Alliance of Confessing Evangelicals

Guest (Male): Welcome to Hear the Word of God, the online and broadcast teaching ministry of the Reverend Eric Alexander.

Eric Alexander: Now it would help you undoubtedly to have your Bible open at Galatians Chapter 1. Last Sunday morning, we began a series of sermons on Paul's letter to the Galatians, and I was suggesting in the introduction that one of the basic reasons that Paul writes to them at all is that he has a deep sense of alarm at their spiritual condition.

These Christian people who make up the church at Galatia, most of them Paul had won to Christ. And now he hears word of their having defected from the gospel. Paul has a great sense of distress and disturbance about their spiritual condition.

It appears that after Paul and Barnabas, in their first missionary journey, which is recorded in Acts 13 and 14, had sown the good seed of the gospel there, others had come in and had sown a very different kind of seed. They had begun to teach them a false gospel, and Paul expresses his astonishment at the reception these false teachers had had. In verse 6 of Chapter 1: "I am astonished that you are so quickly deserting the one who called you by the grace of Christ, that is God himself, and are turning to a different gospel, which is really no gospel at all."

Evidently, some people are throwing you into confusion and are trying to pervert the gospel of Christ. Now, clearly, there are two ways in which people can discredit the truth that people like these Galatians had learned and had come to believe. The first way is to seek to discredit the message, that is, to attack the message, to say it's not true, it's not consistent with Judaism, as they were saying to these people.

But there's another way of attacking people's confidence in the gospel, and that is by attacking not the message so much as the messenger. And there is no question that that's one of the principal lines of attack that the false teachers were employing as they came into the churches in Galatia.

These are, of course, the two classic marks of how the devil produces in people an unteachable spirit. Have you noticed they are still classically true? In the first place, it is possible for the devil so to work in somebody's life that there are some things about which they will never allow God to speak to them.

And the other way is by ensuring that there are some people they will never allow God to speak through to them. Now, you know how that happens contemporarily in the modern world in our own experience. There are certain things immediately they are raised, something in us bristles, and we will not allow God to speak to us about that. He may speak to us about this or that or the other or whatever, but not about that.

And sometimes the devil works in us so that there are some people we will never allow God to speak through to us. And immediately they open their mouth, our ears are closed. And that's very easy, isn't it? It may be that we don't think much of their academic achievement. It may be that we just don't like their personality. It may be some stupid prejudice, but we never hear God through them.

Certainly, it was that latter which Paul is addressing now from verse 11 of Chapter 1 of Galatians in his experience. The assault had been on the Apostle Paul's authority as an apostle, on the genuineness of his own Christian experience, of whether he really had come to faith in Christ or no. They were attacking in all sorts of different ways the authority of Paul to bring the gospel to them. "You can't really trust him," they were saying.

Now, as Paul in some ways, I suppose, defends himself against this charge, he provides for us a very significant insight into his own Christian beginnings. In verses 11 and 12, you get the introduction to it, where Paul tells us that although he preached the gospel, he did not produce the gospel. He did not get it by human instruction. He says, "I want you to know, brothers, that the gospel I preached is not something man made up."

So he didn't make it up himself. Nobody else made it up and passed it on to him. He says, "Neither did I receive it from any man, nor was I taught it." But the way the gospel came to Paul was by divine revelation. "I received it by revelation from Jesus Christ." Now you see what Paul is saying. He is saying the gospel I preached to you was not a matter of human invention. Neither I nor anybody else thought up this gospel.

Nor was it a matter of ecclesiastical tradition. I didn't get it from other people who were my teachers. It was a matter of divine revelation from Jesus Christ. And it is precisely so for us, just in the same sense, although in a different way, it is so for us. The gospel on which we have staked our eternal souls is not a matter of human invention. It is not a matter of my opinion or anybody else's opinion. It is not something that has been produced wherever by whomsoever.

Nor is it a matter of ecclesiastical tradition. This is Presbyterianism, or this is Anglicanism or Methodism or Protestantism or whatever. It is a matter of divine revelation. The apostles received it directly from Jesus Christ, and we receive it directly from the apostles in Holy Scripture. And that's the point of apostolic New Testament authority. We receive the gospel as a divine revelation, and the apostolic writings in the New Testament are the inscripturation, the writing down of that revelation.

