06 Galatians 3:23-4:11 The purpose of the Law

Speaker: This is Wednesday in the Word, a women's ministry of Trinity Presbyterian Church in Charlottesville, Virginia. Today is October 12th, 2011. Our passage is Galatians chapter 3, verses 23 through chapter 4, verse 11. And our teacher is Krisan Marotta. For more talks in this series, please visit our website at www.wednesdayintheword.com. Well, we are in Galatians chapter 3, verses 23 through chapter 4, verse 11 today. And it's a longer section, but it's basically two ideas. So we're going to take them together. We have very few rites of passage in our society, but I think one of them that's still around is graduation. And I remember when my oldest graduated from high school, I remember thinking, oh no, my parenting days are now numbered because I was watching him go. And then when my youngest graduated, she was all excited and I was it was traumatic for me because I felt like, oh, I've been fired. You know, and and now she only has two years left before she graduates from college. And graduation is one of those, you know, celebrations where you're celebrating your past accomplishment, but you're also kind of marking your transition into the next phase of life. So graduates are kind of crossing that threshold, and from high school they're kind of leaving childhood behind and moving into uh hopefully adulthood. Doesn't always happen with college, but we hope anyway. And so graduating or becoming mature is is that is marked by that ceremony, and that's the theme of our of our passage today. And it's also a theme in scripture. I just want to point out it's not just in Galatians. Paul writes in 1 Corinthians 13, 11, when I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child, when I became a man, I gave up childish ways. And that's in a discussion of of of graduating and looking beyond spiritual gifts to things like faith, hope, and love. Then in Ephesians 4, he's writing about the body of Christ, and he's writing about all the different gifts that are given to the body, and he says, um, well, I'll just read Ephesians 4, 11 through 15. And he gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the shepherds, and teachers to equip the saints for the work of the ministry, for the building up of the body of Christ, until we all attain the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to a mature manhood, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ, so that we may no longer be children, tossed to and fro by the waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine, by human cunning, by craftiness and deceitful schemes. Rather, speaking the truth and love, we are to grow in every way into Him who is the head into Christ. So again he's writing about this idea that we are to grow up, we are to leave childhood behind and grow into adulthood. And then the author of Hebrews takes it one step further and he actually scolds his readers for not growing. In Hebrews 5.12, he writes, For by this time you ought to be teachers, yet you need someone to teach you again the basic principles of the oracles of God. You need milk, not solid food. So he's admonishing them that they're still in spiritual infancy. And that's what Paul's going to argue today. He's we're in a section where he's talking about the purpose of the law, and he says the law served this great purpose in our lives, but uh having learned that lesson, we ought to graduate into spiritual maturity. So we ought to leave the law behind and graduate into kind of this maturity of faith. So that's the main point of today, and let me uh review where we are in the book, and then we'll look at the the um lesson or at the sections, the verses themselves. So you'll remember that we're in chapters three and four, and they form a unit where Paul is making five arguments for the fact that we are justified by faith alone. And we have looked at three of them so far. So in three, one through five, he says, look at your own experience. When you became a believer, when you received the spirit, did you receive the spirit because you finally got your act together and started doing everything right? And God was pleased with you, so he rewarded you with the Spirit, or did you receive the Spirit because you believed? You heard that Jesus died in your place and he paid the penalty for your sins. You believed it and you received the Spirit. And he says, obviously, you you got the Spirit through faith. Then in 3, 6 through 14, he says, that experience is confirmed by Scripture. Scripture teaches us that Abraham believed and it was counted to him as righteous. So from the beginning, righteousness came to those who had faith, and that God promised that all those who had faith like Abraham would be blessed. So those are the first two arguments. Last week we looked at the third argument, which is in 15 through 22 of chapter 3. And Paul argued that God made a promise to Abraham, and the law which came later was a deal, but the deal did not nullify the promise. So Abraham, the covenant with Abraham was a one-sided covenant in which God promised to bless Abraham and all those who had faith like him. The law was a two-sided covenant in which was given to Israel through an intermediary where the law spelled out, do this and live, don't do this and die, and there were conditions on both sides. So that was a deal, whereas Abraham's was a promise, and he says, Um, the law that came later did not nullify the promise, and having been given a promise, why would you ever want to go back to the deal? So we're still kind of in that section. He raised the question in 319, why the law then? And the