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Reading Galatians 1:1-2 in this introductory message to the book of Galatians, considering central themes and a basic overview of the series. Visit wwutt.com for all our videos!
In Galatians 1 .6, the Apostle Paul said, I marvel that you are so quickly deserting him who called you by the grace of Christ for a different gospel. Are you going after a different gospel when we understand the text?
Many of the Bible stories and verses we think we know, we don't. When we understand the text is committed to teaching sound doctrine and rebuking those who contradict it. Visit our website at www .wutt .com.
Here once again is Pastor Gabe.
Thank you, Becky. So we begin a new study this week, and it's a study that I've done before. In fact, not that long ago, I finished up a sermon series in the book of Galatians back in 2019. This was when I was a pastor in Kansas.
I'm actually gonna come back to that sermon series. As we have finished up 1st and 2nd Corinthians, logically, we would just keep right on going into Galatians and Ephesians, right? Well, I'm going to take from the sermon series that I did just a couple of years ago and bring that into the podcast.
And this is gonna give me an opportunity to finish up some other projects that I need to do. As I mentioned, one of those projects being finishing the Bible reading of the New American Standard for the Literal Word Bible app.
And then when I finish that, I'm gonna start on the Legacy Standard Bible. So I thank you for giving me time to be able to do that. Still providing some good Bible study though, as I mine from the archives of my own sermons that I've collected.
What am I gonna do with those sermons? Well, here we go. I have the opportunity to recycle some old teaching, but still fresh and new for an audience in 2022, as much as it was back in 2019. Here is an introduction to the book of Galatians.
Galatians chapter one, verses one through 10. 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.
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 and ever, amen.
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. Not that there is another one, but there are some who trouble you and want to distort the gospel of Christ.
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. As we have said before, so now I say again, if anyone is preaching to you a gospel contrary to the one that you received, let him be accursed.
For am I now seeking the approval of man or of God? Or am I trying to please man? If I were still trying to please man, I would not be a servant of Christ. Let us pray. Our wonderful God, we come before you today and open up your word and desire to have you speak to us.
That our hearts would be convicted and we would turn all the more to the gospel so that we may know our only hope and deliverance from the grave, the wages of sin, which is death, is by faith in Jesus Christ, who died for our sins and rose again from the grave, conquering death so that all who believe in him will not perish, but will have everlasting life.
Teach us these things and how this should look in our lives. What does it mean to believe the gospel? And how does it change the believer as we live in this world? Guide us in your truth everlasting. In the name of Christ we pray and all God's people said, amen.
Thank you, you may be seated. In 2015 and 2016, we were studying through the book of Romans. Took us almost two years to get all the way through Romans. And then when we finished that up and in 2017, we were going through 1 Corinthians.
In the month of October, we put a pause on our study of 1 Corinthians, that we would come back to some doctrinal truths that we had been looking at as we had gone through Romans. Specifically what are called the five solas of the Protestant Reformation.
It was in October of 1517. October 31st of 1517, that's the date that we consider to be the start of the Protestant Reformation. For it was on that day that Martin Luther took his 95 theses and nailed them to the door of All Saints Church in Wittenberg, Germany.
These theses were a protest against Roman Catholicism and how the gospel had become corrupted under the Roman Catholic Church. We don't think about it much today because there's a church on every corner and you have options of not just Protestant churches, but even the Roman Catholic Church and some communities will have an Orthodox Church.
But those were the two churches that existed in the world at that time. It was either Roman Catholicism or Eastern Orthodoxy. If you lived in the Eastern part of the world, the Orthodox Church was the dominant church.
And if you lived in the Western part of the world, particularly in Europe, then it was the Roman Catholic Church that was the dominant church. There wasn't a Protestant church. There had been no protest against Roman Catholicism yet.
And the gospel had become so corrupted by Roman Catholicism that the gospel itself, the true gospel was hardly existent anywhere in the world at that time. With the exception of small factions of people that had broken away to have a church that would be apart from Roman Catholicism.
But if the Catholic Church, which dominated government at that time, found you having a church separated from Roman Catholic Church, they'd have you burned at the stake for heresy. This was the kind of oppression that was going on in the world at that time.
And the Protestant Reformation was the recovery of the gospel. I told you about Jeffrey Rice's ministry this morning, post-Tenebrous Lukes, that was a motto that came out of the Protestant Reformation.
In Latin, it is translated in English, out of darkness, light. Out of the darkness that had hidden the gospel, the light of the gospel broke forth, giving truth to what Christ had said in Matthew 16, 18.
