Well, good morning, church. If you will, open your Bibles with me to Galatians chapter 1. Galatians chapter 1, with the Lord's help, we'll be examining verses 1 through 5 this morning. As you're turning there in your Bibles, I want to remind you again of the occasion for this particular letter. Galatians is probably Paul's earliest surviving letter, having been written around 50 AD. It was written on the heels of his first missionary journey, where Paul and Barnabas had visited and planted a number of churches in the region of South Galatia. And no sooner did they get back to their sending church in Antioch, when Paul receives word that these newly established churches had been infiltrated by false teachers, Judaizers, who were trying to place the yoke of the ceremonial law around the necks of the Galatians. and sensing that the very heart of the gospel was at stake, Paul wastes no time and pens this letter defending the doctrine of justification by faith alone. Now, one thing that you'll notice as we read this opening salutation of Galatians is that on one hand, it's exactly like every other salutation the Apostle Paul ever wrote. For example, Paul blesses the Galatians by pronouncing grace and peace to them from God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. Paul does this in all 13 of his letters. His recipients are always being reminded of God's grace to them in the Lord Jesus Christ and of the peace that that grace produces. But on the other hand, you'll notice that Galatians is utterly unique. It is the only one of Paul's 13 letters that does not contain some sort of warm, personal, pastoral greeting. It's the only one that misses those things. Missing from this letter to the Galatians are the familiar statements from Paul, like the one that he wrote to the saints in Colossae. We always thank God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, when we pray for you. or to the Thessalonians. I thank my God and all my remembrance of you always in every prayer of mine for you all making my prayer with joy. Even the pain in the neck church at Corinth received a warmer greeting than the Galatians did. I give thanks to my God always for you because of the grace of God that was given you in Christ Jesus. These sorts of phrases are missing from Galatians. And accordingly, we get a sense of the urgency with which Paul was writing. He had no time for such pleasantries when the very heart of the gospel was at stake. And so before we begin and read our passage, let us pray and seek God's help. Father, we pray that You would be gracious to us this morning that you would pour through the merits of Christ your spirit out upon us, upon me as I'm preaching and upon your people as they hear. I pray that you would push out, Lord, the distractions from the outside world, as was mentioned in our call to worship, those things that have happened in the past week that are weighing heavy on us or the anxieties that we see in the coming days that perhaps are weighing heavy on us. Lord, we pray that you would give us grace to push those things out and to receive the food from your word that you have for us this morning. We pray this not because we're deserving of it or because we've earned it in some form or fashion, but because Christ has earned it. And we pray that you would be pleased to answer our prayer in his name. Amen. Well, let us read from Galatians 1. We'll be reading the first five verses. Galatians 1, verses one through five. Hear the word of God. Paul, an apostle, not from men nor through man, but through Jesus Christ and God the Father, who raised him from the dead, and all the brothers who were with me, to the churches of Galatia. Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ who gave himself for our sins to deliver us from the present evil age according to the will of our God and Father, to whom be the glory forever and ever, amen. And we can add our amen to that. Well, embedded in these five verses, we find the entire letter to the Galatians in a nutshell. We find Paul's defense of justification by faith in a nutshell. It's as if he's using this salutation to provide a preview of what's to come in the body of this letter. He begins by defending his apostleship in verses one and two, a defense that parallels the first two chapters of Galatians. Then in verses three, four, and five, Paul blesses the Galatians with the declaration of God's grace, a saving grace that justifies rebellious sinners and makes peace between them and a holy God. And these three verses are a preview of Paul's argument that will be unfolded primarily in chapters three and four. So we have something here of a preview of coming attractions in this opening salutation. And to help with our examination of this introduction, I've established four different headings. First, Paul's Apostleship Challenged. Second, Paul's Apostleship Affirmed. Third, Paul's Message Declared. And finally, Paul's God Glorified. Let's begin first with Paul's Apostleship Challenged. As was his custom, Paul identifies himself as the author of Galatians, penning his name at the very beginning of the letter. Verse 1, Paul. 13 of our New Testament books begin in this way, and we can hardly conceive of a New Testament which does not contain the doctrine, the ethics, the prayers, the praises of Paul. And mercifully, God saw fit to appoint this man, Saul of Tarsus, the apostle Paul, as his servant to be carried along by the Holy Spirit of God, recording for time and eternity the word of God. And