Sermon: Delivered From An Evil Age

Let's take a moment. Let's pray before we open God's word together.

Father, we are thankful for the great love you've showered upon us, and this we know love, that you love dos. It is only because you first love dos that we know love. So we confessed this morning that even as we stand and sit in this place, that you are a God of love. We want to hear your words that are saturated with love this morning. Would you help our ears to be open? Would you help our minds to be alive? Would you help our hearts to be fertile soil?

And we pray that in your goodness, that you would pour out your love of fresh and new upon sinners such as us. And we pray all of this in the strong name of Jesus Christ. Amen. Galatians one verses one through five. This is the holy iner, sufficient word of God,

Paul Apostle, not from men, nor through man, but through Jesus Christ, and God the Father who raised him from the dead, and all the brothers who are with me to the churches of Galatia grace to you and peace from God, our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ, who gave himself for our sins to deliver us from the present evil age according to the will of our God and Father, to whom be glory forever and ever. Amen. The grass withers and the flower fades.

The word of God is forever. Thanks be to God. Amen.

I've had a couple people ask me over the last, uh, week, a couple weeks, why are we going to go through the book of Galatians? Why that book? I say, well, there's, there's three primary reasons that immediately jumped in my mind. Uh, one is that as I've looked back over what has been preached here at URC, I don't think Galatians has been preached in the last, at least 20 years or so, uh, here at the church. And so seems like we should tackle it.

Uh, the second is we have been in some long books and so wanted to do a shorter book, uh, that we can finish, uh, here by the end of the year. And my hope is then in, uh, the new year after we go through our faith focus in January and February to begin a longer Old Testament book that we can go through together. But the third is this, and most importantly it's this. Uh, I'm stirred to it, uh, as a pastor who has, uh, concern

for your souls, for my soul. As I think about, uh, this book, I think what is so great about the book of Galatians is that it takes that thing of first importance and it just puts it front and center. And the reality is, is that you and I, we have this tendency to just be one degree off. It's one degree. And what what do I mean by that? Well, I mean there's a constant temptation that is too often yielded to by people in the church whereby we love God,

we treasure Christ, we seek to honor our spouses. We seek to care for our children. We seek to work hardily in our vocation to the glory of God. Uh, we seek to be of service to our community, but we drift just one degree, just one small degree, and we're just a, a little off course. The most important thing is, is not front and center. It isn't what we are focused upon and the tincture of our lives. We're we're, we're just not quite tuned in,

just just a little fuzzy. And it makes a world of difference. It's easy to miss it, it's easy to be blind to it, to be distracted from it. But Christ and his gospel we're to understand and treasure much more and much more and much more and much more over the course of our lives. And Galatians is going to set before us week after week after week, just the centrality of the gospel. It's just gonna put it front and center.

We're gonna spend a lot of time thinking about the relationship between the law and the gospel. How do those go together in the Christian faith and in the Christian life, we're going to think about sanctification together and what it looks like to live to the glory of God. But most importantly and pointedly, we're gonna think about justification together over and over, as Calvin said, that that great doctrine on which the entire faith hinges

justification as Thomas Watson, the Puritan said, God does not justify us because we are worthy, but by justifying us makes us worthy. And we all shake our heads at that, or most of us do in the church. We go, huh, yes, I agree. And yet it's, it's not here. It doesn't occupy the heart, it doesn't shape our lives as much as it should, just, just one degree of Galatians. We are going to run into that old adversary and that constant threat to the gospel over

and over legalism. And you're gonna have to wrestle with, and I'm gonna have to wrestle with it. Am I, am I a legalist? May maybe I wouldn't say that, but, but in my mind, do I think like that? Am I living? Do I live like that? Am I actually a legalist?

Do I understand the relationship between the law and the gospel for the Christian? Martin Luther was a man who came to understand that knowing the difference between the law and the gospel was a matter of life and death. He loved this book more than any other book. He gave a series of lectures on the book of Galatians that have become kind of one of the great standards of the Christian faith and have become a classic in the Christian faith.

And in those lectures he speaks about the tendency that people have to wander from the heart of the gospel justification. And he said this, the article of justification must be sounded in our ears incessantly because the frailty of our flesh will not permit us to take hold of it perfectly and to believe it with all our heart. And so we're gonna keep sounding it in our ears over these weeks and months to the end of the year incessantly.

