Rescued from this Age

We're going to try to finish up today these first few verses in the book of Galatians. We've talked about where the churches were. We'll mention them again today. And what I'd like to do and what I've been doing as we go along here, and I like to answer questions. I guess it's just that Socratic method I've gotten so used to. I think it makes sense for us to keeping our minds, well, what about that question? And is there an answer to it?

So so far, we've discovered a couple of things that Paul's insistence that is not Paul insisted that law keeping was not essential to be saved. and the adoption of what we might call apostolic succession or the fact that Paul was not appointed an elder or an apostle by man or through the agency of men.

He was appointed by the resurrected, glorified Christ himself. So he's made that point in verse 1 because he's been attacked on the issue of his apostleship. To meet these two evils that he has, he refuses succession. He constantly says, look, I didn't get my appointment from any man or the Lord didn't tell a man to come and tell me. He told me directly. And he proclaims that it's the impossibility of combining a legal system with the gospel for the means of salvation. You can't do that. So, verses 1 and 2, he sums up the truth about his apostleship, and verse 3 through 5, he sums up the truth about his own teaching.

So verse 2 says, And all the brethren who are with me to the churches of Galatia. We talked about, weeks past, where the Galatian churches were, who the Galatians were, what were the Judaizers, And what did the Judaizers teach? Pretty much we talked about all of that last week. Now we're going to talk about, can a believer tell, or we talked last week too, can a believer tell from God's Word the difference between a law-based righteousness and a faith-based righteousness?

Now, he starts out by saying, all the brethren who are with me greet you. Now, it's interesting because in Paul's letters, he will, at the end of them, He will mention people that send their greetings and want to be remembered. But if he mentions them at the beginning of a letter, it tells a whole different story. And the story is that they really were, all of the people that were traveling with Paul became joint authors of the letter. They were, even though Paul composed the letter, these people all agreed with what he was saying. and that they put their stamp of authority on it.

And that's why it's interesting to see all the brethren that are with me in the churches of Galatia. So why did he do this? He did it so that he's not the only one with the testimony. He's not the only one that has a problem with what we would call the Galatian error and the false teachers. All the brethren that were with him were identified with what he was saying, and they were communicating to the people in Galatia the same message by putting their stamp on it.

So, and he's not talking about all of the people that he, the churches and stuff that he had visited, like in Philippi and in Rome, or I hadn't gone to Rome yet, but in other places. He's talking specifically about this group that are walking with him now, okay? And he uses the word all. it would indicate that there were quite a few people there, there weren't just one or two, and that they were colleagues in his work in presenting the gospel ministry at that time to the churches of Galatia.

Now we've talked before, and if I can back this up, the churches of Galatia, I've got to go fast here, the churches of Galatia were primarily Lystra, Derby, Antioch, Pisidia, and Iconium. And these churches now were actually under the influence of false teachers. So he is dealing with those specific churches.

And when he uses the church, what does the word church mean? I've got to go to the new slide. Oh, wow, I've got all kinds of new ones. What is a church? It's a translation of the word ekklesia, and it means to be called out. We could use it. We would know that if the president decided that he was going to bring Congress back together next week, he would call them out to come back to Washington and come into session. That's exactly what this word means. It refers in the New Testament to a local group of believers, and less frequently it's referred to as the whole entire church, but they're called out ones.

The church is a spiritual body of people, not an earthly one, a heavenly body. And the believers received their apostolic epistles, namely All of these churches, Rome, Corinth, and the churches that we're dealing with, they've got their letters from the apostle who was called to be the apostle of the Gentiles. So Acts records the history of the founding of the churches while the epistles drill down deep into the doctrine and the conduct of these churches. So if you look in the body of scripture, you'll find that the church, or the called out ones, are represented by several different words. A lot of times it's referred to as a body. Ephesians 1, 22 and 23 sees it as a body, or it's represented by the word building.

Jesus is the chief cornerstone of that building, and that there are blocks and bricks that build this building or temple. that go forward as time goes on. And the thing was is that Jesus Christ was the foundation or the cornerstone and he specifically said to the disciples, it's my church and I'm going to build this church upon me. Not on Peter, not on anybody else. It's my church and I'm building it on me.

