Galatians 4:4

The Church in Galatia (Asia Minor) was founded by Paul (Acts 16:6) during his 2nd missionary journey prior to his journey into Greece.

It was not long however before pernicious and malign influences began to infiltrate the church so that its very base began to shake (1:6). These judaizing influences sought to re-establish the observance of the law as central to salvation. Such a view Paul sees as stabbing at the very heart of the gospel, so much so that he calls it ‘another gospel’ (1:6 again). It’s not just a difference of opinion on which brethren can agree to disagree but a fundamental error which must be rooted out of the Church. The same applies in our own day. There are differences of opinion which may force us to disagree and even divide but we must do so in a spirit of fraternal love. But when it amounts to a fundamental attack on the Gospel, it is no longer a matter of difference of opinion and the contrary opinion must be anathematized. Paul now has to write to the church in Galatia and recover them to the truth. He points out to them the greatness of their error, that to re-establish the observance of the law as the basis of salvation is to fundamentally undermine the whole basis of the Gospel. Salvation is all of grace from its inception in the eternal counsel of God’s electing love to its actualization in the death and resurrection of Christ and the effectual calling of every believer. It is not and can never be of works. He even points out how he had to withstand Peter when he was tempted to compromise by favouring the Jews over the Gentiles. He also shows its illogicality. Why would they wish to re-establish that to which they are dead?

In chapter 3 he likens the law to a schoolmaster or tutor. Its role is to heighten and define the character and nature of sin; to bring to the fore the nature of sin as transgression (which is the argument of Romans 5:13). It is not that there was no sin before the law. There has always been sin since our first parents’ fall, but it is only defined as transgression when there is an explicit law to transgress (3:19). So the law taught us these things as only the law could. Without it we would not have the knowledge of sin that we do have, and it directs us on to the answer to the problem of us as ‘sinners in the hands of an angry God.’

If the law is a tutor then we are its pupils – until such time as the final revelation has taken place and the shadows have been removed.

So we move on to chapter 4.
v 4,5 "But when the fulness of the time was come, God sent forth his Son, made of a woman, made under the law, to redeem them that were under the law, that we might receive the adoption of sons."

Why then, when they have been redeemed from the law do they wish to live again under it?

We were under the tutorship of the law in our pupil age, wherein God, working all things to the fulfilment of His own great purposes, prepared the way for the coming of the Messiah. History and God’s revelation in history is not a series of disjointed and unconnected events. Nor was God’s management of history confined to that of His chosen people alone.

All the time and all of the events from Adam were preparatory to the coming of Christ. The stage was being set for the greatest drama of the world’s history. The rise and fall of nations and empires were not the haphazard events of the juggernaut of chance. They were all there in the mind of the Almighty. Stand forth Nimrod; stand forth Pharaoh; stand forth Sennacherib mighty king of Assyria; stand forth Nebuchadnezzar mightiest king of Babylon; stand forth Cyrus ruler of Medo-Persia; stand forth young Alexander, you who are called the Great and who wept because there were no more worlds to conquer; stand forth Julius Caesar, you titan who founded the imperial age of the greatest empire the world had known. You all thought that you were the workers of your own destiny; that your conquests and your might were the expressions of your power. Only you Nebuchadnezzar, you learnt your lesson, albeit by experience even as we all do, “Now I Nebuchadnezzar praise and extol and honour the King of heaven, all whose works are truth, and his ways judgment: and those that walk in pride he is able to abase.” Daniel 4:37.

God was in command of it all not just reacting on behalf of His people to world events, but Himself the master of those events, and yet wonderfully not in such a way as to make human kind mere pawns.

God was preparing the way. Firstly Abram is chosen. Why? Because he was wise and noble, a fine specimen of manhood in the flower of his youth, an ideal candidate clearly naturally gifted to be a leader of men and the founder of a dynasty? No! Because he was bone of our bone and flesh of our flesh; he was as we are. He was a perfect example of the nature of the Gospel as Paul writes of it in 1 Corinthians 1, that the gospel is foolishness and an offence to natural wisdom and logic. He and his dear wife Sarai were a pair of pensioners, and Sarai barren at that, wandering in a foreign land. I’m not being disrespectful. I am unworthy to untie Abraham’s shoes. But he wasn’t chosen because he was great saint. He became a great saint because he was chosen. When we read of Abraham’s failures it is not simply so that we can learn lessons so that we don’t repeat the same errors. The whole reason why Abraham’s life is laid down for us is to show us that his election is all of grace; it is grace from beginning to end. God hasn’t chosen the wise and great things of the world, but the weak and foolish to demonstrate that the gospel is God’s work from beginning to end. God then narrows the promise to Isaac thence to Jacob and his children.

God sends Israel into Egypt. Why?

Firstly, so that the iniquity of the Canaanites might be full. Their iniquity had not yet reached that depth which would prompt their obliteration. What a word this is to us. We frequently have this view of God as summed up in the children’s hymn, Gentle Jesus meek and mild; and so He is to His own. But to the wicked, to those who are reserved for His wrath and anger, He is a consuming fire. The fact that our own nation, which now surely rivals the Canaanites in its catalogue of cruelty and perversion, has not yet perished under divine fire is purely down to God’s longsuffering. But we can be sure that our own nation, like Pharaoh of old, is only preserved to demonstrate the greatness of God.

