Intro to Galatians I

Good morning. We'll be continuing our worship time together as we behold the Lord through his word. I'll go ahead and read the scripture passage, which will be, I will say, a theme towards the end of today's message here. It's Galatians 2.20. I have been crucified with Christ and it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me. And the life which I now live in the flesh, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself up for me."

As we start into this, I just want to point out we're definitely into a spring season, and a number of you know what that means. Lots of lawn, right? And yes, I know some of you are still a little tired from the snow that you shoveled Saturday morning that didn't come.

But it'll fly along, believe me. Some of you will fly along with this process in delight. Others in a little distress, but it'll fly along. It'll happen. Don't worry about that. Today there are quite a number of new technical accommodations which may help the process. So anyway.

But we ourselves will be cutting some new turf today. And this new turf we'll be cutting is our study of the book of Galatians. We'll be starting a study of the book of Galatians. It'll proceed pretty much verse by verse. We've got today and next week looking at an introduction to the book. And so that's what we'll be moving through today. Galatians is a letter that is special. It is not that long, six chapters.

But it is particularly hard-hitting, especially at first, and sometimes towards the middle even. Very hard-hitting book, and at the same time, it is also a book in which Paul displays that he is very much caring for these people. He cares for them deeply, which is one of the reasons why he speaks so strongly in this letter. The other thing is, it contains certainly some valuable principles, but also Paul's heart comes out in this letter.

He is not just writing something that's just raw doctrine that you would put on your hard drive and leave it, or put on a piece of paper and put it on the shelf. It is an exposure of his heart. This is what he not only knows, but feels very deeply, being one who personally saw the Lord. who personally fellowshiped with the Lord. His conveyance of those truths to these people is not a secondary thing. He has it from the heart. We'll be walking along side by side as we go through this biblical adventure, I'll call it.

And Paul's going to be giving for us some incredibly valuable insights. And we want to make sure that we savor each one of those. And it'll be valuable not just to sort of have on the shelf, but even for today and for every day. We're going to be looking at this letter that Paul wrote to the churches in Galatia. We're going to get critical insights into our own fellowship with the Lord. And it also gives valuable insights to our relationships with one another here in this body.

And as we proceed through it, The reality is, as I've looked this thing over, there isn't any time in any of our lives that Galatians doesn't touch on. It isn't one of those things that you can read and look at and say, well, sometime I guess I'll use that. No. It's exceedingly valuable every minute. And that's one of the things that I look at and I say, this is great stuff.

This letter tells us early on, we're going to see in early verses there, and even later on, it's going to talk about how life is to be lived. No, not in setting down a bunch of rules and even how-tos, but what are the principles by which we are to live? By which life are we to live? He makes it quite clear. Now, so we have an owl question, a who, okay? Now, some of you are looking at this. Yes, that's an owl boy. It's not a towel boy. It's an owl boy. So, we'll ask the first question.

Paul very clearly wrote this letter. As a matter of fact, it's real interesting. Even those who have a very skeptical view of Scripture, and even would like to be able to say Paul didn't write it, are oftentimes forced to say, yeah, he did. This is one of those things. It's so clear that he wrote it. by his authorship, we'll be taking a closer look at Paul's life because the very contents of the letter on into, I'd say especially the second chapter, talks about Paul's life. And so we'll be taking a look at Paul's life particularly. But the present question, the one for us to scratch our heads about a bit here, is who are the Galatians? Who are the ones that Paul wrote to?

And over the centuries, there have been two major schools of thought, and I would add particularly that there's a northern school and a southern school of thought, okay? And the southern Galatian view is actually, generally speaking, more recent, but it's also been one that's more recently prominent. And so anyway, there's the Northern Glacier View and the Southern Glacier View.

Okay. All right. Now, what we want to do, here's a map of the Eastern Mediterranean, and you have Greece there, kind of up on the upper left, and then what is now Turkey on the upper right, and then Israel, lower right. Okay. Now, we're going to zero in on this part that's now Central Turkey.

