Bible Guys Classics: Galatians 1

Hey, everybody, we're the Bible Guys, and if you're just

tuning in recently, just know that we are showing a

little bit of reruns for a few months and then

we'll be back bigger and better than ever on August

thirty first, because behind the scenes, we're taking a hiatus

to do some very important things.

Yeah, we're building building out a new studio and we've

got some new structure. Super excited about it. So August

thirty first, brand new content. But in the meantime, enjoy

some of our greatest hits.

Well, today we're going to find out that the idea

of being a penpal came from Paul as he finally

comes home and then writes to the churches he visited.

Okay, so that's what we're talking about. Apparently today he's

Chris and I'm Jeff, and we're the Bible guys.

So today we're actually just going to ask each other

a question, okay, and just answer it. So here's my

question to you. What are the top five cities that

you've not been to that you would like to visit?

Oh, that I have not been to that i'd like

to visit. Okay, top five in order, so five, four

three too. Well, I mean that's incredible. If you do,

that would be good.

Let me the alphabet.

Probably, let me see. So top five countries are cities

that I haven't been to yet. I've never been to Jerusalem,

so that that's a big one. I'd love to go

to Jerusalem. I've never been to London. Oh yeah, I'd

love to go to London. All the museums and all

that kind of stuff. That's kind of cool. I've never

been to Bangkok, Thailand like that. So I've been to Burma,

I've been to places over there, but not not not

to Thailand I've never been to. Does that have to

be cities, that's the question. Yeah, okay, does it have

to be existing cities like like like currently lived in cities,

like I'd love to go to Machu Picchu I will allow. Yeah, okay,

so it's an empty city, but Machu Pichu is on

my on my list, I'd love to go there. I've

never been to Buenos Aires, so that'd be my fife,

I guess.

Wow, yeah, those are more exotic than mine. Okay, So Dubai,

Venice just because you know, my my family's from from

that area. Barcelona nice, I want to go to Barcelona,

go watch the bulls.

Yes, that's right, that's right.

London because my daughter, my daughter actually spent time over

there first semester.

It was really cool.

My wife got to go. I never have to go,

you know. And then also for some reason, I've always

wanted to go to Sydney, Australia.

Sydney, Australia. Yeah, okay, yeah, well, there you go. Those

are places we haven't been, those are bucket list places.

We should do it. Let's let's just yeah, sure, we're

gonna take a couple of weeks off and we'll be back.

That's what it is.

Yeah.

Well, I think we named every continent except the Antarctica,

so that's like true there too. Yeah, okay, well that's great.

I love travel, I really do. I think that it's

incredibly important to expand your worldview and to see the

world from outside of our lens are just our distinctly

American lens. When I come home, it makes me love

our country more certainly, but it also causes me to

have a broader and more compassionate view of the rest

of the world as well. So yeah, I love it.

I think it's great. Yeah, well, you know what.

I actually, when I remember the first time I left

the country and I flew over to Africa, I had

this thought like, geez, this world is so big and

I'm so small, you know, And I just remember thinking

that and thinking, man, this world's so huge. Then when

I get over there and I realized that the people

over there, even though they were radically different, were almost

exactly like me, right, and we had so much in common.

It was just they were so they were so much

like me.

Trying to provide for your family, did your kids educated?

You know, same thing built into them as built into me.

Trying to forgure how to avoid carbs right then and then.

When you well, they didn't have to.

They just walked a bunch it and worked.

But basically, the bottom line is is after I got

there and I understood that, I visited a bunch of

churches over there, and I realized their faith was the

same and they were the same as me, I stopped

thinking that this world is so big and I'm so small.

I started thinking, Wow, this world is actually really small

and God is so big. Yeah.

Oh, that's a great way to view it. I think

it's fantastic. So if you remember Paul went on this

that we just finished up. Paul finishing PAULM. Bartner was

finishing their first missionary journey. Yes, they do three journeys,

and each journey goes out further than the last one,

and they limp back home. They do every time. They

beat up beat up pretty rough, and so each of

these journeys to go up further and further. During this

time that we have read up through Acts chapter fourteen,

James becomes the main pastor in the in Jerusalem and

he writes the Book of James.

