Galatians Chapter 1:11-12

Galatians Chapter 1:11-12

Sermon #6 ~ Origin of the Gospel

Introduction

On November 24, 1859 a British Naturalist named Charles Darwin published a book entitled “Origin of the Species”
This book was to become a landmark that has changed the way scientist have viewed nature now for almost 150 years
As I imagine most of you are aware the notion of evolution (or more precisely macro evolution) within a single species was brought to the forefront of modern thought with the advent of this book
As a result of this one book over the next few decades the entire scientific landscape changed from believing in a creator that created distinct species to a belief that animals and even humans evolved from much simpler organisms over a great deal of time
For those of you that are in the scientific community you are aware of the far reaching implications of Darwin’s work and how his theory for the origins of the species gave rise to other scientists also attempting to apply similar logic to other disciplines such as astronomy, hydrology and other physical sciences
For those of you in the business community you are probably aware that most business people rationalize their predatory business practices by citing the thesis from chapter 4 of Darwin’s work, namely the expression “Survival of the Fittest”
Darwin’s theory or theories have permeated ever facet of our lives
His theory is still being debated today in courtrooms as challenges arise about its place in the classroom and should it be taught alone or taught side-by-side with other theories to explain the origins of the universe and all that we find within it
The logical outcome of his theories are at the heart of numerous political debates ranging from population growth to drilling for oil, to cutting logging in the Pacific North West
Here is the point; Realize that in order for Darwin’s theory to catch on and to be accepted he couldn’t start 2,000, 3,000 or 5,000 years ago; in order to succeed he needed to contend vigorously that this was the origin of life on this planet
You see once you control the origin of something you really can control everything that comes after it; however if you don’t go back to the origin you always will play a back and forth game with your skeptics of “…but such and such came before that”
The Apostle Paul also understood this and in order to cement the gospel he had previously delivered he had to establish its divine origin
And in even greater measure than the impact on western civilization Charles Darwin’s book is the impact of the true gospel of Jesus Christ and the impact it has on debates in classrooms, courtrooms, capital buildings, libraries, offices, hospitals, churches as well as homes and any number of other places
If you have been with us for the last several weeks as we work through the book of Galatians you probably recall that Paul spoke in some very strong language a few weeks back when we looked at verses 8 & 9
I recall sharing with you that Paul’s choice of words and phrasing were designed for maximum the impact with his listeners
Today as we look at verses 11 & 12 from chapter 1 of Galatians we will see that Paul begins to vindicate the language he used a few verses back by citing the origin of his message
In previous weeks we saw important points about Paul’s credentials as an apostle being made in the introduction to Galatians
With these two verses, verses 11 & 12, we come to the first important thesis that Paul is putting forward
Paul has spoken of the gospel in verses 6-9 stating emphatically that there is only one gospel
But there are certain questions which could be raised and Paul is now ready to address them; the questions could be asked:

Why should your gospel be the accepted one Paul?
Why not some other gospel?
If it is true that there can be only one gospel, why should not some entirely other teaching be the accepted gospel?"

Paul's addresses this and he addresses it much like Darwin did by pointing to the origin of his teaching and calling attention to the fact that it had its origin not in man but in Christ Jesus
Throughout the remainder of this chapter and all of chapter 2 Paul defends this thesis by an appeal to his own experiences
If God permits, over the next few weeks we will finish up chapter one and continue into chapter 2 which is really the same though in the apostles mind and all part of the same thesis

#1 Brothers

¹¹For I would have you know, brothers, that the gospel that was preached by me is not man's gospel. ¹²For I did not receive it from any man, nor was I taught it, but I received it through a revelation of Jesus Christ.
The first thing Paul does before he begins to defend the origin of his message is by referring to his audience as brothers or brethren
Paul makes clear that this group of Churches in Galatia is not made up of apostates from Christ
An apostate of course is one who has forsaken or rejected the faith & principles they once adhered to; in short a renegade
Paul is not saying that the Galatians have rejected the gospel of the grace of God but they are however in danger of doing this, for they are looking in the wrong direction, giving ear to dangerous error and involved in a movement which, if continued, will separate them from God
Keep in mind the entire purpose of this letter is to bring attention to and arrest their current behavior so they can again look to Christ as their sole sufficiency for salvation once again
Paul is proving to them (and to us) that any time you tamper with the gospel you are headed down a slippery slope towards apostasy
So as we always do on Sunday mornings here; we place our lives on the microscope and allow the Holy Spirit to look at our lives
All of us at various levels have embraced false teaching of some sort, most of us have done this out of ignorance of the truth and when that happens the Holy Spirit is faithful to lead us into all truth and correct the errors in our belief and practice
However sometimes our own stubborn will and desires cause us to reject sound truth because it goes against our natural mind or in some way is contradictory to what we would want to believe about God, his nature and his ways
When we are in a stubborn and rebellious state against the Father and the truth revealed in the Word of God that is when we are likely to be moving in the direction of or already arrived at apostasy
So today I speak to you the same way Paul did, by calling you brothers and sisters in the Lord, and I ask you to commit to the Lord, as you sit in your seat, that you will allow the Holy Spirit to renew your mind and if that means things have to change you will allow the Author of truth to teach you today through his word.

