God is Glorified - Galatians 1:15-23 Part 2

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The Promises of the New Covenant, Part 3 – Hebrews 8:12

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as his man, his representative there. And then in other scriptures, and including in the first verse here in Galatians where it says

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Paul an apostle, we had to actually put it in there. And there I had to say, and I'll just give this one in English for you, back to English.

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He says, that one whom Jesus sent out to pass on his words, the one that Jesus sent out to pass on his words.

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So in that passage, we got the idea of him being a preacher or passing on.

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And we have the idea that he was sent out. However, the idea of him being chosen had to be implied in that particular context, but it goes all the way through it, that he was chosen.

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So the imam, we don't have any problem understanding that. So we can see from these passages anyway, that Paul was a man chosen by God to be his voice, his messenger, he was an apostle.

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This was his proof, his proof that he was qualified to help the

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Galatian people and to straighten out their errors. And we know from his testimony that he didn't get this from the other apostles in Jerusalem, that he got it straight from Jesus Christ.

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Now more in verse 17, as we go on with Paul's travelings, what else did he do? It says there in verse 17, that he went away to Arabia, and then he returned again to Damascus.

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So instead of going to Jerusalem, which we logically would have thought, he traveled all the way into the country of Arabia.

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And finally, later on, he went back to Damascus, where he'd originally been converted. So we aren't told in this passage, and we aren't told in Acts either, what he did there while he was in Arabia.

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But so I think we can safely assume that while he was there, he would have sought out some of those persecuted believers that he had chased all the way there.

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That would have been what I would have done if I had done so much damage in my former life,

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I would have tried to make up for some of that. And I think maybe he did. But I also believe that he went there to rest, and to get away from people, and meditate on these

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Old Testament prophecies that he had always thought before meant somebody else. And now he could meditate on them, realizing that they were about Jesus.

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And it was a deserted place, a desert place, and there would be no interruptions. And I think also he went there to listen to Jesus in his teaching and training him more.

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And even though Luke or Paul don't mention anything else, I think it's highly likely that he did receive strength from the

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Lord while he was there. But his point in this was telling the Galatians, again, it's to emphasize the fact that he had been taught and sent by Jesus alone and nobody else.

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No others influenced this message. So this was the proof of his authority to correct the errors that the

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Galatians had fallen into by trying to add works to salvation. Now look at verses 18 and 19.

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Where else did Paul go? It says, then three years later, I went up to Jerusalem to become acquainted with Cephas, or Peter, and stayed with him 15 days.

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But I did not see any other of the apostles except James, the Lord's brother. So after three years of being taught by Jesus there in the desert,

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Paul finally goes back to Jerusalem, which was his hometown. We hadn't been there for quite a while now, and it was three years.

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And he gives his purpose here. He says, I went to Jerusalem to become acquainted with Cephas, or Peter.

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So Paul saw a necessity to visit with Peter, possibly, it doesn't say any reason except for one here, and I'll get to that in a second.

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But we would think, well, Peter was kind of like the head guy, the head honcho of the disciples. So obviously,

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Paul would have gone to see Peter. But this is what he says. He says, to become acquainted with him.

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And this appears to be just a personal visit, not for any other reason. And we know that because of what

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Paul doesn't say here, I think. Paul doesn't say, so I could get more teaching, or so I could sit down with the apostles and go over what we needed to understand, or so that I could gain further insight into the gospel message.

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But instead, he says, I went to get acquainted with Peter. Well, that's pretty simple. That's all he did.

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And he stayed with him 15 days, he said. So specifically here, two weeks. Can't get a whole lot of things accomplished in that amount of time.

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And then he says, and I didn't see any other apostle except James. So why didn't he have a gathering of the apostles?

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It doesn't say that. All he did was to get acquainted. He had a brief opportunity to visit with James as well,

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Jesus' brother, and Peter. And for no other reason than to become acquainted in just a short visit.

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And I believe what he was emphasizing here, basically, was just the shortness of time. He was proving to the readers that there wasn't enough time to get instructions as to what the gospel should look like.

