Not Man's Gospel

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Well, good morning.
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Take out your Bibles and turn to Galatians chapter 1.
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Last week we looked at verse 10.
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We spent all of our time in one verse.
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Today is going to...
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We're going to read several verses, but we're probably only going to focus on one or two verses.
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We're going to read it.
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I'm going to give a slight commentary over the whole that we read, and then I'm going to come back and start focusing on the individual verses.
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And then over the next several weeks, we're going to look at the verses through.
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So each week we'll read the whole thing just to make sure we understand the context, but we're going to key in on some specific sections each time we come together.
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So we're going to read verse 11, and we're going to go all the way down through chapter 2, verse 10.
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So that's a long bit of text.
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That's my Bible.
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Thank you, brother.
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I'm going to put it here.
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Don't let me leave without it.
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So we're going to read chapter 1, verse 11, through chapter 2, verse 10.
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Long section, but it's all one idea.
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It hangs together as one narrative.
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And then again, like I said, we'll go back and take it apart.
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For I would have you know, brothers, that the Gospel that was preached by me is not man's Gospel.
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For I did not receive it from any man, nor was I taught it, but I received it through a revelation of Jesus Christ.
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For you have heard of my former life in Judaism, how I persecuted the church of God violently and tried to destroy it, and I was advancing in Judaism beyond many of my own age among my people, so extremely zealous was I for the traditions of my fathers.
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But when He who had set me apart before I was born, and who had called me by His grace, was pleased to reveal His Son to me, in order that I might preach Him among the Gentiles, I did not immediately consult with anyone.
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Nor did I go up to Jerusalem to those who were apostles before me, but I went away into Arabia and returned again to Damascus.
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Then after three years I went up to Jerusalem to visit Cephas and remained with him fifteen days.
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But I saw none of the other apostles except James, the Lord's brother, and what I am writing to you before God I do not lie.
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Then I went into the regions of Syria and Cilicia, and I was still unknown in person to the churches of Judea that are in Christ.
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They only were hearing it said, He who used to persecute us is now preaching the faith He once tried to destroy.
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And they glorified God because of me.
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Then after fourteen years I went again to Jerusalem, with Barnabas taking Titus with me.
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I went up because of a revelation and sat before them, though privately before those who seemed influential.
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The Gospel that I proclaimed among the Gentiles in order to make sure I was not running or had not run in vain.
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But even Titus who was with me was not forced to be circumcised, though he was a Greek.
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Yet because of false brothers secretly brought in who slipped in to spy out our freedom that we have in Christ Jesus, so 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 revealed for you.
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And from those who seemed to be influential, what they were makes no difference to me.
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God shows no partiality.
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Those, I say, who seemed influential added nothing to me.
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On the contrary, when they saw that I had been entrusted with the Gospel to the uncircumcised, just as Peter had been entrusted with the Gospel to the circumcised, for he who worked through Peter for his apostolic ministry to the circumcised worked also through me for mine to the Gentiles.
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And when James and Cephas and John, who seemed to be pillars, perceived the grace that was given to me, they gave the right hand of fellowship to Barnabas and me, that we should go to the Gentiles and they to the circumcised.
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Only they asked us to remember the poor, the very thing I was eager to do.
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Let's pray.
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Father, I thank You for the Word.
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I thank You for this long narrative that we've read.
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Lord, in this is Paul's short synopsis of his own life and the early points of his ministry.
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And Lord, we see in it Your hand from start to conclusion.
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And Father, today as we look at what Paul says, when he says that what he preached was not man's Gospel, Lord, may we have our eyes opened to what that means.
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May we have our ears attentive to what that means.
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And may the message of that Gospel go into our ears, go through our brains and into our very souls.
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And Lord, that it might affect not only what we believe, but also how we behave.
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And I pray this in Jesus' name.
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And I pray that You would keep me from error, O God, as I preach Your Word in Jesus' name, Amen.
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I spent quite a bit of time trying to think about how I wanted to break down this section because, as I mentioned, it's really all one long story that Paul is giving in an attempt to try to give a defense for his message and his authority.
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As we talked about last week when Paul says, am I doing what I do to please God or please man? The reason why he said that was because there were people who were accusing him of trying to please man.
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There were people who were saying that Paul had twisted the Gospel to be a man-pleasing Gospel.
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They were saying that Paul had twisted the message of the cross to make the cross a lawless cross, to make the message of Christ a lawless message.
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And so they were making the argument that Paul was not who he claimed to be.
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He was not preaching what he claimed to preach.
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And he was doing this to please men rather than to please God.
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And Paul asked that question which we spent time with last week.
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Am I seeking to please man? I love you, brother.
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Yeah, man.
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I'll see you later.
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He said, am I trying to please man or please God? If I were still trying to please man, I would not be a servant of Christ.
