Not Man's Gospel

Well, good morning. Take out your Bibles and turn to Galatians chapter 1. Last week we looked at verse 10. We spent all of our time in one verse. Today we're going to read several verses but we're probably only going to focus on one or two verses.

We're going to read it. 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 and then over the next several weeks we're going to look at the verses through.

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. So we're going to read verse 11 and we're going to go all the way down through chapter 2 verse 10.

So that's a long bit of text. That's my Bible. Thank you brother. I'm going to put it here. Don't let me leave without it. So we're going to read chapter 1 verse 11 through chapter 2 verse 10. Long section but it's all one idea.

It hangs together as one narrative and then again like I said we'll go back and take it apart. For I would have you know brothers that the gospel that was preached by me is not man's gospel. For I did not receive it from any man nor was I taught it but I received it through a revelation of Jesus Christ.

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.

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 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.

Then after three years I went up to Jerusalem to visit Cephas and remained with him 15 days. 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.

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. They only were hearing it said he who used to persecute us is now preaching the faith he once tried to destroy and they glorified God because of me.

Then after 14 years I went again to Jerusalem with Barnabas taking Titus with me. I went up because of a revelation and sat before them though privately before those who seemed influential. The gospel that I proclaimed among the Gentiles in order to make sure I was not running or had not run in vain.

But even Titus who was with me was not forced to be circumcised though he was a Greek. 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.

And from those who seemed to be influential, what they were makes no difference to me. God shows no partiality. Those I say who seemed influential added nothing to me. 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.

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.

Only they asked us to remember the poor, the very thing I was eager to do. Let's pray. Father, I thank you for the word. I thank you for this long narrative that we've read. Lord, in this is Paul's short synopsis of his own life and the early points of his ministry.

And Lord, we see in it your hand from start to conclusion. 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.

May we have our ears attentive to what that means and may the message of that gospel go into our ears, go through our brains and into our very souls. And Lord, that it might affect not only what we believe, but also how we behave.

And I pray this in Jesus' name and I pray that you would keep me from error, O God, as I preach your word in Jesus' name. Amen. 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.

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. There were people who were saying that Paul had twisted the gospel to be a man-pleasing gospel.

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, and so they were making the argument that Paul was not who he claimed to be.

He was not preaching what he claimed to preach, and he was doing this to please men rather than to please God. And Paul asked that question, which we spent time with last week. Am I seeking to please man?

I love you, brother. We'll have lunch. Yeah, man. I'll see you later. 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. On the very heels of that statement, he moves into the next statement, and this is what I have entitled the proclamation.

He says, for I would have you know, brothers, that the gospel that was preached by me is not man's gospel. Now, as I said, we've read the whole thing, but that's the verse that I really want to focus on today, because this is the beginning of Paul's defense of his position.

Paul is defending himself because he has attackers. He has dejectors. He has people who are saying that his message is not true. And so he says, I would have you know. That phrase in the King James Bible, I believe, says, I certify.

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? I'm sorry. Okay, you have King James. Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you. Yes. So the word certify is there in the King James, 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.

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.

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, one certified on behalf of the other. Well, Paul is using a language that we don't really use anymore.

We still use the word certify, but we use it more in the formal sense, 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, right? You know, that language is more of a modern way of expressing you want to emphasize what you're about to say.

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. 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 bits 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. 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 am 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, a thing. Or the word Evangelion, which is the Greek for Gospel, 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 three 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 oftentimes 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, nah, I'm a good person. You 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.

You 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 would say, well, yeah, Hitler was a pretty bad guy. You know, he was pretty torturous.

And he did some evil things. You say, okay, well, how about 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. Well, okay, how about Ted Bundy? Ted Bundy was a rapist and a murderer. I remember when he was executed. I was a young man. Actually, 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. This is something R .C. 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. He said, I want you to put 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? Satan. Well, 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 line becomes like a scale, where are you? See, 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 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. 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 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. That king responds 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.

In the Middle East, a few years ago, they began to put the Arabic letter N on the homes of the Christians to mark them out as followers of the Nazarene. That's why they used the Arabic letter N. And they did that so that those homes would be marked out for the more severe persecution.

This is not an exaggeration or anything being made up. There are more Christians being killed for their faith now than ever in history. We don't think about that because we live in America. You don't think God will bring justice against His adversaries on the final day?

You don't think God has set aside a place of torment for those who would attack and ravage His bride? See, this is what helps us understand the Gospel. Because if you don't understand the weight of sin, you will not understand the Gospel.

And Paul says, I came to you, and I preached the Gospel to you. And he did it first by helping them understand the depth of sin, and then he helped them understand the massive expanse of grace. Because here's what God does.

God returns from His journey. He sees the people who have destroyed His property and He chooses to give mercy. Amazing! You wouldn't do it. If you went to your home today and you found your wife beaten and your children murdered and your house burned, you would want that person destroyed.

