Galatians 1:1-10

Greeting:

Thank you Pastor Tate for allowing me the opportunity to share God’s word this morning. Thank you to our Deacons, Ministers, the Worship Team and our wonderful ushers (you may take your seats). We will be in the book of Galatians this morning the 1st chapter, beginning in the 1st verse if you want to begin turning there.

Quickly before we begin, I just wanted to tell you where we are going this morning and why. I have a simple philosophy of preaching which comes out of a couple of places in scripture the first is Acts 20:26-27 when Paul is addressing the Ephesian Elders for the last time he says “26 Therefore I testify to you this day that I am innocent of the blood of all, 27 for I did not shrink from declaring to you the whole counsel of God.” and later in scripture James the brother of Jesus writes in James 3:1 “1Not many of you should become teachers, my brothers, for you know that we who teach will be judged with greater strictness.” As an occasional preacher it is easy to pick out an easy happy text that doesn’t challenge or offend, we all have fear of man issues (or at least I do) and we want to be liked. But I want to make sure that I am sharing the whole council of God, because it is what we need, and because someday I will be called to answer for what I have taught. The very best way I know to do this is to preach through whole books of the Bible, so that we deal with everything God has for us, and not just the easy texts. For that reason beginning this morning we will start going through the book of Galatians, and any time I have the privilege of addressing you we will continue verse by verse through that book until we are done. Amen.

Let me pray for us...

Read Text Galatians 1:1-10 in the ESV

Background

Paul wrote the book of Galatians to those believers who were in Galatia, a Roman province which covered roughly the same area as modern day Turkey. So unlike his other letters to specific cities such as Philipi, or Rome this is a circular letter. Most likely it would have been carried by a trusted associate of Paul’s to the various congregations in that area and read out in their meetings for all to hear. The fact that it is not to a specific congregation makes it difficult to date the letter since Paul was in different parts of Galatia at different times in his ministry. Scholars give us a range of somewhere between 49- 55 A.D. some 16 to 22 years after Christ’s crucifixion.

Text

English Standard Version Chapter 1

1 Paul, an apostle—not from men nor through man, but through Jesus Christ and God the Father, who raised him from the dead— 2 and all the brothers who are with me,

To the churches of Galatia:

Paul is here establishing or reminding the Galatians of his authority as an apostle of Jesus Christ. The Greek word here is apostolos which simply means messenger and in this context denotes one uniquely sent by the risen Christ and bearing His authority.

It is important that we know who’s teaching we are following, have they been affirmed by leaders you can trust, are they faithful to the text. If we are not wise about who we allow to speak into our lives we will be lead astray as we will see our Galatian brothers and sisters were.

English Standard Version Chapter 1

3 Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ, 4 who gave himself for our sins to deliver us from the present evil age, according to the will of our God and Father, 5 to whom be the glory forever and ever. Amen.

“Grace to you and Peace”. Each of Paul’s letters begins with these two blessings from God. First is Grace or charis in the original language on which our whole time together this morning really hinges. The meaning is best translated as “undeserved kindness”. Paul uses this word more than any other NT author and assigns to it huge theological importance which I hope we will unpack a little bit this morning.

The second part of Paul’s greeting is ‘Peace” referring to the relationship that Christ’s death and resurrection have established with God. We have sinned and offended a perfect, holy, God who cannot abide sin or allow it in His presence, but the Lord Jesus has paid the debt for all our sins. You may have heard it said the Jesus atoned for our sins, and that is the perfect word…break it down at…one…ment. We have been made one with God, something we could never have accomplished on our own. Because our sins were paid for on the cross, and because God is righteous and just and would never punish us for a sin that has already been paid for we, undeserving as we are are at “Peace” with God able to come into His presence in part today, but fully and finally when the Lord Jesus returns, or we pass from this life to Him.

