Initially this morning let us look at a thread throughout this chapter as a means of identifying what the Apostle Paul’s heart contained for these Galatian believers. He has dealt with the attacks that were made upon him personally by those Judiazers who were trying to pervert the Gospel of Jesus Christ. He has dealt with the arguments historically and scripturally. Throughout the Letter, we see that he is earnestly trying to get these believers back on track. He is being firm with them. He is facing them intellectually. He is sternly calling them back to Christ Alone with the Word of God by the Work of the Holy Spirit. Now we see a different approach. He is looking at their conversion in terms of their experiential growth. He finishes this chapter with an allegory in order to show them on every basis, historically, scripturally, emotionally, intellectually, and spiritually, that God’s intent can only be fulfilled in Jesus Christ, period! 
Chapter 3 ends with the statement And if you are Christ's, then you are Abraham's offspring, heirs according to promise. The first verse of chapter 4 continues with the declaration I mean that the heir, as long as he is a child, is no better than a slave, though he is the owner of all the estate; but he is under guardians and trustees until the date set by the father. Verse 19 states My little children, with whom I am again in travail until Christ be formed in you! 
	 There are several aspects to the Apostle Paul dealing with Christians as children. The Apostle Paul, in his letters, also refers to other believers as children. He is very specific in that comparison. He always does it with the idea of encouragement. He is desirous for these believers to grow up in the Lord, to become mature in all the fullness of Christ. He recognizes the growth pattern that God has created, even in spiritual development. Our spiritual growth is by the ministry of the Holy Spirit in His nourishing work with the Word of God.  Growth is established as the Holy Spirit brings us into situations and circumstances that cause us to more and more seek after Him. He never takes us through those trials that we cannot endure in Him. He is always faithful in our lives to show forth Christ in every dilemma, every trial, every circumstance, and every seeming catastrophe. That is one manner in which our growth into Christ is measured, as each one of us learns to more and more rely on Christ to be our only sustenance.
	As an aside, that is the manner in which Christ is seen in action, in love, in power, in wisdom, and in grace by others. They watch what happens as we face the onslaughts of this age. They ponder how it is that we can remain so calm in the midst of the storms raging around us. They wonder how we can survive the harshest of events, and still joyously and assuredly show forth the peace of our unwavering faith in Christ. 
	The Apostle Paul takes the Galatians back to the time before they were Christians. Even before they knew Who God was, God was working to keep them. He set guardians over them until the time came that they willing turned to Him to be their Lord and Savior. As mentioned, there are various stages in our spiritual growth that we all go through, and Paul is highlighting several of them at this point. 
The first is that God made provision for His people under the Law, as we fully discussed last week. That Law was a guardian of His Chosen people of Israel. At the same time, however, He was working in the Gentile realm as well. God was and still is evident throughout His creation. Rom 1:19+20 For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them. Ever since the creation of the world his invisible nature, namely, his eternal power and deity, has been clearly perceived in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse; 
	God made provision for all His called to be guarded until their new birth, the salvation of God in Christ Jesus, could be accomplished. Mankind was created by God with a need to know Him, with a spiritual void that only He can fill. While the Children of Israel were directed unto Him by the Law, the Gentiles were directed unto Him by what they saw of Him in nature. Sadly, both failed to see the Lord God Almighty. The Gentiles turned that need for God into worship unto their own, created gods of wood, stone, silver and gold. The Israelites turned away from God in their self-righteous twisting of the Law. They took something that God intended for them as a guardian against the despicable elements of this age, and turned it into their god. They were more enamored of the Law than of God by Whom that law was established. While they hated its curse, they loved the sense of superiority that it afforded them over the other nations. They were caught up in the rituals, the details, the festivals and the customs. As well, they were constantly manipulating it to see how they could interpret the law to fit their vile desires. The Gentiles were caught up in their pagan rites and rituals, blinding themselves to the One by Whom all things were created. Whether Jew or Gentile, all were held in bondage to the elemental things of the world. Even that was used by God to be a guardian over us until we turned to Him. 
	Many of us, I am sure, can look back to our lives before we became Christians and see the Hand of God covering us, even when we did not know Him. There were various events that we could point back to and now clearly see that it was only by the protection of God that we survived. He kept us unto Himself in His grace, as He has always done. We were not yet Sons of God, which happens in Christ, but we were the children of His creation. He loved us to the utmost, even when we did not recognize Him as our Heavenly Father. Once we accept Christ, we are made Sons of God with all the inheritance of God. We are the heirs of God. Most all of us are not immediately ready for all that this involves, so we are put under the guidance of the Holy Spirit, to bring us into the maturity of our sonship in Christ. 
