Episode Transcript
[00:00:02] So if I haven't met you yet, my name is Eric Bolling. I'm part of the preaching team here. And this morning we are going to continue in the book of Galatians.
[00:00:13] And just by way of review, Galatians is a letter written to a church that Paul had planted in this region known as Galatia. And it's a mix of Jewish and Gentile people who are coming together to follow Jesus. And a couple of big themes that Paul talks about is justification by faith, freedom from legalism, and adoption into a new global family. And we're going to talk about that adoption piece this morning.
[00:00:45] Underneath the whole book of Galatians is this kind of ongoing conflict between what's known as the Judaizers and Paul. And the Judaizers are people, they're Jewish people who would follow Paul around to the churches he would plant, and they would basically say, it's great that you follow Jesus, but you also need to follow the law. And the problem with this is, is one, it's not true, but two, it's just creating a lot of confusion within the churches on what people should do.
[00:01:17] So last week, Pastor Ryan took us through Galatians chapter three, and here is what he highlighted. That a right relay relationship with God is received exclusively through faith in God's promises, rather than through religious performance, tradition, or the Mosaic Law.
[00:01:38] So chapter three, particularly the ending part, is. Is written seems like more towards the Jewish side of Paul's audience. Chapter four, where we're going to be at today, if you want to go ahead and turn there, Chapter four one to seven, there seems to be a shift in. And what Paul focuses on to be more of the Gentile and more Roman side of things. And so as we, as we dig into this, I want to just again go back to chapter three and highlight Paul's massive promise that he ends with when he says we are all heirs according to the promise.
[00:02:20] Now, probably initially, as they would have been reading this letter, they would have connected three and this part of four together. Now we've split it up. So think of this as kind of like part 2 or 2.0 of what Paul's been talking about, about figuring out this faith in God as opposed to performance or worshiping something else. Now, a word here. You're going to see the word son repeated a lot through this. When we hear that, particularly as, as American Christians, we think of what son, right. Males, we don't tend to think of it as like, particularly we think of male children. Paul, though, really is using a more expansive Term in terms of its children of God, it's people of God. We know this because of chapter three, verse 28, where it says, there is neither Jew nor Greek, nor slave nor free, no male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.
[00:03:22] So as we keep hearing, sons, don't let that throw you. We're talking about people who are able to enter the family of God.
[00:03:32] Well, let's dive into the text, starting in verses one and two.
[00:03:38] So Paul says this. He says, I mean, that the heir, as long as he is a child, is no different from a slave, though he is the owner of everything, but he is under guardians and managers until the date set by his father.
[00:03:56] My guess is that reads sort of strange to us because you see things like heirs and children and slaves and guardians and managers and dates set by fathers. And in order to get at what Paul's saying, I want to take us through a little bit of Roman culture.
[00:04:17] And once we get that, it really unlocks kind of the point Paul's making. So what Paul's talking about, first thing, when you see like, like children and slaves, he's not talking about slavery as, like, our minds go to.
[00:04:33] He's not talking about the same type of system. See, the ancient Roman world had a different form of slavery.
[00:04:42] Although, I mean, slaves were legally viewed as property with no rights or legal standing outside of their owner.
[00:04:49] Anyone, regardless of ethnicity, could become a slave.
[00:04:54] Now, don't get it wrong. Like, being a slave is not great.
[00:04:58] You're still under somebody else. However, anyone in Roman culture was capable of being put under slavery. Why? Sometimes it was through war or conquering other places. Sometimes it was through debt. And if you couldn't pay a debt, you would put yourself into slavery to whoever you owed the debt to. Sometimes it was being born into it.
[00:05:21] Slaves, this is interesting, held positions in every level of Roman society, except for high political office.
[00:05:29] These were often highly educated people who served as physicians, architects, tutors, accountants, administrators, etc.
[00:05:38] They held professional roles, some of them within Roman culture.
[00:05:43] And oftentimes, slaves held more functional power than poor free Romans.
