I'm actually going to start the text today in verse ten, even though most of your Bibles will break the kind of the section break at verse eleven and start there. And so I want to read verse ten and then I'll kind of give you the introduction to the sermon, he says, for my now seeking the approval of man or of God, or am I trying to please man? If I were still trying to please man, I would not be a servant of Christ. I began this series a couple of weeks ago with a satire. That was said to have been written by one pair of Dios on the island of Satyricus to the Apostle Paul because of the harsh tone against the Galatians that he takes. Now, when that satire was put on Justin Taylor's blog, I linked to my Facebook to it and immediately one of my old acquaintances from college wrote If this is truly a letter to Paul, then it should be considered carefully. The apology presented at the end of this article was poorly written and conceived. The indictment of Paul written by this man was, in my mind, on point and exceedingly wise. Now, he said this, not only believing the letter to be genuine, but obviously also that Paul is often wrong fallible and just plain mean. He then told me that Paul would turn in his grave if he knew how he is worshipped today. Apparently, if you believe that Galatians is infallible, then you are worshipping Paul. It's the only thing I can figure from the context of what he said. He said many evangelicals treat Paul like Catholics treat Mary. Now, this strange reaction to the Apostle Paul Which, frankly, I don't understand at all. It gives me good introduction to the passage today, who was Paul, how did we come to have so many of his books in the New Testament? Why are some people so taken aback by what he says? Clearly, it's the case that some people are. Well, the apostle speaks forthrightly in the verse I just read, Galatians 1 10. Am I now seeking the approval of man or of God, or am I trying to please man? If I were still trying to please man, I would not be a servant of Christ. This is the introductory statement, in my mind, of the autobiographical part of Galatians, which also happens to be the longest autobiography in the entire New Testament and maybe even in the Bible. From Galatians 1, 11 to 2, 14, that's 28 verses. Paul tells us all about his zealous life as a Pharisee, his conversion, his early life as a Christian and how he came to be in the company of the disciples. And he even gives us a story about himself and Peter later on in chapter two, even though he mentions Peter in chapter one. Now, he tells us all of this For one simple reason, it is proof that the gospel he is preaching is not something that he got from anyone on the earth. But it came from Jesus Christ through personal revelation. In other words, he's building a case for the authenticity of the gospel. Today, we're only going to look at the silent years. of Paul's life before he ever met with the other disciples to be sent out on missionary journeys by them. We're going to look at the impact of his early life that it had upon Christians whom he had never met. And throughout this, I will talk about some specific things that I hope will help you understand Paul and our present culture together. And most of all, I hope to show you where the focus of such a personal testimony should be. Now, first, why does Paul bring up this whole thing about seeking the approval of men or of God in verse 10? Well, I want you to consider just for a moment what he has already said in the previous few verses. He believed himself to be an apostle called by Christ Jesus and God the Father alone. His authority and ministry came from God. He then immediately lampoons the Galatians for being so quick to despise this authority and so eagerly longing to give up the message he preached to them, effectively deserting God. And then finally, he places, if you are a member of the BAM, utter devotion to destruction from the Old Testament. or what is called an anathema in the text here upon anybody who preaches a different gospel from the one he preached, even if that be himself or an angel from heaven. Now, obviously, that kind of language, that kind of tone is not popular. You could not get any more politically incorrect than what he has said in the first few verses of Galatians. He realizes the harshness of his tone and the rebuke of his message. And so he lets these people know up front that he isn't writing this letter to win brownie points with them. In effect, verse 10 says, maybe some of you are hearing stories that I go around from town to town trying to win the approval of men, that my gospel is soft, maybe that it's even something that I made up. So let me ask you, do people like that generally go around condemning people to hell? I think that's what he's doing. It's easy to think of people in our own day who care much more of the accolades and praise of men than they do of God. These people go on nationally syndicated television shows and when asked direct questions about things like hell or the exclusivity of Jesus Christ, they squirm and they smirk and they hedge and they fudge. And sometimes they even lie about either what the Bible says or about their own personal convictions on these matters because they want to be liked. They enjoy the attention, the applause, having their names in lights. They like being patted on the back. They like being called uniters, ecumenical, culturally sensitive and all of the rest of the garbage. You get absolutely none of that in Paul's letter here or in any other letter that he ever wrote. This is one of the reasons why it's so baffling to me that my friend would say that people worship Paul like they worship Mary. It's rare to find somebody who speaks so harshly to his own people being