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On the very heels of that statement, he moves into the next statement.
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And this is what I have entitled the proclamation.
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He says, For I would have you know, brothers, that the Gospel that was preached by me is not man's Gospel.
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Now, as I said, we've read the whole thing, but that's the verse that I really want to focus on today.
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Because this is the beginning of Paul's defense of his position.
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Paul is defending himself because he has attackers.
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He has dejectors.
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He has people who are saying that his message is not true.
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And so he says, I would have you know.
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That phrase in the King James Bible, I believe, says, I certify.
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Anybody got a King James? Can you verify that for me? Is that what it says in the King James? Verse 11? Really? That's not what it says in the King James? Okay, you have King James.
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Thank you.
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Thank you.
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Thank you.
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Yes.
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So the word certify is there in the King James.
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And I bring that out because when we think of certifying something today, we think of somebody signing something or somebody giving a certificate of completion.
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If you've ever had your house worked on, like last year, I had my roof, we did a roof over where they came in and put a metal roof on top of the old single roof and afterward I had to have it inspected for my insurance company so that my insurance company would know that it had been done correctly and that they could continue to insure my home.
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And so they sent out an inspector who got up and looked at the rivets and looked at the screws and made sure there was a certain amount of screws per foot and a certain amount of screws per linear space and made sure everything was done right all the drip edge and everything was on right and when it was done they handed me a certificate of completion that I could give over to my insurance company.
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One certified on behalf of the other.
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Well Paul is using a language that we don't really use anymore.
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We still use the word certify but we use it more in the formal sense this is what I was just referring to this is a language that he's using that essentially is saying I'm telling you something that is the truth I'm telling you something that is accurate I'm stating something that is a fact and I'm doing it in the emphatic I'm emphasizing the truth of what I'm saying and that's why he says for I would have you know in fact have you ever said that to somebody? I'll have you know I'm such and such or I'll have you know you're being a such and such that language is more of a modern way of expressing you want to emphasize what you're about to say.
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Paul says I would have you know and then he says brothers that's important because remember what have we said about the Galatians the Galatians have been flirting with false teachings that some of the Galatians have received a false gospel in fact this is one of the only letters that we have of the Apostle Paul where he offers no thanksgiving for the Galatians he gives no encouragement to the Galatians he doesn't give them any I thank God for you like he said to the Corinthians Paul is upset he said I am astonished that you are so quick to desert him who called you in the grace of Christ I'm astonished by you I'm amazed at your behavior he has really a frustration with the Galatians and yet he still calls them brothers he has not as it were kicked them out of the kingdom I have a lot of friends who are of different perspectives in Christianity a lot of pastor friends who are different I am what you might refer to as reformed and baptistic meaning those are the bents that I would hold to, reformed theology and baptistic theology and so there are those who would differ with me, my Presbyterian friends think that I'm wrong when it comes to baptism they think you should baptize infants and I don't and so we differ on that and I have some friends who are not reformed and we differ on the doctrines of election and God's sovereignty and yet I still identify them as brothers I have brothers in the Presbyterian church I have brothers in the Baptist church I have brothers even in the Methodist church and in the Episcopal church and other places where they have the gospel there are my brothers in Christ and that's something we need to remember Paul has said I'm amazed that some of you are abandoning the gospel but it is apparent that number one, not all of them had abandoned the gospel because he's still identifying them as brothers and it's apparent that even though some of them may be flirting with this abandonment they are not all the way gone and so basically what I'm saying here is I think Paul is giving them the benefit of the doubt you know if you tell me you're a believer I'm going to give you the benefit of the doubt now you may go later and prove yourself a liar by how you live or you may prove yourself a liar by abandoning Christ or you may prove yourself a liar by some other way but if you tell me you believe in Christ I'm going to take that on good faith that we're brothers in Christ you know again until we prove otherwise and hopefully you won't so Paul says I would have you know brothers and he moves on to say that the gospel that was preached by me now again I'm just taking this word for word because I'm trying to show you how to really understand the language Paul is using Paul says the gospel that was preached interestingly enough if you read the Greek language it actually says the gospel that was gospeled you say that doesn't make sense well it kind of does because the word gospel can be a noun the gospel I think or the word euangelion which is the Greek for gospel can be it can be stated in the verbal form like if I said to you I went out