Only Peter and James
Galatians 1:18-20 · Randy Peterman · Feb 21, 2010
Galatians (2010), No. 08
Holly Hills Bible Church
https://hollyhillsbiblechurch.org/teaching/messages/4926155115079

Transcribed from the recording by SermonAudio, so expect the occasional misheard word.

Alright, if you have your Bibles, please turn to Galatians chapter 1. I'm going to go ahead and start reading in 15. I have a wireless mic so I can walk around. I can teach behind everyone and make it really awkward. Everybody else has got one? Alright. I want to quickly correct something I said last week. I had my orders of magnitude wrong and I wasn't sure about the number of square miles in the Arabian Peninsula. And it is 1.2 million square miles, not 12,000. Slightly different order of scale.

So, Galatians 1.15, he says, But when God, who had set me apart even from my mother's womb, and called me through His grace, was pleased to reveal His Son in me, so that I might preach Him among the Gentiles, I did not immediately consult with flesh and blood, nor did I go up to Jerusalem to those who were apostles before me, but I went away to Arabia, and returned once more to Damascus.

Then, three years later, I went up to Jerusalem to become acquainted with Cephas, and stayed with him fifteen days. But I did not see any other of the apostles except James the Lord's brother. Now in what I am writing to you, I assure you before God that I am not lying. Then I went on into the regions of Syria and Cilicia. I was still unknown by sight to the churches of Judea which were in Christ.

But only they kept hearing, he who once persecuted us is now preaching the faith which he once tried to destroy. And they were glorifying God because of me." Alright, so we have here on the handout, I created a micro outline, or a very terse outline in the top right hand corner. When we started out, Roger got to teach the introduction section of the text in 1-5. Paul introduces himself as the Apostle and carries on his typical greeting that he carries on about grace to God the Father and our Lord Jesus Christ in most of his epistles.

And then he comes in and immediately gives us a purpose statement in verse 6. talking about the Galatian church deserting the gospel of Jesus Christ. And then after taking on this desertion, because they had listened to outside speakers, he begins to defend his apostleship. And so we're continuing on in this passage about his apostleship. The thing that I think is interesting as we look at this We take his apostleship for granted. We're here reading the Bible and we have our canon. We have the 66 books and of course it's Paul the Apostle.

But he had come through Galatia and he had been an outsider. He'd been a former Pharisee. They may have heard his story prior to his showing up in the cities of southern Galatia. But he here is defending his apostleship. making sure that they understand that it was not his own doing, it was not that he was sent by man, but that he was sent by God the Father to give him this position.

The thing I want to take a look at today is that Paul is doing a really fast run-through of his testimony. If you ask me, Randy, what's your testimony, it would probably take me not only am I long-winded, but it would take me a while to go through my testimony, and I would share with you all the details and the nooks and crannies of the things that the Lord has done in my life. Paul doesn't take that labor into account, and he just gives us a quick rundown. So this morning as we take a look at 18 through 20, I want to take a look at the parallel passages, and we're actually going to step back a little bit earlier But we're going to take a look at the parallel passages between Acts and Galatians and make sure that we have a slightly more full understanding of those texts together.

The key part that we're looking at this morning is 18, 19, and 20, and so I want to consider carefully what looks at first like a discrepancy between Luke's account in Acts 9.26 and Paul's account in Galatians 1.18-19. Anytime there looks like there's a discrepancy, you always have to get worried that maybe the Bible has an error and you just found the first one. We can unfortunately understand that we have not found the first error in the Bible and we're okay. Our faith is not for nothing.

So we want to take a take a look at this and I actually want to start back we'll start back in if you've got if we can have some people like let's pick the people on the right-hand side, my right-hand side, so your left-hand side, depending on which side of the table you're sitting on.

See, it's Ruth's right-hand side too. And Gail's. Anyways, on this side of the room, if you will turn in your Bibles to Acts chapter 7, we'll start there. And on my left-hand side, or your right-hand side, depending on where you're sitting, stay in Galatians.

And we're going to jump back and forth, but we're going to try to construct a fuller picture of the account of Paul's conversion and the years leading up after this, up until his first missionary journey. So we're looking at the time from Paul's conversion, or actually the stoning of Stephen to Paul's conversion, up until his first missionary journey and seeing how those fit together in those two accounts. So, if I could get somebody to read Acts chapter 7 verses 58 through 60. That loud.

