This is an exclusive in an exciting example of scholarly cross collaboration and interdisciplinary research. Textual critics and archaeologists have just published a translation of a recent discovered first century letter, apparently authentic, written by the Apostle Paul himself or written to the Apostle Paul himself. Scholars believe it was likely written in the late 80s, 40s or early 50s. The parchment was remarkably well preserved in a jar buried in a cave on the island of Satyricus. It is surmised that the author of the letter, Perodias, was an elder who had met Paul on one of his missionary journeys. The translation published here for the first time reads as follows. Perodias, a servant of the Lord Jesus Christ to our brother Paulos. Grace to you and peace from God, our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. Our church recently received a copy of the letter that you sent to the churches of Galatia. We hope you will not mind hearing our humble concerns. In the past, we have noticed you are more interested in confronting people rather than conversing with them. But we hope you will receive this letter as an invitation to further dialogue. First of all, we are uncomfortable with your tone throughout the correspondence. We know it is difficult sometimes to discern tone of voice from written communication, but you should keep this in mind as well. One could gather from your careless use of words that you are losing your temper. You certainly sound angry. This is becoming a spokesman. This is unbecoming a spokesman for the for the faith. As you say yourself, one of the manifest fruit of God's spirit is gentleness. Aren't you being a hypocrite to preach grace, but not show it to our Judaizer brothers? They may not worship as you do or emphasize the same teachings you do, but our Lord has sheep not of this fold, and there is certainly room within the broader way for these brothers. Their methodology may differ from yours, but certainly their hearts are in the right place. You yourself know that our Lord required personal contact when we have a grievance against another. Have you personally contacted any of these men? Have you sat down to reason with them personally? Have you issued a personal invitation? Some of them may even reconsider their viewpoints if you had taken a different tax. We know that your position is likely that public teaching is open to criticism, but we can do better. We can do better than what is expected, can't we? In one portion of your letter, you indicate you don't even know these persons. Quote, whoever he is, you write. Our dear Paulos, how can you rightly criticize them when you don't know them? It's clear you haven't even read their material because you never quote them. We implore you to see that they are plainly within the tradition of Moses and the prophets. They understand the context of the covenant in ways you appear deaf to. Similarly, we find your tone in resorting to harsh language, not in keeping with the love of Christ. foolish Galatians, let him be a curse to emasculate themselves. Really? Can you not hear yourself? You think this is Christlike? Does this sound like something our Lord would say? Do you think this flippant, outrageous, personal, vindictive manner of speech well of God's love for the church? It's clear you're taking this way too personally. Indeed, you ask the Galatians if they are now their enemy. Does anyone have to be does everything have to be so black and white to you? Paulos, what will unbelievers think when they read your letter? Do you think this will commend the gospel to them? This kind of harsh language just makes us look like a bunch of angry people. They see we can't love each other. And over what? Circumcision? This is a terrible advertisement for God's love to the unbelieving world. You have given plenty of people permission now to disregard Jesus if this is what his mouthpiece sounds like. We hope you will reconsider your approach. We know that you catch much more flies with hot honey than with vinegar. We are concerned that your ill worded singular letter signals a divisiveness that threatens to fracture the church. We beg you to reconsider how important these minor issues are and how in the future you may speak in ways that better reflect God's love, grace and the love of the Lord Jesus be with your spirit, brother. It was kind of hard to read in the original Greek there, I was kind of tripping over the words. Perhaps this could have been written by an elder in a Galatian church. We don't know what kind of temperament these people had, but we do know that the churches there did not last long in that part of the world. Such a response would have sped their demise, even as it is speeding many today. But of course, this letter is not ancient. It is a piece of satire written by Justin Taylor that was published on his blog two months ago. It cleverly points out the sorry state of evangelicalism today, which is more concerned with being nice than with protecting the good news of Jesus Christ so that people might actually be delivered from the present evil age. In some places, being nice has become the new gospel. Where this is so, the gospel is by definition no longer the gospel. Today, we begin a study of the Book of Galatians. Perhaps more than any other book in the Bible, Galatians is concerned with getting the gospel right. This is the most important thing you can ever know, because when you believe that you're saved and when you do not, whether it's because you do not believe it or you've never heard it or you're