and evangelized right that's the verbal form of preaching the gospel right if I said I don't say I went out and gospeled I would say I went out and evangelized or I went out and did evangelism that's the verbal form of the word and so Paul says here he says the gospel that I gospeled or the gospel that I evangelized the gospel that was preached and we use the word preached because it's the way that we would express it Paul says the gospel that was preached by me now when was the gospel preached by Paul to the Galatians if we look back at the book of Acts we're not going to do it right now we're actually going to look at a timeline maybe next week if we don't get to it today I have it all written out we're going to look at a timeline of when Paul got saved when he visited Jerusalem twice because he tells us in this text from chapter 1 and chapter 2 that he visited Jerusalem twice there was a 3 year period and he visited once there was a 14 year period and he visited twice so we have a timeline from when he got saved to when he wrote the book of Galatians to when the Jerusalem council which is in Acts 15 but this when he says the gospel that was preached by me he's referring to when he planted the church at Galatia see Paul was a traveling evangelist Paul would leave where he was stationed there in Antioch and he would go up into Asia Minor I don't know how familiar you are with geography but in that area which is north of you know you have Jerusalem you go up north into Antioch and then you go out and over and you're into what now is called Turkey but back then was called Asia Minor and often times you see in the Bible they use the word Asia you think of the continent of Asia that's not what is being referred to it's Asia Minor and Paul went through this area of the Galatians the southern area and he preached in certain cities Iconium, Derbe, Lystra and Pisidian Antioch these were the cities that were in southern Galatia and he traveled through there and he preached the gospel to them and what was Paul's gospel? We talked about this a few weeks ago the gospel begins with sin we have broken God's law we stand before God as those who are worthy of His punishment we stand before God I tell you a lot of people don't believe that anymore you tell someone you're a sinner they'll say yeah you tell someone your sin is deserving of the eternal wrath of Almighty God they'll say nuh uh I'm a good person say wait a minute you just said you were a sinner yeah but I'm not that bad I'm a sinner but I don't deserve God's eternal unrelenting punishment say why not well because I'm not that bad see it's a circle you ask the question did Hitler deserve to go to hell most people will say well yeah Hitler was a pretty bad guy you know he was pretty torturous and he did some evil things say okay well how about maybe Genghis Khan did he deserve to go to hell well yeah he was a pretty bad guy killed multitudes of people he was a warlord and a despot sure he deserved to go to hell okay how about Ted Bundy Ted Bundy was a he was a rapist and a murderer I remember when he was executed I was a young man my step grandfather worked at the prison as a cook and he had met Ted Bundy and you know he said he's amazing when you look at him because he doesn't look like the kind of guy who could do what he did which was lure women into horrible situations and murder them in cold blood didn't look like the kind of guy who could do that you know he looked like a normal guy is hell deserving for such a man I think it's easy for us to look at the evil the wretched and say yes hell is fit for kings as those right for those who are kings of evil hell is fit for such men but is hell fit for you that's the hard part you say well I'm no Ted Bundy I give you this is something R.C.
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Sproul did years ago and I thought it was very helpful he said I want you to imagine a line and you can imagine the line as long as you want but being as my arms are only as long as they are we'll make the line this long he said I want you to take on this side and I want you to put Jesus Christ the only righteous man who ever lived the only man in history who never sinned the only good man in all of history so I'm going to put you Jesus right here he said on this side I want you to think of the furthest person away from Jesus that you possibly can who'd you say? you could say Satan of course but let's think of a human person who's the worst human person you can think of maybe Hitler maybe again Genghis Khan now here's where the question becomes real if this becomes this line becomes like a scale where are you? see the the average person would say well I'm pretty much right over here you know if Jesus is over here and Hitler is over here then I'm somewhere I'm closer you know I'm a little closer here if you read the scriptures and you're honest with yourself you are right shoulder to shoulder with Adolf Hitler yes sir the Bible says yeah if you've broken one law you've broken the law the whole law and so when I stand next to Hitler I'm shoulder to shoulder when I compare myself to Christ now if we compared ourselves humanly speaking we would have all kinds of levels but I'm not comparing us humanly speaking R.C.
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Sproul was trying to make the point that people who consider themselves unworthy of hell are only doing so because they don't understand where they fall on that line when people consider themselves unworthy of hell they don't understand the wretchedness of their condition they don't understand the sinfulness of sin in fact there's a tremendous work on that subject on the sinfulness of sin that is important to read it's just helpful because we don't understand the wretchedness of sin sin is cosmic treason against the king of the universe imagine this imagine a king leaves his kingdom in the charge of his subjects and he goes away on a journey while he goes away his subjects destroy his kingdom they violate his queen they attack his institutions and they bring to ruin all that he has created and the king returns from his journey to find his kingdom in shambles his walls have been broken down his queen has been violated and ravaged and his home is ablaze how would that king respond to those traitors yeah or worse some kind of torturous response indeed you say well god's better than that well yes but he's still a king we still live in his kingdom and we violate his law and his standards and his queen who's his queen? his queen is the church that's why it's so scary to think about people who take up arms against the church around the world today Christians are dying every day every day there are Christians who are being filleted burned, hung beaten, raped robbed and pillaged all because of the name of the lord Jesus Christ.