Religion versus the Church
Galatians 1:13-14 · Mike Doyle · Jan 27, 2019
Galatians (2018-20), No. 08
Holly Hills Bible Church
https://www.hollyhillsbiblechurch.org/teaching/messages/49261913486928

Transcribed from the recording by SermonAudio, so expect the occasional misheard word.

So today we're going to continue to talk about Paul's defense of his apostleship and why he presents a gospel that he has the courage to say back in a few verses that if anybody else preach another gospel other than what I'm preaching, let him be accursed.

It's pretty strong language. And as we talked about last week, only God could do that. But Paul, because he got his gospel word for word from God, he can do it too. And that's in essence what he's saying. So we've worked our way up to talking about, well, what is this gospel? And one of the things we discovered is that it's heavenly. And that, I think, is probably the the core of what his gospel is all about. What does it do? It produces, for those that believe, a new order of existence. After a new order, a new man, it's Christ himself, Christ lives in me. New man. New order of existence.

And it's not, and think about this what I'm going to say, it's not the old man that has received additions or advantages to him as an illegal religion would be. That's not what it is. That's what the former gospel would have taught us. But I am made entirely new of Christ. I am in him who is the Son of God, and that that old man has been superseded and judicially put an end to at the cross. Pretty interesting, right? Being crucified with Christ, the old man is no longer have recognized existence before God. It certainly does before me. I'm dealing with this guy all the time. But before God, it doesn't. Well, I and my new creation am in Christ before the Father, and he lives in me.

These issues are the very core of what Paul's gospel is about. the very core of it. Now, we being the religious people that we are, it's difficult for us, I think, to enter into the fullness of what he's saying here. And we described last week, how would you put a tag? How would you identify this gospel? And I think we could say it's the gospel of the glory of the Son of God.

It has to do with This new man resurrected, seated in the heavenlies, and he's glorified, and I'm positioned in him. The position that the believer has before the Father is exactly the same thing as relationship to Christ. And the Lord Jesus's relationship to the old Adamic old man is the same relationship I have from God's perspective. didn't understand all of this.

It didn't mean that he and Paul were in contradiction of each other, but he preached salvation, perfect as it was and final, through a risen Savior, the present indwelling of the Holy Spirit he preached. But the great elements of this gospel of Paul he didn't know about, because he didn't see Christ in the glory. He didn't set aside man entirely and judicially as him being ended at the cross. Nor does he connect the individual with Christ as his life, as his head, that the saints already possessed by the Holy Spirit. In other words, I could say that Peter didn't have a full concept of who he was as a believer, where he was, seated in the heavenlies in Christ, and what he had.

It doesn't mean he wasn't saved, it doesn't mean he wasn't of the Lord, he certainly was. But the glorified Christ communicated to Paul not only the great fundamentals of the heavenly church, but totally new revelations about who he was and his body, which we are, truths that hadn't been shared with the nation of Israel at all.

These truths concern things like our identification with Christ crucified, buried, resurrected, ascended and seated with Christ in the heavenlies. We have a heavenly position, which is what reality is. We're co-heirs with Christ. We will reign with the beloved bridegroom and much, much more.

If you've ever had the opportunity to look up Lewis Barry Chaffers. He wrote a paper called the 33 things that happened to us at the cross. 33 things. I would encourage you to look them up and just go through them and recognize that every single one of those 33 things is true of everybody in this room. It's mind-boggling what's there.

I think that we try to make the gospel something other than this glorious gospel of Christ, because we really think that, well, it'll appeal to the world better, or it'll appeal to my contemporaries in the spirit better, that we can somehow explain the things that go on in the world if we're not as heavenly.

The point is, is that only from that position Can we really see things? I have this saying written on a wall in my house that came from Miles Stanford that says this, Keep looking down, for your life is hid with Christ and God. The view is a lot better up there. You can see things a lot better from that position than you can down here looking up. Now, in Ephesians chapter 1, verses 3 through 6, I want you to take a look again at some of the things that are true of everybody in this room.

First thing Paul says is, blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ who has blessed us. And I thought, you know what? If I said, who has blessed Bob with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ, just as he chose Ingrid in him before the foundation of the world, that Roy should be holy and blameless before him in love. He predestinated Randy to be adopted as a son through Jesus Christ himself according to the intention of his will, not Randy's will, his will. to the praise and the glory of His grace, which He freely besowed on us in the Beloved." If you make it personal like that, and it's talking about you, He is talking about you.