section we're looking at today is still part of his answer of why the law. So if he says he's just argued that the promise is better than the deal, and why the question is raised, well, why would the law ever be given? If if the promise is so great, what's the reason that God would then give us the law after making this kind of promise? And Paul argued that the law served a great purpose, and that was to teach us we were sinful. What he's going to go on today is to say, having learned that lesson, we ought to graduate from law-keeping into maturity of faith. Okay, so that's where we're headed. Alright, so let's start with 323 and 24. Now, before faith came, we were held captive under the law, imprisoned until the coming of faith would be revealed. So then, the law was our guardian until Christ came, in order that we might be justified by faith. So he's saying, okay, before we had faith, we were under the law. In fact, we were imprisoned by the law. And the word that's translated held captive in 323 is used elsewhere in the New Testament of the action of armed guards which are placed around the city. So it's the idea that, like when it's under a siege, so it's the idea that we are hemmed in, we are surrounded by the law and imprisoned and held captive there. And he's making the point that these rules bound us and bordered us and fenced us in and limited our rebellion, teaching us right from wrong. Now, that sounds kind of strange to us, but think about it. When you have a rebellious child, what it what's the first thing you usually have to do? You have to lay down the law. You have to restrict their freedom and start putting rules and limits on who they spend time with and when they spend time and when they do their homework and when they don't. And maybe you take away their their freedoms or their their internet or their cell phone, and maybe the more rebellious they are, the more law you have to lay down. And partly that's to keep them safe, keep them from harming themselves, partly it's to teach them right from wrong, but the goal is always to end the rebellion. And that's the picture Paul's painting here. The law hemmed us in like that, put limits on our right and wrong, restricted our freedoms to teach us that we needed the promise, that we were in rebellion, with the goal of ending that rebellion and moving us to faith. So, further then, in first twenty-four, he says we were under a tutor or a guardian. Um, so then the law was our guardian until Christ came in order that we may just be justified by faith. There's no English word that translates that word guardian. It's a hard word to explain. It's I've heard one person that described it as a learning enforcer. This is how John Stott explains it in his commentary. He says the Greek word means literally a tutor, a guide, or a guardian of boys. He was hims he was usually himself a slave whose duty it was to conduct the boy or the youth to and from school and to superintend his conduct personally. The A V translation schoolmaster is unfortunate for the pedagoge, that's the Greek word, was not the boy's teacher so much as his disciplinarian. He was often harsh to the point of cruelty and is often depicted in ancient drawings with a rod or a cane in his hand. So the idea of this guardian is not this nice, kindly governess or teacher, but a strict taskmaster whose job it is to uh to teach and discipline. So I the best modern equivalent, I think, might be the drill sergeant in basic training. So you've probably seen, you know, the Hollywood movies where the recruits come in and the drill sergeant gets right in their face and yells at them and demands they do, you know, 150,000 push-ups or whatever. And it's kind of this harsh, uh, strict taskmaster. But the goal is to turn those, you know, raw, unvarnished uh recruits into battle-ready, strong character, um, strong character soldiers. So that's kind of the most modern equivalent, this this drill sergeant that makes demands that is requiring strict obedience, all with the point of making a good soldier out of them. And Paul's saying that's the way the law functioned in our lives. It was like that kind of drill master or drill sergeant or taskmaster insisting on obedience to hem us in, to put limits on our rebellion, because without it we're prone to selfishness and evil, and we need the law to restrain us. So it was necessary because of our propensity to sin, we'd be much worse off without it. But having graduated from basic training, why would you ever go back? That's the point he's gonna make. So having gone through that, nobody in his right mind ever says, ooh, I want to go back to basic training again. Once the process is finished and you've learned the lessons that needed to be learned, you should grow up or graduate and uh go forward. So don't you don't want to go back to boot camp. In fact, at the end of this section, you can almost hear his disbelief in 4.9, he says, How can you turn back to the weak and worthless and elemental things? It's like, how can you go back to that? Only a fool would go back to that. Okay? So why the law then? He says the law was this demanding kind of drill sergeant taskmaster that was necessary for us in our rebellious childhood, but it was never intended uh for those who have graduated into life in faith. So that's what he's going to go on to say. Look at 3, 25 through 29. But now that faith has come, we are no longer under a guardian. For in Christ Jesus you are all sons of God through faith. For as many of you as were baptized into Christ have put on Christ. There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is no male or