Grace to You | Galatians 1:1-5 | Pastor Jake Brown

Our passage of scripture for just for today's sermon is Galatians one one through five.

Galatians one one through five.

Paul, an apostle, not from men or 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 Glacia.

Grace to you, and peace from God our Father, and the Lord of 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 him be the glory forever and ever.

Amen.

This is the word of God.

Paul proclaims freedom in Christ for all who believe the gospel.

Paul also does something that's maybe less appealing.

He draws lines in the sand.

He says there's one gospel and no other gospel.

He speaks of justification by faith like it's the one true way to be saved.

He claims and argues that the gospel should lead us to holy living.

There should be change in your life if you're following after Jesus and believing the gospel.

But who is Paul to make such a claim?

And where does this gospel, he claims, even come from?

Maybe you're here and you've been walking with the Lord for a long time if you've never asked those two questions.

But maybe you're here and you're skeptical enough about everything, especially religion, that those are the first questions that come to your mind when you hear about the gospel or the Bible or Christianity at all.

Who are these people that wrote this book?

What's the source of this story?

I think we get some insight on that here just in the first five verses of Galatians.

Lord willing, we're going to spend several of the weeks ahead, hopefully several months ahead, working through the book of Galatians.

And today it lays a lot of groundwork for what's ahead.

We'll see today's passage in two main points: the source of Paul's authority and the source of the gospel.

The source of Paul's authority and the source of the gospel.

So first, let's start with the very first word Paul.

Now, don't worry, I'm not going to spend all the time on Paul because in a future week you'll hear another sermon from another pastor here going through Paul's entire testimony.

What you need to know, though, is that Paul was formerly more commonly known as Saul of Tarsus, and he persecuted Christians.

These are historic facts you can check outside of Christian sources.

This man existed and killed Christians.

So what is he doing in the Bible, writing us this book?

Did you know that Paul, by the way, means small one or little?

A lot of us didn't know that.

We pick on Zacchaeus a lot, not so much Paul.

We actually don't know if he was small, but that is the meaning of his name, and it is fitting since he says he is the least of the apostles in other passages.

He does say Paul, an apostle.

Now that's a good Christian word, right?

It's a good church word.

What does apostle mean?

If you are a Christian, it depends on what background you come from.

Maybe you grew up in a church where some of your church leaders called themselves apostles.

Maybe you've heard of apostolic gifting with a lowercase A.

Here, Paul is concerned about this office of apostle that ceased after that first generation of apostles.

This would include those that Jesus called his initial disciples.

You may have heard the 12 disciples.

You get confused because you're like, wait, was Judas still one?

No, he's replaced by Matthias in Acts chapter 1.

Acts 1 · chapter mention

Paul and some others are called apostles.

Barnabas is credited as an apostle, another part of the New Testament.

In Hebrews chapter 3, verse 1, even Jesus himself is called an apostle.

Hebrews 3:1

So what does that word mean?

It means one who has been sent out.

Especially as we look to the office, we're looking at those who have been specifically sent out by Jesus himself in person.

So Paul is claiming something pretty important here.

He'll deal with this more in Galatians.

He doesn't get into his entire argument at this point.

But here in the title of a letter, in the opening of a letter, he wants us to know that he's an apostle.

Were any of you taught to write letters in school like I was?

Every letter I wrote, probably ever in my life, started with dear so-and-so.

That is until we got to emails.

And then it just became like your name, comma.

And you know, if we're really upset, it may be like to whom it may concern.

But we never started with our own name.

That was only if you were putting together like a formal letter to apply for a job, maybe you'd put that together.

It was more common then to start with your own name, to start with, this is who I am, this is the authority that I have to write to you.

You'll see that in many other letters.

Paul calls himself an apostle frequently.

Peter calls himself an elder.

Notice what Paul says here about his apostleship.

He said, it is not from men, nor through man.

It's not merely humanly appointed.

There wasn't a committee that got together and voted on Paul and was like, all right, he's an apostle now.

That's not how it worked.

They didn't have a job description, he didn't go through a hiring process.

In fact, if you had done it that way, you wouldn't have picked Paul.

He was persecuting Christians.

It's a miraculous saving of Paul that first makes him a follower of Jesus, and then Jesus' own commission to him that sends him out as an apostle.

So his claim is that his authority comes from Jesus himself.

It's right there.

But through Jesus Christ.

He uses the name Jesus.

By the way, Jesus' last name is not Christ.

That's a title.

