Galatians Introduction and Overview

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I am NOT Mr.
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Dave Broughton.
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I am taking his place today.
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He called me last night and asked if I could take his spot.
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And I want you to know I was happy to do it.
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I am a little, I'm a little, I need to get done in haste today, though.
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I need to leave at my time because today is the last day I have with my son before he leaves for the Air Force tomorrow.
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So I'm going to ask that afterwards we pray and then I'm in the car and gone.
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Because I want to get home and go have lunch with him and spend the rest of the day.
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I will.
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And again, I didn't do anything special for today.
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We're just going to go right back to Galatians, right where we started last week.
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We're going to sort of overview the prologue that we looked at.
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And we're going to look at the first few verses.
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So if you want to open your Bibles to Galatians 1.
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And let's look at the first five verses.
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I didn't get to it.
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It's kind of good that I'm doing it today because I didn't get as far as I wanted to on Thursday.
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So this sort of solves that issue.
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It allows me to have a second opportunity to get through the first few verses.
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So we're in verse 1.
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I am Paul, an apostle, not from men nor through man, but through Jesus Christ and God the Father, who raised Him from the dead, and all the brothers who are with me, to the churches of Galatia.
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Grace to you and peace from God our Father, and the Lord Jesus Christ, who gave Himself for our sins, to deliver us from the present evil age, according to the will of our God and Father, to whom be the glory forever.
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Amen.
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Let's pray.
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Father in Heaven, I thank You for Your Word.
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Lord, as we seek to understand it today, as I seek to give an exposition of just these first few verses, and how they apply to the entirety of this argument that Paul is making in the book of Galatians, Lord, I pray that You would first and foremost keep me from error.
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I pray that You would open the hearts of these men to the truth.
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Lord, we need Your Holy Spirit.
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I need Your Holy Spirit to preach.
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They need Your Holy Spirit to understand.
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So Lord God, give us Your Holy Spirit, and give Him without measure, Father, that we might understand Your Word.
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I pray, Lord, for the believers here, that they would be encouraged, enlightened, and driven towards Christ.
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And Lord, for the unbelievers, that today would be the day of reckoning, that they would see their need for Christ, that they would quit relying upon themselves, and that they would turn to Jesus, the only one upon whom we can cast all of our sins, because He has borne them for us.
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And we pray that in Christ's name.
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Amen.
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Alright, now from last week, just to remind, and I know a few of you were not here, we began looking at the book of Galatians.
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Galatians has been called the Magna Carta of spiritual liberty.
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It is the battle cry of the Reformation.
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It is the Christian's declaration of independence.
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It is a book which is about the freedom that we have in Christ.
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And last week we talked about the fact that it is influenced, at least in part, by the events that happened in Acts 15.
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Acts 15 is the Jerusalem council where the Apostle Paul and Barnabas went to Jerusalem to talk to the leaders there, which would have been the Apostles Peter and James, the brother of Jesus, who was the pastor of the church of Jerusalem, and talked to them about the issue of circumcision.
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There were men who came from Jerusalem who said that unless you are circumcised, you cannot be saved.
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And the reason why they said that was because the Old Testament clearly stated that for a person to be part of the covenant community, they had to be circumcised.
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If a person, a male obviously, was not circumcised, it goes without saying, but we'll say it anyway, has to be a male who is circumcised.
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And if a male was not circumcised, he was to be cut off from the assembly, meaning he was to be excommunicated.
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If he was unwilling to be circumcised, he was not a part of the people of God.
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And so you have this group of people who we have identified as the Judaizers.
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That word comes from the book of Galatians.
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It simply means those who would force the Jewish customs upon the people of God, upon the Christians.
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And these Judaizers had gone to where Paul was, and they were saying that Paul's doctrines were incorrect.
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Or, well, let me correct myself.
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They weren't saying Paul was incorrect as much as they were saying Paul was incomplete.
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They were saying his message was incomplete.
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Yes, Paul brought you faith.
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Yes, Paul brought you Jesus.
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Yes, Paul brought you the doctrine of justification.
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But Paul has not given you all the truth.
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We have brought you the rest of the story.
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And the rest of the story is this.
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Before you can be right with God, you have to be right with God His way.
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And certainly they had Scripture to stand on because, as I already said, the Old Testament clearly said that a person must be circumcised.
