The Elements Of The World

Galatians by H.A. Ironside

 Lecture 10

Galatians 4:8-20

Howbeit then, when ye knew not God, ye did service unto them which by nature are no gods. But now, after that ye have known God, or rather are known of God, how turn ye again to the weak and beggarly elements, whereunto ye desire again to be in bondage? Ye observe days, and months, and times, and years. I am afraid of you, lest I have bestowed upon you labour in vain. Brethren, I beseech you, be as I am; for I am as ye are: ye have not injured me at all. Ye know how through infirmity of the flesh I preached the gospel unto you at the first. And my temptation which was in my flesh ye despised not, nor rejected; but received me as an angel of God, even as Christ Jesus. Where is then the blessedness ye spake of? for I bear you record, that, if it had been possible, ye would have plucked out your own eyes, and have given them to me. Am I therefore become your enemy, because I tell you the truth? They zealously affect you, but not well; yea, they would exclude you, that ye might affect them. But it is good to be zealously affected always in a good thing, and not only when I am present with you. My little children, of whom I travail in birth again until Christ be formed in you, I desire to be present with you now, and to change my voice; for I stand in doubt of you. (Gal 4:8-20)

"Howbeit then, when ye knew not God, ye did service unto them which by nature are no gods." We have seen in this epistle that the Galatians, who had been brought out of heathen darkness into the light and liberty of the gospel through the ministry of the apostle Paul, had fallen under the charm "shall I say?" of certain Judaizing teachers who were carrying them into subjection to the law of Moses, telling them that unless they were circumcised and kept the law of Moses they could not be saved, that while they began in faith, they had to complete their salvation through works of their own, acquiring merit by obedience to the commands of the law. The apostle has been showing them that the law could only condemn, could only kill, could not justify, could not give life, neither could it sanctify, and that our sanctification is as truly by faith as is our justification.

Now he reasons with them, trying to show the folly of their course in giving up Christianity with all its liberty and light for the twilight and bondage of Judaism. "Why," he says, "you were heathen when I came to you. You were enslaved to heathen customs, you served those that you esteemed to be gods who really are not gods, you were worshipers of idols, and you know that in those days you were misled by pagan priest craft. There were certain things you could not eat, places you could not go, things you could not touch. There were different kinds of offerings that you had to bring, there were charms against evil spirits, and amulets, and talismans. You were slaves to worldly customs in those days of your heathenism. The thing that amazes me is that you should be willing to go into another bondage after having known something of the liberty of grace." "But now, after that ye have known God, or rather are known of God, how turn ye again to the weak and beggarly elements, whereunto ye desire again to be in bondage?"

Notice that expression, "After that ye have known God, or rather are known of God." There are the two sides to it. We often say to people, "Do you know Jesus?" But it means more to realize that Jesus knows you, to be able to say, "Thank God, He knows me, and He knew about me in my sin, and He loved me and gave Himself for me." We sometimes say, "Have you found Jesus?" Of course the Word of God says, "Seek, and ye shall find," and the Lord bids us to "call upon Him while He is near," but it is a more wonderful truth that He seeks us. We have heard of the little boy who was approached by a Christian worker who said to him, "My boy, have you found Jesus?" And the little fellow looked up with a perturbed expression and said, "Why, please, sir, I didn't know He was lost, but I was, and He found me."

That is it.

I was lost, but Jesus found me,
Found the sheep that went astray;
Threw His loving arms around me,
Drew me back into His way.

