WWUTT 1748 Called by God to Follow Jesus (Galatians 1:10-14)

When you and I came to faith in Jesus Christ, it probably did not look like a miracle to most people.

But if we truly understand the transformation that's happened in our hearts, it is only by the power of God 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 an online ministry dedicated to teaching the

Word of God in context, promoting sound doctrine while exposing the faulty. Here's your teacher,

Pastor Gabe. Thank you, Becky. And greetings, everyone. We come back to our study in the book of Galatians.

Still in chapter 1, we've finished verses 1 through 10. I'm going to pick up today in verse 11 and read through verse 24.

This is out of the Legacy Standard Bible. For I make known to you, brothers, that the gospel which

I am proclaiming as good news is not according to man. For I neither received it from man, nor was

I taught it, but I received it through a revelation of Jesus Christ.

For you have heard of my former conduct in Judaism, how I used to persecute the church of God beyond measure and tried to destroy it.

And I was advancing in Judaism beyond many of my contemporaries among my countrymen, being far more zealous for the traditions of my fathers.

But when God, who had set me apart from my mother's womb and called me through His grace, was pleased to reveal

His Son in me, so that I might proclaim Him as good news among the Gentiles, I did not immediately consult with flesh and blood.

Nor did I go up to Jerusalem to those who were apostles before me, but I went away to Arabia and returned once more to Damascus.

Then three years later I went up to Jerusalem to become acquainted with Cephas and stayed with him fifteen days.

But I did not see any other of the apostles, except James the Lord's brother. Now in what

I am writing to you, I assure you before God that I am not lying. Then I went into the regions of Syria and Cilicia, and I was still unknown by sight to the churches of Judea, which are in Christ.

But only they kept hearing. He who once persecuted us is now proclaiming the good news of the faith which he once tried to destroy.

And they were glorifying God because of me. Now over the last few weeks here that we've been in Galatians chapter one, it's taken us a few weeks to get through verses one through ten, there was an introduction and then there's been, you know, a few other sermons in there and those sermons have been broken up.

It hasn't been one sermon every day. But anyway, here we are in the second half of chapter one.

I've been playing sermons from that series that I preached through a few years ago. But then in Galatians one eleven through about two fourteen,

I don't have any recorded sermons of that section. I had stepped away.

I was doing some traveling and doing some speaking in some other places and the other elders of my church stepped in and were preaching through that section.

So I don't have those sermons. So we're going to do this the usual way we've been doing it on the podcast.

And then when I get to Galatians two fifteen, then we'll pick up in the sermon series again.

So here we go with Galatians one eleven through twenty four. We'll look at part of this today and then the second part will be on Monday.

Paul says, for I make known to you brothers that the gospel which I am proclaiming is good news is not according to man.

Now remember what he's just said. He's talked about the true gospel that was proclaimed to the

Galatians and they are to receive no other gospel except the one that was first proclaimed to them.

If we, Paul says, or an angel from heaven, like the two most authoritative verses that could appear before the

Galatians, if we, the apostles come to you or an angel from heaven comes down to you and gives you a gospel contrary to the one you received, let him be accursed.

And Paul is so emphatic about this that he repeats it again, says it again in verse nine, as we've said before.

So I say again now, if any man is proclaiming to you a gospel contrary to what you receive, let him be accursed.

In verse 10, for am I now seeking the favor of men or of God? Or am

I striving to please men? If I were still trying to please men, I would not be a slave of Christ.

For I make known to you brothers that the gospel which I am proclaiming as good news is not according to man.

So right off of that thought in verse 10, Paul says, what I'm proclaiming is not according to man.

I am not trying to please men. I am a slave of Christ.

Contrast that with the Galatians who are not slaves of Christ. They're believing the words of men.

They are enslaved again to the law is a point Paul is going to make coming up a little bit later on.

So these statements here opening up the letter are meant to jar them so that they will recognize that they are not walking in the grace of Christ.