female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus. And if you are Christ, then you are Abraham's offspring, heirs according to the promise. So he says, but now that you've come to faith, so that's 325, now that we've come to saving faith, we've graduated, we've finished this basic training under the law, we're no longer under the custody of this drill master or this taskmaster. We are free, responsible heirs of the promise of Abraham. And then he says, further in 27-28, all of us come to faith the same way. There is no there's not a different path for Jews and Gentiles. There's not a different path for slave or free or men and women. So Jews may have the advantage of learning the law earlier, being exposed to it sooner, and hopefully coming to understand it sooner, but we are all saved by grace. There's no hierarchy in the body of Christ. So he uses kind of the metaphor of baptism. I think the idea is we're all placed in the same spiritual river. There's not a river for rich people and a river for poor people, or a river for men, or a river for women. We're all in the same river. We all get wet the same way, and we come up uh equally saved. So we're all equally sinful and equally saved. Further, he says we put on Christ, or some translations say we're clothed in Christ. A lot of scholars think that Paul's referring to this Roman ceremony where a young man reached adulthood, and when he did, he was given his special toga as a symbol that he was now a man. So as he moved from this childhood to the responsibilities of adulthood, there was this ceremony in the Roman world where he would be donned with his first kind of manly adult toga. Now, that's kind of foreign to us, so I think the best analogy for us might be back to graduation where you wear your cap and gown. You know, you're given your cap and gown as a symbol that you have completed that phase of life, you finished your degree, you're ready to move on to the next one. It's that kind of putting on the gown, putting on the cap and gown symbolizes you're ready to move on, and he's using that analogy, you have put on Christ the same way. Now, we have to talk about 328. Uh there's neither Jew nor Greek, there's neither slave nor free, there's no male nor female, for you're all one in Christ. Um, because this verse has become a lightning rod for a debate. And so I want to talk about that. I think the point he's making here is we all come to faith the same way. So it doesn't matter whether you're Jew, Greek, slave, free, male or female, we all need this drill master to teach the of the law, to teach us we're sinful, but we're to graduate from that basic training into faith, and it's the same faith for everybody and the same process for everybody. And then he concludes in 329, if you have that faith, then you're a child of Abraham, and you stand to inherit all the promises and all the blessings. So it doesn't matter how you start out, it doesn't matter what your cultural background is, it doesn't matter whether you grew up rich or you grew up poor, or you grew up with the blessing of a faithful household or not, or whether which side of the tracks you grew up on, or whether you had privilege or pro poverty or the best education or no education, none of that matters. We're all sinful in the same way. We all need the law to teach us, and we all graduate. So just to stretch my analogy a little bit farther, you could say that our graduation robes cover whatever we're wearing underneath. So it doesn't matter if we're wearing a Jewish prayer shawl or a Roman toga or the rags of the poor and homeless or the finery of the rich underneath. It doesn't matter we all are clothed in the same robe and the same cap and gown. Okay. Now, the fact that that we are equal before God in terms of our salvation and how we get there, I think has great implications for how we treat each other and for how we respect each other and how we uh view the body of Christ. And we could spend hours kind of challenging ourselves on that. Uh and I'll let you spend if you want to do that in your small groups, I'll leave that uh for you there. The problem is 328 has become a touchstone in the debate over the roles of men and women. And there's a group that call themselves the Biblical Feminists, or um, they go by a few other names, but biblical feminists is most common. And they say that in this verse, Paul is claiming that there is neither male nor female, therefore there are no differences between men and women ever, under any circumstances, in any area of life, period. And that's what they argue from this verse. So the the goal they're trying to get to is in marriage, there's no head, there's no helper, that's all been abolished. In the church, there's no difference in women and and um men in leadership, um, there's no difference in society, and so on. And that's the point they want to make from this verse. So, as Bible students, and part of our goal is to teach you how to study the Bible, let's see, is that correct? How do we how would we know is that a correct interpretation or not? So we're gonna spend a little bit of time on that. I think the short answer is the question is in what sense is Paul saying there's neither male nor female? And that's the question you have to ask when you're coming to this verse and try to interpret the passage. In what sense? Clearly he's saying there's no difference between them, and what is the d the lack of distinction he's trying to make. So consider the verse in the context of Paul's argument. Remember, the overarching argument of the book is he's trying to convince the Galatians that they are turning away from the