I will build my church and the gates of hell will not prevail against it. And these men who were passionate for the gospel fought against Roman Catholicism and brought to light once again, the doctrinal truth that was proclaimed by the apostles, that it is by grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone, that we have salvation.
Not by any works, not because the Pope has said something, not by any of these other doctrines that the Catholics were teaching, adding to the gospel of grace. It is by the gospel alone that we are saved.
Those five foundational doctrines in the Protestant Reformation, we talked about when we were in Romans and came back to them again in October of 2017. There were five Sundays in that particular month as we came up on the 500th anniversary of the Protestant Reformation.
So we committed every one of those Sundays to studying each one of these doctrines. Those five doctrines were, it is according to the authority of scripture alone, that we are saved by grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone, to the glory of God alone.
And this is not something that the Protestant Reformers came up with and imposed upon scripture. We find it in scripture. In fact, our root scripture that we use to study through these things was Romans 3, verses 21 through 26, where those five doctrines are outlined.
And it is in Ephesians 2, verses eight and nine that we read, it is by grace, you have been saved through faith. And this is not of yourselves. It is the gift of God, not of works, so that no one may boast.
When we were going through Romans, I mentioned that the theme of Romans was justification. That was basically the doctrinal treatise that Paul was writing on justification. It is the book of Romans. What you want to know about justification and in your study of that particular doctrine, you come to Romans as kind of your base point on understanding what it means to be justified.
That word itself means that before God, we are declared innocent. We are justified. And this happens by what Christ has done. And by faith in Him, are we justified. We are cleansed of our sinfulness and we are declared innocent before a holy God, before whom we have sinned and whose judgment we deserve.
Christ took our sins upon Himself when He died on the cross. And He's clothed us in His righteousness, all who have faith in Him, so that we may be justified. Now I mentioned that to you again, because as we come to Galatians, justification is the theme here as well.
But Paul gets a little more specific about the justification that he talks about with Galatians. Specifically, we're talking about not a general overview of justification, but specifically justification by faith.
That is what Paul comes to over and over again. This is the repeated theme that you are going to see continually throughout the book of Galatians. Namely, I think of Galatians 2, verse 16. It's a pretty beefy verse here, but here you have a summary of the book of Galatians.
We know that a person is not justified by works of the law, but through faith in Jesus Christ. So we also have believed in Christ Jesus 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.
Chapter 3, verse 10, and for all who rely on works of the law are under a curse, for it is written, cursed be everyone who does not abide by all things written in the book of the law and do them. Now it is evident that no one is justified before God by the law, for the righteous shall live by faith.
Where else did we see that said? Romans 1, that the just shall live by faith. We are justified by faith alone in Christ, and this is the point that Paul makes in Galatians. Here's our general theme, and you may have gathered this even from what Paul addresses here in the first 10 verses that we have read this morning.
So we understand that we are saved by grace through faith in Christ alone, and no other way do we come to salvation. It is not by works. We are commanded to do good works. In fact, as I quoted Ephesians 2, 8, and 9, verse 10, then right after that says that we are created for good works, which God has prepared for us beforehand that we should walk in them.
So we are to do good works, but the works that we do are not the thing that saves us. The works that we do are the evidence that we have come to this salvation in Christ, so that we might demonstrate with our lives that it is the righteousness of Christ that we have, not a righteousness of ourselves.
So we show the righteousness of Christ by doing the things that he has commanded. John 14, 15, Jesus saying to his disciples, you will show me that you love me when you obey my commandments. And so it is in obedience to Christ that we live in righteousness.
This is not the thing that saves, but it is the evidence that we have been saved. So by grace through faith alone in Christ alone. Here's what Paul addresses with the Galatians. If your doctrine of justification is by grace through faith in Christ plus blank, the emphasis of your theology is gonna be on the blank.
Whatever fills that blank, that's gonna be the emphasis of what you believe salvation is. So it is no longer by grace through faith in Christ alone, it's this other thing that fills this blank. That's the thing that you have to have in order to think that you are saved and you have corrupted the gospel.
Immediately Paul addresses at the start of this letter, I am astonished that you're so quickly deserting him who called you in the grace of Christ and are turning to a different gospel. What is the different gospel that the Galatians have turned to?
Gnosticism? No, hadn't come around yet. Is it Catholicism? No, also did not exist yet. Not Mormonism, not Buddhism, not Taoism, none of these other isms. This was not what it is that the Galatians had turned to, rather it was a gospel of works.
It was the belief, oh yeah, I believe in Jesus, but I also have to do this. And until I do these things and boom, boom, boom, and I've checked all my boxes, only then can I really be saved. And Paul says, that's a different gospel.
