The Persecutor Who Became the Victim
Galatians 1:18-24 · Mike Doyle · Feb 10, 2019
Galatians (2018-20), No. 10
Holly Hills Bible Church
https://www.hollyhillsbiblechurch.org/teaching/messages/49261913587106

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

So we're going to finish up chapter 1 today, and then next week Roger will pick up in chapter 2. We're racing through these verses, you notice that? So back up in 17, Paul says, Neither did I go to Jerusalem to those who were apostles before me, but I went away to Arabia and returned once more to Damascus. So the timeline is Damascus, Arabia, back to Damascus. So when Paul got back to Damascus, he hung around for a while. Why did he leave Damascus?

Let me see if I can get this thing working. Now that I got a pointer. Look out. I want to point it that way. Right. So one of the interesting things about studying Galatians is that Paul goes through some history in a hurry. And if you want to do some background checking on kind of what was going on, you can go to acts a lot of times and find, oh, this is circumstances that were surrounding why he was leaving. So.

Acts 9, 19 through 25 are interesting because Paul comes back to Damascus and it says, Paul kept increasing in strength and confounding the Jews who lived in Damascus by proving that Jesus is the Christ. So Jesus is the Messiah and that's what he's proving to them.

And when many days had elapsed, which I think includes Arabia, the Jews plotted together to do away with him. But their plot became known to Saul, and they were also watching the gates day and night so that they might put him to death. But his disciples took him by night, led him down through an opening in the wall, lowering him in a large basket. So that's why the title came to my mind, The Persecutor. who once headed the persecution of the church is now the victim of it.

So Paul goes back to Damascus and they're on him right away. And what's interesting about this is that, imagine meeting the glorious Christ on the road to Damascus. Then you go hang around Damascus a little while. Then you go in the desert. And I'm thinking the desert experience was probably about two years, maybe a little longer. Then you come back to Damascus and you're teaching and you're preaching and you're thinking, gee, they're going to love me.

No, they don't. He's got a lot of pressure on him. So you find out that if you're called of the Lord, that this isn't an easy time, that part of your spiritual growth is going to be pressure. Pressure from, in this case, people who wanted to put him to death.

So, the next step is that he goes up to Jerusalem. Let's see if I can do this right. What kind of reception did he get in Jerusalem? Let's take a look. Then three years later, I went up to Jerusalem, become acquainted with Cephas, who's Peter, stayed 15 days, but I didn't see any other of the apostles except James, the Lord's brother. Again, if you go to Acts, you find out, well, things in Jerusalem weren't so cool either. When he came to Jerusalem, he was trying to associate with the disciples. Good move. But they were all afraid of him, not believing that he was a disciple. So he goes up to the place where all of this started and they don't want anything to do with this guy, they're scared to death of him.

But Barnabas took hold of him and brought him to the apostles and described to them how he had seen the Lord on the road and that he had talked to him and how at Damascus he spoke out boldly in the name of Jesus. And he was with them moving about freely in Jerusalem speaking boldly in the name of the Lord. But he was talking and arguing with the Hellenistic Jews. Those were the same group of guys that he was talking to in Damascus.

But they were attempting to put him to death. Oh, gee, he's not having any fun in this town either, you know. But when the brethren learned of it, they brought him down to Caesarea and they sent him away to Tarsus. So three years later, three years after he's converted, he goes up to Jerusalem. And he goes up there kind of He goes up to just to meet Peter and to kind of get acquainted, but also he's been sort of kicked out of Damascus So where do you go? if you're if Damascus is a town you met the Lord in and then you've been out in the Raving desert and you come back and then pretty soon after a little while They're trying to kill you and so you escape out of town. Well, where are you going to go next? well, maybe I better go to Jerusalem because Peter and the Apostles are up there and So he's showing what he's trying to show to his detractors in Galatia, that he's an independent apostle, that he didn't learn anything from the other apostles. And so that's why he goes up to Jerusalem. And it says, after three years, and I became acquainted with Cephas, well, or Peter. He came up there just to sort of hang out or to inquire to or find out or just to visit with Peter and introduce himself and just talk to him a little bit.