[00:05:53] The last thing we know about slavery at this time is slaves could and were expected to work to purchase their freedom.
[00:05:59] So a slave could and was expected to buy themselves out of slavery. Slavery.
[00:06:05] Matter of fact, the Romans had a system that if someone could buy themselves out of slavery, that person's children would then be given full rights as a Roman citizen.
[00:06:16] What that means is within a generation, the former slave family now is full Roman citizenship.
[00:06:25] And so when we hear this and we see slaves and slavery. Again, don't get it wrong. Like, it's not great, but it's also a very different system than what we are used to hearing and thinking about when we think about slaves and slavery.
[00:06:43] So Paul's point is this. He says that the heir, as long as he is a child, is no different from the slave.
[00:06:49] What he's saying is there's really no difference between the two.
[00:06:54] The slave and the son are both under the full authority of the father.
[00:07:01] He goes on to say that actually the, the. The son, until he, until the date set by the father is under the control of the slaves. Notice, he talks about there are guardians and managers.
[00:07:17] And I first read that and I thought, well, I would assume parents were the guardians, right? If you ask who's your guardian, it's usually a parent or somebody who, who operates as that type of person. If you talk about managers, okay, you get a manager when you go to a boss or when you get a job, it's a boss, right? I was like, why would a child have a manager? So I did a little digging and here's what guardians and managers were.
[00:07:40] Guardians and managers with both slaves with very specific roles within the Roman family, A guardian was the moral bodyguard for the son.
[00:07:52] The guardian followed the boy everywhere to ensure he behaved and stayed safe.
[00:07:58] Now, I've raised a couple boys, I can tell you that's a great idea, right, to pay somebody, say, can you just follow my child around? And if they're going to do something stupid, don't let them stop them. And so the guardian, this is also interesting how, how far this could go. They had the legal right to discipline the son.
[00:08:20] They could scold him, they could restrict him. They could use physical punishment if necessary. So, like, this slave was there to keep the boy in line, to keep him on the straight and narrow path of righteousness, so to speak.
[00:08:37] But there's also a manager. Well, what is that? A manager was the person who managed the future inheritance and often other financial affairs for the family.
[00:08:49] So they were essentially the cfo and they would be in charge of all of the financial and other resources. The family owned. The son until the date set by the father had to ask the slave for resources.
[00:09:06] Hey, can I get a couple of bucks?
[00:09:08] Hey, can I get this? Can I get that? So what Paul is saying, he says, look, the heir, as long as he is a child, is no different from a slave.
[00:09:17] Though he is owner of everything.
[00:09:21] Though he is the owner of everything, he is under guardians and managers until the day the Father says, you're now an heir.
[00:09:29] And so again, sticking with kind of Roman culture here, the Romans practiced this, this, this thing called Peter familias. I may have said that wrong, but it's basically the father's in charge of everything.
[00:09:44] So what this means is the father was the central authority of the Roman family and had all legal authority over everything.
[00:09:52] Now what this meant in culture was at some point you would have children who would become adults.
[00:10:00] Let's think about American culture for a second. We do not have very good processes for transitioning children to adulthood.
[00:10:09] Like, if I were to ask you, when does a child become an adult? If you ask a child, they're like, well, when I'm 12 years old for sure, right?
[00:10:16] Or they might go, well, when I'm 16 and I can now drive and we give that child a license and we put them behind the wheel of a car, which is terrifying. If you start to think about it, don't.
[00:10:31] Are they free then? Are they adults then? I mean, they have very adult responsibilities.
[00:10:37] We let them go places and drive places. Okay, now you kids don't understand what this was like when I was coming up because when I got my driver's license, my parents sent me out on my first solo journey. I went to the Lakeland Christian Academy basketball end of season party, arguably one of the biggest social events of the year.
[00:11:00] My dad said, when you get there, you need to call me so I know you made it safely.
[00:11:07] I was like, dad, you're killing my style. Like, I'm rolling up in the 82 Nissan stands, alright? Like, don't do that to me.
