God's Unlikely Gospel Messenger

Paul’s Former Life in Judaism and His Violence Against the Church

Well, this morning we're looking at Galatians chapter 1, verses 13 through 16. Last time I was able to preach, I preached Galatians 1 .10, a single verse. And I don't know, maybe it's because of that, as I approach this text and have three verses.

It just seems to me that this passage grew and grew, the sermon grew and grew, but not just in length, in gravity, actually. It just feels heavier, it feels more important the more time that I've spent with it.

In fact, last night around the fire, I commented, I said, this sermon feels like it has gravitas this morning. Just a weight and importance for us to hear, to understand, and to process together. So let me read Galatians 1, 13 through 16, and we'll look at the passage that we will be expounding upon this morning.

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 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 anyone.

Now that last little phrase there, I did not immediately consult anyone, I'm going to leave for Josh next week as he finishes up chapter one. And that should be a place for rejoicing as we finish chapter one.

The Unique Gospel That Gives God All the Glory

Now, just to recap what Josh talked about last week, was Paul defending his gospel. And he said, it's not the invention of any man. This gospel that I am proclaiming is unique and it is divine. Man would never create this kind of gospel.

Only a gospel from God begins by telling us that we're wrong, that we are sinners and that we need to repent and believe in God, to believe in him completely for our salvation. Meaning that we don't get to boast, we don't get to say that we're good or good enough, that our works are anything because God alone gets the glory.

This makes this gospel that Paul preaches unique among every other cult or world religion where you have to be good enough, where you have to prove yourself to be worthy. This is a man-centered gospel and man can't help himself, but to create such a gospel, which is all about him, all about his wants, all about his needs, all about his glory.

I think we've said it before, we tend to be glory hogs and glory as hogs, as pigs. I like the combination of those two words and the word picture that that creates. That is what we are. Now, when I was a youth pastor in Austin, Texas, I would often go to one of the middle schools, Lake Travis Middle School.

I had some kids over there and I'd have to check in. They would have to request me. It was a big deal to get into the school, but I'd bring a pizza and I'd come and a couple of the guys would be waiting for me.

They would bring some of their friends because they would say, hey, my youth pastor's coming and he's going to be bringing a pizza. You should sit with us today. And that's where I met Devin. And Devin was Willie Nelson's grandson.

And Devin said to me once, he said, I would come to your church if you showed movies. And I said, Devin, then my church would not be a church. It would be a movie theater. And sadly, many churches have become movie theaters.

They've become a place of entertainment. And this is the way that they feel like they have to gather men and proclaim the gospel. And Paul says, man, I'm preaching the gospel that comes from God. It's unique.

It doesn't need anything else. And you need to hear it. Now, not only is it a unique gospel, but our passage this week talks about Paul being an unimaginable messenger of the gospel. I mean, if you or I were to choose someone to proclaim this gospel, we would have probably counted Paul out and said, no way, not this guy.

As we begin this section, Paul states to us how unlikely he is to be this messenger from.

God.

He says, for you have heard about my former way of life in Judaism, that to an extraordinary degree, to an unbelievable degree, I was persecuting the church and trying to destroy it. Now, literally, from the words that he's using here, extraordinary, and destroying it, to annihilate it, to ruin it, to make it come to nothing, we

Not an assumption to think that he used great violence against the church. It was no secret to anyone during this time who Saul of Tarsus was. He was a infamous Jewish religious leader, well-known for persecuting the early church.

And he says, for you have heard about my former way of life. Let's do something fun. Anyone here have a former way of life that they'd like to talk about this morning?

Anyone?

No one. It's wonderful, it's beautiful that Paul has such transparency as he comes and defends.

Himself.

He goes, you know who I am.

Acts 25 verse 5, or Acts 26 verse 5, he says, that in accordance with the strictest part of our religion, I lived as a Pharisee. In Philippians 3, he calls himself a Hebrew of Hebrews, a Pharisee of Pharisees.