The Northern Galatia View says that Paul wrote to the churches that were in ethnic Galatia. Interestingly, it's a group of people that are Celtic that came there about 280 BC. And so the Northern Galatia View sees that this letter is written to those people. Very interesting. And that would be three cities in particular that are dominant in that area.

And then the Southern Galatia view says that Paul wrote to the churches that were in the Roman province. This is a political province. When the Romans came in, they said, well, we'll call Galatia the area where the Galatian ethnic group lives, and throw some other areas into that, and we'll call it Galatia. So that view looks at mostly these southern cities, Antioch, Iconium, Lystra, and Derbe as being the target audience for the Book of Galatians.

And in fact, if that's the case, it could even include the ones in Northern Galatia. I would say here that the evidence strongly favors the Southern Galatian view. There's a supplemental handout if you want to take that up and take a look at it, and I'd be glad to discuss it. I would even say that it strongly favors that view, but I'll not go into the details on that now.

The Southern Galatia view sees the churches in this letter, this Galatians here, as those that Paul had established in his first visit and revisited in his second and third visits. Acts 13 starts the first missionary journey that Paul took together with Barnabas. And then he visited those cities in what is the southern part of the province, the Roman province of Galatia. And then Paul drew some helpers also from these very same churches.

We have Timothy from Lystra, possibly Iconium, because the fact is the book of Acts there in chapter 16 says the people of both cities spoke well of Timothy. So it may be one of those places where he spent time at both. There's also Gaius from Derbe. So there's another city that's mentioned. So we have particular helpers to Paul coming from those cities.

Here is a picture of Pisidian Antioch. Now, one of the reasons why you might wonder, what's this Pisidian thing? Brace yourself. There are 17 cities in what was ancient Turkey named Antioch. So try to keep that straight. So what they do is they'll say it's this one or that one and put another name with it. That's an instance here. It's Pisidian Antioch to say specifically which one.

Here is the synagogue ruins in that particular city. Over on the upper right, you have Iconium, and so there's a shot in the foreground, kind of lower rolling hills and off in the distance, you notice there's some more snowy covered peaks. Lystra, which is the likely place of Timothy.

Also an area of kind of rolling hills and off in the distance snow-covered peaks. And then finally Derby, similar description there. One of the interesting things is if you look at this, we ought to be fairly well feeling at home. Why? All four of those places have low rolling hills with snow-covered peaks off in the distance. Sound familiar? Okay. And so, at least in terms of the geography, the physical geography, it would be a place that we would say, hey, that feels kind of comfortable. Assuming you're comfortable here. Okay. Now let's look at a timeline. What does this mean, timelines? The timeline looks like this.

Here's Paul's first missionary journey described in Acts 13 and 14. It would be bracketed by the years 46 through 48 AD. And so here's Paul, and we call it Paul's first missionary journey. That particular one, Barnabas, was with him during that journey.

Here is a map of the journey, and I'll bring out something about the map. Your page two of the map has some different maps, and the reason for doing that is for me to comply with copyright requirements. So, at any rate, that's the reason for the different maps. If you can track with me here, that's fine.

Paul's first missionary journey with Barnabas here, described in Acts chapters 13 and 14, takes him into each of these four major cities of southern Galatia. And what does he do? They track back through those very same cities, revisiting each of the churches, and in each church, chapter 14, I believe it's verse 23, appointing elders in each one of those cities as they make a return visit through each of them. So, traveling through each of those four primary cities.

Then, what happens? See these guys up in the upper right? These are guys that have earned the name Judaizers. You won't find that word in Scripture, per se. But what does it mean? It's those who say, alright, believe in Christ, and that's all good and well, and Christ came and died for your sins, but you still got to follow the Mosaic Law. So that's the plan. So these guys come in and they say, you know, all that stuff about believing Christ, that's great, but you still got to do all the law, the whole thing.

Everybody, Gentiles included. So these guys come on the scene very shortly after Paul and Barnabas have left these churches. These guys come in swooping in with their legal teaching. Paul gets wind of it and he's, whoa, we got a problem here. And so he writes this letter to these churches, and the letter is sent off not to one specific church, but to the whole group. Apparently the Judaizers have gotten to them all. Then we find in Acts chapter 15 what's known as the Jerusalem Council. The apostles and the elders in Jerusalem gather together with some others, who include Paul and Barnabas, meeting at the council there in Jerusalem to sort out this issue of, hey, what are we going to do with the Gentiles and the law?