we also notice here that Paul, consistent with his custom, does not stop by simply giving his name. There is a sort of escalation here in verse one, or more properly, a decomposition, with Paul working downward to the very foundation of who he is, to the very root of his apostolic authority. Look with me again at verse one. He starts with Paul, then an apostle. Next, not from man nor through man. And finally, but through Jesus Christ and God the Father who raised him from the dead. Each of these distinctions are important and they contribute to Paul's personal credibility with the Galatians, but more importantly, they establish the credibility of his doctrine. And as we read Galatians, especially these first two chapters, we always need to keep in mind that the Judaizers, the men whom Paul refers to as the ones who want to distort the gospel of Christ, the ones who were troubling the Galatians, the ones who had bewitched the Galatians, the ones who want to make a good showing in the flesh, these Judaizers came into Galatia shortly after Paul had left and began to immediately undermine his credibility. The Judaizers were not simply taking shots at Paul's doctrine of justification. They were substantiating those shots by attacking his apostleship, seeking to erode his credibility in the eyes of the Galatian Christians. Paul, yeah, he means well. Paul's a nice guy and all, but you know he's not a real apostle. Oh, you didn't know that? Well, Paul didn't study at the feet of Jesus like the real apostles did. He never knew Jesus. He didn't walk with Jesus like the real apostles did. These were the sorts of accusations being levied at Paul. Now, out of his 13 letters, nine of them include a reference to his apostleship in the greeting, but only one of those nine address his apostleship in the negative. And that's Galatians. Paul, an apostle, not from men nor through man. Paul is aware of this claim the Judaizers were making about him, that his apostleship was of human origin, that it wasn't authentic like the calling of the other 12 apostles. In this approach that the Judaizers are taking, it makes sense. After all, you can't simply attack Paul's doctrine. As long as Paul is seen and recognized as a divinely appointed spokesman of Christ, as long as he is seen as a true apostle, his doctrine has to be true. It has to be pure. There is no other option. Apostle of Christ cannot lie. And so we need to take that into consideration here. The word apostle, it literally means a sent one or a commissioned one. However, the usage of this word in the New Testament, it's almost exclusively in reference to those men who were commissioned by Christ to serve as his authorized messengers and representatives. And we see here in verse one that Paul is not a self-commissioned man, nor has he simply been commissioned by another man or another apostle. He was commissioned by the risen Christ to be his messenger, to be his apostle. And R.C. Sproul explains that similar to the Old Testament prophet, the New Testament apostle was divinely chosen, divinely called, divinely commissioned, divinely gifted, and a divinely inspired agent of revelation. So take a minute and put yourself in the shoes of the Judaizers. If Paul has been divinely chosen, If he's been divinely called, if he's been divinely commissioned, divinely gifted, if he's been made a divinely inspired agent of revelation, how are you going to convince the new Christians in Galatia that Paul is wrong? How are you going to convince them that justification by faith alone is wrong? How are you going to get them to buy into your system of works righteousness? Well, you have to attack the legitimacy of Paul's office. You have to claim that he's not truly an apostle of Jesus Christ. You see, to undermine the teaching, the Judaizers had to undermine the teacher. To undermine Paul's creed, they had to undermine the carrier. To undermine the message, they had to undermine the messenger. And so they called into question the validity of Paul's apostleship before the Galatian Christians. And let's just note, Paul is in good company in this respect. Not only were the prophets of old rejected, but the chief apostle himself, the sent one of the father, he was despised and rejected. He came to his own and his own did not receive him. We remember what they said about him. Is not this the carpenter's son? Is not his mother called Mary? Are not his brothers James and Joseph and Simon and Judas? And are not all his sisters with us? The Bible tells us that Jesus' own hometown would not accept him being the chief apostle from the father. They took offense at him. And so having his credibility attacked here by the Judaizers, Paul is really in good company being with Christ himself. And saints, there's a point of application here for us. Although you and I are not apostles, there is something about being slandered for the sake of Christ that we need to be aware of. Jesus says to his disciples in Matthew chapter five, blessed are you when others revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account. Rejoice and be glad for your reward is great in heaven for so they persecuted the prophets who were before you. And we live in a day and age where religion, especially biblical Christianity, is not popular. And in many ways, this is a return to what has been the norm throughout the history of the church. And friends, if you walk on the narrow path for long enough, you will inevitably find yourself facing backlash, facing ridicule, facing