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Hi, this is Pastor Tom and I want to welcome you to Daily Drive Time Devotions,
Galatians Four this week as we continue our study through the book of Galatians.
This is day one. And if you remember, last week we began in our look at
Galatians Three, a look at these two chapters, Galatians Three and Four, which
are really all about how do you keep on growing as a Christian.

Remember, Paul is speaking to these new believers in Christ, and they knew that
they'd come to Christ through faith, but they were having questions about how
they keep growing in Christ. They were getting to a point where they felt a
little stuck in their spiritual growth. You ever been there?

And so because of that, Paul writes to them about growth. And in these chapters,
he's not speaking to them so much about the tools of growth, which are very
important, tools like God's Word or small group or Christian fellowship, vital
for our growth, but he's not talking about that in these chapters. He's also not
talking about the practices of growth like worship and fellowship and
witnessing.

He is focusing on the doctrines, the attitudes of growth. He's really beginning
at the foundation. And remember, last week we looked at four arguments and four
principles for our growth as believers.

Let me just remind you of that before we get into today's verses. We talked
about the argument from experience and the principle that growth continues as
growth begins. We talked about the argument from Scripture and the principle
that growth is living out what God has made me to be in Christ, what I already
is.

That's the faith of growth. We talked about the principle of the fact that
growth is from God's Spirit, that we grow by God's Spirit. That's the principle
behind that argument.

And then Paul made an argument from history. And in that argument from history,
he gives us the principle of growth that growth depends not on our actions, but
in essence, it depends on God's promises. And Paul isn't finished yet.

This thing about growth is so important to him. He is so passionate about it
that he goes on to share three more arguments, three more principles in those
arguments about how you and I grow. The fifth argument beginning at Galatians
chapter four is the, well, I call it the logical argument.

Listen to the argument Paul makes in Galatians chapter four, verses one to ten.
Here's what Paul says. Think of it this way.

If a father dies and leaves great wealth for his young children, those children
are not much better off than slaves until they grow up, even though they
actually own everything their father had. They have to obey their guardians
until they reach whatever age their father set. And that's the way it was with
us before Christ came.

We were slaves to the spiritual powers of this world. But when the right time
came, God sent his son, born of a woman, subject to the law. God sent him to buy
freedom for us who were slaves to the law so that he could adopt us as his very
own children.

And because you Gentiles have become his children, God has sent the spirit of
his son into your hearts and now you can call God your dear father. Now you are
no longer a slave, but God's own child. And since you are his child, everything
he has belongs to you.

Before you Gentiles knew God, you were slaves to so-called gods that do not even
exist. But now that you have found God, or I should say now that God has found
you, why do you want to go back again and become slaves once more to the weak
and useless spiritual powers of this world? You are trying to find favor with
God by what you do or don't do on certain days or months or seasons or years.

Paul just lays it out for them logically here. He's asking them logically, which
do you want to choose, slavery or freedom? Let's just think about this.

Logically, which do you want to choose, being under a tutor, a teacher when you
were a child or living out the truth? Now Paul in these verses calls the law a
guardian or a tutor. Logically the word is a pedagoge.

It's the idea in the Greek language, not even of a schoolmaster, a teacher, it's
a trusted slave, someone who is responsible for a child's moral welfare to help
him to attain maturity, to see that he gets to and from school safely and
everything's okay with him and his friends or her and the friends. And Paul says
the law was like that for us before Christ came. The law could bring us to the
door of truth, but it's not even the teacher.

It could show us our need, but its purpose is not a purpose in and of itself. To
serve the law in and of itself is to miss the purpose of the law. The purpose of
the law is to bring us to Christ.

Just like this pedagoge was to bring the student to the school so that the
student could be taught, the law has brought us to Jesus so that we can be
saved. And what Paul is asking here is why would a grown man, a grown woman,
return to their nanny? Same question as why would a Christian return to the law?

He's pointing here to faith as the truth that we grow by. Faith, he says, is the
moment that we grow up spiritually. As a child spiritually, we are under, he
says, guardians and managers.

And he says here, the phrase he uses is very important, under the elemental
things, or later he says under the weak and useless spiritual powers of this
world. This is extremely important to understand. Paul is saying here when he
talks about elemental things, when he talks about the weak and useless spiritual
powers of this world, he is saying that there is a spirituality that looks
powerful to us as human beings, but there is no power in it because it's only of
this world.