And cast him out of the city and stoned him. And the witnesses laid down their clothes at a young man's feet whose name was Saul. And they stoned Stephen, calling upon God and saying, Lord Jesus, receive my spirit. And he kneeled down and cried with a loud voice, Lord, lay not this sin to their charge. And when he had said this, he fell asleep.

So we have the first reference of Saul, or Paul, right there in Acts chapter 7. And this is a critical point, because here you have this very antagonistic, anti-Christian guy. He is really ticked off at Christianity. I mean, let's face it, if Christianity was replacing Judaism and it was a false teaching, and you were a Pharisee, you would be really tipped and you'd want to get rid of it. So Saul is not behaving in an irrational manner, but he's really upset about this.

The thing that I think is funny is that as a first world American, stoning doesn't show up. You're like, I'm really mad, let's go riot, let's boycott. We don't think, hey, let's stone somebody. That doesn't come into our thought. That was apparently culturally acceptable. So I'm grateful that now we don't have that choice. Tom, I see your hand over there in the corner. We do have rock concerts. I guess that's the closest we'll get. Thank you for that. That's going on the Internet.

In Galatians 1.13, he says, For you have heard of my former manner of life in Judaism, how I used to persecute the Church of God beyond measure and tried to destroy it. And those are not direct one-for-one correlations, but it's a reference from Paul about his involvement of persecution. If I could have somebody go ahead and read Acts chapter 9-3, we'll take a look here. And suddenly, a light from heaven flashed around him. And he fell to the ground and heard a voice saying to him, Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me? And he said, Who are you, Lord? And he said, I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting. But get up and enter the city, and it will be told to you what you must do.

And then in Galatians 1.12 he says, For I neither received it from men, nor was I taught it, but I received it through a revelation of Jesus Christ. We've already covered some of this in the Galatians class. I don't want to rehash too much.

But the thing that is interesting as we go through this is that Luke's account is in more detail, even though it's Paul's story. And I just think that's kind of funny as a long-winded individual, anytime I have the opportunity to say more words, I usually do. And Paul here is terse as he goes through. The thing I think is important though for us to consider is that the Holy Spirit inspired Luke and Paul through both of these letters. But we're grateful for the clarity that Luke brings. As we continue on in the story in Acts, Luke accounts for three days of blindness for Paul and then Ananias comes and prays for him and he's healed and is baptized and immediately begins teaching. Paul skips over all this. He doesn't really go in and account all of these details as we go through.

In 9.22 he says that they grew in strength and understanding and then he comes under persecution in Acts 9.22, I should say.

He comes under persecution and he mentions that in 2 Corinthians 11.32 as well. We won't turn there. But this persecution comes and so Paul is forced to leave the southern part there of Israel where he's been staying. And at that point in time, heads up to Jerusalem.

And this is where we need to look at the two texts between Acts 9.26 and Galatians 1.18 and 19.

Would somebody mind reading Acts 9.26? When Saul arrived in Jerusalem, he tried to meet with the believers, but they were all afraid of him. They thought he was only pretending to be a believer. Alright, so he comes up and they're scared of him. Now, this is not shocking.

You know, this guy's been persecuting everybody and as he tells in his account, Acts 7.58-6, he tells us that he had been persecuting people. So the believers there were concerned.

And he had come from Jerusalem where he'd been persecuting and then gone down and disappeared for a while. So maybe they were unaware of everything that had gone down there in the southern part of Israel, where he was in Damascus and the Arabian Peninsula, and instead there was fear. What's interesting is that as we keep reading here, in verse 27 of Acts 9, he says, But Barnabas took hold of him, and brought him to the apostles, and described to them how he had seen the Lord on the road, and that he had talked to him, and how at Damascus he had spoken out boldly in the name of Jesus. And he was with them, moving about freely in Jerusalem, speaking out boldly in the name of the Lord. So we have that account where we see that picture of From Luke's perspective, he's writing and there's a plurality of elders there, but when we take a look at 18 and 19, he says that he went up to Jerusalem and became acquainted with Cephas and stayed with him 15 days, but I did not see any other of the apostles except James the Lord's brother.