They would still be under his judgment if they don't repent and come back to the gospel that was proclaimed to them at first.

So in verse 11, again, I make known to you brothers that the gospel which I am proclaiming as good news is not according to man.

For I neither received it from man, nor was I taught it. But I received it through a revelation of Jesus Christ.

Now you know the story of Paul known by his Hebrew name as Saul in Acts chapter nine.

He's on his way to Damascus to round up Christians to persecute them. And it's there on the road to Damascus that Jesus appears to him and says,

Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me? Saul says, who are you, Lord? And he says,

I am Jesus Christ whom you are persecuting. Saul is stricken with blindness. He is told to go to the street called straight.

He is to stay there. A man named Ananias is going to come to him. Jesus speaks to Ananias and says,

I'm going to show him how much how much he must suffer for my name. Paul becomes an apostle.

He who was previously a persecutor of Christians has now become an apostle of Jesus Christ. That's what this section is about.

Verses 11 through 24, Paul sharing his testimony with the Galatians so that they would recognize what he proclaims is not of man, it is of God.

Now Paul's story, of course, was different from the other apostles. They actually were with Jesus, even

Matthias, who replaced Judas. There were two men who were chosen to be the twelfth apostle.

We read about that in Acts chapter one, replacing the office that Judas had left vacant after he betrayed

Christ and then committed suicide. So it fell upon two men, Matthias and Justice, were both qualified.

And those qualifications included they had to have seen the risen Lord. Well, they had to have witnessed

Christ's earthly mission, his earthly ministry from the time of his baptism by John to the time of his resurrection and ascension into heaven.

And there were two men among them who had seen that. See, it was more than just the twelve or more than just the eleven that were there in the upper room, which we're reading about in Acts chapter one.

There were 120 that were in that room. All of them were disciples of Jesus. They had all followed him at some point in his earthly ministry.

But to be an apostle, they had to have been a witness to that ministry from the time of his baptism, having heard the voice of God from heaven say, this is my beloved son in whom

I am well pleased. And then they had to have been there for his crucifixion, his resurrection, his ascension into heaven.

They had to have seen the risen Lord, and they had to have been personally appointed to that position by Christ himself.

Now there is not that personal appointment like Jesus being in the room. Actually they are in the room with them, standing with them in Acts chapter one.

But they asked that the Lord would reveal to them who he has chosen to fill the office of Judas.

They cast lots, it falls on Matthias, and he becomes the 12th apostle. Even Matthias had a closer relationship with Jesus on earth during his earthly ministry than Paul had.

So Matthias wasn't just chosen, hey, we got to have a 12th guy, let's pick somebody. This was a man who had experienced the ministry of Jesus like all the other disciples had.

There were more than just the 12 who were following him around. But he had that inner 12, and even within the 12 there was a closer group, right?

There was Peter, James, and John. So among the 12 you had the three. Only they got to go with Jesus up on the mount where you had the transfiguration.

So anyway, all of this to say that the qualifications of an apostle were that they had to have seen the risen

Lord, and they had to have been personally appointed to the position of apostle by Christ himself. And then their apostleship is also confirmed by the signs and wonders and miracles that they perform.

The gospel that they proclaim, all the same. No apostle is preaching a different gospel than another apostle.

The gospel that Paul was preaching was the same gospel that all the other apostles were preaching even though Paul was not with them.

So he was not taught this gospel by men. It was not the other apostles that came to him and said, okay, hey, you want to be one of us now.

Well, here's what it is that we preach. You need to know this, and now you can go out and you can do the mission stuff like we do.

Oh, yeah, they're probably going to kill you for it, too, just to let you know. I don't know if you noticed that in the fine print, but that also comes along with being an apostle.

That wasn't the way that Paul received this. Jesus appeared to him, and the gospel that he came to know was revealed to him by Christ.