worshipped. Don't you think? On the other hand, it's pretty easy to see why my friend doesn't like Paul. He went to a Christian college, by the way. In the second half of verse 10, Paul adds, if I were still trying to please men and I would not be a servant of Christ. In other words, Christ pleasers are by definition not man pleasers. Because sometimes they have to rebuke, correct and discipline their own people. I thought about examples in our own day. Who has to discipline and correct, sometimes rebuke their people? Well, there's a couple of groups. I thought about pastors, elders of churches, and I also thought about parents. So I want to talk about parents for a minute. Too many parents in our day, all you have to do is watch the nanny shows that are on television, think that they need to please and cater to their children's sinful actions and words. They feel like if they don't, then the child will end up hating them for not giving them everything they want or for coming down hard on them. So let me say this to you, parents, of which I am one. God did not create you as parents to be your child's best friend. Do you know that? But to be their parents. You can be their best friend when they grow up. But for now, you have a job, and as Proverbs says, that job is to train them in a way that they should go. The biblical ideal is to train them in correct theology and right behavior and love of Christ and his church. If they get out of line, it's your obligation and responsibility to discipline them, not to be liked by them. But people pleasers hear this talk about how to be parents, and they think that what you really mean is something like this. Then what you're really saying, Doug, is you should do everything in your power not to be liked by your children, to be mean, to lord your authority over them, to beat them mercilessly and to generally make sure that you have no personal interaction with them other than authoritarian. This bizarre reaction occurs because these people have never been disciplined in love themselves, and they cannot therefore personally relate to what discipline is supposed to do. It's supposed to set straight the mind. It's not just pure punishment. When a child sees her parent doing what she knows he is supposed to do, that is discipline. Then she may not like the immediate punishment, but she loves the fact that he loves her enough to not let her get away with sin. Biblical discipline actually creates a bond of love between parents and children. And when handled properly, increases the affection between the two. Because the parent doesn't enjoy disciplining any more than the child likes receiving it. Did you hear that girls back there in the background? Paul is disciplining his children in Galatians chapter one. This is another reason why it baffles me that anyone would say that Paul is worshipped by most Christians today. This man does not care what people think of him. He cares about what they think of Jesus. Paul thinks nothing of himself. He isn't holding himself up here as God. On the contrary, in William Hendrickson's commentary on this passage, he paraphrases this part of the verse Paul is talking about saying, if in spite of my claim that I am Christ's servants, I were still or nevertheless attempting to please men, if that was my claim, then it would be false. So don't listen to me. It's kind of like what I said earlier, if I should preach a different gospel, let me be anathema. Generally, it's people who speak of themselves as the root of all goodness, their ideas as the root of all truth and are never possibly wrong to end up being worshiped. Think about politicians who claim that their brand of change can only and always be for the better, that they alone know how to fix all bad things. How does this not inspire worship among their followers? These are the people that create a following for themselves. The apostle here does exactly the opposite thing. And thus he moves into perhaps the most important claim in Galatians. He says, I would have, you know, brothers, that the gospel that was preached by me is no man's gospel. Because I did not receive it from any man, nor was I taught it, but I received it through a revelation of Jesus Christ. There's two things I want you to notice about verses 11 and 12. The first one is that the gospel is not of human origin. And there are so many things I can say about this, I could probably take up two or three sermons. But the main thing I'm going to say is that this means that the gospel is an objective thing. It has its origin not only outside of you, but outside of all people. It comes from the mind of God. People go astray here in a couple of ways, one way is the liberal way. Which is to think that the gospel is actually a subjective, that it has its origin inside of you. And when I say liberal, this includes very many evangelicals in our own day, as all of the polls are showing. But Frederick Schleiermacher, who lived the turn of the 19th century, was the father of modern liberalism. He was born a pastor's kid in the German reformed church. Why is it that so many of our worst heretics come out of the reformed tradition? He was sent away by his pastor father to a Moravian Center for Piety and Faith, and from there he came away quite tainted by objective religion. This is what he wrote in a letter to his father in 1787. I cannot believe that he who called himself the son of man was the true eternal God. I cannot believe that his death was a vicarious atonement because he never expressly said so himself. And I cannot believe that it has that it is necessary because God, who evidently did not create men for perfection, but for the pursuit of it, cannot possibly intend to punish them eternally because they haven't attained to