slander, facing persecution. And we all need to hear Paul's exhortation to Timothy where he says, indeed, all who desire to live a godly life in Christ Jesus will be persecuted. He goes on, while evil men and imposters will go on from bad to worse, deceiving and being deceived, but as for you, Timothy, and I would say as for you, Bereans, continue in what you have learned and have firmly believed. So may God give us grace to persevere and to finish well. Well, although the Judaizers may have been the first group to try and discredit Paul's authority, they were certainly not the last. In fact, in this respect, the spirit of the Judaizers lives on to the present day in the professing church. There are many evangelicals who want to undermine Paul's authority specifically as it relates to things like the roles of husbands and wives, for example. The idea that a wife would submit to her own husband as to the Lord, this is an abhorrent thought to many in the professing church. After all, haven't we progressed beyond the barbaric concept of male headship? Isn't that something we left behind years and years ago? There are also many evangelicals who want to undermine Paul's authority as it relates to matters of governance and teaching within the local church. When Paul says clearly that women in the church should learn quietly with all submissiveness, and that he does not permit women to teach or to exercise authority over men, when Paul lays down clear rules of order for the church in this manner, many people find themselves being offended. There was a controversy a couple of years ago in the Southern Baptist Convention. I don't think it's ever been resolved. where formerly so-called conservative men were defending churches who were inviting women to preach to their congregations on Mother's Day, as if that's some sort of acceptable practice. And whatever the reason, and I find it hard to justify their behavior beyond these men simply trying to gain favor with the world, but for whatever the reason, these men made fools of themselves, trying to argue against Paul's clear instructions regarding teaching and authority within the church. 1 Timothy 2, verse 12, I do not permit a woman to teach or to exercise authority over a man. Rather, she is to remain quiet. And here's a question. How does this verse make you feel? I would submit to you that even us in a conservative, reformed church, even we might find ourselves being a tad bit uncomfortable here when we hear that verse and hear this language from the apostle. And if that's the case, I would submit to you that that's an illustration of the power of the spirit of the age. Friends, the world is always pressing in on us. It's always looking to conform us to its image, to get us to act the way it acts, to get us to think the way it thinks, to get us to feel the way it feels. We are shaped, even when we don't realize it, by the things that we watch, the things that we listen to, the things that we read, the people that we choose to make our friends. These things are not neutral. They have an impact on us. And we have to actively fight against conformity to the world's pattern of thinking and be transformed by the renewing of our minds with God's word. We have to submit ourselves to what God's word says, and we have to do it in season and out of season, when it's in vogue in our culture and when it's not. And part of pushing back against conformity to the world's pattern of thinking is to recognize falsehoods when you hear them. Now we don't have time to go over all of these, but I have one favorite catchphrase of those who want to undermine the authority specifically of the Apostle Paul. You'll hear this. Well, Jesus never said. Friends, anytime you hear someone say, Jesus never said, that ought to be like a tornado siren going off in your mind. There is a storm brewing here. Saints, the inspired words of Paul in the scriptures are the words of Jesus. They are the words of the divine son. They are the words of the triune God. Undermining Paul's authority is a fast track to undermining the doctrine of inspiration and infallibility of the Bible. It's to participate in the sin of the Judaizers in Galatia who were claiming that Paul wasn't a real apostle, that he wasn't a true messenger of Christ. Friends, through multiple persons, through multiple pens, through multiple parchments, our Lord speaks in the Bible in one voice. And we are to hear that. You've heard it said before, if our red letter Bibles were completely consistent, every word in them would be read. because every word in the Bible is the word of Christ. All scripture is breathed out by God and is profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness. So may God grant us grace to lay hold of this truth and to gain a firm confidence in his word. So we've seen Paul's apostleship challenged by the Judaizers. Next, let us see Paul's apostleship affirmed. Verse one, Paul, an apostle, not from men nor through men, but through Jesus Christ and God the Father, who raised him from the dead. Now Paul's purpose here in pointing to Jesus Christ and God the Father, it is to validate his apostleship, and rightfully so. In the introduction here, he's preparing the minds of the Galatians, excuse me, he's priming their minds to hear and to believe the doctrine of justification by faith that he's going to unfold in the body of the letter. So there's a purpose here in Paul validating his apostleship like this. However, I don't want you to miss what this statement