An Introduction

Good morning. Would you all stand with us? We want to welcome you this morning to Calvary Chapel, and we want to welcome those of you who are joining us online. This is the day the Lord has made. Let us rejoice and be glad in it. Would you join me in prayer? Father, we thank you for this opportunity together to worship and study your word, Father. Father, we come to you just as we are, Lord, with all that goes on around us and

with all that goes on in our local community, our state, our country, and the world. We know things are always changing, it seems, but you don't change, Lord. You're the same yesterday, today, and tomorrow forever, Lord. We can trust you with everything in our life, Lord. Bless our time now as we worship and study in Jesus' name. I think I asked you all to stand, didn't I?

Grace that you have given.

And because of that great love you have for us, Lord, you work in our hearts. You allow things in our lives to build character, to make us what you want us to be, to draw us closer into your image. And sometimes that's not enjoyable because you're chipping away. You're softening the clay. You're working on the maybe seated of the star.

We know that when you convict us, it's drawing. It's drawing us to you. It's causing us to look to you. And we know that when Satan is condemning you, he's wanting to push us away and emphasize our unworthiness and how we don't belong. But we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ, who's paid the price.

Magnified and glorified, Lord, you're worthy of all our praise.

Sinners saved by grace, Lord. We praise you. We thank you. Father, Jesus said, if you've seen me, would you all stand? Oh, it's that amazing grace. And again, that crossing God's riches at Christ's expense, you know, grace. It'll bless our service as we study your words together.

Let's have some fellowship.

Glad you could be here this morning. If you could start to locate your seat, grab a bulletin. We'll go over some announcements. Welcome to Calvary Chapel. Glad you could be here. A few things to take note of in your bulletin over on the left-hand side are the things that are going on throughout the week. Lots of studies to get. Plugged into. So you should locate one of those over in the middle section of your bulletin.

Just a reminder that starting today between the services, stick around and go back to the back room back there. The youth group is going to be starting their little fundraising adventure, the blessed bean, making some specialty coffee drinks. The coffee that the ushers have back there still there, but they will be slinging some espresso for us. So go back, get you a cup of coffee, visit for a little bit, maybe even meet the people that come to second service. That would be fun, right?

There's a handful of people that are like, hey, I didn't know they go to church. I'm like, yeah, that's because they come to first service. So maybe we can get you people together. You can meet each other. It's going to be awesome. You're going to love it. A few other things to take note of. Just a reminder that Joe's going to be starting up his small group next or at the end of this

month. And there is a little legal pad out. You can write your info down on if you're interested in that. And then this coming Saturday, February 11th is the women's breakfast at Daisy Mays Cafe at eight o'clock a.m. And then one thing I failed to put into your bulletin is that tonight is our intercessory prayer time from six to seven. That's a really big word to say. We're going to pray for

each other and all the things that are going on in the world, which there's a lot of things going on in the world right now. So come join us for that from six to seven. Again, in that back room, those are the things that are going on. If you'd make sure that your mobile device is silenced for our this morning unison reading, we're going to be in Psalm 125. Psalm 125, looking at the new American standards. So we sound the same should be one around you.

If you need it, as you are turning to Psalm 125, if you would stand in the honor of the reading of God's word. And if you would read along with me, Psalm 125, a song of a sense. Those who trust in the Lord are as Mount Zion, which cannot be moved, but abides forever as the mountains surround Jerusalem. So the Lord surrounds his people from this time forth and forever for the scepter of wickedness shall not rest upon the land of righteous so that the righteous will not put their hands on the land of the righteous. So the Lord will not put their hands on the land of the

wickedness, but will put their hands on the land of the righteous. So the Lord will not put their hands upon the land of the righteous. So the Lord will not put their hands on the land of the righteous. Do good, O Lord, to those who are good and to those who are upright in their hearts. But as for those who turn aside to their crooked, crooked ways, the Lord will lead them away with the doers of

iniquity. Peace be upon Israel. And father, we do put our trust in you this morning. And it's a good thing because there's not much else we can put our trust in right now. And so, Lord, we find our trust in you and our rest in you. And so, Father, as we spend time in your word this morning, I ask that you would move in our hearts by the power of your Holy Spirit.

In Jesus' name, amen. You may be seated. Before we get into our study in Galatians this morning, I've got a friend that I'd like to come share a few words with us for a few minutes. One of the ministries that we support here at Calvary Chapel is the Gideons. And so usually about this time of the year, we have somebody from the Gideons come and share with us a little bit about the ministry of the Gideons.

And so this morning, I would like for you to welcome James Miller.

As the rain cometh down, and the snow from heaven, and returneth not thither, but watereth the earth, and maketh it bring forth bud, that it might give seed to the sower, and bread to the eater. So shall my word be, that goeth forth out of my mouth. It shall not return unto me void, but it shall accomplish that which I please, and it shall prosper in the thing whereto I sent it. The purpose of the Gideon ministry, as you know, is to share with people our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.

To begin with this morning, I ran across a little bit, a little timeline in our Gideon magazine that I thought was kind of interesting. The Gideons were started by a pair of gentlemen businessmen that met each other in a hotel room in, I believe, 1889. And they formed an organization, got together, and they placed. Their first Bible in a hotel in 1908. In 1926, they reached 100,000 scriptures.

