Sermon Tone Analysis

By Pastor Glenn Pease

Charles Dickens tells of how men react to bad news.

Martin Chuzzlewit learns that the 50 acre tract in America in which he had invested all his savings turns out to be a hideous swamp.

He sinks into a fever because of his sorrow, but Mark Topley who savings were also sunk in that same swamp refuses to be overpowered by calamity.

He gives himself a blow on the chest and says to himself, "Things is looking as bad as they can look, young man.

You'll not have such another opportunity for showing your jolly disposition, my fine fellow, as long as you live.

And, therefore, now is the time to come out strong, as never!"

This is the very kind of positive thinking that must have gone through Paul's mind when he heard that his investment in the Galatian church was threatened.

He had preached his heart out to these people, and now they were ready to forsake their freedom in Christ and enter into the bondage of the law.

Paul could have thrown his hands up in despair and given up on the Galatians.

He could have layed down and died of grief at his loss and the terrible fickleness of human nature, but instead he said, now is the time to be strong.

If ever I spoke with authority to defeat the forces of evil, it must be now or never.

Paul did not greet bad news with an attitude of defeat, but with an attitude of determination to never admit defeat.

This letter was his weapon, and it has been the primary tool for many a victory since.

Paul must have said I'll never have a greater opportunity to defend the Gospel of grace than this, and so I must come out strong now or never!

The first thing Paul does in this letter is to defend his authority as an Apostle.

Paul usually just states the fact of his authority, but here he is fighting those who reject his authority, and so we see the letter is different right from the start.

We usually skip through Paul's introductions with little attention.

Quite often the preface or the introduction is skipped to get right to the body of a book.

I use to do it all the time until I realized that the key for a full appreciation of the book is often found in the introduction.

Information on the author and his or her background, and what they had in mind in writing the book, can make the book so much more meaningful.

The Bible is often boring to people because its historical setting is not grasped.

We cannot see how it relates to our lives because we have not taken the time to understand its original setting and the purpose for which is was written.

We must be able to enter into the emotions of Paul's letter and understand what he is doing if we are to appreciate its relevance for today.

The best of Bible students have their dry days, however.

John Bunyan wrote in his Grace Abounding, "I have sometimes seen more in a line of the Bible then I could well tell how to stand under, and yet at another time the whole Bible has been to me as dry as a stick; or rather my heart has been so dead and dry unto it that I could not conceive the least dram of refreshment, though I looked it all over."

We cannot escape the dry spells of life, but these are of little consequence in our lives if we develop the habit of finding refreshment at the fountain of the Word regularly.

One of the ways to add value to Bible study is to get all the information you can on the author and his purpose.

We want to do just that with this letter to Galatians.

The more we can understand Paul's feelings and intentions the more meaningful this letter will be.

Let's begin with the name Paul.

We all know that Paul's name is Saul in the book of Acts when he first appears on the stage of biblical history.

After his conversion and his appointment as God's ambassador to the Gentiles he is called Paul.

Many have assumed that his name was changed, but the likelihood is that he had both names from birth.

This is the conviction of men like J. Gresham Machen and John Brown, who are great scholars on the life of Paul.

Their reasoning makes sense.

As a Pharisee it was natural for Paul to go by the name of Saul.

This was his Jewish name, but when he became Apostle to the Gentiles it was equally natural for him to go by his Roman name of Paul.

He was a Roman citizen by birth, and so it is likely that he was given this Roman name at birth.

Paul means little or small, and is a name more likely to be given to a little baby than one given to a grown man at the time of his conversion.

God chose this man even before his birth to accomplish the great task of getting the Gospel to the Gentiles, and one of the ways of preparing him was to see that he was born in Tarsus, a great Gentile center, where he would be exposed to the very people and culture he would spend his life reaching.

He had his Roman citizenship at birth, and likely also his Gentile name of Paul.

AN APOSTLE.

An Apostle is one sent with the authority with the one who sends.

