From Slaves to Sons

Welcome:

Easter Sunday. If you grew up going to church, Easter Sunday can be more nostalgia than anything else. For the longest time it meant, new suit or dress, shining your shoes Saturday night, an Easter egg hunt Sunday morning, special music during the worship service, and then a thanksgiving type dinner. Nothing wrong with that, but in many ways the familiarity of the holiday has almost masked the meaning of what Easter is all about.

If you didn’t grow up attending worship on Easter Sunday you probably still did some of the traditional things, but ultimately the meaning was also misunderstood or muddled somewhere between Christmas was when Jesus was born and Easter is when Jesus died.

Whatever your experiences were and whatever your perceptions are, I won’t be able to answer every possible question surrounding the meaning and purpose of Easter. But if you stick around long enough and you’re willing to ask questions and be patient with our answers, I think you’ll discover that the Easter story is the most life-changing story ever told.

Introduction:

What I would like to do this morning is share with you one implication of Easter and how living in light of that one result of Easter can dramatically change your life.

In order to get to Easter, I am going to lay a brief background of one of the oldest stories in the Bible, then I’ll show you how the apostle Paul connects that story to the Easter story.

The Passover:

If you have joined us on any Sunday since the second Sunday of January, you have probably heard us talk about the family of Abraham and that’s because we’ve been studying the book of Galatians. Now, Abraham’s story begins during the first few chapters of the Bible, but we’ve been studying a letter that was written by the Apostle Paul thousands of years later. That’s because the Bible carries one continuous story from beginning to end.

If you’re familiar with the Bible or Bible stories you will remember the story of the people of Israel crossing the Red Sea. Well, that is an epic story for sure, but before that ever happened God inaugurated something very important with these same people. It is called the Passover.

Rewind about 400-430 years prior when God uses Joseph (one of the twelve sons of Isaac) to rise to a position of power in the land of Egypt to literally rescue the entire known world from hunger. The story goes on to tell us that after the Pharoah of Egypt had died, the next king forgot all about Joseph and started to panic because the size of the family of Isaac’s twelve sons and all of their kids and grandkids were beginning to take over the land of Egypt. So that King decided to enslave the entire Israelite family. And they lived for about 400 years in total oppression and domination of the Egyptian people. The King despised this family so much that he demanded that all of the baby sons be thrown into the Nile River.

The King despised this family so much that he demanded that all of the firstborn sons be thrown into the Nile River.

One particular mother made a basket and put her son in that basket, the boy’s name was Moses. He was actually rescued by the King’s daughter and grew up in Pharaoh’s palace. Clearly God had a plan for Moses. But after Moses had retaliated to seeing one of the Israelites beaten he fled. For forty years Moses lived in a foreign place and took up shepherding.

One day God spoke to Moses in the form of a burning bush, that wasn’t being consumed. God told Moses that he was going to use him to rescue the Hebrew people from the bondage of slavery and lead them to the land that he had promised to Abraham. Moses reluctantly went back to Egypt and walked up to Pharaoh’s palace and demanded that he let God’s people go so that they could worship God freely. The demand was laughable to the Egyptian King. He was so offended at the request that he instructed his task-masters to make it harder for the Hebrew people.

Discouraged that “it didn’t work” Moses went back to God and said, “This plan is not going to work.” But God in his tender faithfulness said to Moses:

Exodus 6:

Exodus 6:6–9 ESV

Say therefore to the people of Israel, ‘I am the Lord, and I will bring you out from under the burdens of the Egyptians, and I will deliver you from slavery to them, and I will redeem you with an outstretched arm and with great acts of judgment. I will take you to be my people, and I will be your God, and you shall know that I am the Lord your God, who has brought you out from under the burdens of the Egyptians. I will bring you into the land that I swore to give to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob. I will give it to you for a possession. I am the Lord.’ ” Moses spoke thus to the people of Israel, but they did not listen to Moses, because of their broken spirit and harsh slavery.

Moses and his brother Aaron went back to Pharaoh and Pharoah said, “No.” So God began to judge Egypt. There were ten plagues and all of them had symbolic meaning. For instance, God turned the Nile River into blood because they worshiped the Nile as being their source of life. He turned the sun black because they worshiped Ra, the god of the son. He infested their homes with frogs because they worshiped the frogs for keeping the insects under control.

All of these plagues led to the ultimate plague of judgement. God was going to respond to Egypt’s murderous plot to wipe off the Israelite’s from the land by killing the firstborn child of every home in Egypt. Including the Jews, unless they adhered to his instructions. God provided a way for the families to escape this judgement. Exodus 12 retells what they were to do to avoid this judgement.