So that's the next part. This is all happening in a fairly tight sequence here. The next one, Paul's second missionary journey, he goes back to these cities, to the churches that are established there, and lays out, hey, this is what the apostles have decided, and just so you know, to clear this thing up. So here's Paul's second missionary journey.

He comes from Jerusalem, where they've had the council. He heads up through Antioch, where he has actually a written letter that he takes from the apostles and elders in Jerusalem. And then he takes subsequently into Tarsus, his own hometown, and then into these very same cities that we just looked at. Now, in his third journey, what does he do? He starts in the Antioch and he visits the same churches again to strengthen them and to reinforce the message that he'd gotten before and to build them up in the Lord.

Now, how old were these people? You look at these people who are in this church, we're not concerned about chronological age, they're probably of a whole range of chronological ages. It's how old are they in the Lord? That's the question. Given the timeline that we just walked ourselves through in looking at it, the believers to whom Paul was writing the book were at most about two years old in the Lord, some maybe close to three years old in the Lord. Plus, there would be others who would come to the Lord since that time. So you'd have anything from brand new believers to those who had been about two years old in the Lord, maybe some of them approaching three years old in the Lord. Then, what do we have here?

Paul and Barnabas had appointed elders, but how old in the Lord were these elders? Actually quite young. So here they're very young in the Lord, But, on the other hand, that's the way all the churches were because the church had just begun in this area. So all the elders are young. Later on, Paul directs that don't have young believers be elders. In this case, they have no choice.

That's a subsequent piece of wisdom. Paul wrote to the churches in Galatia to address a problem. Something to bring out, and some folks are kind of shocked to hear this, most of the New Testament epistles were written with a significant portion of the letter to correct doctrinal and moral problems. Most of the New Testament letters were of that character. There was one class, I believe it was at a Bible college or seminary. The professor went and took the whole class and said, okay, I want you to group up in groups of like three or four people and I want you all to go off and study and come back when we meet again and tell me what's the number one issue in the letters written in the New Testament.

Number one issue. And it all came back, interesting, every group came back. Correcting false doctrine. Number one issue. And same thing here. That's exactly what Paul's doing. He's correcting false teaching. This is true, this is false, drawing a line between. So, we got a question here. Okay?

How big of a problem are we talking about here? There's this problem he's dealing with. How big of a problem are we talking about? Paul answers as he writes his letter, and we'll be getting there and dealing with it in more detail. I am amazed, Paul says. I am amazed. What is he amazed about? I'm amazed that you are, what did he say? So quickly. So quickly, deserting Him who called you by the grace of Christ for a different gospel.

This isn't, hey guys, you've got a little tarnish there, you've got to polish it up a tad. This isn't, hey, you need a little straightening on the house frame. No. This is, you guys have fallen off the foundation. Major, major problem. Here's Paul and Barnabas, as we talked about, just got through going through these churches, looping back through, and here they are. They've been teaching the believers in these churches. I mean, here's apostolic teaching. You can't ask for better. They've been getting apostolic teaching and they're letting it slide. And what did Paul say? Quickly. Quickly. It had not been long. He says, we just got home. And now we got word that you guys are going off track.

They'd fallen for a different gospel. Three primary doctrinal problems. Three of them. The first one, some Jews who were insisting upon the law of Moses for believers taught a couple of things. The law is required in order to be saved. You don't follow the law of Moses, you're lost. Believe in Jesus, that's cool. I mean, that's fine. But you still got to follow the law.

Every jot and tittle. And don't you dare eat that apple with a worm in it. And don't go out for lobster for lunch. No good. You've got to follow the law down to the last little jot and tittle. You've got to dot your t's and cross your i's, right? The next thing, the law is required. Now once you follow the law in order to be saved, you've got to keep following it to stay saved. How about that? It doesn't do any good to just get in the front door. You've got to keep on following the law down to every fine detail. Check the wormholes and the apples.

