"A Slave or an Heir?"

In various newspapers last year you could find the following headlines:

He’s Homeless – and He’s Rich

In another paper the headline read:

Bum Inherits Windfall

And in yet another paper was found the headline:

Hobo Set for Life

Max Melitzer was homeless until his brother died and left him his entire estate.

Max’s life flipped upside down when his car flipped upside down in 1990.

While driving his wife and two friends through Wyoming, he lost control and rolled his car.

He survived but his wife and friends died.

Twenty years later, Max was pushing a shopping cart and all of his possessions through the streets of Salt Lake City.

Following the accident, Max’s sorrow turned into depression.

Along with the depression came aimlessness and vagrancy.

After losing his friends and his apartment, he drifted hopelessly between relationships and addresses.

Eventually, he lived homeless on the streets of Salt Lake City.

Max was very much in love with his wife and it was really hard for him to lose her.

To make matters worse was the fact that he was driving when she died.

Max’s brother, Morris, and other family members tried to contact Max without success.

They knew Max had emotional issues and wanted to be left alone.

When Max’s brother Morris came down with terminal cancer, Morris’s death-bed wish was that his brother Max be found.

Morris wanted to give his estate to Max.

After a year of searching, Utah detective David Lundberg finally found Max in a Salt Lake City park.

He had recently been beaten up, his watch and money stolen.

The detective described Max as a sweet man in his 60s, far more articulate than you would think.

The detective put Max on a bus and sent him back to New York to connect with his family and his inheritance.

The inheritance was about $100,000.

This may not seem like much to some but when you are homeless, it’s a lot of money.

This is an example of a rags-to-riches story on a small scale.

In our text for today, Paul speaks of another rags-to-riches inheritance story.

Galatians 3:26-4:7

Paul uses adoption imagery.

He imagines a minor due to get the family inheritance.

While underage, minors and their future are under the control of a guardian.

In a spiritual parallel, God’s people were once under the stipulations of the Law, living like slaves held under external regulations.

Christ was born into that system of the Law.

He fulfilled its requirements on our behalf and liberated God’s people.

Slaves could now become adopted children of God.

This is a rags-to-riches story or what might be called an extreme makeover story.

I. Our Work vs. God’s Work

Every employee has a boss whose demands must be satisfied through work and service.

But in that sense, God is an odd Boss.

Our work won’t ever cut it.

We know our efforts to live good lives could never meet the Boss’ standards.

People cannot justify themselves.

Without faith, it’s impossible to please God.

But in Christ, God was pleased to have all his fullness dwell.

It is only through a personal relationship with Jesus that we can be pleasing to God.

It is through a personal relationship with Jesus that changes our status from that of a slave to that of a child of God.

Adoption into God’s family means we get an inheritance, an inheritance that can never perish, spoil or fade.

It is kept in heaven for us.

Christians sometimes misunderstand the role of righteous living.

Our good deeds will never save us.

We are saved by grace through faith.

But the result of this saving faith will be good works done with right motives and for the glory of God.

II. Slaves vs. Children of God

Max Melitzer received an inheritance when someone in his family died.

When it comes to a Christian inheritance, Christ died to make us family who are then worthy to be heirs.

Without Christ, we are slaves to God’s law.

In Christ, we are children of God.

A slave must do what he or she is told and only what she or he is told.

Slaves are slaves.

They serve.

But adult children will ideally live in the best interests of the family.

They will behave and act appropriately.

They see themselves as participants in a relational system larger than themselves.

They learn to give and receive.

This leads to some important “Why” questions.

Why do we live the way we do?
 

Why do we give the way we do?

Why do we serve the way we do?

The real question is this: “Do we live as Christians because we must live as Christians or because we long to live as Christians?”

In other words, is it a “have to” or a “want to?”

That’s the difference between a slave of God and a child of God.

III. Rules vs. Relationship

There’s a massive shift in the sense of obligation in this passage in Galatians.

Rules generally have an impact on our actions.

But rarely do rules shape our attitudes and thoughts.