[00:11:14] So I get to the house, he can't track me. There's no cell phone. I have to ask the coach, coach, can I use your phone? And I'm trying to be like, hey, coach, can I use the phone? My buddy's here. What do you got to do? I was like, I call my dad and tell my mate. Oh man, your dad's. It was embarrassing, right? But I did it because I wanted the freedom. So my point is this. Is it 16? Probably not. Is it 18?
[00:11:39] When you're 18, you can vote. We'll send you off to war. We'll do all other kinds of things that make you. But good luck, you know, renting a car or getting a hotel room. Right?
[00:11:52] So where is it? It's interesting.
[00:11:54] American culture created this concept called teenagers about 100 plus years ago, where for the first time in history, we now made a separate category that wasn't a child and wasn't an adult. For most of the ancient world, it's about 14 to 17. And if you go back and you look at history, you got 14 year olds doing very adult things that are lost on us. So America, we created this teenager category.
[00:12:21] Now, about 100 plus years later, we actually have a new category of adulthood.
[00:12:27] Ever heard this? It's called adulthalescence, where you have people who are like 25 to 30 plus who are still living at home and who are still. And again, nothing wrong with that. Like, there are certain scenarios where those types of things need to happen. But the problem is they're kind of stuck. They're not fully teens, they're not fully adults. And again, I don't make fun of that. I think that's hard because we've created all these problems. The Roman world, though, had no such problems. The father could decide when the son was an heir, usually between the ages of 14 and 17.
[00:13:06] There was one day a year in Roman culture and it was during the feast of the God Liber where they would take all of the boys who were going to become sons or heirs adulthood, and they would celebrate it on March 17.
[00:13:23] What would happen is there was a private kind of family ceremony where the sun would take off the childhood toga, which was pure white and purple. He had purple adornment which signified everybody, this is a child under the rule of the father. And he would put on a new toga that was dyed a natural color and had no adornment. And the symbolism of that was he's now a no longer a child, he's a full citizen. And in legal heir.
[00:13:54] And so literally the physical changing of a garment, people would go, oh, that's an adult now. They would then have this very public procession. They would all go down to the local administrative office and they would sign the son's name in as being a full Roman citizens with full rights to their own family.
[00:14:16] Here's what Paul's saying.
[00:14:18] He's using that Roman kind of civil ceremony to say, until the date set by the father, the son is no longer under the slave and guardian. The slave now had zero authority.
[00:14:34] So Paul is using again, an example to his audience that would have been extremely familiar to them.
[00:14:40] Oh yeah, no, we get that. We get that connection.
[00:14:43] But he goes on in verse three to expand the picture to include everyone, just like the son who becomes an heir.
[00:14:54] Let's look at verse three together. It says this in the same way.
[00:15:00] We also, when we were children, were enslaved to the elementary principles of the world.
[00:15:06] So he's saying, just like this son who is under the guardianship of guardians and managers is not an heir until the date the father has set. He said in the same way when we were children, he's not talking about like physical age, like actually a child. He's talking about like spiritual immaturity or not knowing Christ. He said we were enslaved to the elementary principles of the world.
[00:15:33] Now there is some debate on what Paul means by elementary principles of the world.
[00:15:39] Most scholars agree that what he's referring to is the Roman system of worshiping earth, air, water, fire, sun, stars, moon, etc. Which each had their own God or goddess attached to them.
[00:15:58] And so what Paul is saying is, he's saying we were enslaved to these gods and goddesses and worship of these elements. And again, remember, worship in the ancient world wasn't just you come to church for about an hour and then you leave. It was like ritual and sacrifice and required a lot. Why? Because if you made the gods angry, things would not go well for you. But it may not go well for the entire people.
[00:16:27] Matter of fact, in verse nine, Paul is going to call these elementary principles weak and worthless because they have no power to save and they're transactional. And so what he's saying is he actually at other places refers to these elemental principles as like being demonic in nature.