And that church is a unique We are all a unique group of human beings that have been called out, and we've been cruising along now for 2,000 plus years, and I think pretty soon the next great event in the church is going to take place, which will be the next great event on the earth, and that's the rapture. And we're all going to leave together.

It's going to be really neat. And we'll meet, we'll become the bridegroom, we'll meet the Lord in the air, we'll have gone through the judgment of rewards, and there'll be the wedding feast of the Lamb. All of that will take place coming up soon. Like I think Hal Molloy years ago said, you know, we could be one minute and seven years away from the Millennial Kingdom right now. Because we could all go now. I'm ready.

So the church is charged now because we're still here to watch and to wait and to look and to love and to be ready. The time is a mystery, but the facts are consistent with the church. It's our blessed hope that we're going to leave and be with the Lord and never ever be away from him ever. And that's really what the heavenly calling out is. We have been called out to heaven. We have not been called out to be necessarily earth changers. We are a heavenly body.

It's not acceptable, I don't think, for us as heavenly people to be confused with the regulations that go on in the earth. And what I'm talking about, there are principles that part of the Galatian book will talk about that have to do with the Jewish system. And the system of Israel is really earthly based. And if there's one problem we have as members of the body of Christ today, the problem is that the distinctive heavenliness and the calling of the church hasn't been preserved. We don't think of ourselves as heavenly people all the time. And we don't function in studying the Word of God that, wait a minute, we really are heavenly people.

Peter said we're sojourners and we're strangers to this land. We're just passing through. A sojourner, I thought, was a person who's just passing through. A stranger is someone who's passing through, but he bought a house and thought he'd stay a while. But this isn't our home. This is not our home.

If we imitate and we adopt what belongs singularly to another time, which is Israel, it always destroys the individuality and makes one unreal and kind of not understanding what's happening. We start mixing what God has for Israel and what he has for us, it gets to be confusing. So the first thing we should do is acknowledge the fact that the church is heavenly. It's not earthly. And then let us learn how a company who are altogether heavenly can function on the earth. That's what we learn.

But the failure of the church is to see that she is separated, she's a called out body for the purposes of God. His purpose, not mine. And we have a definite mission that's limited in purpose and scope. But if the church endeavors to take things, promises made to Israel, and about their earthly glory, and appropriate them over into the church age, That has done more to turn the church away from its appointed course than all the influences put together, and this was really the Galatian error.

I have an interesting time, or interesting letter. I just got it yesterday from a friend of mine in California, and this is a guy I thought I'd read a little bit to you. This will give you an idea of what I'm talking about. This is a guy who's been a believer for, he went to a Christian college, he's from the Midwest, and the letter is, he wrote to a group called Pacific Garden Missions. And here's what he says, I have been involved in some way with Pacific Garden Missions since 1967. and was made aware of a fabulous mission by a godly grandmother many years before that time. I'm writing to you because of your words used in the godly stewardship section of the December 2018 issue of your magazine. I quote these words from part of a sentence, quote, and donors and benefactors advancing the kingdom, we continue forward faithfully in His name."

His words gave me great pause. Would you be so kind as to let me know what you mean or are trying to convey to me or any other reader of that sentence? What's he complaining about? You get up in the morning and work for the kingdom? What is the kingdom? The kingdom is Christ's rule on the earth through the nation of Israel and the focus is on the earth.

That is not who we are. We are heavenly people. We are not to be advancing the causes necessarily of the earth. And so being a church, we're called out to do that. So verse three, he says, grace to you and peace from God, our father and the Lord Jesus Christ.

Why didn't Paul praise the Galatians like he did in all the other letters? I don't know if you're that familiar with the epistles, but this is pretty abrupt. In all the other letters, and the one that's most notable to me is Corinthians because they were just immoral and their society was a mess. But he praises them and he has a lot of nice things to say to them. He has nothing nice to say about the Galatians.

Why do you think that is? Because from his perspective, legalism is a bigger problem than sinfulness. Because legalism focuses you back on the earth and on yourself. And he says, look, this is a really big problem, much bigger than the immorality that was going on in Corinth. He could solve those problems much easier.

