An Introduction | Galatians 1:1-5

We'll read now from Galatians.

You want to turn your Bible to that book of the Bible.

Standing right at the beginning, just to introduction.

Where we read God's word as follows.

Paul, an apostle sent not from men nor by a man, but by Jesus Christ and God the Father,

who raised him from the dead.

And all the brothers and sisters with me, to the churches in Galatia, grace and peace

to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ, who gave himself for our sins to rescue

us from the present evil age, according to the will of our God and Father, to whom be

glory forever and ever.

Amen.

Thanks Rob.

Good morning church.

Before we look at God's word, let's come to our God and ask him for his help with this

text.

Father God, we are so indeed grateful for the gospel and for your grace that has worked

in our lives.

This morning we ask that as we, your people, come around the words of eternal life, that

you would please give us ears to hear, hearts to understand that we would be transformed,

that our minds wouldn't just be renewed, but our lives, our hearts set afresh anew for

this good gospel, this wonderful gospel that you have given us.

We ask for this in Jesus' name.

Amen.

I don't know if you have children at daycare or at school, but it's one of the worst feelings

when you get a text or email through the day to say that your little one has been hurt.

It actually happens quite a lot.

That's what kids do when they run around and play.

They trip or they fall and they get hurt.

So a lot of the time you're just being informed that your little one has grazed an arm or

a cheek or something like that.

But imagine if throughout the day you were told that some of the teachers got fed up

or bored with some of the things that they were doing and decided that they should bring

deadly snakes into the classroom for the children to play with.

Or thought that the kids could do with a day of running back and forth across the street

to see if they could dodge all the speeding cars and trucks that were whizzing past.

I don't know about you, but I would be absolutely livid, fuming and sickened by the people who

would be so careless and cruel to do that to the little ones who were under their care.

Well much in the same way, that's the context of the book that we're looking at this morning.

These false teachers had come into the churches that Paul had planted in the region of Galatia,

which is modern day Turkey, on his first missionary journey.

And they were leading God's children into all sorts of danger by telling them that though

Jesus is important, they had to do more to be saved.

They had to do more like be circumcised and keep the whole law that was given to the Jews

to be accepted in the sight of God.

And so because these people were relatively young in the faith, they were accepting a

false gospel that was to have a devastating effect on them.

To put it simply, because of these false teachers that had infiltrated the churches, the people

in this region were in danger of spiritual shipwreck, abandoning Christ alone through

faith alone, the gospel that they had first received.

To adopt a poisonous heretical view that would end up spiritually killing them.

And so Paul, furious as you can imagine, writes them this letter that's one of the greatest

treaties on what we have in Christ because of his work on behalf of his people.

He writes it so that these people might realise what was going on, repent and reform back

to the gospel that they had first received.

And church, this is what we're going to be looking at over the next few months that will

pretty much take us up to the Christmas season.

We're going to be exploring the letter to the Galatians and hopefully see that because

of Christ alone, because of God's grace, which means his undeserved favour, because of God's

grace towards his people, everything that needs to be done to make us right with God

for all eternity has been done.

We're saved because of the grace of God and not because of our own works.

Something that these people were in great danger of adopting.

And so this morning, we're just going to look at the first few verses to set this whole

series up and I'm hoping that you catch wind of just a few things, three things in particular.

First, Paul's no ordinary guy and this is no ordinary letter.

Second, there may be many congregations but there's only one church and gospel and third,

the gospel is the power unto salvation.

So if you have your Bibles with you there this morning, we're just going to look at

the first few words of verse one.

We read Paul an apostle.

I have to laugh every time my mum sends me a text because you can really tell she hasn't

grown up in the iPhone generation because she usually signs her name at the end of every

single text.

She does it all the time.

She sends a text and even though she's in my contact list and know exactly who she is

and she has the exact same thing her end, she always signs love mum.

It's a way of letter writing that's pretty much lost on younger generations.

You sign your name to the letter you write.

Well, Paul lived in a world where one would sign their name on the letters they wrote,

not at the end but at the very beginning.

That's what we read here.

This letter was from Paul an apostle.

And so we might ask the question, who was Paul and what's an apostle?

First, Paul.

Well, believe it or not, Paul didn't start his career off as a church planting missionary

but actually as one of the first terrorists that went out to destroy the church.

That's right, our author here once went by the name of Rabbi Saul of Tarsus and he was

a zealot for the Jewish religion that travelled around persecuting Christians in all manner

of ways.

That was his passion to stamp out the new movement that had arisen in Jerusalem in which

people were claiming that this Jesus was the Messiah.

Paul was driven to ruin anyone who claimed Christ as king.