Follow the law down to every fine detail in order to stay saved and stay in good standing with the Lord. That's what they're teaching. Most of what we're going to read as we go through this letter is going to be focused on those things right there. Paul is going to be addressing that in major part in this letter. There's another area, though, that he addresses, especially, I would say, in chapter 5. This siren song of immorality from the pagans. Here you've got the Jews who say, you've got the Mosaic Law and you've got to stand by that. And then you've got the pagans out there who say, Mosaic Law? What law?

Go ahead, indulge the passions of the flesh to the max. Matter of fact, we'll even make it really good, we'll make it a spiritual activity. And that's exactly what they did. Prostitutes up at the temple. Worshipping the god Bacchus, also known as Dionysius.

Get blitz drunk for three or four days and tear up small live animals with your hands. Crazy stuff. Crazy stuff. So, imagine here are these Galatians. You pick between the way things are being presented, pick between the Law of Moses, and boy you better do everything down to the finest detail. Or, a wild, insane lifestyle. What a wild set of alternatives have been presented here.

Now, they went from listening to Paul, a very short period of time, to following these Judaizers. What did that entail? Paul wrote in Galatians 4, 13 and 14, I preached the gospel to you the first time. Isn't that what he did? Acts 13 and 14, very first time. You received me as an angel of God, as Christ Jesus himself. Did they receive what he said? Yes! Yeah! How quickly! The foundation slid out from under them. Then, the Jews came from Jerusalem teaching a different gospel.

That's how Paul identifies it in Galatians 1.6.

Living by the law of Moses in order to be saved, in order to remain in fellowship with Christ. Different gospel. These Judaizers, and again that's a term that's been applied to them, Not something you'll see directly in scripture, but these Judaizers who are coming from Jerusalem would say that Paul, the original teacher of these Galatian believers, was not one of the original twelve. Paul does not have the proper credentials. The Judaizers said they were bringing the true message. We've come from the apostles in Jerusalem.

And we're telling you this Paul guy is off the wall. You guys need to follow the law. Set aside Paul's message. He doesn't know what he's talking about. And there's a bunch of reasons we don't want to listen to that. You want to follow the law. And so that's what they laid down. So the Judaizers were also claiming, as we'll see fairly shortly, that Paul is just a man pleaser. He tells people what they want to hear. But you guys need to follow the law and forget what Paul said. A number of the believers were seriously sidetracked by the teaching of these legalists. You've got to follow what we say and you've got to practice the law of Moses.

You look at the timeline here. Galatians here was written right before the events described in the Council of Jerusalem. Let's take a look at what that led up to, because here's the Judaizers saying it right out. You'll see what we just talked about.

Plain as day. Some men came down from Judea and began teaching the brethren, unless you are circumcised according to the custom of Moses, you cannot be saved. I don't know what they did with the gals. Unless you're circumcised, according to the custom of Moses, you cannot be saved.

So at least they got something for the guys. And when Paul and Barnabas had great dissension, ah, so Paul and Barnabas did not agree with this, right? Right at the outset. So now they get face-to-face and nose-to-nose. They had great dissension and debate with them. The brethren determined that Paul and Barnabas and some of the others of them should go up to Jerusalem to the apostles and elders concerning this issue. Let's get this thing settled. Let's get this thing dealt with. This is not going to set. What happened?

Verse 4, when they arrived at Jerusalem, they were received by the church and the apostles and the elders, and they reported all that God had done with them. This is in the churches there in southern Galatia. But some of the sect of the Pharisees who had believed stood up saying, what did they say? It is necessary to circumcise them and direct them to observe the law of Moses. We've got to get these Gentiles completely under the law.

So, as we walk through this letter, we're going to see three different cultures stand out. One will be Roman culture. The next will be Greek culture. And as you notice, I've got a stripe across the middle because these guys ran stark naked. And then the Jewish culture. We're going to see those three cultures standing out. Let's take a look first at the Roman culture, just a quick glimpse to get an idea.