So in verse 13, He says, For you have heard of My former manner of life in Judaism, how I used to persecute the church beyond measure, and I tried to destroy it. So why would he make a statement like that? What is he trying to prove through this statement? His argument in this verse is that his early education in Judaism is proof that he didn't receive the gospel from man. Understand what I said?

The fact that he was a godly Jew and got this education from Judaism would prove I didn't get this new gospel of the glory of Christ from man. I went to this rigid school of ritualism which really is opposed to Christianity. He says I was a staunch adherent to the principles of that school and as such relentlessly persecuted the church. No human agency could therefore have been brought about, could have brought about the changes that happened in Paul It required a direct interposition of God himself for Paul to have that change of mind.

He says, you've heard of my manner of life. Everybody who's reading this has heard about me and what I was all about. He told the Galatians of his career as a persecutor. And you know what? It was his habit to do that. And a lot of places in the scripture, Paul would say, well, let me tell you about who I was.

Let me tell you about what I did in my past life so that you can understand who I am and the grace that I live under. In Acts 22, 3 through 5, he said, I'm a Jew, born in Tarsus of Cilicia, but brought up in this city, educated under Gamaliel, kind of the top Pharisee at that point, educator, strictly according to the law of our fathers, being zealous, for God just as you all are today. I persecuted this way, the way being Christianity, to the death, binding and putting both men and women in prison. And I also had letters from the high priests and the council to testify of my doings. From them I received letters. And I went up to Damascus to grab some of these Christians and bring them home and put them in jail because I was zealous against what they were saying.

In Acts 26.4, he's giving a defense before Festus, I think, and he's explaining that he was a Jew and that everybody knows from his youth up that he spent his time among, not only in the nations, which is Tarsus, his dad was a Pharisee, but also in Jerusalem studying. And he says, since they have known about me for a long time, if they are willing to testify that I lived as a Pharisee according to the strictest sect of our religion. And now I'm standing trial for the hope of the promise made by God to our fathers, the promise to which our twelve tribes hope to attain as they earnestly serve God night and day.

So he's talking a lot about tradition. He's talking a lot about the Jewish religion and how careful he was and how educated he was. It says to me that we get educated in our system and we have traditions and we have the denomination I came out of is nothing but tradition. And there's all kinds of things that we did every week, every month, special holidays, all that kind of stuff that were kind of traditional. And not only was it we had family traditions, but that denomination was sort of married into our family. And we all we all did it together. So. Paul is trying to explain, look, What's going on here is that I was educated in the traditions of my religion. Was that education the result of his being taught everything that God taught Moses on Mount Sinai? Answer no. The question is, is what Saul learned and practiced in the Jewish religion, was it the same thing that God gave Moses on Mount Sinai?

The word religion is not really in the Greek. It's a word that refers to the Jewish faith and worship. Perhaps it was a term coined by Gentiles to describe the Jews, just like the term Christianos was coined in Acts 11, where Christians were first talked about as Christians, identifying them. So his early education, which is important, had to do more with ritualism and tradition than any other part of it.

The argument that he did not receive the gospel from man, certainly not the Christian gospel, makes sense because he wouldn't have gotten it out of that Jewish system. If they had been If he had been educated by what happened at Mount Sinai, the original Judaism, he may have recognized that there was a Messiah, that there was a Savior sent.

But because it was covered over with this tradition, you never saw it, and the Jews never saw it. So no human agency could possibly have brought about such a change in man, who at one time relentlessly persecuted the followers of Christ. He was out to ruin and destroy them, and to identify Christianity as a cult, and only God could change that man's heart. Now, here's what he probably didn't know about. He knew nothing before his conversion of the supernatural Judaism, in which the Levitical sacrifices were the outward expression of an inward faith in the coming of substitutionary atonement.

The whole idea of the sacrifices in the Jewish system was to cover their sins and it pointed to a Redeemer who would come and take the place of them and put their sins away. Notice that the Jews always thought that their sins were covered until John the Baptist saw Christ coming down the road and he said, Behold the Lamb of God, who takes away the sins of the world. The take away part was new, brand new, and that's what the sacrifice was supposed to do. Judaism in Paul's time was really a mere ethical cult basing salvation on good works and observing the sacrifices that were merely a form.

But when he was saved, imagine what happened to him as he began to rethink his Old Testament education and got to thinking about what he knew from the standpoint of now he's a believer. And when he's out in Arabia and God is teaching him about the heavenliness of the church, the supernatural significance of what his education was began to open up to him. But in this verse, he's speaking of apostolic Judaism in his early life.