hearing something that replaces it, then you cannot be saved. Good news translates the Greek word Evangelion, which is found many times in the first two chapters of Galatians. And this is where we get the word evangelical. An evangelical was historically someone who held and proclaimed the good news that Jesus Christ had died, had been crucified, because of our sins and was raised to life for our justification. The good news is what it is. It's an announcement. It's not a conversation. It's not a dialogue. It's not the way you treat one another. It is gospel. It's not law. The gospel is the primary topic at the beginning of this body of this letter. Now, I need to tell you some stuff about Galatians here before we get into the text. First thing I want to tell you is that Galatians is a letter. That is its genre. There's lots of genres in this scripture. There's poetry, there's gospel, there's apocalyptic, proverbs, history. This is a letter. Typical letters of that day followed a standard formula. They had a salutations, thanksgiving, a body, a list of moral exhortations, final greetings and a benediction. Galatians has all of that with the exception of thanksgiving. Instead, it unleashes a quick volley of shots off the bowels of those who are quickly turning away from the gospel that has been proclaimed to them. There is shock, he writes. I am astonished in verse six. There is anathema, he says, let them be a curse, let them be damned to hell forever. This is followed by autobiography, an example, allegory, satiric rebuke and exhortation, all aimed at bringing the audience back to its senses. The church has been duped. The word it's used in chapter three, verse one is bewitched, which signifies satanic delusion, which is causing them to turn away from the gospel that they were taught. This gospel is a free gospel of grace, freedom in Christ, justification from sin, faith alone to salvation. But they've turned it into the opposite. They turn it into a gospel of law keeping. Good news of slavery. Works based acceptance from God and so on. And so therefore, the stakes could not be higher in this letter. The stakes are heaven versus hell. And therefore, there is no time for cordial niceties. These people must see the grave danger that they are in before they turn away altogether and perish for eternity. Now, friends, You need to see that in having no thanksgiving, God is telling you that you must get the story right. To have any hope at all in this life, and especially in the life to come, you must know the gospel and believe it. God greatly desires this for you. Therefore, you must heed the words of this letter. You must take it to heart. Consider your own soul. Think on your attitude about this good news. Are you in love with it? Are you complacent about it? Do you long for something different than it? Those are the kinds of questions you need to ask yourself. When reading this kind of genre, it's always helpful to figure out the thesis. You remember back in grammar school when they taught you how to write a letter. Usually it has something like five paragraphs, and in the first paragraph, the last sentence, would have a thesis statement. The thesis is the big idea of your paper. It's the argument that you're trying to prove. Well, the thesis of Galatians is found in verses 11 and 12 of chapter one. It says this, For I would have you know, brothers, that the gospel was preached by me. It's not man's gospel, for I did not receive it from any man, nor was I taught it, but I received it through revelation of Jesus Christ. Now, I want you to notice that the thesis is about the gospel, but it's also about the origin of the gospel. Now, this is very important to keep in mind as we go throughout the letter. The origin of the good news is in heaven. It comes from heaven. This heavenly or supernatural origin has an opposite throughout the letter. It is the supernatural origin of the tendency to disbelieve, confuse, obscure, and deny the good news. It's supernatural, but it doesn't come from heaven. It comes from the pit of hell. In other words, there are satanic forces aligned against God who greatly desire that you turn away from the truth. So, you read about the following supernatural terms in this letter. Evil angels. Good angels, gods, principalities, witchcraft, heavenly cities, the present evil age and so on. Now, this emphasis of the supernatural in the letter of Galatians, in my opinion, is not given its proper due a lot of times in commentaries and in sermons, and it's something that I want to help to rectify as we go through this series. It's also important to keep in your mind when you have doubts about the truth, or when your friends do, when you're called to give an answer for the hope that is within you. The point is, the letter is written to prove where the gospel, the good news originates, and why you can therefore trust it. Everything else revolves around this question of origin, and the answer ought to give you great comfort. I want to talk about the author. I want to look at the first five verses as I do this. These are the salutation of the letter. As was said in the parody, the author begins by identifying himself as Paulos Apostolos. Now Apostolos is not his last name. It is a title. His name in English is just Paul, but we know that before this he was called Saul. Now, actually, Easton's Bible dictionary points out something I had never heard of before. It says his circumcision name was Paul and probably the name Paul or sorry, his circumcision name was Saul and probably the name Paul was