In 1929, 1 million. In 2001, 1 billion. In 2015, 2 billion. And last year, they reached 2.5 billion. Before the COVID hit, our numbers were around 90 million a year worldwide. And when the COVID hit, we were at about 2.5 billion. And when the COVID hit, that dropped to about half. And locally, our numbers were pretty representative of that. Our college distributions, we've been passing out about 3,000 every year at WSU, about 350

here at Cali County. By the way, the folks here at Cali County have been great to work with the college here. And around 200 at Southwestern, and those numbers have dropped to about half. And I'd say we're gradually working back up, but we're not quite to where we were. So please keep us in your prayers, if we can get the Bibles where they need to be, and that God will speak to people through them.

These are numbers. Really, we prefer to look at changed lives. I'd like to share with you a testimony that the Gideons received from a young Muslim woman named Sarah McCulloch. It doesn't really seem right to me that Muslims should name their daughter Sarah, but apparently someone did. Anyway. Let me get my brain here. Sarah grew up in a Muslim home. Her father was from Libya, and her mother came from what she called a nominal Christian home,

but had converted to Islam because she believed that Christians just used grace as an excuse to sin. As a child, Sarah developed a great fear of God. She lived and practiced the faith pillars of Islam, prayed five times a day, and wore a scarf from the time she was in the second grade. Her spiritual life was based on performance, good deeds versus bad deeds.

But she knew in her heart that she was inadequate to live life perfectly. In high school, she began to ask questions, but received harsh words and criticism for questioning tradition and religious law. She wrote, I found myself in a place of total destruction. Religion hadn't satisfied me. The world totally disappointed me, and there I was with no answers. I finally cried out to God one night and said,

God, if you are real, and if you want me, you need to come find me, because I don't know what to do. Well, when the Gideons at her college offered her a New Testament, she didn't have time to explain, so she just took it and put it in her backpack and said, Thank you. And she forgot about it. Well, about a year later, she met a young Christian man named Chris, and he began to talk to her about Jesus.

And she was, She was interested because he seemed sincere. She knew it wasn't compelled by fear or guilt. It wasn't a works-based thing. It was a genuine overflowing of joy and love for his Savior. Over time, her interest in Jesus, as well as her friendship with Chris, grew. Then one night as they were talking, Chris said, You know, Jesus is the way, the truth, and the life.

No one comes to the Father except by him. Well, she was totally offended. She thought, How could he tell me what I'd believed in all my life had been a lie? How could he say, tell me that my family, because they didn't know Jesus, would not spend eternity in heaven with God? They were doing so many wonderful things and living righteous lives. How could he say that to me?

Then she remembered the Bible in her backpack, and she began to read it to try to refute what Chris had told her. When she got to Matthew 13 and the parable of the seed and the sower, she read Jesus' words, Who has ears? Let him hear. And she knew he was talking to her, and it reminded her of the time when she said, God, if you want me, come find me. Well, she still wasn't ready to let Chris be right,

but she did call a friend in Alabama that she knew had been saved in high school. After her friend's decision, her life had been completely turned around. Sarah asked her what happened. She told Sarah a little bit about it and then asked, Can I call you back tomorrow? When she called back the next day, her friend asked, Where are you? She said, I'm at home.

And she surprised me by saying, Can you pick me up at the airport? Her friend had actually gotten on an airplane and flown to California to come share the gospel of Jesus Christ with Sarah. She said, We spent five hours talking, and she answered all my questions. She took me through the Roman road and the Bible. I still didn't give my life to the Lord. I was tired at that point, but we did go and visit the young man who had started this whole problem, Chris.

As we sat there together in my car in front of his apartment, I broke down in tears. I felt the Holy Spirit saying, Just respond. So I responded right then and there. I asked Jesus to come into my life, and I stood humbled, because for the first time in my life, I was free. There were no more weights and balances, no more works, just the love and mercy of a loving God.

It was finally personal to me. Praise God. This is why we love to pass out scriptures. It is a blessing. Thank you very much for your time here this morning. Thank you for your prayers, for your support. We appreciate it, and God bless you.

James will be standing at the back after service with the Bible open if anybody wants to make an extra donation to the work of the Gideons and their placement of the scriptures throughout the world. Thank you, James. I really appreciate that. I always love hearing stories of what God's Word does in the lives of people.

Well, if you would, open up in your Bibles to the book of Galatians, chapter 1.

Galatians, chapter 1.

I didn't give this to Nick to put on the board because I wasn't thinking about it, but the overarching title that we're going to give to the book of Galatians, our study and our time in Galatians, is going to be the title that R. Kent Hughes gave to his introduction to Galatians, and that's this, Back to Grace. Because that's exactly what the book of Galatians does, is it takes us back to grace, back to our understanding of the unmerited favor that we have in Jesus Christ. This morning's title is Galatians, chapter 1, an introduction.

We're only going to cover the first five verses of Galatians, chapter 1, because I want to build a little bit of introduction to give you some background on how we got to where we are. As a matter of fact, as I was starting to prepare for this this week, I thought, you know, what an interesting thing, to jump straight from a gospel into an epistle, because there's a lot that's taken place in the time between the ascension of Jesus Christ and the writing of the epistles. So I thought it good to maybe take a little bit of time to build a short timeline for you, a little bit of an understanding of how we came from the ascension to the epistles. And so the first section that we're going to cover this morning is just that.

