SCHOOL'S OUT!

                                                                School’s Out! 

4 Now I say that the heir, as long as he is a child, does not differ at all from a slave, though he is master of all, ² but is under guardians and stewards until the time appointed by the father. ³ Even so we, when we were children, were in bondage under the elements of the world. ⁴ But when the fullness of the time had come, God sent forth His Son, born of a woman, born under the law, ⁵ to redeem those who were under the law, that we might receive the adoption as sons.

⁶ And because you are sons, God has sent forth the Spirit of His Son into your hearts, crying out, “Abba, Father!” ⁷ Therefore you are no longer a slave but a son, and if a son, then an heir of God through Christ.

⁸ But then, indeed, when you did not know God, you served those which by nature are not gods. ⁹ But now after you have known God, or rather are known by God, how is it that you turn again to the weak and beggarly elements, to which you desire again to be in bondage? ¹⁰ You observe days and months and seasons and years. ¹¹ I am afraid for you, lest I have labored for you in vain. (Gal. 4:1-11) 

Introduction

Stars do not disappear from the sky during the day. It’s just that something brighter than the stars and planets has appeared in the sky. Malachi said that “the Sun of Righteousness shall arise with healing in His wings” (Mal. 4:2). That is kind of what is happening in Galatians chapter four. Jesus is the rising sun. And just as the dawning sun outshines everything in the sky, by way of contrast, so Jesus, the promised Messiah, causes the “weak and beggarly elements” (Gal. 4:9) of Old Testament law to disappear.

The long night of slavery, of serving the law, of being tutored in your ABCs at school, has ended. The final bell has rung. The lesson has ended. Like that line in the old Alice Cooper song, “school’s out forever!” That song has a special meaning to me. It came out the year I left high school! Like me, you no doubt enjoyed much about your school years. But now that you’re a grownup adult, why would you want to go back there? As Paul says, “But now after you have known God, or rather are known by God, how is it that you turn again to the weak and beggarly elements, to which you desire again to be in bondage?” (Gal. 4:9).

In other words, the Galatians want to go from knowing God and being known by God, back to the place where you are treated as if you do not know God. They want to give up being a son with all its privileges and freedoms as heir, to return to essentially being a slave under guardians and stewards. Do you want to be a servant or do you want to be a son? It’s ‘make your mind up time’ Galatians.

On the Blackboard

Image from Web

            Back in the day, at least for me, school was all blackboards, chalk and dusters, yes, nails scratching blackboards! We learned times-tables by rote and abstract things like algebra. Algebra is often joked about by memes and suchlike on the Internet – e.g., someone on their deathbed bragging that they never once used algebra since they left school! Be that as it may, how would bridges and buildings, roads and railways, be built without a knowledge of mathematics, the forces of gravity, weights and measures, metallurgy, metal fatigue and corrosion, wind velocity, geographical location, soil types, etc., all these things and more were explained on the blackboard with words and other such-like symbols, yes, even abstract mathematical symbols.

The trouble with school back in the day was that we were never told that all these disciplines; maths, science, geography, history, physics, chemistry, language classes, spelling, music, art, cookery, social sciences, etc., were studies of God’s creation and were therefore revelation of the Creator who made them. Whether Secular or Christian, school is simply where the things of God’s creation are studied.  

Once school was out forever, we were supposed to develop all the things we had studied to His glory. However, secular schools purposely remove all reference to God. Thus, as important as this factor is, school primarily becomes primarily about job preparation. To be sure, there may be a period of “Religious Education” tacked on here or there, but the idea of it being a separate class betrays the fact that the secularists have removed Christianity from the rest of the curriculum. Many Jews, including the Judaizers that were trying to influence the Galatians, had suffered something of the same fate. They had failed to see Christ in any their lessons.

All the rivers of blood in the sacrificial system, the priesthood, the tabernacle and then the temple with its altar, it’s holy of holies, the ark of the covenant, the depictions of the cherubim, the annual feasts, circumcision, Passover etc. had been wasted on them. All they wanted was to leave school and go to work. (Salvation by works!) They wanted to use their circumcision as a diploma, their badge of office, their credentials. It gave them their street cred for a job of hire. They were trying to teach the Galatians to do likewise.

Like a secularist education, it is zeal without knowledge (Prov. 19:2; Rom. 10:2). They were seeking a Christianity without Christ. As Jesus says, “You search the Scriptures, for in them you think you have eternal life; and these are they which testify of Me. But you are not willing to come to Me that you may have life” (John 5:39-40). The Galatian grifters were accepting the wrapping but rejecting the gift therein.