Paul had just an amazing resume in Judaism. He was raised, taught by Gamaliel. He knew the Halakha, he knew the Mishnah well, and could argue and could present a case that few could stand against. We also know of the early Saul as he's introduced into the gospel in the book of Acts, as he stands and holds the cloaks of those men who stoned Stephen in Acts chapter 8.

So he has zeal to persecute the church. In Acts 26 verse 9, he says, indeed I myself thought it necessary to do many things to oppose the name of Jesus, the Nazarene, which I also did in Jerusalem. And not only did I look upon many of the saints in prison, having received authority from the chief priest, not only I said look up, but I locked up many of the saints in prison.

That just didn't seem right to me when I was reading that. Not only did I lock up many of the saints in prison, having received authority from the chief priest, but also when they were being executed, I cast my vote against them.

And throughout all the synagogues, I punished them often and tried to force them to blaspheme. And because I was enraged at them beyond measure, I was pursuing them even as far as to foreign.

Cities.

He was manipulating people to blaspheme. Paul was a man fueled by religious zeal and anger. Hear him say he was enraged, jailing, executing Christians. We would call him a religious extremist today. We would look at him like we look at many terrorists.

And yet, he received a stamp of approval from the church to go and do the things that he was doing. And Paul was being rewarded for his zeal. Listen, he said in our passage in Galatians, he said, I was progressing in Judaism beyond many of my contemporaries in my nation because I was a far more zealous adherent of the traditions handed down by my fathers.

He was progressing. They were promoting Paul beyond his contemporaries across the nation of Israel. Positions of power were opening up for Paul, probably being promised to him. And his career path as a Pharisee was just, it was golden.

He was rising to the top. But this is not what motivated him. He is not someone, as we would know today, who was just doing whatever it takes to get.

To the top.

He says he was zealous for the traditions of his forefathers, fighting for his heritage, for his people and their traditions. Jesus, and it's no wonder that he hated Jesus of Nazareth because Jesus told the Pharisees, why do you yourselves break the commandment of God for the sake of your tradition?

And I bet that just burned Paul. You don't understand. Our tradition is important. We have to uphold it. We can't let it go. And so this Saul of Tarsus, this Saul of Tarsus became the messenger of the gospel to the Gentiles.

Unimaginable. Unimaginable. An impossible change happens in verse, where is that? Verse 15. This unimaginable change happens to an unimaginable messenger of a unique gospel, and this is what we call conversion.

The Theology of Conversion: Set Apart, Called by Grace, Revealed in Christ

Paul tells us about what happened to him that changed everything. Now it's important for us to understand what conversion means. Because one, it is the only way that we can have peace with God and be welcomed into the family of God for all eternity.

But secondly, if we truly understand our conversion, it will affect the way that we live. It will affect our witness for Christ. And we must understand it well enough to be able to communicate it to others and answer their questions.

So if you're sitting here this morning, you're going, okay, I know about conversion. That happened to me, Bart. I'm going to be bored for the rest of your sermon.

That's false.

Completely false. Because unless you can communicate it well to someone who has no idea what it is, this sermon is something that you need to take some notes on. So you need to put it into your heart so that you can clearly communicate what it means.

Paul describes his conversion, which changes him completely from a persecutor of the church and a man who hated Jesus Christ and his followers into a man who spread the gospel across the Mediterranean.

And this is what he says in verse 15, but when God, when God, that transition, that but is huge there. I was this, but God. If we take the Greek and we kind of move things around a little bit, when I studied Greek,.

That's what we did.

We had all these big whiteboards all over the walls of our classroom and we would write it in Greek and then we would just start moving stuff around back and forth because in Greek, everything's jumbled up and you have to un-jumble it.

And depending on how you un-jumble it, it means different things. So it's crucial that you un-jumble it correctly. And when I translate this, the was pleased that's later, that he was pleased to reveal his son in me, actually can go all the way at the beginning.

But when God was pleased to set me apart from my mother's womb, to call me by his grace to reveal his son in me. We see that salvation, genuine salvation has its beginnings in the good pleasure of God.

