God's Word from Paul's letter to the Galatians, chapter 1. And I'd like to start in verse 6. I marvel that you are turning away so soon from Him who called you in the grace of Christ to a different gospel, which is not another. But there are some who trouble you and want to pervert the gospel of Christ. But even if we or an angel from heaven preach any other gospel to you, Then what we have preached to you, let him be accursed. As we have said before, so now I say again, if anyone preaches any other gospel to you, other than what you have received, let him be accursed. For do I now seek to persuade men, or God? Or do I now seek to please men? For if I still pleased men, I would not be a bondservant of Christ. Let us pray. Our Father in heaven, we turn once again to your word, and we pray that you might lead us in the way everlasting. We, like the Galatians, feel the pressure of many voices calling us onward, saying that they have the will of God, and we feel this confusion, this troubling of the Church has come down to our day, and therefore we pray that the light of your word might shine and give us a true direction. Even now we pray, our Father, we pray that you would direct our hearts and minds in Christ Jesus, for his name's sake. Amen. As we bring this series to a conclusion, I would like to preach to you three messages, reviewing briefly the three main themes of this book of Galatians, and to do a more thorough analysis on the same kind of divisions and issues that the Church is struggling with in our day. We've learned that Paul is writing this letter because there were false teachers, people that had come to Galatia, They'd come down from Judea and Jerusalem to these newly planted congregations in the Roman province of Galatia, and in Paul's words, they were now troubling the church. I read that to you in verse 7, and also in chapter 5, verse 10. Those words are repeated. What does it mean to disturb, unsettle, to throw into confusion? The churches have been thrown into confusion. More than simply this demand for circumcision, Paul points out that these men, in saying this, are teaching another gospel. Another gospel that is not another, that has no saving power. And Paul, therefore, confronts these false teachers strongly, head on, with a burning passion. And Paul's approach, I think, is very helpful in clarifying to us as we face very similar issues in the church today. And so this letter of Galatians that we just finished studying can be divided roughly into three parts of two chapters each, handling the three main points of the controversy. There's a good way to get a handle on the book. The first big question that we'll consider today from the first two chapters is the question of authority. How do we know what and whom to believe? The second big question, which we'll take up next week, is the question of salvation. on which this controversy turned. How can we be saved and have our sins forgiven and receive the adoption as children of God? And the third big question with which we'll conclude our study is the question of holiness. How can we overcome the sinful desires of our flesh and live a life of love and holiness and walk with God? So you can think of this book in three parts. Chapters one and two deal with the question of authority. Chapters 3 and 4 deal with the question of salvation. Chapters 5 and 6 deal with the question of holiness. Today we consider the question of authority. Paul and Barnabas had planted these churches on their first missionary journey. Soon after their departure, within months, people arrived, Jewish Christians, coming down from Judea, saying they represented the true apostolic teaching of the disciples in Jerusalem. And the Galatians were therefore immediately faced with a dilemma. They were faced now with two different groups, you see. Each one claiming to represent God's will on essential important matters, critical matters of salvation and piety. Groups that were in stark contrast to one another. Should they believe Paul and Barnabas, these men who come to them from the church in Antioch? Or should they believe these men who've just come from Judea, where the apostles are, claiming to represent the true teaching of the apostles? Well, sad to say, they made the wrong choice. And Paul has to write this letter to call them back. And I call to your mind, the first two chapters, how he does it. He has to do three things, actually. Paul first has to demonstrate that he didn't get his teaching from any man. Not from any disciples in Jerusalem. Not from any church. And he proves them. He didn't even talk to those disciples for years. He got his teaching from Jesus. He's not representing anyone's tradition. He's giving them Christ's word. Second, he says, these false teachers are not, in fact, representing the true apostolic tradition. I mean, anybody can say they have. Well, we have apostolic doctrine. I mean, you look at every ancient church in the world today, from Syria to Ethiopia to India to Rome, all of them claiming that their special traditions are actually apostolic traditions. I quoted to you some time before to make that point. Traditions in complete contrast, disagreeing vehemently with each other. the cause for division in the church today over who