teaches us regarding the two natures of Jesus Christ. Remember, Paul had just made the clarification that his apostleship was not from men nor through man. His authority was not given to him by a mere man. But in the same breath, he turns around and he says that his apostleship is through Jesus Christ. Again, his apostleship is neither from nor through a man, but through Jesus Christ. And so it must follow then that Christ was not a mere man, but rather the God-man, truly God from all eternity, truly man from Bethlehem onward. And because Christ is divine, Paul mentions Him side by side with the Father. This would be inappropriate if there was not inequality that exists between the Father and the Son. Paul's apostleship is through Jesus Christ and God the Father. Commentator J.V. Fesco says this, Paul's calling was rooted in the will of the triune Lord, not his own. The stamp of the Trinity is all over Paul's ministry. Paul was a minister of Jesus Christ. He preached the gospel of God, and he called on the sanctifying power of the Holy Spirit. So, understand that Paul's apostolic calling, it is a Trinitarian calling. But notice next, immediately, Paul points back to the humanity of Christ. through Jesus Christ and God the Father who raised him from the dead. Friends, the divine nature of Christ never suffered and died. The divine Son is a most pure spirit, one in essence with both the Father and the Holy Spirit. There was never a time when the divine Son died. But in the wisdom and mercy of God, the Son assumed to himself a human nature. And when the fullness of time had come, he took on flesh. He was born of the Virgin Mary. He matured into manhood. He perfectly obeyed the law of God his entire life. We talked about covenant theology this morning. He was the better Adam, the true Adam, the second Adam, obeying perfectly the law of God his entire life. He then offered himself as a spotless sacrifice to God through the eternal spirit for the sins of his people. He died, he was buried. And he was raised from the dead and in doing so he conquered sin and death. Friends, the Lord Jesus Christ did all of this in his humanity. His deity was not raised because his deity never died. And I want you to see that in Paul's greeting to the Galatians, he affirms one of the great mysteries of the faith. He affirms both the deity and the humanity of Jesus Christ. Now, Paul's purpose in this greeting is not to lay out a detailed exposition of the mystery of Christ's two natures, but it should strike us as significant that Paul so naturally speaks of both natures here in the same breath. The people he was writing to knew what he was talking about. Paul's apostleship is not from a man, it's from Jesus Christ, but that same Jesus died and was raised from the dead. Truly God, truly man. So I want us to think on these things, to think about Christ's two natures, to think about our Lord as Trinity, not as an academic exercise, but as Pastor Jerry mentioned this morning, to stir up holy affections in our hearts for him. Well, in making mention of the unity of the Godhead here, his apostleship again being through Jesus Christ and God the Father, Paul is simply echoing the words of Christ from John chapter 13. Truly, truly, I say to you, whoever receives the one I send, receives me. And whoever receives me, receives the one who sent me. And there are clear implications here for the Galatians. If they receive Paul, then they receive Christ, because Paul was sent by Christ. And if they receive Christ, they also receive the Father who sent Christ into the world. However, if they reject Paul, if they reject the one whom Christ commissioned as his apostle, they are not rejecting Paul alone. They're also rejecting Jesus Christ and God the Father. In other words, Jesus and the Father, they're a package deal. You don't get one without the other. You don't reject one without rejecting the other. The essential unity of the Godhead expressed here in Paul's apostolic calling demands that we come to this conclusion. Look now to verse two. Not only is Paul affirming that he's been called by the Holy Trinity, he also has the support and backing of, quote, all the brothers who are with me. Remember that Paul is most likely writing this letter from his home church in Antioch, having received that notice that the Galatians were already falling away. They were already being drawn into a false gospel shortly after returning from that first missionary journey. And he's writing with the support of all the other leaders at the church in Antioch. If we were to go to Acts chapter 13, verse one, we would read this. Now there were in the church at Antioch prophets and teachers. Barnabas, Simeon who was called Niger, Lucius of Cyrene, Mananin, a lifelong friend of Herod the Tetriarch, and Saul. Alongside the apostle Paul are the other leaders at the church in Antioch, Barnabas, Niger, Lucius, and Manan. All of these men are in harness with Paul. There is unity amongst the officers at the church in Antioch. And friends, when controversy strikes the local church, that is not the time for the leaders of that local church to begin seeking unity, to begin looking for theological common ground. That should already be established. That should already be in place. And in the practice of our local church, Pastor Jerry, myself, and our deacons, we, every year, publicly sign our church's doctrinal statement as an affirmation before all of you and before God about what we believe. Now this public affirmation alone, it