So as you have your Bible open, just sort of sit back, relax, and allow yourself to have this picture, painted in your mind of the story of what took place between the ascension and the epistles. When last we left Jesus in the book of Matthew, Jesus had given his disciples a commission. He told them that they were to go into all the world to preach the gospel and to make disciples, to baptize people and to teach them, to teach them all the things that he had commanded with a promise and the promises that he would be with them until the end of the age. He gave that commission to them.

On a mountain, just in the region of Galilee, not a few days later, maybe a couple of weeks later, he met up with them on the Mount of Olives, just outside of Jerusalem, about 10 days before the feast of Pentecost, about 40 days after he had risen from the dead. And as he met with his disciples there at the top of the Mount of Olives, he told them that what they needed to do is to go and to hang out in Jerusalem in the upper room, undoubtedly the same upper room where they had had their first church. They had their meal together 40 days before. Hang out in that upper room and wait.

Wait for the coming of the Holy Spirit. But when the Holy Spirit has come, you are to go out and be witnesses of me in Jerusalem, in Judea, in Samaria, and to the uttermost parts of the earth. And then Jesus ascended into heaven. And his disciples obeyed him. They went back to Jerusalem. They spent time in the upper room. It says that they were all together in one accord

in this upper room, singing praises to God and praying. And about 10 days after Jesus ascended into heaven, while the disciples were spending time in the upper room, waiting on the Lord, the very promise that he had made was fulfilled. It says that the Holy Spirit came down on that place. It came as a, first of all, sound of a great rushing wind. And then there were tongues of fire

that descended upon each one of the disciples. And each of them began to speak in a different tongue. And what they spoke in a different tongue is more important than whether or not the gift of tongues is for today. Because what they spoke in that tongue was the mighty works of God. And from that point, God began to pour out his Holy Spirit through the disciples on the city of Jerusalem.

God began to work through them in miraculous ways. He began to work through them through their preaching. He began to work through them through the performing of miracles. He began to work. He began to work through them through great revival that was taking place in the city of Jerusalem. The Holy Spirit was at work. As the Holy Spirit was at work, they decided that it was time for them

to call a group of men that would be those who would be the hands and feet of the disciples so that the disciples could focus on spending time in prayer and in the word of God. And so they chose seven men full of the Holy Spirit, able to teach and able to serve. One of those men was a guy named Stephen. Stephen, while content to be a servant, took every opportunity that he could also to minister the word of God.

And he became a little bit of a firebrand amongst those servants of God in Jerusalem. And he began to debate with the Jewish leaders. And the Jewish leaders didn't like what he had to say. So they brought him on trial. And as they brought him on trial, he presented to them the hardness of their hearts as it had always been in their rejection, not only of God,

but of the very son of God himself, Jesus. They didn't appreciate what he had to say. So they condemned him to death and they stoned him. And as they stoned him, he first of all cried out, Father, forgive them. But there was one man there who is going to play a very important role in the rest of everything that we have to talk about. It says that they threw their coats at the feet

of a man named Saul of Tarsus. Well, from the point of Stephen's death on, it says that Saul of Tarsus began to breathe out threats against them. And so what they would not do in obedience and taking the gospel outside of Jerusalem to Judea, Samaria, and the uttermost parts of the earth, God did through persecution. And the gospel began to spread. It began to spread all over the place.

As a matter of fact, as the gospel began to spread all over the place, God revealed to Peter that the gospel was not just for the Jews, that the gospel was for everyone. Everyone. Including the Gentiles. So God used Peter to take the gospel to the Gentile people first. A guy by the name of Cornelius. And as the gospel was taken to Cornelius, the Jewish people,

starting with the apostles, began to realize, hey, the gospel is for everyone and we now need to accept these Gentile brethren. They too can have the gospel preached to them. Well, around that time, Saul of Tarsus, who had breathed out all of these fiery threats against the church of God in the city of Jerusalem, had his own encounter with Jesus Christ. I'll go into the details of that encounter as we get into our introduction here.

But Saul had an encounter with the real Jesus Christ and his life completely turned around and he began to preach the gospel. Well, as the gospel was spreading to different parts of the region, it spread all the way up to a city called Antioch. Antioch was a predominantly Gentile city. And the church was made up of Jews and Gentiles. And they knew that someone needed to teach this church

to make sure that they were grounded as they should be. So they sent a guy named Barnabas up there. Barnabas knew he needed help. So he went and found a really good friend of his named Paul. We knew him first as Saul. And so Paul and Barnabas did a lot of preaching in the church in Antioch. But before long, the Holy Spirit said, hey, I want you to send out Paul and Barnabas,

Barnabas to everywhere that I'm going to send them to go. And so Paul and Barnabas get sent on this missionary journey. And as they go on this missionary journey, they go and they spread the gospel all over the extended region into the areas of Asia Minor and Europe. They then take a second missionary journey and then a third missionary journey. And as they do so,

every time they go, they not only strengthen churches that they've already started, but they go and they start even more churches. And as they go and start these churches, the Holy Spirit is at work now, not only in Jerusalem, but in Judea and in Samaria. And as far as they were concerned, the uttermost parts of the earth. For a little bit of context, you could just read the book of Acts, but I just gave you a quick synopsis of the book of Acts.