And so there's an apparent discrepancy. Oh no, we have apostles plural, and then we just have James and Peter. And there's a plurality there. So that's not a complete discrepancy. But if you just hear Apostles, do you think 12 maybe? Maybe you think 12 Apostles? That would be typically the way that we think of the Apostles. As they're outlined in Acts chapter 1. Peter, Andrew, James, John, James of Alpheus, Judas, Thomas, Matthew, Philip, Nathanael, Simon, and then Matthias who was chosen by Lot.

But Paul's perspective is to say, hey listen, I didn't get to meet with all the apostles. It's not that he's doing a head count so that you can be like, oh, he talked to Peter and James. He can be arrogant about that. It is instead, because he's defending his presentation of the gospel from being sent by men, as he accounted earlier in 6-10, and even in verse 1 of Galatians, He's accounting that I only saw these two, and Luke, when he's writing in Acts chapter 9, is merely stating that he met with the apostles that were there, and it's not a headcount. So while there is a mild appearance of discrepancy, it's not a critical issue where we have to start getting ready to burn our Bibles because they're full of error.

Now the interesting thing that comes after this, you look at the rest of this chart, Paul remained out of service for about 14 years from going out and doing missionary work and being active in spreading the gospel throughout the Roman Empire. He had about 14 years where he just stayed in Antioch, or southern Israel, and just stayed around and grew and continued to be trained and learn as a believer.

And then it wasn't until Acts 11, 26 records that Barnabas sought out Paul. Barnabas went down to Antioch and looked for Paul. He wanted to find this guy. The interesting thing is, Barnabas, was Barnabas an apostle? He's not listed in the original twelve.

But he was working very closely with the apostles and so Barnabas comes and he knows that Paul, who he has befriended and brought in so that Peter would even see him, he knows that Paul is genuinely a believer, that he's genuinely being used by God and he brings him in for fellowship, and Barnabas and Paul taught in Antioch for a year.

They basically held what I would consider, and I've heard various people say it, is basically seminary. Here you've got a year's seminary with Paul and Barnabas. That's pretty awesome. I'm glad they didn't have to take any Greek classes. They spoke it natively and then I have to argue about translation stuff. But they got a year of seminary with Paul and Barnabas and then the Holy Spirit sends them out. And we're not going to go over that too much because that's somebody else's lesson and I don't want to steal their thunder.

But the next thing we want to take a look at is the significance of him referencing James the Lord's brother as an apostle. And this is one of those things where I had to do a lot of thinking and head scratching on it, I'm not going to lie. This was something that on the surface was a little bit disruptive for me, along with having an apparent discrepancy about seeing all the apostles or seeing just a few of the apostles. James is not typically accounted as an apostle. He did not do the normal apostolic things, but Paul writes of him as an apostle. Now, if this was the only case of this, then we'd have another reason to start panicking and burning our Bibles. But fortunately, that's not the case.

If you're on the Acts side of the room, would somebody go ahead and turn to chapter 14, verse 4. But the people of the city were divided, and some sided with the Jews, and some with the apostles. All right. And earlier than that, I'm sorry, earlier in the text, let's see here. You see that Barnabas is there. Yes, I'm sorry.

So verse 15, 50 of 13 says that Paul and Barnabas were there. So Paul and Barnabas, he's saying, plural, apostles. So Barnabas is being lumped in there. One of the principles that seems to be in use in the New Testament is those that work closely with the apostles get called apostles outside of the original twelve. We can see another instance of that if you turn to Romans 16, 7. So we'll just keep moving right here.

Paul writes in Romans 16.7, Greet Andronicus and Junius my kinsmen and my fellow prisoners who are outstanding among the apostles who also were in Christ before me. So he calls these two other guys apostles And I think it's important to recognize apostle means a special messenger in the Greek. So it's not necessarily reflective of the original twelve, but it is a special purpose that is put in a few people's lives here.

Philippians 2.25, if you want to quick there and we're just going to run through all these so that everybody feels really comfortable that there are other people that are called apostles Philippians 2 25 But I thought it necessary to send you a papyrus my brother and fellow worker and fellow soldier who is also your messenger and minister to my needs the word messenger there is literally apostle your apostle and minister to my needs So he was sent as a special messenger from the Philippians to Paul.