I'm stuck on this idea of tradition because I think that we all have traditions. We have traditions here at Holly Hills. God forbid somebody would sit where you sit. You know, it's one of the things we laugh about a lot. But let me read a couple of passages that maybe help us understand from God's perspective. In Isaiah 29, 13, the Lord said, Because this people draw near with their words and honor me with their lip service, but they remove their hearts far from me, and their reverence of me consists of tradition learned by rote. Isn't that interesting?

They don't know me, they know about me. One of the biggest complaints that God has about the Jews in the Old Testament is they didn't know His ways. They knew His works, they knew how powerful He was, but they didn't know His ways. What are people's ways? It's kind of what they're all about. Those of you who are married know what your spouse's ways are. You know what they do and their work is, but you don't know their ways unless you're intimate with them. And God had a problem with that with the Jews.

Even in Colossians 2.8, he says, see to it that no one takes you captive through philosophy, empty deception, according to the traditions of men, according to the elementary principles of the world, rather than according to Christ. Would you say that Christ is all about giving us new traditions? I don't think so. He's all about life. He's all about heavenly life, and how that life functions. And it's not traditional, it's life.

So, Paul says, look, based on that, and based on where I grew up, I persecuted the church, and I was really trying to waste it. I like one of the translations that said, wasted it. I really like that word. And this wasted and... Persecution is an imperfect tense, which means he was doing it all the time. This was his goal, his purpose, his everyday, this is what he was thinking about. It describes a course of action continuously pursued. Wasted is a really strong term. It means to make havoc of, it referred not merely to an attempt to devastate or ravage, but to ruin them, destroy them, get rid of them, And it not only applied to cities or lands, but it also applied to people.

It was used by the Christians in Damascus of Saul after his conversion. They understood who he was, and it probably became fixed in Paul's mind. These people, these Christians that I'm now part of, they know me as one who was after them, who wanted to destroy them. I think the reason why Paul mentions the fact that he tried to destroy the church is that he might show that such bitter hostility proved that he was not among those whose association with Christians had been received, that he had received the gospel from them. So he's using his old life to show, I couldn't have gotten the information I have about my gospel from them, because look at my history.

So, and notice he uses the term the Church of God. He shows that in writing to the Galatians, he had not only formed a concept of individual churches, but the church not only was a local assembly, but God intended it to be worldwide, that it was the gathering of local churches into one entity, the Church of God or the body of Christ, same thing. It also shows at the same time that the nation of Israel had been temporarily set aside and the Christian church brought in to be the channel through which God was to work for the time being. You have to study Romans 9, 10, 11 to get a hold on that.

Expand the translation of this verse, that you've heard of my manner of life of four times in Judaism, that beyond measure I kept on continually persecuting the church, the church of God, and continually bringing destruction upon it. verse 14, and I profited in the Jewish religion above many of my equals in my own nation. This word prophet means he blazed a trail.

He was known for how much zeal he had and how smart he was and how well he did. He outstripped his Jewish contemporaries distinctively in their culture, in their zeal, in their activity. He pioneered in his studies, cutting new paths. He was a brilliant pupil of Gamaliel. So he's the guy, you know, he's the man in Judaism.

But when he says the equals of my peers, he's not talking about in terms of education, he's talking about pretty much age. All the young guys that were learning to be rabbis and learning to be Pharisees, I was the number one guy in class. And not only did I learn more, I was also more zealous than they were. I outstripped them.

And in the words, my own nation, he says he has incidental proof that Paul was writing especially to Gentiles. Paul's writing, his ministry is to the Gentiles. being more exceedingly zealous of the traditions of my father." Now, notice what he says there. The traditions of my father's. The traditions mean to give from the presence of or thus to give personally. It signifies transmission.

It signifies how do you learn a tradition? How do you learn a tradition in your family? Or how do you learn a tradition in your denomination? Or how did you learn a tradition of the school you went to? Somebody had to teach it to you, right? You had to learn it from somebody.

And that's the point that he's been trying to make. I didn't learn any of this from a man. I didn't learn it through a man. No one told that fellow to come and tell me. I learned it directly, directly from Christ, and that's what makes it different. There's no time. in my vocabulary to separate tradition and what I learned from the Lord. It's not tradition. I learned it all immediately.