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That's why he specifically mentioned this 15 days. And again, he was backing up this idea that he received no formal instruction other than he was taught directly by Jesus Christ.

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As he says there, his message was a revelation. Now, we come to another interesting verse here.

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Verse 20. And I had to puzzle over this one. Why is it in parentheses? And why is it so different from everything else?

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He says, now, he says, in what I am writing to you, I assure you before God that I'm not lying. I promise you with God as my witness, he said, that I'm not lying in what

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I'm writing to you. Well, according to the commentaries, I had to, I couldn't figure this one out, and I had to go, what we should do anytime we ever have a question about God's word is look it up, look it up.

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Look and see what other passages say on it. And this time, I found that this was an oath he made, and it's very similar to one that we would make in a court of law, where we would take and lay our hand on the

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Bible. I don't even know if they do that anymore. But anyway, we'd lay our hand on the Bible, we used to, and say,

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I swear on the Bible that this is the truth. We have to swear, make an oath or swear. And I think that's what

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Paul was saying here, and we'll see why in a second. We also see in Romans, he made a similar oath, a similar promise to the

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Roman believers that he was telling the truth, with Jesus Christ as his witness in that case. He said in this letter that he promised them he really, really did feel genuine sorrow for his

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Jewish brothers and sisters because of their need to understand the gospel, and they weren't getting it.

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And so Paul was saying, I really, really feel sorrow, and this is the gospel truth, and I swear by Jesus Christ that it's true.

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And I believe that reason for giving that oath at that time was because he had been accused of deserting the

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Jews, because he had been going to the Gentiles. And so they were saying that he preferred the

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Gentiles over the Jews. He was preaching against them. And this comes out in his trial before Felix in Acts 24.

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We won't turn there, but just to explain that, that this is what Paul was saying. And so why then, why then did he again, or now, actually, this was before the book of Romans, but why did he have to give an oath here as he wrote them?

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And I believe the reason was because Paul needed to stress the fact that he'd been misrepresented by these legalistic

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Jews. They'd been saying all kinds of things against him. And his only truth was that he was an apostle, and he had been,

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Jesus Christ had revealed himself to him, and that he was telling the truth. But these accusations, just follow with me for a second, what some of these might have been, sounded like.

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Maybe they were saying something like, look, Paul is saying that a person can be made righteous by God just by believing.

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How absurd could that be? Why would we ever throw away our traditions and our laws that God has set up for us?

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We know that we have to prove we believe by the things we do, by adhering to God's laws.

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And we can only get in touch with God by obeying the commands and conform to being circumcised, they said, in order to be recognized as believers.

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We have to become just like the Old Testament Jews. And maybe they were saying this, Paul, he's destroying everything

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God demands. You can't trust him, he's perverting it. He's claiming he's heard

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Jesus Christ talk to him. Well, Jesus Christ is gone on, so how could he do that?

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This is absolutely absurd. He's lying just to make himself look good. I believe this is what they were saying. So Paul was calling on God as his witness, that these accusations were untrue and that what he was telling them was true.

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The gospel wasn't about keeping the laws, was it? Or other traditions. Jesus had revealed this to him and it was important enough to appeal to God as his witness to these things.

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So that was what the oath was. Then where else did Paul go? Verse 21, then

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I went into the regions of Syria and Cilicia. Syria and Cilicia.

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A short visit there after Jerusalem, or after a short visit in Jerusalem, he went to Syria and Cilicia.

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And so I had to ask myself, well, so what specifically does this have to do with it? I believe that, again, this emphasizes that he went far enough away from anybody to influence him.

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No one else taught him it. But another important thing is Cilicia was Paul's hometown.

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This is where Paul was actually born. In the area of Tarsus, excuse me, the town of Tarsus in his hometown area.

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We know this because of his own testimony in Acts 21 where he says, I am a Jew of Tarsus in Cilicia, a citizen of no insignificant city.

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And so it's interesting to note, also from the book of Acts again, and I like to go back to Acts because this is kind of like we bounce the two back and forth.