And 1 Thessalonians 2.6. We'll see that Silas and Timothy and there he's, I'm going to start in verse 5, says, For we never came with flattering speech, as you know, nor with a pretext for greed. God is witness.

Nor did we seek glory from men, either from you or from others, even though, as apostles of Christ. I'm in second Thessalonians. I'm not in the wrong place. Nor did we seek glory from either of you or from others, even though, as apostles of Christ, we might have asserted our authority.

And Paul sends the letter in verses 1-1, Silvanus and Timothy. So Paul is grouping other peoples under that name of apostleship. So all of that to be said, that James being the Lord's brother and being counted an apostle is not a completely ridiculous thing for Paul to do and we don't have to panic about it.

Anytime we have an opportunity to explore something that might be considered a discrepancy, I'm always a fan of actually beating the dead horse in the sense that if we don't feel comfortable answering, if somebody comes to you and says the Bible is full of errors, and you don't have any answers, The first thing is that when somebody comes to me and says the Bible is full of errors, I always want to ask them where.

Because usually they say that kind of grand sweeping statement, and you say where, and they've never read the Bible and they don't know, they just heard that from somebody else. Which is a dangerous presumption. But in that case, if they do have some places, then we need to be prepared. We need to know why is this not a reason to be concerned? Why is this something that is there?

In this case, James being the Lord's brother actually, with Paul referencing him as an apostle, I think lends some credence to the validity of the book of James being in the canon of scripture. James worked in Jerusalem and was very consistent. He's said to be an elder of Jerusalem in church tradition. He was very consistently working and he was teaching there. The thing is that when he writes his letter in the book of James, who does he write it to?

He sends it out to those who are spread out, the Jews who were part of the diaspora or spread out from Jerusalem when the pressure got turned up in Jerusalem and the church split up. So that leads us to also believe that it was James the the brother of Christ who wrote that book. But there's some important relationship that comes from that later on in chapter 2 of Galatians. My thought on that is when you mention the words the church was split up, it's not the same as the church split up. It's more like God blew on the dandelions and the seed spread.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Not a church split, but an ascending. Doesn't it also say that when Jesus appeared to the people that it specifically says James in that passage? Where? Well, when he came back, I don't remember exactly where, I just brought that up, but I think it said that it appeared to 500 people and also to James. So it was a specific reference.

In Acts chapter 1 there are some First Contents 15. Okay. Go Rockets. Take away. Well, it's what Burns has been covering recently. That's not embarrassing at all. If you were paying attention in the main service, you would know. No, no, it's good. Always be prepared. I can't tell you to say be prepared for discrepancies and then not be prepared to answer that question.

And the reason I bring that up is because it's one of the James. Which verses are you looking at? 7. The thing is that James was part of that. There were two James's in the list of the Apostles, but James's brother was also there.

It doesn't appear that James's brother was a believer prior to the death, burial, resurrection, and ascension. He was probably just irritated that his brother was perfect and he wasn't. That is a classic joke in teaching about James, that it would be tough to be his younger brother. But the truth of the matter is, joking aside, it would be tough to be the younger brother of Jesus.

So we have this accounting of James. being an apostle, and it's not a ridiculous thing for him to be described as such. He didn't appear to leave Jerusalem. A lot of the apostles went out and were traveling, spreading the gospel message, well, a lot, all of them, of the Twelve, but James stayed in Jerusalem. So that made his function and his work there different than the others that were accounted there.

As we continue on in Galatians in verse 20, Paul writes that he's not lying. And I think that's one of those things that, on the surface, we kind of, as modern Americans say, well duh, of course he's not lying. Either you say he's not lying because he's an apostle writing the New Testament, or you understand that it would be inconsistent for him to be trying to lodge a logical argument and then having it be based on lies. But the thing I think is important is that Paul is basically giving an oath.

And when we think of oaths, what context do we have oaths today? Judicial in our court system. Marriage oaths or vows. If you go and you get a mortgage you sign about three trillion oaths in triplicate. If you join the military. So we have oaths in place.