And my hope is that as we do so, that the, the gospel will taste sweeter, though we didn't think it'd become any sweeter, that we find that we are treasuring Christ. All the deeper though we thought there was no way I could treasure Christ deeper. Not that the mountains that we reach contemplating the grace of Christ that we thought there, there's no way to go beyond that. That we see that there's vista after Vista after Vista experiencing and knowing

and delighting in His grace. It's my hope as we begin. And what that does is it just, just fine tunes us, gets us a little more in the frequency we're supposed to be in, having that right tincture about our lives, no longer one degree old, the world of difference.

So let's start this morning with this letter. Paul begins this letter by identifying himself and he identifies himself as an apostle apostle, just means that he is a messenger. It can also have the idea of being an ambassador. He is at the very outset, he's asserting his office. It's actually quite strong in the Greek. He, he is being very blunt and pointed. He says, Paul apostle not from men. Why is he so direct? Well, it seems that there are people in glacier

that are questioning whether Paul is actually a real apostle or if he is a real apostle. He, he doesn't meet the standard of all the other apostles because didn't Peter and didn't John and didn't James and didn't, fatties didn't, didn't they walk with Jesus? Paul didn't. Didn't they see Jesus do miracles? Paul didn't. Didn't they hear Jesus preach? Paul didn't. And so even if Paul is some kind of apostle, he's a sub apostle,

he's a second rate apostle and that means that we can question his teaching. He's not quite up to par with the rest. And so Paul at the very outset is clearing things up. He is apostolic authority. It's not the man Paul, but the man Paul in the office that has a so authority. And so it is always in the church. It is those that God calls false teachers have descended upon this church. They are what we will see. They are judaizers, they are Jewish Christians

that are doubting whether Paul was actually taught them the real faith and they are sowing these seeds of division. And so Paul defends himself in this book at the very beginning, not because he is proud, not because he is arrogant, but because the gospel is at stake. He's concerned for the gospel. He wants them to know that what he is taught them and what he is teaching them is not of his own creation. We're gonna see it more next week

and in detail next week as we look at the verses that flow here in chapter one. But Paul will recount his his own conversion story and you'll remember that when he is on the road to Damascus and he, he's persecuting Christians and he is on his way there to round up more Christians, to imprison them that it is there on that road that he is called by Christ and he's called by Christ to ministry. He, he says it in verse 16, he says,

God was pleased to reveal his son to me in order that I might preach him among the Gentiles. He's called by God. That's his point in verse one. These false teachers, these judaizers as we shall see, are simply called by men. They're called through men and authority in the church does not come from men, it comes from God. And so the message of the gospel, it does not come from men either. These men that have been called

by men are giving you a false gospel because you can't have a gospel from men. But I've been called by God and the gospel I preach is from God through Christ.

I always shy away from listening to self-appointed prophets and apostles and ministers and preachers and teachers and pastors really does not matter how knowledgeable they seem or charismatic they are or authoritative, they sound if God has not called them and sent them, then they are threats. They're not blessings. That's his point.

He's sent by God with the truth of God. In fact, he, he's pointing out that this is a truth that all Christians hold to. He says it's not him alone that writes to them. But verse two, all the brothers who are with me that is, this is what all Christians believe and we're writing to you together. And who is he writing to? Well verse two, to the churches of glacier, where's glacier? Well, there is a quite a bit of debate

and biblical scholarly circles about who is it that Paul was writing to. There are some that believe he was writing to what we have called South Galatia and there are some that believe he was writing to what is called North Galatia. And really it doesn't make a lot of difference in how you interpret this book. There are a few things that are affected by it. Most importantly, what is affected is chapter two. And there in chapter two we see that Paul confronts Peter.

And so the question is is did he confront Peter before or after Acts chapter 15 in the Jerusalem council, those that hold that Paul wrote this letter early in his ministry. He wrote it to the South Galatian churches and he wrote this letter before the Jerusalem Council in Acts 15. For those that believe that he wrote this to the churches in North Galatia, they believe that he wrote this book after the Jerusalem Council in Acts 15.

But it doesn't have a, a lot of effect upon the interpretation of the book. It's churches that are in today what we would call Turkey or what has historically been called Asia Minor. He's writing to them because what's happened is, is the point is leaving these churches, whether it was after his first missionary journey or whether it was after a later journey, these judaizer Christians, these Jewish Christians have come in

and they soon this false teaching and what are they doing? They are perverting and they're undermining the simplicity of the gospel. The gospel's simple and Paul wants them to know that he wants them just to know the simple gospel.

