Untitled Sermon (4)

Introd

Well this morning as we gather around the Word to Worship the Lord, my thoughts on these passages have really taken to the depths of where we left off last week.

I had a lot of things left to say concerning our introduction to Galatians that I really felt needed to be included.

Yet there was also a reality setting in my mind that we do have limitations on time.

So as we move through this text today, some more vital background information will be coming in but I really would like to get into the text a little more than last week.

So without giving much more of an introduction, please turn with me to and we will get right into the Word this morning.

Authorized Version Chapter 1

1 Paul, an apostle, (not of men, neither by man, but by Jesus Christ, and God the Father, who raised him from the dead;) 2 And all the brethren which are with me, unto the churches of Galatia: 3 Grace be to you and peace from God the Father, and from our Lord Jesus Christ, 4 Who gave himself for our sins, that he might deliver us from this present evil world, according to the will of God and our Father: 5 To whom be glory for ever and ever. Amen.

Pray

As we were going through some of our background last week, I found myself getting immersed into merely one side of what needed to be introduced and not getting into all that is truly here.

Going through this epistle what generally sticks out to most people is its nature of pointing to salvation by faith alone.

And not this Epistle doesn’t do that as it very clearly does.

But what is often overlooked is the manner in which God sets apart His chosen people for the tasks He has called them to.

Inside of Galatians, we get a full measure of recognizing Paul’s aim of cutting through the thickets of works tied to one’s salvation.

Yet the fact that from 1:4-2:21, Paul defends his own calling to those people who might bring about a charge against him.

Paul takes the time to walk through the providentially orchestrated events of his life.

All of these things point back to the clarity and the beauty of the divinely called Apostle bringing the true Gospel to the people of Galatia.

So as we begin today to dig through the depths of what is spoken of here my aim Will be for you to see Paul’s calling as the Apostle to the Gentiles.

The apostle Paul had this unique ability to begin a letter with much care and love for the people being addressed.

Through basically all of Paul’s letters we find an introduction that is intentional to his purpose in writing.

Take for example the introduction in Romans.

He begins by calling himself a slave of Christ Jesus and then moves on to lay out that beautiful promise and fulfillment of the Messiah.

Paul shows how the gospel of God had been promised beforehand through his prophets in the Scriptures.

And after Paul’s beautiful introduction, he moves right into a small section of praise to the Roman church.

In verse 8 of Romans Paul praises God that the faith that is within this congregation is proclaimed all over the world.

So Paul begins Romans by not praising the body but by giving thanks to God for the faith that is found within the Roman believers.

A faith that is very clearly well known.

He then goes on to speak highly of the work that God has done in the Roman Church.

He speaks of his longing to one day come and visit them and both give and receive a spiritual blessing.

This in a sense is the standard of Paul’s introduction in 12 of the 13 letters he wrote in the New Testament.

You could honestly scroll through basically all of them and each one presents praise to God or at the very least a commendation of their faith.

Yet in Galatians we wont see that in his introduction.

You see something has truly bombarded the Apostles heart in such a way that two words into the letter he has to get right into calling out the problem in full force.

And this is unlike the Apostle’s character.

Even in First Corinthians where there is sexual immorality in the Church and people doing things they should not be doing, Paul still does not begin the letter in such a way that he is in a sense exploding.

Paul was jumping at the bit if you will to address the issue at hand in the Galatian Church.

And do you know why?

Because there were people there professing to be believers and yet adding to the Gospel.

And not only were they adding to the Gospel, but they were desperate to remove the Apostolic Authority given to the Apostle Paul by the Lord Jesus Christ.

You see these people who crept in were some of the worst types that creep into the Church.

They would come in with this mentality of telling the Church that yes, they are saved by faith, but that it wasn’t by faith alone.

They wanted to add in the Levitical Law as well as circumcision.

And to top it off, they were claiming themselves to be men who were sent out.

Now, one might ask the question of how this issue could come about.

How they might have some that would creep in claiming to be leaders without catching what they were saying as being heresy.

I mean we are in a sense commanded to take what is taught and examine it in light of Scripture.

But what would the Galatians examine this teaching by?

Well let me ask this question, what Bible did the Galatians have in the first century?

If the same practice that we have today of examining what is said at the Pulpit with Scripture is true today, it was true then correct?

If the date on Galatians is as we said last week around 48 AD, and it’s considered by most scholars to be the second book of the New Testament.

With the first one being James.

What bible did the Galatian Church have?

I can promise you this, it wasn’t the New Testament.

What they most likely had was the Old Testament Scrolls with the Apostles Paul’s teaching after his mission work there in Galatia.

You see they didn’t have a Bible in their hands.

They had the teachings of the Apostolic fathers who were divinely set apart by the Lord Himself.

There’s also a good chance that unless they were borrowing the Old Testament Scrolls from the Synagogue, they didn’t even have an entire Old Testament.

They wouldn’t have been able to afford them.

Not unless they had someone who was a benefactor who was willing to foot the bill.