God knew me long before I knew Him. He knows me now, since I have trusted Christ, as His child, and Paul says, "Isn't it a shame that after you have known God, or rather have been known of God, after you have come into this blessed relationship with Him as your Father, if you really know what it is to be born again, isn't it strange that you would turn now to as legal a system as that from which you were delivered when first brought to a saving knowledge of the Lord Jesus Christ?" "How turn ye again to the weak and beggarly elements, whereunto ye desire again to be in bondage?" Someone might say, "But what do you mean?" They were turning to law, to observing Jewish feasts and Jewish Sabbath, Jewish ceremonies. But they never knew those things in their heathen days. Why does he say, "How turn ye again? The principle was exactly the same. Why do the heathen go through their forms and ceremonies? Because they hope to gain merit and save their souls. Why did the Jews go through all their rites and ceremonies? That they might please God in that way, and so gain merit and eventually save their souls. The principle is just the same, whether you try to save yourself by offering your own child or the dearest thing you have on a heathen altar, whether you keep the seventh-day Sabbath, as some people do today, and thereby hope to save themselves, or whether you observe the heathen feast days and hope to please the heathen gods thereby. The Jewish festivals have been fulfilled in Christ, and we are not going back to them, hoping to please God by their observance. They had their place once, and men of faith could observe them in obedience to the Word of God, but that place is not theirs now, because "Christ is the end of the law for righteousness to every one that believeth" (Rom. 10:4). All these ceremonies were merely shadows of things to come. Now that the reality is come, why go back to the shadow? We are not going to be occupied with the type since we have the Antitype; we are not going to be occupied with pictures when we have the Reality. The worldly principle, of course, is to try to merit salvation by works of your own.

There are only two religions in the world, the true and the false. All forms of false religion are alike, they all say, "Something in my hand I bring," the only difference being in what that something is. But the true religion, the revelation from heaven, leads a man to sing, "Nothing in my hand I bring." Christianity says,

"Not by works of righteousness which we have done, but according to his mercy he saved us, by the washing of regeneration, and renewing of the Holy Ghost" (Titus 3:5). We see Christians today who turn to symbols and pictures as a means of helping them spiritually, but they are just going back to the elements of the world. If you were to ask a heathen, "Is this idol your god?" some would say, "Yes," but an intelligent heathen would reply, "No, it is not exactly that I consider that idol as my god, but it represents my god; it helps me to enter into communion with my god." You see just the same thing in Christendom where some churches are filled with images. They are not images of Mars, Jupiter, Venus, Isis, or Osiris, but images just the same images of Saint Joseph, Saint Barnabas, Saint Paul, the twelve apostles, the blessed Virgin Mary, and even of Christ. Candles are burning in front of them and people bow before them. We ask, "Why do you not worship God? Why worship these images?" And they answer, "We do not worship them; we reverence them, and they are simply aids to worship. These images help to stir up our spirits and help us to worship."

I heard a Protestant minister speaking to a group of ministers and he said, "I find that it is very helpful to have before me a very beautiful picture of the thorn-crowned Christ." He mentioned a painting by a certain artist, and said, "I have that framed; and when I want to come to the Lord I like to drop everything else and sit and contemplate that picture for a while, and I begin to realize more and more what He has done for me. That draws out my heart in worship and adoration." "How turn ye again to the weak and beggarly elements, whereunto ye desire again to be in bondage?" There is no painter on earth who can paint my Christ. You need to go to the Bible to get that picture. If you want to be stirred up and put in a worshipful spirit, sit down over your Bible and read the fifty-third chapter of Isaiah, or the account in the Gospels of what Christ accomplished, and as you are occupied with the truth of God your heart will be drawn out in worship. You do not need pictures to help you to worship. These are just the "weak and beggarly elements" of the world. In the dispensation of the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ we are to worship in "spirit and in truth."

So the apostle says, "I am sorry to see you go back to these things" "Ye observe days, and months, and times, and years." That is, they were going back to the Jewish Sabbath and other holy days and festivals, the Jewish Sabbatical year and the year of Jubilee. But, you see, these things are not binding on us today.

Why? Because the Sabbath day of the Jews has found its fulfillment in Him who said, "Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest" (Matt. 11:28). "There remaineth therefore a rest (a true Sabbath-keeping) to the people of God" (Heb. 4:9). We have found our Sabbath in Christ, and so we observe the first day of the week, the day of His resurrection, not in order to gain merit but because we are glad to have the privilege of coming together as a company of worshiping believers and to take advantage of the opportunity to preach the gospel of the grace of God. That seventh-day Sabbath was the memorial of Israel's deliverance from Egypt. That does not apply to us, but we have found its fulfillment in Christ. Some may ask, "Are you quite certain that the Sabbath of the law is included among the shadows?" Yes, turn to Colossians 2:16-17: "Let no man therefore judge you in meat, or in drink, or in respect of an holy day, or of the new moon, or of the sabbath days: which are a shadow of things to come; but the body is of Christ." Do you not see?" it was the Sabbath of old, one day's rest in seven. Now I have Jesus, and I have seven days rest in seven. I have rest in Him continually and am delivered from the Sabbath of the law.

