The Gospel of Paul is from Christ

Galatians chapter 1 verses 11 and 12 is what we're studying, titled, Paul's Gospel is from Christ. So we'll look at that this morning. It's May the 4th, and have you ever heard of the phrase, may the 4th be with you? May the 4th be with you. I just thought of that before this lesson this morning. It's officially Star Wars Day. It's okay with me. Yeah. So it's a marketing day for Star Disney, I guess, you know, what that is.

So let me go back to verse 6 of Galatians 1 and read from there to put us in context again, once again this morning. In verse 6, beginning there, Paul says, I am amazed that you are so quickly deserting him who called you by the grace of Christ to a different gospel. or for a different gospel, which is really not another, only there are some who are disturbing you and want to distort the gospel of Christ.

But even if we, or an angel from heaven, should preach a gospel contrary to what we have preached to you, He is to be accursed. As we have said before and now say again, if any man is preaching to you a gospel contrary to what you received, he is to be accursed.

Last week's verse 10 and 11 was, or verse 10, was, for am I now seeking the favor of men or of God, or am I striving to please men? If I were still trying to please men, I would not be a bondservant of Christ. Then today's verses are, for I would have you know, brethren, that the gospel which was preached by me is not according to man. For neither I received it from man, nor was I taught it, but I received it through a revelation of Jesus Christ.

So that concludes 12, and we are looking at verses 11 and 12 this morning. So we'll start here. 11. For I would have you know, brethren, that the gospel which was preached by me is not according to man. So we'll just jump right into the lesson. And then at the end of the lesson, we'll review where we are. So we'll do it in reverse this morning. So last week's verse 10, we had Paul saying that he was not striving to be a man pleaser with the gospel and with another gospel that has introduced as any type of works at all. His gospel is devoid of works. It's all by grace.

And it's so what I'm doing here to start is we're going to define what the gospel is. And we know in this fellowship that it's the gospel is 1 Corinthians 15. And I'll go down to verses 1 through 8, that whole passage. Let me read it from 1 Corinthians 15, 1 through 8. Now I make known to you, brethren, the gospel which I preached to you, which you also received, in which you stand, by which you are also saved, if you hold fast to the word which I preached to you, unless you believed in vain. And here it is, starting with verse 3.

For I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received, that Christ died for our sins according to the scripture, and that he was buried, and that he was raised on the third day according to the scriptures, and that he appeared to Cephas, then to the twelve. After that he appeared to more than five hundred brethren at one time, most of whom remain until now, but some have fallen asleep. Then he appeared to James, then to all the apostles, and last of all, as to one untimely born, he also appeared to me also. So that section of 1 Corinthians 15, 1 through 8, is the true gospel that he's preaching.

And I underlined, you see in verse 3, It parallels what we're studying here in Galatians. And these two verses from Galatians 1, 11 through 12, he received it, and you see it right there in verse 3 of 1 Corinthians 15. So he was given it. Very important. And I like how this, the statement of the gospel is, you see, he says, he sets it up as prime importance right there in the beginning of verse three. And so it's a concrete message. And I go back to your lesson, Roger, on the content of the message of the gospel, right? It's very sustained. And that's what it is.

So, and I was thinking if anyone a week from now, a year from now, 10 years from now is runs across this lesson on the Internet. you know, by chance, and they're not a believer, that's the gospel right there in the box. So that Christ died for our sins.

He was buried and raised the third day. So I encourage anyone who hasn't believed that message to believe it and think on it and accept it as truth, and you'll be saved. So, he started preaching this gospel right after he was saved or his conversion on the Damascus road. He started preaching the gospel, you see Acts verse 20 of Acts of chapter 9.

And I want to reiterate that the gospel is not of works, as according to Ephesians 2.8.9, that Paul gives to the Ephesians, he says, For by grace you have been saved through faith, and that not of yourselves. It is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no man may boast.

So there in Ephesians 2.8.9, he divorces salvation and faith from works. And that's what we're looking at here in Galatians, all through Galatians chapters three and four.

When he begins verse 11 with the word for, that's gar, it's an intensified way to assign a reason in an argument, or it could be truly, I would have you know, brother, or therefore, I would have you know, brethren, that gar, and here it is, here's what the Greek word looks like. And I know that Roger had that in his lesson last week in the 1030 service. To me, it looks like yap, but. So, it's Greek is a funny thing, right? It's just the words. Or the letters look like other English letters.