given to him in infancy for use in the Gentile world as Saul would be his Hebrew home name. Now, we first meet Saul in the book of Acts presiding over the stoning of Stephen, the deacon. And receiving the robes of the witnesses who threw the stones. He's first called Paul in Acts 13, where it says that he was filled with the Holy Spirit. Opposing a demonically inspired magician who was himself opposed to preaching of Jesus. And so when you look at those two And when we look at these stories, it's very obvious that something radical happened to Saul. Now, curiously, Paul means little. And we're going through Esther. And Mordecai means little. And just like Mordecai, Paul is from the tribe of Benjamin. So I thought that was an interesting thing to throw in just for our sake. God loves to use little things of the world to shame the big things. So he can gain all the glory and the mercy for his mercy and his grace. Now, we read about Paul's dramatic change in Acts chapter nine and then later twice in the end chapters of Acts. We also read about it a little bit in Galatians chapter one. And so when we come to the last section of chapter one, we're going to spend some time looking at what happened to Paul who wrote more of the New Testament than anyone else. For now, it's enough to mention that Paul delves into this autobiography to convince his audience that his words are to be trusted as true and as having come from God himself. So that's why he tells you again in this letter about little about his conversion. And that leads to his title, Apostle. The word apostle connotes personal delegated authority. It speaks of being commissioned to represent another. To put it more briefly, the word apostle refers to somebody sent by another person, as in an envoy or a messenger. Now, the last word there, messenger, is curious, given Paul's use and reference of angels in just a few verses, because angel also means a messenger. Did you know both of those meant that? What's the difference? Well, apostles refer only to human messengers, while angels can refer to human or heavenly messengers. And for now, I just want you to keep in mind that both apostle and angel mean messenger. The Bible uses the word apostle broadly and narrowly, so there's two kinds of uses of the word. Broadly, it can refer to anybody who is sent by somebody else to do something. It can refer to a Christian brother sent out from a church for a mission, tied to official duties or even to just sending a letter. So Paul would write a letter in one place and he'd send somebody and they'd go deliver the message. When it's used in this broad sense, it's arguable that even women can be considered apostles. I dealt with that several years ago when we were in Romans 16 in the word Junius. But when it's used in a narrow sense, Only men are apostles and only in fact, a very select few men. In other words, contrary to the movie that came out about 10 years ago, starring Robert Duvall called The Apostle, you can't just appoint yourself an apostle, baptize yourself in a river and go out and start saying, I'm the apostle that contradicts the very meaning of the word. Apostles are sent, not self appointed messengers. So this small band of men were given special functions and tasks and powers, and they were each called by name personally by Jesus. The function of these men was to proclaim the gospel to all the world. Using uncommon, supernatural gifting of the Holy Spirit. And the keys of the kingdom to organize the church and give her the inspired apostolic tradition of doctrine in life. The rules for who was an apostle in this sense are gathered from the scripture. First of all, they all had to have seen Jesus with their own eyes after the resurrection. They were personally called to that office by Christ by name. All of them could perform miracles, and I'm talking about real miracles, not the voodoo you see Benny Hinn doing on television. These were given for the very special purpose of attesting at that time to the truth of their preaching, to the origin of their gospel, to the authority of their ministry. They were all infallibly inspired in their public teaching, whether it's by word or writing, even though they were sinners. And even as Paul talks about Peter in this very letter in chapter two could fall into great hypocrisy. And therefore, given all these facts that you know about the apostles, they had no successors. That includes anything from a Pentecostal self-appointed apostle to the bishop of Rome, to me or to you. These are the only infallible authoritative teachers of Christian doctrine. These 12 become the foundation of the Church of Jesus Christ. And therefore, to question the message or authority of one of these men, as these people were doing to Paul, was to question God the Father and Jesus Christ, too. This was an incredibly serious sin, which is at the very heart of the letter. While people cannot commit this sin in the same way today, because, of course, all of the apostles have died and you can't go up to Paul and say you're a liar. It's still very easy to commit this sin by not believing what the apostles wrote down, which God preserved for us to believe. And this is something that happens all the time today as people question their message, their authority, their authorship and just about anything else that they can think of to question about these guys. So Paul's message applies to us as well as to the Galatians. Do not let anyone, even if it be an angel from heaven, teach you a different gospel than the one found here, because this is God's