11 I want you to know, brothers, that the
gospel I preached is not something that man made up. 12 I did not receive it
from any man, nor was I taught it; rather, I received it by revelation from
Jesus Christ.
13 For you have heard of my previous way of
life in Judaism, how intensely I persecuted the
18 Then after three years, I went up
to
Years ago when I was still training for the ministry, I was called on to make a difficult call with one of the elders of the congregation. As I had a small devotion and prayer with him, he questioned the context of what spoke from. I am not blaming him for his question; it was a legitimate concern. Yet I felt at that moment that we should not do this call together, because I did not have the trust of the man sitting next to me. It would be like going into battle but having to worry about whether the person at your side would be shooting with you or shooting at you. The leader needs to be trusted.
This trust does not come from the preacher just saying, “trust me,” nor should it. It comes from the preacher proving himself to be trustworthy in his doctrine and practice; by being faithful and serious in his usage of God’s Word. This calls for diligence on the part of the preacher. He needs to continually go back to the Scriptures and expound them in a way that is both clear and concise to his hearers.
When he uses the Scriptures faithfully, the Holy Spirit will work faith in the hearts of his hearers and naturally motivate the whole congregation to grow in faith together. This is what the Gospel has the power to do. It gives both the preacher and the members a focus on the death and resurrection of Christ – and enables them to work together in a way holy and pleasing to the Lord. But without the Gospel’s message and motivation, any such coordination and gathering is superficial and weak at best. That’s why in last week’s sermon Paul stressed the importance of the Gospel. It is the glue that holds a congregation together and gives it focus and purpose.
Therefore, the devil knows that the heart and core of his attack has to be against the Gospel of Christ. If this can be perverted or changed or skewed or doubted, then he can regain control of the children he once owned. Paul warned against this attack – telling the Galatians to stick with the original Gospel.
Yet the devil didn’t attack just the doctrine of the Gospel. As the book of Galatians continued on, Paul reveals to us a deeper attack. In order to attack the Gospel, the devil also used false teachers to attack the very authority of Paul. It would appear that they were saying things like, “you can’t trust Paul. He’s a ‘Johnny Come Lately.’ He just got his doctrine from the other apostles – he doesn’t really know what he’s talking about.” Here’s a comparison. Years ago on television there was an advertisement for “diamelles”(sp?). They weren’t real diamonds, but they were made to look like diamonds – only costing much cheaper. This is the accusation that was being brought against Paul. “He’s just an imitation apostle. He’s not real. He’s just an imitation.” So in today’s text Paul had to defend his apostleship so they would continue to have a trust in the Gospel. In order to do this, he contrasts his life before his conversion to his life now.
The Change in Paul Proclaimed the Power of God’s Grace
One thing Paul did was to point
back to his past. He said, “you have heard of my previous way of life in
Judaism, how intensely I persecuted the
Most of us have heard that part of
Paul’s history. Yet the next part that
Paul mentions after his conversion is
almost as equally remarkable if you think about it. “I did
not consult any man, 17 nor did I go up to Jerusalem to see those who were
apostles before I was, but I went immediately into Arabia and later returned to
Damascus. 18 Then after three years, I
went up to
Think about how amazing this whole history is. Here you had some pillars of the church who knew and followed Jesus while He walked and talked among the world in humility; and Paul – who most likely never even met Jesus and lived in a completely different region from where Jesus was. Yet all of these three men all were brought into a common fellowship and common faith in Jesus Christ. They all preached the exact same thing – salvation is found only in Christ. How could such a miraculous union happen unless the same God and Savior had sent His Holy Spirit into all of their hearts and brought them to a common faith? What would be the odds that they would just come up with the exact same faith and the same Savior when they had not even met until three years after Paul’s conversion? It’s not as if they had telephones or television with which to compare notes by.
Think also about the magnitude and
importance of their agreement! Peter
would have had all of the credentials and James as well – since both were well
associated with Jesus. But they had
never met Paul. At best they would have
heard from Ananias about the Lord’s vision to him and
the miraculous healing and baptism of Paul.
