My title of the sermon was simply "Unnati Galatians," because the address that he uses here is a form of the Greek term "anoetoi." Here, what Paul is saying when he uses this word. Is the most literal, simple derivation I can give for you is you people who are without or outside of your minds. You're out of your minds. It's Paul's way of saying, if he would speak in contemporary terms, what's wrong with you people? The Apostle Paul's apparent frustration towards the Galatian church wasn't born of animosity, but of love and pastoral concern.
So, what was it about the Galatians that had Paul so concerned? I'm Josh Mann, and I'm glad to be with you on this Lord's Day for another edition of Renewing Your Mind. Today we'll be wrapping up our series in Galatians with R.C. Sproul, which means that it's also your final opportunity to receive the ebook edition of Dr. Sproul's expository commentary on Galatians.
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Well, if you're following along in your Bibles, you can turn to Galatians chapter three for today's message. Here's RC now. O foolish Galatians, who has bewitched you? It was before your eyes that Jesus Christ was publicly portrayed as crucified. Let me ask you only this: Did you receive the Spirit by the works of the law, or by hearing with faith?
Are you so foolish that, having begun by the Spirit, are you now being perfected by the flesh? Did you suffer so many things in vain? If indeed it was in vain, does he who supplies the spirit to you and works miracles among you do so by works of the law or by hearing with faith? Just as Abraham believed God and it was counted to him as righteousness, know then that it is those of faith who are the sons of Abraham. And the Scripture foreseeing that God would justify the Gentiles by faith, preached the gospel beforehand to Abraham, saying, "In you shall all the nations be blessed." So then, those who are of faith are blessed along with Abraham, the man of faith.
Read that text, and I think, "Wow." I tried to come up with a title for the sermon, and I thought about different options that I could have. I thought, "Oh, you bonehead Galatians!" I thought of, "Oh, you stupid Galatians!" I thought, "Oh, you crazy Galatians!" And I tried to tone it down a little bit from even the apostle Paul, and so my title of the sermon was simply. You nutty Galatians, because the address that he uses here is a form of the Greek term aneutoi, and nous, of course, is the basic root of that word. Nous is the Greek word for mind, and you put a little a or a, a Greek a, alpha, before the root. And that negates the root of the word itself.
And so, just like we say that there are those who are in the know, they have gnosis, knowledge. Then we talk about those who are agnostic. That means those without knowledge. And here, what Paul is saying when he uses this word is. The most literal, simple derivation I can give for you is: you people who are without or outside of your minds, you're out of your minds.
It's Paul's way of saying, if he would speak in contemporary terms, "What's wrong with you people?" But this is the address: "O foolish Galatians." There's something not right about your thinking, something wrong with your mind, and so most of the translators have used the term "foolish" to try to capture the sense of what the apostle was saying. And as I've said to you on other occasions, when the Bible speaks of foolishness. It's not just speaking about a learning disability, but rather there is a moral, a strong moral element that is contained within the concept of foolishness. Let me look at two other biblical views. Very quickly, to give you a sense of this moral quality of foolishness, you remember that God came to this young lad Jeremiah and called him to himself to be his spokesman, and he said, "I'm going to put my words in your mouth, and I want you to make an announcement to the people of Judah." And that announcement was the announcement of God's coming judgment on the nation, the Northern Kingdom Israel had already fallen, and now God is announcing that the Southern Kingdom is going to fall as well.
And in the fourth chapter of Jeremiah's prophecy, listen to what God says through the lips of the prophet. For my people are foolish; they know me not. They are stupid children. They have no understanding. Oh, they are wise in doing evil, but how to do good?
They don't know. What an indictment that God gives to the people of Judah through the lips of His prophet Jeremiah.
Now that's just one text. Another one I would like to call attention to is found in the Gospel according to Saint Mark, where Mark in chapter seven says. There are you also without understanding. Do you not see that whatever goes into a person from outside cannot defile him, since it enters not his heart, but his stomach? And then he goes on to say, "What comes out of a person is what defiles him, for from within, out of the heart of man, comes evil things." And then Mark gives a list of the gross and heinous sins that are born in the heart of fallen humanity, and then are expressed in their behavior and practice.
And listen to this list carefully. From within, out of the heart of man, comes evil thoughts, sexual immorality. Theft, murder, adultery, coveting, wickedness, deceit, sensuality, envy, slander, pride, and what's the last thing on the list? Foolishness. Do you see that in God's eyes, foolishness?