The thing is that for a Jew to make an oath was very, very significant. It would have been very serious and if he had just, maybe he made an oath with, you know, I swear by the life of Elvis Presley or something, Anyways, it gets awkward. But Paul is swearing by God in his authority. And I wanted to take a quick journey back into Genesis where the first oath is, because this is the model that the Jews would have expected for an oath. This is the first recording of an oath by a man, because part of that God had made some oaths. He can do that because he's the maker of godly covenants.

But if we take a look at Genesis chapter 24 verses 3-9 we want to take a look at the significance of this oath because this is the significant oath that many Jews would have started with when they began to perceive an oath. Would somebody mind going ahead and reading out loud Genesis 24 verses 3-9?

I will make you swear by the Lord God of heaven I said to him, perhaps the woman will not be willing to follow me to this land. Must I take your son back to the land from which you came? But Abraham said to him, beware that you do not take my son back there. The Lord God of heaven, who took me from my father's house and from the land of my kindred, and who spoke to me and swore to me, saying, to your descendants I give this land. He will send his angel before you, and you shall take a wife for myself. my son back there.

So the servant put his hand under the thigh of Abraham, his master, and swore to him concerning the matter." There's a couple significant elements of this. The servant wants to make sure that he's really, really clear on what he needs to be doing. So that's important. One of the things we need to ask ourselves, why did he put his hand under Abraham's thigh? Anyone got any good guesses on why the thigh? Because they had no Bible to put his hands on. They had no Bible to put his hands on. Maybe he liked thighs and didn't like wings. Or drumsticks.

No, that was inappropriate. That's going on the internet. The thing that is important to understand is that when you made an oath in Jewish tradition, you would always have an oath and you would swear by something private or incredibly valuable. Now this is awkward, especially in a room primarily filled with ladies. Abraham, what was the sign of his covenant with God? Circumcision. So there's elements of the Hebrew word here that said that this was up very near the groin region of Abraham as a serious sign or a sign of the seriousness of the covenant. This is a very... Transgenerational. What? Transgenerational. No. Not something that could have import from time to time.

For the oath, yeah, it would be significant. In this case, the timeline was very specific. But the thing is that this is an oath that is very serious and is reflective of the most valuable and important things to Abraham. Put your hand over my thigh. Alright, we're all really uncomfortable here now, but now promise me that you're going to do this. And so this is the first oath. You're going to promise to God and you're going to put your hand near the most important parts of my relationship with God, or the outward sign of my relationship with God, and you're going to promise me you're going to do this.

So when Paul says I swear by the Lord. The Jews are coming back and they're starting here with Abraham. I swear by the Lord. And as you go through and you see promises with Moses and David and Joshua and throughout these things, when they make a promise, it's all in line with the seriousness of taking into account God's authority and God's statement.

We mentioned James earlier as the brother of the Lord and I don't want to to stop there. What does James tell us in chapter 5 verse 12 about oaths that we make as believers? Say yes or no. Let your yes be yes and your no be no. Don't swear by God or the altar or all these other things. And let's turn there because if we go by my recollection it'll be not as good as the inspiration of God. But doesn't this all fit in with covenant also, Randy?

Oh, it's definitely part of the nature of covenants and oaths James 5.12, this is where we want to take a look. He says, But above all, my brethren, do not swear either by heaven or by earth or with any other oath, but your yes is to be yes and your no, no, so that you may not fall under judgment.

And it's that so that you may not fall under judgment that he says, When he's being inspired by the Holy Spirit, he doesn't have to worry about suffering under judgment for an oath that he's not living up to. He's got it covered. the blessings and the curses. Because when you follow what you say and you follow what God tells you to do, there's blessings. But when you don't, then there's curses.

And they keep going back to that Deuteronomy statement throughout the whole Testament. That's the guideline that they're supposed to follow. It's honesty, truth, veracity. God's covenants come with a promise and a sign with them. And in the case of his His covenant with Moses there in the nation of Israel absolutely comes with some negative stuff, huh? James is also dealing with what Jesus said, I think, about the time of the Sermon on the Mount. Let your yes be yes and let your no be no. What's more beyond this is other than the devil. Yeah. And the judgment was definitely tying in with that.

