Galatians 1, beginning in verse 18. Paul is speaking about his own conversion, or his own growing at this point. Then after three years, I went up to Jerusalem to visit Cephas, and I remained there for 15 days. But I saw none of the other apostles except for James the Lord's brothers. In what I am writing you before God, I do not lie. And then I went into the regions of Syria and Cilicia. And there was also still an unknown person to the churches in Judea that are in Christ. They only were hearing it said that he who used to persecute us is now preaching the faith he once tried to destroy. And they glorify God because of me. Will you pray with me again? Heavenly Father, we praise you. And Father, we thank you that as we come before you this day, that many of us have stories that are not necessarily the same as Paul's, but not unlike Paul's. And people could say of us, the one who used to is now speaking about Jesus. And so Father, I pray that you would bless the reading of this word and hearing. I pray that you would use it to build us up in faith. And Father, I pray too, if it hits the ears of those who do not have faith, Father, I pray that you would use these words to call them to faith. In all things, I pray that you are glorified, that you are magnified, that you are praised, and that you are proclaimed. In these things, we pray in Jesus' name. There's two ideas that we kind of find in our texts this morning. Again, we're working through Paul's testimony. And we kind of talked last time I was up here about the importance of our own testimonies and how God uses our testimonies oftentimes to shape the lives of his people, to build his church. And so this is what Paul is doing, giving us his own testimony. And of course, his own testimony is given five times in the Bible. And just to kind of add some weight to just how important his testimony is. And so he begins kind of, with a little bit of a interim period of time, because there's a little bit of time that happens in between verse 17 and verse 18. And we're going to talk about that a little bit. We're going to talk about how Paul is trained, and we're going to talk a little bit about this last line, about the one who used to persecute, is now preaching the faith that he tried to destroy. And we'll kind of close up with there. And so I want to begin just by jumping over a book briefly to Ephesians 4, 12. In Ephesians 4, verse 12, Paul kind of states the purpose of God giving prophets and apostles and evangelists and pastor teachers to the church. And the purpose is this, to equip the saints to do the work of ministry. That's the purpose of all of these teachers. That's the purpose of the pastor in the church these days. That's the purpose that God gave apostles, which is Paul being an apostle back in the ancient times. And before that in the Old Testament, that's the purpose that he gave prophets, to equip the church to do the work of ministry. And so our Bibles will translate that a little bit, and some of our Bibles, instead of saying equip, will say perfect the church for the work of ministry. Some will say train the church for the work of ministry, but the same basic idea is being conveyed. There's work to do, folks. And as a church, all of us are called to be about that work. Sometimes in bigger churches, people get the mindset that, okay, we pay the pastor, okay, we give him a salary, so that's his job to do all of the work of the church. Okay, we kind of subcontract all of that work out to him. That's not what the Bible says. The Bible says his job is to train the body so that the body as a whole can go about doing that work. And so that's the idea. And the question? The saints. Well, folks, who are the saints? Well, you are the saints. Saints means holy ones. Kind of wrap your head around that a little bit. God's calling you. Paul is calling you, the holy ones of God. You've been set apart. That's what holy means, to be set apart for God's purposes. and not for the world's purposes. And so as the saints, we have the job of ministry. So maybe we need to ask the question, what's ministry? Ministry is service to God. It's mediating. We sometimes do prayers, mediating for God's people when they have troubles or difficulties in their lives. It's mediating, to do that. It's not just in church, but in the community. When you run into somebody who is having a difficult time, don't just say, I'll pray for you and I'll put you on my church's prayer chain. Stop right there and say, let me pray for you right now. Let me pray and petition that the Lord of heaven would reach into your life and address whatever it is that you're facing, good, bad, or otherwise, to care for people, to minister to them, to aid them when they are in need, and even to do some kind of administrative stuff. I don't know about you. Some people like administrative stuff. I don't like administrative stuff. But God raises people up in the church to do the administrative stuff, too, because for a church to function, there are kind of some administrative kind of things that need to happen. Somebody's got to figure out how to work this microphone boom and make sure all that kind of stuff works. and the cogs, as it were, the wheels keep on rolling and stuff along those lines. That's ministry. And imagine this, and for those of you who've been around me long enough, you know I'm always saying this, but you know a Greek word here. You go, oh, I know a Greek word. The Greek word for ministry is diakonia. This is where we get deacon from. Okay, so you've heard about a deacon, diakonos. The work of the deacon is diakonia. Okay, so you know some Greek now. You go, oh, I can sound really smart around the dinner