true gospel and turning to a false gospel of keeping the law. Because there's the group teaching that you have to, once you come to faith, you have to now be circumcised and keep the law to complete it. So that's the overarching kind of theme he's writing against. He's argued that the true gospel is not man-made, but God himself revealed it to us. He argued that he received this gospel by revelation, and he was given a unique role to proclaim it and teach it. And he's in the midst of five arguments for why we are justified by faith alone, and that is the true gospel. So now we're in the third of those of those five arguments, and he has kind of digressed slightly to explain the purpose of the law, and he's just argued the law is our drill master in this basic training to teach us we need a savior, and he concludes in the next verse if you are Christ, then you are Abraham's offspring, heirs according to the promise. All that is to argue the promise is better than the deal. So the law was never intended to save us, it was intended to teach us. It was intended to stem our rebellion and turn us back to God. And uh that for all of us, God gave us his spirit because we had faith, not because we got our acts together. So the question is: in the midst of that argument, do you think he would stop to say, oh, and by the way, there are no gender differences ever under any circumstances, especially in marriage? Not too likely, I think. In the context, he's arguing about salvation. And he's saying, in terms of salvation, in terms of how you become Abraham's offspring, in terms of how you get to be one who inherits the promises of God, there's only one path for all of us, and that is justification by faith. And it's the same for everyone, regardless of your race, your gender, or your economic status. So I think it's highly unlikely that in that kind of a context, Paul would argue that there's something different about marriage now because of this. So just to tell you how we get to that, there's this is one of the five C's of Bible study. And I always like to throw in Bible study, so well I this is my big chance then since that's part of our goal. So the the five C's are how do you know an interpretation is true? So if you're looking at a passage and you're looking at someone's interpretation, how do you evaluate is that interpretation right or wrong? And there are five kind of rules, they all begin with C. So the first one is credible. That is credible, it understands the words, the syntax, the grammar according to their normal usage at the time the author wrote. That's what we mean by credible. So it takes all the words and and and sentences and grammar structure and interprets them the way the author would have meant them. So if I interpret, say, the word guardian to mean sliding glass door, you would know that I was wrong because there were no sliding glass doors at the time Paul wrote. And he couldn't possibly have meant that. They didn't exist. So that's an absurd example. But for instance, a lot of times we're tempted to say, what does this word mean? And we go to our Merriam-Webster dictionary and we look it up and what it means in 2011 modern English, not necessarily what Paul meant in first century Greek. So you can't you gotta be careful when we take our modern uh words and put them back in the tack in the passage because words change. Just think of what gay meant in 1920 and what it means today. It's very different. So words change their meaning. So credible is it has to understand them at the way the author would have used them at that time he wrote. Okay, so credible is the first one. Comprehensive is the second one, and that is explains each and every detail in the passage. So you can't skip a verse, you can't leave a verse out, you can't um skip over anything, you have to explain everything in the passage. And that sounds like, oh, why would anybody do that? But you would be surprised how often that happens. You may say, well, this contribution of this verse is only stylistic or it's just adding flavor, but you still have to explain it. So credible, comprehensive, coherent is the third one. That is, it fits the flow of thought of the passage and in the larger context of the chapter and book. And that's the one I think they're violating here. So it's got to fit the flow of the thought. So if Paul is arguing for salvation by faith, we wouldn't expect him to suddenly go into a verse on duck hunting in East Jerusalem, you know. You know, as I mean, that's again absurd, but I think that's what the biblical feminists are doing here. He's arguing for justification justification by faith, and they're saying, oh, and in the midst of that, he's suddenly argued that in marriage there is no more difference. And that seem that doesn't fit the flow of thought. So credible, comprehensive, coherent, consistent is the fourth one that's consistent with the information which is not in the book. So the author's other letters, the rest of Scripture. So given what Paul wrote in Ephesians about marriage, would we expect him to in Galatians say there's no difference? So it has to be consistent with w everything else we know about the author and his letters and the rest of Scripture. And then conforms is the last one. Conforms to the author's purpose and plans. And that basically means it has to fit the context. It has to flow with the book and the context and the thought of the argument. So credible, comprehensive, coherent, consistent, and conforms. And I would argue that interpretation violates the last three. It's not coherent, it's not consistent with what we know of Paul elsewhere, and it