. He did the rest. It is God's work alone.

And if it is God's work, you know what that means? You can't lose it. You can't lose it. But you know what you can lose? Your assurance of it. It is possible to be his child and yet to forget that you're his. It is possible to doubt your salvation. But it doesn't mean the Spirit has left. It just means you've forgotten.

Assurance and Reminder

I want to show you a video clip to illustrate this point. This is from a movie called Blood Diamond, and I don't have time to get into the particulars of the movie. But what you need to understand is this. There's a man named Solomon Vandy, and he had a son named Dia. And his son was captured and was turned into a child soldier and was made to do some horrible things.

This is in Sierra Leone during the civil wars in the late nineties. It's a true story. And the father Solomon, he goes to rescue his son. And he has an encounter with him at the end of the movie where the son doesn't remember who he is. He doesn't remember who his dad is. And I want you to watch that clip.

Dear, what are you doing? Bring the flights. Dear. What are you doing? Of the proud Mende tribe. You are a good boy who loves soccer and school. Your mother loves you so much. She waits by the fire making plantains, a red palm oil stew with her sister. And did you, baby? The cows wait for you. The wild dog who wants no one but you. I know they made you do bad things, but you are not a bad boy. I am your father who loves you, and you will come home with me and be my son again.

Dia forgot who he was. He's brainwashed. And if we're not careful, we can get brainwashed. It can cause us to do some things that aren't in accordance with our true nature.

How did Dia change? He allowed himself to sit and listen to the words of his father about who he really was. And you just watched the assurance come back as he melted into his father's arms. I wonder how many of us today here have lost our assurance. Maybe you're someone who is perpetually unsure about where you stand with God.

Can I tell you, you can get it back. You know how? These are God's words. And when we bring our whole self before his word, we begin to remind ourselves who we are. And listen, this is not just an intellectual exercise. Do you know why? Because God sent the Spirit of his Son in your heart. And if you will just bring yourself like Dia before his father, bring yourself before God's word, his Spirit will engage your heart, and you will begin to feel the assurance again.

And if you are someone here today who has never known this love, you can have it today. He would love to adopt you as his heir. In fact, if you sense a stirring in your heart, can I tell you who that is? It's God's Spirit beginning the process of drawing you home. All you have to do is come.

Let's pray.

Conclusion

Father, thank you for your word. Thank you for the beauty of this promise of how you have accomplished completely apart from us our salvation. I pray that for many of us today, there would be a renewal of assurance, that we would experience, not just know our status, but experience our status. And I pray that some today would come to find themselves as your child for the first time.

If you're here today and you'd love to spend some time in prayer, these rails are always open to you to privately interact with God. If you'd like prayer for something specific, we have people trained in the back who would love to do that with you. The rest of us, let's stand and worship together.