Sermon Tone Analysis

Bookmarks & Needs:

B:

Housekeeping Stuff & Announcements:

Welcome guests to the family gathering, introduce yourself.

Thank the band and Kyleigh.

Invite guests to parlor after service.

Silver Seekers is this coming Tuesday morning at 10:00 in Miller Hall.

See the Page for more information.

CareNet’s Annual Walk for Life is going to be held on August 24.

See the Page for more information.

This is Gary and Stacy Lowe’s last Sunday with us, as they are moving to Texas this week.

I’ve so appreciated their ministry, and especially how Gary has allowed me to lean on him during Sunday nights.

Keep them in your prayers as they embark on this next chapter of their life.

Opening

Opening

We are well into our series on Galatians, which we are calling “Dear Church”.

We’ve looked at chapter 1, and today we will move on to the first part of chapter 2. Let’s stand in honor of the Word of God as we read through verses 1-10 of Galatians chapter 2:

Pray, and pray for the victims and families of both mass shootings (El Paso and Dayton) yesterday.

This passage contains several things that we need to look at and address, so what we are going to do this morning is study through it, and then make application to us at the end.

You may recall from a couple of weeks back, we looked at the context of this letter to the churches of Galatia.

I argued that Paul was writing this letter to the churches that he and Barnabas had established on their first missionary journey in the Roman province of Galatia: the churches in Pisidian Antioch, Iconium, Lystra, and Derbe.

This letter is the only one of Paul’s letters written to the churches in a region, rather than a city or an individual person.

Paul must have been writing it very soon after his missionary journey through Galatia.

Paul had gone up

Remember from our study two weeks ago that the reason that Paul is writing this letter is because of what I called “The Galatian Situation”: some people had come in, claiming to be apostles from Jerusalem, and had begun to preach a “different gospel” that was no gospel at all.

In fact, they were preaching that in order to truly be saved, the Gentile believers had to become cultural Jews by following the Law of Moses.

These “false apostles” had also called into question Paul’s calling as a true Apostle of the Lord Jesus Christ.

They had contested his presentation of the Gospel, and Paul shared his conversion story and early ministry testimony as a part of his defense of his position as Apostle (big A apostle: a select group of people who had personally seen and been called by the Lord Jesus Christ, such as Paul, Peter, John, and James).

Study (longer than normal)

In our passage today, Paul is continuing his defense of his apostleship, and is showing the churches in Galatia not only that he had been acknowledged as an apostle by the apostles in Jerusalem, but that he had already dealt with this question of “Jesus plus Moses” for salvation before.

Ultimately, this issue would be clearly addressed at the Jerusalem Council, which was still to take place at the time of the writing of Galatians (in 48).

With all of this setup

Let’s look at verse 1:

Paul writes that “after fourteen years” I went up again to Jerusalem.

How does this time square with what I’ve taught the last couple of weeks?

This statement of time is one of the major reasons many scholars place the writing of Galatians much later, after the Jerusalem Council, and to a different set of churches.

And I’ll agree: it’s a difficulty.

If the Jerusalem Council happened in 49 AD, and thus Paul’s first missionary journey took place during about 46 or 47 AD, and Jesus was crucified in the early 30’s AD, how do we have time for the growth of the church, the persecution of the church, Paul’s conversion, his time in Arabia and Damascus, his return to Jersusalem “after three years” (), and this statement of fourteen years’ time before his first missionary journey with Barnabas?

See? It’s a difficulty.

But it’s not an insurmountable one when we consider how people back then tracked time.

There are three issues to address: First, what does Paul mean when he says “Then after so many years...” in both and ?

Second, is it even possible to square the 14 years with the timing?

And third, is there any evidence of this “fourteen years” later meeting?

We’ll address these quickly one at a time, and then get on with the message.

I just didn’t want to leave you with any questions about my position on the letter, because I feel that understanding the timing of it is very important.

First, we know that the first church grew extremely rapidly.

So much so, in fact, that it would not be outlandish at all for the church to

First: In our language, when we say, “Then, after this much time I did this.

Then, after this much time, I did that.”

We normally mean that we telling a story in sequence.