So point being, what does Paul mention? Why does he mention the number of days he was in Jerusalem? In verse 17, He says, I was only up there 15 days, 14 days, 15 days. Why is that important? Well, he wants to make sure that the Galatians who are reading this letter recognize that the conversation he had with Peter didn't last any longer than 15 days. And so what he learned in Arabia, being there for a couple of years or a little longer, it took all that time to teach him what he had learned so far. But going to see Peter, he couldn't have learned all these things about Christianity in 15 days. Couldn't have done it.

So the facts were important for the purpose of demonstrating how little time that he had spent in Jerusalem. He wanted them to know that. And the other thing is that the early churches in Judea, as opposed to those in Galatia, were different in the sense that they The ones in Galatia were quarreling and they were having a problem because the Judaizers had come in and brought the law with them and they were back and forth and back and forth and there wasn't any rest. Yet the churches in Judea didn't have that problem even though they were close to Jerusalem.

And he was a little, he's trying to prove to them that they were already slipping away from what the grace that he had presented to them. So, and he knew that this legalism that had come in was so deadly to them because there are two principles under which any group functions. There's the legal principle, which our society functions in all, and then there's the grace principle. And the body of Christ functions solely under grace.

And if you bring in law, what happens? You spoil it. You ruin it. Because they don't mix. You can't be under some grace and some law. Someone said to me one time, well, if you're hiking in the mountains and you come up to a little lake and it's the lake of grace and you stick your legal toe in it, it all becomes legal. It just ruins it.

So it's deadly and he knows it's deadly because once you get away from grace, you start looking for the rules. And here's the other thing. Grace affords the opportunity to behold the glory of the Lord Jesus, to spend your time focused on Him, which frees you from being focused on you. But if you bring some law in, what does law do? It forces you to look at yourself. How am I doing? Am I measuring up? It gets all to be about me again. But if I'm living under grace, it becomes more and more about the Lord Jesus.

And that's why Paul felt it was really deadly, and he wanted them to stay away from it. They thought that a little law was a much safer course. I can remember my very first shot at teaching was about, I don't know, 1980 or so. And I was teaching the men's Bible study out at Betty's place. And it's going along pretty well. And Miles Stanford was helping me.

But it dawned on me one day, these guys aren't getting it. like I was a genius. I'd been a Christian about four years, you know, I didn't know anything. And I thought to myself, you know what, if I push them with a little bit of law, maybe they'll move. What a mistake that was.

Grace is what moves you. It's not legalism. Legalism stagnates you. So in today's society, I think we have to be aware of the fact that most Christian environments and people we run into, to some degree, are operating under a law principle. If they're a Reformer or a Covenant or Calvinist, they're under a law principle. They have tried to bring the law and the blessings of Israel into the church. And so once you do that, you are totally away from the grace. Totally away. And you can't grow in law.

We're studying Romans 7 on Sunday school. and the devastation that Paul finds out about. He delights in the law of God as we learn today, but the problem is the law of God only makes you more aware of your own sinfulness. That means that your focus never gets off of you and onto the Lord Jesus and who you are in Christ.

So that evil that was started in Galatia centuries ago is at work in the church today. The germs of it started then. The result of it is what we see a lot of today. So, I think we as believers, one, we should understand, spend time learning what grace is. And then we should be, I don't know how to say this right, almost steely against legalism. against legalism.

Do you think that if I said to you, now look, if you want to be more spiritual, you know, you've got to do 1, 2, 3, and 4. And you're sitting there thinking, oh, that sounds good. I think I'll do 1, 2, 3, and 4. And you do 1, 2, 3, and 4, and you find out you're not any more spiritual than when you started.

But if I said to you, if you learn the degree in which Christ loves you and the grace that you're under, which means this is unmerited and unlimited blessings from God based on what Christ did on the cross. If you learn that, you will respond. Do you think that's true? Do you buy that concept?

That if I learn grace, I'll respond. I won't have a problem responding. I can't wait to respond because the grace is the greatest motivator there is. Well, we should be for grace and against law of any kind, any kind. And we should be able to explain why law or why grace is so important to us in terms of how we live. And we don't need a set of rules to do it. The refrigerators can be clean. So Paul mentions, the reason he mentioned the number of days, was Paul there to discuss whether his doctrine lined up with Peter's doctrine? Why did he go up there? Well, obviously he went up there because he got kicked out of Damascus.

But when he sits down and he talks to Peter, what are they talking about? They're talking about what they know spiritually of the Lord Jesus, and Peter's probably doing the listening, and Paul's doing the talking. And would you say that, well, Paul's the Johnny come lately when it comes to apostles, right? Did he go up there to say, gee, I hope what I'm teaching lines up with what Peter's thinking?