You wouldn't want mercy. And yet God gives mercy. God gave His Son to take the punishment that they deserved. You see, that's the Gospel that Paul preached. That's what changed Galatia from being a pagan place to being a place filled with churches.

The grace and mercy of Almighty God changed a region. And then some fools are going to come after Paul and say, Paul didn't tell you the whole truth. Paul forgot to mention circumcision. Paul didn't tell you that you have to first become a Jew before you can be a Christian.

You've got to first receive these laws before you can receive grace. See, that's what has happened. Paul preached the Gospel. And these others have come in and said, no, Paul was wrong. And they said, Paul isn't preaching the true Gospel.

And Paul says right here, he says the Gospel that was preached by me is not man's Gospel. In some versions it says not according to man. That's actually the rendering of the Greek. It's not according to man.

What is he saying? I didn't get this from a man. A message from a man. In fact, I would say this, not only is he saying he didn't get the message from a man, I think what he's saying here is that this message could not have originated with a man.

Because let me tell you something, in the book of Romans, the Gospel is called God's Gospel. And I think it's called God's Gospel not only because it comes from God, but because it could only come from God.

The message of the Gospel is not the type of message that men create. Men create Gospels. Men create messages that exalt men. But the Gospel exalts God. Think about the message of Joseph Smith, the Mormon leader.

It's all about exalting men. You get to become a God one day. God was once a man. You get to become a man. It's man exalting. You go through all of the false religions. Every one of them is about the works of men.

What can you do to become right with God? What can you do to make yourself good enough? What can you do to pull yourself up by your own bootstraps? Every time you hear a message that is about what you can do, know this, that's man's Gospel, not God's Gospel.

Because God's Gospel will always be about what God has done, not what you can do. If I come to you and say your life needs to be changed, the very next thing that's going to come out of my mouth is this, and only God can change it.

Twelve steps isn't going to save you. 140 prayers are not going to... Only God is going to change your life. Only God can take and change a life. Only God can change a heart. That was what made Paul's Gospel God-centered, not man-centered.

It was the Gospel of God. It was a Gospel about God. It was a message from God. It was not from men, because men's Gospels are about men's accomplishments. God's Gospel is about God's accomplishment. Men want credit for what they have done.

The Gospel gives all credit to God. Do you realize that? If you believe the Gospel, one of the things that you believe when you believe the Gospel is this, you didn't do anything. You say, wait a minute, I believed.

Slow down. Your belief is a gift from God. You say, well, I repented. Slow down. The Bible says that God grants repentance. You say, well, wait a minute, the Bible says I'm to work out my salvation with fear and trembling.

Oh, nay, nay, read the whole verse. It says, work out your salvation with fear and trembling, for it is God who works within you, both to work in you. God is not your accomplishments. The Gospel of God is the accomplishments of God in you.

It will always be about Him. It will always be from Him. It will always be to Him. It will always be for Him. You are the recipient. You are the beneficiary. You are not a contributor. The only thing you did to make your salvation is provide the sin that made it necessary.

And God did everything else. You were the sinner. Christ was the Savior. God was the applicator. He applied the work of the Son to you by the power of the Holy Spirit of God. That's Paul's Gospel. And it's offensive to men.

I know that. I preach sometimes and people get so offended. I don't try to be offensive. I take a shower. I don't want to smell bad. I comb my hair. I want to look nice. I match my shoes and my belt. I work hard.

What I'm saying is I don't want to offend with something foolish. But if telling you that your sin is deserving of God's wrath and the only way to be saved from that wrath is by God's grace offends you, that means you have never understood the Gospel and neither do you know the Son.

Because knowing the Son means you understand your condition and what He did to save you from it. It's not man's Gospel. Man's Gospel always exalts men. God's Gospel always exalts God. So how do you know if somebody is preaching to you the true Gospel?

When they start exalting men. When they start exalting works. What were the Judaizers doing? You've got to do this work. You've got to accomplish this thing. You've got to do this law. You've got to fulfill this.

Paul said no. Paul has already preached the Gospel not of works, but of grace. What does the Bible say? For by grace are you saved through faith not of your own doing. It is the gift of God. You understand salvation is a gift.

I said earlier, if you tell me you're a brother in Christ, I'll take it for granted until you prove me otherwise that you're telling me the truth. I pray it's the truth. But I'll say this, one of the first things that I want to know if you tell me you're a brother in Christ, how has He changed your life?

How has Christ changed your life? And a lot of guys, well, I used to be on drugs and now I'm not on drugs. Or I used to be an adulterer and now I'm not an adulterer. I used to be this. I used to be that.

And all that's great. And I'm not discounting that God can change your behavior. But one of the things I really hope to hear someone say is He saved my life. But I hope when I ask how has He changed your life, that someone would say that I used to love sin and now I love Jesus.