There are other words for send in the New Testament, but this word for Apostle stresses that the one sent has the authority of the one who is sending, and is also fully responsible to the sender.

In Heb.

3:1 Jesus is called the Apostle and High Priest of our confession.

He spoke to us more directly from God than did Moses, and he speaks directly to God on our behalf.

The term Apostle carries in it the idea of highest authority.

Communication with an Apostle is dealing as direct as possible, unless it be face to face.

Jesus bestowed the highest dignity on his Apostles when He said in John 17:18, "As the Father has sent me into the world, so send I you."

An Apostle is one who speaks for Christ directly, and with His approval and authority.

Paul says his authority is not for men.

He does not waste any time before he gets to the real issues.

He begins to defend his authority immediately.

He says right off that he is not an Apostle because of human agency, but he has his authority directly from God.

You don't go around defending your credentials like this unless someone is attacking them.

Paul is making clear he is equal with the twelve Apostles in authority.

It is obvious that the Judaisers have tried to undermine Paul's ministry by attacking his authority.

They apparently accused him of being a maverick who has gone off on a tangent and whose doctrines threaten to overthrow the foundations of true religion, by which they meant the Old Testament laws.

They could say that Paul was not chosen by Christ as were the other Apostles.

They said he received his authority from men.

These were very serious charges, and you can see how easy it would have been to get Gentiles to question Paul's authority.

Who was he to tell them what God required when others were telling them the law of Moses was their foundation?

Paul knows that the cause of Christian liberty in Christ depends upon the Galatians respect for his authority.

If they are not convinced that he bears the authority of an ambassador sent directly by God, they will follow those authorities who are coaxing them to submit to the law of Moses.

The first major issue of this letter, therefore, is the issue of authority.

Either the Galatians are obligated to obey the revelation that God gave to Moses, or God has given a new revelation of liberty in Christ through the Apostle Paul.

Which they follow depends upon their being convinced that Paul is truly God's spokesman, and not just the agent of men who are sponsoring a new approach to religion.

There is probably no issue that is more relevant to every age than the issue of authority.

Everything we are and believe is based on some authority.

The authorities we accept determine what we become.

If we accept the authority of the book of Mormon, we will be Mormons.

If we yield to the authority of the Koran, we will be Mohammedan.

If we buy into the views of Jehovah Witnesses, we will become one.

We are creatures of authority.

We do not swallow color liquid by the tablespoon because we have studied its nature.

We take it on the authority of others who say it will help a problem.

Because this is so, it is very important to determine the validity of any authority.

We cannot afford to just accept any authority.

We have an obligation to investigate and prove the worth of any authority.

Paul makes this clear by the very fact of the existence of this letter.

It is in large measure a defense of his authority.

He did not just say he was an authority.

He had to prove it and demonstrate the validity of his claim to be a spokesman for God.

We take Paul's authority for granted, but the early church did not.

They had no New Testament to go by.

They had only the Old Testament and Paul was challenging the authority of its laws.

That is why he had to show to the Galatians how God worked in his life, and how the truth of the Gospel makes the law obsolete.

He had to show by sound argument and historical facts that it was so.

He had to show them how his battle for the truth of Christian liberty even won out over the Apostle Peter.

This was the kind of evidence that was necessary to convince them that his authority was equal to the Twelve.

Paul is not being proud in this letter when he speaks of the other Apostles as adding nothing to him.

If you don't know the great issue behind this letter, you might think that Paul had little respect for the Twelve when he visited them in Jerusalem.

In chapter 2 Paul refers to those of repute and in verse 6 says, "What they were makes no difference to me, God shows no partiality."

You can only grasp what Paul is doing here when you know that he is defending his authority as an Apostle equal to the other Apostles.

God chose him for an unique ministry to the Gentiles just as He chose Peter for a ministry to the Jews.

Paul is not being disrespectful, but he is trying to show that the Judaisers are wrong when they deny his authority, and say it is of man.

He proves it is of God by showing that the other Apostles had to acknowledge his authority.

All through history the primary battle has been the one over authority.