Now Paul goes on from verse 13 to the main body of what he says and what we're going to look at this morning to provide the evidence from his own personal Christian history for all of this. And you will notice very easy to see. You just need to look at it, and it falls into three parts. Most things in the Bible, you may have noticed, do, but it falls into three obvious parts. Paul tells us first of all what happened before his conversion. Then he tells us what happened at his conversion. And then he tells us what happened after his conversion.

All the time, he is speaking to these Galatians in the midst of all their confusion that has been sown in their minds and the spiritual decay that has taken place in their lives. He is speaking to them in order to rescue them from spiritual disaster. Again and again, I think this is why Paul speaks about himself. You get the clear impression in the New Testament he doesn't like speaking about himself. But there are occasions when they will be able to close their minds to the gospel by refusing to accept the authority of the apostle. And that's when it becomes important to him.

So what happened before his conversion? Well, there are two scenes Paul paints for us. One of them is what the human eye could have seen about his past history. The other is what only the divine eye could see and understand. But notice what the human eye could see first of all in verses 13 and 14. He tells us about his life, his previous way of life, verse 13, in Judaism. "How intensely I persecuted the church of God and tried to destroy it. I was advancing in Judaism beyond many Jews of my own age and was extremely zealous for the tradition of my fathers."

Now, it seems, I wonder if you would have thought this, as I do. It seems to me that the Apostle Paul by nature, that is by his God-given personality, was the kind of man who was wholehearted whatever he touched. A marvelous kind of person to meet in any sphere of life. He was an absolutely all-or-nothing character. I reckon if he had played rugby, he would have ripped up the turf going from one end of the field to the other. I would have loved to have thought of the Apostle Paul playing rugby, but that's an extra-biblical interest.

He was an all-or-nothing man. And grace took hold of that quality in the man's personality and took it up and used him for the glory of God and the expansion of the gospel in the ancient world. I say to you again, it's a glorious thing to find this. This all-or-nothing kind of character. This absolute commitment to whatever you are doing. It is especially so in a world of lethargy and laziness and don't care and don't let me get involved. To find somebody like this, who is an absolutely committed, all-or-nothing, wholehearted man.

Now, he was wholehearted in his opposition to the church of Jesus Christ in his former life in Judaism. Do you notice it? He says, "You know, you've heard of my previous way of life in Judaism. I intensely persecuted the church of God. I tried to destroy it." And when you turn positively to his commitment to Judaism, he says, "I was advancing in Judaism beyond many Jews of my own age and was extremely zealous for the tradition of my fathers."

I say that was the Apostle, ardent, enthusiastic, committed, wholehearted, an all-or-nothing character. And he applied it both to his pursuit of knowledge in Judaism and to his persecution of the church of Jesus Christ. No wonder they trembled when he came near. But God took up that quality and baptized it into Christ and made him the kind of man who stood in the church of Jesus Christ and cried out, "To me to live is Christ, to die is gain." There is nothing else in the world but living for Jesus Christ. Oh, that God would raise up men and women of that caliber in our generation, my dear friends, how desperately we need them.

But Paul was that kind of man. But that was just one level. The level of his commitment to the persecution of the church, the level of his commitment to Judaism and to growing in his religious life. But there was another level that only God could see. And you notice how he describes it in verse 15 at the beginning. "But when God, who set me apart from birth," that's a bad translation. It is really from my mother's womb. "When God, who set me apart from my mother's womb, called me by his grace."

So what was going on at that level? All the time he was harrying Christians, persecuting the church, going 100 percent for growth in Judaism. What was happening was that all through his days, God had his hand on that young man's life and was saying, "I've set that boy apart from the time he was in his mother's womb. I have had a destiny for him, I have had a purpose for him." And as he raged against Christ, to the point where the Lord Jesus on the Damascus Road said to him, "Why are you persecuting me?" All the time the hand of God was upon him.

There are some of you in church this morning who know the reality of that. You have known what it is, even when you have been in open and violent rebellion against Jesus Christ, that the hand of God was upon your life and God had touched you from before you were born. That's a reality. You know we have been rejoicing with John and Lyn Kerr in the birth of their little girl this week. That little girl was prayed for before she was born. I always find a great and remarkable mystery that my brother and I were prayed for before we were conceived.

I remember my mother, and I've shared this with some of you, I'm sure. I remember my mother telling us about an elderly aunt who lived with them out in the country, who was unknown to them as a family, a godly old lady, and who used to retire to her room early at night to be alone. And they used to gather, my mother was one of seven, and they used to gather outside the room and listen to the old auntie talking to herself, as they used to say. And she would go through what they called auntie's ritual. "Bless my sister," she'd say. "O God, bless my sister. O God, have mercy upon her children and upon her children's children."

