OPENING THOUGHT:
I love Friday mornings… But when I worked in the court system it was not like that at all. Friday mornings were when we brought up all of the new criminal cases involving the people being held in the County Jail. After a few years of seeing the same people over and over, Friday mornings, for me, became moments of frustration and disappointment… “You were just here a few months ago, and we gave you a chance to have freedom. So why would you ever do anything that would bring you back to this place of bondage?”

In a similar, more spiritual way, as we saw last week in chapter 3, Paul had this to say to the Christians in Galatia: "You foolish Galatians! Did you receive the Spirit by observing the law, or by believing what you heard? Are you so foolish? After beginning with the Spirit, are you now trying to attain your goal by human effort?" In other words, God has given you a taste of spiritual freedom through the gospel of Jesus Christ. So why would you ever turn to anything else? Why would you ever do anything to bring yourself back into a condition of spiritual bondage? Because that is what many of them were doing, and that is what many of us are doing...

But there is a path to freedom, as we will see in Galatians 4. Personal faith becomes your path to Jesus, which is a path to spiritual freedom, so that, as a believer in Christ, you are no longer a slave to anything in this world! At just the right time, God is ready and able to set you free, all by the one and only gospel!

BACKGROUND & CONTEXT:
You may have heard the story about the man in Tuscan, Arizona last Sunday who got himself stuck in his chimney while trying to get back into his house. How in the world did he get himself stuck in that terrible situation? But that is just the point. As human beings, we are masterful at getting ourselves stuck in really bad situations. And so, as we have seen in this letter to the churches in Galatia, Paul reminds us that God has made a way so that we can be unstuck from the sin that so easily entangles us and free to experience a closer relationship with God!

As we saw in chapter three, God’s way began with a promise that through Abraham, a seed would come who would bless every nation. And looking back, Paul writes that this promise of a seed is the gospel of Jesus Christ. And notice that this gospel is so powerful that even believing in the promise of it would result in salvation… Abraham believed the Lord, and it was credited to him as righteousness (Gen. 15:6).

Our freedom in the gospel has always been based on our personal faith. But notice that even Abraham struggled with how to live by faith. When the promise was taking too long, Abraham tried with his own effort to move it along. He had a son in his own power with the younger maidservant Hagar. And the result, as Paul tells us in 4:23 was not a child of the promise, but a child born in the ordinary way, by human effort, still under the law. If we follow that way, trusting only in our human effort, we will always remain under the law

When God gave the law to Israel, it was never meant for them to remain under the law. God gave the law to a people who were stuck in hopes that they would get unstuck. John Calvin explains the three main purposes of the law:

(1) A picture of God
(2) A restraint of evil
(3) A mirror for ourselves

And Israel lived in the face of that mirror all throughout the Old Testament. It was a revolving cycle of closeness with God and separation from God, always feeling the weight of the law in hopes that at just the right time, they would be ready to let go of their own way and turn to God’s way.

And when the time had fully come (4:4), with the law doing its job well to show the people their sin and their need, and also with a Roman Empire in place with a common Greek language and good infrastructure to get the word out, God then sent His Son, the promised seed into the world to fulfill His gospel promise.

Where human effort has always, at best, moved us horizontally and never vertically to be closer to God, God sent His Son from heaven to earth, born of a woman to be God in the flesh, and thus born under the law, as all humans are so that by living a human life, he could live up to the law and be the only one in human history to actually fulfill the law. Jesus came to where the captives are, under the law… To set the captives free! The gospel is the greatest prison break the world has ever seen!

When the time had fully come, God did this for them. And God also did this for you so that the time could fully come for you at some point in your life. Could this be the right time for you, your path to true spiritual freedom through faith in Jesus Christ?

God sent his Son under the law to redeem those under the law, which means that Jesus became the price that had to be paid for every lawbreaker. It would be like the judge pronouncing you guilty, but Jesus stepping in to take the punishment for your guilt in your place. The world uses the law to make you guilty, like a hammer over your head and a voice that whispers into your ear telling you that you are no good, reminding you that you are guilty, and telling you that you don’t deserve anything better.

If you are struggling with addictions, bad habits, or patterns of sinful behavior, the world will keep that hammer over your head and that voice in your ear. And some of you are in that place right now and hearing that voice right now.

But God uses the law much differently. The law will be that mirror in your life to show you the reality of your sin, but it was never meant to permanently define you or permanently beat you down. Jesus came to pay the price so that the hammer is no longer over your head. Because he paid the price, God can look at you and say these three words: Paid in full. God can look at you and see the person he created now covered by grace and completely forgiven, so that now you can say those three words: “I am forgiven.”

There is freedom in those words to break all the chains of your sin because each sin has been nailed to the cross and the weight of your guilt is no longer hanging over you. There is freedom when you are forgiven by God! But it does not end there. God is also filling you up...

From the moment that you put your faith in Jesus, God has sent the Spirit of his Son into your heart, just as He promised He would do back in Ezekiel 36:26–27: “I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you; I will remove from you your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh. 27And I will put my Spirit in you and move you to follow my decrees and be careful to keep my laws.”

When it comes to obeying God and living well, the presence of God's Spirit makes all the difference. Think about your own life. From the moment you first heard the Word of God and were drawn to it. The fact that you are here worshiping, listening and learning with a hunger for the Word, maybe even preparing to share with others what Jesus has done for you because you have a concern for other people... Those things do not come naturally by your flesh, but by the presence of the Holy Spirit in your life! If you can say these words from your heart: “Jesus is Lord,” then God has sent the Spirit of His Son into your heart.

And His Spirit in your life is the power you need to overcome ongoing sin. This is the Spirit who calls out to the Father on your behalf in your time of need, giving you the power you need to overcome the sins of the flesh. The power to overcome the flesh cannot come from the flesh. It must come from God! God will keep you on the path of freedom because you are forgiven, because you are being filled up by His Spirit, and finally, because you can look forward to...

Can you imagine being the son of the one who created the heavens and the earth and knowing that he has an inheritance waiting for you! Welcome to the family and welcome to your new identity in Christ. Because what Paul is saying here in 4:7 is that as you have been washed clean and forgiven by the blood of Jesus Christ, you have now been brought back into the family of God with all of the rights and inheritance as a son of God so that for the rest of your life you can live with forever in mind!

Remember the story of the prodigal son from Luke 15...
Every time one of us turns from our sins and turns to Jesus, it is a time of celebration for another captive being set free and being welcomed into God's family with the freedom that comes from forgiveness, the filling of His Spirit and the promise of living forever in His presence!

And when the time had fully come, God sent His Son…
Is it time for you to break free and come home through faith in Him?