good news, not Paul's. And so the very next words after Paulos Apostolos are that he's an apostle not from man nor through man, but through Jesus Christ and God the Father who raised him from the dead. So let's look at that a little bit. What Paul says about his apostleship fits right in with the thesis of the book. Remember, I said the thesis is that the gospel is not of human origin. Well, what Paul is saying here is that his apostleship is not of human origin. He's not an apostle because some person made him one. He's not an apostle because he went to some group in Jerusalem who voted him into the club. but because God made him one when Jesus Christ personally appointed him on the road to Damascus. At his conversion, Jesus told him, quote, I have appeared to you for this purpose, to appoint you as a servant and witness to the things in which you have seen me and to those in which I will appear to you, delivering you from your people and from the Gentiles to whom I'm sending you. This is confirmed to Ananias when Jesus told him personally, he is a chosen instrument of mine to carry out my name before the Gentiles and kings and the children of Israel. So Jesus appeared personally to more than one person and told them, this guy's an apostle. Listen to him. Accept him. Now, perhaps on the testimony of two or three witnesses, Paul refers to both Jesus and the father. as two persons who made him an apostle. And to this, he adds even more authority that this father raised Jesus from the dead. Now, that's a sly way of telling these people, look, not only did Jesus call me to this position, but this is the same Jesus who was raised from the dead. Oh, and by the way, the father who raised him from the dead called me to this position. I like these early Christians. It's important to tell you that those who deny the truth of the Scripture must deal honestly with these very first words of this letter of Galatians. From the very first, the reader is faced with the fact that Jesus was said to be raised historically from the grave by somebody claiming to have been called by this very Jesus to teach this truth to you. What has the resurrection of Jesus from the dead done to your faith lately? It ought to spur you on to righteousness and boldness in the face of opposition. But before any of that, it ought to generate faith in your heart, for this is what you need to do to do anything, or this is what you need to do anything. You need faith that Jesus Christ has truly been raised in body from the dead. The resurrection is a supernatural occurrence. The resurrection of Jesus is always the very foundation of New Testament books. It's the central point of the gospel. It's the singular event of history. It's the fulfillment of prophecies as old as man himself. It is the heart and soul of Christianity. It's the single most important reason to even be a Christian. As Paul says elsewhere, if Christ has not been raised, then our preaching is useless and so is your faith. Either he rose from the dead, which changes everything, or he didn't, and the Bible is the most untrustworthy book in existence. If he did not, then do not pretend that he did. But if he did stop living your life as if he did not. There can be no middle ground for that is a lukewarm place which is vile and repugnant and good for nothing. Now, apparently, Paul was not alone when he wrote this letter, and I want to call this to your attention as we keep on reading here. He says there were many brothers that were with him. Don't let that slide by too quickly, because it's very important. In most of Paul's letters, he only identifies himself. Sometimes he identifies Timothy on rare occasions as being with him and a few others. He also mentions a fellow named Silvanus in only to the Thessalonian churches. Apparently they knew who he was. But here you get the impression that there are a lot of brothers that are looking over Paul's shoulder as he writes this letter. That means that the Galatians letter is not the mad ravings of an Internet flamer. Have you ever received a flaming email from somebody? They're always written by one person, usually off the cuff and are never anything but emotional outbursts, sort of like the parody suggested at the beginning. What you get the impression of is that Paul has been in deep discussions with these other brothers over what to do about these people. They are all deeply concerned about what they're hearing, and their counsel was for Paul to write a letter from all of them. Interesting, isn't it? That leads to who the letter is written to. The churches of Galatia. Now I want to give you a slightly detailed explanation of this. It needs to be addressed in two separate parts. So the first part is Paul is breaking his normal custom of writing to one church. Here he's writing to many churches. Second, these churches are in a place called Galatia. So first of Paul's 13 letters, and I'm not including Hebrews in that eight were written to a single church and four were written to individuals. Now, all of those letters would circulate throughout the ancient world, they would be passed on, they would be copied and they would be kept in those different churches, but they were only written to one church. But Galatians is the only Pauline letter written to more than one group. And that means that the things he's saying here were widespread, the things he's dealing with. They're not just the problem of one isolated church. The whole groups of churches were headed down the same dangerous road, which implies to some degree that unlike other