That was until, however, Jesus himself got hold of Paul on the road to Damascus while

he was on the way to persecute Christians, that is.

And it's reported in Acts 9 that Paul was knocked off his horse, that the resurrected

Jesus met him and that he was never the same again.

He went from travelling around persecuting Christians to travelling around proclaiming

Christ as king because of this encounter.

So that's Paul.

Second, what's an apostle?

Well, quite simply, an apostle in the Greco-Roman world was someone who was commissioned by

the emperor to claim to all the territories in their kingdom that their king had taken

more land and dealt with their enemies.

You might think of an apostle as a person who would herald good news to all the people

who claimed Caesar as king.

You might remember we looked at this just a few weeks ago when we were in our Matthew

series in how Jesus gave this name to 12 guys while he was on earth.

And he gave them this name because he trained them for the purpose of sending them out to

proclaim the good news of the kingdom of heaven and to proclaim how the king had come to deal

with our greatest enemy being sin and death.

That's what an apostle was.

An ambassador sent in the name of a king with his authority to deliver his message.

That's why Paul said he was sent.

And notice it, Paul says something else here that's important for us.

He was sent, this is in verse one, but not from men nor by a man, but by Jesus Christ

and God the Father who raised him from the dead.

In a few weeks we'll be ordaining a couple of men from among us and commissioning them

as deacons to serve the church with the gifts that they've been graciously given by God.

We as the church have recognised this, we've called them, we've nominated them, the elders

have trained them and will ordain and then commission them to their office to serve the

church.

It's a beautiful picture of people, the people of God recognising gifts that have been given

and then commissioning those men into their ministry.

That's not what Paul said happened to him.

No, he's saying Jesus who has been risen from the dead had called him.

But the risen Jesus had commissioned him and Jesus had sent him, not the apostles, not

Peter or Paul's missionary sending church in Antioch, but Jesus.

To put it plainly, Paul opens this whole letter by asserting the divine mission and authority

of his apostleship.

He insists on that, not because he feels threatened by false teachers or defensive about his own

rights, but because the credibility and the authority of the message of the gospel depends

on it.

Church, it's important that we know this about Paul.

It's important because his message wasn't from him.

We're actually going to learn a bit more about that later in this chapter in the coming weeks.

He was chosen and sent not from men nor by a man, but by Jesus Christ and God the Father.

Actually in saying that, you could almost take the phrase not from men nor by a man

as the big picture of the whole book of Galatians.

That's actually what we're going to see time and time again in this series.

Paul's going to keep reminding us about the grace of God in various ways throughout this

whole letter.

Not from men nor by a man is the great big theme of this book.

Whether in the calling of an apostle or in the conversion of a sinner, grace itself is

not from us or by us.

Church, one of the reasons that this book is so important for us to understand is because

we've got such minds that find it hard to understand grace.

We're consistently trying to insert ourselves into the plan of salvation and put ourselves

in a place where we can look at our own accomplishments and say, look what I did.

Look what I did to deserve God's approval.

That's why we need to understand the opening of this letter.

The assertion of divine authority that Paul is making is because we have to stop wrestling

with God and submit to the authority of Christ.

He's speaking to us by his apostle.

He's proclaiming to us even now and assuring us by his word in the name of the risen savior

and almighty God that grace itself is not from us nor by us.

It's from God.

That's right.

Grace is from God and it's free.

So in light of that, we need to lay down our frivolous efforts to secure the favor of God

by our own performances.

We need to stop with our attempts to find peace and rest and being good enough.

It's an impossible task if you have tried.

We will never find ultimate comfort in our own works.

So brothers and sisters, hear Paul loud and clear this morning right where you are.

Our only hope.

Our only hope comes not from us or by us, but in the glorious free grace of Jesus Christ

who was risen from the dead.

So we see something here.

Paul starts his whole letter by reminding his dear brothers and sisters in the faith

of exactly what we have.

God has been at work in this world.

He sent his son who was raised from the dead.

He sent his apostle whom he raised from spiritual death to deliver them good news.

Good news that they needed to be reminded of.

That all God's people need to be reminded of.

That's the next thing we catch wind of here.

There might be many congregations, but there's only one church and gospel.

We see it in the language that Paul employs here in verse 2.

This letter is from Paul and all the brothers and sisters with him to the churches in Galatia.

Now I want you to notice something here.

Paul does say churches in the plural, but that doesn't mean he's speaking to different types

of churches or denominations here.

Now he's speaking to a region of churches or what we might call different congregations

or gatherings in the region of Galatia.

Think about it like this.

We might say the churches in Armidale, but really because of the work of Jesus, gospel

established churches are just different congregations that have been built by our risen Lord and

Saviour through the faithful proclamation of the gospel.

