The Book of Galatians #4
The Book of Galatians #4
Galatians 1:16-24
 
Now, as we mentioned to you last week, the apostle Paul wrote the book of Galatians to defend himself against Judaizers.
 
I think it important to remember he is not defending himself out of pride or to draw attention to himself, but rather because of the importance of the gospel. 
 
They were questioning his credentials because he taught salvation by grace.  They didn’t believe what he taught so they sought to destroy his credibility. 
 
Eventually he will deal in this letter with their false doctrine, but first he is establishing his authority to speak for God.
 
But what we have, beginning in verse 11 of chapter 1 is a defense of his authority as an apostle and he does it by way of his personal testimony. 
 
As we saw last week, he tells them, first of all, about his life before salvation. 
 
Verses 13 and 14
 
The point is this. His early education, his early training, his early upbringing were not responsible for his conviction concerning salvation by grace. 
 
He lived in a totally different world, the world of the Law of Moses.  Nobody taught himabout Christ. Nobody, in typical Jewish fashion, handed this stuff down by tradition from generation to generation.
No rabbi sat him in a corner and taught him all the things that he knew about Christ. He was at the very opposite extreme. So his life before salvation is evidence that his message didn't come from a human source.
 
Tonight we’ll see secondly,
 
2. His Salvation
 
Verses 15-16
 
He was going along the way he was going and all of a sudden it pleased God to transform him, and that was the beginning. Now, I want you to notice something. His call was both supernatural and sovereign.
 
In the case of Saul of Tarsus, who became Paul, there wasn't anything for him to do but stop, because the Lord blinded him and slammed him on the ground.
 
"When it pleased God." Paul’s salvation was of God’s plan.  God determined to save Paul and call him to be an apostle. 
 
Listen to 1 Corinthians 1:1. "Paul, called to be an apostle of Jesus Christ, through the will of God."
 
God wanted it.
 
Get the picture?  Here is Paul running around like a fanatic, bent on a course of persecution and destruction, but God changed it. You say, "Why?" Because He wanted to.
God wanted this man. And God changed it. His fanaticism was no match for the will of God.
 
Some might say, "Well, God was up there in heaven, and He saw his potential." Said, "Boy, that old Paul. He's really got a lot of fire. If I can just latch onto him, we'll get something done." No, no. Listen to what Paul said, "When it pleased God, who separated me from my mother's womb."
 
He’s not talking about physical birth. He's not saying, "God, who made me be born." saying, watch this, now, "When it pleased God, who separated me unto the apostolate, did it "from my mother's womb."
 
Did you realize Paul was chosen to be an apostle before he was born? The physical birth of Paul isn't the issue in this passage. What's the issue here is his call to be an apostle. What he's saying is, "Hey, people. You want to know something? I didn't get my message from men. God called me to be an apostle when I was still in the womb." That's pretty strong language.
 
Just like Jeremiah of old, or Isaiah or John the Baptist.  God had His hand on these men before they were born!  That sounds like God's running the show. That's sovereignty.
 
And the Jews understood that language.  After all, God had chosen them.  They knew that's how God usually chose His prophets.
 
The Jewish mind has no problem with that. When Paul said, "God separated me even from my mother's womb," they knew exactly what he was talking about.
They knew that he was claiming apostleship, that he was claiming the call of God equal to the prophet of God who was chosen by God before such a time as he was ever born.
 
So if God had marked Paul off, set him aside, before he was born, then he was no human apostle. That's a strong, strong proof.
 
So we see his life before salvation, then his salvation itself.  Then notice what he says about
 
3.  His Life after Salvation
 
verses 16-24
 
That 16th verse is an interesting sentence. 
 
Why does he mention what he did not do?  Remember, he is emphasizing his apostleship and from where this message of grace came. 
 
So what he says is “I did not go to Jerusalem. Why? Reading between the line, Jerusalem is where the apostles were.  He didn’t need to confer with them because he was an apostle himself.  All the information he needed would be given directly to him from God.
 
So he went into Arabia. Not the Arabia you're thinking about, but area around Damascus. It was in that general vicinity that he ministered. And verse 18 indicates it was a three-year period.
 
There is a little commentary on that in Acts 9:20-23
 
That little phrase, "after many days," is a phrase in the Greek that's used to speak of two or three years.
 
What happened? They tried to kill him and it was then he was let down in the basket to escape, and in our text in Galatians he just sums all that up and references a three-year period of time. 
 
But it was during that period of time that the Holy Spirit did not allow Paul to go to Jerusalem because He wanted it established that Paul did not need to be taught by other apostles. It was not dependent on the Jerusalem church or on any human agency.
 
