Good morning this is Christmas week and a time to celebrate the birth of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ which we do and we do so by referring to the scriptures and so we're going to do that this morning we're going to take our passage of scripture actually from the book of Galatians You will join me there and Galatians, please chapter 4 chapter 4 and verses 4 through 7 This is not an uncommon passive scripture that preachers use for The coming of Christ Christmas messages Paul wrote, But when the fullness of time came, God sent forth His Son, born of a woman, born under the law, that He might redeem those who are under the law, that we might receive the adoption as sons. Because you are sons, God has sent forth His Spirit, the Spirit of His Son, into our hearts, crying, Abba, Father. Therefore you are no longer a slave, but a son, and if a son, then an heir through God. All right, so many of you are going to have a great week ahead. I trust you're going to spend some time with your family. You're going to spend some time with your friends. You're going to enjoy being with each other. And I trust in the midst of it all, of course, that you're going to celebrate the birth of the Lord Jesus Christ as well, and rightfully so. We always have to draw away from the commercialism of the Christmas season. That's not necessarily a bad thing. We like to buy gifts. We like to give gifts. It shows our love and appreciation for one another. But we have to take some time off from the gift-giving and from the eating and from the fun and the games and the joy of family of which there is nothing wrong with that. I encourage that and rightfully so. But there is a reason behind what we're doing here and that reason is revealed to us through this particular writing in Galatians where it says And when the fullness of the time came, God sent forth His Son. Here is the real reason for celebrating this season. For us as Christians, this is not just something that's seasonal. Celebrating the birth of Christ is something we do all year long. The world takes special note of it around Christmas because somewhere around the 4th century AD, the church, and the church of course when that particular term is used, generally refers to the Catholic Church. They chose this particular time of the year to celebrate the birth of Christ. Now we don't know when Christ was born. We have no idea the day. We really don't have any idea of the month. It's now ritual, it's been established, it's traditional to celebrate the birth of Jesus Christ at the 25th of December, and so we do. However, as I said earlier, we as Christians are not bound by just this season to celebrate the birth of Jesus Christ. I think we need to be celebrating the birth of Jesus Christ continually in light of the turmoil and the destruction and the misery that so many people now call life. You know, one of the reasons people love the Christmas season is because to some degree many of them get a relief from the stress of life. There's something joyous about the Christmas season that people find delightful. But we ought to find it delightful all year long, the birth of Christ, the promise of the birth of Christ. People are becoming so used to being miserable that I'm not sure they even know they're miserable anymore. They just accept life like it is and say, okay, this is as good as it gets. And it's not as good as it gets. It gets far better when you have Jesus Christ as your personal Savior. Jesus came to die for those who are saying, well, this is as good as it gets, even though they don't know they're miserable and they're miserable. Jesus came to die for them to release them from that prison. So, what do we find? What is Paul teaching the Galatians here in this particular chapter? Well, his origin is divine. God sent his Son. God! This isn't This is better than UPS. This is better than FedEx. This is better than overnight priority mail. God sent his son from heaven. This isn't like going to your mailbox and getting a letter out of your mailbox and on it it says, you know, from the President of the United States of America. And you know it's not from the President of the United States of America. It looks official. And they try to make it look official, but it's junk mail. made to look official so that you might at least open it and at least see what's in the letter. And they know that not everybody's going to open that official looking piece of junk mail. But they're going to get some people to open it and some people are going to buy into whatever they are selling. Jesus Christ was sent from God. He's the official package. He's the official Savior. He has the authority of God Almighty behind him. If you're walking into Walmart and someone's standing at the door and says, hey, grabs you by the shirt and gives you a piece of paper and says, here's a list of stuff I want you to buy me. When you go to Walmart, please buy all this stuff for me. What do you think your response is going to be to this person who you don't even know, who doesn't know you, but yet they're telling you they want you to buy this stuff? More than likely, you're just going to blow them off. You're not going to go in there and buy them all the stuff on their list. You don't know who they are. But if your wife, on the other hand, gives you a list of things to buy at Walmart, you're probably going to go in there and you're probably going to buy everything that she tells you to buy. Because she has the right to tell you these things. If a co-worker comes up to you and tells you to do something that's not in your realm of work, you're probably not going to pay a lot of attention