Galatians 1:11-24

Introduction

Imagine that you are living back in the Medieval Time Period

-Imagine that you are working for the King who reigns over the towns in the surrounding region as one of his heralds

-Your job is to go to various towns, to go into the public square, and to loudly proclaim “hear ye, hear ye . . . thus says the king!

-You are not authorized to change or tweak the message in any way

-Your job is to deliver the message just as you have been given it

-One day, the king sends you on a very important mission

-You are to go to a nearby town and a vital message

-The town has become unsubmissive to the king, ever since some troublemakers have entered the town

-They have deceived many of the towns people into rebelling against the king

-What raises the stakes for you even more is that this is your hometown, the place where you were born and raised

-You go, and summon the people to the townsquare and loudly proclaim the message of the king

-However, once you are finished, some of the subverters begin to try to convince the people that they needn’t listen to your message

-they claim that you must have mixed up the message, or that you made it up, or that you were told it by some high ranking court official, but not the king himself

-or they claim that you’re not a real herald, but just a wanna-be

-You realize the precarious position your hometown is in, and so you quickly begin to come up with ways that you can convince the townspeople that you do indeed work directly for the king, and that your message is directly from him

This is exactly the position that Paul finds himself in when he writes the book of Galatians

-I would propose that few people in world are more hated and maligned than the Apostle Paul

Those who hold to liberal theology which denies the Authority and Innerancy of Scripture and believe that Jesus just came to teach us how to be good certainly hate Paul

-Thomas Jefferson, one of our founding fathers and the 3rd president of the US claimed that Paul was “the first corruptor of the doctrines of Jesus.”

Muslims certainly hate Paul

-Muslims believe that Jesus was simply a prophet, but never claimed to be God

Ibn Taymīyya (a Muslim from the 1300s) called Paul “a Jew who caused corruption in the religion of the Christians”

Orthodox Jews hate Paul

-I found a blogpost written not that long ago by an Orthodox Jew who used to claim to be a Christian

He wrote:

“One of the many things which helped me come to repentance from idolatry, to leave Christianity and return to the faith of my fathers was my realization that the reason Christianity has been so anti-Torah and anti-Judaism . . . [is] because of Paul’s teachings and views, which make up almost a half of the New Testament. Few Christians realize that most of the Christian theology can be directly attributed to Paul and not to Jesus, a man Paul never knew in real life, whose teachings he is not interested in quoting and whose life and ministry, except for his birth, last supper, and death, he mostly ignores.”

There has been a long line of Paul discreditors, which began long before music artists and celebrities found it cool to talk about “haters”

-This line of attempts to discredit Paul go all the way back to the first century, where during Paul’s lifetime, people viciously attacked Paul as a “wanna-be” Apostle, a subverter of the Scriptures, and an enabler of licentiousness through His Gospel of Grace

-And this is where Paul finds himself in his relationship with the Galatian church

Thesis: The Gospel didn’t come from man. It came from Christ Himself (vs. 11-12)

-It seems that false teachers have come in, known as the Judaizers

-And they are teaching that yes, you must believe in Jesus for salvation

-But you must also get circumcised and keep the Mosaic Law in order to be right with God

-After all, the Mosaic Law was given by God Himself!

-Surely, God would want us to keep obeying it on top of trusting in Jesus

-And it seems that they are discrediting Paul and His Gospel of salvation by grace through faith

-Perhaps their argument went something like this:

“Sure, Paul is a nice guy and all! But he’s gone a little too far in this whole gospel by grace thing. God still wants us to keep the Mosaic Law. He’s got his doctrine a little twisted. He’s not as authoritative and important as the leaders in Jerusalem like Peter and James. Perhaps he’s just got things a little twisted up. After all, he didn’t really spend time with Jesus like they did.”

And so Paul has to defend his Apostleship, and more importantly, the supernatural origins of his Gospel

Now, I want you all to understand that the importance of this text extends just beyond us being assured through the Scriptures that Paul wasn’t a fraud or a second-rate Apostle

-That is important for us to understand and be assured of

-This is why Paul claims here:

“I didn’t get this from man! I didn’t craft this myself. I wasn’t taught it by others. I got it from Jesus Christ Himself.”

-That is important for us to understand and be assured of

-But this text lands a closer to home for all of us

-Because at the heart of all of this, it’s not really Paul that is being attacked . . . it’s the Gospel that Paul preaches

-We can at times live our lives as if the Gospel is not all that important or life-changing

-Almost as if it’s a good piece of advice that someone thought up

-We can interact with friends, family members, or coworkers who are unsaved, and fail to share the Gospel with them

-We can think to ourselves, “they seem fine! I don’t want to offend them.”