And just to avoid some smart-aleck with a good memory, we have verse 18
 
B the way, I did go to Jerusalem after three years of ministry, and I went for one reason: to see Peter. I stayed 15 days. Now Paul said to the Ephesian elders, “I have not failed to declare unto you the whole counsel of God.”
 
Do you think you could learn the whole counsel fo God in 15 days? Not even with a brain like Paul. 
There's no way he could have learned what he knew except God gave it to him.
 
Now, in addition to spending 15 days, notice what he says in 19.
 
Why didn't he see the others? Because contrary to public opinion, preachers work more than one day a week.  It's likely that they were out ministering. They were on the go. They were moving around.
 
 
So he didn't see any other apostle than Peter.
However he does mention "James, the Lord's brother." Now, James, the Lord's brother was not an apostle. James, the Lord Jesus' brother, was the leader of the Jerusalem church, but he was not an apostle. He saw none of the other apostles, but he did see James, the Lord's brother.
 
I think I know why he went to see these two men.  I think he was Peter because he knew Peter was so close to Jesus and he loved Jesus so much.
 
I imagine he sat down with Peter and he said, Now, Peter, I know the revelation God's given me, but what was He like? I mean, what did you do, Peter? What did you do? What is He like?
 
And then the only other guy in town who knew as much or more about Jesus as Peter did was Jesus' own brother, James.
 
And I imagine he got to James and said, James, tell me about Him when He was little.  What was He like? You say, “You're speculating.”  Yeah, and it’s a lot of fun!  You ought to try it some time!
 
But it just make s sense to me from what I’ve studied about Paul that those are the things he wanted to know.  He was absolutely consumed with Jesus.  Listen to his letter to the Philippians where he says, “I just want to know Him; the power of his resurrection.  I want to understand his sufferings.  I want to explore his death.
 
Paul wanted to know these personal things about Jesus. So he spent time with them.
 
So Paul says, I came to Jerusalem. It was after three years of ministry, lasted only two weeks, saw only Peter, spent some time with James, preached and left in a hurry.
 
It would be ridiculous to charge that he obtained his gospel and teaching from the Jerusalem apostles.
 
Then as further evidence, notice verse 20
 
Verse 20 is a very Jewish verse.  In typical Jewish fashion, he binds himself with a vow.  In so many words he is swearing by God.
 
verse 21
 
If we were to look up the next chronological event in Paul’s life after the places he mentions here. We would see it when Barnabas goes over there and finds him and says, Come on, I want you to be my co-pastor at Antioch.
 
But all the years in between he's over in Syria and Cilicia by himself founding churches.
 
Verses 22-23
 
Isn’t that a great passage?  Nobody knew him there, they had only heard about him.  They knew he used to be a terrorist, destroying the churches.  And now he’s preaching the faith he once tried to destroy.   Isn't that good? He had a reputation and his reputation was that he had been saved.
 
He never sat under the teaching of the apostles. The history of his life proves it.
 
verse 24
 
This is like taking a shovel and hitting those Judaizers right in the back of the head. This is such a slam you can't even believe it. They were saying, Well, we don't feel he's an apostle and we're not allowing him to speak authoritatively for the Jerusalem church, blah, blah.
 
He says, incidentally, folks, the people in Judea who aren't even up there, just the plain old people in Judea, they heard that I had been a persecutor, but I now preach the faith, which once I destroyed and they glorify God on account of me.
 
You know what he's saying? He's saying you know-it-all Judaizers don't know as much as the hicks in Judea. They weren't suspicious, not at all. They were glorifying God on account of Paul. They probably heard reports and they were just praising God over what he was doing.
 
And here are these Judaizers trying to propagate the fact that he's no apostle. And so Paul sums up a crushing argument against them when he shows that the people who heard, who got the word, glorified God on account of him.
 
Now, it’s been 2,000 years; his authority is well-established; he wrote 13 books of the New Testament.  We know he is an apostle.  Why all this attention to the credentials of Paul? 
 
Because it's a basic point.
 
Go back to verse 11 and 12 and we'll wrap up.
The argument still exists today.  Many deny the Bible is the Word of God.  They refuse it’s message, which was his message, which is the message of salvation by grace through faith. 
 
It’s either true or it’s not true.  And that is the dilemma of the unbeliever.  They must accept God’s message or they reject His message. 
 
Paul says, “I only told you what God spoke to me and here it is, "...that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures; that He was buried and that He rose again the third day according to the Scriptures." You believe that? You believe Jesus died and rose again for our justification? That's Paul's message. It's either true or it's an outright lie. You need to decide.
 
And may I hasten to say this. To reject Paul is to reject God. And, I have belabored this point because I want you to know without shadow of a doubt that the New Testament is authoritative. The principle is clear. The authority rests in Jesus and His apostles.
 
Let's pray.