The Apostle Paul, in his writings, addresses several aspects of being children, not having the maturity as fully grown in Christ. In this letter to the Galatian Christians, he deals with the necessity for the Holy Spirit to indwell our heart. It is then that we come under the tutelage of the Holy Spirit. He works in us and through us unto the glory of God. He is the One who teaches us about our Heavenly Father and the great love with which He loved us unto Himself. He works to bring us to the realization that we can call out unto Him, Abba, Father, as Jesus Christ did, because we are now adopted into the very family of God.
Carrying this course of consideration a little bit farther, in 1 Cor. 3, verses 1-3, Paul teaches us that we, as children in Christ, may not yet have the ability to receive strong doctrine; that we need is to grow into a maturity that will allow us to digest all the things of God. But I, brethren, could not address you as spiritual men, but as men of the flesh, as babes in Christ. I fed you with milk, not solid food; for you were not ready for it; and even yet you are not ready, for you are still of the flesh. For while there is jealousy and strife among you, are you not of the flesh, and behaving like ordinary men? This is sometimes an issue with many new believers. Because they don’t yet have the grounding in the Word of God, they are often lead by their emotions, by feelings rather than the Holy Spirit. They will assume that everything they feel emotionally is solid food in Christ, while in reality; they need the sustaining nourishment of milk for a time. They, we all, need to be established by the Holy Spirit into the solid stability of our lives in Christ Jesus.
	In Ephesians 4:11-14, Paul addresses the instability of the faith of these spiritual children. And his gifts were that some should be apostles, some prophets, some evangelists, some pastors and teachers, to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ, until we all attain to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to mature manhood, to the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ; so that we may no longer be children, tossed to and fro and carried about with every wind of doctrine, by the cunning of men, by their craftiness in deceitful wiles. One day, these newly born Christians feel the joy of their salvation and they seek to spread the gospel of Christ with all their energy. They know they are saved and rejoice it that feeling. The next day, however, in discouragement, they are downcast and feel they must not be true Christians. They allow themselves, as did the Galatian Christians, to be swayed here and there with any doctrine that sounds good or appealing to them. Please do not misunderstand. We have all been there. We still have our times of emotional crisis. None of us should be casting any aspersions or criticism on anyone else. We are simply indicating the usual growth pattern of our lives into Christ.
	The Writer to the Hebrews, shows forth the need for new and mature Christians to study the Word of God as the sustenance of spiritual growth. Heb 5:12+13 For though by this time you ought to be teachers, you need some one to teach you again the first principles of God's word. You need milk, not solid food; for every one who lives on milk is unskilled in the word of righteousness, for he is a child. 
Continuing then, in our Galatian text, we are brought to the glorious statement of the Fullness of Time, in which God’s work of Grace sent forth His Son, Jesus Christ. Verses 4+5 But when the time had fully 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. The plan and purpose of God was fulfilled within the timeframe of God’s choosing. 
The promise that had been made to Abraham those so many years earlier was fulfilled with the arrival of Jesus of Nazareth. Mark 1:14+15 Now after John was arrested, Jesus came into Galilee, preaching the gospel of God, and saying, "The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand; repent, and believe in the gospel." 
	He was born of woman, meaning that he was born under the Law. The Son took upon Himself the humility of becoming man in order to redeem us unto Himself. He alone could accomplish every precept of the Law. This had been the divine knowledge of God from before eternity. Everything had been put into place by God, in His divine plan and purpose, for this specific time. Everything required in the preparation of the time was accomplished.
First, man was shown the depravity of his being born in sin. All men knew that the wages of sin is death. The Gentiles futilely attempted to find some avenue of righteousness before their man-made gods, and were absolutely unable to establish any type of salvation with God Almighty. The pagan world was rife with hatred and turmoil and atrocities that were unspeakable. 
Likewise the Jews, having the Law, were just as lost in their own efforts to find righteousness. They realized that they could never completely fulfill every precept of the Law and therefore were doomed to the righteous curse of death. Theirs became a mission of establishing themselves as high in the world order as possible. 