Talking about Messiah, the anointed one of the Old Testament, the one that the Jewish people, the Hebrews, had been long awaiting.

So Paul's making a big claim about Jesus right here out of the gate.

Jesus the Christ and God the Father.

Notice that Paul equates the two.

He puts Jesus the Messiah with God the Father because Christians have always believed there's one God who eternally exists as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

He's calling Jesus God, and he's saying, Jesus the Son of God, and God the Father have appointed me as an apostle.

Now, what's really neat for Christians is while we think this office of apostle is no longer, there is a sense in which we are sent out as well.

Jesus said to his disciples that even as he was sent from the Father, so he is sending them into the world, sending us into the world.

So, brother or sister Christian, members of this church, especially, do you go about your day thinking I've been sent out by God to represent him?

Kind of changes our interactions at the register, right?

If suddenly I'm here to represent Jesus, maybe I'm a little bit more patient in line at Target.

Maybe at work, I think about my day differently.

But this office of apostle, we do think is done.

Why is that?

Apostles would have been around Jesus and his teaching physically.

We get authoritative apostolic teaching in the Bible.

As a pastor here, I'm here to tell you I'm not in apostolic succession from the apostles.

I'm not.

I am a sinner saved by grace who only gets to stand before you in this role as long as God would have me here by his grace.

But Paul wanted us to know from the outset: hey, this has bearing for Christians.

This is important.

This isn't something you can set aside and say this doesn't matter.

He's claiming the authority of God in his writing.

He tells us something about God here.

God the Father who raised him, that is Jesus, from the dead.

This is the most direct reference we get in Galatians to the resurrection of Jesus Christ.

If you're here and you're not yet sure what you think about Jesus, thank you for coming.

This is the part you need to focus on.

Because if Jesus has been raised from the dead, then we need to pay attention to what Galatians and all the rest of this book says about Jesus.

And we need to figure out how to follow him.

And if he wasn't raised from the dead, then why on earth are people here at 7 a.m.

setting up chairs?

What are we doing?

Let's go back to sleep.

We can watch the World Cup today because it's not American football season yet.

There's lots of stuff you could be doing on a Sunday morning other than what we're doing right now if Jesus wasn't actually raised from the dead.

But if in fact he is raised from the dead, and I believe with Paul that he is, then there's hope.

There's joy.

There's peace.

And it's real no matter what we're facing.

If Jesus is resurrected from the dead, then we know that sin and death will not be the end of our story.

We know that there's a happy ending eventually.

We know that there is true goodness and true beauty in this world because we have a God who has not abandoned us to our sin, but has rescued us from sin and death, to the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.

Paul there made it very clear which God he's talking about.

He said, Jesus Christ and God the Father who raised him from the dead.

He's not speaking in some general term about like whatever you feel God to be.

No, I mean the Christian God of the Bible, who was and is and is to come, who raised him from the dead.

Paul does something interesting here.

Verse 2, he says, and all the brothers who were with me.

You're noticing the family language here?

God the Father, and I have brothers with me.

Now the term here could really mean brothers and sisters.

So, women, please don't feel left out here.

His point, though, is that he is not alone in the things that he is about to write in this letter.

Other people, besides Paul, understood and knew the true gospel.

They knew the things he was arguing for.

It's not just coming from him.

He's not making it up as he goes.

He says, I belong to the body of Christ, and we together have agreed on these things.

Our church members, that should be sounding a little bit familiar.

We're supposed to hold one another accountable to things that we've agreed on, our statement of faith, especially in the scriptures, to say, this is the Bible that we believe, this is the gospel that we believe, and holding one another to it.

When you see me acting out of step with the gospel, you say, hey, Jake, that's not how we're supposed to be.

And Lord willing, by the power of the Holy Spirit, I look at you and I say, I'm so sorry.

And we repent and we're restored.

This belonging to one another wasn't just for us, it was for the Apostle Paul as well.

Now, that gives us the source of Paul's authority.

He's claiming it's God.

Whether you believe that or not really should hinge on whether or not Jesus was raised from the dead.

But that's the source he's claiming.

So now we find the source of this very gospel in the back half of verse 2 and the rest of these verses.

To the churches of Galatia.

Notice it says churches plural.

I think we can get a big misunderstanding sometimes if we say, oh, there was only one church in each city at the time, and they only met in houses.

I've read books that claim these kinds of things.

That doesn't seem to be what the New Testament is telling us.

It says there are many local churches in Galatia.

And he's writing to all of them, concerned about them.

Now, this is going to be important as we go through Galatians because he calls the church to action, not just the pastors, not just the other apostles.

