Please turn with me this morning to Galatians chapter 1.
We'll be considering verses 11 through 24. The apostle Paul has begun a letter to the churches in Galatia in which he aims to address some false teaching that has begun making inroads into the churches there in Galatia. A false gospel is taking root and Paul wants to stop it in its tracks and set Galatia back on the right path, the path of truth. But before he can do that, he has to defend his own apostolic authority. Evidently these false teachers were attacking Paul's gospel by attacking Paul himself.
And so in our text this morning, Paul defends his authority as an apostle. So hear now the word of the Lord from Galatians 1 verses 11 through 24. For I would have you know, brothers, that the gospel that was preached by me is not man's gospel, for I did not receive it from any man, nor was I taught it, but I received it through a revelation of Jesus Christ. For you have heard of my former life in Judaism, how I persecuted the church of God violently and tried to destroy it. And I was advancing in Judaism beyond many of my own age among my people, so extremely zealous was I for the traditions of my fathers. But when he who had set me apart before I was born and who called me by his grace was pleased to reveal his son to me in order that I might preach him among the Gentiles, I did not immediately consult with anyone, nor did I go up to Jerusalem to those who were apostles before me, but I went into Arabia and returned again to Damascus. Then after three years I went to Jerusalem to visit Cephas and remained with him 15 days, but I saw none of the other apostles except James the Lord's brother. In what I am writing to you before God, I do not lie.
Then I went into the regions of Syria and Cilicia. I was still unknown in person to the churches of Judea that are in Christ. They only were hearing it said, he who used to persecute us is now preaching the faith he once tried to destroy, and they glorified God because of me.
Let's pray. Lord, you were in no way obligated to fix the mess we caused through our fall into sin. You have seen fit to reveal yourself, though, to us as Redeemer, as high priest, as the great shepherd of the sheep, the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. You have revealed the way of salvation to sinners who had no hope of salvation, and you have preserved that beautiful revelation of the gospel, first through the witness of your apostles, but then secondly through the process of inspiring those same men to write down the gospel. In writing it down, you have ensured that countless generations, like the one gathered in this room today, might hear that gospel and believe that gospel and be eternally transformed by that gospel. Holy Spirit, give us ears of faith to hear and believe to the saving of our souls and protect your church from lies that masquerade as truth. Amen.
I want to begin this morning with an illustration which will help us define a couple of categories that I think are going to be important for us in understanding Paul's purpose in these verses that we just read. My mother and I, from time to time, have, perhaps surprisingly, had some spirited discussions about college basketball, specifically about which basketball team is better, the UNC Tar Heels or the Duke Blue Devils. My mother's a Tar Heel.
I'm a Blue Devil. Now, when we get into these discussions, at some point it becomes apparent that our criteria for determining the answer to this crucial question are very different. I like to ground my arguments about basketball in statistics. She likes to ground her arguments in the personal character of the players and the coaches. I like to discuss a team's execution of basketball fundamentals.
She likes to discuss the appeal of Argyle or certain shades of blue over other shades of blue. You see, we have differing opinions on which team is best because we have differing opinions on what constitutes a good team. We might say that the question of UNC versus Duke is the subject or the topic of our disagreement, but the foundation, the root of our disagreement, is the question of what objectively constitutes a good basketball team. During the Protestant Reformation, the issue that blew up in Europe was the issue of justification. Is justification by faith, by grace alone, or is it by grace plus some works? That was the subject, the topic of the Protestant Reformation. Theologians call it the material principle of the Reformation. It's like the UNC versus Duke question. But the underlying cause of that disagreement between the Protestants and the Catholics over the doctrine of justification, what theologians call the formal principle, had to do with the criteria by which the justification question should be answered. Does scripture or the church have the final authority, the ultimate authority? That is a much more fundamental question, like the question of what constitutes a good basketball team.
Is it the team's performance or the team's character? If you can't agree on the foundational criteria, you're likely never going to agree on the various topics that spring from that foundation. And just like the Protestant Reformation, the book of Galatians is also about justification by faith. That's the topic of Paul's letter. The disagreement between Paul and his opponents centered on whether a person was justified by faith alone or by faith plus works of the law. But the underlying criteria by which this question was going to be resolved had to do with the source of Paul's authority. If Paul speaks for God, then his word, his Gospel message is true and trustworthy. If Paul is speaking for himself, on the other hand, or speaking in order to gain a following or to please people or for any other self-serving reason, then his word, then his Gospel message is untrustworthy.