[00:16:48] So he's saying, just like the Son before the date set by the Father, the that's who we were because we are enslaved to elementary principles of the world. Remember verse three or chapter three, he's been talking more to kind of the Jewish imprisoned under the law. Now in four, he's talking about being enslaved to these gods and goddesses. His point is the same whether you're under the law or under the worship of pagan gods. Both end up at the same place, which is slavery.
[00:17:20] Being under the control of.
[00:17:24] Sometimes we hear these things and we go, well, look, I'm not really, you know, I'm not really following the law or I'm not really worshiping foreign gods. I was not. Remember Ecclesiastes, though, says nothing new is under the sun.
[00:17:40] These same systems exist. They change a little bit and they shift, but they're still there. And if we're not careful, if people who don't know Jesus, Paul says they're enslaved to these. Let's look at two examples. One is what I would call just the prison of performance. Kind of modern legalism.
[00:17:59] Right. This doesn't even have to be like spiritual in nature, but you think about, you have checklists of things and Maybe your checklist is tied to, you know, your, your house or your optimized human functioning or how good your kids are doing, or it doesn't really matter, it's just some checklist that you might be keeping where you can look at it and go, yep, yep, yep, yep. And as long as I have more yeps then nopes, then I'm doing great.
[00:18:34] And you keep this. And the problem is is it makes, makes you continually have to audition, continually have to perform. If I perform, I'm accepted. And then when you fail, well, then you failed.
[00:18:50] And so there's one, one way we could look at this. The other way is if we talk about modern elementary elements like worshiping those. Now again, there are people and places that worship false demonic gods. Absolutely.
[00:19:03] But I think for a lot of Americans, particularly at this cultural place, they tend to worship things like money.
[00:19:13] Right.
[00:19:14] Again, we can worship money, we can worship identity. However we choose to frame that, we can worship just having digital affirmation. Do people like the content I'm putting out there?
[00:19:28] And so when we get caught worshiping these, these are weak and worthless. Why? Because they're transactional.
[00:19:35] If my sense of self worth is built on what you think about me, I'm in trouble.
[00:19:41] Cause some of you like me and some of you don't.
[00:19:44] It's just the way it is.
[00:19:46] And if your self worth is based on what I feel about you, I love all of you.
[00:19:52] You're in trouble too. Right? And so when Paul calls these weak and worthless, it doesn't just go away. They just shift and take different forms and they are expressed in different ways. But the same problem is there.
[00:20:05] Back to what Paul's saying. Whether we are under the law or we're worshiping different idols or other gods, it doesn't matter. It's all slavery without Jesus.
[00:20:18] Everyone is enslaved to something and trapped in a whole system of performance.
[00:20:25] Now that's bad news.
[00:20:27] If we stop the sermon right there, we're not walking out of here. Very hopeful.
[00:20:33] We're not walking out of here with a full picture of what Paul's saying. Paul though, goes on in verse 4 and he gives profound truth. And it's this.
[00:20:43] God has set people free.
[00:20:48] And I don't care how long that you've been in church, are you been following Christ like that is one of those truths, man. We ought to come back to it over and over and over.
[00:20:58] Because without it we're trapped, we're enslaved. But with it, God has set people free.
[00:21:06] So good. Verse 4, Paul says when the Fullness of time had come, God sent forth his Son, born of woman, born under the law, to redeem those who were under the law, so that we might receive adoption as sons.
[00:21:24] But when the fullness of time had come, God sent forth his son.
[00:21:29] It's an interesting way Paul phrases that the fullness of time had come. What does he mean? There's two different ways to understand this. One is an eternal time.
[00:21:40] That God, as the Supreme Father of everything, decided that now is the time to send Jesus to this culture at this time, at this place. It is 100% his decision. He sends Jesus at that time.