You see, Paul had gone and started all of these churches, but sometimes these churches had issues that needed addressed. And so Paul would write them a letter. Sometimes these churches had concerns that needed addressed. So there would be a letter. Sometimes these churches just simply need strengthened. So there would be a letter. And so from the time of Jesus' ascension

to the epistles, you have this amazing work of the Holy Spirit through not only Peter and the apostles, but through this guy named Paul. And now we have not only the story of the work of the Holy Spirit, but the epistles that went out to all of those churches. One of those epistles is the one to the Galatians. And so as we jump into Galatians chapter one, it says this.

Paul, an apostle, not sent from men, nor through the agency of man, but through Jesus Christ and God the Father, who raised him from the dead and all the brethren who are with me. To the churches of Galatia, grace and grace, Praise to you and peace from God, our father and the Lord Jesus Christ, who gave himself for our sins, that he might rescue us from this present evil age, according to the will of our God and father, to whom be glory forever and ever. So we have this introduction now to the book of Galatians. And so as we look at this introduction to the book of Galatians, there's really about three main things that we're going to look at.

We're going to see the writer, we're going to see the recipients, but then we're going to see Jesus, because that really, honestly, is going to be the main theme of the book, the grace of God that comes through Jesus. So the first thing I want to look at is the writer. It starts off by giving us the identifying mark, Paul, an apostle. Now, Paul, the apostle is probably one of the best stories of grace in the entire New Testament.

I alluded to it during our little timeline introduction, but let's go a little bit deeper into the story of Paul, shall we? Paul will tell us a little bit more of the story as we get into the end of chapter one and into chapter two. But Paul was such a fascinating story of grace. You see, Paul, also known as Saul, Paul was his Greek name. Saul. Saul was his Jewish name.

He grew up in a home where he was trained to be a rabbi among rabbis, a Pharisee among Pharisees. He trained under a guy named Gamaliel. Gamaliel was one of the foremost teachers of the law of his day, and Paul spent his time being trained by him. And as Paul was trained by Gamaliel, he was trained in the absolute letter of the law. Well, as you remember from our study in the book of Matthew, anybody that was trained

in the true letter of the law. As far as the Pharisees viewed it, when Jesus came along, they didn't handle him very well, did they? Matter of fact, when Jesus came along, they were quite opposed to him because Jesus cared about the spirit of the law, not man's interpretation of the letter of the law, not man's take on what the law had to say, but what the law really meant. And so in the three years that Jesus found himself walking the earth, Saul, the Pharisee, hated Jesus.

I've often found myself wondering how many encounters Saul maybe had with Jesus in those three years. Scripture doesn't tell us of any, although if he was a Pharisee that entire time, I can't imagine that he, at some point in time, wasn't in one of the multitudes of Pharisees that found themselves surrounding Jesus trying to ask questions. Maybe it never happened, but I have a hard time believing that that didn't happen. And all of that time, Saul's hatred of Jesus continued.

But pretty soon, he started taking note of the fact that even though that this Jesus was gone, there was still a group of his followers that were continuing to push his agenda, that were continuing to push his story. And his hatred grew deeper and deeper and deeper until his anger spilled over into a violent desire to see every follower of Jesus Christ, not just stopped, but destroyed. And that was his mission. In life, to stand and hold the coats of those that threw the stones at Stephen to put him to death meant that he assented to his death and cast his vote in his death.

And now that he'd seen that, his violent breathing out of threats against the church was even greater. As a matter of fact, he didn't just want to stop in Jerusalem because many of the believers in Jerusalem had found themselves scattered. He wanted to go to other areas. He felt like the best thing he could do was go as far as he possibly could to root out the church.

And he'd heard that there was a sect of these believers in a place called Damascus. And he went to the high priest and said, I would like some letters from you to prove that I am who I say that I am, to have authority in Damascus, to bring back believers to be imprisoned here. The priest gave him the letters that he needed, and he was on his way. And as he was on his way.

Surrounded. By a group of soldiers that were his protective detail, a bright light shone from heaven and it knocked him to the ground and a voice began to speak. And the voice said this, Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me? And he said, Lord, Lord, I don't even know who you are. He said, well, I'm Jesus. The one that you're persecuting. And of course, when he tells his story later in life, he includes the little detail.

That the King James Bible includes in that section in Acts chapter nine, where he says, it's hard for you to kick against the goads. In other words, you've been fighting me for long enough. See, that gives us a little bit of an indication of what had been going on in the life of Saul up to that point in time. You see, up to that point in time in the life of Saul, he'd been fighting against the conviction of the Holy Spirit.

He'd been fighting against this understanding that this Jesus does seem to do all the things that the Messiah said that he was supposed to do. Right? Right? Right? Jesus does seem to fit the bill of everything that scripture says that the Messiah was supposed to be, even though it doesn't fit my understanding of the Messiah. The Holy Spirit was convicting him of his sin.

He was convicting him of his lust that he had in his heart, of his envy that he had in his heart, was continuing to convict him of all of these different things. But he did the same thing that you and I do before we ever came to know Jesus as Lord. We said, not now, Jesus. He pushed against it. He kicked against it. Jesus said, aren't you tired of fighting?

Aren't you tired of fighting against me? Man, I remember the day that I finally surrendered my life to Jesus. And it's like I could feel Jesus saying the same thing. Aren't you tired of fighting?

Of course, Paul said, what am I supposed to do? He said, I want you to go into the city. I want you to go to the street called Strathclyde. I want you to go to the street called Strathclyde. And there someone's going to come and find you. And of course, we know that that's exactly what happened. Someone came and found Paul and they preached the gospel to Paul.

