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SERMON:
A couple of Sundays ago we started a
sermon series on Paul’s letter to the Galatians. We’re calling this series, “First
Things First”.
Our first message spoke about how we
want the Gospel of Jesus to predominate, or reign over, every area of our
lives. What this means is that we want to view everything we experience through
the forgiveness that we have because of Jesus. First things first means the
Gospel is core to our whole thought process.
This morning we continue our series
with a second message based on the letter to the Galatians. We call this
message: “Go to God’s Word First”.
▬
Now, to begin with, when we read the
New Testament, most of the time we’re reading someone else’s mail. These words
weren’t written to us. They were written for us. God intended us
to read them eventually, and to learn from them, and for our faith to be strengthened
by these words. But the words that we’re
going to read this morning were originally sent to a group of congregations in
the Roman province of Galatia. These first readers lived in a different
millennium, and on a different continent. They didn’t live like we do. They had
different dreams, different problems, different routines, different histories.
It’s good to keep this in mind when
we study any of the letters of the New Testament. When we know who was
receiving a letter, and what was going on in that congregation’s life, then we’re
better able to understand the thoughts and the ideas contained in any given letter.
▬
So, what had happened in Galatia was
this. The apostle Paul had come through the area and had shared the news of
Jesus with a bunch of people. This “news of Jesus” is what we call the Gospel.
The Bible tells us that all people
are sinners, condemned to suffer hell after this life. But in the Gospel we
hear that God’s Son changed our fate when HE suffered for our sins, and died in
our place. The Gospel reveals to us that Jesus has declared all people righteous
before God, by suffering on the cross. The main take away of the Gospel is – we
don’t have to worry about the future. God loves us, and through His Son, He has
forgiven our every sin.
A good number of people believed
this message in the Roman province of Galatia. Enough people that a number of
congregations were formed.
But after Paul moved on to share the
Gospel in other places, problems started to crop up. New people started to move
in on the Galatian congregations. These new people were undermining the Gospel
of Jesus. They were saying that Jesus DIDN’T earn COMPLETE forgiveness for the
sinner. They were teaching that we have to perform certain religious rituals
and observe certain religious ceremonies to earn COMPLETE forgiveness from God.
▬
In addition to attacking the Gospel
and trying to alter it, these new teachers were also attacking Paul.
Have you ever been a witness to
tense a conversation where you really didn’t know what the underlying fight was
about? You could sense that there was some sort of bad blood between the two
people who were arguing, but you could only make out bits and pieces of what
this was all about?
We’ve got a little bit of that
situation going on here in Galatians. Every once in a while Paul will say
something like, “…am I now seeking the approval of man, or of God?”. He
says that particular thing in chapter one, as if someone had accused him of
just trying to please people by his teachings. There are numerous times in
Galatians where Paul says something that appears to be a response to some
slander that had been spoken against him. Watch for these phrases that show us
how Paul was being discredited.
Galatians 1:11-24 (NASB)
11 For I would have you know, brethren, that the
gospel which was preached by me is not according to man.
12 For
I neither received it from man, nor was I taught it, but I received it through a revelation of Jesus Christ.
13 For
you have heard of my former manner of life in Judaism, how I used to persecute
the church of God beyond measure and tried to destroy it;
14 and
I was advancing in Judaism beyond many of my contemporaries among my
countrymen, being more extremely zealous for my ancestral traditions.
15 But
when God, who had set me apart even from
my mother’s womb and called me through His grace, was pleased
16 to
reveal His Son in me so that I might preach Him among the Gentiles, I did not
immediately consult with flesh and blood,
17 nor
did I go up to Jerusalem to those who were apostles before me; but I went away
to Arabia, and returned once more to Damascus.
18 Then
three years later I went up to Jerusalem to become acquainted with Cephas, and
stayed with him fifteen days.
19 But
I did not see any other of the apostles except James, the Lord’s brother.
20 (Now
in what I am writing to you, I assure you before God that I am not lying.)
21 Then
I went into the regions of Syria and Cilicia.
22 I
was still unknown by sight to the
churches of Judea which were in Christ;
23 but
only, they kept hearing, “He who once persecuted us is now preaching the faith
which he once tried to destroy.”