does not mean that it's impossible for us to stray from the truth or that it's impossible for us to ever have issues of disagreement that we have to work out amongst one another, but it is a benchmark. It is a milestone that helps us remain intentional in maintaining our theological unity. And our prayer as leaders, and we hope you join us in this prayer, is that the Lord would guard our unity, that he would be the divine peacemaker, as it were, amongst us, not only amongst the leadership, but amongst the congregation as a whole. Even so, the word of God and church history, both of them attest to the fact that it's not a question of if theological controversy will come to the local church. It's only a matter of when. And when it does come, the leaders of the church have to act in lockstep and speak clearly with one voice to the issue, just as the leaders in Antioch did here with Paul. But not only does there need to be unity amongst the leadership for peace to truly reign, there needs to be unity amongst the congregation as a whole. Now, as painful as it was, I'm thankful that we can look back to last year as a church, and we can see that God granted us the unity necessary to speak with one voice, to act in lockstep as a church when former members began making the same claim that the Judaizers were making here, making the claim that salvation is not by faith alone. Yeah, Jesus, that's a great start, I tell you what, but you need Jesus Plus. Jesus plus your obedience. And by God's grace, with one voice, we said no, not here. Would to God that no soul-destroying doctrine such as this ever find a foothold in our local church. May the Lord be pleased to keep our doctrine pure and our unity strong. Well, so we've seen here Paul's apostleship affirmed by God and affirmed in the support that was given to him by all the saints in Antioch. Next, we see Paul's message declared. Starting at the end of verse two, this is where Paul addresses the recipients of his message to the churches of Galatia. That's it. He doesn't say anything else about them. Now we read some of the other greetings that Paul gave, and when we compare this with some of those, Galatians stands out like a sore thumb. As we mentioned, the greeting is notoriously short here. Missing from it are all of Paul's customary pleasantries. There are no prayers. There are no words of encouragement. There's no reference to the good reports he's heard about them, certainly. And if we're trying to take Paul's temperature as we read Galatians, really it's here at the end of verse two where we start to see something's different about this letter. This doesn't sound like Paul normally sounds. His manner of addressing these churches, it should alert us, as I'm sure it alerted them, of the sense of urgency that Paul must have felt while he wrote this letter. And let's look forward just briefly here to verse six. And what we see is a description of why Paul was so troubled. Many in the Galatian churches had indeed imbibed the poison of the Judaizers. They believed the lies that they had heard about Paul's apostleship. And they had begun to believe that Christ alone was no longer sufficient to save them, that they needed to add their obedience to the ceremonial law, in particular circumcision, to the work of Christ in order to be saved. And so what we have here is a theological crisis of the highest degree. And so when we understand that, the seriousness that underlies why Paul is writing here, it makes sense to us why the greeting is short, right? I think we can connect the dots there. But what we might have trouble wrapping our heads around is why Paul refers to the Galatians as churches. They were falling away from the gospel, right? Why does he reference them as churches? Well, one commentator, I believe, rightly suggests this. They are called churches for the sake of those among the Galatians who continued to believe correctly about Christ. For even in the midst of ungodliness, God preserves in his church those 7,000 who have not bowed the knee to Baal. So with Paul addressing this letter to the churches of Galatia, we see that mercifully Christ's lampstand had not yet been removed from their midst. And accordingly, if not a bit ironically, but they are a church, Paul extends now this most amazing benediction to the saints in Galatia. Verses three through five, grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ who gave himself for our sins to deliver us from the present evil age according to the will of our God and Father, to whom be the glory forever and ever, amen. And in these verses, we have the sum and substance of the gospel. We find the core of Paul's message to the Galatians. Indeed, we find the sum and substance of Paul's message to Christians of all ages. These words, friends, are more relevant than any commentary from any news pundit, They are more relevant than any newspaper headline or blog post. They are more relevant than the world's most popular podcast. Embedded in these words are the keys to eternal life, to peace with God. And as such, we ought to pay close attention to them. And I wanna approach this section of our text by examining both grace and peace, answering the questions, what are they and where do they come from? Starting first with the word grace. Grace is God's unmerited favor or goodwill towards sinners. Our God is indeed a God of grace, and there is a sense in which his graciousness is ever being poured out upon his creation, regardless of their relationship to him. And