I was just flipping through my Bible and I ran across, I was trying to mark up a page and I accidentally went one page too far into Luke chapter 12 and I saw that I had marked.

This.

It says, fear not little flock for it is your father's good pleasure to give you the kingdom. Think about that. Your conversion was because God was pleased to save you. This means that your salvation is not dependent upon your own feeble and fickle decision to choose God, but on his unchanging will that holds you in his mighty grasp.

If Paul, if God is pleased to save you, then you are saved. And there is a great degree of certainty and security in that. He says then in order to set me apart and then call me by his grace and then reveal his son in me.

And it seems like there's an order, well, and then lastly, in order that I would proclaim the gospel about him to the Gentiles. Now there seems to be an order that is in place here and I want to look at each one of these parts here because what it does is it creates a theology of conversion, a theology of salvation, which is similar for everyone who is saved.

Now, the way that we're saved, and we're going to look at Paul's conversion, which is very unique, is very dramatic, it's not typical, but whose salvation is typical? I think it's wonderful as God creates us individually, each one different from one another, that he chooses a different means of saving us, a different way.

Sometimes it's really quick, sometimes it's dramatic, other times it's slow, other times it's quiet, but it still has some similarities. And I think Paul is unpacking these for us, so let's begin with who set me apart.

So God was pleased to set Paul apart. Now, I do believe that there is an order here, like I said, and it begins here because he gives a point in his life. He says, when I was set apart from my mother's womb.

And this is a bit of a Hebraism, that means before he could choose right or wrong, before he could do anything right or wrong, before there was any kind of clue about what kind of person Paul would be, God set him apart.

Now, that creates some interesting implications later, and we're gonna get to that, but you'll hear him say a similar thing in Ephesians 1, verses 3 through 4, blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places.

And hear this, even as he chose us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before him. Paul is not shy about teaching the electing, predestining work of God. He puts it out there.

And it's something that is hard to understand, but we can't deny that it is in the Scriptures. And so we must work hard to figure it out. It's from this passage and similar passages that we understand the doctrine of election.

When we talk about doctrine, we're just talking about a core belief or conviction, a teaching about election, that God chooses or sets apart some based solely upon his sovereign will, not based on our works, not based on our worth or our potential, not even based upon his foreknowledge that we would one day choose him.

You've probably heard it before that God, in his foreknowledge, looks down the corridor of time and sees Lanny and he goes, well, I know Lanny's going to choose me someday, so I'm going to choose him.

That's not the basis on which he chooses us. He chooses us solely based upon his sovereign will. It pleased him to choose you. That's it, which means that there's nothing in us that deserves what we've been given.

God chooses us as undeserving recipients of his grace. He does his work of election before the foundation of the world. And Paul says, this impossible change in me is because God set me apart from before I was born, from my mother's womb.

Let's look at the, well, let me answer a question here because some will, as I say this, as I teach this, as I explain this, some say, why does God only choose some? Why doesn't he choose all? Because that seems really unfair of God.

I'm really glad that God is not fair because if he was, we would all face judgment and destruction because that's what we deserve. Again, we don't deserve salvation. No one who is saved got there because he was deserving.

The wonder of the gospel is not that God chose some, but that he chose any at all. Paul is saying, God was pleased to save me long before I met him on the road to Damascus, before I could choose right or wrong.

And again, God's eternal sovereign kindness is why I am saved. I am what I am because of Christ. And yet still, that just doesn't, I still feel like, ah, it doesn't really answer that question of why God doesn't save all.

And the logical assumption then is that God not choosing some people damns them, that he chooses some to be condemned. And the Bible doesn't say that. The Bible puts it differently. And let me just read you some passages from the Bible that kind of present a different.

Case.

Remember, Jesus and Luke, I'm going to go to Luke 13, Luke 13, 34. Listen to what Jesus says. Oh, Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the city that kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to it. How often I would have gathered your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you would not.

You would not.

You would not choose me. You were not willing. Or we could look at Ezekiel 33, oh, I was just there, verse 11. Listen to what God says through the prophet Ezekiel, say to them, as I live, declares the Lord God, I have no pleasure in the death of the wicked, but that the wicked men would turn from his way and live.