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We find a mention of some Jews, some other Jews who had come from this region of Cilicia. And these were men who were opposing

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Stephen when he was preaching in Jerusalem before Stephen was killed. And so these men also were from Cilicia.

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And Albert Barnes in his commentary mentions this. He says, these men that came against Stephen, he says,

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Cilicia, he says, was a province of Asia Minor on the seacoast at the north of Cyprus. And the capital of this was

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Tarsus, the native place of Paul. Paul was from this place and he belonged to Dallas even to this very synagogue, he says.

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And it's probable he was one who was engaging in this dispute with Stephen. So we don't hear that said, but it's very likely that's where he was, was doing it.

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So it's rather, it's very certain that Paul, or Saul as he was called at that time, took an active part in both the confrontation of Stephen and the stoning.

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As it says he does, it does say the coats were laid at his feet. So he possibly was one that was actually disputing as well.

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And I believe that we can be fairly certain that this was what was, why this was important to him, to show them that he was from there.

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So he went back to his hometown after meeting. And again, I believe the point is again, the same idea again, that it was to get away, to be far enough away from the apostles and from other influences, from Ananias, all these guys that had been a part of him.

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And he stayed away from them so that he wouldn't be influenced by them. And possibly too, I think he worked as a tent maker there, but I think possibly he also gave the gospel to his family and his relatives, his friends.

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That's something we can just speculate on, excuse me, because there is no record of it.

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Okay, now we come to the third part. So we have, first of all, what happened to Paul, and then his travels, what

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God did and what Paul did in his travels. And now we have the third part, the Jewish community's reaction.

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He says here, I was still unknown by sight to the churches of Judea, which were in Christ. So from his own testimony, we hear that the

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Jewish believers hadn't met Paul, had they? They talked about him, but they hadn't seen him.

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No one else had ever made contact with him. And then verse 23, he finishes this by saying, but, but only, they kept hearing he who once persecuted us is now preaching the faith that he tried to destroy.

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So they hadn't met the new Paul yet. All they had known about him was the persecutor, the evil guy, but now he had been changed.

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And he was now preaching the same message he'd been trying to wipe off. Wow, what a change, isn't it?

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So now we come to the very end, where we started this morning. He says,

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Paul says here in verse 24, and they were glorifying God because of me. And the believing Jews, they were praising

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God. They were saying, wow, he's changed. They were acknowledging that it was a miracle from God, that God had changed him.

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And so, I think we can learn from this testimony of Paul that, you know, it's true, isn't it, that God can change any man, can't he?

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It doesn't matter what they've done. But no man can change himself, can they? It has to be

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God. That's why he said, but God. That's why he glorified God. God can change us. He can transform the vilest person, even a murderer.

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Child of God, and we know this because we've seen here how Paul was changed. We see a similar ending also of this as we look back on verse 15, where it says, but God, through his grace.

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It's the same thing. God alone gets the praise and the glory for it, and Paul acknowledges. And as I mentioned at the beginning, it was a summary of everything that happened.

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But the glory only went to God. And isn't it true that God alone should always get the credit and the glory for anything that we do, shouldn't he?

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Whatever we do, whether we might be a former missionary or a missionary today, or a

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Sunday school teacher, or a secular worker, or a boss in a job, or worship leaders, or students, or teachers, or whatever

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God has given us to do, whatever we do, whatever we plan to do, let's always remember, like it says in 1

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Corinthians 10 .31, it says, whether then you eat. It's a little out of context, but I think it applies.

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Whether you eat or drink, or whatever you do, whatever you do, do all for the glory of God.

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So let's always give God the glory for anything. Never take the glory for ourselves. So I'm gonna close here with Ephesians 3, 20 and 21, where it says, now to him who is able to do far more abundantly beyond all that we ask or think, according to the power that works within us, to him be the glory in the church and in Jesus Christ to all generations forever, amen.

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Now let's pray this morning and close. Lord, we just thank you for your word. Thank you for what you've shown us.

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Thank you that we, Lord, though we do things, we do them because of you, not because of us. We pray that we'll always remember this, always remember that it's you that's always to get the glory, and never us, and that we never will take credit for it.