Galatians 1:1-9 - A Gospel Issue

Church, as I mentioned, we are in Galatians this morning.

And I want to kind of do a unique introduction.

And I want to read one of the hymns we sang this morning.

This is kind of the theme of Galatians put to song.

No list of sins I have not done.

This is the song not in me.

No list of sins I have not done.

No list of virtues I pursue.

No list of those I am not like can earn myself a place with you.

Oh God, be merciful to me.

I am a sinner through and through.

My only hope of righteousness is not in me, but only you.

No humble dress, no fervent prayer, no lifted hands, no tearful song, no resuscitation of the truth can justify a single wrong.

My righteousness is Jesus' life.

My debt is paid by Jesus' death.

My weary load was borne by him, and he alone can give me rest.

No separation from the world, no work I do, no gift I give can cleanse my conscience, cleanse my hands.

I cannot cause my soul to live.

But Jesus died and rose again.

The power of death is overthrown.

My God is merciful to me and merciful in Christ alone.

This church is our hope.

That there is nothing that we can do to earn our salvation.

We cannot make our soul live.

And Paul is writing to the church in Galatia to remind them of this.

And the the theme, the two major themes in his letter to the churches in this region are one that he is an apostle of Jesus Christ.

And so he speaks with apostolic authority.

That he speaks with apostolic authority.

And the second thing is that we are justified, we're made right with God by Christ's work on the cross.

Not our work, but Christ's work.

Our justification is his doing, not our own doing.

Again, these are the two major themes.

As we go through the next six chapters, Lord willing, over the weeks to come, you're going to see Paul again talking about his authority and talking about how Jesus atoned for our sin and his work justified us, made us right with God.

There's nothing that we can add to that to make our salvation work.

So Paul wrote this letter to the churches in Galatia, I think in a region called Southern Galatia, which is in modern day Turkey.

He wrote this letter around 48 AD.

Paul most likely planted these churches on his first missionary journey when he was going through and planting churches.

And now this church, like so many other churches, are dealing with the issue of false teachers.

And they're questioning Paul's authority.

And Paul's writing to say, listen, I'm speaking to you as one who has authority.

And he's calling them back to the gospel.

See, in other contexts, in other letters, we know that there was some false teachers kind of threatening the existence of the church.

But the issue here is that for these churches is that these false teachers have worked their way in and they're beginning to deceive the believers.

So listen with me or read with me.

Galatians chapter 1, verses 1 through 9.

Galatians 1:1–9

Paul, an apostle, not from men nor through man, but through Jesus Christ and God the Father, who raised him from the dead, and all the brothers who are with me.

To the churches of Galatia, grace and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ, who gave himself for our sins to deliver us from the present evil age, according to the will of our God and Father, to whom be glory for ever and ever.

Amen.

I am astonished that you are so quickly deserting him who called you in the grace of Christ, and are turning to a different gospel.

Not that there is another gospel, but there are some who trouble you and want to distort the gospel of Christ.

But even if we or an angel from heaven should preach to you a gospel contrary to the one we preached to you, let him be accursed.

As I have said before, so now I say it again.

Paul has very strong language here.

For the first few verses, he gets right to his point.

He begins to defend his apostleship.

See, the Jews, again, they were coming in, Jews were coming into these churches, and they were saying, you need to start practicing the Mosaic law.

You need to be circumcised if you're going to be a Christian.

Essentially, you need to convert to Judaism if you're going to be a Christian.

This wasn't what Paul taught.

This isn't the gospel, but here they were calling people to follow Jewish tradition.

And under the old covenant, the way that God marked off his people was that through circumcision, the males were to be circumcised as an indicator under the old covenant that they belonged to God.

But when Jesus Christ came and lived a perfect life and died for the sins of his people and was buried and was rose from the grave defeating death, he entered into a new covenant.

He began a new covenant.

His people entered into a new covenant, and they are now marked off by belonging to the church.

By faith alone, in Christ alone.

And Paul says, anyone who adds to this should be accursed.

Should be accursed.

Strong language.

I want to start actually with a story about a missionary named David Brainerd.

Maybe you've heard of him.

David Brainerd was a missionary to the American Indians.