Secular school, like Old Testament school, is supposed to be a tutor, a schoolteacher that points you to Christ. The Old Testament is a blackboard pointer pointing us to Christ. Otherwise, school is all just clouds without water, late autumn trees without fruit (Jude 12). However, like the Prodigal son coming to his senses, in His good time, God can bring you, me, and even the ‘foolish’ Galatians to our senses. God does this by showing us where Jesus fits into the school’s curriculum.   

School begins. School ends. Night ends when the day dawns. It’s all just a matter of time “Until the day breaks and the shadows flee away” (Song 4:6a). The Old Testament is the shadows, and the New Testament is the daybreak. However, we are not to throw our Old Testament away. Christ can be seen clearly in those shadows if were to shine the light of the New Testament on them.

. “Now when Jesus heard that John had been put in prison, He departed to Galilee. And leaving Nazareth, He came and dwelt in Capernaum, which is by the sea, in the regions of Zebulun and Naphtali, that it might be fulfilled which was spoken by Isaiah the prophet, saying: ‘The land of Zebulun and the land of Naphtali, by the way of the sea, beyond the Jordan, Galilee of the Gentiles: The people who sat in darkness have seen a great light, and upon those who sat in the region and shadow of death Light has dawned.’ From that time Jesus began to preach and to say, “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand” (Matt. 4:13-17).

School began with Moses at Mount Sinai and ended with Jesus at Mount Zion and “Jerusalem above” (Gal. 4:26; Dan. 7:13-14). Until school ends, like the Israel in the Old Testament, “we are under guardians and stewards until the time appointed by the father” (Gal. 4:2). When was “the time appointed by the father”?  “But when the fullness of the time had come, God sent forth His Son, born of a woman, born under the law, to redeem those who were under the law, that we might receive the adoption as sons” (Gal. 4:4). No longer under the curse of the moral law and in bondage to the ceremonial law, no longer treated as kids who don’t know anything, those whom the Father has adopted are now heirs, adopted sons, along with God’s only begotten Son, Jesus Christ.

All through the Old Testament, God has been promising to send His Son. From the “Seed of the woman” who would crush the Serpent’s head in the first Book of the Old Testament (Gen. 3:15) to the “Sun of Righteousness” who would rise with healing in His wings in the last Old Testament Book (Mal. 4:2), God has been promising to send forth His Son (Isa. 42:6-7, 49:8-9). And notice also that He has also been promising to “send forth the Spirit of His Son into your hearts” (Gal. 4:6). See, e.g., where God says, “I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit within you; I will take the heart of stone out of your flesh and give you a heart of flesh. I will put My Spirit within you and cause you to walk in My statutes, and you will keep My judgments and do them” (Ezek. 36:26-27).

Now, without getting too sidetracked, but it is relevant to our text, keep in mind the promise of the new covenant in Jeremiah 31 where God says,

 

“Behold, the days are coming, says the Lord, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah—not according to the covenant that I made with their fathers in the day that I took them by the hand to lead them out of the land of Egypt, My covenant which they broke, though I was a husband to them, says the Lord. But this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, says the Lord: I will put My law in their minds, and write it on their hearts; and I will be their God, and they shall be My people. No more shall every man teach his neighbor, and every man his brother, saying, ‘Know the Lord,’ for they all shall know Me, from the least of them to the greatest of them, says the Lord. For I will forgive their iniquity, and their sin I will remember no more.” Thus says the Lord, Who gives the sun for a light by day, the ordinances of the moon and the stars for a light by night…” (Jer. 31:31-35a, cf. Heb. 8:8-13).

“Then Peter said to them, “Repent, and let every one of you be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ for the remission of sins; and you shall receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. For the promise is to you and to your children, and to all who are afar off, as many as the Lord our God will call” (Acts 2:38-39). The Galatians Paul is writing to were included in those who are “afar off.”

The old covenant is obsolete. The Galatians are now under the promised new covenant. However, they want to go back to school again! They want to go back to the old covenant. They want to go back to the law written on stone tablets instead of it being written on their hearts. They want to return to blackboards and white boards, teachers and discipliners, books and jotters, instead of the freedom that comes from working with all that knowledge now stored in their brains. Under the influence of the Judaizers they are considering a ‘data-dump,’ dumping the internal and returning to the external. In other words, they want to give up the walking in the Spirit and return to walking in the flesh. Thus, they are rejecting the gospel in favour of the law.