to him. But if your boss comes up to you and tells you to do something that you don't normally do, you're probably going to go ahead and do it. Jesus Christ came from God with the authority of God behind Him. Whatever He says to us has the authority of God behind it. Whatever Jesus does has the authority of God. Jesus didn't just come. He was sent by God. God had a reason and God had a purpose for His coming. Because He had the authority of God behind Him, there was nothing on earth, there was nothing in the earth, there was nothing in heaven that's going to stop Him from doing what God sent Him to do on the earth, which was die on the cross ultimately. But not only did he come with divine authority, he had divine origin. In other words, he was God. He didn't just come as the Son of God, he is God. He came from the presence of God who dwells in heaven. The Bible says, in the beginning was the Word, the Word was with God, and the Word was God. John 1.1, right? Beloved, this is truly one of the greatest characteristics of our Savior. He was God. He had no beginning. His body was conceived and born, but Christ Himself has always been. He didn't just come into consciousness when He was born. Jesus Christ testified this by Himself. He says, Now the Father Now, Father, glorify me together with Yourself, with the glory which I had with You before the world was. Beloved, we don't look at the manger scenes, that we see and say, oh, what a cute little baby. When we look at the manger, when we look at the, quote, Beyblade in the manger, unquote, we don't say something, oh, isn't he so sweet looking? No. Yet while we see a body, we see much more than that. We see the eternal Son of God. Somehow God, in His omnipotence, squeezed Himself into a human body. And that's what Paul is trying to say in this particular passage of Scripture because he goes on and he says, born of a woman. Born of a woman. As incredible as it is for God to come to earth in a human body, it's just as incredible that He even had to come to the earth in a human body. You know, why couldn't God just have stayed in heaven and decreed, okay, I want so and so to be saved, or here's how you're saved. Why couldn't God just stay in heaven and mandate? Okay, we hear a lot about mandating today. Everybody's mandating everything. Why couldn't God just have mandated, okay, here's the way of salvation, rather than having to send his son to the earth in a human body? The reason is because a mandate wouldn't work. It takes a sacrifice to pay for our sins. God's penalty for sin was death. He established that penalty when he created Adam. And it's been the same ever since. In Genesis 2, verses 15, 16, 17, God says, Then the Lord God took the man that he put into the garden of Eden to cultivate and keep it, and God commanded the man, saying, From any tree of the garden you may freely eat, but from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat. But in the day that you eat from it you will surely die. That is law, that's not mandate. You see, law has penalty. The only way for Jesus to die, pay the penalty for our sin, was if he had a human body. Christ couldn't have died without a human body. Adam sinned and he plunged the whole world into sin. And the penalty, God says, for that is that you die. The only way Jesus could die is if he had a body. And the other problem is, we could never pay for our own sins against God. When God told Adam that he would die, he didn't just mean physically die, but he meant spiritually and eternally dying. When Adam sinned, he was separated eternally spiritually from God, and there was no way that Adam could just apologize and tell God he was sorry. Why? Because, like I said, laws have penalties. Mandates may not have penalties, but justice requires a penalty. You don't have justice without a penalty. You don't have a law without a penalty. When Adam sinned, he was eternally separated from God. That is the ultimate penalty of sin. That isn't just because God is mean, or God is bitter, or God is somehow hateful. It's because God is holy. It's because God is just. You can't have justice without a penalty. You can't have a law without a penalty. Beloved, we cannot understand who God is without understanding His justice and His righteousness. I know we love to talk about His love, we love to talk about His mercy and His grace, but if there's going to be a God, if there's going to be such a thing as God, He has to be the source not only of love, mercy, and grace. He has to be the source of righteousness, goodness, holiness, and justice. Those things have to come from somewhere. Love doesn't evolve. Mercy doesn't evolve. Grace doesn't evolve. Righteousness doesn't. Those things are spiritual things. They're immaterial. Spiritual, immaterial things do not evolve into existence. Those spiritual, immaterial things are arguments for the undeniable existence of Almighty God. Therefore, guess what? Dying is a spiritual experience. In other words, you don't die just because your body wears out. You don't die because you get a disease. You don't die because you get COVID. You don't die because of sickness. We die because we have sinned against God. Everything else is a manifestation of the reality of our sin against God and the breaking of His laws. That's why we die. Life isn't just breathing. Life isn't just your heart beating in your chest. It's not just eating, sleeping, working, laughing, sex, pleasure, and being nice to others. Life is a spiritual experience. Life is the creation of God, of God, for God. Life is, in essence, spiritual. It's about having a relationship with God. Death is spiritual. It's about being separated