From that very moment that the gospel was preached to him, it says that great scales fell off of his eyes and his eyes were opened. And from the point of Paul's conversion, he became the exact opposite of everything he'd been up to that point. Only with the exact same passion. Isn't it great that God takes who we are naturally, turns us into somebody that follows him and uses all of those natural things that he gave us only now to glorify him.

And that's exactly what he did in the life of Paul. But he did this in the life of Paul because God showed him such great grace. And as a matter of fact, I think the reason why Paul was such a champion of grace is because of the grace that he had experienced. He knew what it was to live his life under the law, and he knew what it was to live a life set free by grace.

Paul, an apostle. The word apostle means a sent one. Only for Paul, it was a very specific calling. You see, we remember from our study in the book of Matthew that Jesus originally called 12 apostles. Only we've lost one of them. Remember? The one that we lost was... Was Judas. Judas, the one who had betrayed him. That gets us down to 11 apostles. I believe that Paul fills that 12th role.

Me and a lot of other commentators believe that Paul fills that role of the 12th apostle. And as he fills that role of the 12th apostle, it was something that he took very seriously. And yet something that continually came under fire. Under fire, especially in places like the church of Galatia. You see, everywhere that Paul went to spread the gospel, it seemed like there was this

faction of people. Jewish brethren, may I say some that may have known him before, who tried to discredit him. And so while he absolutely defends grace in this epistle to the Galatians, he also defends his apostleship. And so when he says Paul, an apostle, it's a specific statement that's made because he wants to present to them the credentials that he has.

Because take note of the next thing he says about his apostleship. He says, Who's not sent from men. Nor through the agency of man, but through Jesus Christ and God, the father who raised him from the dead. He says, The credentials that I have did not come from man. And a matter of fact, he'll explain that in an even deeper degree. And at the end of chapter one and into chapter two, he says,

The calling that I have is not from man. The credentials that I have are not from man. The authority that I have is not from man. It comes directly from God. We could say, if you will, his ordination is not from man. And, you know, that brings up a really interesting point. You see, we as humans can't really ordain anyone. Now, I'm an ordained pastor. And most churches have an ordained pastor that are in charge of them.

They really like it to have that when you do a wedding, when you sign your name as the pastor. So for the state, we do that sort of thing. But man could put a title on me all that they wanted to, but that would do nothing in the eyes of God. You see, all we really can do as humans is ratify what God has already done. And that's the belief in Calvary Chapel.

That's the belief in the movement of Calvary Chapel. We care less about your degree and we care more about your calling. We care less about your education, although you should be educated. You should know stuff, but we care more about your calling. When we lay hands on someone to ordain them, either as an elder, as a leader, or as a pastor, we've done nothing other than say,

we recognize the authority that God has placed in their life. We recognize the calling that God has placed in their life, and we want you to recognize it too. And so Paul says, listen, I'm an apostle, but it's not because man made me an apostle. It's because God made me an apostle. He says, and all the brethren who were with me, because Paul usually had some sort of

an entourage of fellows who were there supporting him because he did believe that ministry meant family. And so first thing, the first thing that we're given is this introduction to the writer of the epistle, Paul. The second thing that we're given is the recipient of the epistle. Notice what it says, the churches in Galatia. Now, Galatia was a Roman region.

And last night I did a little research and I found a map that hopefully is going to be able to be visible to all of you. So I want to point a couple of things out. So I'm going to move video people over here. Okay. So this area, that I'm pretty sure looks sort of bluish green right there in the middle is Galatia. Let me give you a little bit of context. Down here is Jerusalem.

Up here is Antioch. Where'd it go? Up here is Antioch. Paul left from Antioch and he went on his missionary journey and he came up here to this region of Galatia. Those three places that you see, Iconium, Lystra, and Derbe, those are going to be three of the main churches in Galatia that he's going to be writing to. There's going to be others. You can see some up.

Some up north and some over to the side, Antioch and Pisidia. But those are the three main ones he's writing to. However, it says the churches in Galatia. So we know he's writing to all of them. But that's the region that he's writing to. Typically when an epistle is written, it's written to one group of people, but this one is to a whole group of multiple churches.

So Paul says to the churches in Galatia. Now, if you wanted a little bit of context for how the churches in Galatia acted, you could look at Acts. Acts chapter 14. As a matter of fact, you might write down Acts 14 because that is Paul's first missionary journey in his ministry to the churches in Galatia. The people of Galatia were known for two things. I love this.

I didn't say this. A historian said this. They're known for being fickle and fond of change. J. Vernon McGee in his commentary says, they're a lot like Americans. I thought that was pretty good. There was a great revival that took place there, but it was also a place that was under great Jewish religious influence. Let me share with you a little bit of a story about how fickle and fond of change they could

be. When Paul was in Lystra, he first went to Iconium and then he went to Lystra. When he went to Lystra, he healed someone. And when he healed someone, they were so amazed at what he had done that they wanted to begin to worship he and Barnabas as gods. As a matter of fact, they brought out the oxen and the garland so that they could make a sacrifice to him as a god.