No, it's totally the other way around. Because Paul is the guy who got his information directly, directly from the glorified Lord. The other guys got it from other methods. Other than the Mount of Transfiguration, Peter and those fellows had never really seen anything that had much to do with the glory of the Lord.

But Paul is on the road to Damascus, sees him there, goes out in the desert, spends at least two years being taught by the glorified Lord. So he has a lot more to say about what real church doctrine should be, the expanded revelation, than Peter had. And so it's interesting, Paul also might have been up there to see if, well, how can I serve up here?

Even though he knew he'd been called to be an apostle to the Gentiles. And his visit, 15 days, was terminated prematurely. How come? Well, Acts 9.29 says, and he was talking and arguing with the Holocenic Jews, but they were attempting to put him to death. And when they had, brethren had learned of it, they brought him down to Caesarea and he went off to Tarsus. So he's only two weeks max. Why? Because the outside pressures on him.

The other thing was, is that in Acts 22, 17, Paul's in the temple praying while he's in Jerusalem. And this event happens. It happened when I returned to Jerusalem, was praying in the temple, that I fell into a trance. And I saw him saying to me, make haste, get out of Jerusalem quickly, because they will not accept your testimony about me.

Interesting. After three years, he went up to Jerusalem, became acquainted with Peter, and remained there 15 days. What I find interesting about this is that Peter, or Paul, if you just read Galatians, you think, well, he went from here to here to here, no problem. But his journey were always part of pressure put on him from the outside. And it dawned on me, well, isn't that the way it is with us?

That we learn some wonderful doctrine, some wonderful truth that has a real effect on us, and we think, oh, now things are going to be easy. And you believe what you have seen. So what does the Lord do? Okay, now that you believe it, and you're right, and you enjoy it, let's test it. Let's see, let's make it so that you really do own it.

Here comes the pressure. And so many of us look at pressures like that as though, oh no, this can't be from God, when in fact it is from God. Look at the pressure on Paul early on in his life to do what? Is God testing him about what he's taught him? Yeah, he is. I mean, he's thinking, I'm going to go out here and I'm going to do that, I'm going to do that, I'm going to do that, and people are going to love me. No, they don't. And it's pressure. And he can't, you know, he's learning to keep his focus and his mind and his attention on the glorified Christ and what he has learned. He's learning to live by faith and walk by it and live in it.

So, verse 19, But another of the apostles I didn't see except James, the brother of the Lord. Let's talk about that, because it sounds like he saw Peter and James, both apostles. The Lord's brother James wasn't an apostle, because he didn't even believe in Christ at the time the apostles were formed. He was a brother of Jesus, and he didn't come to the understanding and trusting of the Lord Jesus until when?

Until Christ rose from the dead. And he starts hanging around and James and his brothers are looking and saying, oh my goodness, he is who he says he is. He's the Messiah. So James is not one of the original twelve. I think you could read this verse that says that I didn't see another of the apostles except James. I didn't see another of the apostles, comma, but I did see James. And I spent some time with James. James, the Lord's brother. This is the same James that's mentioned in a lot of other verses.

Galatians 2.9 and 12.1 and 1 Corinthians 15.7. There's a lot of verses, but this is the Lord's brother. His physical brother. But he was a man of some report up in Jerusalem. He was what we might call the administrator or the moderator of the church in Jerusalem. He was the head guy.

So, verse 20. Now the things which I wrote to you, behold before God I don't lie. Why has he got to say this? Don't these people reading this letter believe him? The things I write to you, they primarily refer to the verse 18 and 19. to the effect that he went to Jerusalem to become acquainted with Peter. He's telling them that. I'm not lying about that. I was only there 14 days or 15 days, and then I left. He considered these facts as important as a demonstration of his apostolic independence. The words, Behold, before God, I don't lie.

Pretty strong language. And it's the reason he says that is because one of the attacks against him was that the Judaizers were saying, well, he spent a lot of time in Jerusalem, and he learned all this stuff from those apostle guys. And so he's really dependent on those twelve for his doctrine. Well, we know better. He wasn't dependent on them at all. So he denies the charge, and here's how he denies it. He said, which I'm telling you, and I'm not lying. So then in verse 21, he says, Then I went to the regions of Syria and Cilicia. And now I want to see if I can do this quickly. That's what the pointer's for. I want to show you where he's where he's hanging out.