has the true apostolic tradition. Paul points out, look, when I went up to Jerusalem with Timothy and I explained the gospel message 14 years after I was converted. I went up, I laid out my gospel before them, they gave me the right hand of fellowship. And even Timothy who was with me was not compelled to be circumcised. The smoking gun. They are falsely claiming to represent apostolic tradition. The third thing that he does, at some length, is to show that this proposed scheme of salvation, that you must be circumcised and all that, this proposed scheme of salvation taught by the Judaizers is not taught anywhere in the Bible, not even in the Old Testament. Justification by faith, apart from works, was preached clearly to Abraham, it was taught in the Law of Moses, it was revealed by the prophets, The law says, all who rely on the works of the law are under a curse. You can't be good enough, people. Even those Judaizers, those people, he says, even they can't keep the law. And therefore, their teaching should be rejected. It is not of Christ, it is certainly not representing the apostles, and the main point, it's not what's been taught in the scriptures. Brief review of what we've seen. Paul's approach, you see, in resolving the problem, his whole approach to this dilemma, is very helpful now for us today, as we are confronted with exactly the same situation, just multiplied many times over. Because, you know, now in the world today, there are a multitude, a large number of voices, disagreeing vehemently with each other. All most claiming apostolic authority for their distinctive beliefs. I'm going to be more specific tonight. I'm not going to concentrate on any other church. I'm simply going to concentrate on this fundamental difference between Protestants and Catholics. And to show you that this question of authority is our question. This is the fundamental question. It's not the most important difference between the two. By far, the most important difference is over the Gospel, just like at Galatia. But the difference in the Gospel and all those other things is simply because of the matter of authority because the Roman Catholics are claiming that they have apostolic oral tradition and they're able to interpret the Bible with apostolic authority that's why we have a major difference this is why the Rome has a massive number of other beliefs and practices distinctive of Roman Catholicism, at the very heart and center of Catholic piety, which are not found in the Bible, the veneration of Mary and the various beliefs about her sinless conception and perpetual virginity and bodily assumption to heaven, which the council proclaimed, if you don't believe it, you can't be saved. Prayers for the dead, prayers to the saints, treasury of merit of the saints, from which the church may draw, the practice of confession to a priest as part of a penitential system, penance itself, marriage, and extreme unction as sacraments, the practice of indulgences, the belief in purgatory, monasticism, a celibate priesthood, the office of the Pope, the primacy of Rome, the government of cardinals, archbishops, and so forth, archdeans, deans, all these essential features distinctive of Rome. Different from Eastern Orthodoxy, different from Protestantism, different from the other ancient churches. These distinctive things of Rome that divide us are all We would say, nowhere taught in the Bible. Well, we are divided so much on all those things though. There are many more things I could name. The churches of the world are not divided over such things. They are divided on the matter of authority. How do we know what to believe? And what to do? Just like in Galatia, the real question that faces us is, who is representing the authentic apostolic traditions? Who has the authority? And just to be clear, the question is not whether, you know, Catholics are bad and Protestants are good or anything ridiculous like that, right? The whole matter comes down ultimately to authority. If you can get that settled, every other question is settled in the universal church. Well, I shouldn't say it that way. Every other difference that divides us like that. we obviously teach that the word of God in the scriptures is our only rule of faith in life and that differences in interpretation should be resolved as they have been resolved since the time of Moses and throughout the New Testament as well by the calling together and deliberation of a body of elders just as there were elders in every city in Israel Supreme Council to be held to handle matters of appeal So we have in the church today So that had in the Old Testament and New Testament now the Roman Catholic Church Along with every other ancient church I might add teaches that they have a very large body of underwritten traditions of the Apostles and Even more important than all that They have in the church today a living apostle who has full apostolic authority to both declare and interpret doctrines, their words. The Bishop of Rome, as he's called the Vicar of Christ, is able to declare the will of God with the infallible authority of Christ himself. The pope and the bishops in communion with him are called the church's magisterium. And when the magisterium has spoken, they say, it has spoken