[00:21:57] Another way to think of it is from a more temporal perspective, because what's happening in the world at this time is you have what's sometimes referred to as the Pax Romana, or the Roman peace happening, where there are extreme technological advances that are happening in culture, particularly coming out of Rome. I'm going to give you an example of one. How about a road?
[00:22:20] Now, we take roads for granted. We don't think about this, but in the ancient world, Rome started building easily transversed roadways that connected cities and geographical areas in ways that had never happened in history. Made it a lot easier. What did that do? Opened up commerce.
[00:22:39] People could now trade. So you have more wealth happening.
[00:22:44] It opened up the spread of information.
[00:22:47] Like you can now hear in relatively quick fashion what's happening in Rome or Jerusalem or Antioch or Syria or Greece, it doesn't matter. You could get information.
[00:23:00] Now, that gets lost on us a little bit because we have information literally from everywhere, at every time, right in our pockets.
[00:23:07] We want to know what we can jump on. But in the ancient world, that's a big deal.
[00:23:12] And Paul saying when the fullness of time had come, it's related to this trade. You also have a common language.
[00:23:19] From one of the first times, the majority of the world speaks Greek.
[00:23:24] So if you're on these roads and you're traveling, you can communicate with probably most people because of shared understanding of Greek. Again, it gets lost on us because. Because in our phones we can translate almost everything instantaneously.
[00:23:40] But now you can not only connect to different people at different places, you can communicate with them.
[00:23:46] You also have the influence of the Judaism with monotheism, this idea that that's spreading throughout the world. Romans and Greeks worshiped a lot of different gods. But you have the Jewish perspective on monotheism. You have messianic hope. You have moral decline of Roman culture creating spiritual hunger in people. So when Paul says the fullness of time had Come, he's saying it was the right time because God decided it was the right time and the world was at a place where it was ready for it to spread.
[00:24:21] And if you trace the spread of Christianity, the way that it explodes throughout the ancient world very quickly, why? Because it's. The fullness of time had come.
[00:24:32] So God's decision, the timing is perfect.
[00:24:37] It's perfect.
[00:24:38] Along with that, Paul's going to give us a couple of really robust theological understandings about Christ. He says, first of all, God sent forth his son. We know Jesus is God's son. Son.
[00:24:54] This is an ontological relationship that's always existed.
[00:24:58] Jesus is divine.
[00:25:00] Jesus is God.
[00:25:03] We read that he's born of woman.
[00:25:06] Connection, then to the virgin birth which was prophesied. It's also connection to humanity, that Jesus is fully God and he's fully man.
[00:25:16] And so it connects it to that human perspective.
[00:25:20] Born under law, Jesus was Jewish.
[00:25:23] It's a connection to the Messianic prophecy. And Jesus was the one who perfectly kept the law, fulfilled the law, and paid the curse of the law.
[00:25:32] And so Paul packs a lot right in that short little statement about who Jesus is as God's son, about his connection to the virgin birth and the connection to humanity and his ability to keep the law, fulfill the law, and pay the curse of the law.
[00:25:51] But what's the whole point of it? Paul goes on and he says this to redeem those who were under the law.
[00:25:58] That word redeem, or the idea of redemption, literally means to buy out of slavery.
[00:26:05] Now, I told you before that in Roman culture, slaves could buy their own way out of slavery.
[00:26:11] There was another cultural practice where you could pay for someone else to be taken out of slavery.
[00:26:19] And so what Paul is saying is Jesus has set all people free.
[00:26:26] He redeemed them from slavery.
[00:26:31] And as his audience hears that, they start to go, oh, man, not only are we taken from freedom, he goes on to say that we might receive adoption as sons.
[00:26:46] Again, another Roman practice, adoption, as was practiced then, was very different than how adoption is practiced in our modern context. Let me give you some differences.
[00:26:58] The Roman legal process of adoptio, an adopted child experienced a couple of things. Number one, they experienced the cancellation of all debt.
[00:27:09] Now, to you and I, we're probably thinking, well, why would a child have debt?