So when Paul writes this, he's swearing by the Lord of the veracity. But a Jew, and we have to remember the Judaizers are attacking, and so Paul is responding to the Judaizers who are attacking Galatia. If he swears an oath by God, that's going to have their attention. Because you wouldn't do that lightly. You would certainly not swear by God if you were trying to pull a fast one. unless you want it to be stoned.

That's a good way to, you know, the next time Paul comes in we're going to really take him out because he's lying. So he wouldn't do this lightly and he says this, but if you're reading this, I'm in the church in Galatia, and you get this letter and it comes before you and you're reading this and you hear this, you're going to take that seriously and you're going to take into account that Paul is very, very seriously promising the solemn nature of this. His account that he gave is one that he probably already told him in person when he came through. He told him his account. And he's repeating it just in case they might have forgotten. And then he's swearing to it.

And I think that's also confirmed by what he says later when he, or I guess it would be later, when he said, I am judged by no man. So he's saying that his whole life is judged by God, not by man. And so when he's saying that here, you can see from his belief system, this is, like you said, extremely important for him, because he's being judged by God, not by man. So the truth is very, very important to him. Yeah. The nature of truth, and we could have an entire philosophical discussion if we wanted to. We've run out of time now. But the nature of truth is critical. A Jew understood truth very literally. They understood God was communicating to them very literally.

And our culture with post-modernism and the liberalism that's come and the American, I'll say, general conscience, conscientiousness or conscience of America, we're really passive about stuff. That's why we can have former President Clinton say, what is, is. Because he's going to deconstruct what you're saying and basically, suddenly, You've removed the argument by destroying the value of the words that were stated. A Jew would understand the words and the language and it would be critical. God wanted to talk to you and he used language to do it.

So you took it seriously. Even today in the judicial system and you swear and do an oath I don't think that perjury really means a whole lot to people. That's clearly a problem. Oh well, that escaped me at that point in time. Under this oath if you don't tell the truth then you are perjuring yourself. I don't think most people... The majority of people, and I'm thinking of the high profile. Yeah, there are some pretty blatant cases. Well, what's the worst that can happen?

You just go to jail, right? Yeah, yeah. You go to jail for perjury. They're trying me for something a whole bunch higher than that. So what if I don't tell the whole truth? Or what's the difference? He's a politician. What do you expect? Well, Paul considers perjury a big problem. When you look at 1 Timothy He actually lists that as one of the reasons that the law is given to bring condemnation so that people would respond to the gospel. His perjury is in that list.

I've got a few questions for discussion. These are somewhat philosophical. I like those things. Like I said, we're going to have a philosophical discussion. We'll probably have a short one until the bell goes. The first question I've got on here is, what is the biggest obstacle for the gospel in the world's system or the world's mindset? When you present the gospel, What are you asking them to do?

Believe in an absolute. You're asking them to believe in an absolute? By faith, too. By faith. The experiment hadn't been repeated since then, so it's difficult for a lot of people to show me. That's what they wanted. Like they're all from, was it Missouri? Yeah.

The world system is self-contained, it's the man-made logical system. There is no rationalizing with somebody where I'm just going to rationalize them to Jesus. And that's, you know, when Paul gives this defense, this account, it's to people who are already believing. When he comes in, he's going to share his testimony.

Oh, okay, I'm sorry. Go ahead. You're basically asking them to admit and agree with that mankind and me personally, we're not good enough. Yeah. We can't solve the problem. Well, that goes along with the absolute truth nature of the gospel. You have an absolute truth, you have a need, and you have someone who is willing to fulfill it. But you can't do it. The unmerited nature of grace is really offensive to the flesh.

I have a job, and I get to keep that job because my company is fortunately making money, and I'm doing a good job, so they merit me a wage. I live every day with a merit-based system. I get to drive my car because I have not exceeded the number of points that you can have deducted from your driver's record. So you have these points that come down. It's a merit-based system. Everything that we are surrounded by is merit-based on the earth. And you say, hey, I got this really cool not merit-based system. Want to buy in? What else do you got? So when we ask them, there's a major logical obstacle because of the way that we're wired as human beings. Now the thing is that the free gift of grace should be enough. But it scares some away.

The next question I've got here is, what can we learn from Paul's accounting of his testimony here about the approach one might want to take in the presentation of the Gospel? What does Paul's accounting of his testimony do? Where does he start with?