Then there were sacred months. There was the month in which they had the Passover and the Feast of Firstfruits. Then the seventh month, in which was the great day of Atonement and the Feast of Tabernacles. But all of which those months and feasts speak has been fulfilled in Christ. He is the true Passover: "Christ our passover is sacrificed for us: therefore let us keep the feast, not with old leaven, neither with the leaven of malice and wickedness; but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth" (1 Cor. 5:7-8). The Feast of Firstfruits had its fulfillment in the resurrection of Christ, and it was He who said, "Except a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth alone: but if it die, it bringeth forth much fruit" (John 12:24). Christ fell into the ground in death, and now has become the firstfruits of them that slept, and we worship with adoring gratitude for all that this means to us. The great day of Atonement has had its fulfillment in the cross. The Lord Jesus Christ was the sacrificed Victim whose precious blood makes atonement for the soul. We read, "The life of the flesh is in the blood: and I have given it to you upon the altar to make an atonement for your souls: for it is the blood that maketh an atonement for the soul" (Lev. 17:11). That is all fulfilled in Jesus. And He is the true fulfillment of the Feast of Tabernacles, the feast which carries us on to His coming back again when He will bring in everlasting righteousness.

They were all given to point forward to the coming of the blessed Son of God, and His wondrous work.

"Ye observe days, and months, and times, and years." Many in Israel had fallen into the evil habit of consulting astrologers and others, and so were known as observers of times, but that was distinctly contrary to God's mind, and He links it up with demons. Christians have nothing to do with anything like that. Then they observed sacred years. There was the Sabbatical year; every seventh year had to be set apart as a Sabbath to the Lord. You cannot pick out certain parts of the law and keep them only; if you are bound to keep the seventh-day Sabbath, you are bound to keep the seventh-year Sabbath also. But Paul says that as Christians we are delivered from all this. It was only bondage and we are free from it.

"I am afraid of you, lest I have bestowed upon you labour in vain." He really stood in doubt as to whether they were truly converted. He remembered how they had confessed their sins, and the joy they had, and now he says, "Was that not genuine?" One may often feel like that about people. Some make a good start and apparently seem to be real Christians, but the next thing you know they are taken up with some most unscriptural thing, and you wonder whether it was all a mistake. If people are saved, they are sealed by the Holy Spirit. He is the Spirit of Truth and He comes to guide them into all truth. Thank God, sometimes they are recovered, and then you know they were real, but if never recovered, we read, "They went out from us, but they were not of us; for if they had been of us, they would no doubt have continued with us: but they went out, that they might be made manifest that they were not all of us" (1 John 2:19).

Now he turns directly to these converts of his, and in the most tender way he says, "Brethren, I beseech you, be as I am; for I am as ye are: ye have not injured me at all." What does he mean? He is practically saying, "There was a time in my life when I observed all these things that you are going into now; when all my hope of heaven was based upon working out a righteousness of my own; and I was very punctilious about all these things that you now are taking up. I observed the Passover, I kept the Feast of Firstfruits, the ordinances of the great day of the Atonement, and kept the Feast of Tabernacles. I did all these things that you are undertaking to do. I was careful about meats and drink, I looked upon certain foods as unclean and would have nothing to do with them, but I came to you as one of you. You did not know anything about the law, and I came to you as a man utterly delivered from the law of Moses, completely freed from it. I wish you would come over to where I am. Take your place now with me; I am not under law but under grace, and I want you to be under grace rather than under law." Before God, they were actually so, of course, if truly saved, but he would have them so in spirit.