And then he just pleads with them. The almighty God of the universe pleads with man and says, turn back. Turn back from your evil ways. Why will you die? Oh, house of Israel, or let's look at Acts 17, 30, 17, verse 30, 22, 26, 30, the times of ignorance God overlooked, but now he commands all people everywhere to repent.

God is calling mankind to repent and believe. He's calling mankind to choose God, to cry out to God for mercy. Or let me look at Romans 10, verse 13, 10, 13, for everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.

Man, these are powerful verses. He says, but let's continue in Paul's breakdown of his conversion. He called me by his grace. Not only was Paul set apart, but he was called by grace. Now in the Reformed camp, we call this the eye of tulip, the doctrine of irresistible.

Irresistible Grace and the Effectual Calling of God

Grace.

I'm looking at Brady right now because he and I are meeting together every week and we're talking about some of these deeper theological truths and trying to sort them out and come to a place of understanding.

But this idea of irresistible grace, this doctrine of irresistible grace that Calvin put forward is that God through the Holy Spirit works to bring about effectually the salvation of individuals through spiritual regeneration without cooperation from the individual.

What he's saying is the Holy Spirit must regenerate man because man is spiritually dead. And this is totally a work of God. Think about the thief on the cross. What did he do to get ready for the grace of God?

Did he go to church? Did he teach a Bible study? Did he give money to the church? No, he did nothing. Yet God had mercy on him and called him by his grace. The thief on the cross and Saul, the persecutor, were both dead in their transgressions and sins.

They were spiritually dead. And that's how we are without Christ. And there are no degrees of deadness, okay? There's not some people who are just kind of dead and other people, that guy's really.

Dead.

No, dead is dead, right? Dead people do not choose. Dead people cannot understand or think. Dead people cannot respond. Think about Lazarus. This is the picture that we have of him being raised. Jesus stands and the tomb is opened up and he calls Lazarus forth.

Lazarus couldn't do anything until he heard the command of his creator. This is what we call the effectual calling of God. That God's calling produces what it commands. And if God, through his Holy Spirit, calls you as he did Paul, by his grace, your heart cannot help but respond.

In fact, without God's sovereign election, without God choosing some to be spiritually alive, the reality is that no one would be saved. Because the natural response of unregenerate man, the natural response of man in sin, is to reject God and to run from him.

But with the man whom God calls, there is a certainty of salvation, even though, and this is crazy, even though he may not have yet responded to Christ. So you would, some people would say, well then how do I know that I'm called?

How do I know that I've been chosen? Should I just wait for it to happen to me? What should I do? I love this passage in John 6. In fact, what Jesus says in John 6, some of my most favorite verses in all the Bible, because I go, whoa, how is he saying this stuff?

With John 6, 37, all that the Father gives me will come to me, and whoever comes to me, I will never cast out. Let me just say that, let me read that again, because it's, all that the Father gives me will come to me, and whoever comes to me, I will never cast out.

I would say to the question of how do I know that I'm called or chosen, should I wait for it to happen? As I would say, don't trouble yourself with that question, and don't delay being stuck in that thought, simply come to the Father.

Come to the Father. Jesus beckons all those needing salvation. He says in Matthew 11, 28, come to me, all you who labor and are weary and heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Come to me. I like what Paul says in 2 Thessalonians 2, 13 and 14, because he puts these two things together for the Thessalonians.

Verse 13, but we ought always to give thanks to God for you, brothers, beloved by the Lord. He was pleased to save you, because God chose you as the first fruits to be saved, and here are these two things, through the sanctification of the Spirit, that's what we've just been talking about, when the Spirit makes you alive, and belief in the truth.

You believed. To this he called you through our gospel, so that you may obtain the glory of our Lord Jesus Christ. Paul says, the impossible change in me is because God has called me by his grace and he's made me alive.

He says this very clearly in Ephesians 2, 4 and 5, but God being rich in mercy because of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ, by grace you have been saved.