in this common way, God is always extending his unmerited favor, his undeserved goodwill towards mankind, both to those who are in Christ and to those who are outside of Christ. For example, Jesus says in Matthew chapter five that the father makes his son rise on the evil and on the good, and he sends rain on the just and on the unjust. Likewise, Acts 17, Paul makes it clear that God gives to all mankind indiscriminately life, breath, and everything. But in our text, God's grace is inseparably tied to the word peace. In other words, there is a special grace that leads to peace. Now, generally speaking, peace means harmony or tranquility or freedom from worry. But in our text, the peace Paul is declaring to the Galatians is addressing far more than their subjective feelings. It gets to the very heart of their relationship with God, to their standing before God. And to be at peace with God in this sense is to have his wrath removed from you. It is to have his anger and judgment due to sin taken away from you and to be justified before God, to be declared righteous in his sight. And we talked about it this morning. Pastor Jerry and I did not discuss this before the service today, but I think it's important to point out that our father, Adam, our federal head, Adam, Because of his transgression of God's command in the Garden of Eden, every human being that has ever been born, Jesus Christ being the only exception, anyone who has ever been born has been born in a state of sin and misery. Every human being is born in an unjustified state, if you will. God looks on us and renders the verdict guilty, and rightfully so. And because of this, God's wrath abides on us. It waits until the last day when justice will be served and our sin will be punished justly in hell. Now you may not think that's fair, but God alone is the one who determines what is just and what is fair. And the reality is we are by nature enemies at God. We are at war with God. And to illustrate this point, look at how Paul speaks to the redeemed saints in Ephesus regarding their relationship to God before their conversion to Christ, before God's wrath had been removed from them. Ephesians 2, verses one through three, Paul says this, and you were dead in the trespasses and sins in which you once walked, following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience, among whom we all once lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the body and the mind, and listen up, we were by nature children of wrath. like the rest of mankind. The redeemed saints in Ephesus were once children of wrath, like the rest of mankind were at that very moment. Now this is a hard truth to swallow. No one likes to think of themselves as a child of wrath. And I'm sure if we were to go to downtown Powder Springs and ask folks at random, are you at peace with God? I'm sure most of them would answer, sure, I don't have any beef with God. I'm not at war with God. I don't have a problem with God. God has a problem with them. The answer that we find in God's word is that his wrath abides on every human being unless and until that wrath is satisfied and removed. which brings us back to grace, specifically saving grace. Saving grace is God's goodwill towards unworthy sinners given freely in the person and work of Jesus Christ, which makes peace, which satisfies the wrath of God for that individual. Friends, you cannot have peace with God without grace. It is impossible. And in a sense, that's what the Judaizers were telling the Galatians. Grace wasn't enough to get peace with God. This leads to our next question. Where do the grace and peace which Paul speaks of, where does it come from? and we see here at the end of verse three. Saving grace, the grace that produces peace with God, it comes from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. Now there's no negative qualification here like there is for Paul's apostleship where he says, not from men nor through man, but the grace and peace which Paul pronounced to the Galatians could very well have been qualified negatively. Grace and peace to you. not by your own works, not due to your own merit, not because you've been really good lately, but from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. And the title of this sermon is Galatians in a nutshell, Galatians in five verses, if you will. And if you'll remember, the first of our three high-level headings outlining the book of Galatians was titled The Fountainhead of the Gospel. And the fountainhead of the gospel, the good news that Jesus Christ lived, died, and rose again for sinners, the source of this good news is God himself. Saving grace offered freely in the gospel. It is from God himself. It is a free gift from God, the Father, God, the Son, and God, the Holy Spirit. It is not something that you can work for. It is not something that you can earn. If you don't believe me, listen to God's word. Ephesians chapter two, for by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing. It is the gift of God. Not a result of works. Why? So that no one may boast. The gift of saving grace, which makes peace between you and God, must be received by faith in the peacemaker, faith in Jesus Christ alone. And Paul will unfold this to the Galatians and to us as this letter progresses. His central point. is that grace which changes the state of a sinner from being unjustified, declared guilty before God, the grace that changes the state of that sinner to now one that is justified, declared righteous before