[00:27:15] Remember, though, family debt is transferred around particularly and can be transferred to children. That's how they stayed in that process of slavery. So when a child was adopted, debt is canceled.
[00:27:27] Second thing that happens is the erasure of the old lineage, meaning Their connection to their old family is completely cut off.
[00:27:37] And that's strange to us. As we think about adoption today, we don't really practice that. But back then, that's what they said. The old self, the old relationships are gone. They no longer apply.
[00:27:50] The adopted child had the legal right to a full inheritance in a new family, meaning when they were adopted, they were placed in the inheritance line, just like biological children would be, and they were given full access to the inheritance. This, this Roman practice was so strong of adopting that you could disown your own biological child, but you could not disown an adopted child.
[00:28:21] And so Paul's making a point that again, we hear that and we go, yeah, receive adoption as sons. Okay, we get it. Like you're taking in a new family. No, no, no.
[00:28:31] It is a complete, total and irreversible change in identity because you are now adopted. And Paul's point is, if we believe Christ, we have a complete, total and irreversible change in identity.
[00:28:52] Debt is canceled.
[00:28:54] Our old lineage is cut off.
[00:28:58] We have a legal right to everything in our new family. He will never leave us nor forsake us.
[00:29:05] But it gets better.
[00:29:06] Verse 6 or verse 5, excuse me, is objective. It's what happened because of the work of Christ on the cross. Verse 6, then, is subjective. It happens in us through the work of the Spirit. Look what he says in verse six. He says, and because you are sons, right? So because you've been adopted into God's family, here's what happens.
[00:29:27] God has sent the spirit of his Son into our hearts, crying, abba, Father.
[00:29:34] So the first redemptive act is God sends his son.
[00:29:38] The second act is God sends the Holy Spirit to his sons.
[00:29:43] The way to understand this is first of all, notice that you have God the Father, Christ the Son, and the Holy Spirit all involved in the process of salvation.
[00:29:53] They're all active. The Holy Spirit is the internal witness of sonship.
[00:29:58] It's the eternal perspective that shifts. Notice what Paul says. He uses the phrase abba, father, to describe this. Paul actually uses two different languages to create this concept. He uses Aramaic, which is more of the Jewish spoken in the Jewish world. And he uses the Greek word for. For father. So he takes Aramaic and he says abba.
[00:30:24] What that means is it would have, you know, portrayed a child's intimacy, trust, emotional connection to a father. It'd be like calling a father, like Papa. It's a term of endearment. It's like. It's like a close name. It's an intimate name that would be spoken between family members, particularly a child and a father.
[00:30:46] But he also includes the Greek word for father, which connotes that there's a weight of respect for God's authority.
[00:30:54] And so what Paul does is he said the spirit gives us an intimacy to God. That would have been a revolutionary concept. Why? Because God is God, right? He's out there. Think about the book of Leviticus. We went through all the different ways they had to approach God. And there was this, this, this almost not distance. That's not the right word, but. But there was just a very different way of relating to God. And now we have this abba. We have this, this papa. We have this intimacy, but we still need to recognize him as God.
[00:31:28] Another, another piece of this is abba was often used by Jesus when he was praying. I'll just put a bunch of verses there. Matthew 11:25, Mark 14:36, John 11:30, 41 John 17:1 John 17, 5 John 17:21 John 17:24-25. Here's the point.
[00:31:50] When we pray, we can pray like Jesus.
[00:31:55] Why? Because we can have the same type of relationship to God that Jesus himself experienced.
[00:32:02] Because he has redeemed us, set us free, and God has given us the spirit of his Son into our hearts.
[00:32:13] So what?
[00:32:14] We're actually going to kind of do our. So what here with verse seven.
[00:32:19] In verse seven, you see a shift in language. Paul goes from talking about, like, we and us, and he uses you.
[00:32:31] He says, so you are no longer a slave, but a son. And if a son than an heir through God. What he's saying is, you are no longer a slave, you are a son. And if you are a son, you are an heir.
