Called By God | Galatians 1:11-24

Hi, my name is Michael, I'm pasting here, we're absolutely delighted to have you if you're visiting with us.

We have morning tea after the service, so please don't feel like you have to dart off straight away.

We'd love to get to know you, meet you, and also if you hear anything in the sermon that you would like to ask questions about,

please come and speak to me after church, it would be great to meet you and talk with you.

Before we come to God's Word this morning, would you please join me in asking His help.

Father, we are so grateful and thankful for the words of eternal life.

This morning as we come to words that you have given us, we would ask that you, by your Spirit,

give us tears to hear, that our hearts would understand, and that we would be transformed by the Gospel for your glory.

We ask for this for your glory and in the name of Jesus. Amen.

So for the past couple of weeks we've been looking at the book of relations,

which was a book written to a group of congregations that were in great danger of denying justification by faith alone,

in Christ alone, and apostatizing.

This had happened because false teachers had come into the region of Galatia, which is in modern day Turkey,

and were saying that all got it wrong.

He got it wrong when it came to the Gospel he preached, and then were in turn teaching a doctrine

to take people back to the works of the Mosaic Lord.

Now these teachers, they didn't deny Jesus being important, but they did deny that His Word was all sufficient.

And this manifested itself in a so-called Gospel that was Jesus plus circumcision.

Jesus plus dietary requirements, among other things, to gain or maintain salvation.

As we heard last week, this was no trivial matter.

The true Gospel was being twisted to their own destruction.

That's our Apostle, he had to go home, even announcing that if he was to return to them and preach a different Gospel,

if angels were to reveal themselves to them and preach another Gospel, that they were under God's curse.

This was serious. These people were in danger.

If they abandoned Christ alone, through faith alone, by grace alone, and bought into a Jesus plus something else,

don't do it. They were in real danger.

Paul gives them hard words, but words that these people had to hear, words that God Almighty wanted them to hear.

That's why Paul begins our passage this morning saying, am I trying to win the approval of human beings or God?

Am I trying to please people? If I was still trying to please people, I wouldn't be a servant of Christ, first and foremost.

Interesting that this morning we got to see a shift in this book.

Paul began this whole letter by introducing himself, then relating his utter astonishment at what he had been hearing about these congregations.

To now, what we might see as a bit of an autobiography.

And he does this because he wants to teach these churches and us something about the nature of the Gospel that he preached.

And I want to show you three things that Paul puts out for our encouragement, so that we might not fall into a Jesus plus something else kind of Gospel.

And we'll be looking at these three things predominantly from verses 11 through to 16.

So if you have your Bibles with you this morning, it would be helpful to have them open.

So three things I want to show you. First, that the Gospel we receive is of no human origin.

Second, the Gospel can reach and change the vilest of sinners.

And third, the Gospel will have an effect on those it truly touches.

So first, the Gospel is of no human origin.

Paul writes in verses 11 and 12, I want you to know, brothers and sisters, that the Gospel I preached is of no human origin.

I did receive it from man, nor was I taught it. Rather, I received it by revelation from Jesus Christ.

I don't know if you've heard the old wife's tale about the boy who cried wolf.

The story goes that a little lad would come running into town, warning the people of a fictional wolf about to attack the flock.

And time and time again, he would trick the townsfolk into going out to defend the sheep, only to find no wolf whatsoever.

But as we might know, as you might know, when a wolf really did appear, the people refused to believe the boy because they'd been previously deceived, and they had enough.

The lesson for the little ones among us is that the credibility of the message rests on the reliability of its source.

And that's why our apostle starts this part of the letter with where he got the Gospel from.

Notice it, he starts by saying that the Gospel that he had preached to these people didn't have its source in humanity.

Meaning he didn't come up with it, nor did he receive it from other people.

And I think that language is important because we're all in the same place.

We're all in the same place, and we're all in the same place.

And I think that language is important because at the time, there were apostles, there were evangelists,

not to mention people all around who had taken their experience of Pentecost back to their own hometown.

So look at what Paul's saying here.

I preached to you the Gospel that I proclaimed in your hearing.

I didn't get it from any group, any preacher.

I didn't arrive at this from my own study.

No, I got this from Jesus Christ himself.

Church, what Paul is saying here is it's very important to take note of because again,

he's taking this whole thing to another level.

You might remember just a few weeks ago when we looked at the first few verses of this letter.

Paul said that he was sent by Jesus Christ and God the Father.

And now he's saying that the Gospel he proclaimed was also given by Jesus himself.

So, more simply, Paul's saying that his commission and message isn't an idea, a philosophy,

or a message in which it can be just smushed into other ideologies and worldviews that people come up with.

No, our apostle is saying that he was sent by God in the flesh with his divine message of salvation.