Theres a lot in this little greeting

Okay here I need a little aside. Sometimes when we are reading the new Testament, written 2,000 years ago we can miss things that our 1st century brothers and sisters would have found very impactful. And that’s what will happen right here if we are not familiar with structure of 1st century letters. I know it sounds strange, but stay with me. There was a very definite structure to a 1st century letter:

Identify the Sender: Paul an Apostle

Identify the Recipients: “To the churches of Galatia”

Give a Greeting: “Grace to you and Peace”

A section of Thanksgiving usually to the Lord for the fruit He is bearing in the recipients like in 1st Thesolonians when he says “2 We always thank God for all of you and continually mention you in our prayers. 3 We remember before our God and Father your work produced by faith, your labor prompted by love, and your endurance inspired by hope in our Lord Jesus Christ.”

Body of the Letter

Final Greeting

Closing

So let’s walk back through our letter and identify the parts so far because we are about to get into the body of the letter.

(Read verse 6) this would have changed the entire mood in the room

This would have shocked the first century hearers. It’s kind of like when your wife or husband calls you on the phone, there is a normal pattern. Hi sweetheart, how’s your day going, I just want to ask.... , as long as the normal pattern is followed you know everything is okay, it is a normal conversation. But if you answer the phone and he or she says Hi sweetheart, what were you thinking when you left the house this morning and didn’t do this or that you are immediately on your back foot, your whole demeanor changes, you know this is not a normal conversation.

So here is that transition that would have sounded so alarming to the Galatians

English Standard Version Chapter 1

No Other Gospel

6 I am astonished that you are so quickly deserting him who called you in the grace of Christ and are turning to a different gospel— 7 not that there is another one, but there are some who trouble you and want to distort the gospel of Christ. 8 But even if we or an angel from heaven should preach to you a gospel contrary to the one we preached to you, let him be accursed. 9 As we have said before, so now I say again: If anyone is preaching to you a gospel contrary to the one you received, let him be accursed.

10 For am I now seeking the approval of man, or of God? Or am I trying to please man? If I were still trying to please man, I would not be a servant of Christ.

So what is going on here? Paul has gone into this region proclaiming the gospel, establishing churches, and appointing leaders to Shepard those churches (we know this is his pattern from elsewhere is scripture) and then he receives word that there is a problem.

We are not told exactly what “different gospel” the Galatians are turning to, but commentators agree this is most likely from a group called Judaizers.

The term Judaizer refers to people who zealously promote a Jewish lifestyle according to the law and Jewish tradition. In this case, they were persuading the Galatians to practice circumcision (6:12), as well as observe food laws (2:12) and certain calendar cycles (4:10).

They are saying you can’t just believe in Jesus, you must also be Jewish to be saved; circumcision, no pork chops the whole thing

Well that doesn’t sound so bad we might say, at least they aren’t turning to a pagan God like Baal and engaging in human sacrifice or other terrible acts.

As Martin Luther says in his commentary “No false teacher comes under the title of errors, neither does the devil come in his own likeness”

In other words to get us lost in the christian life , to get us off track and distant from Christ it is hard for the devil to get us to turn around and go in a completely different direction (not impossible, but hard) to get us to renounce Christ. But what if he nudged us off the path ever so gradually changing our direction. We would still think we were walking toward Jesus but we are headed in the wrong direction.

To the Devil it doesn’t matter if you are off course by 10,000 miles or you miss Jesus by 2 blocks as long as you are off course

So back to Pastor Luther’s quote. These Judaizers would have shown up not saying everything Paul said was wrong, but that what Paul said was incomplete. You could not just rely on faith in Jesus you had to add to it your own works of ceremonial righteousness. Which to be crystal clear this morning is not the gospel and therefore to accept it the Galatians have been nudged off the path, just ever so slightly not thinking they have rejected God, but that they are even more religious more devote now that they are “adding” to the finished work of Chirst.

But that’s not the Gospel

Ephesians 2:8 For by grace you have been saved through faith; and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God;

John 3:16 “For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish, but have eternal life.