table tonight. You know, but that's the work of ministry. You know, so deacons are kind of an office of the church that is designed to make sure that the work of ministry is done, but not to do it all. to train the whole church to do the work of ministry. And so they're ordained to a particular work of overseeing the church and doing what the church is supposed to do. So pastors and evangelists today, their job, our job is to equip you, is to train you, is to help you perfect the work of ministry in your life. But if I just kind of stop there, we kind of think school. That's where I was trained. I went to school. I went to seminary school to learn the basics of the things that I need to know. And that's important. Don't undermine the importance of that. But if we just kind of stop there, Paul is getting at, infusions here, because he uses another Greek word that we translate as equipment. It's actually the only place in the New Testament that this word shows up, and it's a medical term. Okay, remember who is one of Paul's close associates is a guy by the name of Luke, and Luke was a doctor. So Paul probably learned this word from Luke as a doctor. And this word that is found here is an ancient Greek word that referred to how a doctor would set a bone that's been broken. So essentially, it's like he's using this medical idea to describe what the pastors are doing in the life of the church. Okay, and so if your bone is broken, it doesn't function in the way it's supposed to function. You break your arm, you're not gonna be able to use your arm like you should. You break your rib, you know, you're not gonna be able to, I mean, part of the rib's job is to protect your vital organs. Okay, and so bones have a really important place in our lives. They produce blood cells and they protect things. They kind of use them as levers and, you know, muscles attached to them so we can move around and do all that. If we didn't have bones, we'd be in trouble. And when a bone is broken, if you've ever had a badly broken bone, there's problems, right? And you're limited in what you can do. And so you need a doctor to set the bone straight and then they splint it and they put it in a cast and all those kinds of things so the bone can heal. Well, think about it in the life of our spiritual lives, in the context of the church. Sin has caused our lives to be broken, to be bent, to be twisted, to be discombobled in a variety of ways. And before we're gonna be useful to God, some of those parts of our lives need to be straightened out. Those bones need to be set in place. And so they can heal. And so Paul is kind of saying, look, This is the job of the church. This is the job of those who are pastors, is to take you as people. We're all broken people. You know, we've got messes that have been part of all of our lives. Is to take us as a church and kind of set those bones straight. So we'll be ready to do the work of ministry. And so again, none of us are perfected in this earth. None of us are perfect until we go to heaven. But there's a process of growing in that direction where God is working on us and changing us and transforming us. We see that in Paul. But I think if we're honest, we should see that in ourselves as well. So that's what Paul is saying to equip the body. And then a lot of parts of the equipping of that body, Okay, and so what Paul is saying is this is the job, even though the apostle, and now we go back to Galatians and we have Paul's testimony. And where was he equipped? Where was it where his bones straightened out as it were? Well, it happened during this three year period of time, where he went away into Arabia, to be with the Lord, so he could grow, and so he could learn, as it were, the gospel, you know, and spend time training with Jesus to prepare him for the ministry that he would face. He had an advantage. He was a trained Pharisee, so he knew the Bible inside. Do you understand something? That to be a Pharisee, before you even start your training as a Pharisee, You actually had to have the first five books of the Old Testament memorized. Verbatim. No mistakes. You had to be able to say, I want to recite it all for you. Or your pastor or your trainer would say to you, well begin with the account of Nadab and Abihu in Leviticus. And you had to be able to recite that. That's Paul. That's why he's constantly scripture everywhere, but that's Paul. He already had that. So Jesus is kind of putting the pieces together. I heard one theologian once say that the Old Testament is kind of like a fully furnished room, but it's also dimly lit. It doesn't have bright lights in it. It's not until we have Christ in the New Testament that the lights are given. So all of the pieces of the puzzle of the Gospel are there. We just have trouble seeing it if we're just looking at the Old Testament. Jesus turned the light on, as it were, in Paul's life that he could understand and see the fullness of the Gospel. And then what does Paul do? He goes And he sits in synagogues with Jewish leaders and rabbis, and he debates with them that Jesus is the fulfillment of the Messiah. That was his primary ministry in the early days. And so he had to be trained to kind of see how all of that takes place. And that happened during a period of three years. And we don't know all of the things that happened during that three year period, but I think it's interesting. that the apostles, the original 12, spent three years with Jesus, walking and talking with him where Jesus was teaching them and training them. And now here we have the apostle Paul walking and talking with Jesus, being trained for three years as well. We see this kind of pattern. There's a