I really believe that this is important that we take note of because in this pluralistic world of ours,

and very much like the world of the original recipients,

there's a temptation to put the Gospel in and amongst other ideas and just pick and choose the thing

that makes us feel most comfortable or supports our wants.

Because hey, sometimes people don't get it right.

But our apostle, he denies that option when it comes to the Gospel that he delivered.

He says the message that you've heard isn't like any other.

It hasn't come from me or what's it made up by other people.

No, this word has come from God.

This is the Word of God to us.

I remember a few years ago hearing a Bible college lecturer talk about what Jesus had said on a certain subject

and then what Paul had said.

And then he kind of played the two against each other.

And it was really confusing because beneath his entire point was the fundamental rejection

of the divine inspiration of Holy Scripture.

And church, we have to be very cautious, very careful of that kind of thing.

Because if God isn't the final author of what we have here,

if Paul or Matthew or Mark were the final author,

well then why not choose which paths to believe and which to deny?

Why not pick the bits that you like and just reject the bits that feel uncomfortable?

Because if it's just human authors revealing what they think about God,

as many liberal theologians will say,

then why believe any of it?

People make mistakes.

That's certainly implied by the false teachers there in Galatia about Paul's message.

This is why Paul wants us to understand that the Gospel that's been delivered to us

isn't man's good news about God,

but God's good news to man.

See the difference there?

And that's exactly what Paul's getting us to see here.

The Gospel he preached didn't come from himself or other people,

but from Jesus himself.

Paul isn't like a little kid crying wolf here.

No, he's the servant of Jesus Christ.

An apostle sent by God with the Word of God to proclaim his message to the world.

And as we see here, Church,

Paul wants us to know that its authority rests on its source,

and its source isn't Paul,

but Christ himself.

So that's the first thing that we see Paul encourage us here this morning,

because all we've received is of no human origin.

It's from God himself.

Next he points our attention to the fact that because this Gospel is from God,

it can reach and change the violists of sins.

And Paul shows us this by using his very life as a testimony to this fact.

Read with me verse 13.

Paul writes,

For you've heard of my previous way of life in Judaism, how intensely I persecuted the Church of God,

and tried to destroy it.

So Paul's setting the scene for us.

He takes us back before he was converted,

and he tells us a few things about himself.

He was a zealot for the Jewish faith, and he persecuted Christians.

That's what Paul wants us to know here.

He was a violent band, and he was out to destroy the Church.

He wanted to totally wipe out those who trusted Jesus to be Israel's Messiah by any means necessary.

And notice it, notice it in that text this morning,

he's not just so brute with a club, but he was well educated.

He was a well educated man, saying in verse 14,

I was advancing in Judaism beyond many of my own age among my people,

and was extremely zealous for the traditions of my fathers.

So if we put this together, we might say that Paul was a religiously driven terrorist.

He hated Christians,

and he thought the whole time as he was persecuting the Church of Christ,

that he was doing the work of God.

I mean, in just these short few verses,

he gives us a picture of a deeply religious, yet deeply misguided person.

He gives us a picture of a guy that was consumed with hatred and bitterness,

all while seeing it as his righteousness before God.

This was a man totally dead in sin, and he wants us to know that.

Now if we think biblically here, we know from looking at Acts 9,

that in Paul's rage against Christians,

he got permission to take out a small congregation in the region of Damascus.

But on the way there, on the way to persecute and detain more Christians,

the risen Jesus, Jesus Christ himself, met him on the road.

That's what Paul reflects on here in verses 15 and 16.

This is what Paul says makes all the difference.

He was out to rob, kill, and destroy,

but God, who set me apart from my mother's womb,

called me by his grace and was pleased to reveal his Son in me.

By Paul using his own life as a backdrop,

he wants us to see something about the nature of the Gospel

that was revealed to him and which he preached.

I just want to, there's so much to unpack here,

but I want to point your attention to just three things in those verses in 15 and 16.

Why Paul?

Why would God choose to prepare and send his Son for a guy

who was harassing and wanting his people killed?

That's the first wonderful truth Paul gives us here.

The answer is found there in verse 16.

It was because, as Paul says, God was pleased to reveal his Son in me.

Now, admittedly, there's some interesting language there,

because we just heard that Jesus met Paul on the road to Damascus.

That's pretty well documented.

Why does Paul say that God revealed his Son in him?

I'd like to put it forward to you this morning,

that that's language that's meant to communicate that God's love for Paul

had to break in and change this man's dead heart.

This wasn't just an experience kind of thing.

Now, Paul says that God did an incredible miracle on that day,

in that he worked in Paul a revelation that Jesus alone is the way, the truth, and the life.

To put it simply, Paul's telling us that God opened, he illuminated the eyes of his heart

in that he saw the truth of the Gospel in Jesus.

So again, why did God go after a wicked terrorist who was out to destroy his people?