We see this in the very beginning of Luke when he addresses Theopholis.

That’s what Theopholis was.

A benefactor who put up the money that was needed to pay for writing materials.

Nobody in the first century had an entire Bible to themselves.

Not only did they not have an entire Bible in their hands, but it would have been useless to well over 85% of them.

They could speak in 4-5 languages but most everyone in the first century world was illiterate.

Most of them would have relied upon having something read to them.

And that’s what we find in Revelation we see a call for each of the Letters to be read among the Church’s.

This is also why we see these beautiful introductions from the Apostle Paul in his letters.

What would take place is that the letter would come to the Church and the letter would then be publicly read to the Church.

Therefore, this introduction was vital!

It would be one of the first things that the Galatians would hear from the person reading this letter.

The reader would get two words into the letter and they would hear the correction coming from the Apostle Paul.

Not only would they hear it but they would know that this situation was no small matter.

The issues arising there were beyond being a minor issue.

They had allowed these false teachers to come in and to add things to the Gospel which made it not a Gospel of good news but a message without hope.

A message with no real ability to bring peace into the converted man’s soul because it required of him an external action.

Instead of salvation producing the work they had changed it into work producing salvation.

And they did so by bringing accusations against Paul’s Apostolic Authority.

These men crept into the Church and began to discount all that Paul had done in Galatia.

They began to cut his authority down which in turn meant that his teaching was no longer valid in the Church’s eyes.

And this is where the church not having a Bible comes in.

They had no real great way of checking the things being told to them.

So in the Church’s eyes when they stepped in claiming to have authority that discounts Paul’s Apostolic Calling, there’s nothing to check it against.

Nothing at all.

With the exception of Paul’s teaching’s while he was there in Galatia.

That is why Paul gets only two Greek words into his introduction.

Paulus Apostolos.

And from that point on, Paul begins to push back against everything that was being said against him.

He says “not from men, nor through man, but through Jesus Christ, and God the Father, who raised Him from among the dead.

Now would you pay real close attention here.

And this is vital for us to catch onto, especially for us Americans.

Please don’t take this as a knock against us but we have this real issue in the core of our hearts as westerners.

We profess to serve a Sovereign King and then we discount that by taking credit.

We have generations of men who are going into the ministry because they think it’ll make for a nice and cushy job.

In our culture, we have people striving after raising themselves up into places that they have not been called to be.

People who would undertake a form of authority in which God has not called them.

They think that what they need to do is go into a Church, pastor it for a little while and then when the offer to pastor a larger Church comes in they run off after that.

And sadly they’ll only feel led to go when they see the dollar amount on the Church offers.

These men are not called of God to go into the ministry.

They have set themselves apart.

They rubbed shoulders with the right men and made good impressions and those men set them up in leadership.

That is not a setting apart by God.

That is a setting apart from man.

Yet they give God the credit.

And although in a sense God is the Sovereign over all that ever comes to pass, them setting themselves up is not a blessing to the ministry.

Instead it’s a shortfall in the church.

These things are not of God.

You know when it’s of the Lord as you’ll see the evidence of His work in it.

You’ll go to places you would have never dreamed of going.

You’ll do things you would have never done before.

For the sole purpose of serving your King!

The man divinely set apart for the Gospel will serve the Lord wherever He calls him.

And although he may kick and grumble occasionally, the man wouldn’t change a thing about what God has called him into.

Because he knows that he is faithfully serving His King.

And that’s right where we find Paul.

Paul is letting the Galatian Church know that his calling was not something set up by men.

He was set apart before the foundations of the world to be the Apostle to the Gentiles.

If you go back to Acts and find the Apostle Paul’s conversion story and find just what type of man he was, he was a tyrant.

One who had hit the highlights of character within Judaism.

So much so that he was persecuting Christians and even was at the very least an accomplice to the death of Stephen.

Paul’s calling was not something where he found himself serving in the Church by attrition and merely rose to the top as an eloquent speaker.

In several places between the Corinthian Letters Paul mentions that it is not with eloquent speech that he speaks but with the truthfulness of the Gospel.

Paul’s calling had nothing to do with the works of men but had everything to do with the one who called him.

His calling did not originate with men, nor was it mediated by human agency.

It was all a Sovereign work by Christ Jesus and God the Father who raised Him from the dead.

And not matter where he was serving the Lord from, he knew that his calling was sure.

He knew that while he was in prison, God had set him apart.

He knew that while he was shipwrecked and looking at what surely felt like a horrendous situation, God had set him apart.

He knew that when his time to face Roman persecution came, God had set him apart.

There was no time that would come where he would sit aside and question the calling that God had given him.

It was a Sovereign work of the Lord and regardless of what trial may come his way, Paul was ready to serve him faithfully.

And that includes standing up in the face of opposition in the very Church that helped to start on his missionary journeys.

A divine calling is not something that can be negated or restrained by man.

And this gave great courage to Paul.