Sidi and Antioch and Lystra, Lystra is the place where likely Timothy was from, were both Roman colonies. What does that mean? The Romans established a colony there and they expected the people that they put there to express the Roman culture through and through, to eat, breathe, and live Roman culture. They expected those people to be the perfect picture of loyalty to Rome. But when you hear the word Rome, your ears pick it up and your heartbeat steps up and you just all of a sudden think Rome. You think Roman. That's what those people were assigned to do.

We're going to see that coming out in this letter. We're going to see that Paul took a number of illustrations from Roman law, one of them that he brought out. And here's one of the points that I think is key. Galatians is one of all the New Testament epistles. It has more examples of influence of Roman law than any other letter, specifically Roman law. And I think that's one of the reasons you have two of the four cities are Roman colonies and the others are right nearby.

He knew they had a strong Roman background. He himself was a Roman citizen. Roman citizens quite commonly were brought up to know very well what that meant. It was not taken lightly. One of the points that comes out in this letter is he talks about the adoption of sons. That was a Roman legal matter, and we'll take a look at the significance of that. It's huge. It's big.

Now, the Greek influence, and notice I picked something I don't have to put a stripe across here, but anyway. These cities also had Greek cultural influence for more than three centuries. Well, it had been more than three centuries since Alexander the Great came sweeping through. And when Alexander the Great came through, he said, guess what? You guys are going to learn Greek, our form of Greek. And you're going to learn Greek culture, and you're going to learn Greek philosophy.

And so there was that influence and it had been there in that area for over three centuries. They were steeped also in the Greek culture. That would explain why Paul could write this letter to them in the Greek language. This Greek cultural influence would also explain why when Paul and Barnabas went into these cities, some of the people there began to worship Paul and Barnabas as Zeus and Hermes. because that's some of the Greek names for the gods that were popular among the Greek culture.

Now there's also a Jewish influence. Now the Jews were a minority, but a significant and strong minority in this area. We have obviously the synagogue ruins from Sidi and Antioch. But the Jews had been living there in that area for about two and a half centuries, a great number of Jews. And this Jewish influence is evident in chapters 13 and 14 of the book of Acts. And beyond that, it would also explain why Paul is going to use as a significant reference in this book, Abraham and Sarah and Hagar. He's going to make reference out of the book of Genesis and those two separate passages there.

Now, Galatians is also a big chiasm. You don't have this in your handout, and there's a reason for that, but for those of you to whom that might be a new thing, chiasm is a mirror image in writing. The entire book is one large chiasm. We'll go into that in more detail next week to outline what that means. Okay, now, we're going to be turning a corner here. Turning a corner is this. We have the best alternative, right in front of us here, in the entire universe, to legalism.

That's Galatians 2.20. Here is Paul sending this message to them, and notice he makes it very personal. There's a reason for that, too, we'll look at next week. He makes it very personal. He doesn't say, you've been crucified with Christ. He says, I have been. Very personal. You see, the Judaizers, the ones who would come in saying, you've got to follow the law of Moses. Those guys would say, the law is your life. Yeah, they'd say the law is your life. What did Paul say?

Christ lives in me. Or more directly, as he said in Colossians 3.4, Christ who is your life.

Here in Galatians 2.20, he very distinctly, and right at the outset, makes clear that we've been crucified with Christ. But also implied, since Christ is my life now, the implication also is that He has been raised, and we are raised with Him. This, I have been crucified with Christ, interestingly, that I have been crucified with is all one word in the Greek.

It's a perfect passive indicative verb. Now, what does that mean? Well, you know what perfectly passive means. It's a perfect passive indicative verb, and that means this. First of all, it's a verb. That means there's an action. A verb means there's an action.

The perfect tense means it's a completed past action with ongoing results into the future. Remember how we illustrated that? A completed past action, ongoing results into the future. Cut the top off the carrot and throw the top away. Completed past action, ongoing results in the future.

That's what he said here. You have been crucified with Christ. It implies permanence. That you are crucified with Christ has impacts now, will have impacts into the future. And the implication is it's not reversed. It's permanent. It's a done deal. I've been crucified with Christ. The results keep on going and going and going and going.

