Galatians 1

Today we'll study Galatians chapter one, and I'm wondering how you're doing on writing your verses out. I hope you're able to do that because it really does add a wonderful layer of learning to go so slowly as to write out each verse at a time. In this teaching today, my job is like a drone. My son has a YouTube channel and he's actually got to be a very good drone pilot. And we love watching drone scenes, especially if it's something, uh, uh, territory that's familiar to us. We love it when we can see above and see the context. And that's what I want to do here is I want to kind of fly us up high for a little bit, take a look at the whole book of Galatians and in your study guide, I mentioned it, but I'm going to lay out a roadmap here for what we can expect in Galatians in chapters one and two, we titled those finding grace, how Paul found grace, how any Christian finds the grace of God. Chapters three and four will be understanding grace. What does it really mean and how does God extend grace to people? Chapters five and six living in grace. How does grace affect the average Susie Christian and our life and how it relates to other people? So that's our, our high view from our drone. Now I want to kind of turn it and look back to where we've been. And I want to remind us where we were in our introduction, what this letter is all about. Paul and Barnabas had gone to the churches in the area of Galatia. They had shared with them the gospel of Christ, it was very successful. And then Paul and Barnabas went on their way and continued on their missionary journey. And after they left, people came in to trouble the Galatians and to tell them, uh, to share with them a distorted gospel. In this lesson, Paul's going to call it a contrary gospel. And this happened very quickly. It hasn't been that long at all, a year, maybe two since Paul was there and now there was a mess. And so if you're just joining us this week, I want you to know we covered chapters, excuse me, verses one through seven in our introduction last week. But I want to just point out, I want to point out chapter, I keep saying that verse six as kind of a wet edge to where we've been. And I want to read verse six together that says,

Now in that verse, that word deserting is a military word. It actually means someone deserting their post, deserting their platoon. I'm not a military girl, so I don't know all the wording for this, but I'm leaving where they're supposed to be and turning to go somewhere else. This is what was happening to these people. So the question naturally comes up as we're reading this, could this happen to us? And what if it did happen to us? What would it look like? What would be the symptoms that we might expect in a woman's life if she did begin to desert the gospel of grace? Well, I thought of a few things that we might see in our lives. First is prone to anxiety, more easily agitated. And the reason is because throughout the New Testament, grace and peace go together. If you begin to abandon grace, you begin to erode your sense of peace. And so your sense of anxiety rises. Prone to more fear in life because our underlying foundation of meeting God's approval is on a little bit rocky ground. So we are prone to be a more fearful person. We are prone to legalism, always looking for the target, which is always moving based on what we are thinking. And we are prone to that kind of legalism, making sure we do it right. And then we're prone to have higher expectations of others around us because if we're going to be trying that hard to do it right, we expect them to be trying that hard as well. Now, maybe some of those symptoms hit home with you. But I just want to say that just like physical symptoms, if you have a fever, that doesn't necessarily mean you have malaria. A fever can be a symptom of other things as well. And just because you have anxiety doesn't necessarily mean you have left the gospel of grace. What I'm saying is that when women do desert the gospel of grace, there will eventually be unfortunate symptoms that come up in our life. We'll be able to tell things are just not right. The point is, we need to know, we need to not look at the Galatians and say, oh, for Pete's sake, those Galatians, they were so silly to abandon what Paul had taught them. We can do this too. This is a message for us as well. And so when that happens to us, we need a friend or we need a Bible study to come along and to say to us, I am astonished that you have so quickly deserted the peace and the rest that you have experienced with Christ in order to work so hard to meet God's approval. Now, what I want to do is cover some new ground in chapter one. We're going to start in verse eight and go through the whole chapter. Verse eight begins like this.