doesn't really conform to the the flow of thought of the book of Galatians. So now having said all that, um I would say, okay, if you're trying to argue that God has abolished gender roles based on this verse, I think you that you can't do that. But there are some things we can learn. Because Paul is saying, as far as the Lordship of Christ is concerned, there's no distinction between men and women. And that has valid application. Because I think we can say from that our Lord intends women to be grown-up disciples just as much as He intends men to be grown up as disciples. We're not considered junior partners of men. God expects serious Christianity and faith and service just as much from women as he does from men. He expects, you know, kind of to use our gifts, to exercise our gifts, to be involved in thinking and study and service just as much as men. And we can see that that's how Jesus treated women. He expected them to respond to him as Lord. He expected them to be serious about the things he was teaching, to listen, to respond, to think and act as grown-ups just as much as he did the men. So when he says in Christ there's no male or female, I think we can say that the as far as the call to discipleship and faith is concerned, we are equal. So he's not claiming that maleness and femaleness have ceased to exist in every sense of the word, but he's saying as far as the lordship of Christ, as far as salvation, there is no distinction. We ought to all be grown-ups. Okay. Let's go on to chapter 4 then. He continues this theme of the importance of graduating and being spiritual grown-ups, and he expands the metaphor. So in 4, 1 and 2 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. So he's taking a metaphor from his world because at the time in Roman households, especially noble kind of wealthy households, they would have this Olympian father figure who kind of lived above the, you know, fray of everyday run-of-the-mill home life. And he didn't raise his children, but his children were raised by a highly educated slave, the guardian or the drill master we've just been talking about here, and the slave taught and directed them. And Paul's pointing out the irony that here you have the child who will someday be the master of the estate, but while he's underage, he is controlled by the slave that he will one day own. So he's pointing out that difference. He's saying he is an heir, but as long as he's a child, he's no different from his slave. The slave tells him when to get up, when to go to bed, what to eat, when to eat it, what to study, when to study it, how to study it, how to be respectful, how to act like a man, how to be an adult. He disciplines him, he controls every aspect of his life. So as a young child, there's no real difference between being an heir or being a slave. Um, even though one day he will own everything. And that's part of the point Paul's making. Childhood consists of that kind of slavery, that kind of restriction. It's life under a taskmaster, but it points to a time when it will end, the fullness of time, as he's going to go on to say, or the date set by his father. There is a date when we we are supposed to grow up. So look at uh 4, 3 through 9. In the same way, so just like this child, Roman child who's up under a slave, in the same way we also, when we were children, were enslaved to the elementary principles of the world. 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 adoptions of sons. And because you are sons, God 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. Formerly, when you did not know God, you were enslaved to those that those that by nature are not gods, but now you have come that you have come to know God, or rather be known by him, how can you turn back to the weak and worthless elementary principles of the world whose slaves you want to be once more? So he's saying, just like that Roman child, we were enslaved to the law, but having come to faith, we've grown up, we're no longer slaves. How could you possibly go back to it? Now he uses a very interesting word in 4.3 and 4.9, the one that's translated elementary principles of the world. It's kind of a hard phrase to get a grasp on. Again, I'm gonna this is how John Stott in his commentary explains it. He says, the elemental principles of the world, uh wait a these were often associated in the ancient world with either the physical elements, earth, fire, air, and water, or the heavenly bodies, the sun, the moon, and the stars, which controlled the seasonal festivals observed on the earth. This fits with verse 8, where we were said to have been in bondage to beings that by nature are no gods. So the idea is in our immaturity and in our rebellion, we were trapped by these hollow and deceptive philosophies of the world. So we looked around, we looked at the planets, um, astrology, we looked at forces of energy, feng shui, you know, all that ki, whatever, all that stuff. We looked at all those philosophies and we said, oh, that must be it. That must be what's right and wrong. But we were actually trapped by them in the same way this Roman child would be trapped by his slave. We look to them as if they were gods, but they are not gods. We look to them as if they were true, but they were not true. And so they're they look good on the outside, but there's nothing in them. They don't deliver on the promise. They deceive you into believing they are true, but then when you believe them, there's really nothing there. So these are philosophies of the world, and they are empty and hollow. They don't deliver what they promise. And further, they come from the world. And remember, he's