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And again, this doesn't just start with Moses.
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When did circumcision begin? With Abraham, right? It was part of being the child of Abraham, the son of Abraham.
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You had to be circumcised.
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Certainly, they were right when it came to the Scriptures about the necessity of circumcision.
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And they were right that it said that if you were not circumcised, you were to be excommunicated.
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Where they were wrong was that they were holding to a covenant that had now been superseded by a better covenant.
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The New Testament is called a better covenant.
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And it's better in many ways, but the one that it is best in the sense of being better, it's better, better, best.
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The way that it is best is that it relies solely and completely on the work of Christ.
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The covenant, the new covenant, is not one that we work to enter, but it is one that we enter by faith.
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And in that, it's very similar to Abraham's covenant because Abraham did not work to enter his covenant with God, but he entered into it by faith.
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And so, later in the book of Galatians, we'll see in chapters 3 and 4, Paul is going to connect the Christian faith with the faith of Abraham, saying, see how Abraham was justified by faith? So too are we justified by faith.
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Now, as I was coming in this morning, I was thinking about how we might best understand this book.
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And as I said, I want to look at the first five verses, but before we do that, I want to show you something else.
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I thought about reading the whole book.
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And I thought, well, that may be a bit much and I don't want your eyes to glaze over and get tired, but I do want to show you some key verses.
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I want to just take you to some key passages in the book, sort of relaying to you the message in little snippets.
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Because we're going to go verse by verse, we're going to hit all of these, but again, just to help you see the thought process, and then we're going to read the last two paragraphs of the book, because that sort of...
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Here's a trick to reading.
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By the way, if you have issues, if you have difficulty reading books, here's something that can help you, especially with your Bible reading, but also with any book reading, is anytime you have a book that you need to read, first, read the first chapter, and then read the last chapter.
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Because oftentimes, there is a summary of what's going to be stated in the book in the beginning, and then there's a summary of what's been said in the book at the end.
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And so you get an idea in your mind of what's in the book if you read what's at the beginning and what's at the end.
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Then go and read the table of contents.
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A lot of people don't read the table of contents.
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They don't even think about it.
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But you go read the table, and that'll tell you the structure of the arguments in the book.
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And now when you read the book, you'll be much more...
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You'll be much better at understanding the flow of what the author is trying to get you to understand.
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So, here's a few verses in Galatians that are going to be key verses.
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Verses 6-9 of chapter 1.
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Let's read just those.
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This is really the thesis.
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I am astonished that you are so quickly deserting Him who called you in the grace of Christ and are turning to a different gospel.
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Not that there is another one, but there are some who trouble you and want to distort the gospel of Christ.
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But even if we or an angel from heaven should preach to you a gospel contrary to the one that we preach to you, let him be accursed.
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As I've said to you before, so now I say again, if anyone is preaching to you a gospel contrary to the one you received, let him be accursed.
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Now in a few weeks we're going to go through this, we're going to look at this line by line, but for now, we understand the thesis of the book is this.
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There are people who are preaching a different gospel.
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That's the problem.
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The Judaizers, who we've already been talking about, they're giving a different gospel.
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And we're going to see at the end of the book, He addresses that same thing again.
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But let's look at another verse.
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Go to chapter 2 and verse 4.
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Yet because of false brothers secretly brought in, who slipped in to spy out our freedom, notice the word freedom, that we have in Christ Jesus, that they might bring us into slavery, to them we did not yield in submission even for a moment, so that the truth of the gospel might be preserved for you.
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See what he says there? There's men that want to steal your freedom, and we're not listening to them.
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We're not going to submit to them.
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So again, that's part of the theme of the book.
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Now look at verse 11.
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Same chapter, verse 11.
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But when Cephas came to Antioch, I opposed him to his face, because he stood condemned.
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Verse 16, it says, or rather verse 12, it says, for before certain men came from James, he was eating with the Gentiles, but when they came, he drew back and separated himself, fearing the circumcision party.
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Who is the circumcision party? Jews.
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That's the people the book is written against.
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That's the concern.
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They're the people that Paul's fighting with.
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That's the people he's contending with.
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So we're just sort of following the argument here.
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This is the issue.
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And even Cephas, who is who? Peter.