Paul mentioned contrary gospel and that one being accursed in duplicate here. He reinforced it to make sure that the readers understood. All right. What I want to do is kind of juxtapose, is that the right word? The true gospel with the contrary gospel. So first let's look at the true gospel. When we get to chapters three and four, which we titled understanding grace, we'll dive into it a little bit more. But just for right now, let us make a simple definition, okay? That the true gospel or the gospel of grace is the good news that God Almighty, the creator of the universe extends grace to sinners like you and me when we put our trust in his son. That's just it. In a nutshell. It's simple. It is very easy. So if it's that simple and that easy, how does a contrary gospel get a foothold? It's because humans by nature are incurably religious. We love to do something that makes us feel worthy. You've probably heard someone say to you, or maybe you've said it, I just don't feel, I just don't feel worthy enough to talk to God or to approach God or to go to church. Maybe you've said those things and the implication is I'll do something, I'll clean up a little bit, then I'll feel worthy enough and then I will approach God. The true gospel gives all the credit for worthiness to Jesus Christ. We get none of the credit for worthiness. Do you know that that bothers us? Do you know that people don't really like that? That ruffles us up a little bit, especially Americans. We are fiercely independent. We are fiercely capable and we like getting credit for the things that we do. We want to be told we're enough. We don't necessarily like it when people tell us Jesus is enough. Okay, so by nature, we are drawn to a contrary gospel. Now let's try to define what a contrary gospel looks like because we're not talking about a different religion here. We're talking about something that has a semblance of the gospel. Remember we talked about that mirror in the rest area that's distorted. So we're keeping some of the gospel. You can see part of it there. So in a contrary gospel, we always want to keep Jesus. I should say we. People want to keep Jesus. What's not to love about baby Jesus? And you want to keep Christmas because that's the best thing ever. So we keep Jesus, but we love to add some things in there that make us feel worthy, make us feel enough. And so it's win-win. We get to keep Jesus. We get to keep our pride. And so you can see how a contrary gospel all of a sudden sounds like a pretty good deal because people love to keep Jesus and they love to keep their pride. So in a nutshell, that's a contrary gospel. Now, how does God feel about that from this text? What did he say about the message and the one who preaches it? Let him be accursed. He said two times in what we just read, what are the motives for people who promote the contrary gospel? What are their motives? Last week, when we went back into Acts chapter 13, we. realized that the Holy Spirit was moving and Paul was collecting a following. A lot of people were coming to the gospel message because of him. And remember it said they were jealous of that because people like to have a following. And so one of the motives is gathering a following. The true gospel message is offensive, but if you can find something that's not quite offensive, keeps Jesus, keeps pride, you can gather a following. Now, Paul went on to make his motives clear in this. He is not in this to win friends and influence people. Let's go on and look at verse 10.

A revelation of Jesus Christ. Now, think about that. If that is true, if the gospel is a revelation of Jesus Christ, it's probably the most important piece of information that I have ever received in my lifetime. I should pay attention to it, like we're doing right now in this Bible study. All right, so in verse 13, Paul goes on to talk about his former life. And I just want to say this. I'm an advocate for not jumping to application before we really take a look at the scriptures. But since Paul runs his life and the gospel message parallel, I'm gonna do that quite a bit too here as we finish up this chapter. So verse 13,

And so Paul sets up his before picture in the before and after. This is what he was like before. Says he was extremely zealous. Was he zealous for God? No, he was zealous for the traditions of his fathers. He was zealous for his way, for his team, his way of doing life. It says he was persecuting God's church. And now he is sharing Christ with that same church. And he used words like violence and destruction. This is his before story. This is what he was like before Christ came into his life. Now, there are two things, he's gonna go on and talk about his after story, but there's two things I want to point out about Paul's before and after story that is true about each one of our before and after story. The first thing I want to point out is the fact that Jesus changes people. Jesus changes people. When Paul came to Christ, he had to repent of his former life. And he had to walk in a newness of life. He not only had to repent of the sins that he did, but he had to do something that I think is harder for you and me to do. And that is to believe that the blood of Christ is thick enough to actually cover those sins and offenses in order that we can get up and do what God has called us to do. That means that we can't keep going back over the same territory and over the same territory and saying, yes, but I did this, and yes, but I did this. Paul is mentioning it here so that we can see what he looked like before, not because he's still dealing with it. And we need to be able to do that. We need to repent of our sins once and believe that that forgiveness is available to us. And then we get up and we move on. Now, the second thing that I want to point out here is Jesus uses our past. Have you noticed in life that God very often will use the things of our past, people that we look at around us to build the calling that he's had for us, to build our ministry. And so we should ask ourselves, have I allowed God to use the things of my past for his glory, for his purpose as he wants to? All right, now with verse 15 comes the explanation of the change in Paul's life. And you have to know that he shared these things when he was with them in person. But have you ever had that experience where you're sharing something with someone and then you think I've told you this before, but they have that look in their eyes like it's the first time they ever heard it. But I'm really glad that for our sake that Paul did this and I'll share with you why in a minute. Let's read starting in verse 15.