churches, what Galatians says is probably more important to understand than any other. Because what it speaks against is apparently easier to fall into than other problems. Their main problem seems to have been a particularly gullible spirit that would listen to religious teachers that would contradict the essential parts of the gospel. They were easily swayed, willingly led astray, quick to have their ears tickled, fast to believe whoever came into their midst. Now, does that sound familiar at all in our ancient world or in our modern world? And so this is an important thing to understand. Now, second, these churches were all in a place called Galatia. This gets a little technical, so bear with me. Galatia lies in the middle of what the New Testament calls Asia Minor. If you have a map in the back of your Bible, you can see that it's the place that we know today as Turkey. But where in Galatia are these churches? This is actually an important question for people concerned with fixing a date for the writing of the letter, which in turn is implications for how you understand the events Paul talks about, such as his conflict with Peter. When did that occur? There's two possibilities for where these churches are located. The first is in northern Galatia, up in the mountains, perhaps even as far up as the Black Sea. The second is southern Galatia, nearer to the Mediterranean. And the problem lies in exactly what Paul means by Galatians. So here's the problem, all right. Galatia, the term Galatians, you foolish Galatians, he writes later in chapter three. It can be an ethnic term or it can be a territorial term, sort of like Cheyenne or Dakota. They're both, one's a city, one's a territory or now a state, but they're also people groups, the Cheyenne Indians. And so it may refer to a people group or to a province of Rome. We don't know. If it's being used ethnically, then it refers to the original inhabitants of this region who were called the Celts. Ever heard of them? And it's probable audience then if it's territorially used, or sorry, ethnically used, is that it's a northern Galatian churches. Now, you may be surprised by this idea of Celts, because we normally think of the Celts as living in Britain or Ireland, or if you really know your history, ancient France or the land of Gaul. The history of these Celts is obscured by the ancient myths of time. Josephus stated that Gomer, the son of Japheth, the son of Noah, settled in Galatia. So that's a long, long time ago. Gomer founded, Josephus says, quote, those whom the Greeks now called Galatians or Gauls, but they were called Gomerites back then. The name Gomer in Akkadian is Gimaru, And they call them Gemari and the Europeans call them Cimmerians or Cimbri, if you've ever heard any of those terms. Now, as Josephus says, Galatia takes its name from the Gauls. Gaul is thought by some to derive from a word meaning powerful. Others suggest that Celts and Gaul have the same meaning, something like potent or valiant men. It comes from a Greek word, Gala, which means milk. For example, galaxy. You look up in the galaxy and what do you see? The Milky Way. And thus Galatians means something like, she who is milk white. Why? Because the Celts were the very tall, extremely strong, white skinned, blonde and red haired peoples of ancient times. I'm going to come back to the ethnicity of these Galatians later on in the letter. For now, it's enough to say that if Paul is using the term in this way, he's talking about northern Galatia. It's important to note, however, that we're not told specifically that Paul ever went there on his missionary journeys. And that's where the big rub lie is. If he did, and there's room for it in a couple of verses and acts, then the date of the book is sometime after his first missionary journey. And the important thing about that is that it's after the council of Jerusalem. And when we come to chapter two and we talk about Peter and Paul's conflict with him, we're going to see if that's it's going to have the impact. And if it's before the council or after the council, it makes a big difference in how you read the letter and understand it. Now, liberals liberals love. The Northern Galatian idea, because it allows them to see contradictions in Paul's story with Peter and the issue of circumcision has played out in Acts 15. But as Carson Morris put it, it's much simpler to accept Acts and Galatians together rather than throwing one out or the other as mistaken. And so that means that you read the term Galatians geographically, and that's probably the way most of you have always understood this, that Paul is writing to the churches that he planted in cities like Pisidian Antioch and Iconium and Lystra and Derbe. And you can read all about those in Acts 13 and 14. This was his first missionary journey. And if that's true, then the letter of Galatians in the southern theory is to be dated about 48 or 49 A.D., which makes it the earliest of all of Paul's letters and probably the second earliest letter in all of the New Testament behind only the book of James. Now, there's a lot wrapped up in the identification of these people, their history and mythology comes into play later in the letter. Their calling Paul an angel is related to their Celtic worldview. The question of Paul's incident with Peter is related to who these Galatians are. Most importantly, and this does not depend upon either theory, the primary audience of the book is Gentile Christians. And this is important because none of them had ever been circumcised. And so the issue