When he says you, and it's plural, he means the whole church.

So, church members, if you read this and you're like, man, I hope our elders are figuring all this out, this is for you too.

This is written to all of us.

Now, if you're reading this and you're like, I don't know where Galatia is, I haven't seen that one in the World Cup.

Um, sorry for so many World Cup references, it's kind of been an obsession for me lately.

No offense to the New York Knicks, Jay, but basketball is less my thing.

Uh Galatia, though, is in present-day Turkey.

Again, historically known facts, not just something in the Bible.

You can check that against other sources.

Present-day Turkey.

And here in verse 3, we're going to get wishes to these churches that I think do tell us what Paul would claim is the source of the Christian gospel.

First, he says to them, Grace to you.

Grace to you.

Now, if you're like me, you learn this definition of grace, that it's unmerited favor, and that's true.

It's God giving us something good that we don't deserve.

Grace to you from Paul.

Unmerited favor.

Y'all, grace is more than leniency.

If you've been taught that grace means, oh, I just need to let somebody get away with something.

Or it just means, hey, you know, I've messed up.

Can you just forgive me one more time?

Grace is more than that when it's coming from God and we're talking about the gospel.

Grace is power and initiative from God to reach down and save us.

Do you understand what initiative means?

It means God chose and started to save us before we ever did anything that made us save worthy or saveable.

Why?

Because he's good.

Paul wishing grace to these churches is going to be really important to remember because as we go through here, even shortly after this, literally, if you look at verse 6, you're going to see next week's heads up, he says, I'm astonished that you're so quickly deserting him who called you in the grace of Christ.

That's what we're getting to.

But before that, Paul wants him to know, I wish grace to you.

Oh, that's a good blessing to wish on someone.

I pray for God's intervening, loving kindness, his steadfast love to break through into your life, even if you're not looking for it.

Because he is good.

Because of his character, his grace to you and peace.

And peace.

Anybody grow up with a peace sign doing this?

Or maybe you uh have like a peace shirt.

For some reason they're always tie-dye.

Don't know if that's a 60s thing or when that actually started.

But even like me growing up in elementary school, we would like to make those at school.

I think I had a shirt that had like an alien on it, saying peace, which was always weird to me because I'm like, I hope they're coming in peace if we have aliens.

I don't know.

That's a whole different theological discussion.

We can get to another day.

But yo, we often say that word, and we usually just mean like stop fighting, right?

Which there is that essence to peace.

But Paul here is again wishing something much greater, with much more depth.

Because if we've experienced the grace of God, his initiating power to save, then you have peace with God.

You have peace that calms the stormy waters of your life.

It eases your conscience to where you don't always walk around saying, oh man, I hope I'm saved.

Man, I can't believe I messed up again.

No, we've experienced his grace.

So I have peace to walk through life.

So that if Satan whispers to me and says, You're too great a sinner to save, I say, You're right, I am a great sinner, but I have a greater Savior.

That's peace.

It's peace that allows us to stand face to face with one another, knowing that one day we'll stand face to face with God.

And that we won't experience condemnation.

We won't face the judgment that we should have deserved.

We'll receive love.

We'll receive grace upon grace, as we read together earlier.

Notice where this grace and peace come from.

Grace to you and peace from God, our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.

Now we're getting a little bit redundant here, aren't we?

Back in verse 1, through Jesus Christ and God the Father, here, grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.

Like, okay, Paul, you couldn't you couldn't write something else?

Like, come on.

There are some differences, though.

First of all, he's giving you that as the source of grace and peace.

He's going to be giving you God as the source of the gospel here.

But notice what he says about God the Father.

Here he says God our Father.

I want to always highlight those plural pronouns for you in the scriptures.

Because if you look around and see the people here, this is the church, it's the people.

It's not our website, it's not just our name, it's not just the pastors or the staff.

We are the church together.

God is our Father.

We are brothers and sisters.

It's a sweet and good truth.

And here he says, and the Lord Jesus Christ.

So he includes Jesus Christ again, but here he adds a title.

The Lord.

It's interesting to me that he doesn't say our Lord, which is actually more common in the New Testament, but he says the Lord.

Because the truth is, Jesus is Lord of all, whether we acknowledge it or not.

And this is fair and makes sense.

So if you're here and you say, hey, I'm not a Christian, that's not very nice.

You can't say that about Jesus if I don't know him.

If he actually is who he claims to be, then he is the Lord apart from any judgment we place upon him, right?

That's just logical.