A relationship is a far more influential force on how we live.

For example, in my early teen years, I really didn’t care that much about what people thought of me.

I was pretty cocky and kind of a smart aleck in the classroom.

But one day I noticed someone.

Her name was Sherida.

That changed everything.

I didn’t want to be a jerk any longer.

I didn’t want to get kicked out of class anymore.

My relationship with Sherida changed everything.

Not only did I want to please her but also her family.

I had a new purpose in my life.

My goals changed.  

The rules in my high school didn’t change me.

A relationship changed me.

In a similar, the Law itself can’t change anybody.

The Ten Commandments will not change the heart of men and women.

But what the Law does and what the Ten Commandments do is reveal to us our spiritual need.

Galatians 3:24 = . . . the law was put in charge to lead us to Christ that we might be justified by faith.

We are not justified by keeping the Law because God’s standard is that of perfection and all of us have broken some of God’s laws.

It’s Jesus who justifies.

It’s Jesus who saves us.

It’s Jesus who changes us.

IV. External vs. Internal

When Christ’s work replaces our work, slaves become children and relationship guides us instead of rules.

The result is that we internalize the heart of God into our own.

Instead of an external code of behavior, our moral compass is internalized.

Galatians 4:6 = . . . God sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts . .

In Jeremiah 31:33, God says: “I will put my law in their minds and write it on their hearts. I will be their God, and they will be my people.”

We talk about having a gut feeling about some things.

Well, God has given us a sanctified gut.

We feel led from within by the corrective voice of God.

We come to know when our motivations are unholy and self-seeking.

We experience conviction like a gnawing ache that urges us to realign ourselves with who God designed us to be.

We learn to trust our wisdom as Spirit-led discernment and not just spiritualized personal opinion.

An external code of law is obvious and public.

But the invisible Spirit within us is less obvious.

The Spirit’s leading must be practiced, cultivated and tested.

It’s strange how some people seem to be more comfortable as slaves rather than heirs.

We have seen that pattern at work before.

After the Exodus, the Israelites longed for their life of slavery in Egypt when the life of freedom brought challenges.

Max’s story at the beginning of this message may have sounded vaguely familiar because Oprah popularized an almost identical situation 4 years ago.

Oprah aired the story of Ted Rodrigue, a homeless man and the subject of a documentary called Reversal of Fortune.

Film directors planted a briefcase filled with $100,000 in a dumpster where Ted collected aluminum cans.

They wanted to capture what he would do with the money after finding it.

After stumbling upon the cash, Ted bought a bicycle, he got an apartment and he found a girlfriend.

Then he bought a $35,000 truck and another truck for a homeless buddy.

Ted’s family and a financial counselor encouraged him to save the money but he refused.

Ted insisted that he was “set for life” and wouldn’t get a job.

By the time he appeared on Oprah to promote the documentary, Ted was homeless again and the $100,000 was gone.

Ted lived out the narrative that Paul warned the Galatians of:

“You are slaves set free and adopted as children but refusing to live according to your new standing.”

We see this trend in some people today:

• Some are living in legalistic obedience to rights and wrongs. For them living in obedience to God’s Word is a “have to” not a  “want to.”
• Some people are living unchanged lives as if salvation was just fire insurance or eternity insurance.
• Some people are hypocritically claiming one thing but living something different.
• And some people are having difficulty feeling loved by God because of past mistakes.

These are all variations of how people choose to live as slaves rather than children of God.

I have an heirloom that was given to me by my grandfather.

On my 11^thbirthday he gave me this pocket watch because he was 11 years old when he came to America from Russia.

This watch was old when I received it.

It’s really not worth that much.

It’s not gold plated.

It’s tarnished and does show some wear.

But to me it’s worth something because my grandfather gave it to me.

There are some heirlooms that our Heavenly Father passes on to us as His children and heirs such as forgiveness, love, hope, peace, joy and eternal life.   

Why would we choose to be slaves to sin and bondage when we can be heirs of God?