Battery's dead. There it is. Oh, I got to hold it down. OK, so he's saved. He is saved in where am I going? Can you can you see that? It's a very barely. Anyway, he's from this is Tarsus. That's where he's from. And he's he's headed out of Jerusalem up towards in Syria. And he gets saved. And I can't see it myself. up higher. Oh, there's Damascus. He gets saved there. He gets saved up there.

Then he goes down into this region down here for the several years with the Lord. And then he goes back up here and then down to Jerusalem. And then the disciples take him down to Caesarea, put him on a boat, and he goes back there. So all of this goes on in about three and a half, four years.

That's his traveling. I mean, he must have had He must have had miles on his visa card. So he went into the regions of Syria and Cilicia. Now, let's see if we can do this again. What he's talking about are all these regions here that are close to the Mediterranean Sea and all around in here. That's where he spent time. And as Roger is going to talk about next week, there's a time frame there of like 12 years. So 12 years, he'll explain when the 12 years started and when it ended. But that's where he spent his time.

And he was working or teaching with the apostles or by himself. And the church at Antioch in Syria was kind of the center and focus of the Gentile church. He spends this time up there and all of those regions are part of where he hung out after he left Jerusalem and ministered and were in those churches and part of those churches were what they would call Judea. And it's interesting because The churches of Judea received him better than the churches at Galatia were doing these days. They were honoring him. And then the interesting part.

22, he says, I was still unknown by sight to the churches of Judea which were in Christ. They didn't know who he was. He could walk into the church and they didn't know him by sight. They knew about him. They knew who he was in that sense. As a matter of fact, he had a nickname. He was called the Persecutor. And somebody said, oh, the Persecutor's here. Everybody knew who they were talking about. It was him.

But he could walk into these churches, probably in people's homes, and they didn't know him by face. They didn't recognize him. So he's unknown. And the cool thing was, is that there was this contrast between the way he was received and accepted at this point by the churches in Galatia as opposed to churches in Judea. You would think the churches in Judea would have a lot of struggle with them because they were all founded by the other apostles and about when the Christians who were Jewish were moving out of Jerusalem and establishing these churches. So unknown here means that He remained unknown.

He could walk in and spend time and leave. And if he didn't tell them who he was, they didn't know who he was. So he says they didn't know him by sight. They didn't know his face. You know, it'd be like somebody coming in here that we've heard about, but we wouldn't recognize him because nobody has ever seen him. So we have to distinguish something here, though.

The difference between the churches in Judea which is along the coast and away from Jerusalem, are different than the churches in Jerusalem. Because I think at this time, the churches in Jerusalem were struggling because a lot of them had been infected by the Judaizers. And so he just stays out of Jerusalem, but he's moving up and down this whole coastal area for maybe 10 years, maybe nine years, eight years, I don't know. That's what Roger's going to tell us.

Because he's not, he'd been a disciple for about 12 years. His work would have been in Judea. Isn't that interesting? And because he's not, that showed that he was an independent missionary. He didn't spend time with what we would call Jewish Christian churches. He's not operating under the supervision of Jerusalem or the other 12. And then an interesting phrase.

He calls these churches as being in Christ. I could say Holly Hills Bible Church is in Christ. It distinguishes us from those who are not Christian churches, because you can't say that about any other church. Universalist church, some denominations, you just can't say that they're in Christ. We can say it about everybody here. We are in Christ. That's where we are. We belong to him and we are in him.

And in Christ is one of those interesting terms. Paul uses the term in Christ, in him, in the beloved 147 times. And all the other writers of the epistles only use it a dozen times. He understands in Christ better than anybody who writes in the epistles. Verse 23.

But only they kept hearing, he who once persecuted us is now preaching the faith which he once tried to destroy. The word, only they kept hearing, means that they were constantly hearing this. The word was going around. Everything was communicated in those days pretty much verbally. They didn't have cell phones, obviously. So the emphasis is on the fact that the hearing, but upon the hearing it constantly. And that's where the nickname Mr. Persecutor came, because whenever they brought up his name, that was his nickname. He was the one.