Image from Web

Why would anyone want to go back under the law when Jesus has already done all that for us? Jesus was “born under the law.” Why?  “To redeem those who were under the law, that we might receive the adoption as sons.”

Be done then with chalk, dusters and blackboards! And be done serving those things which by nature are false gods. Never mind its components, even education of itself can become a false god! Instead, go into the world and put to good use everything you have learned. School’s out! Now is the time to glorify God and enjoy Him forever.

On the Heart

Those ‘times tables’ that you learned by rote at school, like those Christian catechism questions you learned off by heart, can now be put to good use. Everything you learned, yes, even wrong things used rightly, can now be used to God’s glory as you enjoy your walk with the Lord. Unlike Paul who taught the Galatians the law in relation to the gospel, the Judaizers want to excise Christ from the law. They want circumcision without its proper context, with its true meaning removed.  

What is the law that the Galatians were under? If this is the Old Testament law, then how can the Galatians be redeemed from something that they were never under? Well, that’s Paul’s point. When Paul says, “But then, indeed, when you did not know God, you served those which by nature are not gods. But now after you have known God, or rather are known by God, how is it that you turn again to the weak and beggarly elements, to which you desire again to be in bondage?” (Gal. 4:8-9), he is speaking of the Galatians placing themselves under the law.

Back in chapter three Paul has already said to the Galatians, “There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is neither male nor female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus. And if you are Christ’s, then you are Abraham’s seed, and heirs according to the promise” (Gal. 3:28-29). Therefore, only those who are in Christ are Abraham’s seed. And anyone who is in Christ has been set free from the curse of the moral law and the bondage of the ceremonial law. The “weak and beggarly elements” have to do with the ceremonial law. Ceremonial law? We see this where Paul talks about Old Testament ceremonies. He says, “You observe days and months and seasons and years” (Gal. 4:10). When Paul calls the Judaizers those “of the circumcision” (Gal. 2:12), he is using the word “circumcision” as a shorthand was of referring to those who were under the law. Circumcision, like observing days, months, years etc., is all part of ceremonial Old Testament law.   

Like our school years, the ceremonial law was only for a time. Again, “But when the fullness of the time had come, God sent forth His Son” (Gal. 4:4). Therefore, the time of being under the Old Testament law ended in principle when Christ on the cross said, “It is finished” (John 19:30). It ended in practice with His ascension and the fulfilment of His promised destruction of the temple in Jerusalem (Matt. 24:2). This took place in AD70.

Paul wrote this letter to the Galatians in the period after the ascension but before the destruction of Jerusalem. Take your pick, but he suggested dates vary from AD48-59. The point is that, now that Christ had come, the Old Testament administration of the covenant had run its course. It was now in the period of transition and would be replaced by the New Testament administration.

Image from Web

        The Celtic Galatians, who had been separated from the Jews on account of the Jewish ceremonial law, (and judicial law) were now, like the Jews, being adopted as sons of God through the instrument of faith, thus, making both one in Christ. The middle wall of partition had now been removed (Eph. 2:14). However, the foolish Galatians” were wanting to rebuild that torn down wall that had been fulfilled and thus removed by Christ’s perfect obedience to the law.

Like using an iPad to swat flies, it may work but it’ll get broken, the Judaizers were missing the intent of the law and were therefore breaking the law’s warranty. Like schoolkids looking out the window instead of paying attention, under the influence of the Judaizers, the Galatians were missing the fact that the curse of the law and the bondage of the ceremonial law had been removed by Christ. In short, the ceremonial law was essentially the gospel in the Mosaic law administration in the Old Testament.

“It is finished!” School is out forever. We are no longer slaves being treated like schoolchildren. No longer is it, “Do this, do that! Don’t do this, don’t do that!” Now we are being treated as grownups, as sons, as responsible school graduates, adopted heirs of salvation. Thus, “And because you are sons, God has sent forth the Spirit of His Son into your hearts, crying out, “Abba, Father!” Therefore you are no longer a slave but a son, and if a son, then an heir of God through Christ” (Gal. 4:6-7).

Conclusion

Under the influence of the Judaizers, the “foolish” Galatians were in grave danger of going from being sons to servants, from promise to flesh, from gospel to law. Yes, after having graduated they were in danger of going back to school. But Paul reminds them that school’s out, yes, school’s out forever. Therefore, like them, as with all who are truly in Christ, we Christians today must be careful not to place ourselves back in bondage. We do this by walking in the Spirit of Christ and resisting the flesh and its sinful desires.

Unlike those who do not know Jesus, we can delight ourselves in seeing Christ everywhere throughout the Old Testament as well as the New.