Of Guardians, Sabbaths, and Telos

The challenge of preaching through Galatians is taking what amounts to a theological argument and turning it into something practical and relevant for us today. Paul’s discourse in chapter 3 concerning law and faith, Abraham and Moses, the gospel and some strange, nebulous enemies of it known as “Judaizers” can get a bit tedious. Why can’t we just believe in Jesus and love our neighbor and be content with that?

Well, we should believe in Jesus and love our neighbor, that’s for certain. But are we certain that’s all we need to know? Are we certain that’s all there is to it? And if we are certain, why? What makes us so certain? One of the things Paul is showing us in this epistle is that theology matters. It matters what we believe and why we believe it. It matters that we can explain our faith and defend it. It matters that our faith is grounded in something outside of ourselves, something tangible. The content of our faith matters.

Paul will continue his argument for the faith and against the false teaching of the Judaizers into chapter 4. This Sunday we will get to the part where he uses the analogy of the paidogogos, the slave who, in Greco/Roman culture, was put in charge of seeing to it that children were educated and brought into adulthood. Our ESV translates it as “guardian.” Through this analogy we are going to have reinforced what we learned about the purpose of the law last Sunday.

Speaking of the law and its relation to us in the New Covenant, last Sunday night I did a topical sermon on the Reformed view of the Christian sabbath. Why was its observance shifted from Saturday to Sunday and what does that mean for us practically? What do our confessions say? What do the scriptures say? You can find the audio for that sermon here:

The Christian Sabbath

You might be thinking, I know something about guardians, and I’m pretty sure I understand what a sabbath is, but what is that third word he put in the title?

The word is telos and if you don’t know what it is, that’s because it’s Greek. It’s the word Aristotle used to describe the inherent purpose of a thing. The study of telos is called teleology and teleology is something that modern intellectuals have fully abandoned when it comes to life, the universe, and everything. Let me see if I can explain.

Our Western culture abandoned its Christian roots over a hundred years ago in favor of a materialistic/naturalistic view of the universe. That abandonment began with the Enlightenment, a European intellectual movement that lasted from the late 17th through the 18th century, continued into “modernism,” which took us into the middle of the 20th century, and culminated in “post-modernism,” which is the dominant philosophy in intellectual circles of our day. What this means, practically, is that all meaning has been lost. A universe that exists by chance and is shaped by arbitrary “laws” which just exist on their own can have no purpose or meaning. All of us are left adrift, hoping to find our own purpose and meaning in a universe which, we are assured, exists without it. In modern intellectual circles telos has been lost.

While it takes years for these intellectual trends to trickle down into society at large, they always do eventually. The way a society thinks is always a reflection of its academia. Our culture shows the signs of this meaninglessness every day.

By contrast, the creation narrative in Genesis 1 and 2 is all about purpose and meaning. The Bible doesn’t even bother with the questions which seem important to modern academia. The creation narrative is not really about the how of creation at all, it’s about the why. It teaches us the purpose of it all. It shows us the original design and intent of our designer, our original purpose, what happened to bring us to where we are now, and how God has promised to rescue us, redeem us, and bring us into that glory which was our original destiny.

We have completed the prologue of Genesis on Sunday evenings and this Sunday we will move into the first of ten sections into which the book of Genesis is divided. That section begins with what has been called a second creation account, but which is actually just an expansion of the original, an expansion for the purpose of elaborating on that all-important concept of purpose. We are going to see original design, both for us and for the earth. We are going to elaborate on humanity’s original telos and we are going to be introduced to the probationary period of our history. What was Eden all about? What was the tree of the knowledge of good and evil? What about the tree of life? What is the meaning of it all? I hope you will make plans to attend our evening worship services and see (or rather hear) these things, and that your faith will be deepened and your purpose for existence will be embraced, as well as your destiny in Christ.

To listen to the previous sermons in this series click one of the two links below.

Foundations for Genesis

The Prologue of Genesis