Why did God reveal Christ as Paul's Redeemer?

Well, it wasn't because of anything Paul did or was.

No, it was because, as we see here, God was pleased to do so.

And church, that's always been the case, right?

That's always been why God saves his people.

He doesn't do it because of our religious resume or our spiritual worthiness,

but because in his unmerited, in his undeserved favor, he chose to come after us.

He chose to reveal Christ in us through the Gospel.

And this is so important for us to know and reflect on,

because this is the only kind of Gospel that we can ever be secure in.

We can never rest secure in a message that says your words keep you in

or that you need to do certain works to get in.

Now, the Gospel that Paul proclaimed is that God's love for us isn't based on our performance

or on our keeping of the law.

And we can rest secure because God's love isn't based on those things.

Because if we think about it, God chose us.

And because he chose us, because he chose to reveal Christ in us,

because he came after us, his love for us can never be lost.

Because our sin, our blindness, our stubbornness, our folly couldn't stop him from revealing his Son to us in the Gospel in the first place.

What wonderful truths we find here.

God reveals his Son to us in the Gospel.

He illuminates Christ as the way, the truth, and the life in us,

and we're united to him for all eternity by the gift of faith that he gives us.

The Gospel holds out this intimately wonderful picture of God's love for his people.

The second wonderful truth we learn from Paul's story here is that no one, but no one, is beyond the grace of God.

Notice that Paul isn't saying that he was at a point where he was unhappy with Judaism and looking for something else.

No, he's saying that when God got hold of him, he was intensely following his religious convictions.

Intensely persecuting the church, and in no way seeking Christ.

His zeal for his religious beliefs took him to a place to want to decimate God's people.

Honestly, he probably saw himself a little bit like Elijah, trying to take out prophets of Baal or something like that.

Totally blind, totally dead in sin.

But as we notice here, church, in verse 15, by God's grace, everything changed. Everything changed.

Paul's story shows us that no one has been so wicked that they are beyond the reach of God.

No, no one is so far gone in their rebellion and sin. No one is so lost in unbelief and ignorance.

No one is so enslaved by a lifetime of wicked habits and enslaving passions that they're beyond the reach of the saving grace of Almighty God.

There's no hopeless cases when it comes to God's mercy.

Paul's life shows us this. It shows us beyond a shadow of a doubt that no one is a hopeless case.

That no one is too bad or too broken for Christ to be revealed to him.

Think about it. If God can break in and save a guy like Paul, he can break in and save anyone.

There's no one who's beyond his reach.

Which means, brothers and sisters, we should never give up on our unbelieving family member or friend or loved one who you have been desperately praying for all these years.

God did it with Paul. He did it with you and me. And he can do it again.

No one. No one's very on the reach of God. No one is beyond the saving work of the Lord Jesus Christ.

Finally, the third thing we see here from his life is that before Christ was revealed to Paul, before what we call the sexual race came, Paul says God's electing purposes were there.

We see that at the beginning of verse 15, don't we?

He says an interesting phrase, I was set apart from my mother's womb.

It's really interesting if we read this in context.

Because Paul's just told us he is a theologically driven terrorist.

But there's a sense in that language in which he sees God always being there, allowing all that he did to shape and prepare him for the things he was going to do.

It's just awesome if we think about it because Paul for his whole life, he'd been resisting God.

But God, as Paul notes here, he was sovereignly using his experiences.

He was sovereignly using his failures to prepare him for a life of preaching gospel as an apostle, as a servant of Christ.

All that Bible knowledge, that passion, that theological training was going to be used by God for his glory.

And he sees that in the light of the gospel.

He sees that in light of God's grace and his choosing and revealing to him of Christ.

To put it simply, Paul's saying God was never out of control.

God came after him.

God made him into a Christian.

God appointed him an apostle.

This was God's plan.

He was set apart from his mother's world.

And church, let me just say by way of encouragement, the amazing thing about reflecting on the grace of God in the gospel, even in our own lives, it gives us such an incredibly new perspective, doesn't it?

I mean, when you come to the knowledge of who God is and what he's done for you personally in Christ, as you reflect on all the years of ignorance and idolatry, unbelief, you discover through it all, despite the rebellion against him, despite your high-handed choosing to sin against him, God had already chosen to love you and to make you his child in the beloved.

He loved you and chose you.

And then by his grace alone, he called you and revealed Christ in you.

Church, as we've been reminded of here this morning, God has always been there.

He's never absent.

His people are known to him, even when we haven't known him.

If you trust in Christ, and please know that nothing with a life submitted to him will ever go to waste.

Admittedly, it might not make sense right now.

It might be painful.

It can feel incredibly unfair.

But God is doing something in it all.

All were right elsewhere to the Church in Rome. All things.

All things work for the good of those who love God and are called according to his purposes.

