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,