infallibly. And finally, and therefore the church's doctrine is not reformable, irreformable, their word. And so this man, the pope, preserves the unity of the church. and resolves every difference in faith and life. Here is this man who is, in their words, in Christ's place on earth as the vicar of Christ who is able to speak infallibly and unite the church in himself. So you see the two sisters. Now this is honestly, I say, one of the very greatest attractions to Catholicism. And when people Go back to Catholicism, or turn to Catholicism. It's often because of this, frankly. Here's the testimony of Elizabeth Elliot's brother, Thomas Howard. He asks the question that zealous Roman Catholics seem to be always putting to Protestants, which is a very embarrassing question for sure. You say that the Bible alone is your authority. But you don't agree among yourselves about what the Bible in fact teaches. So at last it comes down to this. The Bible is the only authority as it happens to be understood by your little group of people where you are. What good, what significance is an authority like that, Howard Rice? You say, We get it straight out of the Bible. The great difficulty here is that Eutychus and Sibelius and Arius and every heretic you can name got their notions straight out of the Bible as well. Who will arbitrate these things for us? Who will speak with the authority to us faithful? All of us rushing about, flapping the pages of our well-thumbed New Testaments, locked in shrill contests over the two natures of Christ, or baptism, or the Lord's Supper, or the mystery of predestination? This question formed itself in the following way for me, a 20th century Christian, writing a few years back. Who will arbitrate for us between Luther and Calvin? Or between Luther and Zwingli? Both appealing loudly to scripture, and each with a view of the Lord's table that categorically excludes the other's view. and who will arbitrate for us between John Wesley and George Whitfield, that is between Arminius and Calvin, or with all our independent seminaries and grace chapels and moody churches and so forth. When a crucial issue arises, say, what should we teach about sexuality? Who will speak to us with a finally authoritative voice? Well, the best we can do is to get Christianity Today to run a symposium with one article by J.I. Packer, plumping for traditional morality, and another one by our lesbian feminist evangelical, there are some, showing that we have all been wrong for 3,500 years since Sinai. Then the trouble here is that J.I. Packer has no more authority than our lesbian friend, so the message to the faithful is, take your pick. End quote. See the power and the force of that argument? And wouldn't it be nice just to hear one person to be able to decide and declare, finally and forever, without error, never to be changed, this is the will of God. Wouldn't that be nice? Do you feel the powerful practical argument for Catholicism he describes? I do. And so many people that come back to Rome say, this is what we've needed all along. Catholic apologist Scott Hahn, formerly a PCA minister, he uses this as the climax of his presentation. Look at the Protestant world without a Pope, and what do you see? You see thousands of denominations and churches and sects becoming more numerous each day. You see every Christian producing his own interpretation of Christian doctrine and giving his own account of Christian ethics. It's true, and Mormons have made the same argument to me. You know, we have apostles in the Mormon Church. You guys don't have anything. No wonder you're so split up. Well, I hang my head in shame. It's true. It's true. I'd like to offer a few arguments though, in response. I'd like to be able to help you think through this matter of authority, which is the fundamental matter, from what we have learned now, in Galatians. Before I do, I might say, by the way, various Protestant denominations with various confessions of faith differ on matters of little consequence, and certainly not over the gospel or any foundational doctrine, and that the differences to be held among evangelical churches is pretty small compared to differences even in modern Catholicism, so we're not quite as fractured as what's being said here, but it's a fair enough question. we should address and I will say again that you know Israel was in exactly the same position for so many years and there were fractures there and so the New Testament Church in fact has been all these years so but let's let's handle the question let's let's let's let's respond comprehensively to this charge how are we are how are we to know what is true Who is speaking on behalf of the Lord? We say the Bible is our only and sufficient rule. That is to say, well, quoting 2 Timothy chapter 3, all scripture is given by inspiration of God, or as the NIV puts it very literally, God breathed. Breathed out by God, right? ESV. God's own breath breathed out these words, and so it is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness, that the man of God may be mostly complete, mostly equipped for most good works. Right? Three important words here. Complete, not mostly complete. Thoroughly equipped for every good work. I could begin by pointing out that this