So justification by faith is the topic Paul defends in this letter, but Paul's apostolic authority is the foundation upon which his defense rests. And you know, this is true of any theological topic. As goes one's view of Scripture, so goes one's religious opinions and beliefs. Creeds, belief systems, world views do not exist in a vacuum.
They don't exist by themselves. They spring from certain preexisting assumptions, presuppositions about truth and reality. Our beliefs about what is true and what is false, what is right, what is wrong, what is beautiful, what is ugly come from somewhere.
The question is where? Where do my convictions find their basis? What is the foundational source of authority that informs my view of life and reality? Take for example the current topic of gender dysphoria. Are human beings binary, male or female or not? Is gender even a moral issue or merely a matter of opinion that is morally neutral? If your presupposition is that the Bible is from God and therefore inerrant and authoritative and eternal, then your answers to the gender questions of our day are straightforward. Genesis 1.27, God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him, male and female he created them.
It's a binary world if your understanding of this world is rooted in Scripture as God's word. And any dysphoria or confusion about gender that exists in our culture today is explained by the fact that sin has entered the world and confused our minds, Romans 1, with regard to who we are and how we are to function. But if the Bible is not your foundational truth, if your criteria for morality is, I don't know, self or personal experience or popular sentiment, then your views on gender and a million other topics are going to reflect that foundation. In our text this morning, Paul defends the topic at hand not by first addressing the topic at hand, but by addressing the foundation, the source of his authority. Notice first then Paul's bold claim in verses 11 and 12. Paul says, For I would have you know, brothers, that the gospel that was preached by me is not man's gospel, for I did not receive it from any man, nor was I taught it, but I received it through a revelation of Jesus Christ. This claim of Paul is so bold that if it is true, the debate he's having with the Galatian churches is over with. They're toying with false teachers who are claiming evidently that Paul's teaching is selfishly motivated. Verse 10, he's just a people pleaser saying whatever people want to hear in order to gain a following. But Paul says, No, my teaching, my gospel comes directly from God.
I didn't learn it from human teachers who were inconsistent and fallible. It came straight from Jesus Christ to my mouth. That's what I proclaimed to you. So if you're going to reject my gospel, you're rejecting God's gospel. It's a bold claim.
He puts it all on the line right up front. And that's really where we have to start with any truth claim in the Bible, right? Either God's word is God's word or it's not.
And if it is God's word, then we had better listen to it and believe it and obey it. Now, of course, anyone can make the claim of divine revelation. History is replete with psychotic liars who claim to have received information from a divine source. Just because the claim is made doesn't mean the claim is true. And so Paul, after making this bold claim, begins to give several strands of evidence that support his claim that the gospel he preached in Galatia was truly from God.
And these strands of evidence are autobiographical. They tell the story of Paul's conversion and call. First, Paul points to what he was like before conversion to Christianity and how unlikely his conversion was.
Look with me at verses 13 and 14. For you have heard of my former life in Judaism, how I persecuted the church of God violently and tried to destroy it, and I was advancing in Judaism beyond many of my own age among my people, so extremely zealous was I for the traditions of my fathers. Before Paul met Jesus Christ and was converted to the Christian faith, he was ethnically and religiously a Jew. And not just any Jew, Paul was a Hebrew of Hebrews, he says in Philippians.
His pedigree was pristine. His education in the Jewish faith was the best one could get. His faithfulness to the traditions of his people was so zealous that he was willing to commit violence to keep his religion and his people untainted. This is not the testimony of someone who was driven by a desire to make a good impression within the Christian community. Paul was a hater of Christians, not a flatterer of Christians.
And so his opponent's accusations that he was making up his message to simply please people and gain a following in the Christian world sounded ridiculous. But next, Paul points to his miraculous conversion, verses 15 and 16. But when he who had set me apart before I was born and who called me by his grace was pleased to reveal his son to me in order that I might preach him among the Gentiles, I did not immediately consult with anyone. We discover the details of Paul's conversion by reading Acts chapter 9. And you've heard the story, Paul, or rather Saul, was on his way to Damascus intent on finding and arresting Christians and bringing them back to Jerusalem as prisoners, but in route, he was stopped dead in his tracks by a blinding light. And out of this light, he heard a voice that said, Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me?
