This evening, I want us to consider the first five verses of Galatians chapter one, with the sermon title of This Present Evil Age. I'll read those five verses again. Paul, an apostle, not of men, neither by man, but by Jesus Christ and God the Father, who raised him from the dead, and all the brethren which are with me unto the churches of Galatia. Grace be to you and peace from God the Father and from our Lord Jesus Christ, 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, to whom be glory forever and ever. Amen. Well, last Lord's Day evening, we began a new series of sermons on Paul's letter to Galatians. And we looked at some of the benefits and reasons that justify such a series as this. And we also summarized in a very general way the argument, the flow of the argument of the epistle. Galatians presents two fundamental truths that every Christian must understand and every Christian must live by. These are the fact that the cross of Christ is the only way a person can be right with God, and the spirit of Christ is the only way a person can obey God. And we considered the major crisis that had broken out in the churches Paul had planted in Galatia. as some Jewish Christians were teaching that Gentile converts had to follow Jewish laws in respect of circumcision and kosher foods and Sabbath laws. The thinking seemed to be, well, all of us, most of the first Christians were Jewish. Jesus was Jewish. The apostles are Jewish. Therefore, to be a Christian, you must be Jewish. You must go back to the covenant with Abraham, and that led to the covenant with Moses, and all Jews had always followed the law of Moses. And therefore, anyone who wants to come into the covenant community has to follow the Mosaic law. This was the thinking. But that is not what Paul taught, was it? That was not what Paul preached at all in his gospel. And a major crisis had broken out. And we noticed last time that great opposition, great distrust had grown up towards the apostle Paul. And a good way of winning an argument, I suppose, over time is to undermine the integrity and the character of the opposition. That was what they did. They were gradually trying to undermine Paul and to give the impression, to spread the message that he wasn't of the same rank and stature as the other apostles who had been with the Lord Jesus. It had reached a point where the Jerusalem church was being pitted against the church in Antioch. And things had got really bad after Peter had visited Antioch. And there was a public row, a public argument between Paul and Peter. Because Peter had been quite happy for a while, a long time, in fact, to eat with Gentiles, to share fellowship with Gentiles. But Paul noticed that in the recent past, after these Judaizers had been active, he had withdrawn from the Gentiles. And he was now only eating at the Jewish tables. He wasn't now eating with the Gentiles. And Paul opposed him to the face because his behavior was inconsistent with the gospel message. And it seems that the bad feeling towards Paul by many in these churches, which he had planted, was a very serious situation. If you turn to chapter 4 and verse 15, you get a little insight into the impact this was having on the apostle Paul himself. He says, there were is then the blessedness you speak of. For I bear you record that if it had been possible, ye would have plucked out your own eyes and have given them to me. Am I therefore become your enemy? Because I tell you the truth." You see, they had changed their attitude towards him. They had loved him. But the Apostle Paul had to tell them the truth. And all faithful ministers of God's Word have to tell their churches, their congregations the truth. And sometimes it will make you unpopular. Sometimes it will get you the sack. But the point is that the responsibility is to protect, preserve, and preach the true gospel, whatever the cost. And we pray, don't we, that there will be many more who will be willing to stand up in their churches, which have moved away from the pure gospel, and pay the cost of being a true minister of God's word. These Judaizers had deliberately undermined Paul to establish their position. It seems from chapter 5 and verse 10 that it may have been one individual who was a ringleader in this. I have confidence in you through the Lord. that ye will be none otherwise minded, but he that singeth, but he that troubleth you, shall bear his judgment, whoever he be." One individual, one person can be used by the enemy to sow great trouble, great discord, great difficulty in a company of believers. We all need to judge ourselves, be careful with ourselves, that we are being helpful, that we are not undermining, that we are being faithful to God and to his people. Paul had to defend himself. And he had to defend his gospel, because both the gospel and he as the apostle, the main apostle to the Gentiles, was being challenged. The issue was serious. And in this opening five verses, which are his greeting, his salutation, Paul starts, as he means to go on. In the whole of this epistle, he's doing two things. He's defending himself as an apostle and he's defending the gospel of Jesus Christ. And he begins, right at the beginning here, he begins preaching right from the off, even in the opening remarks. So that's where we're going to