In Galatians, he just says, this is not who we are. We are not under the law. We are not under an earthly situation. So the greeting that he gives is suitable to what the problem is. And he addresses the Galatians. He doesn't even tell the Galatians that they're saints. He tells most other letters that he says, you are saints.

It shows you the extent of the seriousness of their defection. He also is concerned about the state of the apostle's mind as he contemplates. He's got to be exasperated because he's the one that visited all these churches and started them, and he started them on a grace basis. So, it has special significance since the letter, the recipients of this letter had turned away and were turning away from the doctrine of grace towards the legalistic teachings of the Judaizers, and we went through that last time, what that teaching was.

Now, the grace here, when he says, grace to you and peace from God our Father, that grace is a grace that would set one apart. We have been set apart by God to the grace of God. It's an enabling ministry of the Holy Spirit. And this is an important part. The Holy Spirit in our lives is the enabling ministry, minister of grace. The Galatian letter reveals the fact that the Galatian saints were being deprived of the ministry of the Holy Spirit.

Why? Because they were living under law, not grace. By teaching the teaching of the Judaizers, they took them away from grace, which is the lifeblood of a believer and the lifeblood of a church. The effect was that the growth in the church life was to be had by, they said, it was to be had by obedience to legal enactments of the Mosaic system. And coming under the Mosaic system in which there was no provision for an indwelling spirit for the ministry, it was set apart to believers. It's interesting, this morning at Sunday school, Courtney did a great job. He went through talking about there are those that think in Reformed theology that the reason we have been given the Holy Spirit is to keep the law.

The problem is that if you died to the law, Galatians 2.19 will say that I through the law am dead to the law for what purpose? That I might live unto God. And it talks about we have been crucified with Christ. The point is that the Spirit of God will not enact the law or enable you to live the law in any sense if you're dead to it.

That's not His ministry. His ministry is grace. To implement grace and to teach us grace and how to live by it. The other part of this verse is grace and peace, and the peace mentioned here is not just the peace of God, it's peace with Him. It's governed by one's ultimate... that God is the ultimate source of this peace, and that's the ministry of the Spirit. His job is to enable and to teach us about grace so we can settle down, and we can become receivers of God's blessings.

And that results in our being at rest and at peace. And then he uses a really interesting thing. He says, and God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. He gets the entire Godhead involved in this process, not only the Holy Spirit, but the Father and the Son. They are the joint source of all the grace that we have and all the peace that we have.

They cooperate with each other in carrying out the plan of man's redemption. So verse 4, Paul says, who gave himself for our sins so that he might rescue us from this present evil age according to the will of God our Father. So Paul had asserted the truth of his apostleship now and these verses he's going to start to talk about the beautiful summary of the truths that he taught. The first truth that he taught was to proclaim the greatness and the effectiveness of the work of Christ, the one who gave himself for our sins.

If you turn back away from that to law or ceremony or ritual, as if to add something What it does is it takes away the effectiveness of the work of Christ, and it casts a slur upon him. It was practically saying that, you know, the thought that he gave himself, this just isn't enough. His sacrifice wasn't enough. You've got to do some more.

Secondly, he taught that the work of Christ not only settles the question of the believer's sins, but it delivers them from this present evil age. Those who would put us back under the law desire to make a fair show in the flesh, but what are they doing? They want us back connected with this present evil age. Thirdly, he taught by the apostle that according to the will of God and our Father, and above all else, it redounds to his glory. That's why he does everything for his glory. To put a believer back under law was simply to indulge the will of man and exalt men by seeking to make a fair show in the flesh. That's what they were doing.

That's glory in the flesh, it's not the glory of God. Right here, in this verse, he presents the worth of the person of the Lord Jesus Christ and the work that he did. and it met all of our needs, separating us from the world and affecting the will of God for this eternal glory of God.

The brethren called the apostate church Christendom, and I really like that term. Christendom has largely fallen into the Galatian heresy. Most Christianity today lives in this Galatian heresy. They make a profession of Christianity And it practically sets aside the work of Christ by the works of men.

If there's any sense in which you have to do anything about your sinfulness, then you have taken away from the precious work of the Lord Jesus on the cross. It leaves man in the world with the vain endeavor of making it a better and a brighter world. And it seeks to carry out the will of man for the glory of man, working for the kingdom. next part of that verse, he gave himself for our sins. The Galatian Christians were practically ignoring the substitutionary work and the atoning death of the Lord Jesus, a declaration on the ground of acceptance with God. That's what they were doing.