If I had someone come into our church who claimed to be directly trained
in Christian doctrine by Jesus Christ in the
Paul’s argument for authenticity answered the accusations of the critics. He pointed to his background and upbringing to prove them wrong. He did it in order to defend his message. His argument is credible. The history spoke for itself. Yet we need to caution ourselves however to putting to much stock in the history of people to determine whether they are authentic or not. It is interesting and inspiring to hear of the sacrifices many have made in their lives and the changes that have occurred after conversion. Some Christians were at one time prostitutes, drug dealers, and addicted to alcohol and sex. It is amazing to hear of how God changed their lives through a near death experience and what not. Johnny Cash claimed such an event. Yet several warnings are in place –
1. such a conversion does not make everything the person says inspired by the Lord
2. the conversion of the demon possessed man in the tombs did not immediately qualify the man for a call to public ministry
3. you do not need such past experiences to be able to preach God’s Word
4. if someone does not have such an interesting and amazing conversion, it does not by default make him an unauthentic preacher or believer (think of Timothy perhaps)
I fear that too much credence is put on people’s backgrounds. All of us are guilty of this to some degree. Just because your wife is a female doesn’t mean she might be able to have some good suggestions on how to be a better father. Just because a commentator on family life may be Mormon doesn’t mean he wouldn’t have some noteworthy things to say. If a man is not married it doesn’t mean he couldn’t give some good advice on marriage.
This error comes on the other side as well. It seems that today the more turbulent someone’s past is the more he or she is honored as worthy of something to say. Speakers put their history out on the clothesline and think that they should be thought of as experts because of how they changed their lives. Some of them use it as a source of pride as to how they changed their lives and turned their lives around. The whole message is, “I turned my life around! You can too!” Think about it, if you once allowed yourself to get to weigh over 400 pounds and then managed to lose 200 of those pounds, should I then think of you as someone to look up to because of this? If you allowed yourself to become addicted to drugs and then managed to clean yourself up, does this make you some sort of a powerhouse to lead the way against addiction? Although your efforts are laudable, your initial efforts were not. Whatever you’ve been through doesn’t necessarily make your advice any better than the next person’s.
Yet this is very important to people. The woman who has had a miscarriage will be much more apt to listen to someone else who’s had a miscarriage for the simple fact that she has been through it too. We can understand this to a certain amount. More often than not they will have some insights and sympathy that others won’t. Even God says that Jesus became man and is therefore able to “sympathize with our weaknesses.” But my warning is that the simple experience does not necessarily earn someone the status of expert or demand us to listen to what they have to say or demand that we praise them as being great leaders.
Paul was not trying to use his past
as a credential to preach the Gospel. He
was using his past as a testimony to God’s grace. He writes that “God set me apart from my mother’s womb and called me by his grace, was
pleased to reveal his Son in me so that I might preach him among the Gentiles. The
word for “set apart” in the Greek is ἀφορίσας. It is
pronounced “aforisas”. Do you notice how it sounds like the word “Pharisee.” The way
that Paul wanted to be set apart was by persecuting Christians and learning the
tradition of the elders better than his fellow Jews. Yet in spite of Paul’s misled ideas, God had
a different purpose for him from the womb of his mother.
It
is amazing to me that even though God had him set apart from his mother’s womb
– God allowed him to go sinfully persecute Christians – in his own misled
zeal. Throughout all of this time the God
of grace knew in the end – at the right time and the right place – he would use
all of this persecution as a source of spreading the gospel to the world and a
source of humility for Paul. In allowing
Paul to go his way God was setting him apart as the ultimate illustration of
God’s own grace and love and forgiveness in Christ through Paul. The point of Paul was to show that in spite
of what Paul wanted to set himself apart as, God has His own special design for
Paul. In the end, Paul was able to
marvel at God’s grace and patience and forgiveness in dealing with him. By mentioning his past Paul wanted others to
marvel at the grace of God working and speaking through him as well. The credentials for Paul were not based on
his past – but on God’s grace from the womb to the grave.