Not whoever believes in Him and does this or that work, or whoever believes in Him and tries to repay Him.

Illustration

Let’s say you have a pocket watch, it is your favorite possession in the whole world it’s an antique, 18k gold watch from Tiffany and it has been perfectly maintained. But that’s not what makes in valuable. This watch was your Grandfather’s, the man who lead you to Christ who you loved with all your heart. Every time you hold this watch you are transported back to your time with your Grandfather.

Now let’s say you are disciplining a young man at church and after many months of meeting together he comes to faith and is to be baptized. You are so excited for him, the day come he is baptized and you take him to lunch after the service. You start to explain to him how you came to faith and you pull your Grandfather’s watch out of your pocket and give it to him. You explain how important it is to you, and that you want him to have it.

Now imagine he turns it over in his hands a few times and says thank you, but as he says thank you he reaches into his front pocket and pulls out a $10 bill. He hands it to you and says “I want to pay you for the watch I don’t want to be indebted to you”.

He has completely misunderstood the gift. This watch is Charis “undeserved kindness” grace. He wants to add something of his own work to the gift It ruins everything, that watch is priceless to you, no amount of money much less $10 could ever buy it. This watch could only be given away as an act of love and sacrifice. He driven a wedge between himself and the giver, he has greatly offended, and is now at risk of losing the gift altogether.

This is exactly where we or the Galatians find ourselves if we try to offer up our works in response to Christ’s atoning work on the cross. We misunderstand the gift, offend the Giver, and are in danger of losing the gift altogether.

Application

So how do we apply this, what do we do moving forward. As is evident in these verses, this is an issue the church has been struggling with since the beginning.

How do we make sure we do not end up off nudged off course by the Devil causing us to miss Christ. How do we balance faith and works.

You might say to me, Chris, I heard you stand right there in February and tell me that I needed to obey Jesus’ command to take the Gospel to all nations.

How do you reconcile saying we can add nothing to the finished work of Christ with a call to get busy working for Christ.

As with so many things it is about motivation. Let’s use the example of our missions ministry. Let’s say a few years from now we have established our ministry partners in Ethiopia we are at the airport ready to board a flight to preach the gospel in East Africa we have a whole group of us going. As Deaconess Morgan would say “I’m going to speak that into existence”. There we are waiting to get on the plane, we have 20 hours of flying in front of us, long drives to where we will be working, unfamiliar surroundings, time away from loved ones. There in that moment what is the posture of our hearts:

Do we come with a sense of pride. Are we thinking how lucky God is to have us on His team, how selfless we have been giving up vacation days, and tirelessly raising money to fund our trip. Are we thinking, I bet everyone in Ethiopia will be really impressed with us, we are after all pretty amazing Christians.

Scripture tells us that holding up our good deeds to the Lord is like holding up a pile of filthy rags and saying here Lord look what I have brought you. in other words its disgusting.

Or do we come with a heart of gratitude. Are we so over whelmed with what Jesus has done for us, so in love with Him for who he is that anything no matter how big or small we might do in His name seems like the very least we could do. After all He has done for us how could we not give of our time, talent, and treasure to tell someone in Ethiopia about our wonderful Savior. Is our only hope is that He will be glorified and souls will be saved, have we died to ourselves so that we can live for Him. This is the posture we should pursue, this is what is honoring to Christ.

Our Galatian brother and sisters had made even a different error that was still rooted in sinful pride. They thought maybe Christ’s sacrifice was insufficient, they thought maybe they had something to add to their own salvation. And so they stepped ever so slightly off the path not realizing that they were no longer headed toward Christ.

My hope for all of us, and for our brothers and sisters in Christ around this city, and around this world is that we would hold tight to the finished work of Jesus Christ trusting in it alone for salvation. I pray our works would be born out of love, not pride, and that we would glorify Christ in all that we do.

Let me pray for us...