Later that week, the Jewish people showed up and said, no, he's a false teacher. Later that week, they stoned him and he was left for dead outside of the city. See how much they're like Americans, right? That sounds very much like us. One minute you're our champion. The next minute you're our whipping horse, right? And so that's a little bit of a picture. What the people of, uh, of Galatia were like, but you see everywhere that Paul went, especially

in this region of Galatia, there was this group of Jewish teachers that followed him and they would tell people, it's great that you found faith in Jesus Christ. It's great that you have found this salvation in Jesus, all of you Gentile people, but to really be saved, we have to add something to Jesus. You have to add works. You have to add in particular, the works of Jesus Christ.

You have to add the works of Jesus Christ. You have to add the works of the law and even more specifically the work of circumcision. It's great to have Jesus, but we have to add to it. Paul will call this a false gospel or another gospel. That's not really a gospel at all. That's what Paul's dealing with, with the people of Galatia. Matter of fact, that's why he wrote this book to the people of Galatia, because they had

turned from the people of Galatia to the people of Galatia. They had turned from the purity of the simple gospel of Jesus Christ, the simple grace of God, and they had returned to a system of works. They had Jesus and you see, and I love Joe Foch pointed this out when I was listening to him teach on this. He said, the devil will love to make us do one of two things.

He will either cause us to backslide, to fall back into sin, but if he can't get us to backslide, then he'll cause us to front slide into legalism. Into adding to what Jesus has to say. Our job is to maintain the balance, to maintain the balance of the Holy Spirit, where we're not backsliding back into sin or front sliding into legalism. And so as Paul writes this letter, he wrote it somewhere around 50 AD.

Again, there's conjecture over that. Some people think he wrote it closer to 48 AD. Some people think he wrote it closer to 53 AD. Whenever it was, it was somewhere in that general range. I believe personally that he wrote it after his first missionary journey, but before the Jerusalem council of Acts 15, but no matter when he wrote it, these are the reasons he

wrote it. He wrote it to combat legalism. Isn't it amazing how quickly we can slip into legalism? You see, we as human beings like checklists. We like to be able to check things off to say, I did this, I did this, I did this. And then we feel. Pretty good about ourselves. We love those kinds of checklists because then we can hold those over other people and say, look how much better I am than you.

Look how much better I am than everyone else. And so Paul wrote this book of Galatians to combat that legalism. But second of all, Paul wrote to combat false gospels. There are so many and we'll cover some of these next week. There are so many false gospels out there. So many false ideas about the gospel that are out there. And Paul wrote to, to combat these things.

Number three, Paul wrote to explain true liberty. Paul wrote to explain true liberty. I love the story that, that James shared this morning, that this woman said, I didn't like Christianity because it seemed like they used grace as an excuse for sin. You know what? The sad thing is she's probably right. Too many Christians use grace as an excuse to sin. As a matter of fact, you know that there are some who struggle with the preaching of grace because they think that it will create licentiousness.

And I tell you, that's because you didn't really preach grace because to really understand grace, you must first of all, understand that you are a sinner and that grace does not set you free to sin. Grace sets you free from sin because that's what true liberty is, is freedom from sin. But Paul, last of all, wrote this epistle to call God's people back to grace. R. Kent Hughes in his commentary had something fascinating to say, something I'd never thought about with the epistle of Galatians before.

He said, Galatians is an epistle to the prodigal. I never thought about that before because that's what the Galatian people were. They were prodigal. They started off well, but now they have fallen away. They had fallen away from all of the things that God had, from the liberty, from the freedom, from the grace that God had for them. They had fallen away from those things and he is writing to call them back.

It's a story for prodigals. And perhaps some of you find yourself in the exact same position this morning. Perhaps some of you find yourself as prodigals. Oh, you maybe have not fallen into the great sins like the prodigal son had, but you slipped away from grace. You slipped away from grace into allowing yourself to live a little bit however you want to. Because after all, God's grace will cover my sin, right?

You slipped a little bit into some licentiousness. Some of you have slipped a little bit into legalism and you have made your walk with Jesus more difficult than God ever intended for it to be. You have begun to create laws for yourself that God never intended. You have begun to create laws for yourself so that you can feel better about yourself. And maybe, just maybe, even to hold it over other people's heads.

And say, look how much better I am than you. It's an epistle for the prodigal because it's calling us back to grace. But Lloyd Ogilvie, in his commentary, said this, Galatians is a dangerous epistle. It's dangerous because it was dangerous for Paul to write. Matter of fact, he faced danger all the time because his stand for grace caused the legalists, to hate him.

As a matter of fact, him calling out the Galatian people for their false gospels would have caused him to be pretty unpopular as far as they were concerned. It was a dangerous epistle for Paul to write. It was a dangerous epistle for the Galatian people to read because it would pull them out of their comfort zone and pull them back into what God had for them. And brothers and sisters, I agree with Lloyd Ogilvie when he said, it's a dangerous epistle for me to teach.

Because I'm well aware of the fact that as I begin to present to you some of the false gospels and call you back to grace, I will every now and then make you angry because I'll have to step on your toes. I'll have to step on the toes of the false gospel that you hold so dearly. I'll have to step on your toes of the works that you hold so dearly. I'll have to step on your toes for the licentiousness that you hold so dearly.