Is a grievous sin. It's the fool who says in his heart, "There is no God." When the psalmist declares that, it's not just making an intellectual evaluation of the atheist. It's a moral evaluation. As I say, in this country, we have one day out of the year that is Atheist Day that we celebrate annually on the first of April. It's for atheists, especially, because it is the fool who says in his heart there is no God.
Why is that foolish? It's not just stupid; it's immoral. Because as Paul tells us in Romans, that God has clearly revealed Himself to every human being on this planet, not vaguely. Not that one people have to grope in the dark or use the greatest of intellect in order to find some kind of glimpse of the existence of God, but rather through nature itself, God reveals Himself so manifestly. Faunet Ross is the word there, that everyone who claims to be an atheist is without excuse.
And the excuse that people look for is ignorance. Oh God, if I would have only known, I would have served you. I would have worshipped you. I would have obeyed you. That's why when people say, "Well, I'm not an atheist.
I'm an agnostic," I say that's worse.
Well, the person says when they're an agnostic is they say, "I'm not a militant atheist. I'm not on a crusade to do away with the existence of God or destroy religion. I just..." I just don't think there's enough evidence to make a decision one way or the other, and so the reason why I won't affirm the existence of God is because of insufficient knowledge. And so, who's at fault for someone's being an agnostic? Who's being blamed for this lack of knowledge?
God is. If I only would have known the gun was loaded, I wouldn't. Yeah, everybody knows because God is the perfect teacher, and He has revealed Himself plainly of who He is. That's why the judgment on atheism is the judgment of foolishness. And as I say, that has a moral quality associated with it.
Go back to the Old Testament, to the wisdom literature, and you know what the Bible says about wisdom. What's the beginning of wisdom? Where does wisdom start? How is it initiated? The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom.
Well, by contrast. What is the initiation and beginning of foolishness—the failure to hold God in reverence and to adore Him? That's why this is not morally neutral when it comes down to what Paul is talking about as foolishness. This foolishness, this distortion of the truth. Is an expression of fallen humanity.
It's an expression of sinfulness, just as God rebukes the people in Judah through the lips of Jeremiah, saying, "These are stupid children who won't listen to me. They have no regard for my word. They." Plug their ears and close their eyes and harden their hearts. They're a stiff-necked people. They just won't listen.
Now, beloved, that's nuts to not listen to God, the most sure and positive source of truth that can ever be found anywhere in the universe. Paul's just getting warmed up here. With his distress, with the Galatians, oh, foolish Galatians! Then he raises a question that is virtually rhetorical, but one, frankly, that I have found puzzling for many years. Paul says, "Who has bewitched you?" This is a who done it?
Done what? Bewitched, bewitched, bothered, and bewildered. But we live in a time in which we use language of bewitchment, but we don't believe in witches or goblins or things that go bump in the night. We don't believe that people really have the power to mesmerize others, and actually so delude their minds and thinkings that they are bewitched. What does the Bible say about sorcery, about witchcraft, about necromancy?
These are Gross and heinous crimes, according to God, that God will not tolerate the presence of necromancers or sorcerers or magicians, people who practice the black arts, so to speak. God will permit them to live in the land. In fact, He will punish the whole nation if they tolerate sorcery. And so you get the idea here. That there's no real power in sorcery.
That any kind of alleged witchcraft has to be leisure domain, prestidigitation, sleight of hand, a kind of magic that we are entertained by when we see. The magicians on television and so on—we don't really believe that they are doing miraculous things by supernatural power, and we have been so influenced in our culture by the philosophy of naturalism that we don't believe that anybody could possibly have the power of bewitching other people. And so, when we come to this text of foolish Galatians, who has bewitched you? We think that Paul's just speaking in a manner of speaking, as such. But he couldn't seriously be entertaining the thought that there's such a reality of witchcraft out there.
Well, the more I read this text, the more I think that the apostles. Really thinking there is such a thing as witchcraft, it's prohibited, it's condemned, it's absolutely wicked and evil, but nevertheless real. And if you ask the question, "Who has bewitched you?" I don't think that Paul has in mind that the witch avenger has done this. But you think in terms of the one that the Scriptures reveal to us as the supreme deceiver. The Bible teaches us that Satan is not just the temptor or the accuser, but that he really is the deceiver.