24 And
they were glorifying God because of me.
▬
If we can take Paul’s words here as
casting light on what his detractors were saying, then they were saying
something like this:
“Paul is actually teaching you guys stuff
that he came up with, or that he learned from somebody. Paul’s words are
just human ideas. It’d be better to turn to Jews like us who really know the
Old Testament in order to understand what God says about salvation. After all,
Paul isn’t even a real apostle. He never traveled with Jesus during His
ministry. At best Paul absorbed some of the apostles’ teachings in Jerusalem,
or maybe from some little Christian fellowship in Judea. But Paul didn’t
understand it well enough. Here, let us explain to you where Paul got it wrong.
We’ll help you known what things you need to DO in order to be saved.”
Paul had received word about how he
was being slandered, and, more importantly how the Gospel was being corrupted. So,
he promptly responded.
“Um, no, my Gospel wasn’t something
I made up or learned from somebody. As you know, Jesus HIMSELF appeared to me
on the road to Damascus and directly revealed His Message of Grace to me.”
“As for those Jewish teachers among
you who think they know better than me, do you remember my history in
Judaism? I was the super-Pharisee. When it comes to knowing the Judaism, and
the Old Testament Scriptures, I think I can hold my own, thank you very much.”
“As for my Gospel begin some kind of
second-rate copy that I scammed off the apostles or formed from bits gathered
in Judea--I’d been preaching the Gospel
quite a while before getting to know the apostles. And, the Judean churches?
They didn’t know me personally for even longer!”
And we don’t have to just take
Paul’s word for all this. We can read about how the apostles received Paul in
the book of Acts. They were scared of Paul at first, but eventually they came
to know that Paul had truly been converted by the risen Savior Himself. They
gladly recognized him as an equal when they heard his story (Acts 9:26-31).
Later on, the apostle Peter even wrote about Paul. Peter wrote…
“15 Bear in mind
that our Lord’s patience means salvation, just as our dear brother Paul also
wrote you with the wisdom that God gave him. 16 He writes the
same way in all his letters, speaking in them of these matters. His letters
contain some things that are hard to understand, which ignorant and unstable
people distort, as they do the other Scriptures, to their own destruction” (2 Peter 3:15-16 NIV).
Peter calls Paul’s writings
“Scripture”. That was how Peter saw Paul’s message—as the Spirit inspired Word
of God.
▬
One thing we need to remember about
Paul, was that he wasn’t a bold and arrogant missionary. We’re told that his
first sermon to the Corinthian people was delivered “…in weakness, with much
fear and trembling” (1 Corinthians 2:3). Nor was he a power grabber. He
didn’t stay in one place longer he needed to in order to establish a fellowship
of Christ followers. Then he was off to the next place to share the Gospel with
more people. The congregations Paul left didn’t even know for sure if they’d
ever see him again.
Obviously, Paul wasn’t some
pretentious, money grubbing televangelist. So, why did Paul feel the need to
defend his ministry to the Galatians? Because the false teachers in Galatia
were only attacking Paul’s ministry in order to get at the Gospel. The
corruption of the Gospel was the real goal of Paul’s detractors. Paul had brought
the Gospel to the Galatians. If the false teachers could discredit him, they
were one step closer to discrediting the Gospel.
Paul’s ministry belonged to the same
Savior who had washed Paul clean of all his sins by suffering and dying in his
place. Paul wouldn’t just stand there and watch as the soul-saving Gospel was
mixed with work-righteousness.
The whole idea that we can earn our
way to God is a retread idea. It’s the same old human religion that has been
recycled over and over through the centuries, with a million different labels
on the same worthless product. But Paul saw it for what it was, the same old
I’ll-save-yourself religion. It wasn’t the Gospel. The Gospel says God saved US.
It’s DONE. We can be at PEACE as we live our lives to help each other and to
glorify the LORD, our Creator.
Look at verse 15 again. Here Paul
just lets the truth outshine the lies that were being told. He says…
“…when God, who
had set me apart even from my
mother’s womb and called me through His grace, was pleased to reveal His Son in
me so that I might preach Him among the Gentiles, I did not immediately consult
with flesh and blood,”
(Galatians 1:15-16 NASB).