Christ Revealed in Paul and the Mystery of Union with Christ

The next point that he brings us to, not only was he set apart in his mother's womb, not only was he called by grace, but it says that God was pleased to reveal his Son to him. Now, it's interesting, how many of you have, look at that verse, verse 16 in your Bibles there, how many of you have to him in there?

So, was pleased to reveal his Son to me. To me, I got two to me's, three, four, okay. How many of you have in me? Okay, look at that. Actually there are more translations that translate that as in me, and actually if you go to the Greek, it is N-M-Y, so it is in me, but somehow my ESV has let me down, okay.

And the NIV, which just is the bane of my existence, actually gets it right, so. That's why I don't promote a certain translation. But he says, so Paul was set apart, then affectionately called by God's grace, then on the road to Damascus, the Son, Jesus Christ, was revealed to him, okay.

So I want to investigate the to him, and we're gonna look at Acts 26, 12 through 18, to hear Paul's story. Now this is Paul before, I think it's before Agrippa here, and he is recounting his story before kings, before magistrates.

Now listen as he describes his story. In this connection, I journeyed to Damascus with the authority and the commission of the chief priests. At midday, O king, I saw on the way a light from heaven brighter than the sun that shone around me and those who journeyed with me.

And when we had all fallen to the ground, I heard a voice saying to me in the Hebrew language, Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me? It is hard for you to kick against the goads. And I said, who are you, Lord?

And the Lord said, I am Jesus whom you are persecuting, but rise and stand to your feet, for I have appeared to you for this purpose, to appoint you as a servant and as a witness to the things to which you have seen me, to the things in which you have seen me, and to those in which I will appear to you, delivering you from your people and from the Gentiles, to whom I am sending you, to open their eyes so that they may turn from darkness to light, from the power of Satan to God, that they may receive forgiveness of sins and a place among those who are sanctified by faith in me.".

So that is how Jesus was revealed to Paul, okay? So that's clear. But that literal, in me, what does that mean? And so I began to think, and I even had a discussion with Josh on, what was that, Friday.

Night?

I was like, what do you think this means?

What does that mean?

Is Paul saying that the Son was like injected into him and revealed to him like after the fact, like, whoa, I just suddenly discovered that Christ is in me? How did that happen? It's like in some movies, and I told this to Josh, this is what it comes into my mind, you know, some of those mystery movies, you know, somebody comes home into their apartment, it's dark inside, and they open up the door, and then they close it, and then suddenly they stop because they realize they're not alone.

And then the lamp across the room turns on, and somebody's sitting underneath this shadowy figure there. I'm like, is that what's happening here, that suddenly, like, Christ is just there? It's like, where did you come from?

I don't know. Later in Galatians, he talks about the Galatians, he says he's in the pains of childbirth until the gospel is born in you. As Jesus sits with Nicodemus, Nicodemus is told he must be born again.

Nicodemus is like, how do I do that? I don't even know where to start with that idea of being born again. I can't do this. So does God's work of salvation come void of human response? That's my question, because that would seem to be what that's saying, or perhaps it's better translated, within me, that Christ was pleased, or he was pleased to reveal his Son within me, in my innermost soul, by the Holy Spirit.

Listen to Paul in Galatians 2 .20, I've been crucified with Christ, it is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. Or 2 Corinthians 4 .6, for God, who said, let light shine out of darkness, has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.

Shining in our hearts, the light of Jesus shining in our hearts, in the face of Jesus. Man, what begins by being a revelation of Christ to Paul, has now become a revelation of Christ in Paul, as the Spirit is now producing fruits in the soil of Paul's life.

As Paul preaches to the Gentiles the unsearchable riches of Christ, so Christ is revealed through, or in, Paul. From this point on, Jesus is living in Paul, and Paul is in Christ. Now, this is getting a bit confusing, either, and I've heard this growing up, either God's a perfect gentleman and he doesn't force himself upon any man, right, have you ever heard that?

Nice sentiment, but it doesn't really hold much water when you think about the sovereign God who created the universe, when he purposes to do something, nothing stands in his way, and nobody says to him, hey, what were you thinking about, that over there?