And it might make you angry. But you know what? That's my job. My job, just like the one that Paul had, was to call you back to grace. To call the prodigals to come back home. And so the epistle lays out like this. Chapters 1 and 2, Paul will defend grace. Chapters 3 and 4, Paul will explain grace. And chapters 5 and 6, Paul will apply grace. He says, Paul, an apostle, not sent from men nor through the agency of men,

but through Jesus Christ and God the Father who raised him from the dead, and all the brethren who are with me, to the churches in Galatia. And now he brings us to the true subject of the book, the Lord Jesus Christ. Notice what he says in verse 3. Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. Grace and peace. The Siamese twins of Paul's epistles.

He always includes those two greetings. He includes them for one main reason, although we've pulled a couple of side reasons out as well. But the main reason why Paul writes the phrase in the introduction to his epistles, grace and peace, are because there were always two different groups of people meeting in the church at that point in time. There was always some Gentile people and there were always some Jewish people.

When Gentiles greeted each other at this particular point in time, they would show up to each other and they would say, grace to you. Isn't that great? I'm not sure that that's not a greeting we shouldn't kind of bring back. Like, how amazing to show up to someone with that grace to you, right? Like, just kind of makes you a little happy on the inside. And the Jewish greeting, of course, is that they would say, peace to you.

Actually, the Jewish word they would use is shalom, peace to you. And Paul knew he was writing to both groups of people. And there's a really good indication here to us in understanding that this epistle is for everyone. Because there was no greater divide in the world than that between the Jews, and the Gentiles. And so if Paul says, Jew and Gentile alike, this is for you,

then we can know in our culture, this is for everyone. He says, grace to you and peace. But we're reminded of something in this. We can't know the peace of God until we really understand the grace of God. And I don't think it's probably a far stretch for me to think that there's some people here this morning that aren't really experiencing much peace. And so it's time for you to begin to understand much grace.

He says, grace to you and peace. And where does that stuff come from? Where do those things come from? They come from God, our Father, and the Lord, Jesus Christ. And now he begins to explain who Jesus is. Verse four, who gave himself for our sins, that he might rescue us from this present evil age, according to the will of our God and Father. Three phrases.

Three phrases. Three phrases. Three phrases. Three phrases. Three phrases. Number one, he says, who gave himself for our sins. We've spent a lot of time over the last few weeks talking about that, haven't we? How much Jesus gave himself for our sins. He gave himself by laying aside his glory to come down and live a life amongst us. He gave himself for us by deciding that he would live 33 years on this earth,

experiencing all of the things that you and I experience, experiencing all of the events of life, all of the difficulties of life that you and I experience, in his humanity, and yet doing it absolutely perfect. And he gave himself for us by offering himself up as a sacrifice on the cross for our sins. As Peter tells us, who himself bore in his own body on the tree, the penalty for our sins. This sacrifice is so great that we're told in the book of Ephesians that it will take all of Ephesians, eternity for us to fully grasp the grace of God that he showed to us on the cross.

The Lord Jesus Christ, who gave himself for us. And why did he give himself for us? So that he might rescue us from this present evil age. There's just something about the word rescue, isn't there? There's just something exciting about the word rescue, something comforting about the word rescue. Because that word rescue means that I was in a perilous situation

and the only way that I could be set free, the only way that I could be helped is if someone came along and rescued me. And that's exactly what Jesus did when we were in our greatest need. As a matter of fact, Paul in the book of Romans describes it like this. God demonstrates his own love toward us and that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. See, I needed rescued because I had made a mistake.

I needed rescued because I had made such a shambles of my life. I needed rescued because sin was destroying my life. I needed rescued because sin would not finish destroying my life until it was completely and utterly unrecognizable until death was the only thing that was left for me. And then Jesus stepped in and he rescued me. And what did he rescue me from?

This present evil age. An age that is... Dominated by Satan. An age dominated by the things of Satan. And Jesus has rescued us from this. Now, it may not always feel like you're very rescued right now because you're kind of going, yeah, but we're still sort of living in this present evil age. Yeah, because what he's rescued us from first is from the power of sin.

You and I are no longer under the power of sin if you're born again here this morning. If you're not born again this morning, if you've never come to Jesus as your Lord and Savior, you're very much still under the power of sin. As a matter of fact, you very much are still in need of rescue. And today should be the day that you cry out for rescue. Today should be the day that you cry out,

Lord, I know that sin is going to destroy me. I absolutely need rescue. And he will. For the rest of us that are born again, we've been rescued from the power of sin. We've not yet been rescued from the presence of sin because we still live in these bodies that are still subject to sin. We won't be rescued from the presence of sin until he takes us home to be with himself.

But he's rescued us. From this present evil age. And then I want you to take note of the third phrase, according to the will of our God and Father. Now, I'm sure there's a wonderful theological explanation to that phrase, but let me put it to you in simple Ryan vernacular. He did it on purpose, right? He didn't accidentally rescue us. He wasn't like, son of a gun.

I guess that was, that's good too. I'm glad I did that as well, right? Like, I know he did it on purpose. It was his will to rescue us. It was his. Plan to rescue us. My daughter used to do tumbling and every time she would try to learn a new skill, if she did it once, they would say, okay, do it again and then do it again. Because if you do it once, it's an accident.

If you do it twice, it's a fluke. If you do it three times, you really have it. You're doing it on purpose. And that's kind of the way it is with God and us. He didn't just accidentally rescue us. No, it was his plan. How long was it God's will to rescue us from the presence of sin, from the power of sin? From this present evil age? Why, from the moment Adam sinned.