from God. Jesus became a man, born of a virgin, so that we might be forgiven and restored into a relationship with God. Notice how Paul continues that discussion. We're born of a woman. I'm going to clarify what that means here. Just hang with me. And then he says, born of the law. OK. Now, I want to deal with this phrase in particular because our natural response when we read this particular phrase, born under the law, is to unconsciously connect it with the law of Moses. The law here, we just take as the law of Moses. If you're reading the King James Version, It says, made of a woman, made under the law, right? Now, the Greek word here for made is uh and born it's translated made in the king james version born in the new american standard version the greek word there is not the traditional word for a physical birth okay the traditional word for a physical birth is gnao but the word that paul used here is gnomai gnomai The word Ginnōnai means to bring into existence. So, now you're saying to yourself, okay, now he's getting real persnickety here. What's the difference between being born and being brought into existence? They sound like you're saying the same thing. So, what's the difference between being born and being brought into existence? Notice the context. Before we get to the law, the context is he was born of a woman. In other words, he was brought into existence. It's the same word. Brought into existence of a woman. Through a woman. Out of a woman. Paul chose that terminology to impress upon his readers and upon us that Jesus did not have an earthly father. He was brought into existence of a woman. That is not natural. That's not the process of a physical birth. Right? It's not the process of a physical birth. Because a physical birth requires a man seed and a woman seed to be joined together to form the embryo. So Paul is avoiding that. The idea that Paul is promoting here is that Jesus was brought into existence through a supernatural means, right? He wasn't born in the natural way, so he couldn't use the normal word for being born. The baby in the manger was as human as human could be. The baby in the manger was as physical as physical could be. But he was more than mere human being. His body was brought into existence through supernatural means. The Holy Spirit overpowered Mary and planted the seed of God into her womb. Now the person, Jesus Christ, himself is eternal, has always been. But now that physical existence, as supernatural as it was, has some ramifications. If you have a physical existence, even though Jesus' physical existence was supernatural, still have some ramifications, and Paul explains that. That's why he adds the very next phrase, born under the law. Here's the ramification. I know now you're thinking, oh man, what in the world is the preacher saying here? He's changing what the Bible says. The fact of the matter is that what you hold in your hand is a translation. It's a very good translation. There's nothing wrong with the translation, but the translation was made by men. If you're looking at the King James Version, you will notice the word law is in the lowercase, right? It's in the lowercase. The word, the L is in the lowercase. If you have another translation, such as the translation I have, you'll notice that the word law begins with a capital L. It's in the uppercase. The King James Version is quite right in using the lowercase letter L with Law. You say, well, what's the difference between the uppercase and the lowercase? Usually, not always, but usually, when the uppercase is used in your Bibles, it is referring to the Law of Moses. That's how they distinguish the reference to the law of Moses from the law in general or just from the laws of men. So this word law is in the lower case. The context is not talking about the law of Moses here. That's the first clue that this is not the Law of Moses. Now, secondly, and I know you're saying, oh man, preacher, you gotta stop, but you must understand, you see the word the or the, however you pronounce it, T-H-E, before the word Law. The Law. The Law. Once again, The Greek does not have that article there. It does not say the law. The word the is used before nouns to specify something or to particularize something, to identify something, as opposed to it being indefinite or being general, right? For example, if we borrow a book and we're returning the book, we would say, hey, I am returning the book that you gave me, right? You're giving them back a specific book, the book, not just any book, but the book that you borrowed. The definite article, the, is not here. Paul says that Jesus existed under law. Law, not specific, but law general. What law? The general law of God. What is the general law of God? What is the law that all men are under? What is the law that all men are subject to? It is the law of sin and death. the law, the general law, of sin and death. That's what Paul is referring to here. It's universal. Doesn't matter whether you're Jew. Doesn't matter whether you're Gentile. All have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. Paul was informing us that because of Jesus' humanness, he also fell under the law of sin and death. God put Jesus under the law of sin and death to make it possible for Jesus to die as a sacrifice. Don't forget this very important passage of scripture in the book of Hebrews. Therefore when he comes into the world he says sacrifice and offering you have not desired but a body you have prepared for me. Jesus is saying a body, a body you have prepared for me and he's comparing that to the sacrifices and offerings that were made in the Law of Moses for sin. Jesus