They were to take a lamb without blemish from their flock and they were to prepare the lamb in the same way they would always prepare it except this time they were supposed to save the blood from the lamb and paint it on the doorpost of their home.

Exodus 12:11–13 ESV

In this manner you shall eat it: with your belt fastened, your sandals on your feet, and your staff in your hand. And you shall eat it in haste. It is the Lord’s Passover. For I will pass through the land of Egypt that night, and I will strike all the firstborn in the land of Egypt, both man and beast; and on all the gods of Egypt I will execute judgments: I am the Lord. The blood shall be a sign for you, on the houses where you are. And when I see the blood, I will pass over you, and no plague will befall you to destroy you, when I strike the land of Egypt.

And God was true to His word. The firstborn of all who did not mark the doorpost of their home with the blood of a spotless lamb was killed that night. That next morning, Pharaoh commanded them to leave. But as many of you know not long after he demanded their exodus, he gathered an army to go after them to bring them back into captivity. This brought intense panic to the Hebrew people. And as they were standing at the edge of the Red Sea they were left with a decision to jump in and practically commit suicide, or surrender back in to slavery. But their leader Moses offered them a bold third option:

Exodus 14:13–14 ESV

And Moses said to the people, “Fear not, stand firm, and see the salvation of the Lord, which he will work for you today. For the Egyptians whom you see today, you shall never see again. The Lord will fight for you, and you have only to be silent.”

Exodus 14:13 ESV

And Moses said to the people, “Fear not, stand firm, and see the salvation of the Lord, which he will work for you today. For the Egyptians whom you see today, you shall never see again.

Exodus

And then God said something profound to Moses,

Exodus 14:1

Exodus 14:15–16 ESV

The Lord said to Moses, “Why do you cry to me? Tell the people of Israel to go forward. Lift up your staff, and stretch out your hand over the sea and divide it, that the people of Israel may go through the sea on dry ground.

And again, God was faithful to his promise and the Israelites walked across the Red Sea like it was carpet. And once they (all nearly 2 million people) arrived safely on the other side, God closed the waters back up on the Egyptian army. The Hebrew people (as you can imagine) were blown away by the power of God. Even though they “knew God” that whole event proved they really didn’t KNOW God. And 40 days later, God assembled them to the bottom of a famous mountain, (Mt. Sinai) and he reminded them of the promise that he made to their forefathers and he said:

Exodus 19:4–6 ESV

‘You yourselves have seen what I did to the Egyptians, and how I bore you on eagles’ wings and brought you to myself. Now therefore, if you will indeed obey my voice and keep my covenant, you shall be my treasured possession among all peoples, for all the earth is mine; and you shall be to me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation.’ These are the words that you shall speak to the people of Israel.”

When God

Exodus 19:4-

Now, that story can seem a bit odd and even arbitrary. Like, okay that was a really long time ago in an era that is… quite different from the one we live in… unless God unveils the truth of what that first Passover meant.

The New Passover

Now, God told the Hebrew people that every year they were to celebrate the passover as a way of teaching the next generation what God had done AND as a way of pointing forward to the coming of the Messiah. The Historically, the Passover feast was hardly kept by the majority of the Jews. But whenever there was a spiritual awakening amongst the Jews (wherever they happened to be living) they reinstituted the Passover Feast.

Okay… so the connection - Paul wrote the entire letter to the Galatian Christians to remind them that they too have a Passover story, they too have an Exodus story. And by extension, we have a Passover//Exodus story. While it was not written as a word for word comparison, there are significant undertones to the Hebrew narrative:

Galatians 1:3 ESV

Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ,

Deliverance, redemption, slavery are all terms that Paul uses to compare the Hebrew story to the Gentile story. Up to this point Paul is making a strong last-stitch effort to prevent the Gentile believers from thinking that they have to become cultural Jews in order to be accepted by God. Instead of that, he says, I want to show you how you are a part of the story.

Galatians 1:4 ESV

who gave himself for our sins to deliver us from the present evil age, according to the will of our God and Father,

Galatians 3:22 ESV

But the Scripture imprisoned everything under sin, so that the promise by faith in Jesus Christ might be given to those who believe.

Galatians 4:1–3 ESV

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. In the same way we also, when we were children, were enslaved to the elementary principles of the world.

Galatians 1:3–4 ESV

Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ, who gave himself for our sins to deliver us from the present evil age, according to the will of our God and Father,

Galatians 4:

Galatians 4:1–3 ESV

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. In the same way we also, when we were children, were enslaved to the elementary principles of the world.

Deliverance is a main theme throughout the letter. And Paul begins the letter by reminding the Galatians that they too have been delivered from an oppressive period of time.