-And what that actually is is a subtle attack on the Gospel,

Do you really believe that the Gospel is from God Himself?

-Do you really believe that every single person needs it?

Or do you believe that:

-It’s not that life-changing

-Not everyone needs it

-It doesn’t have the power to change the really hard people

Brothers and sisters, we need to be reminded that we can never overvalue the Gospel

-We can never place to high an emphasis on it or its divine origins

-And that’s why any attack on Paul, today or 2,000 years ago is not merely an attack on Paul . . . it’s an attack on the Gospel of grace that Paul preaches and the power of the gospel

And this is exactly why Paul so staunchly defends the fact that his Gospel did not come from man, but from Christ Himself

-Paul wants the Galatians to understand that the Gospel he preaches is not according to man

-No human, including Paul, thought up the Gospel

-Furthermore, Paul didn’t receive it from man, nor was he taught it

-Paul didn’t get it from any pastor, any teacher, or any Apostle

-Paul didn’t derive it from any Greek philosopher like Plato or Aristotle

-Paul didn’t learn it from any of the Jewish Rabbinic traditions

No, Paul’s Gospel came through a direct revelation of Jesus Christ

-That means that Jesus spoke directly to Paul and gave Him the Gospel

-And we’ll look at that a little more in detail in just a few moments

So, this is Paul’s thesis statement for the next 2 chapters (vs. 11-12)

-Paul’s overarching idea from this point until the end of chapter 2 is that “My Gospel has a divine origin, not a human origin.”

So now, Paul has to support that thesis

-How is he going to argue for that claim?

Tonight, we’re going to look at Paul’s first argument to defend himself and his Gospel, and this is the message for us this evening

Proposition: Because God supernaturally changes people through the Gospel, you must hold fast to it (vs. 13-17).

1. We are hopelessly lost in our sin apart from Gospel (vs. 13-14)

Vs. 13 — Paul makes the point that he used to be similar to these false teachers that had come to the Galatian church!

-These false teachers are all about circumcision and keeping the Law, and guess what? Paul was too!

-So much so, that he even was persecuting the church of God and trying to destroy it!

-I mean, this guy really hated Christianity and hated the church

Acts 8:3 NKJV

As for Saul, he made havoc of the church, entering every house, and dragging off men and women, committing them to prison.

-Paul was on the front line, throwing men and women into prison for being Christians

Acts 9:1 (NKJV)

Then Saul, still breathing threats and murder against the disciples of the Lord

It’s not like Paul grew up in a Christian home, born and raised going to Sunday school and VBS

-Paul hated Christianity and the Gospel of grace!

Vs. 14 — Paul says that he was advancing in Judaism beyond his own contemporaries

-Paul was a rising star in Judaism

-He was one of the brightest and finest and Jewish Seminary in Jerusalem

-Notice that Paul was known for his zealousness for the traditions of his fathers

-He was known for being as radical and passionate as they come!

-This wasn’t some middle of the pack, apathetic Jewish student

“the traditions of my fathers” would refer to the Pharisaism that he been taught

-This would have included many of the strict rules and regulations outside of the Scriptures that the Pharisees kept in order to be extra careful not to break the Mosaic Law

-Now, when Paul talks about His zeal, it’s possible that he may have had Phinehas as his hero in the faith

-In the OT, when Israel was in the wilderness under Moses, the Israelites began to commit sexual immorality with Moabites

-And at the climax of this, an Israelite man actually brought a Moabite woman into the camp and into his tent to have sexual relations with her

-Phinehas, Aaron’s grandson, upon seeing this, grabbed a spear and charged after the man and the woman into the tent and killed them both simultaneously

Numbers 25:10–13 NKJV

Then the Lord spoke to Moses, saying: “Phinehas the son of Eleazar, the son of Aaron the priest, has turned back My wrath from the children of Israel, because he was zealous with My zeal among them, so that I did not consume the children of Israel in My zeal. Therefore say, ‘Behold, I give to him My covenant of peace; and it shall be to him and his descendants after him a covenant of an everlasting priesthood, because he was zealous for his God, and made atonement for the children of Israel.’ ”

This was what Paul was like! This is what Paul aspired to!

-As a Jew, he saw himself in the line of Phinehas, needing to zealously defend the faith that was handed down to him

-And he was willing to take violent action, just like Phinehas, in order to protect the honor and glory of God!