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Even he has been influenced negatively by these people.
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Jump down to in this same chapter, chapter 2, jump down to verse 16.
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Yet we know that a person is not justified by works of the law, but through faith in Jesus Christ.
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So we also who have believed in Jesus Christ, in order to be justified by faith in Christ, and not by works of the law, because by works of the law, no one will be justified.
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If you underline your Bible, that's a really good verse to underline.
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No one will be justified by works of the law.
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If we said there is a thesis to the book, we said it was the fact that he's arguing with the people, but this is the heart of the book.
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No one is justified by works of the law.
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Alright, looking over, continuing through the book, chapter 3 and verse 3.
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Are you so foolish, having begun by the Spirit, are you now being perfected by the flesh? You say, wait a minute, what's this talking about? Continuing the flow of the argument.
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Paul has brought them the gospel of justification by faith.
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They started with justification by faith.
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Now people are coming in and saying, oh yeah, but to be right, you've got to do this flesh stuff.
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You've got to get your circumcision.
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You've got to carry out these rituals.
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And Paul says, but wait a minute, if you started by faith, why don't you continue by faith? Are you going to make your faith better in the flesh? And the answer, of course, is no.
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So again, he's just continuing the same argument.
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Chapter 3, going down, verse 10.
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For all who rely on the works of the law are under a curse.
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For it is written, cursed is everyone who does not abide by all things written in the book of the law and do them.
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Now it is evident that no one is justified before God by the law, for the righteous shall live by faith.
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Again, there it is.
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It's just continuing this argument.
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Justification by faith.
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By the way, if you don't want to hear about that, you're going to really hate the next 8-10 months.
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We're going to take this verse by verse and this is Paul's whole argument.
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It's justification by faith alone.
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And when we add, it's this.
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And I know you've seen this before, but just put it in your mind.
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It's this.
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You have Jesus plus anything equals condemnation.
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It is Jesus plus nothing equals salvation.
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You cannot add anything to the work of Christ.
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You cannot add anything to what He has done.
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And when you add something to what He has done, you've brought condemnation on yourself because in some way, you are saying He is insufficient and I have to add X, Y, or Z.
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We either trust in Him alone or we don't trust in Him at all.
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It's an all or nothing venture.
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Okay? Moving on now, where were we? Chapter 3? Okay, now jump down to verse 24.
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Chapter 3, verse 24.
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And when we get here, I'm really looking forward to preaching this passage.
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It says, So then the law was our guardian until Christ came in order that we might be justified by what? Faith.
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The law was there for a purpose, and we're going to find out what that purpose was.
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The purpose was to point us to Christ.
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The purpose of the law is to show us the need for a Savior.
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My Bible uses the word guardian.
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The King James Bible uses the word schoolmaster.
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And it's the word pedagogue.
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If you're not familiar with that word, it simply means if you've ever heard the word pedagogy, it means it's a teaching methodology.
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Like different teachers have different pedagogies.
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They have different methods for teaching.
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This is the way God taught, or the method God used for teaching us we needed a Savior.
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The law was the method of teaching us our need for a Savior.
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So we'll get there again later.
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Let's look now at chapter 4.
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We're moving through the book.
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Chapter 4, go down to verse 17.
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I'm sorry, wrong verse.
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Verse 21.
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Tell me, you who desire to be under the law, do you not listen to the law? And you say, why is that an important verse? Because what Paul is saying is this, and he's starting to really ramp up his argument in chapter 4.
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Basically what he's saying is this.
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You who hold other people to the law are not yourselves keeping the law.
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Therefore you are a hypocrite.
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It's an argument against their hypocrisy.
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That's chapter 4 verse 21.
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Now chapter 5 verse 1.
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Beautiful verse.
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For freedom Christ has set us free.
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Stand firm therefore and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery.
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Amen.
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That's the, oh boy, that's the book.
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You have been set free in Christ, don't go back underneath the yoke of slavery.
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It's like an animal that has that big burden on its shoulders.
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When it's been set free, it doesn't want to go back.
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And here come these guys carrying the yoke saying you need to put this back on.
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They're the problem.
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And again, the solution is Christ.
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Chapter 5, are we still in chapter 5? Verse 12.
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I wish those who unsettle you would emasculate themselves.
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Everybody always giggles at that.