Galatians

Paul begins where he left off in chapter three which ultimately was that the purpose for which God gave the law was to serve as a guardian until Christ the Messiah would come. He is using this language to help them see the connection with the first passover story. Which is a bold move to consider the Mosaic law to be an elementary principle of the world. According to ancient Jewish thought the world was maintained by principalities. In other words, each nation had a guardian that would keep watch over it. Paul is saying, “We had a guardian, but it wasn’t an angel, it was the law. And the guardian had in so many words, been like a slave-master to us, just like Egyptian slave-master, Pharaoh.”

See, every human being (Jew or Gentile) is born under the bondage of Sin. The church fathers have called this Original Sin. This is not so much about individual sins, but capital ‘S’ - Sin. It is the Pharaoh of our story and a relentless task-master. And every human being regardless of what they believe about God longs to be freed from that slavery. You don’t have to scroll to deep into your news feed to find story after story after story of injustice and relational vandalism to see that everyone is affected by Sin. If nothing else, death is the constant reminder that the world at large is in bondage under Sin.

Galatians 3:

Galatians 3:13 ESV

Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us—for it is written, “Cursed is everyone who is hanged on a tree”—

And God knew this, so he promised all the way back to Abraham that through his offspring (which is shorthand for Jesus the Messiah) blessing would make it’s way to all of the families of the earth. Good Friday represents the day where both Jew and Gentile took the spotless Passover lamb and God laid on that lamb the curse of Sin. Jesus condemned sin in the flesh, he bore all of the punishment that was stored up against it when he died on that cross.

Galatians 3:22 ESV

But the Scripture imprisoned everything under sin, so that the promise by faith in Jesus Christ might be given to those who believe.

And even though he had to walk through the scary waters of the Red Sea while he was in the grave, he came up out of the grave, defeating Sin and his army death and hell. So Paul sums it up this way:

But that is not the final word...

Romans 6:

Romans 6:3–4 ESV

Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? We were buried therefore with him by baptism into death, in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life.

Galatians 3:

Galatians 3:27 ESV

For as many of you as were baptized into Christ have put on Christ.

All of that so that we could get to this point where Paul makes this connection between the first passover and the new passover:

Now, Paul once again had to remind the Gentiles of this because they were being led to believe they had to become Jews in order to be a part of God’s covenant family, but Paul will not let them believe that without a fight. Instead he says, because of your passover story:

Galatians 3:28–29 ESV

There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is no male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus. And if you are Christ’s, then you are Abraham’s offspring, heirs according to promise.

He says to the Gentiles, you guys already are a part of God’s covenant family because you belong to Christ. And since you belong to Christ, you are Abraham’s heir not according to blood relation, but according to the promise of God’s blessing flowing to all the nations of the earth.

So Paul sums it up this way:

Galatians 4:1–3 ESV

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. In the same way we also, when we were children, were enslaved to the elementary principles of the world.

Galatians 4:1–3 ESV

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. In the same way we also, when we were children, were enslaved to the elementary principles of the world.

Paul begins chapter four where he left off in chapter three which ultimately was that the purpose for which God gave the Mosaic law was to serve as a guardian until Christ the Messiah would come. He is using this language to help them see the connection with the first passover story. Which is a bold move to consider the Mosaic law to be an elementary principle of the world. According to ancient Jewish thought the world was maintained by principalities. In other words, each nation had a guardian that would keep watch over it. Paul is saying, “We had a guardian, but it wasn’t an angel, it was the law. And the guardian had in so many words, been like a slave-master to us, just like Egyptian slave-master, Pharaoh.”

But then comes his next statement:

Galatians 4:4–5 ESV

But 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.

Galatians 4:4

See, the New Passover (for which we are a part of) God sent out, not Moses, but his own Son, Jesus the Messiah and through the death of Jesus, freedom could be purchased and those who were slaves could become true children.

Good Friday represents the day where both Jew and Gentile took the spotless Passover lamb and God laid on that lamb the curse of Sin. Jesus condemned sin in the flesh, he bore all of the punishment that was stored up against it when he died on that cross.

And even though he had to walk through the scary waters of the Red Sea while he was in the grave, he came up out of the grave, defeating Sin and his army death and hell. So Paul sums it up this way:

Romans 6:3–4 ESV

Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? We were buried therefore with him by baptism into death, in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life.

This brings us back to where we began regarding Easter. What is the purpose? What changed because of Easter?

I am sure you have heard Easter sermons that vier one way towards a sort of blowing Easter off in exchange for a “Let’s just love each other sermon” and maybe you’ve heard Easter sermons that have leaned more towards the “Victorious Christian life” sermons. That because he lives everything is going to get better. You’re not gonna struggle with fear, or pain, or sin anymore.