And of course, that voice was the voice of Jesus Christ. Jesus instructed Saul to go on to Damascus, where he would meet a Christian named Ananias. And Ananias, at God's instruction, healed Saul of the blindness that was caused by that vision on the road. And Saul was filled with the Holy Spirit and he was baptized into the Christian faith. Now, every conversion is a miracle. Any conversion of a sinner is a miracle. But Paul's conversion was exceptionally miraculous because prior to his conversion, he was not merely unconverted.
He was consciously, actively, zealously opposing Christianity. People don't generally do 180s like that, but Paul did. And so the unlikeliness of it all was yet another evidence of the genuineness of his conversion and thus the genuineness of his claim to apostolic authority. But not only did Paul's pre-conversion hostility towards the Christian faith and his miraculous conversion experience validate his claim to have been directly acted upon by God, Paul's post-conversion ministry also gave evidence of his claim to apostleship. After Paul's conversion, he says in the latter part of verse 16, I did not immediately consult with anyone, verse 17, nor did I go up to Jerusalem to those who were apostles before me, but I went away into Arabia and returned again to Damascus. If you were dramatically converted, like Paul was, to a faith that you had previously opposed and resisted, I think the most natural thing in the world would be to run straight to the nearest apostle, the closest expert on all things Christian, and soak in every bit of instruction and training that they were willing to impart. The only reason Paul would not have run straight to Peter or John to get proper teaching in the faith would be if he had been taught by Peter and John's teacher, by Jesus himself. And in fact, that's exactly what Paul was claiming. If Paul did not hop on the first caravan to Jerusalem to learn from the apostles, how then did he learn what he knew about the gospel and about the Christian faith and about the person and work of Jesus Christ?
He learned what he learned directly from God himself, not from man. We're told that for three years after his conversion, Paul was isolated in the wilderness of Arabia. Now a lot of commentators speculate on what exactly Paul did during those three years. Was he living as a recluse, as the Lord taught him the faith? Was he actively preaching the gospel, carrying out the duties of an apostle during that time?
We don't know because the Bible doesn't say. I do think it's interesting that this three-year period of silence in the life of Paul is roughly the same length of time that the other apostles got to spend with Christ during his earthly ministry. But at any rate, the point Paul is making is that his discipleship in the faith was not the product of secondhand instruction from the apostles, not to belittle that, but rather Paul's discipleship in the faith was received directly from God himself. After those three years in Arabia and Damascus, Paul says in verse 18, I went up to Jerusalem to visit Cephas, and that's just another name for Peter, and remained with him 15 days, but I saw none of the other apostles except James, the Lord's brother. So well into his post-conversion ministry, he finally meets the pillars of the Christian faith, but even that meeting is brief.
Fifteen days, Paul says, hardly enough time to have been taught the Christian faith from mere men. And then just to assure the Galatians that he's telling the truth, he swears an oath in verse 20, In what I am writing to you before God, I do not lie. Paul's testimony continues in verse 21, Then I went into the regions of Syria and Cilicia, these were regions that were outside of Israel, and I was still unknown in person to the churches of Judea that are in Christ. They only were hearing it said, He who used to persecute us is now preaching the faith he once tried to destroy. Paul was not some budding new evangelist trying to claw his way to the top of the charts. No, he was living and preaching in relative obscurity, and the only Christians who knew anything about him didn't see him as some up-and-coming star on the itinerant preacher scene.