So, before he's saved, Paul's working and trying to learn the traditions of the fathers. Who are these guys? These are the guys that, maybe explain it this way, God gave the Jews 613 laws, and they had to do with how they lived, how they dealt with morality, and how they dealt with their temple services. Now the Jews are pretty smart and crafty people, so what did they do?

They built a whole system of laws over the top of that, thinking that if I don't break this one, I'm not going to break the real one. Now I live across the street from a Hasidic rabbi a couple of years ago. He's since moved. But that's how they lived.

They had this set of rules that said you couldn't work on Sunday, so they couldn't drive a car on Sunday. So they all had to walk up to the synagogue. But they also pushed baby carriages and all this stuff in the snow. Much more difficult and a lot more work than just getting in a car and driving up there. But they're not working because they've got this layer over the top of the Jewish system or the Mosaic system that if they don't break, these are the traditions.

And this is what Paul learned. He never learned this part until after he was saved. But he knew this part. My friend Zef Pomerantz, who was the rabbi, he never learned this part either. But boy, did he know this part. So, Fathers makes it clear that Paul is not referring here to the Mosaic Law, but to the instructions received from previous generations. This is a really important point, I think, in terms of his argument.

Had Paul lived in an unsaved state in the thought world of the Mosaic economy instead of having his thinking dominated by pharisaic traditions, His act of receiving Christ as Savior would have had some reasonable background, but he didn't have any reasonable background about it.

For the Mosaic institutions pointed to a need for a Savior, to a need for a Christ, and also to Christ who was needed. It would have pointed to the fact that we need somebody to come and deliver us from the moral law And that's what the moral law served. The law serves your purpose. It serves the purpose to show you you need a savior. And you needed deliverance from the Levitical sacrifices because they didn't go far enough. Just covering.

So Paul is at pains to show his Galatian converts that his salvation and his appointment to the apostleship broke completely with all of his background and all of his traditions. He's speaking here of the hereditary traditions of his family. He was the son of a Pharisee. So he started learning it early on from his dad.

So these Pharisaic traditions had been engrafted on the law and had made the law void. And I'll quote a verse from Matthew 15 that the Lord Jesus points this up to the Pharisees. He says, Then some Pharisees and scribes came to Jesus from Jerusalem and said, Why do your disciples break the traditions of the elders?

For they don't wash their hands when they eat bread. Oh, terrible thing. He answered and said, Why do you yourselves transgress the commandments of God for the sake of your tradition? What is he saying to them? Your tradition transgresses the law of God. For God said, honor your father and mother, and he who speaks evil of father and mother is to be put to death. But you say, whoever says to his father and mother, whatever I have that would help you has been given to God. In other words, I gave all the money to God. He's not to honor his father and his mother.

And by this, you invalidate the word of God for the sake of your traditions. You hypocrites. Rightly did Isaiah prophesy of you. Hypocrites. That's what the Lord Jesus calls them. Why? Because they've got this system. So accordingly, he could not have had a true conception of the Mosaic economy.

And when he was converted, he found it probably necessary to go back and revisit Rethink all of what he learned in what we would call the Old Testament scriptures in the light of the revelation given to him, not only on the road to Damascus, but those years in Arabia and under the instructions of the Holy Spirit.

And you imagine with all of that knowledge and not really understanding what it is, and then you become spiritually alive and the Spirit of God begins to teach you what that really means. I think it's true of a lot of us who, again, come out of it. I came out of Catholicism and when I was saved, I can remember, maybe this is a better way to say it, when I was at boot camp in the Marine Corps, they give you two books to read. You know what they are?

The Marine Corps manual and the New Testament. So you have to stand at attention and hold it out in front of you and read whatever. So I read the entire New Testament because the Marine Corps manual was boring. I had no idea what I was reading. But when I got saved and went back and looked at it, oh my goodness, what was there? It was incredible. But I didn't have the capacity to see it.

I think that's the same thing with Paul. He didn't know spiritually what he was learning. He didn't know it at all. So he had intended, if Paul had intended to refer to the Mosaic Law either by itself or in connection with the Pharisaic traditions, he would have mentioned the law by itself and along with its traditions. He's speaking of the way in which his brilliant advancement in Judaism had displayed itself.

In short, the great apostle before his conversion was occupied more with human legal enactments and practices as engulfed upon the Word of God and as interpreting the Word than he was with the Word of God itself. And we know people like that. Our Christianity is full of people like that, that teach anything but the Word itself, anything but drilling down into what God's Word really has to say. The traditions of his fathers included religious definitions handed down in respect to doctrine, ritual, asceticism, interpretation of scripture, and conduct of life.