Right, But this is James the brother of.

Christ, James the brother of Jesus, yes.

Or yeah. So it's not James the son of Alpheus,

which is one of the disciples, right.

And it's not James the brother of John. Right, he

had already been killed, so Herod killed him, right. So

this is James the brother of Jesus.

Yeah, And he's the one that wrote the Book of James,

that's correct. And he actually did it during this time.

So right at the juncture of X fourteen that we're at,

this is right around the time where Paul comes back

to Antioch and he starts writing through the churches. He

was just visited, and then James writes the Book of James.

So in our previous podcast HC Daily and it's in

the archives, so you can find that on our website

or whatever. In our previous podcast, we did an entire

push through the entire Book of James, right, five chapters.

At every chapter, punch packs a punch. Right. So then

during that same time, Paul and Barnabas they returned back.

They go down through Crete up through the center portion

of Turkey. They get beat up a little bit, they

move around, go to all these little villages Iconium and

Listra and Derby, and then finally they go back to

Antioch in Syria. And as soon as they get it

that they haven't even unpacked their bags, and false teaching

is beginning to happen, a bunch of false teachers swoop

in and begin to teach false doctrine in the churches.

And Paul has to write a letter. And that's the

letter of the Book of Galatians.

Yeah, and the note, which is why I love this

life application study Bible. But the notes actually tell us

as well that Paul was accused of watering down the

Gospel uh to the to the Greeks, and so he

actually you know, went out and preached the Gospel. And

all of the Jewish Christians, who had been obeying so

many laws for centuries, had accused Paul of not you know,

of of relying on grace too much and not actually

talking about the law, and so he he was accused

of that. So part of the reason was he wanted

to make sure to you know, make sure that they

were indoctrinated and educated, and.

For both reasons. So this is first journey and most

of the rest of the letters of Paul have not

been written yet, right, These haven't been written, and so

this is the first big letter he had to write

after he had started these churches in Lystra, derby Iconium

and Antiakopasidia. So we just thought we'd pause in that

Acts chapter fourteen spot and let's take a look at

what Paul's trying to tell these people that he had

just led to Jesus.

Right, Because the goal of this whole series is to

is to walk through the Book of Acts chronologically to

make sure that we understand how all the pieces of

the Bible fit together, because obviously Acts is not right

next to Galatians, right.

And it doesn't happen over the course of a few

weeks or a few months. This is decades of time

in Paul's life right now.

At this point in time, when Paul's started to write

the Book of Galatians, he had been a Christian for

fifteen years. So think about that. So acts chapter nine

is when he first became a Christian. And so here

we are just five chapters later, and that represents fifteen years.

You'll find, usually Paul when he opens his books, there's

all these niceties, all these compliments, all these nice things.

But this first book Galatians, he just gets right at it.

And it's because the problem is so intense and he

decides going to go right at it. So here we go.

Let's just read. We'll read the first chapter of the

Book of Galicians. Day It says this, this letter is

from Paul, an apostle. I was not appointed by any

group of people or any human authority, but by Jesus

Christ himself, and by God, the Father who raised Jesus

from the dead. All the brothers and sisters here joined

me in sending this letter to the churches of Galatia.

May God, our Father, and the Lord Jesus Christ give

you peace and grace. Jesus gave his life for our sins,

just as God, our Father planned, in order to rescue

us from this evil world in which we live. All

glory to God forever and ever. Amen. I am shocked

that you are turning away so soon from God, who

called you to himself through the loving mercy of Christ.

You are following a different way that pretends to be

the good news, but is not the good news at all.

You're being fooled by those who deliberately twist the truth

concerning Christ. Let God's curse fall on anyone, including us,

or even an angel from heaven, who preaches a different

kind of good news than the one we preach to you.