begin our exposition of Galatians, beginning in this salutation, in these greetings of Paul. And we'll look at these verses under three simple headings. The author, the recipients of the letter, and the salutation or the greeting. But as we do so, remember that what Paul is doing here is far more than just giving greetings, keeping to normal letter writing conventions of the day. He is throwing down right at the start a gauntlet explaining what the Gospel is and defending his apostolic authority. So let's begin then with our first point, the author. It says, Paul, an apostle, not of men, neither by man, but by Jesus Christ and God the Father, who raised him from the dead, and all the brethren which are with me." So Paul introduces himself as the author in the same way as he always does. Of course, letters were written differently in those days. When we write an email, or very rarely these days a letter, we put the name of the person we're writing to at the beginning, and we put our own name right at the end, don't we? Yours sincerely or yours faithfully. It was not the case in the first century, in this first century Rome. began the letter by referring to the recipient of the letter. And Paul, in all his epistles, gives his name and his office, his title, at the beginning of the epistle. So for example, in 1 Corinthians, he begins that letter by saying, Paul called to be an apostle of Jesus Christ. In Romans, he starts by saying, Paul, a servant of Jesus Christ, called to be an apostle. So this is what he's doing here. Nothing different. That's the standard way of writing. But there is a big difference here in Galatians and from all his other epistles. For one thing, he immediately launches in to a defense of his apostolic credentials. He says, not of men, nor by man, but by Jesus Christ and God the Father who raised him from the dead. From the outset, he refutes the false view being spread around the churches that he is a second class apostle. He claims that he was not commissioned by any man as an apostle, but directly by Jesus Christ and God the Father who raised him from the dead. And we won't have the time tonight, but look at Acts 9 and you'll see how Paul was gloriously saved and commissioned by the Lord directly. It's obvious from the wording here that Paul considered Jesus to be divine. Because he's saying, Paul, an apostle, not of men, neither by man, but by Jesus Christ. He's drawing a contrast between men, just mere men, and Jesus Christ. He's saying, I was commissioned not by a mere man, but by Jesus. And so by implication, he's there testifying to the divinity of Jesus Christ. If he considered Jesus to be only a man, the sentence wouldn't make sense, would it? Because it would be then neither by man, but by a man, Jesus Christ. He also, of course, mentions the resurrection, neither by man but by Jesus Christ and God the Father who raised him from the dead. And by mentioning the resurrection so early on in the first breath, as it were, of the epistle, he is introducing the great themes of the gospel, the death and the resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ. Once you mention the cross or the resurrection, by implication, you're always mentioning the cross and the resurrection. You can't really separate them. So if we ever talk about the cross and we don't mention the resurrection, always remember that we mean the resurrection as well and vice versa. He introduces the heart of the gospel, the central facts of the death and resurrection of Christ, the risen Christ, who is at the right hand of God supreme over all creation and head of the church. He is the one who appeared to Paul on that road to Damascus and it is that one, that glorious being who commissioned him to be an apostle. God himself, in other words, had sent him to preach and teach and do wonders with the same authority that Christ had given to all the other twelve apostles, the original twelve apostles. And the Lord Jesus had said, didn't he, to the twelve apostles in Matthew 10.40, He that receiveth you receiveth me, and he that receiveth me receiveth him that sent me. In other words, He's saying to his apostles, the Lord Jesus, anyone who accepts you, accepts me. Anything, in other words, of my words which you say to others, they are not just your words, they're my words through you. They have apostolic authority. They're not to be you know, weighed in the balance and criticized and analyzed that this is... Apostolic preaching was different. It was, you know, it wasn't a negotiation. Whatever the apostolic message was, that was scripture, that was revelation, that was for the church simply to obey. The right response would have been to write it down or memorize it, not debate it, you see, because all apostles were the ambassadors of Christ directly in a way that no one else has ever been or can be. Which means when we are reading Galatians, for example, and because Galatians is written by an apostle, we are hearing quite literally the voice of Christ. We're not just hearing the voice of even Paul, great as he was, we're hearing Christ. He has spoken through his apostles and that teaching is the foundation of the Christian church. The foundation of all of our faith is built on Christ and the apostles. And if you mess about or chip away at the apostolic teaching, the basic Christian message, you're destroying the church, you're destroying people's faith. And that's why it's so important to preach the Bible, not a version of the Bible that you think will be palatable to today's society. You must preach, we must share, we must believe the apostolic message, because that is the foundation of Christianity. The other thing we notice which is very strange about Galatians and these first five verses is that the Apostle Paul always, I think always, takes the time in his epistles to say something nice about the churches that he is writing to. For example, in writing to the Philippians, he thanks God upon every remembrance of them. The Thessalonians get a whole load of compliments, don't they? He remembers, without ceasing, their work of faith and their labor of love. The Galatians don't get anything. They don't get anything of that kind. There's no compliment whatsoever. They are in his bad books, and he is in their bad books. There's no time for Paul to waste on these Galatians. The gospel was at stake, and his apostolic authority was at stake. And he demands and commands a hearing. I am an apostle. I, Paul, speak with the authority of an apostle. And notice that in establishing his authority and establishing the true definition of the gospel, he, as it were, ropes in other people. He doesn't just write by himself. In verse 2 it says, and all the brethren which are with me unto the churches of Galatia. So it's as if Paul is saying, Yes, I am an apostle. I make all the claims of the apostle. And all these people stood with me and behind me, agree with me. Yes, I am an apostle. And yes, you are preaching a false gospel. And my gospel is the true gospel. And as witness, there is this crowd of people with me, all these others, these churches, these Christians, my friends, who stand testimony to what I am saying. In other words, he's saying my gospel, the gospel I preach, is church recognised. It's not very good English, I know. But it's church recognised. And that's an important thing to note. If what an individual or a church preaches as the gospel is out of sync with the confessionally agreed definitions of the gospel, alarm bells need to ring straight away. You see, Paul is saying, my gospel has agreement. It is agreed. It is agreed in the church. This is the church's gospel, not just my gospel. And it was recognized. It had a shape and a form and a definition which was backed by the church's. This is the issue with the new perspective on Paul, which I mentioned last time. It is a novel. It is a new statement of the gospel. It claims to be a new perspective that has only recently been understood. Beware of the preacher. Beware of the teaching that claims to have something new. It's always a danger. There's always a warning sign. I pray that our meetings and our sermons will always be fresh, but the recipe will always be the same. There's going to be an awful lot of repetition from me. Preacher and hearer alike have hearts and minds that need it. We need a lot of repetition. And I shall never be saying I have a new revelation from God. It will simply be explaining the revelation that we have been given in the Bible. So we then go on to the second point, which I'm not going to spend a lot of time on. The recipients, verse 2. The recipients are unto the churches of Galatia. This is who Paul is writing to. Now at this point, on a hot evening, I could easily bore you to death on this issue of who Paul is writing to. Because although it seems simple that he's writing to the churches of Galatia, it is in fact a very complicated and disputed discussion as to exactly who these Galatians were. It's an academic debate as to whether Galatians was written before the Jerusalem Council in Acts 15 or after. There is the North Galatian and the South Galatian view, which refer to the two different interpretations of the destination of Paul's letter to the Galatians. I'm only going to say this very quickly. The North Galatian view posits that Paul was writing to the region of ethnic Galatia in Central Asia Minor. In other words, he was writing to the original Gauls, to the ethnic Galatians. The South Galatian view argues that he was writing to the churches in the southern part of the Roman province of Galatia, which was not an ethnic area. That was a Roman province which included cities like Antioch, Iconium, Lystra, and Derby, which Paul visited in his first missionary journey. The main debate is whether this letter was addressed to the original Celtic inhabitants of Galatia or to the more mixed population of the Roman province, including those who were not ethnically Galatian. So in those days, if somebody asked you about the way to Galatia on Lossworth, can you point me in the direction of Galatia? They would have to say, do you mean the country of Galatia where the Gauls live, or do you mean the Roman province, which was a much larger area and incorporated other peoples? It doesn't, in fact, make any difference to the meaning of the epistle. It's not an issue of liberal or conservative or evangelical. You've got people on both sides of the debate. In fact, the reformers and most of the Puritans thought it was the ethnic Galatians, whereas the more common view today is that it was the province. We can't spend time on it and it's too hot. academically qualified to tell you which is right. So we'll leave it there. It makes no difference because the churches that Paul is writing to are churches, whichever option you take, are churches that he founded and that had a relationship with him. And they're in great spiritual danger. You see, Paul, as I said earlier, normally gives thanks to the Lord for the churches he addresses. He even gives thanks for the church in Corinth. And the church in Corinth was in an awful mess, wasn't it? But he still says, I thank my God always, even for the church in Corinth. But the Galatians don't get any thanks. There are no thanks given to the Lord for these churches. The churches here, they are not described as saints. They are not described as the called of God. Because they are doing something so serious, so damaging to their salvation and to the Christian faith, that Paul would have been a hypocrite to call them saints. what is going on with them is that they're reverting to a works-based religion. And that has caused Paul, in verse 6 of chapter 1, to marvel at them. In chapter 4, 11, he wonders if he has wasted his time on them. I am afraid of you, lest I have bestowed upon you labor in vain. In chapter 4, verse 20, he says, I stand in doubt of you. You see, they were throwing over the doctrine, the fundamental doctrine of justification by faith alone, by which an individual becomes a Christian and by which a church becomes a church. They were digging away. They were taking almost like a pneumatic drill or a JCB digger to the foundation on which the whole house is built. And Paul couldn't allow it to continue. You see, if you lose this doctrine, this doctrine of justification, you've lost everything. You really have. So in this epistle, even in the beginning introduction, he has to go over old ground. He's invested his life, his teaching, into these people, into these churches. And he has to teach them all over again, right from the beginning. And I believe he was very disappointed and very frustrated with them. In verse 19, we read of how he felt about this. Chapter 4, 19, he says, he has to begin again with them, my little children, of whom I travail in birth again until Christ is formed in you. They have to be reborn. There has to be a restart. If you move away from the fundamental doctrine of justification, you really have to be converted. You have to become a Christian. You have to come back to Christ. I don't know how that fits with all the other doctrines, but I know it to be true. If you believe that you as an individual can save yourself by adding to what Christ has done through works, then you are not a Christian. And you're in danger of eternal damnation. This is why Paul says, let anyone who preaches that rubbish, let him be accursed. And you know, there are, of course, many who do. Roman Catholic Church, the Greek Orthodox Church, as we were saying this morning, you have to add works, works of rituals, works of prayers, works of ordinances and sacraments. You have to add and add and add to what Christ has done, otherwise you are not saved. The Jehovah's Witnesses who we see in the street, do you think that they're living out justification? Why do you think they're in the street? Why do you think they're giving out leaflets? It's because they're adding to what Christ has done. They're adding their works because they don't believe that Jesus is enough. That's the essential heresy, is that Jesus isn't enough, the cross isn't enough, and we have to add our contribution onto the top of what Christ has done. And that denies the truth of the gospel. And it's everywhere. It's all in world religions. And if we're not careful, you can be doctrinally correct in what you say and what you purport to believe, but in your own life, even as a Christian, you can fall back onto works by adopting some kind of transactional relationship with God. If I do this, Lord, will you do this for me? If I do this, Lord, will that be enough? Will you accept me? Will you give me what I need if I add, if I do, if I achieve, if I contribute? You see, there is nothing that we can contribute to our salvation. Let us never move away from this fundamental doctrine of justification by faith alone. And then finally, we have the salutation, or the body of the salutation. Grace to you and peace from God, the Father, and from our Lord Jesus Christ, 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, to whom be glory forever and ever. Amen. Grace to you and peace from God the Father and from our Lord Jesus Christ. The words grace and peace come together in Paul's letters like twins, don't they? They're like conjoined twins. They're never separated. There's always grace and peace. Grace and peace lay at the heart of the Christian gospel. Grace is God's love for those who deserve condemnation. Peace, or Shalom, refers in this context to spiritual well-being. The kind of spiritual well-being that is experienced when a man is put right in his relationship with God. I mean, do you remember that first sense of peace when you knew for the first time you were right with God? That despite all your failures, you had been forgiven. Everything had been dealt with. You were right with God. And God was right with you. And you knew that if you died, you would be with him. That's peace, isn't it? Grace and peace. This is what Paul always wished his recipients. Grace and peace to you. I hope and pray that you know this grace and peace in your life. We all have different personalities. Some of us worry more than others, and some of us are more anxious about things than others. I'm not talking about that. There is a peace that can get below that and would be deeper than that and can hold you in whatever situation you're in, in whatever type of person you are. And there's a deep, deep peace. I know that I am right with my God on the basis of the grace of my Lord Jesus Christ. And so Paul gets to the heart of the gospel very quickly because The purity of the gospel is at stake. And how really is this grace and peace possible in this life? Paul preaches it's only through the good news of the gospel. And so here, in this verse four, he gives the gospel, in a nutshell, he gives a praise of the gospel which he preaches. And we'll just make two points here. about this wonderful little summary of the gospel. Paul talks here about man's plight, the plight of man, the human condition. He says Jesus gave himself for our sins that he might deliver us from this present evil world. The human condition is one of being in sin and being under the dominion of this present evil world. That is the plight of man. That's why the gospel is necessary, why it's needed. The word translated world here in verse four is the Greek word eon, not cosmos. The word cosmos refers to the physical world. The word eon, which is in the Greek, refers to an age, to an age. Literally, the world in motion, really meaning the spirit of the world, not the physical world, but the spirit within the world, the age. And it's dominated by evil. It is a state of being in sin and being under the dominion of this present evil age that sinners need to be rescued from. They need deliverance from it. The human condition means that we individually lack conformity to the law of God and we live in a sinful world system where all its acts and priorities and values and outlook and choices and motivations are all sinful. We live in a muck heap. We live in a spiritual pigsty. It's filthy. It's full of lies and corruption. And that's the age that we're in. And unless we're in Christ, we are stuck in it, as if we're stuck in the mud. And we need someone to pluck us out, to get us out, because we need deliverance. That's the human condition outside of Christ. And the only way to be delivered and to know grace and peace is in Christ. and the salvation he brings. And Paul has to remind these Christians of the seriousness of sin. It's a fantasy to think, as they were saying, that they could contribute a lending hand to the work of justification because they are totally depraved. They are totally sinful and unworthy. They are the ones not in a position to lend a hand. They are the ones who simply need to be rescued. Until you get to that, until you accept that in your life, in a way I don't think you can ever become a true Christian. You have to admit to yourself that I'm stuck. I need a saviour. I need someone to reach down and pull me out and lift me up. because I have no strength, I have no resources with which to do it. Paul reminds these Galatians of the situation they were in before coming to Christ in chapter four and verse three. He says, even so, when we were children, we're in bondage under the elements of the world. We'll look at what those verses mean in detail when we get to them. We won't do it now. But it's sufficient to say just now that Paul is really calling these believers backsliders. He's saying you've backslidden. They're backslidden by choice, albeit under the influence of false teaching, but they had backslidden from relying on the grace and mercy of Jesus Christ for justification, and they had turned back to the weak and beggarly rules and regulations that both Jews and Gentiles used to try to justify themselves before God. Verse 8 of chapter 4, how be it then, when ye knew not God, or rather are known of God, how turn ye again to the weak and beggarly elements, whereunto ye desire again to be in bondage? It doesn't matter if you're a Jew or a Gentile. Paul is teaching that legalistic obedience to the law of Moses after Christ has come brings with it the same slavery as the Gentiles worshipping the false Greek gods. They're making themselves slaves again to the basic principles of this world. Many of them were slaves to false gods like Zeus and Hermes, who were not real gods at all. They rendered worship to gods who were not gods, in the hope of being favoured by them. That's what false religion does. We see these YouTube videos of people going on holiday to Thailand or wherever, and we see their photographs of temples. And it all looks beautiful, doesn't it? But the reality is that there are billions of people who every day wake up, and their sole purpose is to try and please their God enough to get through that day and get through to the next, so that their children won't get sick, or their animals won't die, or that their fields will produce enough food for their family And that's a real bondage, isn't it? Bondage which these Galatians were going back to. For most people, their religion is a transaction. It's a quid pro quo. If I scratch your back, God, will you scratch mine? If I do this for you, will you do this for me? If I produce this sacrifice, what do I get back? It's transactional. And we can laugh at that and look down upon it, but there's a way of being a Christian which is approaching that type of attitude. our faith in Christ has to be one of our service to Christ has to be out of love and joy and out of the grace and mercy and peace which he has given to us. If we're in slavish fear and slavish point by point trying to obey this and obey that and build up a bank of merit to the point where we are accepted to God We're just as much in bondage as the man who bows down to a wooden idol. Is your relationship with God one of peace and assurance and joy? Are you secure in the fact and in the knowledge that he loves you? and that he loves you unconditionally and he wants to empower you through the Holy Spirit to live in the way that he has called you to live. He knows that you can't do it. He knows that it's not within you to be holy. We don't get holy by willpower or by beating our bodies or by starving ourselves. That's going back to the Beggarly Elements, you see. It's a type of Christianity which has been tried and it's failed. We have to, as we'll go on to see in the later chapters, walk in the Holy Spirit. We walk in the power of the Holy Spirit. And then, finally, Paul in this little summary talks about not just man's plight but also God's provision. 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. Notice that God's provision of salvation is the work of the Trinity, Father, Son and Holy Spirit. It's the work of the Father because it says grace and peace come from God the Father in verse 3 and from our Lord Jesus. And salvation, the end of verse four, is according to the will of God and our Father. You see, the Father sends his only begotten Son, Jesus, into the world to be our Savior. Salvation is the work of the Father. It's, of course, the work of the Son, because Paul says here, who gave himself for our sins. Paul emphasizes here the great sacrifice that Christ has made to save us. And no doubt I think he's rebuking the insult that they are heaping upon the cross by believing that the cross is not sufficient for salvation. Christ surrendered himself to the cross. The father sent him, but Christ was not forced into being the substitute. There's a type of preaching of the doctrine of propitiation or the atonement that gives the impression that the father was almost whipping the son against his will to the cross. And that is a kind of punishment. against the will of the son, but no, the father willingly sent the son and the son willingly came. He offered himself. And it's the work also of the Holy Spirit, because in chapter four and verse six it says, and because ye are sons, God hath sent forth the spirit of his son into your hearts, crying, Abba Father. Without the triune God, there is no salvation. And at the back of all of our salvation is the will of God. It's simply the will of God. That's the root source of salvation. Paul talks elsewhere of the good pleasure of his will, of God's will. The plan of salvation was not something God had to do. It's not something anyone was in a position to tell him he ought to do. It was his own free will. He sent his son for us out of his own good pleasure. He delighted to do it. God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son. And by so doing, he has resolved the terrible plight of man. There is now an answer to our sin and bondage. There is deliverance from this present evil age. That's the gospel. In verse six, and this will close, there is this little doxology, this thanksgiving. Sorry, verse five, rather. In the light of all that, Paul says, to whom be glory forever and ever. Amen. A doxology inspired by such great thoughts of God's provision. All the glory goes to God, doesn't it, for this salvation. what wisdom it took for God, think about it, who had to design a plan of salvation that had to be compatible with his own will and nature and justice and at the same time deal with the reality of the human condition. We could never have worked it out. But God has sufficient wisdom. to come up with a plan that works and which does not deny his own nature. He can be just and the justifier at the same time. Wisdom found a way. Divine love found a way. The father gave his son in order to save you and to save me. And we should be rejoicing even on this hot night that Jesus loves me, this I know, for the Bible tells me so. There was a chorus I used to sing as a child. I think it's probably a Pentecostal one. My parents were Pentecostals, so it's probably where I got it from. But it was a lovely hymn and a chorus. It said, oh, the love. that drew salvation's plan. Oh, the grace that brought it down to man. Oh, the mighty gulf that God did span at Calvary. The wisdom and the love of God is given himself, offered himself for you and for me. Let us live for him. And I pray that as we go through yet more wonders in this epistle, that our love for him and will increase in our obedience also. And may the Lord bless his word to us. Feel free to contact us at Sovereign Grace Church in Tiverton. Email us at grace2seekers at gmail.com. That's grace2seekers at gmail.com. Alternatively, you can visit our website at www.sovereigngracereformedchurch.co.uk.