perfection. This is the objective religion that Schleiermacher did not feel in his own word, as what he said was correct. Instead, he asserted that religion is primarily a matter of feeling, intuition and experience. But Paul did not get the gospel from what he felt. In fact, what we're going to see in a minute is that he felt exactly the opposite about the gospel. It didn't come from his own personal experience, which was to torture and murder the followers of Jesus of Nazareth. So that's one way that you can have a problem is by thinking that the gospel is subjective and not object. The other way is by confusing the gospel with that which is inside of you already. Now, that may sound like the same thing, but I mean something different by it. I'm speaking specifically about our traditions distinction between the law and the gospel. The law is in you by nature because you were created in God's image. But the law is not subjective. And that's how it differs from intuition. God gives people a conscience that confirms that they're doing right or wrong. This confirmation tells you that there are moral absolutes that are outside of you that everyone has to follow. Even if they're also written on your heart. The implication of this is that one way you can recognize if what you are hearing is the gospel. Or not. Is if this is something that you do not have in your conscience or memory by nature already. I told you about parents a moment ago, something gospel, you could figure that out on your own. Is the good news that you are being told is good news, something that you already knew? Or could figure out. Are you being told to accept the feeling or to be a better person or to live a life however you feel like living it? If so, then you know that what you're hearing is not the gospel, because this is something that you could have made up by yourself. But nobody could have made up the message of the gospel because nobody would want to. And that leads me to the second part of these two verses, the gospel is received only through a supernatural means of God. So it comes from God. It's not a man made origin and it's received from a supernatural means of God. Paul says that he received the gospel through a revelation of Jesus Christ. Probably all your translations say something like that. You know what the word is for revelation, you might know. The word apocalypses apocalypse. Now, the word means an unveiling or an uncovering or making something or somebody known. Very generally speaking, is where all it means. It usually occurs in the context of some kind of a supernatural vision, like the Book of Revelation, which is called the apocalypse. This is the way that Paul means it here as well. Paul's talking about his conversion on the road to Damascus that you read about three different times in the book of Acts written by Luke. In Acts 9 and chapter 22 and chapter 26, what he tells us is that as Paul was approaching the ancient city in Syria where Abraham sojourned. Suddenly, a light from heaven flashed around him, he fell to the ground and he heard the voice of Jesus. And he mentions an important fact that the men who traveled with him stood there speechless, hearing the same voice, but seeing no one. And later, Paul says that they also saw the light, but they didn't understand the voice that they heard. Now, I want to say something about this. You need to receive the gospel through a revelation of Jesus Christ, too. Because you're not capable of accepting the good news of Jesus apart from hearing the voice of Jesus call you by name. And yet your revelation is not like Paul's revelation. I'm not saying that you need to see a vision that makes you go blind. I'm not speaking about an apocalypse that way, but you do need an unveiling of the truth before your spiritual eyes. Your calling comes from the Holy Spirit, who is Jesus. His personally sent witness. But you need not see Jesus personally like Paul did. In fact, if you saw Jesus personally and started telling me about it, I would tend to be pretty cautious about what it is that you're telling me. The Holy Spirit's calling is misunderstood by a lot of people. This is not a verbal audio soundtrack in your ears, like you're putting on headphones and listening to something. It's a deeply felt knowledge in your heart that the words you are hearing about Jesus are true. That means that it is subjective, but it's not only subjective. It becomes personal, but it has its origin outside of you. So here's what the calling of the spirit is. It's an inward confirmation in the soul of your being that what you are hearing about Jesus's death and resurrection is the truth. The confirmation has an objective matter to it. Which is the gospel message itself. You do not know that Jesus lives because he lives within your heart. Remember that song that we sing so many times? I can remember growing up as a kid going, wow, that's how I know he lives. And it didn't really make a lot of sense to me. That is sentimental, subjective liberalism and made it into most baptismals. You know that Jesus lives because he rose from the dead. And the Holy Spirit testifies in your heart that that's the truth. Now, there's plenty of objective reasons he also gives you as confirmation, such as he was seen by a lot of people. He predicted it before it happened. They were never they never found his body. The disciples all became martyrs. And you could go on and on and on. If you have this inward confirmation, then you have been called by God, even as Paul was. If you sense that it is, in fact, true, and call upon Christ and repent of your sins and trust in him by faith. That brings me to yet another reason why my what my friend said about Paul is just absurd. By reading and studying Paul's letters