would have been painfully important to them. considering that some group of people were in their midst, forcing them to undergo this ancient Jewish covenantal right in order to be considered true Christians. Now, there's a lot of problems that these people have in these churches, and so you could really think of this whole letter as a kind of music to these ancient Celts, sort of bagpipes calling them from distant places, to pick up their swords and come and join God's war against the spiritual forces that are aligned against them. And that leads me into verses three through five. It's funny, I just told somebody this last week, I would never preach like John MacArthur because he's so detailed and he takes so much time to get through something. And here I am doing that very thing. It's like, what, a half an hour into the sermon and I got two verses under my belt. OK, verses three through five. In typical salutation form, Paul greets the churches with grace and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. As we say in our own liturgy every week, God is among his people because he's alive and he covenants to be with them. And therefore, in the liturgy, we greet you. from God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ, with the blessing that you might have grace and peace be upon you when you come together." In this case, as with Paul, the idea is that grace and peace are extended to you from God. Now, these two words are important to reflect upon. As Martin Luther puts it in his commentary on Galatians, Quote, Grace and peace comprehend in them whatever belongs to Christianity. Grace releases sin and peace makes the conscience quiet. The two fiends that torment us are sin and conscience. But Christ has vanquished these two monsters and trodden them underfoot, both in this world and in that which is to come. Only Christians have this kind of doctrine and are exercised and armed with it to get victory against sin, despair, and everlasting death. It's a kind of doctrine neither proceeding from free will, nor invented by the reason or wisdom of man, but given from above." Now this again shows us the origin of the Gospel. Grace and peace are not given by men, but by God. He gives both. to those that trust in Christ by faith alone to deliver them from the present evil age. Now, compare verses one and three, and what you see there is both the Father and Jesus are mentioned, but they were mentioned in reverse order here. Grace and peace come from God, the Father, and also from the Lord Jesus. But in the first Paul's apostleship is from the Lord Jesus and also God our Father. Why the difference? It's because the Father is the ultimate source of grace, peace and his apostolic calling. But Jesus is the instrument through which any of these are manifested to human beings. The two persons are inextricably entwined like a Celtic knot. as one being, but two different persons. And while not saying that Jesus is God, it is clear that He must be, because He's doing the exact same things as the Father. No angel or man or beast ever had such authority. And so from the very beginning, Paul wants the Galatians to know that if they're going to disagree with Him, they have to take it up with Father and Son, who even at the present moment are filling them with grace and peace. The confidence that comes from knowing where all this comes from, in an objective sense, should greatly benefit your faith, brothers and sisters. This is not the babbling of children. It is not the ranting of lunatics. It's this very speech of God in this letter. Now, of Jesus, He says one more thing, and then He says one more thing of the Father. First, he says, Jesus gave himself for our sins to deliver us from the present evil age. And he did this because it was the will of God, the father. And here you have the primary reason for the death of Jesus stated, he gave himself to deliver us. His delivering us was because of our sins, and thus he became a sin offering to take away our sins. What kind of taking away is this? How has Jesus delivered us? Well, it's not the removal from, but the rescue of the power of the present evil age. The rescue is now. The removal comes later. What is the present evil age? Now, this is the only time Paul uses the adjective evil to describe this age, even though he implies it in a lot of other places. And what this does is it brings more supernatural things to your mind. People in ancient times understood it this way, OK? Satan is the god of this world, a world fallen into sin. He rules as the prince of this world, like John says. He has free reign. He's unbound. He's able to deceive and to create all sorts of evil in the lives of men. There's an alternate ending in the book of Mark that is clearly a second or third century edition, but it gives a good commentary on this. It says they excuse themselves, saying this age of lawlessness and unbelief is under Satan. who does not allow the truth and power of God to prevail over the unclean things of the spirits. So the present evil age is tied to Satan, you can see this in the Lord's Prayer, deliver us from evil. It's literally deliver us from the evil. And so some of the translations will say, deliver us from the evil one. And rightly so. The idea is that in the present evil age, you cannot separate the work of Satan from the evil that exists here. Even though we are fully culpable for everything we do, all you have to do is think of Adam and Eve and Satan in the garden to understand that. He's the god of this world and he's blind to the minds of those who live