#2 Man’s Gospel

The second point Paul makes is also in verse 11 when Paul declares that what he preaches is not man’s gospel at all

The fact is brother and sisters that the great truths of the gospel are such that no man could have ever invented them for they are as Paul said in I Corinthians 2:9 “What no eye has seen, nor ear heard, nor the heart of man imagined…”
For you see there is nothing man sees around him, or hears in the course of his life nor anything to prompt his heart to conjure up the glorious concepts of gospel as revealed to us by God
If you doubt what I say look at what else Paul writes just two verses down in 1 Corinthians 2:11 “For who knows a person's thoughts except the spirit of that person, which is in him? So also no one comprehends the thoughts of God except the Spirit of God.”
The gospel is in no way in harmony with any of man’s preconceived notions for the gospel of Jesus Christ is directly opposed to the wisdom of this world
That is why 1 Corinthians 3:19 reads “For the wisdom of this world is folly with God.”
Earlier in 1 Corinthians chapter 1 and verse 20 Paul said “Where is the one who is wise? Where is the scribe? Where is the debater of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world?”
Man’s gospel will always find its origin in the wisdom of the world which God has made clear he will make foolish
Man’s gospel has many hallmarks; lets look at the chief one briefly
In man’s gospel there will always be an exalted view of man, this most often will be presented as a perversion of the true sinful state of man apart from the completed work of Christ on the cross
Man when operating from the flesh instead of from the Spirit will always have an exalted view of himself, a view in which he believes he is mostly righteous
Have any of you ever heard of someone who characterized themselves as a pretty good person?
They say things like they don’t cheat their employer, they don’t cheat on their income taxes and they don’t cheat on their wife so they must be a pretty good person
We hear that kind of talk almost every day don’t we; we would all do well to remember Isaiah’s words in Isaiah 64:6 where he writes: “We have all become like one who is unclean, and all our righteous deeds are like a polluted garment. We all fade like a leaf, and our iniquities, like the wind, take us away.”
On the contrary how many people do you hear that characterize themselves as dirty, filthy, rotten sinners that deserve hell had it not been for the grace of God?
Even one of the two thieves on the crosses next to Jesus was too proud to admit he needed a savior as he taunted Christ in his final hours
Yet the other one was humble and broken and contrite over his sin and asked the savior to remember him as he entered his kingdom
He did this after he rebuked the other thief for his unbelief and pointed out that this was just punishment for their sin
One thief grasped his position before a holy God and one did not
Man’s gospel will always focus on the goodness of man; regardless of how vile a sinner we are, in our sinful state we are always able to justify and rationalize in our own mind our sinfulness
Man’s gospel is able to brush aside the need of a savior to pay 100% of our debt; Man’s gospel is not indebted to Christ for imputing his righteousness to us
One thief understood the gospel, the other didn’t; my message for each and everyone one of you here today is please take time to understand the gospel
We use the word gospel a lot, it is just a word that simply means good news; who wouldn’t want to understand good news?
Imagine I knew where a treasure was, and suppose I gave you direction of how to get to this treasure but you didn’t completely understand my directions
Would you go your way following only the directions you understood and skipping over the parts you didn’t understand yet still declaring to those around you that you were going to be in possession of a great treasure?
I would hope that you would make sure you understood perfectly the directions to the treasure; that in painstaking detail you would seek to know exactly how to get there so that when you set out you would not become confused
Brothers and sisters seek to understand the gospel in the same way
Jesus told a parable about a pearl of great price; and in the parable Jesus says the man sold all he had to buy the pearl of great price
My charge to you today is do what it takes to make sure you understand the gospel, the good news of Jesus Christ.
The gospel is simple enough that a child can accept it in child like faith yet at the same time well educated people can spend a lifetime looking at it and just like the pearl of great value the more you look at it the more nuances of radiance and beauty you find