He lived from 1718 to 1747.

A ways back.

He was born and raised in Connecticut.

He was the youngest of nine children.

And when he was nine years old, his father died.

David was nine years old, his father passed away and died.

And then when he was 14 years old, his mother passed away and died.

And his parents were very devout Christians.

But it wasn't until David was 21 years old that he was saved by Jesus Christ.

And he had an extensive diary and he wrote about his conversion, and this is what he says.

If you know anything about American universities, they almost all were started as seminaries to train pastors and missionaries.

So he was at Yale, and then he actually gets kind of dismissed from Yale for insulting a tutor.

Can you imagine being dismissed from college for insulting anyone these days?

He's dismissed, and he's got this burden to preach the gospel and to reach people with the good news of Christ.

So he's not sure what to do.

He ends up becoming a pastor in a remote part of New England on the edge of kind of the New World, facing into where the American Indians live.

And he starts reaching these American Indians.

This remarkable thing happens as he's reaching them and sharing the gospel as they start coming to Christ, literally by the hundreds.

It's an amazing ministry he has, but he's a very sick person.

His body's always struggled with sickness.

He struggled with deep depression.

And he ends up leaving there and going to his mentor, Jonathan Edwards, and he dies in Jonathan Edwards' home in 1747.

But he came to these Indians proclaiming a very simple message.

Jesus Christ is Lord, and he's the only way to have salvation.

Turn from rebelling against him.

Put your faith in him and follow him.

That was his message to them.

What happened after these times, this happened, and many Christians came and they began to minister also to American Indians.

We see this all over the world with missions.

Is people come and they start adding to the gospel.

Well, that's great that you know those things, but you also need to start dressing like us.

You need to start cutting your hair like we do.

You need to start using tools like we do and living in houses like we do.

You need to do the culturally the things that we do if you're going to be a follower of Christian, because we're Christians, and this is what Christians do.

The reality is that's not the gospel.

And this is what Paul is even facing now in Galatians.

He's come, he's labored among these people.

He's preached to them, he's seen their lives change, families changed, sin forsaken, new life happening.

Then people come in, like, well, that's great that you have that, but you need to add this.

You need to do these things.

And that is an adding to the gospel.

This morning that the title of my sermon is A Gospel Issue.

Sometimes you'll hear me say the word gospel a lot, because it's really important and it matters.

But sometimes in the Christian world, we kind of want to make everything a first tier, a gospel issue.

You know, if we if we get this wrong, then we're not even Christians.

And well, there's not a whole lot of things that are gospel issues, but there are some, and they're very, very important.

We cannot compromise on those things.

So we have to be careful that we don't elevate certain things and make them gospel issues.

First tier doctrinal issues.

Issues like baptism and what you think about the end times, or how even the church should be structured.

When it comes to how are you made right with God, how are you justified before Him?

That is a gospel issue.

And Paul's writing to the church to address this very issue.

And he begins by saying, Listen, I am the authority on this.

Now it's important we get what Paul's doing here.

He's not saying I'm saying, look at me, I'm an amazing person.

I'm offended that you're not listening to me.

I'm kind of ticked off.

Listen to me.

Because I said so.

It's funny, when I was young, I had a lot of questions, and my parents would tell me to do stuff, and I would say, well, why?

And they'd just say, Well, because I said so.

And I just was like, oh, that just made me really mad, you know.

Like, you know, if you don't have a reason, I don't know why I can't just do what I want to do if you can't give me a good reason why not to.

And um, now that I have kids, I realize it's not because you don't have a reason, it's because you don't want to explain it.

Right?

You don't want to take the time.

Like, no, listen, I don't, I it's not worth it for me to explain this to you because you're still gonna argue with me, so just listen.

Do what I said because I said so.

Right?

You gotta feel that, like that impatience.

Just do it.

That's what I say to Will a lot.

Just do what I'm telling you to do.

Your life will go easy.

But Paul writes to them, and he's and he gives the reason that he is the authority on this.

He says, I'm an apostle.

Not from men nor through man.

I don't have, I wasn't ordained by a council of men, I wasn't set apart by a group of men, I wasn't through human authority that I became an apostle, but through Jesus Christ and God the Father.