Secondly, for the preservation of Israel. They were of the same nature and character as the Canaanites. God had not chosen them because they were somehow better, more civilized, more moral than any other nation. God chose them because that was His purpose, that they should be the vehicle of God’s communication with His creation. He took them into Egypt precisely because they were as weak and sinful as the Canaanites and it was only by separating them that they could be preserved from descending to the same depths. They are preserved by bringing them into Egypt during a period which will see Egypt fall under Hyksos supremacy. These were a shepherd people ethnically akin to the Hebrews. It is at the end of this period, that a Pharaoh arose who knew not Joseph, probably Amosis. That is his sympathies were not with the Hebrews since he himself had driven out the Hyksos peoples and it is he who brings the Israelites into bondage for a period of 120 years. But in the fullness of time God delivers them by the hand of Moses and establishes them in the Promised Land. Why there? They are His servant. They are His witness before the pagan world.

Look at a map. The Promised Land sits at the confluence of Europe, Asia, and Africa. Midway between ancient Egypt / Ethiopia and Mesopotamia, India – these were the seats of learning and civilisation when the rest of the world was in comparative barbarism. It is also next to the Phoenician traders whose ships sailed as far as Spain and maybe even as far as these islands. Also all around them were the Ishmaelite tribes with their great land caravans trading throughout Asia even into China and down into Africa. This is the site God chose for the Gospel standard to be raised. In one sense it seems an obscure place but in another it is the very epicentre of the world. God will maintain His witness. Their calling is to bear witness cf Dt 4:6, 28:9,10, Ps 68:31,32. But Israel refuses her role. Instead she turns what is the electing mercy of God into a work of merit. God has chosen them because they deserve to be chosen, because they are better than the surrounding nations. They descend into pride and self righteousness. They fail in their role as a witness, instead indulging in the self same wickedness of the heathen against which they were to testify.

It is cautionary to note that the Israelites’ failure to follow God’s command and obliterate the Canaanite peoples became in itself the cause of their downfall and the means of their punishment.

Judges 2 reads
“And an angel of the LORD came up from Gilgal to Bochim, and said, I made you to go up out of Egypt, and have brought you unto the land which I sware unto your fathers; and I said, I will never break my covenant with you. And ye shall make no league with the inhabitants of this land; ye shall throw down their altars: but ye have not obeyed my voice: why have ye done this? Wherefore I also said, I will not drive them out from before you; but they shall be as thorns in your sides, and their gods shall be a snare unto you.”

On that occasion the people raised their voices and wept, but as the very same chapter proceeds to tell us, once Joshua and the elders of his day were dead “there arose another generation after them, which knew not the LORD, nor yet the works which he had done for Israel. And the children of Israel did evil in the sight of the LORD, and served Baalim: And they forsook the LORD God of their fathers, which brought them out of the land of Egypt, and followed other gods, of the gods of the people that were round about them, and bowed themselves unto them, and provoked the LORD to anger.”

But no-one can thwart the divine will. No-one can deny his created purpose. Even Satan himself can only serve God, albeit he knows it not. As my former pastor, Rev. C.D. Alexander, used to say even Satan himself is only a rag duster in the hands of God polishing up the saints for eternity. Israel cannot thwart God’s electing purposes so what does God do? He judges them and dashes them to the 4 winds. They will not witness willingly then they will witness unwillingly. So they go into captivity in Assyria, Babylon, Persia. They become a people of no fixed abode wandering throughout the world. Yet isn’t it interesting how that wherever they go they retain their individuality - and as they do so they take the knowledge of God with them.

Meanwhile God is preparing the scene. First Assyria, then Babylon, then Persia each empire successively large then Greece opens up Europe and spreads a universal language from Spain to India. God has prepared the scene.

Rome comes spreading its highways from East to West. There is constant war throughout the growing empire. But it spreads its boundaries. The empire now stretches across the known world. One can travel from the coasts of France through Spain to N Africa, from Asia up to the Black Sea. The Greeks had established a world empire which brought a common language. Now comes a nation whose primary contributions to history are military engineering and law. The Romans were incredible road builders. We can see so many examples of their engineering even now. Wherever their armies went they built roads and they brought Roman law.

For 100 years before the birth of Christ that same Roman Empire was plagued by constant war which culminated in a series of bloody civil wars in which Octavian is finally successful. He takes to himself the name Augustus and the window of history known as the Pax Romana is ushered in, a period of unparalleled peace throughout the empire. Wars tended to be limited to the borders of the empire but with those boundaries there was peace and security. There was a universal language available for communication (Greek) and at such a time one could travel from Gaul to India on Roman roads and not be afraid.

“But when the fulness of the time was come, God sent forth his Son, made of a woman, made under the law.” When the fullness of time had come Christ came. It just so happened – of course not. God had been and is moving all things to His own purpose. Nothing escapes the divine will and nothing can thwart Him. Satan sought to undermine the coming of the seed by subverting Israel but as we have seen God’s purposes are still accomplished. In the fullness of time. It is God’s time, not our time. God’s timescales are not ours. The Israelites laboured for 120 years before Moses arose as their deliverer. No doubt they prayed and cried to God. Indeed we are told that they did so. And no doubt many died never seeing the answer to their prayers. Did that mean that God had not heard them? That God had deserted them? No! It simply shows us that God’s time is not like ours. Beloved we may pray and never see our prayers answered. Do we despair? No we simply humbly bow and acknowledge His wisdom. It is all of grace. The fact that we can take our next breath is grace. He has promised us that He is for us. He has promised to hear our cries. But He is not some almighty slot machine, in pops the prayer and out comes the answer. We do not inform God of anything in prayer; we simply learn to trust Him and bring our wills in conformity with His. His will is perfect and He will accomplish His purposes. In Revelation 6:10 the saints under the altar cry “How long, O Lord, holy and true, dost thou not judge and avenge our blood on them that dwell on the earth?”

He has been 2000 years coming. He has been building His church and the gates of hell have not prevailed against her. He is coming. He is even at the door.