Study inGalatians

Presentation 02

Paul’s GospelChap 1v11-24

Presentation 02

Presentation 02

IntroductionA woman who was recently converted began to read through her N.T. and had this to say, “I’m sorry but I find Paul a bit big-headed. Why does he spend so much time talking about himself?”

This reaction is one that is shared by many newcomers as they stumble into the Pauline epistles. We began to see in our last study, that there were occasions when the Paul was forced to speak about himself in order to defend his office. You see if the integrity of his person and office was undermined, then the gospel which he preached on his missionary journeys would also be seriously undermined.

Presentation 02

IntroductionJohn Brown, in his work on Galatians has this to say:“A minister of the gospel should try to forget himself and make his hearers forget him. His ambition should be to be a voice proclaiming Christ... But it is obvious that ministers of the gospel may be placed in circumstances in which duty absolutely requires them to speak a great deal more about themselves than they are disposed to do. The success of a minister’s labours depends in a great degree on the confidence which those to whom he ministers have in the accuracy of his information and the integrity of his character.”In order to vindicate his gospel Paul makes the following three appeals:

Presentation 02

An Appeal To His BackgroundPaul’s detractors, who had infiltrated the church, were saying, “Paul is a good chap, a fine preacher but the gospel he proclaims can’t be relied upon- he got it second hand. He wasn’t one of Jesus’ original companions. He was not around to receive the rich instruction enjoyed by the “real” apostles in the period between Jesus’ resurrection and ascension ”.

In response Paul draws our attention to his Jewish background. Paul had been a rigorous Pharisee. Schooled in Judaism and he was so committed to his Jewish faith that he considered it his duty to eradicate all that contradicted it.

Presentation 02

This zeal helped explain Paul’s early persecution of the Christian church. He was convinced that its claims were false and that Jesus was an impostor. Now how could he have been convinced to give all of that up? Does Paul strike you as the sort of man who is easily influenced by others? Was he a gullible person, someone with no moral backbone? Which brings us to the all-important question;

“Is it likely that a man steeped in such fanaticism could be easily persuaded by mere human influence?”

An Appeal To His Background

Presentation 02

Paul is saying, “A fanatical Jew such as I was wasn’t open to mere human influence and reasoned argument”. Let’s try and illustrate that; think of the devoted Jehovah’s Witness or, Mormon who comes to your door. Have you found their minds open to reasonable argument? Is it not the case that you can almost see them switching their minds off as soon as you begin to speak about your faith, so that when you finish speaking they take up again from where the very place you had left off! Ah you say it would take a miracle of divine grace to break through to such blinkered thinking. Paul implies, “That’s what I was like before my conversion. It took nothing less than God’s intervention to make me change my thinking”.

An Appeal To His Background

Presentation 02

An Appeal To His Conversion And Call

Secondly, Paul draws his readers’ attention to the operation of the sovereignty of God. The Christ whose followers he was out to capture had, in an instant, captured him. He speaks in v15 of God who ‘set him apart from birth, and called him by his grace and revealed his Son in him’. Paul cannot understand why he, a persecutor of the church, should have been marked out not only for salvation but for apostleship. On the Damascus Road, out of the zealous band of persecutors, only Paul was singled out for conversion, only he heard the words of the risen Christ. Paul is baffled by God’s sovereignty, by his electing love, by his call. Indeed, even before his birth God’s hand was upon him. We read in Eph. 1v4 of our being ‘chosen in Christ before the creation of the world’.

Presentation 02

Conversion is something that is outworked in the present, but it has been planned in eternity past. God chose us before we choose him. He does not choose us because we deserve it or because we are his favourites. He has graciously chosen his saints to be his servants.

What marvellous patience, God allowed Paul to stray far in his rebellion and sin before, like an expert Fisherman, he began to reel him in to himself. In this way God brought him to faith in Christ and Commissioned him to be a minister of grace.

Paul continued to stand in awe of the fact that all of the transformation that had taken place in his life had flowed from the grace of God!

An Appeal To His Conversion And Call

Presentation 02

This should encourage us as we see those who are precious to us drift away from God. If God has purposes of grace for their lives, they cannot go beyond the point where God’s grace cannot reel them back into himself.

I once heard an elderly blind man pray. He marvelled that out of the millions of people in the world, God had chosen to be gracious to him, forgive and bless him. He was baffled by the sheer wonder of God’s grace. And he poured out his heart in worship.