It’s like Paul is saying,
“So, they say the Gospel is manmade.
But that’s not true. God chose me before I was born, and not because of my own
goodness, but because of His GRACE. He called me to believe in His Son. And He
even sent me to preach about Jesus to the Gentiles. If all this is true, WHY IN
THE WORLD would I have sought out MEN to train me up in the Gospel since I
already had God as my tutor?!”
▬
The Holy Spirit led Paul and others
to write down what God had taught them. So, today we find ourselves in the same
situation that Paul was in. We have the revelation of Jesus, not in person like
Paul had, but in the Bible.
And the Bible was intended for
ordinary people to read! I know sometimes it’s hard to believe, but it’s true. Galatians
was originally written in Koine Greek. That’s “common Greek”, the same language
that the butcher and the baker down the street would have used in Galatia. The
New Testament wasn’t intended for scholars to ponder over in their studies, it
was intended for you and me take in hand. To read. To know God’s things. To
give us direction, wisdom, hope—all these wrapped around the Son of God’s gift
of complete forgiveness for our sins.
We need to take God’s Word into our
minds. In Paul’s day there were detractors and false teachers, and there are
today too. They use the same methods. Discredit the teacher, dismantle the
message. We need to be constantly learning from the Bible, because our faith is
constantly under attack.
Paul couldn’t hardly even get out of
town before false teachers came into the congregations of Galatia. When you
leave this house of worship you’ll be exposed to anti-Christian ideas,
lifestyles, and attitudes even before you reach your next destination. And even
after you reach your home, the attacks on your faith will continue through all
the communication devices of this information age. False teachers and false
ideas will fish for your allegiance through television, movies, blogs, etc.
▬
In the Old Testament book of Isaiah,
it says…
“19 When someone
tells you to consult mediums and spiritists, who whisper and mutter, should not
a people inquire of their God? Why consult the dead on behalf of the living? 20 Consult
God’s instruction and the testimony of warning. If anyone does not speak
according to this word, they have no light of dawn” (Isaiah 8:19-20 NIV).
We may not ask the local palm reader
about our future. But when we take man’s word over God’s we’re doing just about
the same thing. Instead, let’s do like Isaiah says and go to God’s Word
first.
▬
Do you know how the books of the
Bible got put together? That was one of the things that I really wanted to know
when I got to seminary. I assumed that there was some great counsel that was
held where church leaders chose the books that were to be put in the Bible. But
when I actually got a chance to study how the books of the Bible were
recognized as God’s Word, the truth blew me away. It was much more powerful.
The Holy Spirit lives in the books
that He caused to be written. He works through these books to create faith in
Christ, and to preserve that faith. But the Holy Spirit does not live and work
through books that He didn’t inspire. You won’t find the Holy Spirit’s
testimony in the Book of Mormon. You won’t find it in the Koran.
Over the years, Christians received
letters from various apostles and teachers. Because the Holy Spirit at work in
the books that He inspired, Christians recognized them as the Holy Spirit’s
books. Eventually, the line-up of the New Testament had been so secured by
individual Christian acceptance, that nobody even thought about it anymore.
These were God’s books. Only after that did “mighty” church councils come along
and says, “Yes, these are God’s books”.
And because the books of the Bible come
from the same Divine Author, they agree with one another.
Now, this isn’t to say there aren’t
hard things to understand in them. Thing that seem like contradictions. But if
these are the books of God, then if we dig into our questions about them, we’ll
find answers. When we have a question about God’s Word, we should go to
God’s Word FIRST. Most of the time God will clarify what is said in one
section of the Bible, by what He says in another.
▬
When Paul received the Gospel from Jesus Himself, Paul didn’t
seek a second opinion. He didn’t seek the apostle’s blessing. He just went and
started teaching the message that had given Him peace.
We don’t need a second opinion either. With a solid English
translation in hand, we have God’s Word. We don’t need the priest’s blessing,
we can start sharing the message that gives us peace.
The Word of God is the power here, especially the message of the
Gospel. Let’s go to the Word first in every situation. Today, let’s rededicate
ourselves to being ready ahead of time to defend the things we believe in, and
give a reason for the hope we have because of Christ.
Amen.
The peace of God which
surpasses all understanding will guard your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus.
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