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Yes, castrate.
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Basically what he's saying is it's a play on words.
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Circumcised means to cut around.
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This Greek word means to cut off.
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So basically they're saying if they're telling you you need to be circumcised, they ought to just cut themselves off.
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And again, Paul's not messing around.
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Paul is not trying to win friends.
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That's why I said not many people would ever accuse anyone else of having written this because no one else would have put their name, put Paul's name, if he hadn't have written this, no one else would accuse him of writing it because it's just so blatantly harsh in its tone.
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And it's meant to be.
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He doesn't offer any thanksgiving for the Galatians.
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He immediately goes into their issue of the teaching.
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This is dangerous.
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This teaching is dangerous.
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Chapter 5 verse 12 which is the one we just read.
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Sorry, I'm looking at my notes as I go.
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Chapter 5 verse 14 is also important.
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For the whole law is fulfilled in one word.
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You shall love your neighbor as yourself.
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We're going to talk about what that means when we get there.
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What does it mean to love your neighbor? Paul says the fruit of the Spirit is love, peace, patience, joy, kindness, all those things.
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The fruit of the Spirit is how we see God's law worked out in love.
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And then chapter 6, we're going to read beginning at verse 11, we're going to read all the way to the end.
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Because this is, as I said, what's important, read the beginning, read the end of the book, and then you can go back and see what it's all about.
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Verse 11 says, See with what large letters I am writing to you with my own hand.
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It is those who make, excuse me, it is those who want to make a good showing in the flesh who would force you to be circumcised.
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Notice his argument has not stopped.
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He has maintained the same issue throughout.
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And only in order that they may not be persecuted for the cross of Christ.
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For even those who are circumcised do not themselves keep the law, but they desire to have you circumcised that they may boast in your flesh.
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But far be it from me to boast except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by which the world has been crucified to me and I to the world.
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For neither circumcision counts for anything nor uncircumcision, but a new creation.
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And as for all who walk by this rule, peace and mercy be upon them and upon the Israel of God.
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From now on, let no one cause me trouble.
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For I bear on my body the marks of Jesus.
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The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with your spirit, brothers.
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Amen.
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So there we have the last few verses that maintain the same argument as has been maintained throughout the whole book.
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Those who would come to you and those who would bring a gospel to you that would add to the work of Christ in whatever way, they are not of God.
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And so Paul uses this book as his polemic or his argument against such men.
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Alright.
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So with that, let's go back to chapter one.
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We've done an overview of the book.
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Now we're going to go back and begin our verse by verse exposition and I'm going to make comments as we go.
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We're going to look at verses one through five.
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Talk about why Paul says what he says in his opening verses.
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A lot of people jump right past the introduction to Paul's letters.
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Ah, he's just giving them grace and peace.
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He's just giving them an introduction.
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But you'll notice that the books of Paul's writings, his letters, the epistles, they're all unique.
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All of the introductions, they all start, you know, Paul, an apostle, something, something.
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But they're all unique in that he's speaking a specific issue to a specific issue within that specific congregation.
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And Galatians is important when we look at what he says in these opening five verses.
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The first thing we see here, of course, is his name.
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Does everybody have different translations? Does anybody have a translation that does not begin with the word Paul? Okay, so we're all good.
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So we all start with the same word.
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Now, who is Paul? And again, I'm not trying to be rudimentary, but I know some of you guys are new.
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Y'all know who Paul is? Paul was Saul, right? He was a persecutor of the church.
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He was one who believed in the Jewish faith.
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And he was brought up under a rabbi named Gamaliel who was one of the greatest rabbis in that particular time in history.
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So he had a very high education.
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He would have had what would be described today as like a Ph.D.
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level education in Jewish faith.
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Yes, sir? We don't have any...
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There's no record of saying he himself executed.
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And I don't know why we have no record of that, only as to say we can't say either way.
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We know this.
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He was a persecutor of the church, but in none of his confessions did he ever confess to killing anyone.
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He held the robes for those who stoned Stephen, which means he gave approval to the killing of Christians, but as far as his hands having shed blood, we do not know.
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And so I can't say one way or the other.
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It's safe to simply say, I don't know.
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You did say to an extreme degree.
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Yes.
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You tried to destroy.
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Yes.
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And I wouldn't put it past him because he believed killing Christians was a good thing.