God’s Gospel

Paul has drawn attention to the fact that the gospel he taught was not man’s gospel at all; this implies there is another gospel, God’s gospel and he has mentioned that in verses 6-9
We have already examined how God’s thoughts and man’s thoughts are not the same; therefore it couldn’t possibly be man’s gospel that Paul taught
Men in that age and in our age continue to deride the gospel as being the far flung notion of a bunch of uneducated men, fisherman, tax collectors and the like
But look, there is but a small remnant of those that call themselves Christian who maintain a profession to the doctrine laid forth by the apostle here
But isn’t all the derision of the real gospel is consistent with what the Savior promised?
Didn’t he tell us in Matthew 7:13, 14 that “the gate is wide and the way is easy that leads to destruction, and those who enter by it are many. For the gate is narrow and the way is hard that leads to life, and those who find it are few.”
Let me present this truth another way. Did you realize that according to John 6:44, 45 That so much of the gospel of God is opposed to men’s natural inclinations that if it were not for the drawing power of God and the fact that he chooses to teach us we too would be lost?
Our natural minds would cause us to continue to chafe at God’s plan for our lives were it not for the power of regeneration in our lives that is brought about by the Holy Spirit
You see the plan of salvation that God has set forth is in every way and every facet regardless of what angle it is viewed from is a God-honoring, man-abasing gospel
I often think of this truth like an old-fashioned scale; you have all seen these right, Lady Liberty holds one in her hand with her blindfold on symbolizing the ideal of blind justice/weighing facts
Well as you visualize these scales in your mind what happens if you begin to add weigh to the left side of the scale? The left side goes down and the right side goes up, right?
And like wise if I take weight off the left side it causes the right side to go down and the left side to come up
It is similar in the area of our relationship to God; when we preach man’s gospel we begin to elevate man we are thus forced to lower God; likewise when we begin to elevate God we lower man
When we preach, teach, listen to, learn and accept God’s gospel it will always cause us to elevate God and lower our perception of ourselves
God’s gospel will never drive you to a position of pride; you will never think to yourself “Look how clever I am; I’m sure glad I had the good sense to get in on this deal.”
Rather the true gospel will drive you to your knees where you will say “God I am sinner, wretched and poor but I am so thankful that even when I didn’t have the sense to desire you chose me, and taught me, and drew me unto yourself, you loved me and cared for me long before I ever conceived of attempting to reciprocate love back to you in my feeble way.”
That is the nature of God’s gospel; God’s gospel will always highlight the work of God and the sinfulness of man
God’s gospel will always point us to verses like 2 Corinthians 5:21 which reads: “For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.”
How is it we become righteous according to this verse? Through Christ who for our sake was made to bear the penalty of sin on the cross
That is at the heart of God’s gospel

Received from Christ

Paul closes verse 12 by saying that this gospel he received he received by revelation from God the Son a.k.a. Jesus Christ
We demonstrated at the beginning that there are number of questions that skeptics of Paul’s ministry might be asking
Now let me do some probing; let’s examine together whether it is likely Paul received the gospel as he said from Jesus
Let us ask a series of questions starting with:
Who other than God could have conceived a gospel where a God who could not even spare even the angels who sinned but cast them down to Hell could at the same time predestinate an innumerable multitude of the race of Adam to be holy and blameless before him in love?
Who other than God himself would have fashioned a gospel where God Almighty was both just and also at the same time the justifier of the ungodly – forgiving iniquity, transgressions and sins yet by no means simply clearing the guilty?
Who other than God himself would have put forth a gospel whereby the means to make sinful man righteous was to have his only begotten Son come into the world, born of a virgin, live a life of obedience to God the Father and so fulfill the law and then to turn around and become a willing sacrifice, an atonement for our sins?
Who other than God could have dreamed of a gospel where the Author of Life submits to death?
Who other than God could conceive of a gospel where God the Son bears in his body the sins of his people while hanging on a tree he made but in so doing be becomes righteousness, sanctification and redemption in order that all of his blood-bought sheep are complete in him; that they are created anew; and with this union they share with him they will presented faultless before him in his glory?
Who other than our God of love would have ever gone to the trouble of even offering us gospel (good news)?

Conclusion

Have you been taught by God as John 6 states?
Received the gospel from Christ? I am standing here externally calling you to the gospel but is Christ striving with your heart?
Does the gospel message sound new and fresh today?