There is much about God’s dealings with us that we will never understand but that does not prevent us from prostrating ourselves in awe before him lost in wonder awe and praise!

An Appeal To His Conversion And Call

Presentation 02

What had God done? Paul says, “he revealed his Son in me”. His gospel was not a fabrication that he or others had produced. For God had revealed himself not merely to Paul but in Paul. True revelation never stops outside of a man, it enters into him. The Christian becomes the repository of the life of Christ. cf. 2Cor. 4v6.

The revelation which Paul describes was not simply intellectual illumination - though it is that. There has to be a point where we understand the message of the gospel as our minds wrap themselves around it. But it is never merely that. It reaches down into the core of our being and Christ is revealed in us so that we can become, what Martin Luther called, “little Christs” to our neighbours.

An Appeal To His Conversion And Call

Presentation 02

During a mission in a small church a number of visitors were heard to say, ‘We have seen in these Christians, something attractive that is missing from our lives’.

What had they recognised? God’s revelation of his Son in his people! Christians must never rest content with book learning. It is more than instructed minds that are needed to equip us to share our faith, it is lives through whom the light of Christ shines. When we are careless about the way in which we live, when we refuse to deal radically with sin, then layers of grime begin to build up on the windows of our lives and Jesus does not shine out as clearly as he ought. It is Jesus shining through us that will attract others and not an encyclopaedic knowledge of theology.

An Appeal To His Conversion And Call

Presentation 02

An Appeal To His Post Conversion Conduct

More can be said about this revelation of Christ. If it took Damascus Road to make Paul a Christian then it took Arabia to transform Paul into a preacher to the Gentiles.

It was not enough that Paul knew he was converted as a result of meeting with the risen Christ. He needed the interpretation of the gospel event in order that he might clearly proclaim, define and defend it. What happened immediately after his conversion? Paul tells us he did not consult any man or go up to Jerusalem where the apostles were but he went into Arabia before returning to Damascus.

Presentation 02

Think of it this way the Lord Jesus took Paul under his personal tuition. Paul’s deep and thorough knowledge of the truth was of supernatural origin. Paul took three things with him into the Arabian Desert.1. His acquaintance with the O.T. - something written.2. The things he had heard Christians relate concerning Jesus - something spoken.3 . His personal encounter with Jesus- something experienced.

Paul needed to absorb and ponder these elements under the tuition of Christ’s Spirit. Paul could have been in the desert for almost 3 years. But there was 14 years between his conversion and his commissioning as a missionary. A lot of time for pondering

An Appeal To His Post Conversion Conduct

Presentation 02

But if you intend to build a high building you need to dig deep foundations and that was what Paul was doing. He didn’t get his message from Peter and the others.

Just to keep the record straight Paul tells us he did go to Jerusalem for a fortnight after his spell in Arabia. It is surely not strange after all that had happened to him that he would want to get acquainted with Peter. But as far as the gospel Paul preached is concerned, he got it in the waste desert of Arabia when his heart and mind were opened to the living Christ who had stopped him dead in his tracks on the Damascus Road and brought him to a place of submission.

An Appeal To His Post Conversion Conduct

Presentation 02

It would be presumptuous for preachers today to use the words of v11-12 as Paul did. But we should be able to say that the truth of our message has been impressed upon us by God. This is the value of years of preparation for full time Christian ministry. There is tremendous pressure to put young converts into the pulpit prematurely. But it takes time for the gospel to grip men’s minds and hearts. There is no substitute for time spent with God in shaping the direction and content of our ministry. The more we digest the gospel the more able we are to share it with others. Jesus set that pattern with his own disciples, who spent 3 years under his constant tutelage that they might digest his teaching. Dare we aim at anything less?

An Appeal To His Post Conversion Conduct

Presentation 02

Conclusion

Paul has refuted the claim that his was a second hand gospel learned from others. He has established the authenticity of his apostleship and therefore the authenticity of his gospel. We dare not approach Paul’s epistles and say, “I don’t place great store on Paul’s teaching, I only regard the teaching of Jesus”.

Some today are saying what Paul’ detractors said 2,000 years ago. We allow ourselves to be influenced by them at our peril. We cannot drive a wedge into a gap that does not exist! Paul’s teaching is nothing less than the teaching of Christ. To dismiss Paul is to dismiss Christ. This is why Paul wrote this gospel with such intensity of purpose and this is why this gospel is so relevant in our own day.