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That's why he held the coats of those who were killing Stephen.
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This is why he would later identify himself as the chief of sinners.
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Right? He talks about himself.
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A lot of people say that about themselves in somewhat of a snarky sort of humiliating way.
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Paul meant it.
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He knew the depths that God had reached down and had pulled him out of.
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What's that? He was not a good guy.
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No, he wasn't.
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And here's the interesting thing.
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He thought he was.
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And from a Jewish perspective, from the perspective of the law, everyone else thought he was.
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As he said, I was above all others in regard to my being a Hebrew.
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I was a Hebrew of Hebrews.
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I was, as to the law, blameless.
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He identifies himself in one of his epistles.
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We know that's not true because no one is blameless as to the law, but yet that's how he saw himself.
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And that's how the world would have saw him as a Pharisee.
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As a blameless man.
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So that's the Paul that we are addressing or who is addressing us in this.
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And he identifies himself as apostolos, or as apostle.
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Paul an apostle.
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Now, again, not trying to be too rudimentary, but I want...
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Yes, sir.
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That's what I'm about to say.
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I want to make sure everybody understands that word.
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An apostle was one who was personally sent by the Lord.
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That word apostle means to be sent or to be a sent one.
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So somebody who's going, like if a leader sends out a representative, that representative could be called their apostle.
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He is sent out by that person.
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Yes, sir.
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You could put it as a messenger, correct? Yes, yes.
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There are, and this is an important thing that not everybody understands.
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There are two ways the word apostle is used in the New Testament.
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There's what we call capital A Apostle, meaning those people who were directly sent out by Christ.
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It began with twelve apostles.
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Remember Jesus had twelve men who he assigned.
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One of them was a devil.
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Have I not chosen twelve of you, but one of you is a devil? It was Judas.
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After Judas hangs himself, he is replaced in the upper room by the disciples.
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But what does Paul...
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I want to just go in your Bibles real quick, 1 Corinthians 15.
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This is an important passage on this.
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Because Paul talks about his apostleship.
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1 Corinthians 15 15 Chapter 15 We'll begin at verse 3 just so you get the context.
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He's talking about the resurrection of Jesus.
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1 Corinthians 15 verse 3 For I deliver to you as of first importance what I also received, that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the Scriptures, that he was buried, and that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the Scriptures, and that he appeared to Cephas, then to the twelve.
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Then he appeared to more than five hundred brothers at one time, most of whom are still alive, though some have fallen asleep.
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Stop right there.
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If anybody ever questions the legitimacy of Jesus' resurrection, you can point them right here and say, not only did Jesus raise before his disciples, he raised before over five hundred people at one time.
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The resurrection of Jesus Christ is the best attested event of ancient antiquity.
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It has more eyewitness accounts, it has more people testifying, and testifying to it in their own blood, because many of these people were willing to die for the sake of what they saw.
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Not what they believed, but what they saw, the risen Jesus.
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So this is an important passage, but it goes on.
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Then he appeared to James.
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Now James, that's the James we talked about last week.
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His brother, Jesus' half-brother, the pastor of Jerusalem church.
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Then to all the apostles.
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Last of all, this is the part I want to get to, verse 8.
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Last of all, as to one untimely born, he appeared also to me.
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Paul's talking about himself.
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And he uses the word, they're a very interesting Greek word, he uses the word miscarriage.
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We often think of a miscarriage as a baby who dies at birth, but in the Greek term, this could simply mean a baby that was not born at the right time, maybe born early.
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What's that? Yes, an abnormal birth.
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And that's the idea.
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All the other disciples were born by being followers of Jesus during His earthly ministry.
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Even Matthias was there from the beginning, that's how they chose him.
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They said, we want somebody who's been there from the beginning.
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But Paul says, I'm like an untimely birth.
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I was born out of season.
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I was born at the wrong time.
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Because he was born later.
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But he goes on to say, for I am the least of the apostles, unworthy to be called an apostle because I persecuted the church of God.
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But by the grace of God, I am what I am, and His grace towards me was not in vain.
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And he goes on to say, on the contrary, I worked harder than any of them, though it was not I, but the grace of God that is with me.
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Paul, sometimes people think Paul is being prideful when he says, I did more than the others.