There is no other authority to appeal to.

He doesn't say, Well, I'm an apostle, I hope that you guys agree with that, and if you guys agree with that, then we can have a conversation and talk things out.

He says, Listen, God has set me in a part as an apostle.

Now, if you're familiar with Paul, he used to be called Saul and his story of conversion.

He didn't just set out, like, I just want to be a great Christian, and I'm just gonna do really good, and I'm gonna kind of climb the ladder and I'm gonna become an apostle.

That's not Paul's story at all.

What was Paul?

He was a persecutor of the church.

He literally killed Christians and oversaw other Christians being killed.

He was enemy number one with the church.

There was no kind of bigger threat to Christians in the early church than Paul.

He was the worst.

And he was on a journey, and Acts 9 tells us about this to Damascus when Jesus shows up.

Literally, Jesus comes.

This isn't a vision that he has, this isn't like a dream or a trance.

Jesus, resurrecting Christ, comes to Paul and says, Listen, why are you persecuting my people?

I'm gonna take your life and I'm gonna turn it upside down, and you're now gonna be a servant of mine, and you're gonna serve my church, and you're gonna reach the people, the Gentiles.

You're gonna go to them.

Paul didn't say, Well, well, let me think about that offer.

Let me let me figure this out.

This is what I want to do.

Let me try to navigate my free will on this.

God said, This is what you're gonna do, and you will serve me.

And that's what Paul did.

For the rest of his life, he served him.

So he was not appealing to other men for his authority, but rather Jesus Christ.

In Matthew 10, 40, speaking of the apostles, Jesus says, Whoever receives you receives me.

And whoever receives me receives him who sent me.

Do you see this authority that he's giving to the apostles?

Those who receive you are also receiving me, and by receiving me, they're receiving the Father.

Ephesians 2, beginning in 19, it says, So then you are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are fellow citizens with the saints.

This is talking about Christians and members of the household of God.

And how is household built?

Built on the foundation of the apostles and the prophets, and Jesus Christ Himself being the cornerstone, in whom the whole structure being joined together grows into a holy temple in the Lord.

See, there's three offices given to the church in the New Testament under the New Covenant.

There's three offices for the church there's deacons, there's elders, and there's apostles.

We still have deacons, we still have elders.

We do not have apostles anymore.

The apostles did not pass their authority on.

There's no apostolic succession.

It does not happen.

Their authority ceased with them.

But even the church, they're to devote themselves, as Acts 2.42 says, they devoted themselves to the apostles' teachings and the fellowship and the breaking of bread and prayers.

So apostles had this unique authority, this very unique authority.

So when Paul's writing, he just says, he gets right to it, listen, I'm an apostle.

I don't know what's going on in your church, I don't know who's arguing about what, but I am the authority on this, and what I say really, really matters.

Now we know that Paul's not doing this just to throw his weight around.

He's not just kind of bloviating, saying, Look at me, and I got these titles and all these things, check it out, listen to me.

But he's writing to them because he loves them, he cares about them, he ministered to them, and he wants to see them following the Lord faithfully.

He loves them.

Just as a loving parent will not just say, Well, I'm your parent, but you know, you're your own person.

Just kind of do whatever you want.

It might lead to bad things, but you know, who am I?

Who gave me authority over you to help keep you alive and safe?

I don't know.

We would never do that.

No good parent would do that.

It's your job to pour into your children, to steer them and rear them in the ways of Christ, just to listen and submit to authority.

So many times I'm I'm talking with Will, and I never want to be those pastors who are always using their kids as an analogy, but here we are.

But I just tell him, like, you have to learn to listen to me because you are under authority, because I'm under authority, because we're all, if you don't learn to submit to my authority, you will have to submit to someone else's authority.

And so one of the issues we see Paul bringing up in this theme in Galatians is about authority.

That we are a people under authority, and how we respond to authority says a lot about our hearts.

But in verses 3 and 5, he just gives him a simple gospel reminder.

Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ, who gave himself for our sins to deliver us from the present evil age.

I mean, he doesn't add into there, like, and you need to be circumcised, or you have to go to this kind of place, and you gotta do these things.