How is it that sinful people can ever stand before a holy God? How do you answer that? And Paul's answer is this, it's simple. It's just the gospel, simple gospel

seems the constant strategy of our adversary to undermine the gospel by getting people to doubt its simplicity. So what he does at the very start of this letter is he does a kind of summary of the gospel. He's not gonna hold it in reserve and get to the end of the letter after he is walked through all kinds of things and then bring out this big thing at the end and say, this is what you need to believe and understand.

No, he wants it upfront right away. You gotta understand this, it's this simple. Before we go any further, this is it. Now let's just work it out a little more. So he does it here at the very beginning, the Lord Jesus Christ who gave himself for our sins to deliver us from the present evil age according to the will of our God and Father, to whom be glory forever and ever. Simple.

Walk our way through this in our sermon today, four points, the simple gospel. First the centrality of a self-giving Christ the centrality of a self-giving Christ. The titles are clear. He is Lord this Jesus, he is Christ this Jesus he is Lord. He has all authority. Everything belongs to him. He reigns over all he's Lord. He's also Christ. He is the promised one that would come. He is the one that has come into the world.

He is the Christ the promised deliver. And this one with all authority delivers not by leading any army, not by winning an election, not by creating some kind of utopian enclave. He does the unthinkable. Verse four, who gave himself for our sins? He gave himself that, that shorthand for the cross. He died upon the cross. He gave himself he, he held nothing in reserve. He he gave himself

pose, bringing out the striking nature of this by reminding them that this, this one who gave himself he's Lord, it's Lord

servants give themselves not those in authority. Servants, he's Lord.

When the gunman a few weeks ago took shots at former President Trump and you saw the video or you saw the pictures,

it wasn't Trump that had his arms around the secret service agents.

They are the secret service. They are the servants. And so they had their arms around him.

If one was going to give their life for the other in those moments, it was their job to give their life for him. They're the servants.

But Paul's pointing this out to you from the very beginning. Here's the Lord, the Lord of all glory who gives himself He, he did not call upon others to take his place. No, he came not to be served but to serve and to give his life as a ransom for many.

And notice this was self-giving. He wasn't forced, he wasn't cajoled. He surely was not tricked. He says over and over in the gospels that he is going to his end. He must go to Jerusalem.

He gave himself over to death, even death upon a cross. And this was not a hail Mary, a Tim, back to verse one, Paul makes it clear at the beginning his death was sufficient. H how do you know that? How do you know that nothing more is needed? How do you know that? It's just the simple gospel that this Lord and Christ gave himself and that was enough. How do you know? Paul takes away all doubt at the very beginning because God, the father raised him from the dead that

there's to be no doubt remaining was this death sufficient? He lives, he lives

centrality, self-giving Christ. Second, this Christ gave himself for our sins. There's an exchange, a transaction if you will him for us, he for our sins. That's atonement language. Now consider this. He has already made it clear that this one given for us is Lord what we are meant to see at the outset. To see the price that had to have been paid. It's it's significant.

It's incalculable because there was need for it to be significant. Why? Because the offense was so great. The greater the offense, the greater the cost to make restitution.

Earlier this week I was backing out of my driveway and as I was backing out of my driveway, my back windshield was covered with rainwater mist. I wasn't watching and a neighbor had decided to park at the end of my driveway and I ran right into their car.

I pulled over side rogo, there's scratches all over their car. So I walked inside, not in the best of moods, grabbed a piece of paper and wrote a note. It's really early in the morning, didn't wanna wake them up. So wrote a note apologizing that I had backed into their car at the end of my driveway and that I apologize and I'm willing to pay whatever cost you incur for me having run into your car. I expect that sometime this week I'm gonna be told that

I owe them hundreds of dollars, maybe a thousand dollars. But if they come back this week and they say, what you did to our core, we need a hundred thousand dollars from you, I'm going, you're insane. That's not happening. Because the offense wasn't that great. It wasn't that significant.

My mom tells me the story that when I was a toddler and my family lived in a house or duplex and I was in my room, napping in my crib and the next door neighbor, she had gone out to her car and she had started her car and she forgot something in the house and so she jumped out of her car, leaving her car idling in park and ran inside to get whatever it was. Well, she also left her toddler in the car. The toddler moved and the gear shift in the car moved

and the car moved and the wall of my bedroom moved and collapsed. Now I expect she owed more than hundreds of dollars. It's more significant. The greater the offense, the greater the price for restoration.