-And you can almost imagine Paul, rolling out of bed and going to the mirror to brush his teeth (so to speak) and preparing for another day of persecuting the church, and on the mirror is a picture of Phinehas with a spear, and Numbers 11:11 written out beside it, “because he was zealous with my zeal among them.”

And brothers and sisters, just as a quick aside, this is important for us to consider:

-Oftentimes we read the conversion of Paul through the lens of Martin Luther

-Martin Luther lived in years with terrible guilt over his sin, trying harder and harder to appease God and earn God’s favor

-That is not how the Scriptures present Paul

-That’s not how Paul presented himself

-Paul seems to have been content in Judaism! There’s no hint that he was wracked by guilt

-He was really good at being a Pharisee!

-He was really good at persecuting the church!

-He was zealously defending the traditions that had been handed down to him

-We need to remember that there are many people out there who are perfectly content in their sin

-They enjoy the way they’re living

I went to Zambia on a mission trip, and in Zambia, the roads are just horrendous . . .

What do you mean? These roads look fine to me! I don’t need something better

**roads in Zambia illustration

**people don’t know that they need Christ

2. We need God to rescue us from our lost condition (vs. 15-16)

Galatians 1:15–16 (NKJV)

But when it pleased God, who separated me from my mother’s womb and called me through His grace, to reveal His Son in me, that I might preach Him among the Gentiles,

Paul was advancing in Judaism, zealously defending the traditions, being very successful in his efforts and growing in his influence

-And yet, all of that was changed one day on the Road to Damascus

-We read this on Sunday, but remember that Paul obtained permission to go down to Damascus to continue his persecution of the church

-But on the way, The Risen Christ Himself appeared to Paul and confronted him that he was fighting against Christ Himself

-A few days later, Ananias gave a message from Jesus to Paul that he would receive his sight and receive the Holy Spirit

And in the matter of a short time, Paul goes from being a Hebrew of Hebrews, one who promotes the strict keeping of the Mosaic Law, a persecutor of the church, to being a preacher of the Gospel of Grace in Jesus Christ

How do you explain that?

What happened?

Paul says that it was God’s sovereign election of Him . . . that’s what happened

“it please God, who separated me from my mother’s womb and called me through His grace”

Paul here is referencing the doctrine of election

-What is the doctrine of election?

In an adaptation of the Baptist Confessions of Faith, the doctrine is stated like this:

Election is God’s gracious choice of certain individuals unto eternal life in consequence of which they are called, justified, sanctified and glorified.

Now, brothers and sisters, we must not be scared of this kind of language

-We must not buck against the doctrine of election, first of all because it is an inescapably biblical doctrine

Ephesians 1:4–5 NKJV

just as He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and without blame before Him in love, having predestined us to adoption as sons by Jesus Christ to Himself, according to the good pleasure of His will,

Acts 13:48 NKJV

Now when the Gentiles heard this, they were glad and glorified the word of the Lord. And as many as had been appointed to eternal life believed.

2 Thessalonians 2:13 NKJV

But we are bound to give thanks to God always for you, brethren beloved by the Lord, because God from the beginning chose you for salvation through sanctification by the Spirit and belief in the truth,

Now, many people get scared of this doctrine because it seems to do harm to the idea of human choice and free will

-But this simply isn’t the case

-Orthodox Christians down through the centuries, no matter how much they have emphasized God’s sovereignty, have also understood that the Bible calls people to exercise their will and repent and believe the Gospel

How does that work? We’re not told exactly told, but we know that the Bible teaches that God sovereignly elects some to salvation, and we’re also told that the Gospel call to repent and believe is universal and must be obeyed

-And neither of those ideas undercuts the other

Furthermore, all of you here instinctually believe the doctrine of election to one degree or another

-You might ask, “how do you know that?”

Well, if I were to ask any person in here, “why is it that you are saved and your boss or friend or relative isn’t? Is it because you’re smarter than them? Or you’re a better person than them? Or you were more deserving?”

-Each of you would say, “absolutely not!”

“Well why are you saved and they’re not?”

-You’d probably answer something like, “It’s just the grace of God. It has nothing to do with me, but everything to do with Him!”

And you’d be entirely right! At it’s core, the doctrine of election acknowledges that in the deep mysteries of God, salvation is only by His grace, not by me being better, or smarter, or more deserving.