kind of a mentoring kind of relationship that goes on. If you know in your Old Testament, the account of Elijah, you know, a guy taken up in a whirlwind, And Elisha, the guy that replaced Elijah, we kind of get all our tongues twisted on those guys. Elisha hung out and was mentored by Elisha for six years. before that kind of the past, the baton got passed in terms of the mantle being handed over from one to the other. And so we see this kind of thing going on in the Old Testament as well as in the New Testament. And as James and I were talking earlier in the week, it's kind of ironic that most seminary structures, roughly, I mean, I had some variations, kind of usually place seminary training over about a three year period. And I think there's no, No, I, you know, there's no accident to that. I think they're kind of looking at the model and saying, well, this is, this is, this is the time we'll use to train somebody in the Bible, to train somebody in the languages of the Bible, to train somebody in theology and church history and, and how to defend the faith and about how to think about the world and philosophy and all of those kinds of things. They have that kind of training so that you're ready to engage in the work of ministry. and or to equip people to straighten bones in the life of the church that had been broken. So that much we know in terms of that's modeled there. So verses 17 and 18, we don't know a whole lot. We do know two things about what took place during this three year period. One, that he went to Arabia. And while he was in Arabia, he eventually would spend time in the city of Damascus. And he engaged in debates in the synagogues, basically confronting the Jews that Jesus was the Messiah. And the second thing that we know, and that's what we find in Acts 9 verses 19 through 22. Second thing is we know that after some time there, Paul had earned the hatred of the governor. of that region, a guy by the name of King Arias, and who basically desired that Paul should be killed. We find that in 2 Corinthians 11, verse 32. And so Paul's friends and allies helped him escape from Damascus by putting him in a basket and lowering him over the wall so he could run to safety. And so we find that again in 2 Corinthians 11, verse 33 in Acts 9, verses 23 through 25. Beyond that, we don't know anything. Anything else we would say would be just pure speculation. So, again, the principle of training. Three years, roughly, that Paul spent during this time. And it's something that I believe in. But again, there's good ways of doing it and maybe not so good ways of doing it as well. And we can't limit it to just classroom knowledge. you know, young man training in seminary is to get engaged in ministry and be mentored and by somebody who is a mature pastor who can kind of walk alongside of you to engage in ministry. I mean, one of the best things that ever happened to me is while I was a student in seminary, I was a chaplain at a homeless shelter and had men week in and week out that I was working with that were addicts and just on the streets for years of their life. And so it was a wonderful, wonderful training opportunity. All of that being said, that leads us to verse 18. And Paul writes, and after three years, I went up to Jerusalem to get to know Cephas. We don't use the name Cephas very often, but that's the Aramaic version of Peter. Okay, so it's the same guy. Peter Cephas is the same guy who's also known as Simon. So don't get too excited by the name Cephas. There's different languages and our names sound different in different languages. Okay, and so this is the Aramaic language that he is using here. And he says, I stayed with him for 15 days. Okay, so here's Paul. He's engaging and entering into ministry, but what does he do first after his training? He goes to meet with Peter. Peter is the recognized leader of the church. He is the head of Jerusalem. He is the apostle to the Jews. Paul is going to eventually be the apostle to the Gentiles. But he goes there to establish a relationship, to kind of say, look, we are on the same team. Just making sure that we don't think we're competing with one another or something along those lines. And I want your blessing and I want your approval. And in terms of submitting to authority, that's a very biblical idea, is the importance of authority there. And not just kind of running off as a loose candidate and going, hey, I'm doing my own thing. Americans like to do that. Americans like to say, hey, I'm doing my own thing. And so he goes and he sits with Peter for 15 days. Peter has any opportunity, any question that he might have for Paul, he asks him. He has that opportunity to ask him. And then he'll eventually vouch for him, you know, when, Paul continues on and questions arise. So verse 19, he says, I saw none of the other apostles except for James, the Lord's brother. Now, we have kind of a question mark here that people get all excited about. And maybe a good Wednesday night discussion is, who were the apostles? Okay, I mean, how many were there? Okay, because some people say, well, there was just 12. It had to be 12. Judas kind of fell off, but wait a minute, they replaced Judas with Matthias. And so where does Paul fit into this? And now Paul seems to be referring to James, who's Jesus' brother, who doesn't come to faith until after the resurrection of his brother. It's like, kind of, how do I make of this guy? You know, what do I do here? And so it's a good conversation to have, but let me just kind of put it this way. It seems to be, you can kind of read this one in two ways. He said, look, I didn't see any of the apostles, but he did, by the way, I did run into