Maybe it's due to the ubiquity of sin that it's just everywhere. That it's, it's all over me and every part of my being, the ubiquity of sin in the world is just everywhere. Maybe it's that or maybe it's just our pride, but we tend to think of sin as something small.

No real great defense.

It costs the Lord.

How can such a great offense be paid for? What's sufficient?

Only the son of God becoming flesh and living and giving himself for sin for our sin.

A preposition for it's so very key there. He takes on our debt. He pays the the sin price tag for our sin. It echoes the language in the old Testament of the the sin offering.

He became a sin offering for us. The the offering that was provided so that sin could be atone for put away, forgiven, the Lord became sin for us. Paul will say in two Corinthians five became sin

for us

and here's the threat. Paul's dealing with some in these Galatian churches thought more was needed.

It can't be that simple. Christ died and and so our sins are forgiven. It can't be that simple. There must be more says the message of men. Why? Because the world is opposed to the gospel and hates everything about it. It rubs against every part of yours and my beings. It will always find the gospel to be offensive. Why? Because it makes us too dependent. It says that I have need that I'm weak,

too simple. Surely we must contribute. That's the mantra of the world. That's not the gospel. No one is going to be my master because I need no master. That's the message of the world, not the gospel.

I need nothing in no one. It's a message the world, not the gospel. I can, that's the world, not the gospel

supplies for us what we need and that provision is sufficient.

The son of God gave himself for are sins, but I know, but we know. But no,

surely though the Father isn't satisfied, he he needs to see no

notice. Paul says this was according to the father's will,

a father who loved us so much that he sent his only begotten son for us. It's sufficient so that you might have life and have it eternally.

Luther said it this way, the genius of Christianity takes the words of Paul who gave himself four sins as true and efficacious. We are not to look upon our sins as insignificant. Trifles. On the other hand, we are not to regard them as so terrible that we must despair. Learn to believe that Christ was given not for une and imaginary transgressions, but for mountainous sins. Not for one or two, but for all. Not for sins that be discarded,

but for sins that are stubbornly ingrained. Practice this knowledge and fortify yourself against despair, which leads to our third point, to great gifts of Christ's self-giving for us to great gifts. Verse three, it's a, it's a typical Pauline greeting grace to you and peace from God, our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ, typical for Paul, but life changing for sinners. Grace, peace. These are the effects of him giving himself for us.

Grace to us and peace for us. As Luther said, these two terms, grace and peace constitute Christianity. Grace is God's unmerited favor. Nothing causes it, nothing forces it. Nothing encourages it. Purely a gift. Just grace.

This is so very important because these Galatians that they're wandering from the gift of grace, they're buying into the arguments that deny God's grace. The word that goes all the way back to the Old Testament scriptures and echoes that wonderful word that most beautiful words in the Old Testament, Hebrew, the word hesed, God's covenant faithfulness is kindness. Or as our English translations often dam it, his steadfast love his grace.

The simple gospel is he just gives you grace.

He wants them to know and experience grace. He's so concerned for them because these judaizers, they're, they're upsetting the people's faith and as they upset their faith, they're, they're robbing them.

They're being robbed of the experience of grace

and they're being robbed of the experience of peace. With grace comes peace. The order is all important. First grace then peace. Peace is that rest that is experienced by our consciences within and our souls without with God. Sin is removed by his grace. As pastor Kevin said this morning, as far as yeast is from the west, so far does he remove our transgressions from us? Peace rests upon the souls of those that experience grace,

peace that Paul knows can't be found anywhere else in anyone else, in anything else. It's what is so dangerous. These these false teachers are coming along and they're saying, look, you, you need this for true peace. They're like those old Testament, what the Old Testament prophets spoke about. Of those that will say peace. Peace. When there is no peace and Paul's saying there is peace, it's this simple. Christ is your peace.

Peace.

Even in the midst he says this present evil age, as Paul calls it in verse four, you're the gift you receive is peace.

He's recognizing, look, it's not easy. You live in this world and you are going to be tried in this world and you're gonna be tested in this world and you're gonna suffer tumult in this world. And so you're gonna be unsettled at times in this world, but overriding, you'd have peace,

an evil age, so it will get rattled at times. But you know every culture since the fall, Genesis three has been part of the evil age,

just continual.

It's present evil age, which is opposed to the Christian faith and there's going to be unsettledness at times as we see it wax and we see it wane and there's a rightness. I think about being more unsettled at times saying, I, I see this culture or this society descending more and it seems in an evil age it's even becoming more evil. There's a rightness about that.