They were, quite frankly, astonished that this man, who had once been such a fierce persecutor of the church, was now preaching the faith he once tried to destroy. Well, then the last strand of evidence Paul points to is the effect that his preaching was having. We see it there in verse 24, Paul says, And they glorified God because of me. The fruit of Paul's preaching was that his hearers were bringing glory not to Paul, but to God. Again, this was not the fruit of a man who was in ministry for his own fame. If Paul were seeking to promote his own brand, as his opponents were accusing him of, he was failing miserably at it because the effect of his preaching was that people were glorifying God. So false teachers were promoting a false gospel in Galatia, they gained any traction, they needed to oppose any real gospel proclamation, which in Galatia's case had come from Paul. And so as false teachers are prone to do, they attacked the person and his motives because they couldn't effectively attack the content of Paul's preaching. They accused Paul of being man-centered and self-seeking. They accused Paul of getting his gospel from men and riding the coattails of elite people of influence in order to gain a hearing. But Paul was able to counter those false accusations by sharing his testimony about the unlikelihood of his conversion from persecutor to apostle and about the purity of his theological training in the Arabian wilderness where the only seminary professor was God himself and about the fruit of his subsequent ministry in which people didn't notice Paul and make much of Paul but rather glorified God and were converted to the true gospel of Jesus Christ. If this was Paul's life story, then truly he bore the marks of an apostle. And truly his preaching was not the self-serving manipulation of a rising star. His preaching was the powerful effective preaching of one who is called by God and gifted with divinely inspired revelation. And if Paul's preaching was divinely inspired revelation, then it was true and it was authoritative. I think it's very interesting that when challenged by false teachers with a false gospel, Paul's initial response was not to debate the specifics of the false gospel. He does get to that, but he doesn't start there.
He starts with the defense of the foundation. He defends the source of his message. You know, everyone has a starting point for whatever truth claims they believe. Everyone has an ultimate source of authority to which they consciously or subconsciously appeal. For some, it's their reason. It's true because my mind tells me it's true.
For others, it's their experience. It's true because my senses tell me it's true. I can see it. I can feel it.
I can touch it. The thing about ultimate sources of authority, whether it's rational thoughts or sense experience or some transcendent revelation, is that they cannot be proven. They cannot be proven because as soon as I appeal to something to prove the legitimacy of my ultimate source of authority, I've just made that the ultimate source of authority. If I say Scripture has ultimate authority because the study of archaeology says so, well, I've just made archaeology the ultimate authority.
If I say Scripture is inerrant because historians have demonstrated its inerrancy, I've just claimed that historians are inerrant. Our truth claims are always grounded in a starting point. A highest authority and a highest authority by definition cannot be proven by something outside of itself.
It is and it must be self-validating. Paul was wise then to start with the simple assertion that the Gospel he proclaimed in Galatia had its origins in God. He went to that ultimate highest authority to make his case. There's a very loud, albeit unspoken, implication to Paul's tactic here that we dare not miss. The implication is that if Paul's Gospel came directly from God, then Paul's Gospel is God's Gospel, which means that Paul's preaching is as authoritative as if God himself were preaching. There are many even today who claim to follow the teachings of Jesus, but not the teachings of Paul. Brothers and sisters, if we're hearing what Galatians 1 is saying, then that distinction between Jesus and Paul is not an option for us. Jesus is the source of Paul's teaching. There's absolutely no contradiction between Jesus, the head of the church, and the apostles that he called to be the pillars of that church. We don't get to pick between the red letter words and the black letter words in the New Testament. They're all the inspired Word of God.
They're all equally authoritative and trustworthy. And so even ahead of Paul's defense of the doctrines of justification by faith lies the foundational groundwork of establishing that God's Word is true and authoritative because it's God's Word. This passage, I think, is really a call for us to examine our posture towards the Word of God. When God speaks, do you listen?
Or is God's voice drowned out by a thousand competing affections in your heart and mind? Maybe it's the approval of your friends that drive your beliefs and values and priorities. Maybe it's the desire to be the master of your own fate.
Maybe it's just the pride of reason or the sentiment of emotion. We all have that thing, that ultimate source of authority, the criteria by which we measure truth and morality and values and priorities. The false teachers in Galatia, as we will come to discover the driving force in their life, their ultimate source of authority, Paul will say, was their desire to make a good showing in the flesh.
Paul countered that by holding up the truth of God as the ultimate standard, the ultimate authority, the ultimate source of spiritual freedom and life eternal. Beloved, if the gospel we find in the Bible is from God, and it is, then all other spiritual paths or claim to divine knowledge are false and hopeless. So what should we do?
Here's what we should do. We should read and study the Bible so as to understand what it says, and then we should devote ourselves to believing it and obeying it. Now, that may sound simple enough, but in case you don't know it already, your commitment to the Word of God will be challenged by this fallen world. Your devotion to Scripture will be resisted by your sinful, willful flesh. Your loyalty to the Bible will be ridiculed by the enemies of the cross. There will be a thousand reasons to question God's Word or substitute its authority for something more current, more accessible, more acceptable. But Paul's point is clear. This gospel is from God, and if it's from God, it is true.