Paul's making the same claim here.

He's the Lord over all things.

He's defeated sin and death.

He is ruling even now.

And while this world is broken and yet to be fully consummated into his glory, he's working all things ultimately for his glory and for the good of his people.

So grace to you and peace from God, our Father, the Lord Jesus Christ.

Verse 4, who gave himself for our sins.

That word gave is like a gift.

He freely laid down what?

Himself.

He didn't just show up with a big card of money and say, I'll pay for these people.

No.

He laid down his life.

Folks, if you struggle to trust God, I want you to know that the gospel that includes Jesus' death and resurrection, that includes a God who came to us in the flesh and walked among us, is really good news.

Because this rules out lots of things we could assume about God.

If we say, you know, most likely there is a God, it would make sense that there would be a God because we're different from other animals.

We seem to be the only beings like us that we can find in our galaxy, in the universe so far.

There probably is some kind of higher being.

But he just made everything, set it all into motion, and he stepped aside.

Maybe you felt that or thought that before.

No, God intimately created each one of us.

He knows all the hairs on your head.

He loves you as you are.

He sustains life as it is.

He is the one who breathes and gives life.

And more than that, though he is holy and has every right to condemn sinners like me.

Instead, he sent his only son to live among us without sin, to die for us, to lay down his life for us.

It's right there in that passage.

Who gave himself for our sins.

There's that word our again.

For all the sins of his people placed on the cross of Jesus Christ, that he would bear judgment for us.

Now, what question does that remove?

It means that we can't just say God doesn't care.

We can't just say God is distant.

No, he's entered all the way in.

And he said, I'll take the load.

Took it on himself, gave himself for our sins.

Now that word sins can be offensive.

Some people are like, you can't look at me and say I'm a sinner.

We can if I say that I am too.

Sin means breaking God's law.

It means rebellion against him.

I like RC Sprohl's definition.

It's cosmic treason.

There's one true and holy God, and he is perfect in all of his attributes, which means he is perfectly good.

So when we rebel against him, we go our own way, he is right and just to punish us.

And yet he is gracious and that he sends his son to take our punishment for us so that we don't have to.

Sin is serious.

Sin helps us make sense of lots of problems in this world.

But it gets really complicated when we realize that we are the sinners.

That he didn't just die for their sins.

For your sins.

He died for our sins.

He died for my sins.

That's good news.

Why did he do this?

To deliver us from the present evil age.

Now that word deliver, maybe your translation even says rescue.

It's a very similar word, has the same idea.

Maybe you don't feel like you need to be rescued.

You're like, my life's pretty good.

I had to live in Charleston, South Carolina before I moved here, and one of the problems we found evangelistically, sharing the gospel, was that most of the people in Charleston were very affluent.

Spent their weekends on the boat, drinking, having a good time.

Like, my life's good.

I don't wonder what I need to be rescued from.

Maybe I need to rescue somebody else, right?

Eventually, whether it's our sin or the sins of those around us, it catches up with us.

Eventually, we see and experience the evil of this world.

And we know something needs to be done.

We may not know the answer.

We may not say it's the gospel.

We may not say it's God, but we know something needs to be fixed here.

Something has been broken in this world.

And we need help.

And better than any superhero, Jesus comes to our rescue.

He comes to save us from our sins, yes, but to deliver us from the present evil age.

Now, earlier, Paul mentioned that the Father raised Jesus from the dead.

Y'all, these two phrases are most likely connected for Paul because the resurrection brought in a whole new age.

Fittingly so.

Y'all, even our own calendars now are marked by Jesus' life, are they not?

What year is it?

This man changed everything.

And the most important question that we can ask is who is Jesus?

He's the Son of God who died for our sins to deliver us from the present evil age and was raised from the grave and has ascended to the right hand of the Father, and one day he will return to judge the living and the dead.

Now here's where we get to the true source of this gospel.

This part of verse 4.

According to the will of our God and Father.

According to the will of our God and Father.

A common mistelling of the gospel is that we were made holy like God, Adam and Eve are made, and that we fall into sin, and then God has to change his plan and save us.

It's close, but it's not what the Bible teaches us.

According to God's will from before the foundations of the earth, he knew he would create a people for his name's sake, that they would be saved for his glory.

One thing this undoes, if you look at the cross and you say, man, what an awful religion.

You're saying this father puts his son on the cross and has him bloodied and battered for other people?

That sounds terrible, if that's your understanding.

But y'all, Jesus didn't just die so that we could be made lovable to God.