[00:32:47] Another way to think of that is to think of it if he was speaking to us in like, first person.
[00:32:53] So if I was reading it, I'd say, eric, you're no longer a slave. Eric, you're a son. And if, Eric, you're a son, Eric, you're an heir. Like it's that personal and direct.
[00:33:04] It's not just out there for others, it's there for us.
[00:33:09] So three things that we take away because we are an heir through God. Number one is we have legal standing, the right of access.
[00:33:18] Okay? We are. We are legally meaning we are connected to identifying with Jesus independent of our own merit or performance.
[00:33:30] Paul will use some metaphors. Actually, the New Testament will use some metaphors about being clothed in Christ.
[00:33:36] What that means is exactly like that ceremony we talked about before where the old toga was taken off and the New one is put on.
[00:33:46] And so what that means is when God looks at us, what he sees is he sees the righteousness of Christ that is put put on us, that's draped over us. That's what he sees. Our access to the Father is secure and absolute as Jesus own access.
[00:34:05] We're a joint heir. Our status is finalized. Our standing and our access to God isn't some type of goal we're working to hoping we can do more and be more and be better. It's actually the foundation that we can currently stand on.
[00:34:22] Second thing we have is we have the right of resources. We have a shared life through Christ because of his redemption, the Spirit's adoption. We don't just inherit things from God.
[00:34:34] We don't just get health and wealth from God. What we actually get is God himself.
[00:34:41] Our primary resource is what the New Testament calls the direct power of the resurrection. The same power that raised J. Jesus from the dead is available to us through the Holy Spirit. What does that produce in us?
[00:34:57] Things our own effort never could. But go to Galatians 5 and look at the list of the fruits of the Spirit. Love, joy, peace, patience, gentleness, goodness, perseverance, self like. All of those things are given to us as resources.
[00:35:15] And they don't run out, they don't lose value, they don't change over time. They're not bought and sold by somebody else. They're secure and we have the right of resources.
[00:35:29] We no longer have to be sustained by bankrupt systems. We're sustained by the life of God the Father, Christ the Son and the Holy Spirit. The last thing we have is the right of security for future glory.
[00:35:43] The inheritance in chapter four is an eternal reality based simply because when the fullness of time had come, like God has decreed it, this is an already not yet kind of experience for us, right? Like we know we have this, we know it's available to us. We can live as heirs, we can have the full rights of inheritance. But we live in a world that's hard.
[00:36:07] We live in a world that's difficult. We live in a world that's broken. But we have eternal security knowing that as heirs we are sealed for the day of full possession. First Peter 1:4 says the inheritance is imperishable, undefiled, unfading and kept in heaven.
[00:36:32] It's never going to run out, it's never going to go away.
[00:36:36] It's never going to be taken. Why? Because it is sealed through the Holy Spirit and through the decree of God and through the work of Christ.
[00:36:48] My last encouragement for you today is this. If you're living as just a slave to past or guilt or a religious system or any system of do better, try harder, do more. If you haven't made a profession of faith to follow Christ, then I would say that let this be the day where your status changes.
[00:37:10] It's nothing you have to do but believe and confess.
[00:37:15] And if that day is the day for you, I would encourage you to make that decree to follow that prayer. If you need to talk to somebody, you can talk to me. You can talk to anybody with a badge you can talk to to somebody you came with. Just make today the day of change for you to move from slave to son to full heir. Let's pray together.
[00:37:40] Heavenly Father, we just thank you for your word. Lord, may we never grow tired of learning about what you have provided for us, that what you've given us, that you have given us, as your word says, more, more than we can ask or even imagine. Lord.
[00:37:57] Lord, we just thank you for the adoption as sons and daughters into your family, that we now have a new reality we can live in. Lord, if that is true for us, if we have believed in that and accepted that, then let it transform us. But also let it inform our world as we go out and we interact with and we engage. Lord, thank you again for the truth of your word and thank you for what you've given us. And we pray this in your name. Amen.