Because what was the very first thing that God did after Adam sinned? Number one, he made a promise. Number two, he made a sacrifice. He made a promise. The seed of the man, or the seed of the woman, will crush the head of the serpent. And then he made a sacrifice and he covered Adam and Eve with those skins of animals. You see, God had a plan all along. God knew what he was doing

and he set us free according to his will.

As a matter of fact, I'm reminded of a verse out of the book of Hebrews where he refers to Jesus as the author and the finisher of our faith. Now, there's one last verse that I want to cover and that's verse five. Because Paul sort of breaks out in a spontaneous praise as he thinks about the Lord Jesus Christ who gave himself for our sins and he might, he might rescue us from this present evil age and by God, he even did it on purpose. Breaks into spontaneous praise and says, to whom be glory forever and ever.

Amen. To whom be glory forever and ever. Amen. But you know what that verse reminds me of? You see, legalism and false gospels take all of the glory away from God and they give all of the glory to man. See, that's one of the big problems with it is it takes all of the glory away from God and it gives it to man. Grace takes all of the glory from man and gives it to God.

Brothers and sisters, God is calling us back to grace. God is calling us back to that grace-filled relationship with him. He's calling all the prodigals to come home. He's calling all the weary to rest. And all of those things are found in the grace of God. And they all result in glory. Glory to the one and only God who lives forever and ever. Amen.

As we gather here this morning, it's the first Sunday of the month, which is Communion Sunday here at Calvary Chapel. That's our tradition. So we're going to partake in that communion this morning, but I always find it a good time to do that. I always find it a good time to do that. I always find it a good thing to spend a few moments reminding us exactly what we're doing

when we take this meal of communion. What's sitting up here right now is a couple of cups. The bottom cup of the two-cup stack that you'll get will have the cracker in it. The top cup will have the juice. But there's great power in the understanding of what those represent. You see, on that last great night of the feast, Jesus stood before his disciples and he took that bread,

the bread, by the way, that had been pierced and striped, like we talked about, he took that bread and he broke it. And he said, this is my body, which is broken for you. Take and eat. And then he took the cup, the last cup, and he said, this is the cup of the new covenant in my blood, which is shed for you. Take and drink. When you came to Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior,

that's exactly what you did. You came to Jesus and you took him. You took that body and you partook of it. You took that blood and you partook of it and it became a part of who you are. His body that was broken for you, his blood that was shed for you, came in and made you a brand new creation. And now every time we gather as the body of Christ and we partake in this meal,

we proclaim that the body and the blood of Jesus Christ are what has made us one with him. And quite frankly, the body and the blood of Jesus Christ are what make us one with him. Each other. But Paul, again, warned us in the book of 1 Corinthians not to partake of this in an unworthy manner. He said, as a matter of fact, some of you are even sick. Some have even died

because they've partaken of it in an unworthy manner. So what's it mean to partake in a worthy manner? Well, as always, it's a reminder that if you're here this morning and you're not a believer in Jesus Christ, this is just a sad little drink of juice and a really dry, stale cracker. It won't do anything for you. So to partake in a worthy manner, you need to get your life right with Jesus

because he's calling you. And aren't you tired of fighting? Aren't you tired of fighting against him? He's calling you to salvation. He's calling you to let him rescue you.

And so if you're here this morning and you're not born again, then while this worship team sings this last song and the ushers hand out the elements, it's a really good time to say, Lord, I'm a sinner. Please be my savior. And he'll come and he'll make his home inside of you and you'll be born again. For the rest of us that are believers in Jesus Christ, partaking in a worthy manner means that we need to make sure that our hearts are clean before the Lord.

You see, many of us, as we go through a month, and when I say many of us, I mean all of us, when we go through a month, we find that there's times where we have failed. There's times where I have backslidden, where I have backslidden, where I have backslidden, where I've been that prodigal. And it's time for you to come home. It's time for you to confess those sins to the Lord.

Get your heart right with Jesus. And so again, as the worship team sings, it's a time to ask God to search your heart, to see if there be any wicked way. Have you been holding grudges against people? Have you not been considering the body of Christ? It's time to confess those things to the Lord and get your heart right with him. And then celebrate with a clean, clear heart

before the Lord. The body and the blood of Jesus. Because we're told that when we confess our sins, he's faithful and just to forgive us our sins. To cleanse us from all of those unrighteousness. So I'm going to ask the worship team to come up and get themselves going. And I'm going to ask the ushers to come down and get ready to hand out the elements. And again,

as they come around to hand out these elements, ask God to search your heart and do the business that needs to be done. Once you've received your elements, if you would please stand and we will all partake together. I'm accepted always again. Father, we come to you thanking you, Lord, for everything that you've done for us. Lord, thanking you for the cross,

for your body that was broken, for your blood that was shed. Lord, I praise you that you've made us one with you because of Jesus. Lord, I pray that you would keep our hearts focused on the grace of God. Keep our hearts dependent on the grace of God. And Lord, may we more clearly understand exactly what you've done for us on the cross. We thank you and we praise you, Lord,

in Jesus' name. Amen. Let's partake.

Would you bow with me one more time? Lord, what a great time we've had in your word this morning. Lord, I pray that your Holy Spirit would do your work, Lord. Father, be with us as we go out from here. Use your word in our lives as you see fit. We thank you and we praise you, Father, in Jesus' name. Amen. Be blessed.