God, this saving grace is received by faith alone. Sinners, if they are to be justified, are justified in faith in Jesus Christ alone, apart from any works of the law. And we could quote from any number of scriptures. Roman chapter five, verse one is as clear as any other. Therefore, since we have been justified by faith, what do we have? We have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. Do you want peace with God? You must be justified by faith in Christ. Saving grace is personified in Jesus Christ. It must be received freely by faith and it produces peace with God. That is the salvation formula from God. So friends this morning, do you have peace with God? Or does his wrath abide on you? Are you at war with God? If you are, it is not a war you can win. You have to lay down your weapons, as it were, and surrender. And Pastor Jerry illustrated this wonderfully this past Wednesday night. As sinners, our inclination is to stand before God with our hands full. In one hand, we have our sin that we're not willing to let go of. On the other hand, we have all the good stuff that we think we've done, our righteousness. We're not willing to let go of that either. Now, if we talk about this objectively, I think we can all agree our sin is an offense to God and it should be cast off. But as we learned on Wednesday, our righteousness is really nothing more than sin concealed. And it needs to be put with our sin and cast off. And we need to come to God empty-handed so that we may receive freely from him grace upon grace in the person and work of Jesus Christ. If you are at war with God, would today be the day of God's power for you? Would today be the day that you forsake your sin, you forsake your righteousness, and you receive this blessing in verse three, grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. So we've seen that saving grace makes peace between a holy God and guilty sinners, but what is the mechanism of that peace. In other words, how is a holy God able to exercise his justice against sin and grace towards sinners at the same time? Let's read on to verse 4. Grace to you and peace from God our Father in the Lord Jesus Christ, who gave himself for our sins to deliver us from the present evil age. Now, if you were given the task of boiling the Christian faith down to a single word, think about that for a moment, what would your word be? Now, I know that this is really an impossible task to ask you to take something so beautiful, so rich, so glorious, and distill it down to one word. But just think to yourselves, if you were tasked with that, what would that one word be? If I had to try, I think this verse holds the key for me. The Lord Jesus Christ who gave himself for our sins. Christ gave himself for sinners. Substitution. Substitution, that would be my word. If I had to boil our faith down to just a single word, it would be substitution. Christ exchanging his righteousness for our sin and becoming our substitute on the cross and bearing in his own body on the tree the curse that was due to us for our sins. Second Corinthians 5.21, for our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin so that in him we might become the righteousness of God. Substitution, saints. Christ gave himself for our sins. And there is good news in this fact for every person in this room because I happen to have it on good authority, as Pastor Jerry always says, that you're all sinners. I happen to know that. I don't think we have any righteous people in this room, but even if we did, there wouldn't be any good news for them. Because Christ didn't give himself to deliver the righteous from the present evil age. He didn't come to make peace with God for the righteous person. He came for sinners. He gave himself for sinners. Mark 2, Jesus says this, those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick. I came not to call the righteous, but sinners. Are you here this morning as a forgiven sinner? Praise God. Then rejoice in the fact that Christ gave himself for you. Are you here this morning as an unforgiven sinner? than flee to the one who gave himself for sinners just like you. Cry out to the one who made peace with God by the blood of his cross. By faith, go to the one who freely offers this invitation to you. Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Christ gave himself for sinners. Well, under this heading, we've seen Paul's message of grace and peace declared. Finally, let us see Paul's God glorified. We see in verse four that Christ's giving of himself was according to the will of our God and Father. Remember that Paul is writing to men and to women who had begun to believe that to do the Father's will, they had to submit themselves to at least portions of the ceremonial law, if not all of it. They had been convinced by the Judaizers that to abandon the ceremonial law was to abandon the God who gave the law, to set themselves in opposition to His will. But Paul is clear, the will of God is not that the Galatians should earn their way to heaven through works of the law, as if that was even possible. God's will is that the Galatians should be justified by faith in Christ alone. Faith in the one who gave himself for their sins, making peace by the blood of his cross and delivering them from the present evil age. That is God's will. His desire, his purpose is that sinners be justified by faith alone in Jesus Christ. Salvation is not according to our will, it's according to his will. And because of our utter dependence upon God for