When you start out a verse like this with the word only, it means that this information regarding the Apostle is only the exception to their ignorance of Paul. It's only. Now let's talk about faith, because the verse says, only they kept hearing, he who once persecuted us is now preaching the faith which he once tried to destroy.

If you took the faith class, Courtney and JD and I, we would describe there were four phases or four aspects of biblical faith. There is the essence of faith, the faith, Faith is a principle and personal faith. Which one do you think this is? It's got the the in front of it, so we think, well, it must be the faith. Well, I'm not so sure it is because what he's really talking about, this is the principle of the Christian life. This is what believers, that's why they call us believers, because we're people of faith.

And Saul, when he was Saul, that was where his focus was in trying to destroy the churches. Yeah, he was putting them in jail, but he was attacking them on the issue of faith. That's where he went after them. That's what he tried to destroy. His aim was the extermination of the church and their faith in the Lord Jesus. That's what he wanted to get. He wanted to destroy their faith in the Lord Jesus. And he tried to accomplish it by ravaging the faith of the individual creature.

Destroyed means that he overthrew it. He made havoc for it. And because it's in the imperfect tense, it meant that in the past he was doing this all the time. He never rested. So it's not a fact that he had destroyed the faith, the Christian faith. But what's in view here is that Paul never did do that. But he continuously was in a process of ravaging and making havoc for those who did believe.

That was what he was after. So translation of 23, he said, and they kept on hearing the one who used to persecute us at one time is now announcing the glad tidings of faith, which at one time he was ravaging. Verse 24, and they glorified God in me. What does that mean? What does it mean when Paul or somebody says, oh, they glorify God in you? What is happening? And this also is in the present tense. They continually are doing this. They're glorifying God in him.

It constitutes the ground and basis of the action that they were doing. So I find it interesting that means that his example, who he was and what he was doing, caused the Judean churches to glorify God. Now think about this. They found in Paul an occasion and a reason to glorify God.

He's the persecutor. He has changed. He comes and teaches in these Judean churches, and they marvel at what he knows and what he's doing in his heart. And they can only look at God and say, Lord, this is just, this is a miracle. You did this. You get the glory for this.

Paul wasn't getting the glory. Important point. This wasn't about Paul and his glory. This is about the glory of the Lord Jesus Christ. Paul shows the friendly attitude of the Judean churches towards him and how much they appreciated what he was doing, but they were given the glory to God, and that's where it belonged. The riches of the grace of the glorified Lord Jesus Christ was made known to them by Paul. That's what he did, which resulted in them glorifying God. So, close up now. How transforming is divine grace?

It can turn a thief into a giver, Ephesians 4.28. It can turn a persecutor into a preacher.

But the assemblies in Galatia were rebuking him for that. It can turn anybody we know from what they are into what God would have them be. So in criticizing them, the Galatians were discourteous towards him. Because the source of his ministry had not been Jewish, even though he's dealing with these Judean churches. While the assemblies of Judea, from which he might naturally expect more or less prejudice, he's not getting it. They're glorifying God because of the work that he's doing. I found a quote that's kind of interesting that we'll close with. Listen to this carefully. This is from a man that I read a lot of, J.B. Stoney.

He says this, it's better to lose time as to work in preparing for service than to lose time in repairing one's mistakes in undertaking a work for which one is not competent. So take your time. Spiritual growth takes time. Don't be too quick to get out there and, oh, I've got to get busy.

Why is that true? Because the greater the knowledge committed to each one of us, who are servants, the more necessary and important it is that we should be alone for some extended time with the Lord about it, so that we can realize the nature of it and the effect of it on me, on you, before we undertake to show it to others. It's a critical point.

As you learn these wonderful truths, go and spend time with the Lord about them. Hang out with him. Let him solidify and expand the understanding so that you understand what the truth that you have been given and through that process you begin to learn how and when to give it to somebody else. So many times we learn a new truth and we can't wait to grab the first person that comes along and tell them. And what do they do? See ya.

I don't want to hear that. I don't want to hear that at all. I don't care how enthusiastic you are. You just have learned it in your mind, but you don't own it. It's not part of who you are. And it's really important that it be that way. So let's close. Dear Father, how we thank you for your grace. How we thank you that you are constantly teaching us and bringing us along and conforming us to what you would have us be and do in our everyday life. We're so dependent on you not only to learn, but to learn how and when to give these wonderful truths to somebody else. And we pray in your son's precious name. Amen.