Well, he validates himself as somebody worth listening to. Where does his authority come from? But he also shows earthly validation that the people can relate to. He has a heavenly and earthly justification and he has a testimony to show that his records line up. From an accounting perspective, he's not running double books. He's got a solid testimony.

When I look at my testimony, I consider it important to show out or lay out all my cards. These are my failings and God has poured his grace out on those failings. If all you come across as is the mannequin version of Christianity without the failings, that's a problem. Paul doesn't hide the fact that he persecuted the church.

I'm sure in person he talked to them about all of the opportunities he had to imprison and be involved with stonings and doing those things. His argument also begins and ends with scripture. He's one of the most knowledgeable people of the Old Testament scriptures that there was. So he's honest, he's truthful, and he lets the scriptures speak for themselves. This is on the record by God. So when I share my testimony, what I've found often is that people want to sidestep the scriptures because that brings about what we talked about with the first question source of truth and an absolute truth and knowing truth. And that's scary, let's be honest. From a carnal mindset, from an earthly mindset, having truth means that there's something you can be judged by and you know you're not going to stand up to it.

I know I don't. Paul says he's chief of sinners. Can I do like runner-up? I really know where my flaws are. You know the best thing I love about having a vlog is airing those and then having nobody leave comments because I don't want to touch that. Me too, but no way I'm not saying that out loud. But Paul shares his account.

He has the history that's part of it and I think as believers being honest about our history is part of what gives people an ability to trust us. When the Jehovah's Witnesses or the Mormons show up at my door They just want me to buy in immediately and they don't give me any reason to do so other than maybe a pamphlet or tell me they got some guy that they believe in as a special revelation. I don't trust you. As believers, it is important for us to consider the trust element of our story.

That we have relationships with people. Our culture is, if you come in with religion, they're going to say, how are you different from the Mormons and Jehovah's Witnesses? They don't want to let you have that benefit of the doubt, which is probably good. It means there are fewer people becoming Mormons and Jehovah's Witnesses.

But as believers we need to be real and genuine. The next question I have here is, should we be prepared to defend the truth of the gospel and our presentation of the gospel? And the answer to that is obviously yes. What kind of preparation do you need? This is a wide open question. No answer is wrong unless it's wrong. You need to know the gospel.

I've been listening to a teaching series called the Bible Framework and it's online. If you google for Bible Framework it will come up. But I've been listening to this series and the guy's talking about one of the issues that New Tribes Mission ran into is that they came in, they had usually translations of the Gospel of Mark, they present the Gospel of Mark, and the people would respond, and they'd respond to the Gospel, and it was awesome, yay, awesome, and then trials would set in, and they found that some of the people were reverting back to the animism or the problems that were part of their pagan culture before Christianity. And what new tribes found is that they actually had to go back and present the character of God, starting back in some parts of Genesis and moving through the Old Testament, so that these people didn't feel like they were believing in just some new mystical concept that the missionaries had brought in.

They were believing in a person. So when we present the Gospel, we want to make sure that we consider that we're presenting the person of God, the person of Christ, and not just some nice idea that you're believing in. It's not pixie dust in Jesus, it's a person. So I just want to share that because I think it's an important part of Paul's testimony and his accounting here. He's naming the name and personhood of Christ and God. The last question I'm going to hear, and that's the bell, but we'll ask it, is what do we need to know about the source of our understanding of the gospel? And that really is a question about who is the source. Again, it comes back to the personhood of God and who He is.

I need to close in prayer because I actually have to go drink some water. I hope my voice comes back because I have to sing in the sanctuary. But let's pray and we'll close and please everybody have as much a discussion as you can. I'm going to have to go make sure my guitar isn't tuned.

Heavenly Father, we thank you for the opportunity to be here, to gather and talk about the reliability, the faithfulness, and the truthfulness of your word. We ask that you would constantly be renewing our hearts and minds as we take a look at what your scriptures reveal. Help us to understand the relationship that we have with you as a person, and the relationship that Paul had with you as a person and God, so that we can continue to understand more deeply his message that he shared with the church in Galatia. We just thank you for this time, in Jesus' name, Amen.