So in Paul’s case, we would look at (we won’t go back and read it) as Paul was saved, then he went to Arabia, then he came back to Damascus, then he spent three years, then he went to Jerusalem, then he went to Syria and Cilicia, and then fourteen years later, he went to Jerusalem this second time in .

This gives us a minimum of 17 years, and probably more, between Paul’s conversion and whenever this second visit to Jerusalem was.

But for Paul, this is not what he means.

See, Paul is looking back to a single fixed point in his life when he makes these statements: He’s looking back at his conversion, as he stated in :

Then, three years after that point, he went to Jerusalem the first time.

And then fourteen years after that point, he went the second time.

This is more like how Melanie and I look back at our wedding day as a fixed point.

Compared to that day, I would say that after nearly 10 years, Maggie was born.

And then after 18 years, Abbie was born.

The question is the point of reference, not the total number of years.

How many years were there from Paul’s conversion to his first visit to Jerusalem, about three.

How many years were there from Paul’s conversion to his second visit to Jerusalem?

About 14.

Secondly, how does this square with the timing, compared to Christ’s crucifixion and resurrection?

If Jesus was crucified say in 33 AD (which is kind of the latest time scholars think for His crucifixion), how do we have time for even the 14 years, given that Paul was in Galatia in 46? It’s obviously much easier to deal with if you place Jesus’ crucifixion in 30 or 31 AD.

But for the sake of argument, let’s use the 33 AD date.

It’s reasonable to believe that the church grew extremely quickly, and faced persecution very early.

Acts bears this out.

But still, how do we get 14 years between Paul’s conversion and his second visit to Jerusalem?

It’s because in New Testament times, people counted a part of a period of time as the whole.

We don’t ordinarily do this now, unless we’re rounding.

But for their way of counting, a part of a day was a day if you were counting by days, and a part of a year was a year if you were counting by years.

We see this in the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus and we don’t struggle with the terminology of the “third day,” when we would only count two days, or even less considering that Jesus would have been in the tomb for less than 48 hours.

So the difference between Paul’s conversion and his second visit to Jerusalem could have been as short as 12 years and 2 months by our reckoning, and still be called 14 years by them: (last month of the first year, 12 years, and the first month of the last year).

So we have nearly the rest of 33 for the growth and persecution of the church, then Paul’s conversion in late 33, which would put his second visit to Jerusalem in early 45 by this reckoning.

And finally, is there some biblical record of this second visit to Jerusalem?

Yes, there is:

Acts

Remember that Paul’s first missionary journey is recorded in .

So we can reasonably answer each question: Paul was reflecting on the fixed point of time of his conversion as he wrote these things to the Galatians, that he had used the standard convention of the day for time reckoning, and we have biblical evidence that Paul made a second trip to Jerusalem with Barnabas before his first missionary journey.

Sorry that took so long, but my understanding and presentation of this epistle is based on my belief that it was written to the churches that Paul founded on his first missionary journey, so I had to go through it at some point if we’re every going to make use of and 14 in this series.

=o)

Now, Paul and Barnabas go to Jerusalem, accompanied by Titus.

Why?

Paul and Barnabas went up to Jerusalem “according to a revelation.”

I doubt this was the message from Agabus from believe that within the “some prophets” that came from Jerusalem to Antioch in were the very ones who caused the problems that Paul needed to get addressed.

I think that Paul speaks of this in verse 4:

We’ll come back to them in a moment.

But for now, we have to address Paul’s statement in verse 2, “I wanted to be sure I was not running, and had not been running, in vain.”

What does Paul mean here?

It doesn’t hold up to what we see in Paul’s life and writings that he was concerned that his message was wrong.

No, he was preaching the Gospel of the grace of God through Christ.

He wouldn’t waver from that.

It also doesn’t hold up that he was concerned that his mission of preaching to the Gentiles was wrong.

No, Jesus had specifically called him to that task.

So what does he mean that he wanted to be sure he was not and had not been running in vain?

I believe that Paul was concerned that this issue of the Gospel and the Law was big enough to destroy the unity of the church.

When these “false brothers” came from Jerusalem and started saying that Gentile believers had to follow the Jewish Law, Paul knew that this was not correct.

But Paul’s message had been that Christ had come and died for all people, Jew and Gentile alike, and as a result, to tear down the wall of separation between Jew and Gentile (see for an example).

Tim Keller put it this way in his commentary: