Galatians. And we started it this morning, Joseph. And I'm going to take just a minute and review. We did a little bit of introductory material here. Galatians is a book that to me is similar to the book of Hebrews in some ways, because it deals with the question of Judaism. How does Judaism fit into Christianity? And we found in Hebrews that Judaism was sort of a prelude to Christianity. Hebrews was a lot of types and shadows that taught us about Christ. Obviously, the animal sacrifices didn't save anybody, but the sacrifice of Christ saves. And the Levitical priesthood really wasn't all that effective, but it typified the priesthood of Christ. They had all kinds of ceremonies in the Old Testament, and those ceremonies themselves didn't save, but the substance behind those, the real thing, that is Christ and Christianity, is what it all pointed toward. And in the book of Hebrews, of course, there were people in the church that were Jewish people in the church that were threatening to go back to Judaism. They were tempted to go back because of persecution, because of hardships. Many times they were ostracized from their families because they accepted Christ and in effect turned their back on Judaism. And so many were tempted to go back. And so the book of Hebrews is encouraging those people, hang on, don't go back. Because that old form of a religion was just a way to get you to Christ and Christianity. Now in Galatians, the question is, when you believe in Christ for salvation, is that all you need to do? Or do you need to hang on to these old Jewish rites and ceremonies? And in particular, The one right that is at issue in Galatians is the right of what? Circumcision. That's the one that is really specifically mentioned and that is at issue in Paul's mind here. Of course, though, if you allowed If you allowed that circumcision was necessary for salvation, then what's that going to lead to? Well, then we must observe the Jewish feast days then to be saved. We must observe all these other Jewish things. So Paul is going to cut that off at the bud here, and he is going to draw an argument in Galatians that a justification is by faith and by faith alone. This was the great issue that came out of the Reformation. This was really the main issue that was at hand. Is salvation by faith alone or do you have to do other things in the Church? You know, the Roman Catholic Church, you had to do various other things. besides just believe in the Lord Jesus Christ. And they thought that salvation was conveyed through the instrument of the church. No, it's not. It's conveyed through Christ. It is salvation by faith in Christ alone. And that great issue resulted in many people breaking away from the Catholic Church during the Reformation time. Martin Luther was one of those, and Martin Luther has written a great commentary on the book of Galatians, which I'm anxious to get. And he spent a good bit of his life really working on this book of Galatians. Paul had gone through the churches of Galatia on his previous missionary journeys. And when he went through, he preached the gospel and they believed it. And most of the people up in Galatia were Gentiles. And they believed the pure and simple gospel of Paul when he preached. And that is, just believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and thou shalt be saved. It's a free offer of grace. And they were not tempted at that time to even consider whether they should be circumcised or become a Jew or anything like that. That's not what Paul's message was. Paul's message was not believe in the Lord Jesus Christ and become a Jew and you can be saved, was it? No. It was believe in the Lord Jesus Christ. So they believed that when he first came through, but then when Paul left and went back to Antioch, some false teachers came in. And they began to teach the Galatian churches. And you know, believing in Christ is good. Christ did a good thing when he died on the cross, and it's good to believe in him. However. You really need to hold on to these old Jewish rituals, in particular circumcision. It's necessary that you be circumcised in order to be saved. I'm not sure where that left women. I'm not sure how that works out there. You know, circumcision in the Old Testament was just a sign. It was a sign of Jewishness, and it was ordered with Abraham, wasn't it? And it was a sign in Romans chapter 4, I think it's discussed. So that was a sign and a seal that was given to Abraham, but it was not salvation. It was a sign of Jewishness, but a sign that they were God's special people there in the Old Testament. I don't know why I'm throwing that away. At any rate, so Paul is angry. Paul is angry in the book of Galatians when he writes because these Judaizers are coming in and telling the people that they must also be circumcised. I think Paul recognized the severity of that error. Because if you allow for anything else to come in besides faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, then you're talking about a salvation that is different. It's a salvation by works, a salvation by doing something. And so Paul writes with an angry tone here in Galatians. And so Galatians is about Paul defending the gospel in its pure form. This afternoon here, we want to take a look at the first five verses of Galatians. And I told you this morning that the author of Galatians is Paul. You see in verse 1, the first word is Paul. We talked about that this morning. And the first thing that Paul is going to do here is to assert his authority. Because now you've got these Judaizing teachers who have told the churches something. And Paul is going to tell them something else. So the question is, who is right? Who has the authority here? Is it these Jewish teachers that have come in and they're asserting that you must remain a Jew? Or is Paul right when he says, no, no, all you must do is believe on the Lord Jesus Christ. It's faith alone. So the first thing that you will notice that Paul says here is that I am an apostle. And if you could just, I know this is in writing, but if you could just hear his tone here, if you can kind of read between the lines and pick up on his tone, he is asserting with a bit of defiance here, I am an apostle. And what I told you was you are justified by faith alone. And so Paul asserts the fact that he is an apostle. Now, everyone sort of knows, I think, what the word apostle means. Apostle means a sent one. So anyone could be, I mean, it could be an apostle. You could be an apostle in another sense besides a religious sense. If your employer sent you on a mission. you would be a sent one. So you would be an apostle in that sense. And so in the general sense, Paul was an apostle of Jesus Christ. That means that he was sent, he was commissioned. He was authorized to go by Jesus Christ Himself. Now, we saw that this morning. Remember, after Paul was saved, he apparently spent in the neighborhood of 17 years with Jesus Christ personally, with the resurrected Christ. And he received the gospel over those years with a lot of instruction by direct revelation, it said, from the Lord Jesus Christ. So Paul was sent as a general representative of Christ. However, this word apostle, as it's used here, means something more than that. Paul was sent in a way that I'm not sent. I consider myself a sent one. If God has called me to be the pastor, then I'm sent in that way. But Paul was an apostle in a special sense. And that is that Paul was Paul occupied the highest office in the church. The highest office that there possibly could be other than Jesus Christ himself, who is the head of the church. The next in line is the apostles. And Paul was claiming to be not just a sent one, but a high officer in the church of Jesus Christ. Now there are a couple of places where these officers are mentioned. If you look over at Ephesians, look at Ephesians chapter 4 and you'll see here where Paul is describing the various gifts that God has given to the church. Look at Ephesians 4.11. It says, And he gave some apostles and some prophets and some evangelists and some pastors and teachers. And you'll notice that the highest on the list, the first on the list there, is apostles. It is a special office in the church. 1 Corinthians 12, 28 says, And God hath set some in the church, first apostles, secondarily prophets, thirdly teachers, and so forth. And so there are various officers that are set up in the church. And the highest office of all, other than Jesus Christ, was the apostles. And when Paul says, I am an apostle, Paul is here putting himself on a par with the original apostles of Jesus Christ. And that is at issue here in Galatia. perhaps these Judaizing teachers are saying, well, we agree that Peter and John and James and all them were apostles. And Paul may have some claim to apostleship, but he's sort of a little apostle. He's not really on a full rank with those other original apostles. But when Paul says, Paul, an apostle, he's putting himself here, I think, on par with the originals. This office is a most unique office. It is an extremely authoritative office in the church. In fact, when the apostles spoke on behalf of Christ, their words were infallible. That is their great distinction. They are the only ones in all of history, you know, the prophets and the apostles, of course, when God spoke directly to people and then they spoke for God, the apostles and the prophets were infallible in their speaking. And in the New Testament, it's the apostles basically that were giving God's word and they were infallible. It was just as though Christ was speaking Himself. Listen to what Paul said in 1 Corinthians 14.37. In 1 Corinthians 14.37 it says, If any man think himself to be a prophet or spiritual, let him acknowledge that the things I write unto you are the commandments of the Lord. Paul is claiming there that the things I am writing are actually the words of the Lord. So that's quite a statement. And it's not a statement that you and I can ever make. You know, it would be wrong for me or anyone else to stand up and say my words are infallible. They're not. And so it's your responsibility to check out everything that I say because I'm not an apostle. But Paul was an apostle. And the things that he wrote, in fact, were the commandments of the Lord. There were only a handful of men in all of history who were invested with the authority of apostleship. And they were all men who had intimate fellowship and intimate instruction by Christ himself, either during his earthly ministry or after his resurrection. Now, of course, Paul had instruction from Christ after Christ's resurrection. But nevertheless, it was personal instruction by Christ. Now, the Scriptures teach us that the apostles and the prophets laid the foundation of the church. Look at Ephesians 2, 19 and 20. Ephesians 2, 19 and 20. It says there, Now therefore ye are no more strangers and foreigners, but fellow citizens with the saints and of the household of God, and are built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Jesus Christ himself being the chief cornerstone. So the whole church of Christ is built upon the truth that was laid down by the apostles and the prophets. These men received direct revelation from Christ himself and they wrote these words down by the inspiration of the Holy Spirit. And their words are thus the very words of God. They are infallible and they are authoritative. And so that's the way we view their words. Now the churches of Galatia were struggling with this idea of authority. And Paul is telling them, I am an apostle. I am on equal footing with Peter and James and John. My words are authoritative words. My words are the words of Christ himself. I am an apostle, and you better take heed to the things that I'm telling you. That's sort of the tone that Paul is bringing to this letter. Now, there were no apostles left on the earth after the first century A.D. All of the apostles, what happened to them? They died, like all other human beings, they all died. But they left the foundation fully laid. Now while they were walking the earth during the first century, they were laying the foundation. And when they wrote their letters, when Paul wrote Galatians and Ephesians and these various epistles, it was laying the foundation of the church. It was the word of God in its totality that was laid down as the foundation. And the purpose of the apostles was fulfilled when that word was completed. And they died. So the question is today, are there infallible teachers on the earth today? I mean, that's the question. We say no, the infallible apostles died, but not until the full revelation of God was complete and sure. Now, let me say this. The Catholic Church maintains that the infallibility of the apostles is passed down. And it is passed down by succession from generation to generation through the popes, through the bishops of Rome. And the Catholic Church maintains that the pope may issue infallible statements of dogma. which are binding upon the church and he so does ever so often they'll issue some kind of a decree and it's binding on all the members of the church. We believe on the other hand that the office of apostle was held by only a few of Christ's closest disciples and that when they died there are no more infallible teachers. But what we do have that is infallible is what they left us And this is in the infallible Word of God. That's why we spend hours and hours and hours studying this thing. This is why when we've got five verses to teach, we spend 40 hours on it to try to figure out what it says, to try to organize it in a way that you can understand it. And we put a lot of emphasis on the word of God because it is the foundation of the church. But we don't believe that apostles now exist. But when Paul was walking the earth, they did exist. And Paul said, I'm an apostle. All right. Now, we're going to see here that Paul describes the origin of his office. Take a look. It says, Paul, an apostle of Jesus Christ, and I'm reading the wrong one over in Ephesians. Let me read Galatians. Paul, an apostle, not of men, neither by man, but by Jesus Christ and God the Father who raised him from the dead. So Paul now is going to describe how it is that he came to be an apostle, and he describes it negatively first. Do you see that? He says, not of men, neither by man. Now it's interesting there that he uses the plural at first, not of men, and then the singular next, neither by man. Also the prepositions are different. And I think the force of it here is when it says not of men, plural, that he is talking about the fountain of his office, the source of it. And he is saying that the source of my apostleship When you go all the way back to the source, the ultimate fountainhead of my apostleship, it has nothing to do with men whatsoever. I am an apostle because God chose to make me an apostle. Now that's a pretty good statement of authority right there, isn't it? And so he is saying that the well from which his apostleship sprung is from God. Every river flows from a source, and Paul's apostleship flowed from a source, and that was God. Now, you remember, what happened when Judas died? Did they elect another person to take his place? And they met together, they drew straws, or whatever they did, and they selected Matthias. Now, I would suspect that Matthias could never say that his apostleship was not of men, because it was of men. Men got together, they drew straws. Now, I suppose that God determined which straw came up. But Paul's apostleship was not from men at all. It was directly from God. Peter, James, and John and all the other disciples didn't get together and name Paul an apostle. It came directly from God. I was going to say that Paul spent very little time with the other men after he was saved. We saw that this morning. But now it says, not of men, neither by man. Now that's in the singular. So I think what Paul is saying there is that his apostleship was not conveyed even through a man. Peter didn't come to Damascus or wherever Paul was and lay hands on him and convey this apostleship on him. So it didn't spring from men as a source and neither was it conveyed through a man as an instrument. God worked directly on and through the apostle Paul and made him an apostle. So it says, not of men, neither by a man, but by Jesus Christ. So Jesus Christ is the one that made Paul an apostle. Therefore, the origin of his office is divine and not human, and his authority is absolute. and cannot be questioned as a work of man." Paul is saying, I was made an apostle by Jesus Christ and therefore what I say is authoritative. Now, even though it's not really front and center in the teaching of verse 1 here, I think verse 1 makes a declaration of the deity of the Lord Jesus Christ. And so we'll divert here for a moment. Paul says, I'm an apostle, and I'm an apostle not of men, neither by man, But by whom? Jesus Christ. He's setting up a contrast there. And he's saying, I didn't receive my apostleship from men, but I received my apostleship from God. That's what he's saying, right? But he used the name Jesus Christ. So to me, that makes a wonderful argument for the deity. of Christ. You know there are many people that deny the deity of Christ including Jehovah's Witnesses and others that deny that Jesus is divine, but my thought is that everywhere in the Bible Jesus is portrayed as being God. And even little references like this prove that the Bible asserts that Jesus Christ is God. Of course, Jesus told us he was as well. He said, I and my Father am one. And so here we see another reference to the deity of Christ. Now, I'd like for you to notice who the addressees of this letter are. This is the only book, as far as I know, written by Paul that was addressed to multiple churches. All the rest of his epistles were addressed to singular churches. So he addressed the book of Ephesians to the church at Ephesus. He addressed Romans to the church at Rome. He addressed Philippians to the people at the church at Philippi and so forth. But to the Galatians, this is to the churches, look at verse 2, and all the brethren which are with me unto the churches of Galatia. Now, we don't know exactly which churches were in this area or which ones the letter was sent to, but Paul was sending his letter to a circle of churches there in Galatia, so apparently the same problem had crept into a series of churches in the area. Now let's hurry on here and take a look at his greeting to the Galatian churches. It says, Grace be to you and peace from God the Father and our Lord Jesus Christ. These are two of the great concepts in the Christian life and Paul often, almost always, greeted his readers with these two words, grace and peace. And it's not unusual that he would do so because Paul preached salvation by grace everywhere that he went. Grace was always on Paul's mind. And so he says, grace to you and peace. Peace is the natural outflowing of having grace in your life. If God does not grace you, then you won't have peace. But if you have the grace of God in your life, there will be peace to a lesser extent on this earth, but to a greater extent there. At any rate, grace and peace are the two great dynamics of the Christian life. And Paul wishes that upon his readers. Now, what you will notice here in Galatians is that is all that he says to the Galatian churches by way of a greeting. It's a very short greeting and it lacks any commendatory words at all. In all of his other epistles, he just went on and on. I thank my God through Jesus Christ for you all that your faith is spoken of throughout the whole world. This, that, and the other. And he goes on and on. And in Ephesians, we've seen in the women's Bible study that 14 verses he went on just praising God for God's grace to them and this, that, and the other. But to the Galatians he says, grace to you and peace, and that's it. Even in 1 Corinthians where there was immorality going on in the church, Paul first said, I thank my God always on your behalf for the grace of God which is given you by Jesus Christ, but there's no such blessing or thanks given in the book of Galatians. Paul sat down with an angry pen and he wrote a stern message to the churches of Galatia about the perversion of the gospel which was going on in the churches. And so there's no further commendation there. Now, let's evaluate again the problem in the Galatian churches. They were wanting to incorporate the old Jewish way of religion into the church. They said, we believe in Christ, we believe that He is the Messiah, but surely these old rites of Judaism should not be abandoned. We have done it this way for 1500 years. Should we now just give it all up? Now, when they were saying that, what were they really saying? And I think that they were basically denying three things. First of all, I believe that they were denying the sufficiency of the death of Christ. And isn't that really always the way of man? Man always wants to make it something he has done instead of something that God has done. And so by saying that you must do something else besides faith in Christ, they are denying that Christ's death was sufficient. Now let me run down a few different religions here and show you how they think you are saved. Of course, we've already talked about Judaism. Judaism is a system of religion that thinks what saves you? Works. It's a system of works. It's called the works of the law in the Bible. And the Bible teaches that the Mosaic Covenant was designed as a system that would work condemnation. And it was a ministry of death, remember? I've quoted that two or three times. It's a ministry of condemnation and a ministry of death. But if you belong to Judaism today, you believe that you get to heaven by a system of works. Catholicism, what do they believe? It's works. Now they believe that you must believe in the Lord Jesus Christ and be saved, but they also believe that you must be baptized into the Catholic Church. And also, after you are saved, you must continue to perform good works or else you'll have to pay some penance, this, that, and the other. So there's always works in the background there in the Catholic religion. Mormonism, saved by works. You must be a member of the Mormon Church to be saved. must be baptized into the Mormon church to be saved. They have various other requirements. You must be faithful to the Mormon church leaders. You must tithe to be saved. And also in Mormonism, I don't know whether you know, they have secret temple rituals. No one is really supposed to know what goes on in there, but they've had defectors that have come out and kind of told and they go into the temple and they perform various rituals in order to be saved. Jehovah's Witnesses, they believe that you must be baptized as a Jehovah's Witness And then you must earn everlasting life on earth by witnessing door to door. That's why you see Jehovah's Witnesses in their white shirts ever so often come up to your door. And they believe that they're earning everlasting life. Now, according to their religion, only one hundred and forty four thousand Jehovah's Witnesses will have eternal life in heaven. Everyone else, all the other Jehovah's Witnesses, will earn some kind of eternal life on earth. The one in heaven is better, but those seats are already taken according to Jehovah's Witnesses, and so now everyone else is working for a lesser salvation. Islam says that humans are basically good, but fallible, but they're fallible and they need guidance And the balance between good and bad deeds determines one's eternal destiny in paradise or hell. So they believe that it's all on a scale and you better do more good than bad or else you're in trouble. But Allah's mercy may tip the scales in your favor. Well, I would say that we have a God that does it all for us. He tips the scale all the way for us. He doesn't weigh our bad and our good, because we don't have much good. We have a lot of bad. Hinduism. Salvation is achieved there through yoga and meditation. Hare Krishna. Salvation is achieved by chanting Krishna's name constantly, by worshiping images and obeying rules of the religion. Buddhism. Salvation is achieved by eliminating all desires and cravings. So if you just set motionless and you eliminate all these desires out of your life, that's the way to be saved. Well, all of those things are works kinds of salvation, but Paul is preaching a different kind of salvation. It's salvation by faith in Jesus Christ. God does not ask you to join any of these religions. He doesn't ask you to do any outward acts. He simply asks that you believe in the Lord Jesus Christ. Now, let me hurry on here. You will notice I was going to mention that the commendation or the greeting here is so very short What does that indicate to you? The fact that he says very little to them, doesn't that indicate to you a certain urgency that Paul has? It's kind of like when your house is on fire, you don't stroll up to the upstairs bedrooms and engage in long conversations, do you? You know, when your house is burning down, you don't greet your children with, hello, how are you doing this evening? You certainly are looking well. Let me take a moment to congratulate you on your fine grades this semester. But you run upstairs and you yell fire, don't you? And that's kind of what Paul did here. He kept his greeting short and so we ran on to the heart of his message. In verse 4, basically Paul is stating the gospel in simple terms in verse 4. He says, speaking of Jesus Christ, he says, 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. Now you'll notice there that it doesn't say anything about circumcision, does it? It doesn't say anything about doing good works, but it does say that Jesus gave himself for our sins that he might deliver us from this present evil world. Who does the acting there? The subject that does the acting there is God. And the recipient of that action is us. And therefore, we see a simple statement of the gospel here that shows that God does the work and we do the receiving. Paul characterizes or sort of restates this in Galatians 3.2. Look at Galatians 3.2. This only would I learn of you. Received ye the Spirit by the works of the law or by the hearing of faith? Now notice what it is that we do there. We receive, right? We receive and it's something that God gives to us. And he calls it the works of the law. Did you receive the Spirit by the works of the law? No, we received it by faith. Jesus gave himself for our sins, in verse 4, that he might deliver us from this present evil world. Now, I started to say a moment ago that when people claim that the sinner must do something to obtain salvation, they are denying the sufficiency of the work of Christ. What they say is, it was a nice thing that he did, but his death alone is not enough. His death is not effective. His death does not really accomplish anything. It may pave the way, it may be the ground of our salvation, but His death does not save. And anyone who takes that position writes over the cross of Christ in big letters, insufficient. Now many people in this world believe that Jesus' death did not save anyone. They believe it just made it possible to be saved. and that later on people will believe or do whatever they do to appropriate Christ's death. But we believe that the scriptures teach that Christ's death actually accomplished something, that his death was effective. Look at Romans 5 for a second, Romans 5, 8-10. Romans 5, 8-10 says, But God commendeth his love toward us in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. Much more than being now justified by his what? by his blood, that of course is his death. Being justified by his death, we shall be saved from wrath through him. Now that passage right there puts a lot of emphasis on the death of Christ, doesn't it? It says we are justified by his blood. Now you and I didn't exist then. But we existed in the mind and the heart of God, and when Jesus died, His death did something. It justified us. For if when we were enemies, we were reconciled to God by the what? Death of His Son. Much more being reconciled, we shall be saved by His life. Therefore, if you are saying that Jesus didn't save anybody on the cross, but you are later saved by something you do, then you are tagging the word that says insufficient on the death on the cross of Christ. How dare these Judaizers come in and teach that the death of Christ is insufficient? How dare they teach that such an act as circumcision would assist the blood of Christ in atoning for sin. And so these Judaizers label the work of Christ as insufficient. So let's go on to point two here. The second thing that they do is that they deny the purpose of the work of Christ. Now, they would say that the work of Christ by itself delivers the sinner from nothing. It is the work of Christ plus the work of the sinner, they say, that delivers from sin. It is faith in Christ plus circumcision that delivers. Today we might say that it is faith in Christ plus baptism, or faith in Christ plus church membership, or faith in Christ plus good works. But notice the true gospel in verse 4, Galatians 1.4, The true gospel in Galatians 1-4 says, "...who gave Himself for our sins that He might deliver us." You see? It's Him giving Himself that delivers us. It's not us doing something that adds to it. So, they deny the purpose of the work of Christ, and I would say lastly, that they deny God the glory in the salvation process. Look, it says, 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. There is a certain glory that goes to God in saving sinners. God purposed to do it And he saves sinners, those sinners that he saves, he saves for a reason, and that is to glorify himself. That's why Paul says, glory be to God forever and ever. And if you say that something you do saves you, then you are denying God, the rightful glory that he deserves in salvation. So those are some of the arguments there that Paul makes in the salutation. And we'll pick up there next time and and get into the heart of chapter one here next time. All right. Any thoughts, questions? Comments, oh me's or oh my's. Yes, sir. Yeah. Yeah, I think that was in the forefront of Paul's mind there was to make sure that they didn't think that he was some kind of lesser apostle. You know, he was saying, I didn't have to go to them. uh... i didn't have it and i didn't go to them uh... to receive my apostleship yes so that i think that is in Yeah, they did. They pretty much had to because of his experience. And these Gentiles were being saved and their salvation was confirmed by miracles and so forth. So they didn't have much choice but to acknowledge that God was in Paul working. But yeah, you're right. And when it says, not of men, neither by man, Part of that means that he didn't go to Jerusalem and have them lay their hands on him and confirm it. It came directly from Jesus Christ. All right, stand with me, please. We'll be dismissed. Our Heavenly Father, we thank you for today. We thank you for your word. We pray, Lord, that you will bless us in our study of Galatians as we study it for the next few weeks. Help us to understand it. Help us to go home with a better understanding each time. Bring us back next time. Keep us safe as we go to our homes. Bless us in our daily walk. And we ask these things in Jesus name. Amen.