Galatians 2.21 says, I do not nullify the grace of God, for if righteousness comes through the law, then Christ died needlessly. If you could get righteousness any other way, then why did Christ have to die? He doesn't. That's the whole point. He doesn't.

I'm going to read something else I saw this morning I thought was kind of interesting about this. This is from a book, and by the way, Friday night we're going to hand these out to everybody, by C. H. McIntosh. He says, our blessed Lord might have come into the world of sin and sorrow. He might have become a man. He might have been baptized in Judea, in the Jordan. He might have been anointed by the Holy Spirit, tempted of Satan in the wilderness. He might have gone about doing good.

He might have lived and labored and wept and prayed and at the close gone back to heaven again, thus leaving us involved in a deeper gloom than ever. He might, like the priest or the Levite in the parable, have come and looked upon us in our wounds and misery and passed by on the other side and returned alone to the place where he came from.

And what if he'd done this? What reader but the flames of an everlasting hell for you and me? For it be remembered that all the living labors of the Son of God, His amazing ministry, His days of toil, His nights of prayer, His tears, His sighs, His groans, the whole of His life's work, from the manger up to but short of the cross, could not have blotted out one speck of guilt from the human conscience." What if He didn't die?

We, of all people, are the most miserable. The key issue is that He did die. He did atone for our sins. He did take it upon Himself to solve this issue. He gave Himself for our sins. Anything other than that, anything other than that, leaves us in the most miserable place, I think. He's bringing that against what the Judaizers taught.

They taught a bloodless religion by human works, and he taught the substitutionary work of the Lord Jesus Christ. The Lord Jesus took our place, He took your place with relation to our sins, and He gave Himself a sacrifice that would perfectly satisfy the just demands of God. And God's holy law too, with the human race, had totally violated.

So, and why? That he might deliver us. Now think about this deliverance. It doesn't say that the gospel is just, we just got moved from one apartment to another, or from one location. Notice he uses the word rescue. The gospel is a rescue. It's an emancipation from a state of bondage, and the word here denotes not removal from, but a rescue from, from the power and the moral characteristics of this present age.

To quote a quote that I found, how do you define what the world is? Listen to this quote, this is really good. The world is all that floating mass of thoughts and opinions, maxims, speculations, hopes, impulses, aims, aspirations, at any time current in the world, which it may be impossible to seize and accurately define, but which constitutes a most real and effective power. being the moral and immoral atmosphere which at every moment of our lives we inhale, again inevitably exhaling. What a definition of a world that is.

It's a particular period in human society, this whole environment that we live in that started with Adam and was existing when Christ came. And it'll be existing when he comes again, but he'll change it then. and it won't be this present evil world. It's going on all the time, right now, and it's evil. And one last thought. The word evil here is the word pineros, which means not only am I contemplating and accepting evil for me, but I want you all to join with me. I'm working really hard to get all of you involved in the evil. That's the way the world functions. That's the way this word, world evil, is. So Webster says, like Courtney says, the great definer of spiritual thought, Webster says, that is pernicious, which works mischief and destruction.

So all of this is done according to God's will. This is all His idea and His program and according to the will of God and our Father. According to His plan, not according to our plan. According to the proportion that He's set up to be reconciled to Him. The quality of what He did rescued us, therefore, according to procedures prescribed by Him, not prescribed by us. We cannot earn what Christ has secured for us freely. It's impossible to do. Salvation is given freely. It's a gift. It's gratis. A translation of this would be, who gave himself in behalf of our sins so that he might rescue us from this present pernicious age according to the will of God the Father.

And verse 5 just sort of sums it up and says, To whom the glory forever and ever. Amen. When you begin to understand what Christ has done, you can't help but glorify God forever and ever. Let's close. Father, how we thank you for your word. We thank you for the grace that we're under. We desire to grow constantly in the knowledge and the grace of your Son, the Lord Jesus, to be conformed to his very image, that we might function as a heavenly group of believers to a lost world. And we pray in your Son's precious name. Amen.