salvation, he's the one who's glorified in that process, not us. Luther comments this, how can dust and ashes receive praise and glory? Amen, we can't. God forbid that we receive any glory in our own salvation. Listen to Paul again from Ephesians chapter one. In Christ we have obtained an inheritance, having been predestined according to the purpose of Him who works all things according to the counsel of His will, so that we who were the first to hope in Christ might be to the praise of His glory. In Him also, when you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation, and believed in Him, were sealed with the promised Holy Spirit, who is the guarantee of our inheritance until we acquire possession of it, to the praise of His glory. Salvation and all the benefits therein are to the praise of God's glory. Friends, if we are capable of saving ourselves, if we're even capable of contributing anything whatsoever to our salvation, then God will not receive all of the glory in it. There will be something left for us to boast about. And the reality is we're not capable of saving ourselves. We're not even capable of contributing anything to our own salvation. Remember our Lord's conversation with Nicodemus, and he just blew his mind with us, didn't he? Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God. Just as you didn't control your physical birth, you do not control your spiritual birth. Salvation is according to the will of our God and Father alone, and He will receive the glory due His name. Well, it's worth pointing out here, once again, the unity of the Godhead, just as in Paul's apostolic calling, we saw that it was a Trinitarian calling, so also the work of redemption. Paul says here, in the same breath, without any qualification whatsoever, that Christ gave himself for our sins, and that the self-giving of Christ was according to what? To the will of our God and Father. So Christ gave himself, but at the same time, the Father's will was that Christ would give himself. Saints, God has revealed himself to us in the scriptures as one God, has he not? Deuteronomy chapter six, verse four. Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one. But he's also revealed himself to us as Trinity. Matthew 28, verse 19, make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name, the name, the singular name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. So although we speak of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit as distinct persons, we must understand that they are one God. They are a simple unity. And just as there is only one God, there is only one will of God. The Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit all share one divine will. Each person of the Godhead is one in purpose. And this is wonderful news for those of us who are in Christ. because there is complete harmony and unity with God. There is no division in God. Get rid of any imaginary conflict you might have in your mind between God the Father and God the Son concerning your salvation. It's not as if the Son is twisting the Father's arm and maybe he'll forgive those who will put their faith in Christ. Maybe Christ can convince him to be kind, to be loving to us. Get that out of your mind. the salvation of the elect, their deliverance from the present evil age, their having a heavenly home secured for them in the age to come. This was all according to the eternal will of God. It was all according to the will of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. And this is certainly cause for praise. And Paul goes on in verse five to do just that, to whom be the glory forever and ever, amen. It's fitting that Paul should end his greeting here emphasizing the glory of God. God's ultimate purpose is, his ultimate purpose, excuse me, in all things is his self-glorification. Certainly that includes creation. Psalm 19, one, the heavens declare the glory of God. The sky above proclaims his handiwork. But I would submit to you that God's glory is magnified most of all in the salvation of sinners. Writing in Romans chapter nine, Paul uses Pharaoh as an illustration of both God's sovereign power in salvation and of God's purpose for salvation. Paul says this, so then salvation depends not on human will or exertion, but on God who has mercy. For the scriptures say to Pharaoh, for this very purpose, I have raised you up that I might show my power in you and that my name might be proclaimed in all the earth. Just as God intended his delivering Israel from Egyptian slavery to result in his name being proclaimed in all the earth, so also he intends the salvation of sinners through the gospel to result in his name being proclaimed throughout all the earth. And as Reformed Baptists, we're all familiar with the five solas of the Reformation, are we not? The five alone statements that basically outline apostolic Christianity. And the five solas, they reach their apex here with God's glory. Scripture alone, grace alone, faith alone, Christ alone, to the glory of God alone. So in this benediction, Paul is only echoing David's words from Psalm 104, may the glory of the Lord endure forever. And to that, let us say amen. Let us pray. Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, bless your word to us now, we pray. Apply it to each one of us in the way that we need. Help us to leave this place loving you more, having a bigger picture of you, and being more willing and ready to leave as obedient servants to your word. And we pray this in Christ's name, amen.