I used to love the world and now I love God. Because the Bible says that's the real change that's going to happen. We go from being lovers of self to lovers of Christ. We go from wanting everything for ourselves to wanting everything for Him.

Yes, He saved our lives. And that's true, brother. I don't want to take away from that for a second. And yes, He can take away those dastardly deeds that we have done and those problems that we have and those addictions and desperations that we've been caught underneath.

Yes, He can do that. But the first thing is going from being a lover of the world to a lover of God. That's what He does. The illustration the Bible gives is that you had a heart of stone. And that heart of stone was opposed to the things of God.

That heart of stone did not want to hear the law of God. Have you ever been in that situation where somebody might start reading the Bible to you and you say, I don't want to hear it. I've been there.

I've been in that situation. I didn't want to hear the Word of God. My heart repelled the Word of God. It was like it was impenetrable. It was a rock. I wanted what I wanted. When I was a young man, I wanted certain things that all young men want.

And I wanted it more than... I even prayed for it. How sick is that? That I would pray for sinful fulfillment. Oh God, give me this. Or God, open the door for this. When it was the wrong, it was the sinful thing.

That shows you the heart of stone, right? It didn't want God. Somebody would start reading the Bible and say, I don't want to hear that. It's convicting. I don't want to hear that. It hurts. I don't want to hear that.

It's frustrating. I don't want to hear that. And then, when I was 19 years old, God broke that heart of stone. He did it in a pretty weird way too. It was depression and anxiety and pain. And it welled up inside of me like a storm.

I would get up and go to work and I'd come home to my wife. I had just been married about six months. And I would lay on the couch and I didn't even want to eat. She'd make dinner and I didn't want to touch it.

Something was wrong right here. I was broken inside. And I was really broken. I didn't want to talk. I was a happy guy. I grew up. I had all these things I enjoyed doing. I liked music. I liked doing magic tricks like that.

All these little things that I loved to do. I didn't want to do anything. I wanted to come home. I even thought about drinking. I never really drank. That wasn't one of the sins I dealt with. But I thought, you know what?

Now I understand why people drink. Because I don't like the way this feels. Maybe if I drink, it will go away. I'm serious. I'm serious. Nineteen years old, I was thinking. I'm just being honest. I'm sharing you my heart.

I had a heart of stone and God was breaking it in half. And I was looking for an exit. I was looking for some other way. That's right. I was looking for some escape. But thank God He didn't let me escape.

He wouldn't let me go. I remembered one man who I believe loved Jesus. I went and talked to him. He shared the Gospel with me. A few days later, I was driving home. And I couldn't get it off my mind. I couldn't get the Gospel.

I couldn't get the truth of God off my mind. The reality that God exists and that I am responsible to Him. And if He judged me for what I was due, I would go to hell. I was on Broward Road. I was in a Dodge pickup truck.

I remember where I was, what I was doing. I don't remember the day. But I remember where I was. And I was coming off of 95, getting on to Broward Road. I lived right there in the Allen Point Apartments.

I pulled my car off to the side of the road and I just wept. I had the steering wheel like this. Tears all down my face. A little snot. Face on the steering wheel just crying. And I said, God, I want to know You.

And I want to be saved because I can't live like this anymore. The Bible says God took out the heart of stone and He put in a heart of flesh. God took out the old evil heart and He gave me a new heart.

Now does that mean I'm not evil anymore? No, because I still got the flesh. And it's pretty strong. But I went from one who hated the Bible and one who hated hearing about... who didn't want anything to do with God to somebody who then...

I couldn't wait to go to church. I couldn't wait to open my eyes. I wanted to know what God said. That's the Gospel. That's how the Gospel changes you. You don't go from being sinner to not sinner. You go from being lost to found.

You go from being a reprobate to a redeemed person. And at that moment, your affections will change. You go from one who loves self and loves the world to one who loves God. Not perfectly. Unfortunately, we still live in the flesh.

But your affections will change. And it doesn't come from circumcision. And it doesn't come from avoiding selfish and all kinds of other ceremonies of the law. It comes from recognizing your sin and trusting in Christ.

That's the Gospel Paul preached. And it's not the Gospel of men. It's the Gospel of God. My prayer for every one of you is that if God hasn't already changed your heart, that He would. Because only He can.

Let me pray for you. Father, I pray that You would change the hearts of men today. Because only You can. I pray that You would take the Word of God, apply it to the heart of men, break the hearts of stone, give them a heart of flesh.

Help them to know that there's nothing in this world that's worth hell. Help them to know there's nothing in this world that's worth dying for. The only thing that's worth pursuing is the Lord Jesus Christ.

Lord, help us all to repent of our sins and trust in the Savior. And it's in His name we pray, Amen.