But he gave himself for our sins to deliver us.

God never fails at delivery, he doesn't deliver halfway, it's a complete process to deliver us from this present evil age, according to the will of our God and Father.

So you see him beginning to remind them of these things.

Martin Luther, speaking of this passage, said, Grace and peace summarize the whole of the Christian faith.

Grace contains the forgiveness of sins, a joyful peace and quiet conscience.

But peace is impossible.

It's impossible unless sin has first been forgiven.

And if you're here this morning and maybe you're not a Christian, but you know Christians, and we're we're glad that you're here.

But you might be thinking, man, I know a lot of Christians who are not joyful and they don't have peace.

Therefore, it would seem that having a relationship with Jesus Christ does not necessarily bring this peace and joy that you speak of.

I want to address that just for a moment.

Paul reminds these people of the saving work of Jesus Christ.

He is calling them, he's calling them back to their remembrance of Christ what he's done.

Therefore, the offer of joy and peace is only through him.

As Christians, as we can we can know these things, but then we can choose to just be kind of grumpy or choose to be unhappy, choose to be kind of anxious.

And that happens when we take our eyes off of the Lord and what he's doing.

But until you have Christ as your Lord and your Savior, you cannot know or have true peace or joy.

You might feel relaxed, you might feel happy, but those are not the same thing.

Christians, we can forget these things.

We can forget the joy that Christ has called us to, the peace that He gives us.

We can even.

Times just kind of forget that he's delivered us out of the darkness of this present age.

But the reality is we come to Scripture to remind ourselves of these things.

That Christ has purchased us, that we're to take hold of what he's done, that we're to contend in our heart, to fight, to remember these things, to kill the sin that wants to distract us, to lay aside the distractions that want to keep us from remembering the peace and the joy that Christ has given us.

And what a blessing that our salvation is not our own doing.

That it's God's doing for us.

I mean, what a blessing that is, that your salvation is not in your own hands.

I don't know everyone in this room, but I know a lot of you, and I know most of you, and I know that somewhere along the line you've made a mistake or two, or a lot.

And if your salvation was placed in your hands, what a what a nightmare, what a heartbreak that would be for us.

I hope you can figure this out.

Even for those who like, they just feel like they're doing a great job in life.

Like, man, I'm just, I'm doing pretty good.

Like, I've made a lot of good decisions.

Like, you're probably only, this is very generous, but you're only batting 500, right?

You're only hitting it 50% of the time.

And you want to be trusted with your salvation?

You think you have the wherewithal, the ability to receive that and make those decisions?

No.

Christ has done that for us.

It is in his hands that we rest.

Because if it were in anyone else's hands, we could not rest.

So, Paul, again, he lays out his authority as an apostle, he reminds them of the gospel, and then he rebukes them.

I am astonished that you are so quickly deserting him who called you in the grace of Christ.

Can you just imagine for a moment being there?

You're in one of these churches.

Hey, we got a letter from Paul.

You know, there's all this hubbub, all this kind of dissension going on, and they start reading it out to the congregation.

I am astonished that you are so quickly deserting him who called you.

Just the weight of rebuke.

The weight of their disappointment.

I mean, we're deserting?

We're deserting him.

Some people in their heart, they would have begun to feel just anger.

How dare he say that to us?

He's not even here.

He doesn't know.

He doesn't know what we know, he doesn't know my life and what I've been through.

And he he's not God.

He's not judging us.

He doesn't know.

There is something about believers, true Christians.

When the scripture speaks and it brings a rebuke, there is a there's a pain there.

You feel it.

That's me.

I did that.

I was deserting.

It's just a humility, a brokenness, a contriteness in the heart of the believers over this.

Paul's rebuke to them.

They are turning to a different gospel.

And he just clarifies right there that this is a gospel issue.

He doesn't say, listen, I know there are some false teachers, and you guys are kind of hanging around and you're playing with.

Don't do that.

I know there's some confusion about these things, and this isn't one of the sections where he says, stop squabbling and just seek unity.

Don't deal with that.

He says, you're pursuing another gospel.

You're pursuing a different religion.

You're putting your faith for salvation in another being, namely yourself.

He was angry.