I say again what we have said before. If anyone

preaches any other good news than the one you welcomed,

let that person be cursed. Obviously, I'm not trying to

win the approval of people, but of God. If pleasing

people were my goal, I not be Christ's servant. Dear

brothers and sisters, I want you to understand that the

gospel message I've preached is not based on mere human reasoning.

I received my message from no human source, and no

one taught me and said I received it by direct

revelation from Jesus Christ. You know what I was like

when I followed the Jewish religion, how I violently persecuted

God's Church. I did my best to destroy it. I

was far ahead of my fellow Jews and my zeal

for the traditions of my ancestors. But even before I

was born, God chose me and called me by his

marvelous grace. Then it pleased him to reveal his son

to me, so that I would proclaim the good news

about Jesus to the Gentiles. When this happened, I did

not rush out to consult with any human being, nor

did I go up to Jerusalem to consult with those

who were apostles before I was. Instead, I went away

into Arabia, and later I returned to the city of Damascus.

Then three years later I went to Jerusalem to get

the No Peter, and I stayed with him for fifteen days.

The only other apostle I met at that time was James,

the Lord's brother. I declare before God that I am

that what I am writing to you is not alive.

After that, I visit and went north into the provinces

of Syria and Cilicia. And still the Christians in the

churches and Judea didn't know me personally. All they knew

was that people were saying, the one who used to

persecute us is now preaching the very faith he tried

to destroy, and they praised God because of me. So

the second half of this chapter, he's just beginning to

establish the fact that he has legitimacy in his conversation.

But on the front end he lets them know immediately,

what in the world. I've only been going to this

a little while, and you people are already being pulled

away into false teaching. We'll unpack a lot of that

false teaching over the next couple of days. But he's

very concerned. You can you can read the concern. I

almost hear the concern and the words that we're reading.

Yeah, and and like you said, you said that he

had written this message. Uh, you know, it was so urgent,

and you can hear it in his writing. You know,

he says, I'm surprised that you've turned away so soon,

and he said, let them be cursed. I mean, these

are strong words that Paul is using. Yeah, you know,

and it's because He's just so passionate. And it's interesting too,

because because I'm a pastor, you know, I feel like

God has, you know, sort of given me responsibility over people.

And I feel that way as well. I'm sure you

do too, where you feel you feel the responsibility of

the people. And so if you lead somebody to Christ,

or you introduce somebody to a new relationship with your

you know what, they're they father, and all of a

sudden they sort of go astray. Boy, man, I'm telling you,

it's just something inside just says, no, come on, come back,

come back to Jesus, because you know, I feel responsible

for you. And so you can hear the heart of

the pasture with Paul right here.

Yeah, I love the fact, you know, he's reminding them

of the Gospel. In the first couple verses, especially verse

three and four, he says, may God, our Father, and

the Lord Jesus Christ give you grace and peace. Jesus

gave his life for our sins, just as God as

our father planned, in order to rescue us from this

evil world in which we live. He basically is saying,

that's the message I brought you, right, and he says

it in verse four and then he's going to spend

the rest of this book kind of unpacking the difference

between trying to follow a religious system that has all

these rules and relying on the grace of God expressed

through Jesus Christ on the Cross and forgive them the sins.

And I think that for Paul, he's so urgent in

making sure that they understand what the meaning of the

Gospel is, the simplicity of the gospel salvation by grace

through faith.

You know, if you're gonna read, if you're going to

memorize scripture, a wonderful verse to memorize is Galatians one

to ten, where Paul says, obviously, I'm not trying to

win the.

Approval of people, but of God.

If pleasing people were my goal, I would not be

the Christ servant. And it's just it's a verse that

stands on its own. And obviously we've seen through the

Book of Acts so many times where Peter and John

and of course Paul respond this way to religious leaders

and say, should be not a big you know God?

And should we obey you over God? They say it

in so many different ways. But I love this verse

because it applies to our lives where if God tells

us to do something and we don't do it because

we fear the opinion of others or how we're going

to be perceived by others. You know, we have to

remind ourselves. Are we trying to win the approved of people?

Yeah?

Are we trying to rind the approval of God? Because

guess what, only one wins right, and there's only one

that should win right. It's just a great verse to memorize.