God, by his grace alone, chose to reveal Christ in us, and nothing with a life submitted to Christ ever goes to waste.

And so the Gospel we have received, it's of no human origin.

The Gospel can, it does, change the violence of sinners.

And finally, the Gospel will have an effect on those who truly touch us.

Why did God choose Paul and then by grace reveal his son in him?

Why did he choose this terrorizing, wicked sinner who Paul gives the anzikiah in verse 16?

So that, so that I might preach him among the Gentiles.

Now Church, I call your attention back to the context of this whole passage.

There were false teachers that were going into the churches in Galatia and essentially telling the people that Paul got it wrong.

That he was teaching his ideas and his take on Jesus.

And so Paul, he's made it clear for us in our passage this morning.

He was called and said by God and he didn't go with his own doctrine but with the very Word of God.

That's what Paul preached to these people.

Not his teaching or his take, the source of those things, or his feelings.

But God's revealed good news of salvation for his people.

So why did God send Paul with his Gospel?

Well it's because Paul wants them to know clearly here.

God wants the Gentiles, these very people to whom he is addressing,

to you and me, to come to the knowledge of his son Jesus Christ.

So that we too might enter into the Kingdom of God and be saved.

As we reflect on this passage before us this morning.

By using his own life and testimony.

Always saying to his audience that God saved and sent him because God desires to save people through the preaching of the Gospel.

And he has revealed through Jesus Christ.

The very Gospel that these people were now abandoning by listening to these false teachers.

To sign up to their doctrines of working for righteousness.

A life that Paul was convinced would have saved him too.

That was until God revealed the truth in him about Jesus and all that he is done.

For all intents and purposes Paul was warning these churches that they were in great, great danger of falling away

from what God had revealed to adopt what man had made.

A man-centered message to try to obtain and maintain what was really held out to them in Christ in the first place.

This was serious because when God's word, when God has reached in and revealed Christ, there is evidence.

There is evidence that like with Paul, he will no longer be like he once was.

Paul's testimony of the grace of God in his life reveals that those whom God graciously goes after

will no longer live a life that they have been rescued from.

No longer look to their own works for satisfaction.

No longer look to their old life and wish to just get on back.

No, though we will struggle from time to time with the flesh and our old way of thinking and doing things,

and trust me, we will struggle with the old man.

By the grace and the power of God, we have been born again.

We have been born again and we will continue to change to be like the one whom God has revealed in our hearts.

Our Lord Jesus Christ to the praise and glory of God alone.

Church, as we end our time in this part of scripture this morning, the gospel that we have has its origins in God.

It's been revealed and is preached and it works in our hearts by God's sovereign grace alone and it changes us forever.

What a savior we have. What a gospel that he's revealed. He comes after us.

He saves us. He changes us. Not because we deserve it, but because he's chosen to set his love on us before we were even born.

As we reflect on the gospel, as we reflect on the truth of what God has revealed,

we will be better equipped to not fall for a Jesus plus something else kind of gospel.

Maybe you're here today and this is the first time you've heard any of this and think you're the one person in the world that God can't save.

The one person he can't get through to you. The one person that the blood of Jesus can't be applied to.

Maybe you're here and you've heard all sorts of things before, but you feel like your sin has completely disqualified you from being saved.

We'll hear this this morning. Our sovereign God has you here by no mistake this morning.

The words of Jesus are clear. I will in no way cast anyone who comes to me.

The Bible says, whosoever believes in me will not perish for have eternal life.

And again, if we confess our sins, he is faithful. He is faithful and just to forgive us of all unrighteousness.

Notice those words, he forgives all, not some unrighteousness, all unrighteousness.

Paul's testimony shows you clearly this morning that you are not beyond the reach of God.

You are not too defiled, you are not too rotten, you are not too broken for the work of Jesus to completely save you.

I want to end on a bit of a warning this morning, because Paul's testimony points something else out to us.

And that's that no one is so good that they don't need Jesus, or they just need a bit of him here and there.

Paul was zealous for the traditions of his fathers. He was working hard at being righteous, yet was completely lost.

Maybe you've grown up in a religious family, you've done all the right things, maybe you feel like the Gospel is for other people.

The people who are the real sinners. Maybe you read the Bible, you help the poor, you do some good things here and there.

But look at what we see here. Paul's life shows us that no one can ever be so studious, so zealous, so committed, so dedicated.

That they are not in need of God's redemption in Christ alone.

Have you called upon the name of the Lord? Have you trusted in him alone?

No one, no one is beyond his reach. No one that cries out to Jesus will be rejected no matter what situation you find yourself in at this very moment.

What a Gospel we have, Church. What a wonderful thing the Lord has revealed to us.

Might we ask him to help us love it and rest in it and live by its power and proclaim it boldly to everyone who will listen.

Not just here in Armidale, but in our city and beyond. Would you pray with me?