statement is not entirely true from a Roman Catholic perspective. That is to say, a man may not, cannot be thoroughly equipped for every good work by the Bible alone. For there are, in fact, a great many works of piety which Catholics think are essential that the Bible simply does not teach. Treasury of Merit, Prayers for the Dead, a whole bunch of things. But even the papacy itself. Steve Wood, who's a Catholic apologist, also happens to be a former PCA minister by the way, he admits that if you restrict yourself to the Bible alone, you should be a Presbyterian in your view of church government. But he is not a Presbyterian anymore. Because, he says, the church has taught him a different view. Now I think this is a very interesting and important admission. I just happened to pick on this because we're thinking about the papacy, but it is not only the church, excuse me, it is not only that Christ may teach his church through the magisterium things which he had not yet communicated to her in Holy Scripture. It would seem to be the case that he may communicate truth which is even at odds with what one would conclude from the scripture alone. As I'll say later, there's no difference between the office of elder and bishop and pastor in the scripture. There's no, this whole hierarchy of the divisions, bishops, archbishops, pope. You can't find such things. And Steve admits, if you just look at the Bible, okay, you'd be a Presbyterian, but the Lord has revealed something different through his church. Not more. Actually different and contradictions to what had previously been revealed in the Bible Always we are taught to think about the Bible as a unique revelation, as Paul puts it here. God breathed, coming out of God's mouth. Romans 3.2, the oracles of God, the very words of God, as another translation has it. The Holy Spirit spoke through the mouth of so-and-so, as God spoke through the prophet, right? You know all these many, many, many times the phrases are given. The Bible is given by God, and therefore the Bible says you are to use this revelation as the judge of anything that comes Next, Deuteronomy 13, for example, any prophet, anybody who claims to have an inspiration, revelation from God, he's to be tested by this word. Verses 1-5, any prophet comes, he teaches anything contrary to what you have been revealed to you, that prophet is to be executed. Here in Galatians 1.8, tying it back here, 1.8, if even we, even Paul the Apostle, even if we or an angel from heaven preach any other gospel to you than what we have preached to you or what you have received let him be anathema the previous verse here goes on to show and later on the Bible itself has a different view of the gospel than what you're being taught and so the Bible becomes the means of judging whatever is later people who later arise okay Another example of this problem, consider this Roman Catholic apologist Carl Keating. He's talking about the distinctive teaching of the Assumption of Mary. Anybody know what the Assumption of Mary is, by the way? I'm assuming a lot of these lectures are sermons here. Mary was received bodily up to heaven, didn't die, she was sinless at her death, she was received up into heaven. Carl Keating, Catholic theologian or apologist, he says, fundamentalists, by which I guess he means all Protestants, ask, where is the proof from Scripture? Strictly, there is none. It was the Catholic Church that was commissioned by Christ to teach all nations and to teach them infallibly. The mere fact that the Church teaches the doctrine of the Assumption as definitely true is a guarantee that it is true. So this is why ultimately we have this difference. Rome, in former days, used to claim that her doctrine is nothing that she invented, it's something that was handed down from the church fathers, but from the apostles themselves. And all the fathers, their word is the unanimous consent of the fathers, quoted in two councils. The fact is they have more or less abandoned that view. The fact is the Reformation has happened in large part because Calvin, Luther, and the other reformers began to read the Church Fathers. They recognized that Rome has departed from the historic faith. In fact, in the dedication of the Institutes, Calvin writes, they unfairly cast up to us the early Church Fathers, I mean the writers of the first period of the Church, as if the latter favored their impiety. If it came to a fight between them and us and the appeal to the church fathers, the greater victory would rest with us. But although many things were written wisely and well by these church fathers on the one hand, it happened in some places, as happened to all people, they made mistakes and went astray. But these good and obedient sons, the Roman Catholics, only worship the Church Father's errors and mistakes. They appear to have no other care than to gather the dung from among the gold. And when they attack us with great outcry as those who despise the Fathers and are their enemies. And so, people, we might... Well... I might point out simply, Calvin's point here, if it came down to weighing in the balance the Church Fathers, who would win? Well, to put it modestly, he said victory would come to us. But this is not what our faith is ultimately to be