That is not the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ. We are saved by grace through faith and no other way, by faith in Jesus. Now, our God is a jealous God. And in Exodus chapter 20, God lays that out when he gives the 10 commandments to the people of Israel.
Now, contrary to what some teachers you may have heard have said, the 10 commandments have not been nullified even for the people of God, okay? There still are commandments that we must obey. As I've already quoted to you, Jesus saying, if you love me, you will obey my commandments.
So the Lord, our God has said, and this is as true through Jesus Christ as it was when he spoke this to the children of Israel, that I will have no, that you, sorry, you will have no other gods before me.
For I, the Lord, your God, am a jealous God. And he will not share us with anyone else. So there cannot be faith plus something else. There cannot be this belief or this idea that I have to have this other thing in order to be saved, in order to find my justification, in order to believe that I have right standing with God.
You cannot find yourself unsatisfied with faith in Jesus Christ. Well, you know, Christianity, sure, but let me shape it into something that's a little more palatable for me and goes together with all these other things that I want to do.
Well, then you've created a different gospel. And once again, you've established a blank that needs to be filled, and that's where your emphasis is. Your emphasis is on whatever needs to go in that blank.
And you've corrupted the gospel. Our need and our desire needs to be fully Christ and nothing else. Well, I need to have this too. Well, then Christ is not enough. That's essentially what you're saying.
Can you do without any of those other things? And if you were left with only Christ, you would still be satisfied and you would have assurance of your salvation. What sacrifices must be made in your life to be sure that this is gone and there's only Christ?
And I can live without this other thing in order to be sure that my mind and my heart are completely focused on Christ. This is what Paul comes to with the Galatians. And let me tell you, this is a hard letter.
It's a harsh letter. It's probably Paul's harshest letter, even more so than 1 Corinthians. Yeah, he called out specific sins with specific people in the church in Corinth, but Paul still had a much more praiseworthy greeting to the Corinthians in both 1 and 2 Corinthians than he had here at the start of Galatia.
Galatia is very, very light, and he does not even express thanks for them at the start of this letter. To the churches of Galatia, 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 and ever, amen.
Paul basically gives them the gospel again in their greeting, but he expresses no thanks for them. Every other letter that we have from Paul in the New Testament, he gives thanks to his hearers, to those who are reading the letter.
He doesn't say that to the Galatians. Does that mean that he's not thankful for them? Yeah, that is what that means. What do I mean by that? Because they've turned to another gospel, and as he's gonna say coming up here later on in the letter, I feel like I'm having to go through labor again for you.
I've done this once before, and now I have to do it again, because he's saying to them, when you heard the gospel the first time, it apparently didn't stick, and now here we are again. Here I am again having to preach this to you again.
Paul has no delight in his heart to have to do that again for these people. So therefore, he has no gratitude to express for this church that you are taking away from the mission that I should be focusing on all these other areas who still need to hear the gospel, and now these folks who have heard the gospel before, and here I am preaching it to you again, I have no grace or no appreciation for you.
I meant to say no gratefulness for you. Grace he certainly has, because that's what he expresses at the start of the letter. Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. Grace he certainly has.
It is grace that has compelled him to write this letter to them and address these things with them again, but it still vexes his heart that he has to address this, that this church has left the gospel.
So he has no thankfulness for them, but that they would repent and come to know the true gospel that has been preached to them again. It is gonna be vital for us as we embark on this study of Galatians to understand that God will share us with no one or no thing.
Do we understand that Christ is preeminent? As Paul said in Colossians 1 .18, that he reigns over all and above him is top, and there is nothing to gain above Christ, but when we have Christ, we have everything.
And anything else would just be icing on the gate. It's just blessing from God after that. But Paul said in Ephesians 1 .3, we have been given all spiritual blessings in Christ in the heavenly places.
So there's nothing else you need after Christ. Christ is everything. Now, as we come into this, we will start to get more specific about some of those things that maybe in our lives have become distractions or they become the blank that we need to fill with something else, thinking that we also need this in order to believe that I'm satisfied, in order to believe I have everything that I need.
I have Christ plus blank. And as we address some of those kinds of things, as we go on with this letter, you may find yourself becoming offended, and you should, because there's something that you exalt in your flesh that you need to sacrifice and get rid of.
Thank you for listening to When We Understand the Text with Pastor Gabe Hughes. If you'd like to support this ministry, visit our website, www .wutt .com, and click on the Give tab in the top right corner of the page.
Join us again tomorrow as we continue our Bible study When We Understand the Text.