While they proclaimed Yahweh, their lives showed forth the most corrupt aspects of the natural man. They saw themselves as set above the rest of humanity. The world considered them as no better. Sure they proclaimed the One Living God, but they were being as viciously treated and acted as atrociously as any other civilization on earth. The nations saw nothing but Israel’s failure to manifest anything more than a ridged set of Laws that even the Children of Israel could not uphold. The time was set perfectly as the Law had done its righteous task of showing the corruptness of natural man. Mankind was face to face with his depravity and utter lack of any hope of salvation by man’s own hands.
Second, in the perfect timing of God, Rome had conquered the known world. While the Jews saw themselves as slaves to Rome, the Lord made certain that the news of the giving of His Son could readily travel throughout the region. The roads of the Romans gave forth avenues on which missionaries could freely tread. There was a certain safety in the Roman Legion’s defense of Rome’s property and its roads. There was passage and communication throughout the Roman world, and that allowed the teaching of Christ, and the salvation that God had established in Him, to spread to both the Jew and the Gentile.
Third, the prophets had foretold many things about the Messiah. Those prophecies had all come to pass. By God’s divine plan and purpose, the time leading up to the Messiah, the Promised One, had properly and fully elapsed. He sent His Son, born of woman, to die in our stead. In this selfless act of God’s Love, we became partakers of God’s grace and mercy and loving-kindness in the only means of salvation, the death and resurrection of His Son, Jesus Christ.  
 This is not the only passage in which Paul mentions the wondrous method of God in using time as an instrument in the salvation of man through His Son. Eph 1:9+10 For he has made known to us in all wisdom and insight the mystery of his will, according to his purpose which he set forth in Christ as a plan for the fulness of time, to unite all things in him, things in heaven and things on earth. 
1 Tim 2:5+6 For there is one God, and there is one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus, who gave himself as a ransom for all, the testimony to which was borne at the proper time. 
Titus 1:1-3 Paul, a servant of God and an apostle of Jesus Christ, to further the faith of God's elect and their knowledge of the truth which accords with godliness, in hope of eternal life which God, who never lies, promised ages ago and at the proper time manifested in his word through the preaching with which I have been entrusted by command of God our Savior; 
And, fully in line with this knowledge of the perfect timing of God, the Writer to the Hebrews proclaims in Heb 9:24-26 For Christ has entered, not into a sanctuary made with hands, a copy of the true one, but into heaven itself, now to appear in the presence of God on our behalf. Nor was it to offer himself repeatedly, as the high priest enters the Holy Place yearly with blood not his own; for then he would have had to suffer repeatedly since the foundation of the world. But as it is, he has appeared once for all at the end of the age to put away sin by the sacrifice of himself. 

When time is forever fulfilled, we will see Jesus Christ glorified, illustrious, worshiped, and recognized as Lord of all creation. He will be exalted by all, as He is now in our hearts, because He willing came to earth at the very precise moment required to redeem us unto Himself. 
	Continuing in consideration of Chapter 4, there is much in-between verses 11 and 21. We see the responsive treatment that Paul had received from the Galatians, despite whatever aliment that afflicted him. Usually the Gentiles would look upon something like that with distain, believing that a god was punishing the ailing person for some wrong. But that was not the case with these believers. They accepted him even as an angel with the Good News of Jesus Christ. 
	He also gives indication to the heart that needs to be part of any who minister the Word of God. He seeks to know if he is considered their enemy since he taught them only the truth. He was not like the Judiazers who were apparently saying soft and soothing things in order to win them over. These Judiazers were treating the Galatians as friends, but were binding their time until that supposed friendship could be exploited. The false teachers were trying to shut the Galatians away from any other teacher in order to ply them with their teaching of bondage.
	As a minister, Paul could not give up on these Galatian believers. He was required by the Love of God, to do everything that God lead Him to do in order to encourage them to go on in Christ. He did not give up on the Grace of God to draw these Galatian readers deeper into their completeness in Jesus Christ. Likewise, we must never give up on the Grace, the Mercy, the Love, and the Long-suffering of God in any of the lives of His people. As He never gave up on us, and only chose to Love us unto Himself, so should we do the same in His Love unto our brothers in Christ and unto all in this world. 