In fact, Psalm 115 .3 says, our God is in the heavens and he does what he pleases, and when it pleases him to save someone, he saves them. So, are we just robots? And maybe you've gotten this, if you had this conversation with people, are we then just robots following our programming?

Future for us is completely determined because we cannot act against the will of an omniscient God who does whatever he pleases.

See what I'm saying?

Are we confused yet?

Which is it?

Is it the sovereign will of God that brings salvation, or is it our response to him? Hmm, that's a good question. And before I answer that, I also have one more question to add to that. So, if God allowed Paul to do all these horrific things to the church, why didn't he reveal Christ to him earlier?

Because, if he could have prevented the evil that Paul did and didn't do it, it seems like he would be responsible for causing that evil, that sin, and therefore God would be evil. Okay, to answer both of those questions, I'm gonna go to the Westminster Confession of Faith, chapter three, verse one.

This is what we call the doctrine of concurrence, and there's a lot of doctrine this morning, but it's important for us to kind of wade through this because it tends to answer some of those questions, those hard questions that we get.

And this is what it says, God from all eternity did by the most wise and holy counsel of his own will freely and unchangeably ordain whatsoever comes to pass. God chooses whatever happens in the world because he is sovereign over all his creation.

Yet so, as thereby neither is God the author of sin, nor is violence offered to the will of creatures, nor is the liberty or contingency of second causes taken away, but rather established. Okay, so he said, thereby, so God who creates everything, makes everything that comes to pass, come to pass, he is neither the author of sin, nor does he do violence to the will of his creation.

And then he says something about second causes not taken away, but rather established. Second causes include these two things, the forces of nature or the free actions of God's created beings. So, what you and I choose to do, those are second causes.

God is the first cause, okay? He alone is the first cause. But God in his mighty power uses the secondary causes, what you and I choose, what happens in nature, as means to accomplish his eternal will.

This is like my brain is starting to swell right now. God ordains the means as well as the ends. And while secondary causes shape what happens in the world, they do not operate outside of God's sovereignty.

So, whatever you choose to do, if I were to raise my arm over here, and I have a little bit of trouble with that because I fell off a ladder, if I choose to raise my arm and God says, no, that's not in my will, somehow this, I love how, this is actually an illustration that's just come to mind from R .C.

He said, something would happen in my synapses of my brain, and as those muscles elongate, that would stop. God would be able to do that. Even though I was trying to do that on my own will, I cannot operate outside the sovereignty of God, and neither can you.

God is still on his throne, and this is, and his creation, in his creation, nothing happens apart from his divine knowledge or governance. So, to summarize that, God, the primary cause, works in and through nature and the will of man to achieve his will.

This is called concurrence, okay? It happens at the same time. It is simultaneous. God's intention always is accomplished, and it's always good, even though secondary causes of men's heart are evil and sinful, okay?

That's a lot. If we go into the Bible and we look at the story of Joseph, right? Beautiful story in Genesis. How Joseph is taken by, well, he has this beautiful coat. His brothers hate him because he's his daddy's favorite, and then he says the wrong thing.

They throw him in the pit. He gets taken to Egypt, right? You know this story, and he's falsely accused by Potiphar's wife of, you know, messing around, and he gets sent to prison. He's in prison. All of this, he meets these two guys, and one of them gets out and remembers him and brings him before the king because he interpreted a dream that he had, and the king's had this dream, and he can't figure it out, and he's looking for somebody to do that.

They bring Joseph. He interprets the dream. Joseph becomes second in command in all of Egypt, and then this famine comes. Everybody's starving except they've got food in Egypt, so Joseph and his brothers, they're headed to where the food is.

They get there. They don't recognize their brother, and their brother has this little masquerade thing that goes on with them. He's not telling them who he is, but he's giving them some food, trying to get his younger brother to come up there.

They come up there, and then Joseph at some point reveals himself to his brothers. He says, I'm Joseph. I'm the one you threw in the pit, and they go, man, we're going to die. We are done for.