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He's not being prideful, he's just stating the fact that here is the grace of God in me.
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I was born later than all the rest of them, and yet God has done so much through me.
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Not me doing it, God was able to take a miscarried child, an abnormally born child.
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He was able to take somebody who wasn't there from the beginning, raise him up, as it were, from the dust, raise him from spiritual death, give him spiritual life, and look at what he's done through me.
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I am an apostle, not like the others.
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I am an apostle that was called directly by Christ at the time, different from the others.
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Abnormal, but still with God's purpose.
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Now later in Galatians, he's going to talk more about what happened.
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He's going to talk about the fact that he spent 14 years away, he's going to talk about the fact that he went to Jerusalem and talked to the apostles, but the key to this is simply, because we haven't gotten there yet, in verse 1, he is an apostle, and by that, he has what we call apostolic authority.
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Apostolic authority, meaning he has the authority of an apostle.
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Remember earlier I talked about the big A apostle? Sometimes in Scripture, you will see people who are called apostles who weren't a part of the twelve.
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Barnabas is at one point called an apostle, and James, the brother of Jesus, the pastor of the church of Jerusalem, also called an apostle.
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But that is not the same as when we talk about Paul and Peter and the other twelve as apostles, because they have a certain authority that has been given to them by Christ.
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Thus, we call the first church, the early church, we call it the apostolic church, that which was guided and led by the apostles.
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Yes, sir? Was that the one they called James, the lesser? No, so that...
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No, this is actually the brother of Jesus who did not come to faith in him until after the resurrection.
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Yeah, there is two James in the Gospels.
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There is James who was called Boanerges, which means sons of thunder, him, James and John.
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He was beheaded very early, so we know it's not him.
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And James the less, or Macross was the nickname for him, that particular person, we don't know much about him, but we know this is not that James.
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This is James who was the brother of Jesus who became a follower after the resurrection and became an apostle, or became a pastor and was called apostle at one point.
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Yes, sir? His other brother was named Joseph, right? Yeah, there was James and Joseph and there was a couple others, I have to go back and look.
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Yeah, he had brothers and sisters.
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We assume all through Mary, you know, because we don't believe Joseph had any other wives, and that there was no other relationship, so we believe that these were his half siblings, because of course Joseph was his earthly father, but not his physical father.
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So we would have said that his James and Joseph and the rest are half siblings, you know, through Mary.
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His mother's children.
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Yes.
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So he is an apostle, which gives him authority.
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That's the point I'm trying to make.
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The whole reason why he says Paul an apostle is he is right now immediately defending his authority.
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Why is he defending his authority? Because he's about to make an argument throughout the whole book against people who are coming and saying, Paul has not given you the whole truth.
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Remember we talked about the other.
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He's got people who are coming to say, Paul has not given you everything you need.
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And he's saying, look, I'm an apostle.
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And notice what he says right after that.
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Not from men nor through man but through Jesus Christ and God the Father.
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So not only does he give his title, I have the apostle authority, but I have that authority not from a man.
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I wasn't sent by you.
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I wasn't sent by Peter, James, and John.
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I was sent by Jesus Christ.
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That's where my authority comes from.
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Not from man, nor through men, but from Jesus Christ.
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Again, Paul is making, he's building the foundation for his argument.
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You come against me, you're coming against Christ.
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Yes sir? That's his resume.
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That's right.
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That's exactly right.
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I should make that note.
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That's a good outline.
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This is his resume.
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He's making that point.
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It wasn't through men nor through a man.
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But his apostleship, his lineage is through Jesus Christ and God the Father.
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Now, he adds a statement here.
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He says, through Jesus Christ and God the Father who raised Him, that being Jesus, from the dead.
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Why? Why is that mentioned? Again, this whole statement is a foundation of the Gospel.
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This whole book is about the foundation of the Gospel.
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What is the foundation of our faith? The death, burial, and resurrection.
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The death, burial, and resurrection of the Lord Jesus.
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Is that what you're...
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Yes.
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Jesus plus nothing.
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Yes.
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And what it seems as though is the key to that, from the beginning, from when he first began to go about His Father's work, through His resurrection, that that whole process was His life was the fulfillment of His Father's work.
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Yes.
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And we're going to see that because he says that later on.
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He says, I'm doing this by the will of God.