At the end of this Chapter, the Apostle Paul sums up his argument for holding onto our freedom in Christ, with an allegory. That means that he mentions something that is historical, yet it has a far deeper meaning than the one that is readily apparent. He brings back the difference between the promise and the Law. He demonstrates that Hagar, and her son Ishmael, were representative of the Law, the natural man. Sarah and Isaac, however, represented the Promise of God, the spiritual man. Ishmael’s birth, in bondage as a slave, was humanly ordained. Isaac’s birth in freedom, a miracle of God, was fully ordained by God providing him the inheritance. 
Paul takes this allegory to be seen as the Law, bringing bondage to the natural man, bringing in the curse of death and imprisoning the Jews in the present, earthly Jerusalem. Accordingly, the Jews were in slavery to the customs and heritage of the Law. They were living under the binding restrictions of human endeavor. Why would the Galatians, born in the freedom of the Promise of God, want to become part of that bondage to the Law? Rather than looking at the earthly Jerusalem, they needed to apprehend, with all knowledge, the fact that they, that we, are part of the heavenly Jerusalem.   
	The writer to the Hebrews has much to say about our heavenly Jerusalem and the fact that we have no inheritance, no heritage in the bondage of this earth. We are citizens with Christ in the heavenly city. It is there that we need to look to see the truth of the fullness of Jesus Christ, and our faith in Him to redeem us unto God. Heb 11:8-10 By faith Abraham obeyed when he was called to go out to a place which he was to receive as an inheritance; and he went out, not knowing where he was to go. By faith he sojourned in the land of promise, as in a foreign land, living in tents with Isaac and Jacob, heirs with him of the same promise. For he looked forward to the city which has foundations, whose builder and maker is God. 
Heb 11:13-16 These all died in faith, not having received what was promised, but having seen it and greeted it from afar, and having acknowledged that they were strangers and exiles on the earth. For people who speak thus make it clear that they are seeking a homeland. If they had been thinking of that land from which they had gone out, they would have had opportunity to return. But as it is, they desire a better country, that is, a heavenly one. Therefore God is not ashamed to be called their God, for he has prepared for them a city. 
Heb 12:22-24 But you have come to Mount Zion and to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, and to innumerable angels in festal gathering, and to the assembly of the first-born who are enrolled in heaven, and to a judge who is God of all, and to the spirits of just men made perfect, and to Jesus, the mediator of a new covenant, and to the sprinkled blood that speaks more graciously than the blood of Abel. 
The Apostle John also describes this heavenly city, the bride of Christ, in the plan and purpose of God. Rev 21:2-4 And I saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband; and I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, "Behold, the dwelling of God is with men. He will dwell with them, and they shall be his people, and God himself will be with them; he will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning nor crying nor pain any more, for the former things have passed away." 
He continues in Rev 21:9-11 Then came one of the seven angels who had the seven bowls full of the seven last plagues, and spoke to me, saying, "Come, I will show you the Bride, the wife of the Lamb." And in the Spirit he carried me away to a great, high mountain, and showed me the holy city Jerusalem coming down out of heaven from God, having the glory of God, its radiance like a most rare jewel, like a jasper, clear as crystal. 
We are children of the Promise, spiritually adopted unto God in Christ Jesus; our heritage is that of the faith of Abraham. Our home is in the heavenly places in Jesus Christ Our Lord and Savior. In Christ, we are born into freedom. Never let us put ourselves under the bondage of the Law, in bondage to the things of this realm. It has no hold on us, no claim to anything about us. Its shackles have been forever shattered by the death and the resurrection of Christ.
We will conclude with 2 Peter 3:14-18, where the Apostle Peter echoes much of what the Apostle Paul is stating. Therefore, beloved, since you wait for these, be zealous to be found by him without spot or blemish, and at peace. And count the forbearance of our Lord as salvation. So also our beloved brother Paul wrote to you according to the wisdom given him, speaking of this as he does in all his letters. There are some things in them hard to understand, which the ignorant and unstable twist to their own destruction, as they do the other scriptures. You therefore, beloved, knowing this beforehand, beware lest you be carried away with the error of lawless men and lose your own stability. But grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. To him be the glory both now and to the day of eternity. Amen. 

Jude 24+25 Now to him who is able to keep you from falling and to present you without blemish before the presence of his glory with rejoicing, to the only God, our Savior through Jesus Christ our Lord, be glory, majesty, dominion, and authority, before all time and now and for ever. Amen.