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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.
Bagpipes from Heaven: God's Music to the Ancient Galatians
Series Galatians
| Sermon ID | 524112059592 |
| Duration | 48:00 |
| Date | |
| Category | Sunday Service |
| Bible Text | Galatians 1:1-5 |
| Language | English |
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