And they would all chant outside the door, "and her children's children's children's children." And they had great fun with this old auntie. But I remember my brother saying to me after we were both brought to Christ, "Do you realize that that old woman in Galloway was praying for us before we were conceived?" And that was what was happening before Paul was converted. The hand of God was upon him. If you want to know another place where you find the same thing, you read of John the Baptist, who was full of the Holy Spirit in his mother's womb. That gives you courage when you're bringing up children in a sick and rotten society, doesn't it?

What happened at his conversion? Well, Paul goes on to tell us from verse 15. He says that it had two elements in it. It consisted of an historical call, and it consisted of a divine revelation. Notice the historical call. "But when God who set me apart," verse 15, "from birth or from my mother's womb, and called me by his grace." Now that undoubtedly refers to that period in Paul's life which was climaxed on the Damascus Road, when he suddenly heard the voice of God, was arrested and stricken to the ground as it were. And the voice of God pierced his rebellion, as it pierced the midday sun. And he called, "Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me?"

Saul of Tarsus knew what it was that day for the calling voice of God to sound in his soul. He would have been able to relate to all Horatius Bonar's words that we have just sung: "I heard the voice of Jesus say, come unto me and rest." But that voice had already been calling. I reckon it had been calling as Saul stood by the clothes of Stephen, consenting to his death, and knew what it was for a man to be able to die with a most glorious hope and enter into heaven calling upon God. And I'm sure there was something from heaven that stabbed the Apostle's heart at that time.

There are all manner of things like that that so many of us, what stage are you at this morning spiritually? Could it be that some of you are already knowing, I might even call it the niggling whisper of the voice of God beginning to arouse and awaken you? You know what it's like in the morning when you don't want anybody to awaken you out of your sleep, and there is a voice that comes and says, it is high time to awake out of sleep, and you want to put the blankets back over your head again. There are many people like that in our modern world. There could be some here this morning, and God has been calling you to Jesus Christ through different circumstances and in different ways and by different avenues.

Ah, but this was something else, you know. When the New Testament speaks about God's call, it does not just speak about an invitation from God, "will you come?" It speaks about a compulsion from God, a determination in the heart of God to draw us to himself. This is why Jesus says, "No man comes unto me except the Father draw him." C.S. Lewis in his "Surprised by Joy" has said, "The day that I was converted, I was dragged, kicking and screaming into the kingdom of God. There was no more reluctant convert in England."

Some of us might be able to relate to that and recognize that when the power of God began to lay hold of us, it was rather for Paul like what he was doing to these prisoners as he dragged them through the street. He was drawn to Christ. That's what the Westminster Confession calls the effectual call of God in the gospel. He drew me, and I followed on.

He knew the reality of that call. He knew also the reality of a divine revelation. And you will notice how he describes it at the beginning of verse 16. He says he was pleased, "He called me by his grace." And that's the word that provides the key probably to the whole message of Galatians. It was God's grace that called me. It was God's grace that revealed his Son in me, says the NIV. The AV also says in me. The RSV says to me. The New English Bible says through me. So you will realize that it's possible to translate this particular preposition several ways. And I don't see why we should lose the benefit of the other two because there is a significance in all of them.

What happened when Jesus Christ was revealed to Paul? Well, that was what was taking place on the Damascus Road. He was blinded, do you remember? And Ananias was summoned by God to go and see him and see his eyes opened. But what he saw, you see, what was revealed to him, the revelation, the eye-opener, was the glory of the Lord Jesus Christ. That was the day when God opened his eyes to see everything that a sinner needed in Jesus. And so he speaks about it later when he says the god of this world, writing to the Corinthians in 2 Corinthians 4, the god of this world has blinded the minds of those who do not believe, lest the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ shines upon them.

But he says the same God who commanded the light to shine out of darkness has shone in our hearts to give us the light of the knowledge of his glory in Jesus Christ. That's what happened, he says. And Paul is saying this is what happened to me. It's the authentic sign of conversion. The glory of the Lord Jesus Christ has been revealed to him. But not only to me, he has revealed his Son in me, says Paul. This is the heart in Galatians Chapter 2 and verse 20. He says this is the heart of the Christian experience: "Christ lives in me." Not just Christ has been revealed to me so that I may admire his glory, but Christ has been revealed in me so that his beauty may be seen in my life and character to other people.