So, I would have you come to know, when he says that, it's come to know in a continuous sense. It's come to learn. It's norizo, is the word. I would have you come to know, brethren, that the gospel preached by me is not according to man. And not according to man is the Greek there is cut up Anthropos cut off Anthropos and You know Anthropos is a word for man In Greek course and cut off that might be my favorite Greek word is it's a word that And this is Merriman's kind of definition.

He says kata is a word that expects a norm or a standard to follow it. It also means there's another meaning to it. It means down from or flowing down from. So it like when you there's a cat, I forgot the Greek word kata. It's judging down another Greek word, but it's kata. Yes, yes, thank you. And yes, and judging down is that. So, I think of. And Merriman brought this out that is like.

It since it expects a norm or standard, it's like the master that you kind of can make copies of like a master key. And here's a. A key and so if you make masters of the key I have there, that's. the copies of the key are Qatar from it or according to that key and down from the norm or standard of that golden key that I have there.

And I was thinking, boy, if you had that real key that I have a picture of, and you brought that into a true value hardware store, and you said, can I get a copy of this key? Can you make me a copy? They don't have that. All they have are those boring silver keys, you know, that they, they put in the machine, and they, they make a copy of the key, but it'd be cool if you brought them that. Okay, can you, can you make a exact replica of that key? They would probably kick you out of the store. That's a fancy key.

So the 1st point is that. The gospel did not flow down from man as a source. And man was not a source of the gospel. And in verse 12, I'm throwing up here. He neither received it from man, nor was he taught it. So the second point is he did not receive it from man.

And that's the word paralumbano. And it means to take a message transmitted alongside other men, or receiving a message from men by the narration of others. So that's what it means when he's saying, I did not receive it from men. Paralumbano. And you can see the first part of that Greek word, paralumbano, is para, or where we get para, or parallel, parallel to men.

And paralumbano, I think, I thought a little about it, and I think it's a good illustration and, you know, shout out if you think that maybe it's not a good illustration, but when a runner in a track meet is running a baton race, right? So all the relay, thank you. It's a relay race. So one runner is carrying a baton and They pass it off to another runner who has to get up to speed to that runner with a baton, and then there's the handoff, right? And then the other runner continues on. The first runner is done. But that's like Paralimbano. A runner coming up alongside another, getting a baton from the first runner is like receiving it from another man or another woman, if it's a woman's race. But I think that's a good illustration for Paralimbano.

The point three of this verse and into 12 is that he did not get it from any instruction. There's a word in verse 12, the word taught. the word didactic. I didn't put the proper tense of the word didactic in this sentence, but that's it. So he didn't receive it in a didactic way, or he wasn't taught it.

And so you can see the three points that he makes of how he's isolating the gospel. And it's very important because what he's doing is he's isolating this gospel message from man, and he's using a forensic method, a method of argument, to be convincing that the gospel has no influence from man whatsoever.

And he states it in these three ways. So in verse 12, the second part of verse 12, he He states for us how he did receive the gospel, and he begins with the word bat or Allah, a strong contrast. On the other hand, he received it, and he's going to state it positively, how he received the gospel, and that was Jesus Christ himself. And there's our standard and our source, all things flowing down from the norm or standard of Christ himself, and he says he received it by revelation of Jesus Christ.

And here it is in the narrative form in Acts chapter 9, 3 through 5. Paul says he was traveling, and it happened as he was approaching Damascus that suddenly a light from heaven flashed around him. And he fell to the ground and heard a voice saying to him, Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me? And Paul said, who are you, Lord? And the Lord said, I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting. But get up and enter the city. it will be told to you what you must do.

And that's Acts chapter 9, 3 and 4. And after that, Damascus Road revelation, we know that Paul received further revelation from the Lord Jesus Christ as he describes in 9, 17, and 18. He says, nor did I go up to Jerusalem after the Damascus Road experience to those who were apostles before me But I went away to Arabia and I returned once more to Damascus. Then three years later, I went up to Jerusalem to become acquainted with Cephas and stayed with him 15 days. Oh, and let me back up to, this is from Galatians 17 and 18.