just argued that the gospel comes through divine revelation. So these are ideas and philosophies uh put forth by people, made up by people. They are not the they are not true, unlike the gospel, which comes from divine revelation. So he's saying in the same way that a Roman noble son who's underage would be a slave to his taskmaster, so we in our rebellion, in our infancy, if you will, were enslaved to these worldly philosophies, to these ideas, these forces of nature. And we were fooled into thinking that that's what controlled us. But when the time was right, God sent his son, both human and divine, to keep the law in our place, to die in our place so that we would be justified through faith and be adopted into the family as sons. So the father is then no longer this Olympian distant figure, but he's rather now someone we can go to and say daddy. And that's the force of what he says the airman when he says Abba Father, the the Aramaic word Abba means daddy or papa, it's the word a child would use to address a loving father, and it conveys intimacy. So he's saying you've moved from this position of slave to this position of beloved child. You no longer need the drill instructor, you no longer need the elementary things. Now you can know God directly, you can be known by God, you can learn to think like he thinks, value what he values, um, and uh have this intimate, loving relationship, why would you rather go back to the law? So that's the four twenty action four, nine through eleven. If you are an heir now, why would you ever want to go back to that kind of childhood? Why would you want to re-enslave yourself to diminish yourself into that kind of life under the law? Now, I was trying to think of a way to really explain this, and s I've you've probably heard the psychologists talk about people today they call adult children. You know, children who are physically grown up but still act as if they are children. Um they continue to live at home, they continue to kind of refuse the possibilities of adulthood, they want people to still make choices for them, um and they don't want to step out, so often they're whiny instead of responsible and they're scared when they should be confident. And that's the kind of thing Paul's writing against. And you're probably familiar with this. I mean, think about when my children are young and growing up, they had all kinds of rules, you know, and we had all these discussions over the rules, you know. So when they were little, you know, was don't cross the street unless you're holding a grown-up's hand, or don't talk to strangers, or don't approach the neighbor's dog unless the neighbor's there holding his leash, or you know, then as they get older the rules may be changed. You need to be home by 11, or you need to learn how to budget your allowance, or here's how the rules of homework apply, or you know, call me when you arrive safely. So when they're kids, they have all these rules that you you put down to keep them safe, to teach them right from wrong. But as they grow, the rules change and the rules are relaxed. You start expecting them to make decisions for themselves. So, you know, we expected them to set their own bedtime eventually, or to manage their own money, or to complete their homework without being told to, or make their own school lunch, or do their own laundry, or whatever. Essentially, they grew up. And Paul's saying the law functioned in a similar way. It was necessary, it was helpful to us when we were these rebellious adolescents, but now that we're spiritually mature, why would we go back to it? So, you know, my children are now 20 and 23, and just imagine how they'd react if I said, You want to come home again, live in my house, and follow all my rules? They'd look at me and go, Oh my gosh, are you kidding? I mean, if you have children who've gone away to college, you know when they come back and you try to have it be like when they were in high school, they look at you like you've lost your mind. And that's the argument Paul's making. You're an adult now. You have graduated from being under that kind of childhood. Why would you ever want to go back to living under the law? So God never intended for you to stay there forever. You are heirs now, you are not slaves. God has intervened in Christ. He's your loving father, he's not this taskmaster or this drill sergeant. When you ask for wisdom, he'll give you wisdom. When he when you need faith and courage and um hope, he will give those to you. We've been given gifts to serve him, a calling to explore. Uh, so you're made for freedom, you are made for maturity under Christ. And he's so that's the force of his last coming. Why would you ever want to go back? Then he ends with a warning in 4, 10, and 11. You observe days and months and seasons of the years. I'm afraid I may have labored over you in vain. And I think that's a reference to the Jewish ceremonial laws and the festivals that that were prescribed under the law. And he's saying, look, you're turning back to that. You're going back to that whole system. Why would you ever do that? I'm afraid that despite all my teachings and my prayers, that you uh are going to turn away and that my work is in vain. So, all of that is to say drill instructors are necessary for juvenile delinquents, but they're not necessary for those who've graduated, who've learned of that lesson and moved into faith. So, why would you go back to that? Having received our justification by faith, we should now rejoice in our freedom as mature uh spiritual adulthood. All right, let me pray for us. I'll give you a chance to ask some questions.