Jesus's brother, James. You could read it that way, or you could read it as if there's a suggestion that he is an apostle, he's treated as an apostle because he is a leader in the church. He becomes one of the early pastors of the church in Jerusalem. Peter is kind of the great overseer of the church as it spans out, but there needs to be local pastors. And you know, Jesus' own brother, James, who gives us a book of the Bible, by the way, ends up being one of those pastors, okay? which I think is kind of a really neat thing in terms of our brothers. But you can see him referenced as a brother in Mark 6, 3, and it seems to have come to faith in reference in 1 Corinthians 15, 7. And again, by Acts 15, 13, he's prominent in the church, okay? And so we kind of see this. And so Paul goes on, and in verse 20, He makes a really bizarre statement. He says, look, in what I'm writing to you before God, as God is my witness, is basically saying, I'm not lying to you about this. And you go, what? Why is Paul writing about lying and not lying and stuff along those lines? Doesn't he know he's being inspired by the Holy Spirit? I think there's a sense that he does know that he's being inspired by the Holy Spirit. But remember what the problem with the church in Galatia is. They've accepted a different gospel. There are others that are coming around saying, yeah, that Paul guy, eh, he's really not, he's not really a good guy. Okay, and so he's testifying to the fact that he's been called by Jesus himself. Okay, so he's trying to add emphasis here saying, look guys, pay attention to what I'm saying. Hey, really, this is true. You know, our kids do that to us sometimes when they're just trying to reinforce the point. Look, I'm not lying to you, mom. just to drive that point home. Okay, and I think that's what he is doing there. So verses 21 and 22 really bring us to kind of the rest, actually we're at 23, but he says, look, I went from there, I went into the region of Syria and Cilicia, these are Gentile, these are non-Jewish areas, and I'm still unknown to the church in Judea. And isn't that wonderful? Too many people are all about building up their own names. Paul doesn't care whether his name is built up. We shouldn't care whether our names are remembered beyond tomorrow. We should care the name of Christ is remembered. And if we are forgotten and Christ is remembered, then praise the Lord. But it's not my ministry. It's not anybody's ministry. It's not this church's ministry. It's Christ's ministry. And Paul embodies that. He's like, look, nobody really knew who I was. I was still kind of confused. And in verses 22 and 23, we get the point that they dwell on, which is, I think, one of the most powerful and profound statements that you can make about anybody. He says, they only heard it said that our persecutor is now preaching the faith that he once tried to destroy. glorify God in me." You know, I don't know about you, but I can't think of a better description for a preacher to be remembered by. I can't think of a better description for a Christian to be remembered by. He who used to attack the faith, who used to put Christians to death, now preaches Christ. So we were talking about earlier, about Psalm 139, we pray for our enemies, that God oftentimes will either destroy them or convert them, one or the other, bringing an end to their persecution. But we desire that they come to faith in Jesus Christ, as you have brought me, God, to faith in Jesus Christ. You know, and what a powerful testimony. It's the same kind of testimony that is made of many of the early church leaders, St. Augustine, Constantine, and later a guy by the name of Charlemagne, if you know something about the history in France. We could spend weeks talking about conversions like this of the past. One of my heroes is C.S. Lewis, who was trained to be the defender of atheism in his day. He was trained to be an attack dog against Christians and in God's grace, he ended up becoming one of the greatest apologists for Christianity in the 20th century. That's how God works. I think of Odie Bauckham and his name, because he recently just passed away, and I guess I'm at that age where people, when they're my age, passing away, I take notice of that, because that guy's younger than me by a couple months, but he's younger than me and he passed away. Barry Bauckham is a great Baptist preacher and minister. I've learned a great deal from him. He was raised as a Buddhist though. And God worked faith in that Buddhist and changed him and made him one of the great American preachers of this generation. And I read an article recently about a man named Hamed in Egypt who had been raised as a Muslim extremist. destroying churches, and doing all kinds of nasty things to Christians. And recently, he has come to faith in Jesus Christ, and his life has been transformed. I also read recently of a man by the name of Aaron Abramson, who was raised as an Orthodox Jew, and was never satisfied in his Judaism, and sought answers, and sought answers, and sought answers. The answer ultimately came when somebody confronted him with the gospel of Christ, that Christ was the Messiah. And then, what's even crazier about his story is he ended up in a church that was pastored by a guy who was a former Muslim. A former Arab leader. So you've got a former Arab leader, now a Christian, pastoring a church full of Arabs, where this new, former Orthodox Jew, who is becoming a Christian, and they embrace each other as brethren. That's the way the Gospel works. It changes us. It transforms us. The one we used to be, we are no longer that person. There's power in the Gospel, folks. And sometimes we don't see