So I'm jumping down. Sorry. Yeah. So this is, this is what I think, Bob W, you're going to cover this, right? These verses in the future, so I'm looking forward to that. So I'm, I don't want to steal your thunder here, but I have to jump down to 17 and 18.

And just briefly say how Paul received this gospel. And you can see that in verses 17 and 18 in Galatians 1, he's further isolating himself from anyone else, from the apostles. And he went away to Arabia, and he's all by himself. And only after three years did he see anyone who was a believer, or any other of the apostles that was Peter.

So this phrase at the end of verses 11 and into 12, it's not according to man, neither I received it from man. And that's the gospel. I like what J.B. Stoney says about this, he says, the Galatians' problem was bringing in the flesh to their justification and sanctification. They were bringing back Adam, they were bringing Adam in again. But these two verses we see Paul removing any reference to man and all influence of Adam's nature. from the reception of the gospel.

He says that there's no antecedent to Paul's gospel on earth. It is a new thing. He says it's de novo, which is totally new. He says man is totally ignored. And I like that, just really isolating everything from man. And from last week, I had this quote from Hamilton Smith. Law recognizes man in the flesh and gives him a place in this world.

And so what Paul's gospel is, is is giving man no place in the flesh. There's no room for the flesh in the gospel. And that's the whole point of what we'll be seeing in Galatians as we kind of end the introduction part and move on to Paul's narrative. Merriman says that Paul did not receive the gospel from mankind, nor was he taught it by men or angels. or any other media, he says. It's not according to man's ideas or devices.

And we're really hitting this point home because that's all we're really talking about in 11 and 12, right? So it's a pretty simple lesson. But I like kind of drilling down and isolating this little section. It's kind of cool how we do that verse by verse.

Well, Andrew, you know, man thinks it's, you know, it's foolishness, right? The Jews and the Gentiles have a different opinion about the gospel, you know. Yeah. Oh, and how many gospels are out there nowadays? Yeah, you're right. There's all kinds of health and wealth gospel and things like that. Yeah.

So how do they just totally ignore this whole section and what Paul said. I mean, it's obvious that all these other denominations just, it's sort of like they wipe the slate, you know, oh, that really can't be true or that's not true. It's pretty clear. They can't do anything. It doesn't give them the, I want to do something. Well, no, I've done it. You know, Christ is saying, I've done it. You don't need to do anything. Just believe it.

And that's hard. I was thinking like, A toddler, you have a toddler, and they always want to get involved and do something and help. And sometimes it's best not to have them get in and help with things. But they say that you should, and you should teach them how to do things. But anyway, I guess we're all, mankind is like toddlers. Need to get in and help. So Andrew.

Yeah, another fault is the absence of positional truth. Yeah, the reason they don't know. Yeah, how many people are targeted around it? I mean, never really. kind of opening up Romans 6, right? Or skipping over it or something, I don't know. It's a question. It relates to all of Paul's epistles. Yeah. For me to live as Christ and die as Cain, how do you do that? Yeah. You do it by the same way you're saved by faith. Say Andrew. Yeah. It's natural for man to deny grace. When God gave us grace, we didn't have to do anything. But whenever anybody comes up to me and say, hey, I'm going to do this for you. My first thought is, well, what can I do for you?

Right. Right. Yeah. Yeah. In our common everyday Uh, goalies, we don't know what grace is all about. No, because we want to add something to it. Exactly. Yeah, I had a, I was going to present. Almost a slide of exactly or some merriman's thought on that. It's, um, and what did he, what did he call it? He calls it. Oh, he calls it the. the debt merit principle. We all live on a debt, our mankind lives on a debt merit principle. And it's contrary to grace.

So we're always like, if Bob, if I took you out to lunch, after that, what are you going to be thinking? You're going to be thinking, oh, well, I'll, hey, I'll get you the next time, you know, um, so if you pay for someone's lunch. They're always in the back of their mind going to be thinking of payback, right? Oh, I'll get the next one.

And no one ever just accepts something complimentary or free of charge by grace. It's that debt merit principle. And that's what we do with salvation is the point he was making. And I like that. Um, nothing by, yeah, I guess the old man hates grace, right? Right. I just finds it offensive. Um, and oh, Merriman also said in his Galatian study that, um. Grace is the great humiliator. It's humiliating. So it makes you humble, totally humble. Not humiliating is like, oh, I'm humiliated, but it just makes you totally dependent on God, because there's nothing you can add to this gospel.