together, we are not worshiping Paul. We are worshiping Jesus because Paul was an apostle of Jesus. a personally appointed messenger to the Gentiles. Messengers don't speak of their own message, but somebody else's. This is the claim Paul makes here. His message comes straight from God and not from a man. But now he has to prove that point. And this is where he launches into the full blown autobiography. So he's made this claim that he's not seeking the approval of men. He's made this claim that the gospel doesn't come from him, it comes from God. But so far it is as a claim. Now he has to prove it. And he does it with an autobiography. There are three stages of this autobiography that are in this chapter. First of all, you have his life before conversion. And then you have his conversion and then you have his life immediately after the conversion. So it's not his entire life, but it goes for about three years after he got saved. Now, this brings me to an interesting point. And it was kind of a point I was thinking about, really, as I had finished the sermons, I kind of tried to weave it into what I had already written. You can call this Paul's testimony. Today, the personal testimony has often become the gospel itself. It is the gospel of my personal testimony, isn't it? People say things like, look at what God did for me. I was a drunk and now I'm not. He can do that for you, too, if you trust in Jesus. And the more amazing the testimony, as most of you in here know, The more of an antithesis that you can find in your testimony between what you were and what you are now, then the better it is. And that's why we kids growing up who trusted in Christ at age five always felt like our testimonies were lame and that we didn't want to go up and share them, especially after the ex prostitute turned millionaire WNBA star had just gone before us. If anyone had a testimony of great change, it was Paul. So it's not bad to have a testimony of dramatic change in your life. In fact, it shows God's amazing grace, as people rightly understand. The point is, though, Paul does not use his testimony as the gospel. So many people who give their testimony never actually get around to talking about what Jesus did. It's what he did for them, not what he did. Paul is not telling the Galatians about his amazing change in life in order to say that they can have the same kind of change in life if they believe in Jesus. No, it isn't about change the way politicians say it's about God. He's giving it only for the purpose of demonstrating that there is no possible way, given the kind of a person that he was, that he could have or would have made up the gospel that he told them. The purpose of the testimony is to point at the reliability of the message that he preached to them about the death and resurrection of Jesus. How a person is only saved by believing in that message and how God is glorified because of it. That's very different from the way the personal testimony is often given today. So here's how Paul does it. Let's look at it. First, he talks about his former life in verse 13. For you have heard of my former life in Judaism, how I persecuted the church of God violently and tried to destroy it. And I was advancing in Judaism beyond many of my own age among my people, so extremely zealous was I for the traditions of my fathers. Now, there's more potential danger here if you glamorize Judaism, as a lot of Christians do today. What kind of Judaism is Paul talking about? He does not have in mind biblical Judaism, which is simply the Judaism of the Old Testament, the revelation that centers upon the convergence of Christ's birth, death, life, resurrection. That is true Judaism. That's not what he has in mind. He is talking about the kind of Judaism that elevated legalistic obedience to and Jewish traditions above the law of God. And turn the life of faith. And the life of faith and promises into a life of merit or salvation. This kind of Judaism is very much like other religions of the world, especially Islam. He speaks of the traditions of my father's, but he's referring to is the oral law, things that Jesus destroyed in his Sermon on the Mount. For instance, we read, look, you've heard love your neighbor and hate your enemy. That was a tradition of the Pharisees, but Jesus corrects them and says, no, it's love your neighbor as yourself. That's what the law teaches. What this Judaism did is very important. To understand. It didn't create a general life of goodness. It stirred up in Paul intense, violent hatred for Jesus. That's what it did. And for all of his followers. People don't often think about legalism like that unless they see the fruits of the legalism in their children who end up rebelling in all sorts of crazy ways. This is what he points out directly, saying that he persecuted the church and he tried to destroy it. In fact, he says that this is that it was at this time that he was trying to please men, it was when he was trying to kill Christians. Notice, he said, if I were still trying to please man earlier, I would not be a servant of Christ can only be referring to when he was not a Christian. In other words, those who persecute Christ in his church do so because they're trying to please men. It's an interesting thought, isn't it? I had never really thought about it like that before. We actually know quite a bit about this because Luke and Paul spoke often about it. Paul describes himself as persecuting this way unto death in Acts 22. He says that he was exceedingly mad against the saints in Acts 26. Right before his conversion on the road, Luke says that he was breathing murderous threats against the disciples of the Lord. This is what he did to our fathers in the faith. He put him in chains, he imprisoned