So in verses six and seven, he's very concerned. One

he says, I'm shocked. So he's not even trying to

hide his concern or his frustration. I'm shocked that you're

turning away so soon from God who called you to

himself in this situation. He's not talking about you moved churches.

You know, back then there was the church in Lystra,

the Church in Derby, the church and Antioch. And so

it's not like they packed up and left his church

and went to some other church. They were literally leaving

the gospel. They were leaving the truth that salvation is

by grace through faith in Jesus Christ. And they were

instead adopting or trying to blend this idea of having

to have all these rules in place in order to

please God. And this is incredibly dangerous. Will read this

over the next few days. But it's tempting for us

to say, yes, salvation is only through Jesus, it is

only through the forgiveness of our sins because of what

Jesus did on the cross. It is by faith. But

then I also have to work really hard to keep it.

I have to work really hard to deserve it, you know,

I have to do all these things to qualify for it.

And Paul said, then that's not the gospel. That's not

he said, the gospel that you're following a different way

that pretends to be the good news, but is not

the good news at all.

So this chronological Life Application study Bible talks about the

Judaizers versus Paul, and it says, as the debate raged

between the gentile Christians and the Judaizers, Paul found it

necessary to write to the Church of Galicia. The Judaizers

are trying to undermine Paul's authority, and they taught a

false gospel. In reply, Paul defended his authorities the gospel.

So here's you know, you sort of skipped down and

here's there's two columns and it says, here's what the

Judaizer said about Paul, and here was Paul's defense. So

they said four things about him. Number one, they said

he was perverting the truth. And we read in verses

eleven and twelve that he received his message from Christ himself.

He said that. They also said about him that they

said he was a traitor to the Jewish faith. But

it says in verse thirteen, Paul had been one of

the most dedicated Jews of his time. Wherever he referenced

that about himself. In the midst of one of his

most zealous acts, God transformed him in Acts chapter nine.

The third thing that.

They were saying about him is they said he compromised

and watered down the message for the gentiles. But you know,

and he goes on to say, and we'll actually talk

about this tomorrow's podcast. The other apostles declared that the

message that Paul preached was the true gospel, that's tomorrow's.

And then the fourth thing was they said he was

disregarding the Law of Moses. But then in Glasian chapter three,

he gets into far from degrading the law, Paul puts

the law in its proper place, he says, it shows

people where they've sinned and it points them to Jesus Christah.

So that's just really cool.

It just sort of gives us an outline of what

Paul is trying to say in the Book of Galatians.

And it's in direct, you know, connection to the things

that he was accused of, and you know the concerns

that he had for the church.

Yeah, so these Judaizers, it happens today. By the way,

a lot these Judaizers did not go out and make

these converts in Lystra and in Derby and Iconium. Instead

they swoop in after Paul leads them to Jesus. Right,

how often have you seen that happen? Where you know,

God uses you or or somebody close to you to

lead somebody to Jesus and then suddenly, within just a

few short weeks or months, all of a sudden, this

person who never shared the gospel with them at work,

suddenly is correct correcting quote unquote their theology at work.

Never mentioned Jesus to them before, never shares the gospel before,

But then they swoop in and scoop up the fruit

that God had given. Would I would encourage if you're

a newer believer, be careful about just trusting somebody who

never shared the Gospel with you before, who swoops in

now and decides to try to teach you something that, oh,

you know, you're being taught taught by false teachers. This

is what the Judaizers did too. They didn't lead these

people to Jesus. They come swooping in after Paul is

the one who's sharing the gospel man alive, the one

who brings you to faith in Christ. Pay close attention

to them at the beginning, and be very careful about

others swooping in trying to change you know. I've seen

that with false religions, you know, Mormons, Jehovah's Witnesses, different

different groups like that, that after you become Christians suddenly

want to have a Bible study in your house or whatever.

And I've also seen it with people who want to

twist the Gospel into their theological or their denominational view

that you know, before they never were a part of

the you know, your spiritual development, but now that you

are a Christian, suddenly they're gonna you know, fix your

your doctrine, you know, and to be.