That is his transforming power. That's what he speaks about, you know, in the very last verse of the chapter, verse 23: "They only heard the report: The man who formerly persecuted us is now preaching the faith he once tried to destroy." And they praised God. What was so impressive about that? Well, it's the ultimate evidence of genuine conversion, this transformation of life. You know, not the profession we make with our lips, the transformation of our life and character, the complete change in the whole pattern of our behavior, so that somehow or other in what Tom Allen used to call a fraction of his image begins to shine through our lives to other people. That's the ultimate evidence of a genuine work of grace.

And not only to me and in me, but through me. Because says Paul, "He revealed his Son in me," verse 16, "that I might preach him among the Gentiles." And through him the Gentiles began to know something of the glory of the Savior. That's what happened before his conversion. He was zealous for Judaism and to persecute the church. What happened at his conversion? It was an historical call, God broke into the man's life and drew him to Christ. It was a divine revelation, God opened his eyes.

Now he says, what happened after I was converted? Well, in verse 17 he tells us, the end of 16, "I did not consult any man, nor did I go up to Jerusalem to see those who were apostles before me." Because you see what they wanted to say was, you just got this gospel from the apostles up in Jerusalem. It's not something that has come directly to you from God; you've borrowed it from them. And you can explain your enthusiasm because you're that kind of man. Oh, no, says Paul, "I went immediately into Arabia."

Now, I would love to pause, but there isn't time, on what happened in these three years when Paul went into Arabia immediately after he was converted. He did not rush out and spend the rest of his days in activity. He went into Arabia. You know why I think he went into Arabia? I've got no apostolic authority for what I'm now about to say, but I think it's true. He went into Arabia to get to know God, to come to know Christ, to bathe his soul in the scriptures, especially as they spoke of Jesus. I think that's what he was doing in Arabia for three years. And if I may say so, I think it had a great deal to do with his fruitfulness in the remaining years of his life.

He says, "I didn't want to go and become the great up-front new convert paraded for everybody to see. I wanted to get to know the Lord, and I went into Arabia and later returned to Damascus. Then after three years, I went to Jerusalem for a fortnight and got to know Peter, but that was all, and James, the Lord's brother. I assure you," verse 20, "that what I am writing to you is no lie. Later, I went to Syria and Cilicia. I was personally unknown to the churches of Judea that are in Christ." So he says the idea that I got this by ecclesiastical tradition, this gospel, is untrue.

Dr. Donald Grey Barnhouse, who was minister of Tenth Presbyterian Church in Philadelphia way before James Boice, who's been in this pulpit. Donald Barnhouse used to say, "Do you know what the Apostle Paul was doing in Arabia? He was preparing the material for Romans." I wouldn't be at all surprised. He was certainly working out the glories of what redeeming grace meant.

What the Apostle is saying to us here is that he is no secondhand purveyor of a gospel that's not his own. He has not received it from others and simply taken it up as their gospel. He has received it directly from Christ. And therefore, you see, to disagree with Paul is to disagree with Jesus. And to disagree with Jesus is to disagree with God. And that's what Paul is really concerned about. You say, well, that's very interesting for them. No, no, it's very important for us. Because when we read this New Testament and these New Testament letters, what is it that we are reading? What authority do they carry? They carry the authority of the risen Christ and the imprimatur of the living God. That's why we may read what Paul says about justification and say there is no other way to God, there is no other way to be accepted by God but this. Thank God for the gospel. Thank God for an apostle like Paul. May he in his mercy raise us up men of that ilk. Let's pray together.

We bless you, our great God and Father, for all that you have written for our learning. And we pray that you would inscribe it upon our hearts and incline our hearts to your truth, that we may not be led astray. For the glory of Jesus Christ, our Savior, we ask it. Amen.

Mark Daniels: You're listening to Hear the Word of God with the Reverend Eric Alexander, a minister in the Church of Scotland for over 50 years. To access more Bible teaching from Reverend Alexander, visit hearthewordofgod.org, where your generous contribution will help us sustain and grow this ministry. That's hearthewordofgod.org.

You could choose instead to mail a check to this address: 600 Eden Road, Lancaster, Pennsylvania, 17601. Or call 1-800-488-1888. This program is a presentation of the Alliance of Confessing Evangelicals. I'm Mark Daniels. Thank you for listening. Please join us again next time for Eric Alexander and Hear the Word of God.

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