And so we might think about it like this.

So we gather in different congregations where all brothers and sisters living in the one

house of our Father.

In fact, a little later on in verse 13 of this very chapter, Paul will say to the congregations,

you've heard of my previous way in Judaism, how I intensely persecuted the church of God.

That's why you might often hear me say that we the church are like one house in different

rooms.

And I say that because I want that picture to help you envision that even though we might

not all gather in the same congregation, there's only one church and that one church has only

one Lord and gospel.

Paul says it like this to the church in Ephesus.

You're no longer foreigners and strangers, but fellow citizens with God's people.

You're members of his household built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets with

Christ Jesus himself as the cornerstone.

In him the whole building is joined together and rises to become a holy temple in the Lord

and in him you too are being built together to become a dwelling in which God lives by

his spirit.

Church this is incredibly important for us to see and remember.

The risen Jesus hasn't set up his body to be divided and fractured and really at its

core it's not.

And we can say that because the true or invisible church as the reformers came to call it is

one because of our status in Christ which makes you and me spiritual brothers and sisters

with the worldwide church.

You see we run into a terrible era when we look to our local community, our ethnicity

or denomination to unite us.

Now if you look at the gospel and that's the thing that unites us, our status in Jesus

Christ.

Meaning that you and I have brothers and sisters from every tribe, nation and people that worship

in other congregations.

They might have Baptist, Reformed, something or other, Methodist or Anglican in the title.

The list goes on and please excuse me if I've missed out on a few hundred of those titles.

That's not to say that we agree on every jot and tittle of every secondary and peripheral

matter nor is it to say that spiritual oversight of each congregation isn't important.

I'm also not saying that everyone who has church in their name is actually a true church

but the point is this.

The real children of God, the true church of Jesus Christ that he has purchased with

his blood and established, we're united not because of our denomination, the country we

come from or the community that we grew up in but because of faith in Jesus Christ.

This is what makes me a new family.

That's what unites the congregations in Armidale, Perth and beyond.

And here's the thing, the brothers and sisters, the children of God, churches built on the

foundation of the apostles and prophets with Christ being the cornerstone, they won't only

preach but also be corrected by the word of God.

That's what faithful teachers and congregations are led by the Holy Spirit to do.

They're led to be faithful to the word of God in the proclamation but also the rebuke

and correction that the word brings.

Which means where traditions, philosophies or liberalism or heresy has infiltrated and

threatened the gospel, they're refuted in light of what the word has to say.

That's something that was certainly the matter here in the context of our letter.

A particular heresy had infiltrated the congregations in Galatia and the children of God were being

led astray.

They were being sold at Jesus plus something else, doctrine.

And so again, that's why Paul starts this letter by reminding them exactly who he was

and with what authority he was writing under because they needed to hear the word of God.

They needed to be reminded of who and what they are in Christ so that they might realize

and repent and reform to the gospel to which they had first trusted.

And here's the thing, though Paul has no problem in distinguishing himself from the others

because of his apostolic authority, notice it.

Notice the text, the brothers and sisters with him.

They're all concerned.

They all wanted their spiritual siblings in Galatia to hear the word of God and repent.

It's a beautiful picture.

The church doesn't say, oh well, the brethren in Galatia have gone off track.

Let's try somewhere else.

No, they're all concerned.

They're all invested in reminding their brothers and sisters of the gospel that saved them.

And that's where Paul takes it next, which is our third and final point.

The gospel is the power unto salvation.

We read in verses three and four, grace and peace to you from God, our father and the

Lord Jesus Christ, who gave himself for our sins to rescue us from the present evil age

according to the will of our God and father.

Church look at what Paul is laying out for the church.

The gospel is a declaration of something Jesus has already done.

Grace and peace is ours because of God acting on behalf of his people.

Jesus gave himself.

That is such a beautiful picture.

The love of God worked itself out in a real self-sacrificial action in this world.

Grace and love is what we're meant to see here.

The son of God loved and gave himself for us.

Why did he do it?

Well it's for our sins.

I don't know about you, but I haven't just broken the law, but smashed the law in every

which way in thought, word and deed.

And there is nothing, not in myself, in ourselves that we can do to rescue ourselves from the

just penalty that our sin deserves.

Eternal separation in hell.

Eternal separation in hell.

But this is the thing, God so loved us that he proactively rescued us by atoning for our

sin.

The Lord Jesus Christ stood in the place of his people as a substitute and received the

wrath of God on the cross.

He atoned for all our wrongdoing.

He atoned for all the things, all the wickedness that we have done.