I also think that there's too much of that unsettledness, it feels like in our Christian circles today.

I was um, I was a new Christian in college. My freshman year of college had a lot more zeal than knowledge and I was in a multicultural education class and the professor was waxing eloquent about how all cultures are equally morally good.

And remember raising my hand in class one day and saying, Mrs. Smith, uh, you say that the culture where women are not allowed to be educated is as morally good as the one where she can be hemmed and hawed and had some kind of answer. So ham went up again. Mr. Smith, would you say a culture in which women are physically abused and it's okay, it condoned. Would you say that culture is morally equal to the one where it is forbidden and outlawed

and had some answer?

Mrs. Smith, can I ask one more? The culture where they eat women cannibals equally moral at that point, she rightfully said, Jason, you stay after class and we'll talk, but we can make the error on the other side. As Christians, we can think because we live in an evil age that every age is equally evil. And the fact that you and I at times have been quite comfortable in our culture, I think says more about our blindness

to evil than it does about our cultures form. Former goodness. We live in this present age and it's evil. That's not changed. It doesn't change. It's always evil. Just sometimes you and I are more aware of it than we are other times. I truly think when we get to heavens someday that you and I will look back and so many things that we counted as good, we will realize they were not good. And so many things that we looked past

and didn't even notice they were evil because we were blind to it. Circuits in our heads are gonna be blown to how much we missed. It's always an evil age until Christ returns. But, but here's the amazing, but God rescues us from it. Even now. We dwell in not only this present evil age, but what Paul is pointing out that as Christians we also dwell in the age to come because that age has come. It's broken in. He says, we've been delivered.

It's not only that you will be delivered, you've been delivered. We can have peace now. You're to have peace now 'cause you've been delivered. Paul says he gave himself for our sins to deliver us from this present evil age. He'll say in Ephesians two that Christians were once dead in the trespasses and sins and which we once walked following the course of this world. It's an evil age, but by grace we have been and we will be delivered. And so

Peace is ours. That's yours. The gift

Of the coming of Christ. When he came into the world, and surely when he went to the cross and when he went into the tomb and when he was raised from the grave and now he sits ascended on high at the right hand of the Father, his kingdom has come, the new age has dawned. It's just not fully consummated yet, but it's here.

You dwell in it if you're in Christ so you can have Peace.

As he says in one Corinthians seven, this world in its present form, it's passing away. It's defeated. It's just simply a matter of time. We have peace, but, but notice again, it's not by our effort that we have peace, but by Christ. It's simply by the grace of God that you have peace.

Here's the key, as we go through this book, this gospel, this apostolic gospel, the one that Paul preaches, that is a true gospel gospel. It's not about what we do for God, but what God has done for us. And Paul wants them to understand this. He's not gonna keep it in reserve. He wants to nail it with them at the very beginning of the book. And now he's gonna walk through it for all of these chapters because it is so very important.

Because it is not only they who are being robbed, but God. That's our final point. All of this is to his glory, as Paul says in verse five, to whom be the glory forever and ever. Amen. This is the great end and it's our great aim. It's his work. So he gets the glory.

We contribute nothing. So he gets the glory. We have no reason to boast because we did nothing. He gets the glory,

gospel gives glory to him forever and ever,

and that's as it should and must be.

Paul is getting at here at the very beginning saying, look what we're gonna walk through simple. This gospel is, but I want you to understand that we are speaking about cosmic things. I care for your souls and I care for the glory of God.

So for us to hold on to this simple gospel, I'm hoping that as we go through it over these weeks, that we will, will love it more, understand it more that live and breathe it more that truly it becomes our north star. It becomes that which we center our lives upon, not not just in that two hour moment in church on Sunday, not just oh, when our minds are kind of pricked again, when we're sitting down before we eat and pray,

but where it truly is the thing of first importance in our lives, where our lives are truly tinctured with it, truly attuned to it on the right frequency with it. What we can say with Paul for me to live is Christ that simple.

It's beauty and simplicity of the gospel. We're gonna explore that in the weeks to come. We pray for us,

our Father, we are thankful for so great to salvation,

for the gift of a simple gospel that is not simplistic.

You, eternal God would choose to send the very son into this world to live and to die for our sins. Nothing simplistic about it. And yet so very simple that a child can believe. Thank you for the gift of this gospel, and we know it. We breathe it, treasure it, and we live it to your glory and to your praise. In Christ's name. Amen.