It was by special revelation. It was not taught by man. So Paul says this to the

Galatians that they would know the gospel they first heard was from God. It was not from man, lest they think they need to abandon that gospel for something better, because, well,

Paul is just one man. These guys are men, too, and they're pretty convincing. So maybe we do need this other thing that they're convincing us we need, and we'll kind of pull that in with what

Paul taught us, and here we go. Now we've got this thing. I feel like we have our bases covered a little bit better now.

We're able to do these works to merit our justification, and plus, we believe in Jesus, and Paul says, no, that's a different gospel.

As we've been going through Galatians, you have this equation, Jesus plus blank equals salvation, and what should go in that blank is nothing.

It should just be left blank, but when somebody puts something in that blank, that's the gospel to them, and it's a different gospel.

It's no longer justification by faith in Jesus, it's justification by works, and so Paul is establishing the authenticity of his testimony here, of the gospel that he proclaims.

Verse 13, for you have heard of my former conduct in Judaism, how

I used to persecute the church of God beyond measure, and I tried to destroy it, and I was advancing in Judaism beyond many of my contemporaries among my countrymen, being far more zealous for the traditions of my fathers.

Paul was so zealous for the traditions that he had been taught that he was willing to kill people over them.

That's how zealous he was. He also shares a similar testimony in Philippians chapter three, where he says, if anyone else has a mind to put confidence in the flesh,

I far more. I was circumcised on the eighth day of the nation of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a

Hebrew of Hebrews, as to the law, a Pharisee, as to zeal, a persecutor of the church, as to the righteousness which is in the law, found blameless, but whatever things were gained to me, those things

I have counted as loss for the sake of Christ. More than that,

I count all things to be lost because of the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus my

Lord, for whom I have suffered the loss of all things, and count them but rubbish, so that I may gain

Christ, and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own, which is from the law, but that which is through faith in Christ, the righteousness which is from God upon faith, that I may know him, and the power of his resurrection, and the fellowship of his sufferings, being conformed to his death, in order that I may attain to the resurrection of the dead.

So even there with the Philippians, proclaiming that salvation is by faith in Jesus, that's the only way.

We do not have righteousness according to the law. That's self -righteousness. We cannot attain our own righteousness just by keeping the law.

We can't keep the law. And so we're fooling ourselves, we're deluding ourselves if we think that we're righteous because we've done all the right things.

Jesus said, it is not those who are healthy who need a physician, but those who are sick.

And Paul in 1 Timothy 1 .15, the saying is trustworthy and deserving of full acceptance that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners.

He didn't come to save the self -righteous. They cannot be saved, for they will not admit they need a savior.

You can't be saved unless you understand your sin. The Holy Spirit has opened your eyes to recognize your sin and your need for a savior, and that Christ is that savior.

Jesus came to seek and to save the lost. A person who thinks they're found on their own,

I found myself, cannot be saved. It is those who know that they are lost apart from Jesus Christ.

So Paul came to know that. That became part of his testimony. I did not have a righteousness by keeping the law.

The righteousness that I have is by faith in Jesus Christ. It is a borrowed righteousness, an imputed righteousness, that I would be forgiven my sins and justified before him.

What are the Galatians doing? The Galatians are trying to find justification by faith and works, which is not really justification by faith.

It's really justification by works. You know, there are some that will try to say, well, I believe in justification by faith, and then they also partner works with it.

Well, they don't have justification by faith and works. It's just justification by works. They think that they can make themselves innocent.

They can do enough right things to undo all the wrong things that they've done. We can't ever do that. The only one who can make us right is

Jesus Christ by his shed blood, the atoning sacrifice that he shed on the cross for our sins.

Paul says, you've heard of my former conduct in Judaism. I was advancing in Judaism beyond my many contemporaries among my countrymen, being far more zealous for the traditions of my fathers.