Now next week as we go on, chapter two is gonna continue more of Paul's history. But what I wanna say about this is this is really beneficial to us. Luke did not give us all these insights in Acts and so this letter is super beneficial for us to get a greater understanding, fill in the blanks on how it was that the Lord led the apostle Paul once he got saved. But what I want us to end with here is a focus on verse 15 and 16. Go back to those verses. And it begins with those three words, I asked you to underline them in your journal, but, when, he. And I asked you to write the word God over he so that we can say, but, when, God. And that is always such a great marker in anyone's life. That was a transitional marker in Paul's life and it always is in our life as well. God crashed in on Paul's life right there and he was never the same. Everything before was a before and everything after was an after. Now, not many of our experiences were as dramatic as the Damascus road where we're blinded by a light and we hear God speak to us. But that doesn't mean that we were not born again and everything before was a before and after was an after. And that doesn't mean that God did not choose us to play a part in his unfolding story of redemption in the same way that the apostle Paul played a part as well. So I want us to focus on some of these phrases and ask the question, what does it mean to me? So there are four characteristics that we see Paul talk about in verses 15 and 16. We focused on them in our study guide. Paul said they were true of him and they are true of every single believer. Let's look at the first one. The phrase, set me apart before I was born. Paul was chosen and he knew he was chosen and we are chosen too. Look what Ephesians 1.4 says, he chose us in him before the foundation of the world. This is a truth that we need to get a grip on. This is a truth that sometimes stumbles us. Some of us have what I would call the younger sibling syndrome as it relates to God. And I'll tell you what I mean about that. I was the third born in my family when I was born. I had a sister that was nine and a sister that was six. So when I was 10 years old, I had a 16 year old sister in the house and the older one was already gone pursuing her journalism career. And my 16 year old sister was tall, skinny, she had long hair and she wore mini skirts and long beads because it was 1970. And so as a 10 year old, I just wanted to be her because as a 10 year old, I was not tall. I was not skinny. I didn't look good in mini skirts. And so I pretty much idolized her and I can remember her hanging out with a friend like in their bedroom or something like that. And the 10 year old me would just kind of present myself and come and hang out with them like that was normal and natural. And she was a very sweet and thoughtful person and she never really told me to leave. As I got older and thought about those times. I realized then, looking back on that, the tension in the room, like she didn't tell me to leave, but it took a little bit of maturity for me to understand they didn't really want me there. Some of us carry those kind of things forward to our relationship with the Lord. We think somehow we slipped in the back door. Somehow we heard about Christ, we asked forgiveness, we asked him into our life, but we genuinely feel like God's just stuck with us, like somehow we got in and he's too kind to send us away. And so there we are, it's kind of awkward, but that is not the truth. And you know what? If we're gonna work our way through Galatians, we have to look at this phrase, set me apart before I was born, and be able to say, God wanted me. God went to great lengths in order to draw me. He wanted me. I have a father who wants me. He chose me before I was born, before it was clear how I was gonna turn out. God chose Paul before it was clear how he was gonna turn out. And there was a time that he wasn't looking like he was turning out very good at all. He was murdering God's church. But still, Paul was able to say, he set me apart before I was born. And we have to be able to say, he set me apart before I was born. And then look at the next phrase. He called me by his grace. This is the third mention of grace in chapter one. He called Paul by his grace. His grace meant Paul was getting something he didn't deserve because in the moment he was a murderer, he had done nothing yet to earn God's favor. And yet, it was at that time that God called him, called him into his family. I want you to look at this verse, 2 Timothy 1.9, that explains it another way. It says, who saved us and called us to a holy calling, not because of our works, but because of his own purpose and grace, which he gave us in Christ Jesus before the ages began. This tells us that God called me first. God called me before I cleaned up because he called me for his own purpose and his own grace. It's great scripture. Okay, the third phrase that we're looking at, Paul says, he was pleased to reveal his son to me. Okay, now in some of