You know, also, Andrew, if a person doesn't understand what the scriptures are saying, they're going to read it, and they're just going to pass over it. They're not going to do anything about it. And that's the problem with most of mankind. They just don't understand this. I didn't understand Romans 6, 1 through 11 for years, for decades. into this church and started realizing, oh, you know, this is different. You know, once I understood it, I always had a problem memorizing Romans 6, 1 through 11. I kept forgetting it, because it had no meaning to me.

Right understood the meaning of it then it made sense right you know and I think that's the problem that most most people They just don't understand what you're what you're saying up here. Yeah, they just pass over it and means nothing you But we're not robots. I mean, in other words, the walk, the condition is one by faith, and that's grace-based. I mean, that's a Holy Spirit-led life in the new creation, right?

So again, it's wrong theology that leads to the idea that man has something to do to please God. And I think unless you solidly believe in positional truth, It's really a frustrating life to live as a Christian. And that's where the fault of many people's belief system lies in that they don't see themselves as made wholly righteous before God. And unless you see that, walking by grace, through the power of the Spirit, by faith, is a big challenge.

Now, if you don't understand your position in Christ, then, of course, you've got to work. You have to please God. You have to do whatever you can to get your sin nature under control and please God. That's the only thing left. And that's why we're called people who have hungry hearts, right? We want to know more about how to walk in the new nature by faith. Yeah.

Isn't it amazing that all this is plainly, it's all there. It's plainly stated. It's written in plain English, right? Translated from the Greek, but it's, he's not, it's not ambiguous at all. Um, but yet it just gets passed over. It's passed over, isn't it?

If the Holy Spirit hasn't enlightened your mind, then you're just going to move on without understanding. Yeah, that's a good point. I had that thought too, Jim. It takes the new life of the Holy Spirit and His working inside a person to stimulate interest and a need for this, right? And some people even are believers, and they don't know it. So it's in there, but it hasn't been stimulated yet. And as you say, Bobby, they haven't had a hungry heart yet. One of the things, Andrew, The word here in the text is, I received it through a revelation of Jesus Christ. And that word revelation means God's involved, sort of in a summary form of what all you guys have been saying.

It's God's work that reveals himself to us when we submit to him. Then he has a fertile ground, so to speak, to plant deep in our hearts Himself, and the Holy Spirit reveals Christ in detail. Otherwise, we keep looking at ourselves, and He takes our focus and puts it on our Savior, our Lord Jesus. I think that's really what academia stumbles over, because where if you go to a school or something and you get taught and taught and taught, you start trusting your teachings rather than the person, our savior himself.

He is here right now in each of us living his life. Yeah. We overlook that and we say, well, my mind has created God. I've got it. I've understood it. I know it, and we can argue it, we can, you know, take on debates and everything, but Him Himself living through us is personal, it's intimate. What a wonderful thing that we can look at each other and know that we're new creations in Christ, and that, you know, we're not looking at a physical body of reality, we're looking at a spiritual person recreated by God himself.

Yeah, that's really good, Roy. I was trying to say that, but you said it much better than what I was trying to kind of stumble out of. You said it fine. You do. Just that word revelation really pokes out at us, doesn't it, in this text that we looked at today?

And I didn't cover that in the Greek, but that word would be apocaluptus or apocalupus or revelation. Yeah, something that has to come totally from God himself. Oh, and the last point down there at the bottom of the screen, the source of that revelation, the Lord Jesus Christ, of course, for Greek people, it's a subjective genitive. So he is the source of that revelation. He produced the revelation.

And that's exactly what you said. That's cool. So this, going on in this, it's not according to man, nor I received it from man. I have some more thoughts and hopefully these points don't cover again what you all brought out, so we're not repeating too much. Oh, yeah, I had this and see if you agree with this.

These, I was thinking about these two verses and the massive implication they have, not only for Galatians, he's trying to convince the Galatians, but these two verses work for all of each and every one of Paul's letters. And you think this, The statement that he makes in 11 and 12, it relates to not only the gospel of justification, but the gospel of sanctification, what he says about glorification in other of his letters.