God was already loving us.

Jesus came and laid down his life because love was already present.

It had always been present.

God's love for us had never broken, and it was from that love that he rescues, not so that he could love.

And that changes the story.

Ever so slightly, it changes the story.

Now, if you think I'm reading that into this, I again just reread the sentence, who gave himself for our sins to deliver us to the present evil age according to the will of our God and Father.

It was God's will.

The Father, the Son, and the Spirit have one will eternally.

And Paul is so dumbfounded by this that he himself can't help but just break out into praise here at the beginning of the letter.

Verse 5, to whom be the glory forever and ever.

Amen.

That word glory carries with it the sense of weight.

And I wonder when the last time you were in a church where you could say that was something glorious, not just goosebumps feeling because I liked the lighting and the song or anything like that, but truly you looked at God in Jesus Christ and you felt the weight of his glory to save sinners like us.

You felt small, maybe.

He deserves the worship of all nations.

Has that been stirred up in you?

Maybe it never has.

Unfortunately, for churches, a lot in the U.S.

We've so franchised church that it's not real anymore.

It's a production.

And it's about money.

And we're a year and a half into a church plant.

And you can look at us and say, like, oh, you planted in South Huntsville, a lot of lost people there.

There weren't other churches.

Y'all, there are people here who don't know Jesus yet.

There are people here with us today.

I'm so glad you're here.

That's why we're doing this.

It's not about the money or the building or how smooth or not smooth our Sunday mornings go.

Those things are good, and I want to work on them and I want to do them the best we can for the glory of God.

But I genuinely mean it when I tell you that stuff doesn't matter.

If this mic broke right now, I would keep preaching.

You know why?

Because we're not preaching for the internet.

We think that God's word going forth in power of the Holy Spirit actually makes us more like Jesus and saves people from the depths of their sin.

God reaches down in grace and saves people.

And it's something you can almost touch.

And it's not just manipulating emotions.

It's not just getting you so tired of the same verses at the end that eventually somebody goes forward just to, you know, mercy kills a service for everybody.

It's real.

This gospel that Paul preaches, that he defends throughout the book of Galatians, he says the source is God.

It's not even Paul.

Both his authority and the gospel itself have the same source, the one true and living God.

Paul writes, carried along by the Holy Spirit, these words in Galatians are God's word to us.

Yes, they have a human author, but it is God who pinned these words through that author.

And this gospel, yes, it has been carried to us by faithful generations.

Yes, it has been printed for us by faithful generations.

Maybe your parents taught you, maybe a friend taught you.

But that gospel doesn't originate with any human.

It's good news that comes from God Himself.

Good news of grace and peace to you.

I urge you today, if you've never trusted in Jesus, to take him seriously.

I would long to see you turn away from your sin and trust in him, but if you're not ready to do that, I encourage you to press on the train, asking hard questions.

Explore his resurrection, see what you find.

If it's true, it'll hold up.

And I think it is.

And if you're here and you already know these things, you say, oh man, is this what Galatians is going to be like?

Like, am I just gonna be reminded of stuff I already know?

Yes! You're gonna be reminded of stuff you already know.

Do you know why?

Because we forget.

We get out in traffic as soon as we leave here and we've forgotten.

We must be reminded and we must hold fast to these truths because eternity for so many depends on it.

We want a church that's faithful to the gospel, not for the glory of any man, but for the glory of God in Huntsville, recognizing that Huntsville Hills Church is temporary.

Whether it's here for a year or a thousand years or whatever God has for it, great.

We pray that he'll be glorified in us, in saving a people for himself from every nation, tribe, and tongue, starting right here in our neighborhoods.

Folks, I'm pumped to get into Galatians if you can't tell.

Because it's getting right at the heart of what we're about as Huntsville Hills Church and just as followers of Jesus.

Let's get the gospel right and let's be blessed by it.

And let's bless others with it.

Let's pray.

Father, we thank you for your word.

That even in the opening of a letter, you give us such good news.

You tell us about Jesus' death for our sins in our place, burying your wrath for us.

You tell us about the resurrection of Jesus Christ, that sin and death have been defeated, that there's hope now and forever.

You remind us that this isn't just about Paul's authority, but this is coming from you.

You remind us that the gospel is good news that you have brought to us in your Son.

Lord, help us to fix our eyes on Him.

Help us to fix our eyes on Jesus so that you may be glorified in all that we do together as a church, in our homes, as families, and individually as we walk throughout each day.

We pray that you'll be glorified in us in Jesus' name.

Amen.