We are doing a verse by verse study through the book of Galatians, and as we continue in our study of this book, we come this morning to Galatians chapter 4, verse 11, essentially, and, my goal this morning is to cover verses 11 through 20. And I'm going to warn you guys ahead of time that this message is going to be, something of a downer. the title of the message is an apostle in Agony. An apostle in agony, and by the time we are dismissed this morning, I promise you that you will feel, all of us will feel some of this agony of the apostle.
Paul, as he is writing this section of the book of Galatians, makes a confession to the Galatians that reveals something. Of how he is feeling, he says in verse 19 of chapter 4, I am in labor. Paul reaches for the most painful metaphor that he can think of, and all God's women said, amen, and says to the Galatians, this is what I am feeling. And, and, and I think in a sense Paul is experiencing these pains of labor throughout the entire letter, but it's especially in this section that we notice a Change in Paul's tone.
Beginning in verse 11 through verse 20, Paul moves from talking theology and talking gospel and reasoning and presenting propositional truth about the gospel, to get very personal in this section. and everyone who studies this passage makes note of this. if you look in this section of all the times you see the pronoun I, my, or me, and all the times you see the pronoun you, you would say that this is clearly the most personal, Emotionally intense sections of the book of Galatians. So if Paul is in labor as he's writing Galatians, the labor pangs really intensify in this section of Galatians.
And one of the things I've noticed, I am married to a woman who's had 4 children, is that when a woman is in labor, she speaks differently. she behaves differently. she speaks to her husband differently than she does when she is not in labor. We have a relative, for example, who, when she was in labor pains at the hospital, she physically, beat her husband and, was upset with him for doing this to me, she said....