Luther puts it like this, his riches for our filthy rags.

And why?

Because Paul says it was to rescue us.

That's why God sent his son.

Why did God in the, sorry, God sent his son, God in the flesh died on the cross and he

did it so that he could rescue us.

Rescue us from the penalty of our sin and the present evil age.

That's important for us to see here as we prayed this morning.

Grace and love has broken through.

Grace and love rescued not just as a future hope, but also in the present.

That's right.

Resurrection isn't just something we look forward to, but something that we have, that we possess

here and now.

Paul is saying that the kingdom of heaven, the age where God will be with his people

and his people will be with our God has broken into the present and delivered us from this

world that is seriously under judgment.

It's made apparent and clear for the world to see in the resurrection.

The new age has begun and because of the work of Jesus, he is the redeemer of anyone, no

matter what they've done, who have put their faith in him.

And this is the most astounding thing.

All of this was God's plan for his people.

God's plan for his people, including you and me.

As we read here, it's according to the will of our God and Father.

Do you see that this morning?

The cross, the grace, the peace, the rescue mission, it was all because God loves saving

and forgiving his people.

It's so important that we see that God loves rescuing and saving his people.

Brother, sister, if you trust in Christ alone, you are right at this moment, a rescued and

beloved child of God.

You've been chosen by him, you belong to him and he absolutely loves you as his own.

It was our God's delight to send his son.

It was our God's delight to lay his life down.

The father and son, they're never at odds with one another.

Isaiah puts it like this, it was the Lord's will to crush him and cause him to suffer.

And though the Lord makes his life an offering for sin, he'll see his offspring, he'll see

his offspring and prolong his days and the will of the Lord will prosper in his hand.

Our Father in heaven sent his son to seek and save the loss because of his grace and

love for you and me.

And nothing, but nothing can separate us from the love that he has for us in the Lord Jesus

Christ.

The gospel proclaims grace alone, by faith alone, in Christ alone.

Not a Jesus plus something else kind of thing.

And all of this is meant to result in all God's people glorifying our great God and

Father.

That's how Paul finishes his introduction here.

He doesn't start with what's gone so terribly wrong, we'll get to that, but what has gone

so right.

And that's that the grace and love of God has infiltrated our lives.

The grace and peace that God has towards his people has broken through, which should raise

our eyes heavenward with Paul by declaring to our great God that all glory goes to him.

We see that in verse five.

Church as we end in this small few verses, I want to point out something that's vitally

important for us all to see here at Grace Christian Church and for anyone who calls

upon the name of the Lord in whatever congregation they find themselves in.

Things go off track when the gospel gets lost or is diluted.

We've robbed God of his glory and his work when we forget the gospel.

That's where things go so terribly wrong.

Things go wrong when we look to our own works.

Our own law keeping, our own religious performances for the world to see.

Maybe that's you.

Maybe you found yourself saying I prayed, I committed, I gave, I showed up.

That's why God loves me.

We all find ourselves, all of us find ourselves thinking things like this from time to time.

This is why we need to be reminded of the gospel time and time and time and time again.

That's because something in us always wants to look at some work so that we might say

see that's why God accepts me.

That's why God loves me.

It is the gospel that smashes self-righteousness and reminds us that we are accepted not because

of our work but because of the work and the grace and the love of God for what he has

done on our behalf.

He gave himself for our sins to rescue us from this present evil age because this was

God's plan for his people all along.

And that's why I think this book is going to be good for us because it's going to help

us refocus not on ourselves but on the one who has rescued us by his grace alone.

It's going to help us focus on the one with whom we have peace and hear this we have peace

with him right here right now because of his great love for us.

It's our prayer that as we focus our gaze once again upon Jesus as presented to us in

the gospel that our hearts will burn afresh so that the gospel will be front and centre

here in this congregation in the church of Armidale.

So that this congregation might look not to ourselves and our work but live to give glory

to our great God and Father for all that he has done for his people who he loves by his

grace alone.

Would you please pray with me?

Father God we are so thankful for the good news of Jesus Christ.

We are so thankful that you sent him you so love the world that you sent him and that

this was the plan from all eternity that it was the good pleasure of the Lord Jesus God

in the flesh to come and lay his life down for us as people.

Father we ask that as we go through this series over the next few months that you would please

reveal to us where we have gone wrong.

Reveal to us we ask by the work of your Holy Spirit where we have grabbed onto other things

and added them to the gospel.

We ask that we would be a church that is continually listening, that is continually being reminded

and a church that is continually reforming back to the gospel and your word.

And we ask for this for your glory and for the outgoing of the gospel in this city and

community and we ask for this for your glory alone in the name of Jesus.

Amen.