that power in the gospel taking place because we're too timid to take a stand and to share that gospel with others, particularly those who would hate us for the gospel. The second thing I want to point out about that statement about Paul is that that's my prayer. that language would be applied to all of us. The one that used to be is now. And that's how we would be remembered. Whatever, whatever, fill in the blank for you. I can know the things that I used to be and I am no longer. And I praise God for that. But fill the blank in for you, that people can say that of you, that you have been transformed. as you have been made into a new creation. Paul would write, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation, the old has passed away. The new has come and all of this is of God, who reconciled us to himself and gave us this ministry of reconciliation. Folks, if you're a Christian this morning, Part of the purpose of God reconciling you to himself is so that you can take that gospel of reconciliation with us. That you can reconcile others to yourself, others to each other, but also point them to reconciliation in Jesus Christ. We live in a world where there's a lot of people who are overwhelmed by the guilt and the grief of their own sin. and feel burdened down that they can't escape from what it is that they're trapped in. Folks, that's our job. That's that work of ministry that we're supposed to be equipped for, the bones are supposed to be straightened for, so that we go and take that gospel to those people so they know too that they can be reconciled to God and that God will transform them. Thirdly, the result of this is that Christians celebrate. They don't feel guilty. They don't feel jealousy. They don't feel fear. They celebrate and give God praise that God is really working. I think sometimes the church isn't effective. because the church is afraid to actually take a step out and is afraid to risk something that is comfortable to engage in ministry. So let me close with a couple of final thoughts here and we'll kind of wrap things up. First of all, true fame, true fame is God being glorified and you being forgotten. That is contrary to the culture. In the culture, we all want to be famous and have our name written on a plaque somewhere. You know, a star put in the concretes, you know, of Hollywood's whatever walk of fame. You know, a baseball player, a musician, whatever. We want that. We want to be glorified. But you know what? It's not about our glory, because you and I are coming and going. And in a hundred years, in a thousand years, it won't matter. What matters is God being glorified. So true fame is God being glorified and you being forgotten. Secondly, God can change the worst and most evil of hearts just as he changed our hearts. Paul was a murderer and God transformed his life and made him into a preacher of the gospel. It can happen to you too. Thirdly, sin estranges us. It separates us from God. That's the reason we need the gospel. Jesus dealt with our sin so that in faith that we might have salvation and we might be reconciled to God. But our continual sin, once we've been saved, it still estranges us. It separates us from God. So look at your life. Find those areas where you're struggling with sin and put those areas to death. Don't look with any sense of sympathy or compassion towards that which is evil in your life. There's an old Puritan who used to say that by our putting affection, our cares, our love towards sin, And we do it every time we engage in sin. When we put our love into sin, it's like taking perfume and dumping it into a pigsty. You know, it ain't gonna make the pig smell any better. And we've just wasted something good in terms of the perfume. Something of value. Your affections, your loves have value. Place them on something that is worthy of that value. Place them upon God and on himself. And separate yourself from those things that are evil. And lastly, when people meet you, people who used to know you in the old days, when they meet you, they should notice something that has changed in you. They should recognize that you're different than you once were. And don't try and be cool with kind of, well, I can still fit into that crowd. be different, be separate, be ye separate, that God might be glorified. And by that difference, that doesn't mean we have to snub our nose at them. It doesn't mean that we look down upon them or any of those kinds of things. We show them grace and mercy, but they should notice something in us that is different than the man or woman that we once were. And that's half of our testimony. that the one who used to be now shares the gospel of Jesus Christ. Let's pray. Heavenly Father, I praise you and I thank you for the testimony of Paul. But I thank you for the testimony that you have worked and mentioned every person here because you have changed us and transformed us. You have had mercy upon we who deserve no mercy. You've given us grace where we are worthy of nothing but your wrath. So Father, I pray that you would work in this church, that you would glorify your name. I pray that you would minister to those who struggle, who are struggling, who are having battles with health issues and things like that, addiction issues, hurt, grief. I pray that you would give travel mercies to our friends, our brothers and sisters in Christ who are out west this day. And I pray that you would return them safely, that we might once again glorify you. And Father, I pray your mercies would abound in this land, and the witness of Christ would be profound in this part of this world, and that it would spread to all the earth. All this we pray in Jesus' name. Amen.