the translations, it says like in the ESV, it says was pleased to reveal his son to me, which is good. The NIV says his son in me. Even the ESV has a little note that says in. So they're both accurate. God reveals his son to us. But the way I wanna handle this is reveal his son in me. In other words, reveal Jesus in us so that other people can see it. Let's look at 2 Corinthians 4.10. We're always carrying around in the body the death of Jesus so that the life of Jesus may also be manifested in our bodies. What a great passage for Passion Week. As we put our faith in Jesus, we carry around in us actually his death and resurrection so that other people, so that we can reveal Christ to other people. When God chooses me, calls me, and I respond to him, then he deposits the Holy Spirit in me, which has multiple purposes in my life. But one is so that people will see who Jesus is through me. I think that's what Paul was saying there. And then the last phrase that I wanna highlight, Paul goes on to say he did this in order that I might preach him among the Gentiles. Paul completely understood and embraced his purpose. His purpose was to preach among the Gentiles. He made it clear back in verse 10 that his motives were not to gather a crowd or to get paid or to please people. He was preaching because it was the work God gave him to do. That was the work God gave Paul to do, okay? I wanna interject a note right here from Ravi Zacharias. I listened to a message this week and I felt like it dovetailed so good. So I'm gonna quote from Ravi. He says, never underestimate the value of an individual. What is the work God would have you do as an individual? Don't underestimate what you can do and what your words and activity can accomplish. I thought that was so good because we look at this and we see Paul was just an individual. He was just one man. You are just one woman. What is the work that God has given you to do as a result of calling you and revealing himself to you? How would you complete this sentence? Let me read the sentence. God set me apart, called me by his grace, revealed his son in me in order that I might blank. How would you finish that sentence? Whoever you are right now is part of that mission, part of the words that you had put in that sentence. Are you a wife? It's part of your mission. Are you a mother? It's part of your mission. Are you part of a global pandemic? It's part of your mission. Do you have a before and after story? It's part of your mission. So like Paul, we need to own it. We need to review, even if it's just to ourselves, our before and after story. We need to remember Jesus changes people. We need to remember Jesus uses our past. We need to remember that we didn't sneak in the back door of God's family and nobody really wanted us. That's not how it works. We need to remember that God set us apart and God called us. God reached out to us first. God wanted us. We need to remember God is revealing himself to other people through Jesus in you. And we need to remember that God has given us a specific work to do. Now like I said, a lot of that was personal application. But what I also see in chapter one is that Paul was coming in with his personal story. And so I think it's a good opportunity for us to look at his story and then to say, what does it mean to me? And to go ahead and apply that. I just wanna finish with the last phrase, the last verse. Paul had mentioned that people were saying that the one who was persecuting is now preaching and it ends with saying, they glorified God because of me. Again, God was using his past. What was the result? They were glorifying God because of Paul. The one who was persecuting turned into the one who was preaching. So we'll be right back here next week with chapter two. And I hope that you'll be able to do your study guide, do your homework and write out the whole chapter. So let me just pray for you. Father, I just thank you for the insights we get from Paul and the things that we are able to process in our life. Lord, for the one who maybe had a few buttons hit with this and realizes that maybe they do have the younger sibling syndrome going on with you. I just pray that you would bestow enough grace right now to cover that, for them to repent of that and to move on and be productive and useful in the work that you have given her to do, Lord. Lord, for all of us, help us to be sharp, help us to live in the gospel of grace. Lord, strengthen us during these days when everybody has something to say about everything. Lord, that we would stay true to the gospel, the gospel that Jesus is enough and we need him. So I thank you for that, Lord. In Jesus' name, amen. Amen? Amen. What am I gonna do with this? They're just, they're like, I thought Jesus was John Turner or something? Pray for me, pray for me. Is there anything that I should be about another Bible? Is there anything that's not about God Jesus? Just ask God. Do I have to look at Bible, do we have to look at the Bible for grace? What's wrong with that, Lord?