II. God’s grace focused
Paul’s preaching on the faith
So if we aren’t really supposed to put a whole lot of stock on a person’s background, what else do we have left to tell if he or she is a legitimate preacher or not? It’s really quite simple. Look at what really impressed the churches of Paul’s time. He concludes, 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 because of me. The one main thing that concerned the churches was not what Paul did in his past or where Paul came from – but simply what he preached – and what he preached was “the faith.” Paul explained it this way in Acts 20:24, “I consider my life worth nothing to me, if only I may finish the race and complete the task the Lord Jesus has given me—the task of testifying to the gospel of God’s grace.”
In the end, this is all that should matter to you. It shouldn’t matter to you whether your preacher is fat or skinny. It shouldn’t matter whether is old or young; whether he is a Chiefs or a Packers fan; KU or K-State; whether he likes baked potatoes or French fries; whether he is funny or dry; whether he is energetic or kind of drab in his demeanor; whether he is Hmong, Hispanic, or German; whether he was at one time an alcoholic or a Satanist even. On Judgment Day God will not ask you what kind of a personality your preacher had – or whether he had an interesting or boring background. All that will matter to YOU is whether he gave you God’s grace.
A true preacher of God’s grace recognizes two important things – the sinfulness and impotence of man and the forgiveness and power of God in Christ. A preacher of faith recognizes that God’s undeserved love is not earned by man, but rather given to God through simply believing in who Christ was and what Christ did. This preacher will declare to you that all of your greatest works are still tainted with sin – nothing but filthy rags in the holy God’s sight. He will declare to you that the greatest work the world has ever witnessed is the one that God’s Son performed by dying on a cross. On that cross Jesus earned the salvation of the world. Believe in it and be saved. A preacher of grace will tell you how wonderful it was for you to be baptized – how God in fact put your sinful nature to death and implanted his Holy Spirit in your soul – enabling you to fight your sinful flesh and follow God’s will. A preacher of grace will tell you how important it is to be clothed in the righteousness of Christ which covers your own filthiness. In every aspect of your life, that preacher will want you to see that the God of mercy and might and forgiveness will be with you and protect you and work through you. In short, you will continually be pointed away from yourself and your strength. Instead you will be constantly pointed to God’s love and strength and forgiveness from your birth to your death. This is what is all important.
The God of grace changes lives. That is evident in the life of Paul – more so than perhaps any other person in the history of mankind. In this one man God changed someone from being sold on salvation by works to salvation through faith. It changed him from a persecutor to a preacher. He could be trusted solely because of God’s grace.
It is in the nature of Christianity and faith for lives to be changed. How can it be any different? If the living God now dwells in you and shows you His love and forgiveness in Christ, how can you remain the same? The tree must produce fruit, because it is in the nature of the tree to do so. You may look at your life and see plenty of things that need to be changed. Perhaps your temper, your laziness, or your parenting skills are lacking. Perhaps you feel like you can’t trust yourself. You want to change, but what can you do? Will changing churches help? Will finding a more flashy preacher do the trick? That’s what people were telling the Galatians.
But listen to what Paul said. “Don’t listen to them! I am a legitimate apostle! I am trustworthy – because I am giving you the only thing you can trust in life – the grace of God in Christ.” As proven through Paul, God’s grace works through you in spite of who you are and no matter what you’ve done. The grace of God in Christ assures you through all of your weaknesses that you are forgiven. It assures you that God will not forsake you. It strengthens you to fight those temptations. It gives you confidence to face your demons. It assures you of heaven. Paul says it better than I ever could in his letter to the Romans – chapter 8.
If God is for us, who can be against us? He who did not spare his own Son, but gave him up for us all—how will he not also, along with him, graciously give us all things? . . . I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.
What greater life changing thing could there be in life than knowing that God is a God of grace from the womb and into eternity? Amen.