them, he urged them to blaspheme and he put them to death. That's what Paul did. One example of this is James, the brother of our Lord, who is mentioned in verse twenty, and though Paul was not at this particular event because James was killed after he was converted, it's a good example of the kinds of things they used to do to Christians. According to tradition, the Jews took James to the top of the temple, which is interesting because it's exactly where Satan took his brother, Jesus. And they threw him off the highest point of the temple. And he didn't die. And so they went down and beat him to death with clubs. It's clear that if Paul had not been converted, he would have eagerly participated in this action. Even like he did when he presided over Stephen's death, the first martyr whom they stoned with rocks. That's how he was advancing in Judaism, at least partly as if chopping ahead and hewing out a path, cutting through a forest and destroying every obstacle in order to advance in his religion. That's the kind of violence that a lot of false religions actually incite and stir up, including false forms of Christianity. It's because of the false religion and not grace. Because they're trying to keep laws that somebody else has made. And it's directly opposed to the grace of God. It was in this altered state of consciousness, this raving lunacy of hatred against the church that Jesus called Paul. And I want you to understand that, because it's really, I think, a powerful thing for us reformed Christians to be able to go to this passage and show our Arminian friends One of the reasons why free will is just so crazy. I told you a little bit about that conversion and how it came about through the apocalypse of Jesus. All Paul seemed to want to tell of it here, though, is of God's electing love and effectual calling by grace. He says, but when he who had set me apart before I was born. who called me by his grace, was pleased to reveal his son to me in order that I might preach him among the Gentiles. There's two precious pearls of Christian comfort for you to hold tightly to here. The first is God's electing love. Paul says he was set apart before he was born. Now, that is an incredible thing to say, given what we have just said about what he was doing to the church. It gets at the heart of personal election, a doctrine that is so precious to us and so sadly misunderstood by many outside of our tradition. Some people who don't believe the way we believe admit that election is in the Bible, almost all people have to admit that, but they say it's always a corporate election of groups and only a general kind of election to service. There was a professor at my seminary who actually wrote a book about this very thing, the whole entire book is dedicated to that theme. But Paul almost directly quoting Jeremiah, Jeremiah's personal testimony in Jeremiah, one five, where he says before I formed you in the womb, I knew you. Paul says that he was set apart before birth. It's an incredible thing to say. It speaks of the personal electing love of God set directly against his own consuming hatred for the very same God. Why would God do that to somebody who hates him so much? Paul told the Roman Christians, if when we were God's enemies, we were reconciled to him to the death of his son. The point is, God didn't choose you because he foresaw the good that you would do. Rather, he chose those who were his enemies, who hated him, and he saw what they would do. And it was only evil all the time against him. The only word for this is grace. Do you see how in this testimony he's not bragging about himself, he's bragging about God, he's not saying, look at all the changes that happened to me, he's saying, look at what God did. There is no reason in Paul or you or I that made God choose them. There is no good work that he knew you would do. No choice that he foresaw. Don't even try to go looking for a reason in yourself, which probably we've all tried at some point in time. I don't understand why God would do this for me. That's the point. You can't understand. There is nothing in you. For why he would do this, that's why it's the good news. It's because God chooses horrible people to save and set his love upon. And the good news is that God did this before we were ever born. Election takes place in eternity past. This, too, is why it's good news, because it means that all who come to faith in Christ may rest assured that they did so because God came after them, that God loved them before the foundation of the world. No one who is. Ever given saving faith can ever wonder why they have that saving faith. It is the gift of God because of the doctrine of election. That's the first pearl, the second is effectual calling. The eternal choosing becomes effectual in real time through a real call. Paul, who is scared and frightened on the road by the beatific vision of Jesus Christ, heard the call and what did he do? So, let me go away and think about it. No. He was instantly converted by his own free will. No. By the power of the omnipotent, sovereign, enthroned king of heaven and earth. Through the call. The call converted him. The words themselves created life in him. Just by speaking to him, Jesus converted Paul. And I trust in the same power of the preached word to you. God's power called him and converted him, and he willingly changed his mind against him from that moment on. He was given new affections, set free from his slavery to the devil, and his desire was now to follow his new master. Such is the power of the Holy Spirit in salvation, and he uses this power every time a sinner is made to hear this good news and turn to Christ. Do you hear that call? Have you heard that call? Have you believed upon Christ and been