in darkness. I'm trying to impress upon your mind this supernatural part of Galatians, because like I said, I don't think that it's often brought to the forefront the way it ought to be. Sometimes we refer to the present evil age as the world of flesh and the devil. God has not promised to take us out of the present evil age. He's promised to deliver us from its power. And this then is the great hope of the resurrection. Satan no longer has hold upon us, especially Gentiles, because Christ conquered him and removed his authority and his resurrection. To submit then to the legalistic rules Or the indulgence of fleshly desires is therefore to contradict your Christian calling, because both of those things belong to the order and kingdom of Satan and darkness, sin and evil in the flesh. But those who've been redeemed belong to the age to come, to the kingdom of Christ, to the realm of the spirit, to that which is eternal and lasting. He says this is the will of God, the father. that such a state be true of all Christians." Notice, we do not deliver ourselves, nor does Christ deliver us through our will. There is no free will here, not as people usually understand it. It is the will of God the Father that all to whom He's given to Christ should come to Him by faith alone. Who can thwart God's will? If it's His will to deliver us through Christ, who can turn back His hand? We'll learn much about faith in this book. Faith is the hinge upon which the gospel turns. Also, the will of God here is directed particularly at the work of Christ. Christ came to do His Father's will. Part of His Father's will was that Jesus should lose none that the Father has given to Him. But in order to accomplish this, the Father's will also included that Jesus be led to the cross. He was pleasing his father for our sake. And that means nothing that Christ underwent was accidental or out of control. Rather, it was perfectly planned by God, because this speaks of God's inscrutable, hidden, mysterious, well-known as predestination by which all things move in their foreordained order, even to the point of bringing the Lord to the cross the hands of wicked men like Herod and Pontius Pilate, whom it says God predestined that they would crucify the Lord of glory. And therefore, even though we've not hit the heart of the letter today, just in this salutation, you've been exposed to a lot of theology or right thinking about God. It's really pretty amazing when you sit back and think about it. As I said, the whole letter is about getting the gospel right. You've seen the foundation of the church, the apostles, they're the founders, that they were called personally by Jesus. You've seen that this Jesus has been raised from the dead. God who did this gives grace and peace to those who trust in his son. This son died for your sins. He did this to deliver you from the present evil age. Not that you deliver yourself, but that he would deliver you, making your deliverance certain. God did this because it was His will, and it pleased Him to do so. But most of all, the last words of the salutation are appropriate. God does this to receive glory in His Church. It says, to whom be the glory forever and ever. Amen. He ends with a doxology at the salutation. As with Paul, these things ought to lead you to doxology, that is to praise, what doxology means. God has done all of these things for His people so that they might praise Him and so that He might be glorified in their midst. To have glory is to have a weightiness and a heaviness that is so often missing in the worship of contemporary churches. And this is a weightiness and heaviness that is attached to the praise of God. This is serious business that we are embarking upon in this letter. These things have cost God a great deal. But they are yours as a free gift of grace in Christ. Trust in them and you will know grace and peace. They belong to anyone that believes God has done this to remove their sins and to transfer them to the kingdom of light. Therefore, believe upon this God today. And then come and learn all about this good news that is powerful to deliver even a man from the grave as we walk our way through the letter of the Galatians. To God be the glory forever and ever. Amen. Let's pray. Father, we thank you for the rich theological truths that we find in the letters of the Apostle Paul. We haven't even embarked upon difficult things in this letter yet, as Peter says that Paul's words were. But we have certainly seen the richness and the depth of the wisdom and the knowledge that is hidden in the Lord Jesus Christ and in the Father who sent him to us. I would pray that you would cause us to meditate, perhaps even Memorize these first five verses of the letter of Galatians this week to meditate upon them, to think on them, to cause our minds to dwell upon all that you have done for us in our Lord Jesus, who died for us on the cross to deliver us, cause us to be greatly appreciative, thankful, full of gratitude for the things that you have done this week. And that that might choke out the weeds of sin in our life that so often want to crop up because of our own evil hearts and because of the evil that is outside of us seeking to suppress the truth in our minds and in the way that we live. I would ask that you would send a blessing over your people today and this week, that you would give them grace and give them peace. Help them to know that if they trust in Christ, that he has done all of these things for them and nothing can take them out of his hand. It's in Jesus name I pray. Amen.