Thus Paul shows that he is not, at the time of his conversion, appointment to the office of apostle under such influences and in such a frame of mind as to make the reception of the gospel by him from human instruction possible. It wasn't possible. Only a supernatural revelation could have affected it. Therefore proof is established that neither Paul's office as apostle or his message came by way of human channel but direct from God. expanded translation, and I was constantly blazing a pioneer path, outstripping in Judaism many of my age in my race, being more exceedingly zealous of my ancestral traditions.

So what we're going to do now is Roger's going to come up, and we thought we'd give you five or ten minutes about the status, where we are so far, and what we've been working on. Talk a little bit about direction and where we're going to go. So I would say that the first thing is that we were Roger and I are getting together once a week and on the phone. Ten times a week.

We recognize that our job is to feed the flock and protect the flock. That's our job. And so we're diligent about that. And we're diligent about the teaching. We're diligent about the clarity of it and the value of it to you. And so in that respect, we're probably, even if we get overcrowded in the classrooms back there, and by the way, Those of you who are in my class, somebody remember to open a window because it gets kind of stuffy in there. We're probably going to leave the classes back there even if they're crowded, because if we move one of them in here, it isn't as as interactive as it is in that environment. We really like that environment. Roger will talk about the changes coming in his class in a second.

Wants and Needs. We recognize that there's a lot of talent and ability that you guys have, and we certainly would invite you to come and volunteer or talk to us about any way you might want to serve. whether it be in teaching, whether it be in music or any other need that you see. And if you do see a need, don't be quiet about it. Talk to us. Talk to myself or Roger or Wayne or Phil or Bill or Courtney. Let us know because we don't see everything. We walk right by it a lot and don't even see that it's there.

Well, actually, what's kind of neat, we're starting the Colossians class next week. We've been doing Ephesians, now we're going to do Colossians. Well, the Lord has provided a couple of gentlemen. I'm not going to tell you who they are. You need to come to the class to see who's going to be teaching.

It's going to be pretty cool. I think you'll know both of them. the longtime Holly Hillers. If you're new coming, it's going to be exciting. Bob and I will be doing the main part. A couple of the guys going to help us. So it should be exciting. Probably be the rest of the year in Colossians. So that's exciting. And then secondly, in music, I have a I'm not musical, but Vani is does a really good job playing the piano.

We could use some help. If you know of people that would like to join the ministry here and would like to be involved in the music ministry, we'd love to have you come and let us know. That would be really helpful. I'm thankful for people that do that already, but we can certainly use more help with that.

So I think that's my... and keep praying. In terms of the one thing that I get asked most about, you know, what are you doing to find a pastor? Just to let you know kind of what our thought, and we've talked about this before, our thinking is, I would love to have the phone number of a seminary that teaches what we teach. If you know one, let me know.

Now I know of a couple of places and I've made some contacts, but our attitude is that God will bring to us those he wants to serve here. And probably bring to the group of elders, maybe not somebody who comes in And we say, okay, this is the guy, and not like that. Maybe someone who just joins us as an elder or two and works their way into the system that we have here. That's what we're thinking. Now, that may not be true. Somebody may rise right up and want to come and join us, and we're certainly open to that. We have a process that we go through, those of you who know how it works.

The first thing you have to do is answer some questions. Some questions. Some. Seventy-five. Seventy-five. And they're pretty comprehensive and thorough. And the last time we went through this, we sent them out to three people. One person didn't do very well answering them. Another person wrote back and said, why should I answer these questions? I'm going to be the pastor. And then there was Byrne, who told us that not only did we send out 75, but he added a few to him.

So it was great. So the process is going on, but it's not an aggressive process in the sense that, you know, we are marketing ourselves every day. We are trusting God to bring us the right person. And who knows? Maybe the right person is sitting there. We don't know. So we pray about that every week and we recognize that it's going to take someone who is familiar with and grounded in the things of Paul to be compatible with what we teach and what we grow. And we're looking for someone who could come in and grow with us. Understand that? With us. Because there's some pretty savvy people sitting out here.

Let's close in prayer. Dear Father, how we thank you for your grace. We thank you that you keep us well in hand, that you are constantly focused on us and demonstrating your grace and mercy towards us every minute. We pray in your son's precious name. Amen.