based on. And he calls us back to what the Fathers themselves call us back to, the Word of God itself. I realize this is going on and this is sounding more like a lecture than a sermon. I will briefly point out that even in the matter of the Lord saying to Peter in Matthew 16, you are Peter on this rock, I will build my church. I have all these quotes by Roman Catholic theologians and they say, look, only one church father actually held that. And that was Irenaeus. Augustine does say it at one point, but later in his sermon he takes it back and in his retractions at the end he takes it back. None of the early church fathers held to that. None of the early councils had to that. And I'll just pass that by. I'm not going to spend time in lengthy quotes pointing out what all the fathers say and so forth. Simply to say that the Catholic Church has abandoned the view that All the unanimous consent of the Father stands behind our doctrine. I will say though, in the matter of having, how would you decide? Here we are, a fractured church. How are we to decide what the truth is? Well people, as much as it would be nice to have one person finally and infallibly to tell you what the true interpretation of the passage is, we are in fact left in exactly the same way as God's people have virtually always been left throughout our history, even again all the way back to Moses. We have been called to have the elders deliberate and to come to a decision, a decision which it seems also from the Bible and from history is sometimes wrong. Here's what Dr. Harris wrote some years ago. The fact is that the early church had no head on earth. Christ was their head and they were all brothers. They didn't have an organization, however. There was a doctrinal question at Antioch, the very question we've been studying in Galatians. Do the Gentiles need to be circumcised in order to be saved? What should the church do to settle it? Should they write a letter to Peter asking his decision? That may be the Roman Catholic position. They did not. Should they write to the College of the Apostles? That would be the Episcopal position, but Antioch did not do that. Should they call a congregational meeting of the church at Antioch and have the matter decided by the congregation? That would be an independent theory of church government, but the church did not do this either. Rather they did, as they say what they've always done, Old Testament, New Testament, they sent representatives to a synod held at Jerusalem where the apostles and elders came together to consider the matter and they considered it carefully with prayer and the study of scripture and finally the apostles and elders, it's repeated, the elders, repeated by the way on several occasions decided on the policy and gave decrees to all the churches which were expected to submit. There was no primacy of Peter or anyone else. End quote. In Titus chapter 1 we find some central elements of biblical church government. Titus, you need to remain in Crete until you have set in order the things that are lacking and appoint elders in every city. Just like in Israel, in all the days of old. Elders in every city. And from that small sentence we gain great insight into the biblical form of government. You realize things are not in order until the church has received elders, plural, and neither in the Old Testament or the New Testament are God's people ever ruled by one, the pastor, one rogue elder, at least not in principle. Plural eldership, we see also that in verse 7, there's an interesting parallel. You need to have elders in every city. Verse 5, appoint elders in every city. 4, verse 7, a bishop must be blameless as a steward of God. Or so you have the translation, overseer, episkopos. From that passage you see the difference between an elder and a bishop is none. Two ways of talking about the same thing. That elder refers to the man, overseer refers to the task. Just as if I said, the mayor of Blacksburg needs to be a man of integrity because the chief magistrate of the town is an office of great importance. The words mayor and the chief magistrate are two ways of referring to the same office. You say, well, you're making a whole lot out of one text. Okay, well, let me give you several more. Paul writes his letters. He writes to the overseers and deacons at the church of Philippi. Overseers, plural. No mention of a separate class. Only two groups. No separate elders. Bishops and deacons. 1 Peter 5. To the elders who are among you, I who am a fellow elder, writes Peter. He sits in the assembly with the other men. I am a fellow elder, a witness of Christ's sufferings, shepherd or pastor of the flock of God which is among you, serving as overseers, bishops, not by compulsion but willingly. And when the chief shepherd appears, you'll receive the crown of glory. Once again, the words elder, bishop, used interchangeably. One speaks of the man, one speaks of the duty of the office, but the terms are used interchangeably. 