That's the intent, the meaning of the perfect passive there. Now, the passive part means that God is the one who does it. Do I have to work to be crucified with Christ? Let's try that. Did I do anything? This is not something that self-effort is going to help with.

The crucifixion with Christ is something God does. That's what the passive part. So the perfect ten says it's already done, completed. ongoing results. Passive means God did it. I'm the recipient of the action. I don't have to try to make it happen or try to do it or keep it up. The indicative simply says it's a fact. It's a spiritual fact revealed to us.

Everyone who is a believer, each one here this morning that is a believer, This is not something that's hoped for. It isn't just a possibility. It'd be nice, right? No, not that. Not something for us to work at. It's a done deal. God did it. It's forever good. So, think about this. I have been crucified with Christ.

You remember when that happened, don't you? Remember what it felt like? You have a recollection of it, of course. No, right? Here's the amazing thing. He makes this statement. It's a fact. It's an already done deal. You and I have no recollection of being there. That would be my guess, right? It isn't something that we feel has taken place. It isn't something that we would like to have taken place and are just hopeful that it has.

It is a spiritually revealed fact that we count upon. That we as believers are to count upon. Because of that reality of being co-crucified, crucified together with Christ, the one who I was died. That's a done deal too. And what's the consequence? I'm no longer the one doing the living. Christ lives in me. Christ is the one now doing the living in this body that walks the planet. In essence, the old me is done here. Done. I'm through. So let's take a look at that.

The life that is shown forth from this body, that's what he means by the flesh, this flesh here. It's not the life source that I once tried to live by. It's not the old college tribe. But it's the resurrected life of Christ. It's that life. The Son of God. How does that take place? How does that happen in our lives?

By faith alone, none other. Faith in the spiritual facts that have been revealed. It's not an acting job. It isn't my asking some question like, what would Jesus do, and trying really hard to do that. But it is not an acting job, it is His living out His life through me by faith. And that's all we have. We have nothing more to add to it by faith. On the Good Friday service, we brought out a repeated series of passages that talked about Christ loved and gave Himself up for us. Some of you will remember that.

John 3.16, Galatians 2.20 here.

Ephesians 5.2 and 5.25. Again and again, we saw Christ loved us and gave himself up for us.

We'll see in Galatians 1.4 that there's at least a part of that very same message.

Galatians 1.4 also says the Lord Jesus Christ who gave himself for our sins. If you think about it, what Christ did on the cross was he conducted a spiritual financial transaction.

That's why, as we explained in the Good Friday service, he could say, it is finished. And he used an accounting term. It's a done deal. I paid it all. One way to look at it, he paid full price. Christ didn't come in and say, I'm going to pay the full price of all Vern's sins, but I've got a coupon here. It's good until May 30th. He didn't say that. He didn't do that. He paid full price. for the sins of you and me. All the way. Done deal. He did so, not just to give us eternal life insurance, or as we've said it, get out of hell free, but to impact the right nows for all of eternity.

Because you notice he says, Christ lives in me, present tense. It is God's intent. that Christ's life be lived in each of us now. Remember, these are young believers. Christ living right now for each believer. There is no reason spiritually why not. Your death with Him back then, and now His life in and through you every day, until the day we see Him face to face.

That's God's provision. That's what the Lord has made available to us. Amazing. His life now, while we go to work, while we are at home together, while we're driving down the road, in the grocery store, every minute, all the time, His provision is always there. Christ, present tense, continues to live in me. His life.

In John 10.28, the Lord says, My sheep, I am constantly giving them life. Continuing to give life. His life.

All and only by faith. That's all we can do. Only by faith. Let's pray. Lord, as we look at this passage, we certainly have an incredible adventure ahead of us, looking at what you have laid out in your inspired Word. And Lord, as we look at this passage, we see not just Paul correcting a problem that showed up almost 2,000 years ago, But we see Paul laying out truth that impacts me every second for every moment that I live still on this planet and for each one of us. What marvelous truths. What depth. What infinite grace. We thank you for it all. In Jesus' name, Amen.