He's hot.

He's laying in to the church.

Not again because his authority was questioned.

He's not that immature or petty, but because he loved the church.

He loves these people so much to correct them and to say, but I love God.

I will not allow you to desecrate the work of Jesus Christ on the cross.

Don't for a moment think that Christ's work on the cross was not sufficient, as if it was something, and now you have to add to it.

It was enough when Christ died.

So return to him.

Because for those who proclaim another gospel, they stand accursed.

They stand accursed.

We are naturally rebellious people.

I don't know if you've realized that about yourself yet.

But your nature is rebellion.

You don't want to submit to authority.

I don't want to submit to authority.

But again, we are all people under authority.

And Paul's writing them saying, listen, you need to know the authority that you're under and you need to trust it.

And this is where so many times we just kind of get off and we we we go astray here.

Because one of two things happen.

One, we just don't believe the authority.

I mean, yeah, God's, I believe him, but he's not the authority on this.

Listen, we live currently in a society with instruction by the rule of law.

It's a beautiful thing.

There are laws, and we're to follow those things.

We break those laws, there's consequences.

Now, again, we have a very broken system.

I get all that, right?

But we we live in a society that's seeking to be ruled by the rule of law, ordered by the rule of law.

When you break that law, there are natural consequences.

So for law-abiding citizens, we don't break the rule because we don't want the consequence.

We know that to do this is to reap that.

You commit this crime, you reap the punishment.

Right?

You do the crime, you do the time.

But when it comes to scripture, we just kind of throw that out the window, right?

Yeah, it says not to lust, but there's no consequences to it.

It says that I'm to be honest with people, but if I'm not, they don't know.

There's no consequences to it.

It says that I'm to be committed to a local church, but if I'm not, what are the consequences?

And this is where it gets kind of messed up in our head as we think, yeah, this should be our only rule of faith in life, but I'll pick and choose what I want.

I'll figure out if it aligns with that and I'll accept it.

Now, for those who are here, most of us are just more kind of honest or dishonest.

We act as if we're conforming to it.

We will say this is our rule for life.

We're Christians, we follow the scripture, we believe in the sufficiency of scripture.

It's God's word.

We're here for it.

But then we leave and we don't follow it.

And we're not broken over that.

We're not convicted over that.

We just hope nobody finds out about it.

So we have an authority issue.

Submitting to authority.

And we have an issue with trust.

Trusting that the authority is good.

Again, this is a difficult thing.

We live in a day and age, there's a lot of hard things going on, there's confusing times, and life is hard.

And so when Scripture says, but this is how you're to live, it's like we look at that, we're like, that's really a challenge.

Are we supposed to obey all of this?

God, are you, are you, do you really mean that?

Is this really your plan of redemption?

Is this structure for the church really your plan?

Is the plan for husbands and wives?

Is this really your model for the family?

We have a hard time trusting the authority.

Many times we'll reject authority because we think it can't deliver on what it says it can deliver on.

What we do then is then we trust something else.

We trust ourselves.

God, I believe your word that man to stay pure, to live in purity, not to lust after things, I'm not to be on watching garbage on the internet or on the TV or keeping thoughts in my mind that are contrary to how you call us to live.

I know you say that, but the reality is I have these emotions and I have these needs, and I'm feeling these urges, and I just want them to be satisfied.

And I'm reading your scripture, and it's not satisfying them right now.

So I'm gonna go give in to this temptation that's gonna satisfy me.

And every time the same thing happens.

This is pick any sin.

Gossip, judging others, covetousness, buying things we don't need, greed, gluttony.

We give in because we want something to satisfy us the moment.

We do not trust God's word.

We know he's the authority on it, but we just don't trust him.

So we turn to ourselves and our desires, how we think we could fulfill it, and we fulfill it, and it comes back bitter, empty, eating away our desire for him.

When the nation of Israel in the Old Testament were struggling with their faithfulness to the Lord, God rebuked them and said, My people have done two things.

They've rejected me, the source of living water.

And they've dug for themselves their own cisterns, broken cisterns that cannot hold water.

And the reason that Paul is writing to the church in Galatians, the reason this matters for us, is there is only one source of living water, and that is Jesus Christ.