baptized? The last part of this verse is that Christ called him so that he might preach among the Gentiles. So there's two parts of this calling unto election. One is to salvation and the other is to service. But God never chooses people to serve him without also bringing them to him. That's the one thing I never understood about that professor's book. What good does it do to choose a whole group of people to serve him if none of them are ever going to do it? But at the same time, God does not call Christians without also giving them a purpose in life. It's not just calling to salvation and then it's up to you. The two go hand in hand. That made me start thinking about vocation and then later, as I was reading some other commentaries, they brought up vocation here, too, so I thought it was interesting. The reformers spoke of vocation rather than work or a job. Vocation comes from a Latin word meaning a calling. Christians are to view their work as a calling from God. All lawful work is good work. All lawful work can be a spiritual calling. You don't have to become a missionary like God called Paul to become in order to have a calling. But you do have to glorify God in what you do, praising him for your calling, doing the work to the best of your ability and being free in your mind to know that you are in God's sovereign will when you're doing it. God does call some specifically to serve the body of Christ. That's what he did with the apostle. Notice again, this is part of his personal testimony, but he does not use it in the way celebrities so often use their work, which is as a means to convert people through their fame. Again, making the testimony the good news. Rather, Paul uses this to point again to the good news. God called him to preach among the Gentiles, that is to these Galatians. That's why he came to them with this gospel that was not from him. See, everything you're reading about in this part of this chapter in this personal testimony is there to make the gospel shine, not Paul. That leads to the third stage of the testimony. His immediate choices after conversion. First, he tells us, I did not immediately consult with anyone in verse sixteen, and he says this. He advances his argument by showing that he didn't go running out to any person to tell them what had happened to him. This was a very sobering event in his life, and besides, he probably feared what the Christians would do to him if he went and said, hey, I converted to Jesus. Why should they ever believe him? The point of this is to introduce the idea that once he was converted by Christ, the message of Christ really was from Christ, because Paul was not talking to anybody else about him yet. They say, well, wait, didn't he meet Ananias right after he was converted? Didn't Jesus come to Ananias in a vision and command him to go meet with Paul and lay his hands on him, restore his sight and baptize him? And when we consider this a consultation, is there a discrepancy going on here? Well, liberal scholars, of course, that's what they think. Big discrepancy. Either Luke or Paul are lying or they don't know what they're talking about. I don't think this is a consultation. And I saw Paul, Paul did not seek Ananias. Furthermore, Jesus did this, so that Paul might know in an objective way that what happened to him was real. Imagine this guy sitting on the road. He has this experience. He's converted. He goes into the city of Damascus where he's going to kill all these Christians. He goes into this house that nobody knows where he's going. And he prays. He starts praying to God. And all of a sudden, a knock on the door comes, and he says, in a really timid voice, uh, Saul in there? I just saw a vision from Jesus that you converted to him. That's not the kind of thing that is considered a consultation with the disciples. That's a miraculous intervention to help poor Saul understand that this is really from Jesus himself. How could Ananias have possibly known any of this on his own? Next, he says, I did not go to Jerusalem to those who were apostles before me, but I went into Arabia and returned again to Damascus. When you read Acts, it might seem like Paul went into Jerusalem pretty quickly, because Luke says many days later. So you think, OK, six, seven days later. But Paul tells us he went from Damascus down to Arabia, which is probably in today's Jordan and Saudi Arabia. Petra was one of the main cities that could have been very well been where he went. But the point is, he went down there to preach the gospel and he still hasn't consulted with any human being about what the gospel is, because he's proving that he didn't learn it from any man. I want to make one brief point to foreshadow a major theme in this letter back into verse 16, says that God was pleased to reveal his son to me. It's the way Paul describes Jesus or his son. The title of Jesus as God's son is important because Luke tells us that when Paul began preaching. Which would have been during this time, he says that he proclaimed Jesus in the synagogue, saying he is the son of God. Back in Acts nine. Both of the accounts match the title of Christ and his message, and I want you to talk that away. The son of God is Paul's terminology for Jesus, because it's going to come up later in the letter. In the next verse, we learned that it was actually three years until he finally went to Jerusalem. He said he went to visit Cephas. Which is Peter, and he stayed there for 15 days. He saw no one else of the apostles except for James, the Lord's brother. That is the James who wrote the book of James and who Mason has been preaching through, and I told you was killed earlier by being thrown off the temple. He died in 62 AD, according to Josephus. We know that James did not believe