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And that's what Jesus said.
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He said, I've come to do the will of Him who sent me.
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I'm not coming to do my own will, but the will of Him who sent me.
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But I want to show you something very quick.
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Do you have your Bibles open to 1 Corinthians 15? If you don't, go back real quick.
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Because he says, He is an apostle, not through men, nor through a man, but through Jesus Christ and God the Father who raised Him from the dead.
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I want to show you something in 1 Corinthians 15.
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Go down to verse 12.
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Now, if Christ is proclaimed as raised from the dead, how can some of you say that there is no resurrection of the dead? Now, this is a different book.
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It's a different community.
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There are people in Corinth who were saying that Jesus did not raise from the dead.
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Or saying that people don't rise from the dead.
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And he says, but if there is no resurrection of the dead, then not even Jesus or not even Christ has been raised.
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And if Christ has not been raised, then our preaching is in vain and your faith is in vain.
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We are even found to be misrepresenting God because we testified about God that He raised Christ whom He did not raise if it is true that the dead are not raised.
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For if the dead are not raised, not even Christ has been raised.
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And if Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile and you're still in your sins.
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Then those who have fallen asleep in Christ have perished.
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If in this life only we have hoped in Christ, we are of all people most to be pitied.
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So what's Paul saying there? Again, it's a different chapter, different book, different context.
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But his point is this.
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If Jesus isn't raised, this is all a joke.
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If Jesus isn't raised, you might as well all just pity yourselves because if Jesus didn't raise, then the Christian faith is founded on a lie.
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So, that being said, understanding the importance of the resurrection and how without the resurrection there is no Christian faith.
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You go back to Galatians 1 and he says, I am an apostle, not from men nor through man, but through Jesus Christ and God the Father who raised him from the dead.
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He is not only stating his authority through his apostleship, but he's stating that his apostleship is based on the very foundation of our faith which is the resurrection of Christ.
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Without the resurrection of Christ, his apostleship wouldn't matter.
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The resurrection of Christ is the foundation.
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Then he goes on to say, and all the brothers.
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And all the brothers.
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And you say, well, what in the world does that mean? And all the brothers.
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And he says, who are with me? What he's saying is this, I'm writing to you as an apostle, but I'm not alone.
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I'm writing to you as an apostle who is not from men nor of man, but through Jesus Christ and God the Father who raised him from the dead, and all the brothers who are with me.
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Meaning all the brothers who agree with me.
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We're all writing this to you.
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This is coming to you from me, but it's coming to you from the covenant community.
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You need to listen to what I'm saying.
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This statement is not from one wide, wild-eyed crank in the wilderness just screaming.
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This is from the community of the faith.
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You need to understand the foundation.
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This is the community of faith.
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And we're going to see this later, but Paul went to Jerusalem and he preached his gospel there, and he wanted to make sure that the gospel he was preaching was agreed with Peter and the rest of the apostles.
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Not because he wondered if it was right, but he wanted to make sure that there was agreement within the covenant community.
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And now he knows there's agreement within the covenant community.
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He can speak to them, and he can say to them with confidence, this is coming from all of us.
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This isn't just from me, and it would be enough if it was just from me, because I'm an apostle from God, not from man, and Jesus Christ is the foundation of everything I'm saying.
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It would be enough if it were just from me, but it's not just from me.
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It's from all of us.
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So he's establishing the authority of the whole book on this first few verses.
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And then he says at the end of verse 2, his audience.
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We've looked at the author.
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By the way, that's the root of the word authority, is the author.
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The author.
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Now we're going to look at the audience.
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To the churches of Galatia, notice there the plural churches.
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These are the churches, and again, there's some debate on this, and I don't really want to spend all of our time, I'm pretty much out of time now, but I don't want to spend all of our time on this, but there is debate as to whether or not these are the northern churches of Galatia, or the southern churches.
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There is no evidence that Paul ever visited the northern churches, but we know he visited the southern churches of Lystra and Derbe and Iconium and Pisidian Antioch, I think is the other one.
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And so we know those churches he visited, and they are all considered southern Galatia.
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So that's most likely, and again, everybody wants to argue something, right? Some people argue it's the northern churches.
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I hold firmly, if you read Acts 13 and 14, we know he visited these churches, they were in southern Galatia, and we know that he's speaking to someone who it seems as if he has an established relationship with.