knew, in other words, Jesus saying, look, the Old Testament sacrifices under the Law of Moses did not satisfy the justice of God. They didn't take away our death penalty. There's not a goat or a lamb or an ox or a bull or a sheep that could ever satisfy the justice of God. When we sin against God, no animal sacrifice would ever be sufficient to pay for the sins of a man. God wanted a human sacrifice because only a human sacrifice could pay for human sins. No animal could ever go to hell for you. There is no animal that could pay for your sins. Jesus was born under the law, the law of sin and death and hell, just as every man, whether you're Jew or Gentile. Paul made this clear in the writing to the Romans. He said, for all who have sinned without the law will also perish without the law. Those who have sinned under the law will be judged by the law. Paul says, look, it doesn't make any difference whether you're a Jew and have the law or whether you're a Gentile and you don't have the law, Moses. You're still going to have to be punished for your sins. That's the justice of God. It doesn't matter. It doesn't matter. So when Paul makes this statement to the Galatians, he doesn't end. Notice what he says in verse 5. Go to verse 5. so that he might redeem those who are under the law, that we might receive the adoption of sons." Here, Paul completes his thought of the coming of Christ, laid in the manger. This is the heartbeat of the baby, born and laid in the manger. That he might redeem those who are under the law. And again, I want you to notice the same thing. If you have a study Bible, it's probably in your margin, and you notice that the phrase, the law, It's the same thing as in verse 4. It's not really capitalized. It's in the lower case and it's referring to the general law of sin and death, the law that applies to all men, whether Jew or Gentile. He says Jesus was born of a woman under the law of sin and death that he might redeem all under the law of sin and death, all mankind. Jesus has the power to redeem us from the law of sin and death. We are bound to the law. There is no escape for us. We were guilty before God. If you're speeding down the interstate, going down the highway, the highway patrol catches you, pulls you over. He comes up to you, you roll down your window. He asks you why you were stopped. You might say, well, I don't know why I was stopped. And he says, well, you stopped because you were speeding. You said, well, I don't know that I was speeding. I don't believe that I was speeding. The officer says, you were speeding. I know you were speeding. We caught you speeding. And you say, well, I refuse to believe that I was speeding. The officer, what does he do? He's going to go and he's going to get his radar. He's going to show that radar to you. And it's going to have big red numerals, 90 miles an hour. You're in a 75 mile an hour zone. You're doing 90 miles an hour. And that radar is the standard. That radar has been set as the standard. And when you look at that radar and you see the words and you see the numerals 90 miles an hour, you know there's the evidence. You were speeding. You broke the law. You have to pay the penalty. You and I have been created in the image of God, and in that image is a standard of right and wrong. It's codified in the Ten Commandments. The Ten Commandments are the codification of the Law of God. It's been stamped into the heart of every human being who has ever been born. The Ten Commandments show us that we are liars. We lie. I lie. You lie. We all lie. It's our sin nature. We lie. We're covetous. We want what we don't have. We want more of what we have. We're dissatisfied with what we have. We're covetous. If we're covetous, we're idolaters because we're bowing down before the altar of what we want and don't have. That's being an idolater. We're adulterous. Women are adulterous in the way they dress, in the way they look, and in the way they feel. Men are adulterous in the way they think and in their lusts. We're thieves and we steal time. We steal time from our boss. We steal time from our wives. We steal time from our husbands. We steal time from our children. That's not to speak of all the sugar packets and ketchup packets that we steal. Beloved, worst of all, we're selfish. We are self-centered. We are egotistical. We are proudful. Nobody escapes the sin of pride. Here's my point. God sent his son, born of a woman, brought into existence through a woman, to pay for all of that. When that baby grew up and walked to the cross, He died for those sins. The baby went to the cross to redeem us, to pay for our guilt, that we might receive the adoption as sons. That's what Paul said. Whose sons? God's sons. The greatest gift we have ever been given is to be adopted by God. God, who is the creator of everything, takes you as His own child, claims you as His own child. Through Jesus, you have a literal, true, real relationship with God. And part of that relationship means that you are going to live with Him forever. God wants you to live with Him. When God sent Jesus to be born of a virgin and laid in a manger, and to be worshipped by the shepherds and adored by the wise men, He did it so that He could die for you and bring you into the Kingdom of God. The greatest gift that you could receive this year is to be adopted by God. by repenting of your sins and putting your faith in Jesus Christ. He's done all the work. Salvation is a gift. It's the greatest gift in the world. The Bible says, For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believes in him should not perish, but have eternal life. Is that not the greatest Christmas gift ever?