Jesus while he was alive, but in the most incredible act of grace, the Lord appeared to him in a vision as well. We learn in First Corinthians 15. So perhaps when Paul and James met for the first time after three years, it was to help confirm to both of them that they really had seen Christ. And what an amazing conversation that would have been between the two of them. Why is this detail here? Paul is making the point that the church had not even officially accepted him yet. He was busy with his missionary work to the Gentiles, they were busy in Jerusalem. Probably Paul wanted to meet with Peter in order to get some kind of an idea about the larger organization of the church that had been developing there in Jerusalem. But apparently he had no intent on joining them. We could ask all kinds of questions about the legitimacy of Paul's actions here, especially if you're kind of a high church person. So you should be involved in church planting through churches and all of this kind of stuff. I'm not getting into that this morning, because I don't have time. Maybe Paul thought, maybe I should have gone to them sooner. Maybe he thought, maybe it's better to do your work. through the church instead of apart from it. And that might explain why he says and what I'm writing to you before God, I do not lie in verse 20. It's a strange parenthetical there that nobody really has any understanding why it's there. Why would he just insert? I'm telling you the truth. I'm not lying about this. Maybe he wasn't exactly proud of his Lone Ranger actions. We don't know. It's my guess. But he's telling them the truth about what happened. He isn't making it up in order to gain any of the Galatians favor. He continues to pour it on. After this, he went north to Syria and farther north to Sicilia. This is where his home was in Tarsus, which is in southern Turkey. So he's traveling a long distance on these journeys, and he hasn't even been sent out by the churches yet. He explains his point, saying, I was still unknown in person to the churches of Judea that are in Christ and verse twenty two. And then he adds, finally, the only thing that they knew about me was by hearsay. Since they use, they say that he who used to persecute us is now preaching the faith he once tried to destroy. In other words, he was gaining a good reputation among the churches, even while he was being persecuted in the places he was evangelizing by his old friends, the Jews. He says they even glorify God because of me, these Christians mentions the faith here. He was preaching the faith, what faith is that? This is the same faith, the gospel known to all Christians. And this is the climax of this section. Paul has the same gospel as the other apostles. He's never talked to any of them about it. There is only one gospel that he has ever preached and that they have ever preached. There is only one good news yesterday, today and forever. Paul received the same life changing message of the death and resurrection of the God man that they did. But he didn't receive it from them. How can you count for all of this other than the direct revelation of Jesus himself? Now, going back to my earlier comments on testimonies and on this phantom worship of Paul that I've never heard anyone in the real world engaging in, notice again that they are not glorifying Paul. They are glorifying God at the end of the text. They are worshiping God, and they're doing so because God changed this man who is now promoting the same faith that they are. What a remarkable story and an important piece of autobiography, not because it glorifies a man, but because the testimony. Is given to uphold the good news. You can see how testimonies are to be used to point us to the truth that can save us for our sin from our sins. And you can trust that what you're reading in Galatians is true. Because the only way it could have ever been accomplished is by the sovereign work of God in this man's life. And we have the same gospel being preached that the Galatians had as well, because God has continued to preserve this news to us. And so, therefore, take confidence in the power of God's word to convert and to save. To be powerful in the lives of men and to bring glory to God, that's why he gives it so that you might praise him for his marvelous grace that he shows to very terrible sinners like you and I. Father, we thank you for your word, and I would pray that this would be a meaningful text in the lives of your saints this morning that As we thought about several different things in our contemporary culture, the way that people misunderstood a lot of things in this passage and a lot of things that are implied by this passage that. It would be a corrective for us in the way that we go about speaking about what has happened to us because of you and that you might. Help us in the things that we have talked about in our lives, the people that glorify you and worship you. But most of all, Lord, I thank you for how you have preserved the objectivity of the good news here in this text. And you've made it subjective. You haven't made it about our feelings or our experience, but you've made it about something that happened in history. A long time ago, it was nevertheless, it really occurred. And there was a man who claimed to be God, who predicted his resurrection from the dead, and it happened. And he said it happened by his own power. And so this leaves us in a quandary. We either call him a liar or we believe the word that is said. And we trust because there's a lot of reasons to trust that it's true, Father. And I would ask that you would imprint those reasons on our minds this morning. And that it would be a blessing for us because we've heard your word preached today. In Christ's name I pray. Amen.