And you can go and try to dig your own well, dig your own cisterns, trying to find satisfaction or meaning or purpose in some other thing.

But you know, and I know it will always, always, always be empty.

It will leave you thirsty.

It will leave you hopeless.

The issue is we must trust God's word.

That it is the final authority, and submit to it.

We must be careful.

We do not add to the gospel.

We're just so this happens so easily.

If you're gonna be a Christian, if you want to be saved, I should say, if you want to be saved and made right with God, be justified, then this is what you need to do.

You need to be baptized.

If you're not baptized, you're not saved.

It's the same thing Paul's dealing with in Galatians.

Sure, his work was good, and Christ died for your sin, and he was God on earth, and all those things are good, but you also need to do this thing in order for him to regenerate your heart.

Be baptized.

You need to join a church and be a member of a church.

You need to gather with the church, you need to read your Bible, you need to pray, you need to evangelize, you need to make disciples.

These things do not save us.

Yes, they are commanded by God for us to do.

Or to do all these things.

To not do any of these things is to be living in sin and to be rebellious to Him.

These are commands from God to us.

To be a part of a local church, to be baptized, to be reading and praying and evangelizing your neighbors and making disciples.

We're commanded to do those things, but those things do not save us.

They do not save us, they cannot save us.

So many times we just can look to other things.

Briefly.

Briefly.

And there's just like this weight.

Like, God, I know you're the weight of salvation.

But I'm kind of enjoying a little bit of sin in my life.

So I don't want to come to you completely.

Can I get most of you in some of this?

Is that okay?

God, I I want, I want you, I want you to be my Savior, I want you to be my Lord, but I don't want to do what you're calling me to do.

That's too scary for me.

I still want some control in my life.

Can I get most of you and bring along my own wishes and desires and dreams?

No, you cannot.

You cannot have the world and have Christ.

You cannot have your dreams and your desires and have Christ.

And the beautiful thing about our Lord Jesus Christ is he gives us new desires.

He gives us new dreams.

He gives us what our heart longs for, and that is a relationship with our Creator.

We're reconciled to God forever.

This is what he gives us.

Christ again came proclaiming the gospel.

We're to repent from our sin against our rebellion, to repent from our rebellion against God.

He's holy and perfect.

We're to put our faith in the saving work of Jesus Christ on the cross, and we're to follow him.

The call is simple.

Lay down your life and follow him.

Are you following him?

Are you following him?

Again, do you excuse, make excuses for certain sins in your life?

Because you're doing well in other areas?

Well, this is okay.

I'm actually doing really good over here.

That's not the way of salvation.

That's not the call.

The call is to come and die and to follow him.

Are you growing in your understanding and your obedience to Christ?

Are you pursuing not just understanding, which is good and you need that, but also obedience to Christ?

See, Paul's writing to this church because he loves the church.

And he's saying, Listen to God, submit to God's authority.

God has a way of salvation.

Come to him, know the gospel and be saved.

It is my prayer.

If there's anyone here who does not know Jesus as their Lord and their Savior, that they would repent of their rebellion.

They would repent of trying to do it on their own.

They would follow after him.

Enjoy the obedient, enjoy the life that comes with obeying Christ.

And following after him.

Church, let's pray.

God, if we if we get anything right, may it first and foremost be the gospel.

Because without that, how can we know you?

How can we know you to worship you?

How can we know you to follow you?

May we get that right.

Not just in our profession as a church, in our hearts, in our lives, in our obedience to you, to know that we are made right with you or justified because of your work for us, Jesus.

Pray for those who are here, who know you as their Lord and their Savior.

May they be reminded, may they be called, if they're straying from that, to return.

May they hear this rebuke not from me, but from you, from your word.

They would return to you.

For those who are here who do not know you.

Maybe they think they do.

They're not living in accordance with your with your word.

Or they know that they don't know you.

May you reveal the goodness of the gospel to them.

May they see their sin for what it is and repent and turn from that and follow you.

May they do that today.

Thank you, God, that you do not leave us hopeless.

You do not leave it up to us to find you.

Give us strength, we pray.

Praise in your name, Jesus.

Amen.