That’s why in basically all of his letters he stood fast on that title of being called an Apostle.

He knew that his calling was from the Lord.

Now I want you notice something with me here for a minute.

See how Paul completely separated Jesus from the category of men?

Paul didn’t do this as a way of denying Jesus’ humanity.

Instead it was done as a way of showing that there was more to the historical Christ than what the Galatians were seeing.

In this context, Paul’s point was to show Christ as being much more than a mere man.

He was pointing to His divinity.

Paul was showing that Jesus was completely different from the mere men that the Galatians might think of.

Jesus wasn’t merely a good man in the flesh.

He wasn’t merely a good prophet.

He was God the Son indwelt in human flesh.

Born of a virgin by immaculate conception and without spot or blemish in relation to his Adamic nature.

This is what made the man Christ Jesus so unique from the men Paul referenced at the very onset.

And this is why Paul divides them up.

It was his way of clarifying that this was no mere man.

This was the God-Man.

This was a very real man who lived among men here on earth.

A divine man who took upon Himself what was owed to God on our behalf.

Who not only suffered a physically cruel death but for the sake of all who belong to Him, offered Himself up freely to take the full wrath of almighty God.

And three days later was raised to life from the grave by God and who is now seated in the heavens with the Father.

Now I said that that was a side note, but in reality in brings us to our next place in the text.

Why was it so important for Paul to emphasize Jesus’ resurrection?

I mean Paul was clearly addressing a group of people whom he had visited with.

A group of people whom he had spent countless hours with no doubt sharing with them the good news of the Gospel which entails the resurrection.

To answer that question, we need to ask another.

What in the first century did it mean to be an Apostle?

From the Greek it means that the person is the sent out one.

Yet that doesn’t really answer the question fully.

Many followers were sent out.

What does come to light is that in order to be an Apostle according to Peter, one must have seen and been sent out by the sender.

We see this qualification coming to light in when the group of the 11 Apostles set out to choose Judas Iscariots replacement.

And in the eyes of the Judiazers who had crept into the Church, this was an issue.

There was no way that Paul had seen the Lord Jesus Christ.

In a sense, they might have reason to ask questions but that didn’t mean that Paul wasn’t an Apostle.

It merely meant that they should validate his claim.

It merely meant that there were standards about the qualifications of an Apostle.

Now should this be our standard for Apostleship, this leaves no room for those who claim to be Apostles today.

There can be men sent out in the form of the Church sending them out but they cannot be Apostles in the sense that Paul and the rest were counted.

Yet today as we sit here, there are men and women out there who cling onto a claim of apostleship.

People who claim the title of Apostle and yet don’t meet the standards set by Peter.

And I’m not sure about your thoughts but God has already spoken through His Word and we have that in our hands.

So as far as I can find in Scripture, there are no new Apostles today.

There are Elders given different callings within the Body of the Church.

There are missionaries sent by God to far away lands.

Those people are sent and raised up in a sense by God but they also come through men.

They come through the Church.

When we as a Church send a missionary out, we don’t do so without setting our stamp of approval upon their lives.

And this isn’t without warrant.

We’re commanded to examine those who have been raised up within the body.

Yet this is completely contrary to the Apostle Paul and his calling as an Apostle.

He has a unique calling if you will.

Jesus had been crucified many years prior to Paul’s redemption so there was no way that Paul had seen him then.

Instead what we find in is the conversion story of Paul where he saw the risen Christ.

And from that moment on, God moved upon Paul’s life in a spectacular way.

He didn’t immediately go to visit with anyone.

Instead Paul went off for a time where he came to truly understand the Lord and the promises foretold in the Old Covenant.

But once again, Paul’s Apostolic calling was unique.

And it was wholly based upon God setting His stamp of approval upon Paul.

And not that this doesn’t still take place because it is the Lord that calls His people into the work of ministry.

This just reveals to us that this calling is a Sovereign calling.

Not one made with human hands.

Not one concocted in our own minds or that we’re pressured into because it’s what all the men do.

Instead it’s because the risen Lord Jesus Christ calls to the depths of the heart and causes His chosen instruments to serve Him.

To serve Him faithfully and boldly.

In the face of whatever opposition may come about, God’s people are to stand firm upon his Word and His truth.

This is even more true for those whom God has set apart for the work of ministry.

There is a sense in which we are all called to stand firm upon the Word but it is even more so for Elders.

We don’t merely serve for the sake of serving you as the body, we are serving Christ!

And by serving Christ, we have the blessed opportunity to walk hand in hand with Jesus’ bride through the lowest of lows to the highest of high’s.

This is the call of those who serve Christ the King.

We are to embody that calling in such a way that no matter the issue or the challenge, we stand firm upon a right doctrine in the truth and the Love of the Lord Jesus Christ.

We do not stand for men nor through men, but through Jesus Christ and God the Father, who raised Him from the dead!

(Pray)

Would you pray with me?

Let us leave here this day reflecting upon the Word of the Lord until we come back tonight at 6:30.