Galatians 4:8 - Homiletics

An appeal to the Gentile Galatians.

"Howbeit then, when ye knew not God, ye did service unto them which by nature are no gods." The apostle here seems to turn to the Gentile portion of the Church, and impresses upon them the folly of placing themselves under the yoke of Mosaic Law.

1. CONSIDER THEIR FORMER IGNORANCE OF GOD . "When ye knew not God." The apostle gives no hint here of that self-satisfied agnosticism of our day, which says either we cannot or we do not know anything of God, but simply asserts the fact that they did not as Gentiles know God. God is not unknowable. The apostle explains, in the first chapter of Romans, how the knowledge of God died out of the minds of men. It occurred through a deliberate perversion of the moral powers of man. They knew not God, and were thus in a terrible sense "without God in the world." Yet they were not without religion. Religion is a necessity of man's nature, and hence its universality. It may be dimmed by superstition and ignorance and sin; it may be left to rust by disuse, till it has all but disappeared; yet it is never wholly lost.

II. CONSIDER THE SUPERSTITION THAT WAS BUILT UPON THIS IGNORANCE . "Ye did service unto them which by nature are no gods."

1 . The objects of their superstitious worship were no gods. He says elsewhere they were demons: the gods had no real existence. They were either evil spirits or dead men, or the lights of heaven deified by human ignorance and folly. It is fearful to think of the widespread delusions of the heathen.

2 . Their worship was a degrading bondage. It was full of labour and fear and suffering. "The bondage of the Jews was pedagogic; the bondage of the Gentiles was more wretched, for they did not know God at all." The Gentile bondage was terrible with its sacrifices, its mutilations, its orgies, its cruelties. It degraded the mind, fettered the imagination, cramped the heart, of its votaries.