How about the gospel of the mystery of the church? And that is that saved Jews and Gentiles are baptized into one new body, and they are fellow partakers. Or there's the gospel, the good news of the rapture that he gives to the Thessalonians. And any other good news or revelation that the Holy Spirit communicated through Paul and directly to Paul and then Paul gave to us, you could insert 11 and 12 into any of that. that he received it from him and he wasn't taught it or it didn't come through any man.

And that's the point I'm making in this next point. Not through any man or tradition, but through Jesus Christ himself and is separate and distinct from anything that came before it. Because Getting man into the picture or anything else robs Jesus Christ of His glory, right? To Him be the glory and to no other, you know. So I called it a certificate of authentication 11 and 12 that you can attach to all of Paul's writing. It's his certificate of authentication. and how he received it. And we'll be looking at that later on in chapters one and two into Galatians. So, Andrew? Yeah.

I did a quick word search on revelation. It's used maybe 15 times. That may not be perfectly accurate. Every use of the term in scripture is a revelation from either God the Almighty or the Lord Jesus Christ himself. So that term revelation is only used One comes from above. Oh, that's really interesting. And even the book of Revelation is... Revelation of Jesus Christ. Yeah. Yeah. From Jesus Christ. And you sometimes you don't see that from of Jesus Christ. You just see Revelation. So... Andrew, on top of that, you might look at verse 16 of Galatians 1.

Maybe in context, verse 15, when it pleased God who separated me from my mother's womb, then called me by his grace for this purpose to reveal his son in me, that I might preach him among the Gentiles. Isn't that something? Yeah. That is, it's, it's really, it's going to be really cool because we're going to, what, what first was that? 15? 1516 of chapter one. Yeah. Yeah. So he's going to really, and now he's going to go into detail about all this. This is, so Galatians is just a, boy, it's amazing book, isn't it?

Dennis Roxer here calls it guarding the gospel of grace. Mary C. Tenney calls it the charter of Christian liberty. And I'm just going to sum up kind of like Bob W. has us always thinking about the outline or the kind of getting a view of of keeping our mind on the whole picture, right?

So we've looked at the introduction now, Galatians 1, 1 through 9. Paul has introduced himself as an apostle in verse 1. He gave us the audience to whom he was writing in verse 2, that's the Galatians. Roxer says that in three through five is the blessing of the true gospel Where he says Paul says grace and peace to youth from the Lord Jesus Father and the Lord Jesus Christ who gave himself for our sins Rescuing us from the present evil age to him be the glory forever that's a blessing or What do I what do you call it II? What do the Catholics call that?

Uh, not a eulogy, but a benediction benediction. Thank you. Yeah, that's so that's a that works as a benediction. Um, and he introduced the problem. In 6 through 9, um, that they've left the gospel and he also. Um, gave a cursing or a. cursing to them about following a false gospel. And Merriman says, and Roxler says too, Paul's saying you can trust the gospel of grace because it has a divine origin and it's divinely communicated through Paul.

And that's what we looked at last week and today. So the next eight weeks or so, we're going to look at from next week's verse of verse 13 through chapter 2 of 2 of chapter 2 of verse 21 in chapter 2. He's going to go through the course of his course of life and how he received this gospel. And I like how Strauss puts it, titles that section, he's going to, Paul's apostleship is proved. So he's going to go through a proof of his gospel and how he got it. And Strauss says, I like, I like his simple outline of the whole relations to, he says, chapters 1 and 2 are Paul's personal case. where he talks about himself. 3 and 4 are the polemical case, which is the argument for the gospel, and it's an aggressive argument. And then the end of Galatians 5 and 6 is the practical case. So he's going to just make some practical application for the Galatians.

It's like the outline we were given first from Bob W. But this is another simple way to look at it too. Just the three Ps, you know, it's kind of a cool outline. So I just wanted to end with going back to the outline and where we're going. Great. Any last thoughts? No, I feel like I should get a gavel and conclude this lesson. So yeah, and I have some more, we don't have time for it, but I'll put this in the addendum. There's some good thoughts from William R. Newell in the addendum to this lesson. So that's okay with you.

I'll close in prayer. Our Heavenly Father, we thank you for your study in the word. And we thank you that we were given this gospel and we, we pray for our fellow believers all over the country and throughout the world. that they can grow in grace and discover what you have for them in places like Romans 6, and that they can move on to the growth truths and learn their position in Christ. We would pray that throughout the world you would stimulate that thought in our fellow believers. We pray these things in Jesus' name. Amen.