Our good works look spiritual to us, but no power in it because it's just us.
Our higher thoughts, when we think higher thoughts, we feel more spiritual than
everybody around us. Paul says you might feel more spiritual, but you're not
because it's still just you.

It's still just this world. You need something more than what this world can
offer. It's not nearly enough to connect you with God.

And when Paul is talking about these weak spiritual things of this world, he
does something amazing in these verses. He puts both the law given by God and
the false gods of the Gentiles in the same category. Did you see how he did
that?

He talks about, in verse 3, we were slaves to the spiritual powers of this
world. He's talking about the law there. But then down in verse 8, he talks
about the Gentiles who didn't know the law.

He says before you Gentiles knew God, you were slaves to so-called gods that
don't even exist. And he calls them the weak and useless spiritual powers of
this world. What is he saying here?

The law was given by God, but you can take something even in the Bible that was
given by God and try to make it into more than it should be. And in doing that,
you're depending on yourself and not on the truth that God has revealed. I've
said that I want to bring Martin Luther and what he said in his commentaries
from time to time into what we're talking about as we go through Galatians.

And here's what Luther said about what Paul is talking about here, about the law
and the fact that it is, in some sense, just a weak and useless spiritual power
when misused. Here's what he said. "The law may restrain evil, but it does not
deliver from sin.

The law does not justify. It does not bring a person to heaven. I do not obtain
eternal life because I do not kill, commit adultery, steal.

Such mere outward decency does not constitute Christianity. The heathen,
unbelievers, observe the same restraints to avoid punishment or to secure the
advantages of a good reputation. In the last analysis, such restraint is simple
hypocrisy.

When the law exercises its higher function, it accuses and condemns the
conscience. All these effects of the law cannot be called divine or heavenly. "
So he's saying, "I can take even the law, something God has revealed, I can take
a story from scripture, something God has revealed, and put my layer over it,
and that is weak and useless," he says.

Now, what's my layer? What is he talking about that's weak and useless here?
Let's get really down to the detail of this one.

When you expect the law to save you, Paul is saying here, "That's a false god
just as much as any other false god. " It's pretty simple. Paul is saying you
either try to get to God on your own or you come to him on his terms.

And anytime we try to get to God on our own, through our own works, through our
own thoughts, through our own good deeds, through our own church attendance,
through our own, you fill in the list. Anytime we try to get to God on our own,
that's weak, that's useless, there's no power in that. But when we come to him
on his terms, I love what he says in verse 9, "Now that you've found God," or I
should say, "Now that he has found you," when we come to him on his terms, that
changes everything.

So here at the end of these verses we read today, Paul talks about celebrating
days and months and years as a way to try to get to God. That's the gospel
sandwich we talked about back in Galatians chapter 1, where the false teachers
were taking circumcision, the ritual of circumcision, and they were taking the
ceremony of these different days, and they were saying, "Okay, let's put Jesus
in between those as sort of a gospel sandwich. You've got to do both of these
other things and have Jesus, too," and that's what faith is.

And Paul is saying, "No, you can't add anything to Jesus. " He says, "If you try
to put anything but Jesus into it, it's weak and it's useless, and you become
enslaved. " You're enslaved by the need to please, to please God, to please
others.

That means you're attached to these weak and useless spiritual powers, not to
the power of God. You're enslaved by the need for proof. I've got to prove it to
myself.

I've got to prove it to others rather than by the joy of faith. That means
you're enslaved by these weak and useless spiritual powers. You're enslaved by
the need that comes out of your own pride.

I've got to show that I did it, by my works, by my thoughts. I've got to show
that I'm better. We all have that in us.

We all have pride. I'm prideful. When I depend on my pride to get me to God, any
means that I devise that depends on my pride to get me to God, it's weak, it's
useless, it's not going to last.

Now, this is the argument, the logical argument. There is this growth principle
that's in this, and we're going to talk about that tomorrow. But as we end
today, I want to take just a moment to recognize together in prayer the great
and awesome power of God.

Would you pray with me? And as you pray, just say, "Father, thank you. Thank you
that you made me not for slavery, slavery to myself, slavery to my pride,
slavery to my way of doing things.

But you made me for freedom, freedom to live, to live out the creation that you
made me to be, the joy that you made me to have, the eternity that you prepared
for me. Father, forgive me. Forgive me for those times when I depend on me to
get me to you.

And teach me, show me, show me day to day how to depend more and more on you and
what you've done, on how you love, on your incredible grace. And then help me to
live out the life that you've given me to live. I pray for this today, Jesus, in
your name, amen.