One of the persons who taught Paul was Gamaliel. He mentions that in Acts 22 when he's testifying before the

Hebrews. I was a student of Gamaliel. I had somebody in a class I was teaching,

I was doing a biography on Paul, and somebody after class came up to me and asked, did Paul ever exceed

Gamaliel in learning? And I said, yes, I believe that he did.

Not in stature or position, Paul had not gotten that far yet, but everybody was looking at Paul as being the next big thing.

He was even more advanced in his learning as a young man. He was more advanced than Gamaliel, who was his teacher.

As a Pharisee among Pharisees, he says in Philippians chapter 3, he was like the

Michael Jordan of Pharisees, head and shoulders above the rest. Everybody thought he was going to be the next big leader in the law, and Jesus comes and upsets all of those plans.

And Paul leaving that to follow Christ and become an apostle, that was an incredible transformation.

You've got to recognize that when you're considering the biography that Paul is sharing here in Galatians chapter 1.

How big was this change, really? How drastic was this?

It wasn't just Paul changing occupations or figuring out, hey, I can get more famous, seeing how

Christianity is on the rise, I can do better there than I'm doing as a Pharisee. No, he gave up rockstar status to go and be persecuted for the gospel of Jesus Christ.

Two completely different people. And it is a transformation of the heart that can only happen by the power of God.

And as Paul will say, getting to the end of this chapter, this was testified about in Jerusalem, though I had not been there yet to talk about this.

They heard about it and they were glorifying God because of me, because the people knew there this kind of transformation could only happen by God.

There's no way a guy like Paul would give up everything that he had to go be part of the people that he was persecuting.

How could that? That's mind boggling. How could that happen? Only by the power of God.

Now, as I kind of bring this to a close here today, we'll pick up with the rest of this chapter next week.

Let's kind of give something practical to this, something that that you can take for yourself from this testimony that Paul has shared here.

None of us came to faith in Jesus Christ on the road to Damascus.

OK, we did not have an appearance of Jesus saying, Bethany, Bethany, why are you persecuting me?

John, John, what are you doing? You know, OK, we did we did not hear the voice of God, an audible voice blinding us with light.

Then we fast for three days. Some dude named Ananias shows up, puts hands on us and scales fall from our eyes.

We're baptized and we become apostles. That's not our story. However.

Every single one of us. When we come to faith in Jesus Christ, it is every bit as miraculous as Paul's Damascus Road experience.

We are children of wrath destined for destruction. We are like the sons of disobedience,

Ephesians chapter two, following after the spirit of the age, the prince of the power of the air, and we are deserving of wrath like the rest of mankind.

That's who we are before we come to Christ. We are enemies of God. And as his enemies, we will perish.

But God, because of his great love for us, did not leave us dead in our sins.

But he made us alive together with Christ. He made us alive together with Christ.

By grace, you are saved, not by anything that you have done. It is by God's grace.

That is a work of God in your heart, as much as it was a work of God in the apostle

Paul. And so just as the people glorified God because of the testimony that they heard about Paul, so you glorify

God because you know you were a sinner destined for destruction.

You've been made a saint destined for eternal life. By grace through faith in Christ alone.

Glorify God today by walking in holiness before him. Heavenly Father, we thank you for this word.

May this continue to work in our hearts, an appreciation, an awesomeness for what you have done in our lives, making us from children of Satan to children of God, adopted sons and daughters and fellow heirs with Christ of his eternal kingdom.

May our understanding of this work in our minds and hearts in such a way that we desire to be holy before you, that we turn from our sin to the righteousness of Christ.

We are not trying to please men. We are slaves of Christ. And so help us and teach us in the traditions of our spiritual fathers, that we may know the way that is pleasing to God and live in it according to your word.

It's in Jesus' name we pray, amen. You've been listening to When We Understand the Text with Pastor Gabe Hughes.

Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday, Gabe will be going through a New Testament study. Then on Thursday, we look at an

Old Testament book. On Friday, we take questions from the listeners and viewers. Tomorrow, we'll pick up on an