While there is a pinch of truth in each of those sermons, they’re not the main point of Easter.

Forty days after God rescued the Hebrews through the Red Sea, he brought them to the base of the mountain and said, “My presence will lead you into the land I promised your fathers.”

In a similar way 40 days after Jesus rose from the dead during the feast of Pentecost, God gave, not the law, but his own Spirit, in order to form a people in to his own children both legally and internally.

The legal part is what Paul hints at at the end of verse five “so that we might receive adoption as sons.” He follows that further and says:

Galatians 4:6–7 ESV

And because you are sons, God has sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, crying, “Abba! Father!” So you are no longer a slave, but a son, and if a son, then an heir through God.

Legally, you are adopted as sons the moment that you trust in Jesus. And internally the proof of that adoption is that the Spirit of God opens your eyes and your heart to be able to approach God—Creator of the Universe—Divine and Transcendent—Holy and Awesome—Almighty and All-Powerful—the Spirit opens our hearts and our eyes to see and feel and know that He is also Father. And not only is he Father, but He is “Abba!”

Abba is not a Greek word, and it’s not a Hebrew word. Abba is an Aramaic term. Some have said that the closest word that we have to this in English is the term “Papa” or “Daddy.” Some have said that “papa” is baby babble. It’s inappropriate to refer to God as papa. But the whole point is not about what age you would have used the term, the point is that the intimacy and familiarity in which you felt when you were only a few years of age—the Holy Spirit awakens you to see God in that way.

The Resurrection inaugurates this surprising reality that when Jesus rose, and the Spirit was sent, this new family that God had planned on from the beginning was now being formed. And people who were separated from each other were now being brought near to each other and they were both crying out to their Papa.

You must visualize what this must have been like for Jews who for centuries had gone into the Temple week after week with their prayers and petitions calling out to their Abba. Who now, would walk into the same worship spaces and see next to them a Gentile who was not worship idols made of wood or stone, but was lifting up their hands in worship… and calling out “Abba, I need you.”

We don’t experience it in this way today. We generally pray to the Father and we equally cry out to him in terms of intimacy and endearment. But there is a way that we can know whether or not we believe what we’re saying.

When Jesus cried out those words, “It is Finished” and the veil that was in the Temple was rent from the top down the most holy space was now open. It signified an access to God that very few people in history had ever experienced. Now Jew and Gentile can approach God as the sons that we are.

And for those who may wonder why translators would not use the gender neutral term (children) like many other places in the NT can be interpreted. It’s because in the world in which the Bible was written daughters did not receive an inheritance. Their inheritance came through their husband. Sons were the heirs, they were the ones who received the inheritance. So what Paul intends to convey is that “Male, female, Jew, Gentile, bond, or free” you are all sons. You are all heirs. You are going to receive the same access to the Father that any man has, you are going to have the same access that Jews have, you are going to receive the same access as any free-man has.”

Are you living your life like an orphan who is afraid to approach the Father? Or are you living your life like a three year old child who feels safe enough to barge into a closed door, because you know papa is in there and he never tells you to go away.

How do I know if I’m living like an orphan or a son?

Orphans live on a success/fail basis - Sons know they’re forgiven and totally accepted

Orphans are defensive when accused of error or weakness - Sons are open to criticism because they rest on Christ’s perfection

Orphans often feel discouraged and defeated - Sons are encouraged by the Spirit’s (slow but effective) work in you

Orphans solution to failure: “Try Harder” - Sons trust less in self and more in the Holy Spirit

Orphans need to be in control of situations and others - Sons recognize their inability to fix people, life, and problems

Being A Son Ultimately Means Becoming Like Jesus

It would be a sad Easter sermon if we left here believing that becoming like Jesus is equivalent to “Oh, I never will have tough times or suffering, or be tempted to sin.” Here is the bitter/sweet reality - Becoming like Jesus by the power of the Spirit looks more like the life of Jesus than the picture of that girl on the edge of a mountain without a care in the world.

But the difference is there is hope in the overcoming victory of Jesus:

John 14:18 ESV

“I will not leave you as orphans; I will come to you.

John 14:18

John 16:33 ESV

I have said these things to you, that in me you may have peace. In the world you will have tribulation. But take heart; I have overcome the world.”

John 16:

May the Holy Spirit open your hearts and eyes this Easter to see that you are sons and because you are sons, you are an heir through God.

Communion:

And if you walked in here not trusting in Jesus as your own way of being accepted by God, the good news is that that is what he requires of you, trust him. Don’t look to your self, or what you hope to one day become. Look to Jesus, he is the Passover Lamb whose blood was painted on the post of the cross. He took the full weight of the curse of your sin and he calls you to come to him.