-Does that undercut the importance of witnessing or preaching the Gospel? No

-Does that undercut the need for people to repent and believe? No

Notice there are three things that happen in Paul’s conversion:

God separates Paul and calls Him

-I think these two things are referring to the same concept

-God calls Paul for salvation and brings that calling to pass

2. God reveals His Son in Paul

-This refers to God changing Paul from the inside out

-Jesus Christ, at conversion, comes in and resides in the believer

Then,

3. God commissions Paul

-God chose Paul, not just for salvation, but for special commissioning as an Apostle to the Gentiles

This is what Jesus tells Ananias in Acts 9:15

Acts 9:15 NKJV

But the Lord said to him, “Go, for he is a chosen vessel of Mine to bear My name before Gentiles, kings, and the children of Israel.

Paul, in these verses is borrowing language from Jeremiah in Jeremiah 1:5

Jeremiah 1:5 NKJV

“Before I formed you in the womb I knew you; Before you were born I sanctified you; I ordained you a prophet to the nations.”

Paul views himself in the line of prophets ordained by God for special use and service, and his specific purpose was going to be to proclaim the Gospel among the Gentiles

Now, let’s just stop there and put this all together and apply it and we’ll be done

Paul’s big idea he’s defending is that his gospel didn’t come from man, but from Christ Himself

-And the first way he supports that is by saying: “look at my life! How on earth could I make all this up?? WHY on earth would I make all this up??”

“I was a rising star in Judaism! I was crushing it! I was surpassing all my colleagues. You false teachers are all about getting circumcised and keeping the Law? So was I!! So much so that throwing Christians in prison for subverting the Law and the traditions of the Pharisees! But God called me! He chose me! I wasn’t looking for Him, He looked for me and found me and changed me forever! He set me apart for this by His grace and gave me the Gospel by Revelation! You think I made all this up? Look at my life and how it’s changed! You think I just woke up one day and wanted to go from prominence to the poorhouse?

-from honored to hated?

-from persecuted to persecutor?”

Application

Brothers and sisters, only the Gospel has the power to transform a life from the inside out like this

-Paul is saying, “you think I got the Gospel from man? Look at how it’s changed my life! You think this was man-made?”

And brothers and sisters, the Gospel’s life changing points to the fact that it is not man-made

-The Gospel is unlike anything else in human history

-The Gospel is the one thing in human history that works for every single person

-Occasionally, you hear someone say something like, “I’ve tried Christianity, or the Gospel, or Jesus before . . . it’s just not for me.”

-But brothers and sisters, this could not possibly be further from the truth

-That concept may be true of relationship advice, self-help tips, treatments for cancer, financial strategies, sports advice, or recommendations for movies

-All of those things could be great or enjoyable for one person and not for another

-After all, every person is unique

-The surgery that helped you with your back pain may not work for me

-Or that piece of relationship advice that saved your marriage may not help your neighbor’s marriage

-But where we’re all the same is that each and every person has a problem

-And that problem is that they are alienated from God, blinded by the deception of sin

-That problem will be a permanent problem if they do not repent

-They will be separated from the love of God forever in a place called hell

-And the solution to this problem is not something that any pastor, motivational speaker, psychologist, scientist, or inventor thought-up

-The solution is a God-given one is the only hope for every single person in the entire world

-It is the Gospel of Jesus Christ

-That Christ came from heaven to take on human flesh

-That He died for your sin and for our sin, bearing the punishment of God Himself

-That He was buried

-And that He rose again

-And that every single person is commanded to repent and believe the Gospel

Do you believe that?

-Do you believe that every single person needs the Gospel?

-Does that reflect in your witnessing? in your praying

-perhaps you have a neighbor or a friend at work who you see regularly

-And they seem like they’re happy and content in life

-And maybe you’re tempted to think to yourself: “they seem like they’re doing fine in life . . . I don’t need to try to force a the Gospel on them.”

-And maybe we wouldn’t say it, but we think and act as if they don’t really need the Gospel

Do you believe that the Gospel can and will change every person who believes it?

-Perhaps you’re here and you’ve got a relative or friend who seems unchangeable

-It seems like they would never in a million years accept Christ

-And you almost think to yourself “why bother? They’re not going to get saved anyway.”

-Brothers and sisters, every single person needs the Gospel, no matter how content and happy they may seem

-And they Gospel can and will change anyone who believes it

-The Gospel is the most powerful thing in the world

-Do you love the Gospel?

-Do you treasure it?

-Do you defend it?

-Do you live out the implications of it?

**Tim Keller illustration about the woman who visited her church because her boss took the fall for her**