Let's just be honest, if we're really honest with ourselves.

That's why it's sort of discouraging a lot of times,

because people interpret the Bible in different ways, which is

why we have denominations and and and it's actually a

little discouraging because if you're a brand new Christian, the

one thing that I've heard for decades is who do

I listen to? And so the answer, of course is

the Word of God, right, the Word of God what

it teaches. And then there are some people that will

take a verse and take it out of context, and

it's it's it's really tricky, it's really difficult to times.

And so that's why you have to be grounded in

the faith. That's why you have to sort of when

you hear something that seems like it's different, to question

yourself and question that truth and say, is that true?

Let me let me reserve my right to believe that

I And so really what it comes down to is

when you find a trusted source, somebody that you believe

is as a good woman or a man of God,

and you feel like they interpret the Bible correctly, you know,

surround yourself with good godly counsel, surround yourself with good

believers who are going to point you in the right direction.

That's really important because you know, it's interesting. But when

I was going to get my master's degree, I have

a few classes towards my master's degree, and that I

didn't end up finishing it. But what I remember my

professor said, he talked about the difference between the modern

church and the postmodern church, and he said that in

modernity there was a period of time where, you know,

as opposed to postmodernity. And in modernity there was a

period of time where people believed that everything that could

be known can be known in the Bible. And then

that's where all the denominations broke out. And in the

age of modernity where people said, you know, we agree

on ninety nine things, but this one thing we disagree

with and book therefore we're going to you know, split

our denomination, you know, to to a sub denomination or

something like this. And all of a sudden, now you

have thousands of you know, disagreements. And then and then

post modernity says that, you know, it's okay to embrace

a little bit of mystery of God. In other words,

postmodernity claims, and which is why I'm so grateful for this.

I lean toward this way. It's like, if God wanted

it to be really super clear, he would have told us.

And if there's a little bit of a question mark

around something, then that's okay. It just means that God

hasn't gone out of his way to make it extra

crystal clear. So you can form your opinions around that.

And it's important to have those conversations. But you know

this idea of like, you know, denominations are the enemy,

all these they're not the enemy. Right. We have more

in common than we than we do have differences, but

some of those differences are very, very dangerous.

Yeah, Now, the difference between biblical Christianity and post modernity,

post modernity, modernity modernity is postmodernism would say that there

is no real truth, no objective truth. You can't find truth,

you don't know if there's true. That's that's the stream, right,

that'd be the ex version of that. Whereas what you're

saying is it's okay for us to say, I'm not

exactly sure I can button up that issue always there's

you know, but I can still have faith and truth

in the words of God. So God's words are perfectly true. Yes,

my understanding of them may or may not be perfect

perfectly buttoned up right. But this is what Paul is

coming in. He said, Listen, these judaizers, quite honestly, are

questioning my own faith because the only faith I know

is salvation by grace through faith plus no works. I

was trying to work my way to heaven. I couldn't.

I have this encounter with Jesus, I discover the only

way is through faith in Christ. That's it. So then

if they're going to come out and they're going to

redefine all of the Gospel, that means they're saying I'm

not even a Christian. That's why he spends a little

bit of time here going wait a minute, let me

talk about my credibility just a little bit, because in

just a minute I'm going to shred their opinions of

how they're trying to reinvent Christianity. So I would just say,

it's not a mistake the person or the people that

God used to bring you to Jesus. It's not a

mistake He chose to use them. So for a while

early on in your walk with God, stay close to them.

They're the ones that God sent to your life, and

you can trust them as they begin to unpack the

truths of God's word. Once you begin to hear them

teach against God's word, well then maybe you need to

make some changes. But early on you can trust. So

this is what he's talking about. His testimony is the

testimony that he says, you can trust this and you

can have the same salvation by grace through faith in Christ.

That's great, and that's probably a great place to wrap up.

And we will pick up with Galatians chapter two tomorrow

and we'll see you then on the Bible.

Guys,