The one who muddles people's thinking, whose minds are given over to the darkness, because he's the prince of the power of the air. In fact, when Jesus taught his disciples how to pray, he didn't teach them what the English translations say. Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. Drives me. I almost said nuts.
It really annoys me when I see those translations because the word in the Greek is the word panares, not panaaron. If you use the word evil. In the neuter, abstract, generic sense, it would be Panaron, not Panaros. Panaros, the masculine singular meaning of the term, means the evil one.
So when Jesus is telling his people to pray, "Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us." From the evil one. What's he saying? There really is a devil out there. Satan is real. Every page of the scriptures communicates that supernatural fact and reality, that this fallen angel.
The leader of all of those who are in the demonic realm—that is, Satan, the liar, the deceiver, the evil one—are excellence. But there are very few people in our day and age who even believe in the existence of Satan. We've been so conditioned by naturalism to assume that the natural realm is all there is. There is no supernatural realm. I can remember my professor in Amsterdam said one day.
He says, "Beloved, if there's no demonology, there can't be any theology." Because that same God who reveals Himself in sacred Scripture reveals that not only does He exist, but that evil in reality exists in the person of Satan, and Satan is stronger than you are, and stronger than I am. Don't get into a dualistic error in thinking that Satan is equal to God. I don't believe for one second that Satan. Ever did or ever could perform a miracle. Satan's signs and wonders are always phony, nevertheless powerfully deceptive.
Luther tells a story about a man who is taught about in the fifth century, whose name was Saint Macarius. Saint Macarius was one of these ascetics, his recluse who lived alone in the desert, hoping to have advanced sanctification by living in isolation and self-denial. And he was visited on this occasion by a mother and father who were deeply distraught because.
Somebody had turned their daughter into a cow, and so they would go and look at what had been their gorgeous young lady, and they would see a cow walking around, heard the cow mooing around, and said, "What's happened here is that our poor daughter." Has been turned into a cow, and Macarius looked at the daughter and said, "Are any cows around here? I don't see any cows. All I see is a beautiful young maiden." And Luther told that story, I'm sure, because he believed it. And because, for him. Satan was so manifestly real and powerful that he spoke often about what he called the unfectung that he suffered on an almost daily basis—the unbridled assault of Satan himself.
Satan was so real to Martin Luther that on one occasion he so intensely felt the presence of the devil in his room that he picked up an inkwell and threw it at him. Macarius was saying, "There's nothing wrong with your daughter.
Something wrong with you. You've been bewitched. You've been deceived. You've been deluded by the crafts of the Prince of Darkness, who made you see a cow instead of your daughter." It's the same thing with angels. Remember Elisha and the angels when he was alone with his servant one day, and his servant got up and he looked out and he sees the enemy in the east and in the west and surrounded by the chariots in the north and in the south, and they were all coming to get the prophet.
And the servant said to Elisha, "What are we going to do?" Elijah said, "Relax. Take it easy." Don't you know that those who are with us are greater than those who are against us? Elisha says, "You don't understand. You got to look outside. Ten thousand chariots in the north, another ten thousand on the south, ten thousand the west, ten thousand." He says, "We're surrounded by the enemy." And what did Elisha do?
He prayed. He prayed for his servant, and he said, "Lord, open up his eyes. Let him see what I see. Let him see reality as it is." And the Lord God opened the eyes of the servant, and what did he see? Myriads and myriads and myriads of angels round about Elisha.
The heavenly host was there all the time, but people were blinded to the reality those right in front of them. We can be blinded. We are blinded by the forces of darkness. And so it is that Paul says, "Who has bewitched you?" He knew who had bewitched them. The only one who really had the power to bewitch them to that degree—to hide and conceal and distort the gospel from the Galatians.
In listening to R.C.'s closing remarks, there I'm reminded of the biblical reality that all false teaching, all lies, ultimately trace back to the father of lies. And when we see our loved ones, our friends, and the world at large being blinded to the glory of the gospel, may God help us to wage spiritual war against lies with the truth of Scripture. This has been the Sunday edition of Renewing Your Mind. Thank you for joining us today as we conclude our brief study in the Book of Galatians. And just a reminder that for your donation, you can receive Dr.
Sproul's expository commentary on this book to take your learning even deeper. And if you found today's teaching encouraging, consider sharing the link for this episode with a friend. Have you ever heard the term legalism? What exactly does it mean, and why is it such a serious error? Join us next Sunday to find out as we begin a new study in the Book of Mark.
Here, on Renewing Your Mind.