He tells us elsewhere how he stood:

Unto the Jews I became as a Jew, that I might gain the Jews; to them that are under the law, as under the law, that I might gain them that are under the law; to them that are without law, as without law, (being not without law to God, but under the law to Christ,) that I might gain them that are without law I am made all things to all men, that I might by all means save some. (1 Cor. 9:20-22) Let me illustrate Paul's position. He stands in the center between the two extremes. Over to the right are those under the law, the Jews; to the left are those without the law, the Gentiles, who do not know anything about the law of Moses. Now he says, "I do not belong in either company since I am saved by grace, but stand here between the two, and being regenerated I am subject to Christ. In order that I may reach the Jew I go over there where he is, and am willing to sit down with him and partake of the kind of food he eats, and to go with him to his synagogue, in order that I may have an opportunity to preach to him. And I will use the law of Moses to show him his sin, and the prophets to show him the Savior. Then I go to the Gentiles, but I do not preach the law of Moses to them." He could say, "When I came among you I took my place as a man not under law but in the liberty of grace, and preached Christ to you as the Savior of all who believe. I wish you would appreciate that enough to stand with me. You leave me and go to the place God took me out of before He saved me. Do you not see the mistake you are making? You are giving up grace for law."

"Ye know how through infirmity of the flesh I preached the gospel unto you at the first. And my temptation which was in my flesh ye despised not, nor rejected; but received me as an angel of God, even as Christ Jesus." He sought to touch their hearts by reminding them of those early days when he came to Antioch in Pisidia, and to Iconium, Lystra, and Derbe, and preached the Word among them. All of these were Galatian cities. Did he come with pomp and ceremony, marvelous costumes, and candles and images? No, nothing like that. He came not as a great and mighty ecclesiastic, as one professing to have authority over them, but as a lowly man preaching Christ and Him crucified. "Ye know how through infirmity of the flesh I preached the gospel unto you at the first."

Paul was used of God to heal many sick people, but he never healed himself, and did not ask anybody to heal him except God. He prayed for deliverance three times, but God said, "I am not going to deliver you but My grace is sufficient for thee," and Paul answered, "Most gladly therefore will I rather glory in my infirmities, that the power of Christ may rest upon me" (2 Cor. 12:9). He was a sick man for years as he preached the gospel. He would come in among people, weak and tired and worn, and if there was not money enough to support him he would go to work and make tents to earn money for bread, and then at night would go and look for people to whom to preach Christ. He commended the gospel to these Galatians by his self-denying service and his readiness to suffer. As they (in those days, poor heathen) looked upon him they wondered that he should so love them, and they marveled at his message, and believed it, and were saved. Now he says, "You have lost all that; you do not care anything about me any more; you have gone off after these false teachers, and you have lost your joy." "Where is then the blessedness ye spake of? for I bear you record, that, if it had been possible, ye would have plucked out your own eyes, and have given them to me." I take it that the suffering he endured had to do with his eyes.

He probably had some affliction of the eyes that made it difficult for him to read and to see an audience, and it made his appearance mean when he stood upon the platform. Possibly they said, "Poor Paul! If we could give him our eyes we would gladly do so!" That is the way they once felt. "Am I therefore become your enemy, because I tell you the truth?" It was these evil teachers that had upset them.

"They zealously affect you, but not well; yea, they would exclude you, that ye might affect them." In other words, they have come to make a prey of you with their false teaching, trying to affect you adversely in order that you might rally around them, for they want to get up a little party of their own. They are not seeking your good, but trying to extend their own influence. "It is good to be zealously affected always in a good thing, and not only when I am present with you." That is, it is good for a man to be zealous in what is right, it is good to go after people with the truth and bring them into the light, and they who had started in the truth should have continued in it.

And now in his deep affliction he exclaims, "My little children, of whom I travail in birth again until Christ be formed in you." In other words, I remember when you were saved, I went through the very pangs of birth in my soul, and now I am going through it all again because I am in such anxiety about you. "I desire to be present with you now, and to change my voice; for I stand in doubt of you." In other words, "I am writing some strong things to you, but I would like to talk tenderly, lovingly, to you if I were only there. I am not sure about you." False religion never can give certainty, but the blessed, glorious gospel of the grace of God does. It fully assures us of complete and final salvation if we believe God. Who then would turn away deliberately from the liberty that we have in Christ to the bondage of some false system?