And if it is true, it is our only hope of salvation. The proper response then to this beautiful and true gospel of hope is to acknowledge that the Bible is God's Word and where what the Bible says is different from my beliefs and my attitudes and my behavior, I must change by the grace of God. Think back over this past week and ask yourself, how did the gospel and the teachings of Scripture influence your decisions and priorities, your use of the time and resources you had at your disposal? How did God's Word shape your attitude towards the news or towards your relationships with other people?
What were some ways that the course of any given day was altered because of some doctrine or principle in Scripture? And if you're hard-pressed to think of specific ways in which the truth of God's Word came to bear on your life, you may be closer to those foolish Galatians than you realize. But it's time to reorient your life to what God says in His Word. It's time to start listening to and obeying God.
Now there's a danger that perhaps warrants mentioning. It's possible as we read Paul's bold claim here that his preaching came directly from God and not man, that maybe we think the application of this text to Scripture is that we should listen to God and not man like Paul did, somehow more virtuous to eliminate the middle man when it comes to our personal Christian discipleship and just let God speak directly to us. There's a popular notion in many Christian circles today that isolation from outside sources is good. Isolation even from Christian books and pastors, from creeds and confessions because those things are man-made and we want to simply hear the clear, unadulterated voice of God. I know preachers, for example, who resist consulting commentaries in their sermon preparation for fear that those commentaries might influence their study of the Bible. And I want to say to them, consulting commentaries most certainly will influence your study of the Bible, but so will your personal internal thought processes and blind spots.
You see, here's the thing. There's a profound distinction between Paul, the apostle, and you and me, the post-apostolic Christian. God spoke directly to the apostles, giving them inspired, inerrant revelation for them to write down and distribute to the church. Upon this rock, the rock of the apostles' teaching, I will build my church, Jesus said.
Ephesians 2, 19 and 20. You post-apostolic Christians are fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus himself being the cornerstone. You aren't that foundation. I'm not that foundation. Paul is that foundation. Peter is that foundation. Moses is that foundation. Or rather, their inspired teaching is that foundation, and Christ himself is the cornerstone. Now that the canon of Scripture is complete and closed, it would be foolish and really the height of arrogance for us to say with Paul, I don't consult with other Christian authorities on theological truth.
I go straight to God. God is my teacher, not men. There is a sense in which we can say God teaches us, but that teaching, that imparting of truth, is mediated for us through the apostles and the Bible to some extent, through pastors and teachers that Jesus Christ himself raises up and equips to instruct his church. I'm not saying individual Christians can't read the Bible for themselves and benefit from it.
They can, and they should. I'm just pointing out that we aren't apostles like Paul was, and so we need to be careful not to circumvent God's ordained means of spiritual growth and maturity. You see, the same Paul who said, my teaching and preaching is from God and not man, also said that Jesus gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the shepherds and teachers, in other words, men, to equip the saints for the work of ministry for the building up of the body of Christ. So the question is not, is my understanding of God's word being influenced by outside sources?
It is. The question is, are those outside sources grounded in Scripture and in a commitment to Scripture's inerrancy and authority? Paul's gospel was from God, so it can be trusted, and that gospel has been written down and graciously preserved for us in the pages of Scripture.
The Bible can be trusted because it sources God who does not lie. Am I listening to God's word? Am I availing myself of the sound teaching of men who have been called by God to preach that word? Am I believing God's word?
Am I conforming my life, my thoughts, my attitudes, my values, my behavior to God's word? Brothers and sisters, the law of the Lord is perfect, reviving the soul. The testimony of the Lord is sure, making wise the simple. The precepts of the Lord are right, rejoicing the heart. The commandment of the Lord is pure, enlightening the eyes. The fear of the Lord is clean, enduring forever. The rules of the Lord are true and righteous altogether. More to be desired are they than gold, even much fine gold, sweeter also than honey and drippings of the honeycomb.
Moreover, by them is your servant warned, and in keeping them, there is great reward. Let's pray. O God who cannot lie, you are the way. You are the truth.
You are the life. Give us ears to hear you. Give us faith to believe what you said. Give us a love that obeys your word. I pray this in Jesus' name. .