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So it's apparent that he's been there.
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They know who he is.
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And so, there's no reason in my mind to argue it.
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But, as people will argue over how many angels can dance over the head of a pin, there are still people who argue whether or not it was the northern or southern Galatians.
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We're going to go with the assumption that it's the southern Galatians, and he gives a salutation.
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Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ from whom sorry, I lost my place here.
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I'm looking at two sets of notes.
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He says grace to you and peace from God our Father, sorry about that, and the Lord Jesus Christ who gave himself for our sins to deliver us from the present evil age according to the will of our God and Father, to whom be the glory forever and ever.
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Amen.
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Again, this is a salutation that can be broken apart but for sake of time, I'm just going to give you the high points of it.
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He mentions grace.
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Grace is how we are saved.
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Grace is simply the act of God giving us something we do not deserve.
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A good acronym, you've probably heard it many times, but it's good so I'll repeat it.
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It's God's riches at Christ's expense.
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That's grace, G-R-A-C-E.
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God's riches at Christ's expense.
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Christ paid for us so that we could have the riches of God.
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So that's just a neat little acronym for G-R-A-C-E.
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God's riches at Christ's expense.
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And he says grace to you and peace.
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What is the result of salvation? That's true and I'm not challenging what you just said.
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Peace is true, but what kind of peace? Peace with God.
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Here's why I make that point.
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If you become a Christian, you might not always have peace in this life.
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In fact, you might have a life of sheer hell.
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You might have a life that is always embattled.
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Think about people who become Christians in nations where the people are imprisoned for being Christians.
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I watched a movie recently about a man who was in I believe it was the old Soviet Union who was a preacher of the Gospel.
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He had a little home church.
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They found him out.
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They came in.
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They drug him.
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He spent 15 years in prison being punished brutally.
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They would put his feet into stocks and bash the bottoms of his feet with a cane just for the pain.
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You've seen it? Oh, you want to watch it? It's on Amazon.
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It was available for free.
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So I'll see if we can get it.
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But they beat him and they tortured him.
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My point is this.
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His life was not a life of peace here.
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But you know what? They would find him praying when they came to beat him because he had peace with God.
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In fact, one time the soldier came in to beat him and he said, what are you doing? He says, I'm praying for you.
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Praying for you.
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Exactly.
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And here so we have peace with God.
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My favorite Bible verse, therefore having been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.
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Romans 5, verse 1.
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Our peace may not be with men.
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In fact, the Bible says Jesus said He came to put a sword between men.
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And He would create division even in homes, even in families.
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But a man who comes to Christ has peace with God.
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So He says, grace and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.
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Notice the word Lord there as a reminder of Christ's deity.
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And by also, notice again, I don't want to time is out of, I've got to keep notice this.
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In all of these things it's always from God and Jesus.
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It's never from God and Paul.
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Because Paul never puts himself in an equality position with God.
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But Christ is because Christ is divine.
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Christ is the one through whom we have our peace with God because He is divine.
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So there is an equality here.
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He is the Lord Jesus Christ who gave Himself to deliver us from this present evil age.
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By the way, that is a strong, important phrase.
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From this present evil age because, remember, that's what the men who are trying to pull the Galatians back, they're trying to pull them back to that present age.
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Come back and be the way we used to be.
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Paul says, no, we've been delivered from that.
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We now have a new covenant.
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We have a new age.
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We have a new life in our Lord Jesus Christ.
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And He has delivered us from this present evil age.
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By, or according to the will of God and Father.
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To whom be the glory forever and ever.
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Again, I could say so much.
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I'm going to draw to a close.
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I know you guys are ready to take a break.
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I've got to get going.
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But, in our next study we're going to look at verses 6 down through verse 10, I think, or verse 9 where Paul makes his thesis for the book when he talks about the fact that there are some who've come with a different gospel and there is no other gospel.
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And if anybody preaches a gospel other than the one I preached, let him be condemned or cursed.
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Let's pray.
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Father, I thank You for Your Word.
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May it be, Lord, that this Word would have fallen on ears that are open to hear.
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And Lord God, that it would go through the ear down into the brain, down into the heart, and that it would make a difference in all of our lives.
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In Christ's name we pray.
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Amen.