1 Timothy 4.14 speaks again of the laying on of hands of the eldership, not episcopal ordination. Acts 20.17, Paul calls for the elders of the church at Ephesus, plural elders, one church, Take heed to yourselves and to all the flock among which the Holy Spirit has made you bishops, overseers, to shepherd, or pastor, the church of God which he purchased with his own blood." Well, again, this is sounding awfully like a lecture, and I'm sorry about that this evening, beloved. The point, and I'll leave it maybe with that, elder, bishop, or overseer, and pastor, used interchangeably on many, many occasions. Thomas Witherow has a book called The Apostolic Church, which is it? And he surveys the various forms of church governments that are in the Christian church today and he says, well these are the things that we can find from the Bible. Number one, office bearers are chosen by the people. Choose from among yourself. Again, from the days of Moses. Moses says, choose from among yourself these elders. All the way down to the present. Second, the office of bishop and elder are identical. Third, there is a plurality of elders in each church. Fourth, ordination is the act of a presbytery. That is by the Greek word for elder. The body of elders. Fifth, there was a privilege of appeal. to a larger assembly of elders, and the power of government was exercised by them in their associate capacity. And number six, the only head of the church was the Lord Jesus Christ. And so, in conclusion, I say we cannot accept the papacy, as much as we might like to have that, frankly, we cannot accept it as a divine institution because it simply would be expedient. As attractive as it would be in certain ways, that is man's solution to the problem. and not God's. Man's solutions, as we've seen in previous messages, always carry with them devastating results, however unintentioned. The unity that the Pope confers upon Catholic Christendom is a unity in error, a unity that has persevered throughout the ages by rejection of proposals of reformation. Scott Hahn, in his lecture, makes an interesting slip. He speaks of the time when Luther left the church. Of course, Luther didn't leave the church. He was thrown out. The Pope regarded Luther as a troubler of Israel. In the same way that Ahab regarded Elijah to be a troubler of Israel, and Elijah's response to Ahab was exactly the same response that Luther made to Pope Leo. It is not I that troubles Israel, but you who have abandoned the Lord's commands. It is a striking paradox to see that the Pope is, in fact, a great cause of disunity in the Church. Claiming authority from God. which is in fact keeping Protestants and Eastern Orthodox Christians and others away because they cannot accept the submission to his doctrines at the end of the letter Paul proclaims peace and mercy upon all who will walk by this rule and this is the apostolic succession that we accept and the only that we can accept not a bishop claiming to have the authority of an apostle, but loyalty to the Word of God given by the hands of Christ's apostles. Thank you for bearing with me in that mostly historical lecture. Let us pray together. Our Father in Heaven, we pray that you would reunite the Church on a firm and solid basis, not only in heart and in charity, but in truth. We pray that you would therefore bring together these separate parts of the church and reform that which is to be called irreformable. That's by the preaching of your word and by its loud reception in the heart that you might so break down these barriers and institute a new reformation, a new revival of your Christianity. And so we pray that you might Lead us in our dealings with with others to to deal with them wisely We pray for those who have been unsettled by the various claims the many claims in the world today to apostolic authority and pray that they might be grounded and settled and that Even if an angel from heaven should preach any other gospel other than what they have Received in your word that he would be to them anathema. We pray it for Christ's sake. Amen. I We have a table that brings unity, a table that requires unity. Even the divisions in the church at Corinth were condemned as being completely against the spirit of the table, for here we have the one loaf, and we are one body in Christ. It is a table that unites, and yet it is also, I suppose, a table that divides. That is to say this is given to the disciples of the Lord Jesus Christ and to those who are walking with him and so This is not for everyone. This is not for the world This is for the church. This is my body. He says which is given for you and not for all So we come once again to this table that both divides and unites. A table that causes both a division and a joyful togetherness. And we come and take these elements conscious of the fact that our only unity is in the one Lord, one faith, one baptism of that holy catholic and apostolic church. that which is founded in the apostles. If you are therefore a member of the Church of the Lord Jesus Christ, having been baptized and a member of that unity, we welcome you to this table. And if not, we invite you not to this table, but to the Lord Jesus Christ. And if I can speak with you tonight about these things, please let me know. For I received from the Lord that which I also delivered to you. But the Lord Jesus, in the same night in which he was betrayed, took bread. And when he had given thanks, he broke it, saying, Take and eat. This is my body, which is given for you. Do this in remembrance.