If you'd open up your Bibles this morning to Paul's letter to the Galatians, the letter to the Galatians, that can be found after 2 Corinthians and the New Testament right before Ephesians. Galatians chapter 1. And before we turn to God's Word, let's go to Him in prayer. O Lord our God, we thank You for giving us Your Word. We thank You that it is breathed out by You. That holy men wrote as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit to write down Your words. We ask, Lord, that You would be with us this morning, that the Holy Spirit would now come, illuminate our minds and our understandings, open our heart that we might receive Your Word. O Lord, may the words of my mouth and the meditations of all of our hearts together be pleasing in Your sight, our Rock and our Redeemer. Amen. Galatians 1, beginning at verse 1. Paul, an apostle sent not from men nor by man, but by Jesus Christ and God the Father who raised him from the dead and all the brothers with me to the churches in Galatia. Grace and peace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ, who gave Himself for our sins to rescue us from the present evil age, according to the will of our God and Father, to whom be glory forever and ever. Amen. Here ends the reading of God's Word. Well, a few weeks ago when the elders invited me to open God's Word to you, I had intended to preach from the Gospel of Mark. And as the new year began, I began looking at the letter of Paul to the Galatians and a fire was ignited within me. And that's the power of the Word of God, people. That it will ignite a passion for the message of the gospel of Jesus Christ and you can't help but get that message out. And I hope you noticed that you really can't get past the third word in Paul's letter to the Galatians without noticing that Paul is a man of passion. That a fire has been ignited in the apostle Paul. That he is filled, he's inflamed with the person and work of Jesus Christ and he's got a message to announce. Paul's on fire for the Gospel in Galatians. You can't help but read the entire letter and notice that this letter is a letter that's set apart. It's a letter that's set apart not just from all the letters that we might send to one another, to friends and family members. But it's a letter that's set apart from all other letters. All the letters of Paul in the New Testament. Martin Luther, the great 16th century reformer, called the letter of Paul to the Galatians his Katie von Bora. Katie von Bora was Martin Luther's wife. And so you see what passion Martin Luther had for the letter of Paul to the Galatians. It's a letter that's unique. That's given to announce and declare a certain message to the people of God. A message that we must read over and over again. A message that we must digest. A message that we must once again sit and learn from at the feet of Christ Jesus our Lord. Because Paul's talking about life and death in Galatians. He's talking about our eternal destiny. And he's calling us once again to remember and believe the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ. Well, Paul in Galatians, it's the message of Galatians. Paul's message in the whole letter is that there is really no rival to the gospel. There is no rival to the good news of Jesus Christ that he has been given, that he has given himself for the forgiveness of all of our sins. There's no rival to that message. And Paul brings out that message here in these first few verses of Galatians. And he really does it in three ways. I know you're not surprised that he does it in three ways, but Paul brings this out in really three ways. He argues that there is no rival to the gospel of Jesus Christ by first claiming that he has unique authority as an apostle. And secondly, he has unique authority as an apostle to announce an unmatched message. And finally, that unmatched message, the message of Jesus Christ, has the power for universal transformation. So that's what we're going to look at this morning, beginning with Paul's claim to unique authority. Well, I told you just a moment ago that you really can't get past the third word of Galatians without noticing that Paul is passionate. He's on fire. It'd be a good exercise for you this afternoon to go through all the beginnings of Paul's epistles and notice how in Galatians, Paul speaks in a different way. He's quick. He's to the point. He's not messing around. He has no time to waste. It's easy to read all of Scripture, but especially Paul's epistles. It's easy to read them too fast. It's easy to miss that every word, every letter is crucial in understanding Paul's message. it's easy to skip right over words like Paul, an apostle. Because notice in those first two words the significance of meaning. There's a whole wealth of meaning. There's a treasure chest of significance to Paul, the apostle. Remember who Paul was. Paul was Saul of Tarsus. Saul, the apostle, was once Saul, the arch nemesis of the church. He was being trained in the best rabbinical schools of his day. He says later on in chapter 1 of Galatians that he was advancing in Judaism beyond people of his own age. He was a straight-A student as far as Judaism went. And that Saul, Saul the persecutor, is now Paul the preacher. That message that he tried to squelch, he had now been commissioned by the Lord Jesus Christ himself to go out and spread that message to the very ends of the earth. That's Paul the Apostle. And to really understand the significance of Paul's passion in this letter, you really have to understand who the Galatians are. Paul's writing to a group of churches that today would be in modern-day Turkey. And Paul's writing to a group of churches that he had planted on his first missionary journey that you can read about in Acts 13-14. Paul had come to these churches with the gospel, with the good news of Jesus Christ, and they were the product of that first missionary journey. How excited Paul must have been to see the lives and hearts of these people transformed. Some of the first Gentile converts. Paul refers to them later in Galatians chapter 4. He says that the Galatians are his spiritual children. They're his sons and daughters. And that Paul had birthed them through great anguish. It was Paul who had led them to Christ. It was Paul who had brought them to the feet of Christ. And it was Paul who in Acts chapter 13 had urged these Galatian believers, he had urged them to continue in the grace of God. But after Paul left, things started to go south. The bad babysitter showed up. I'm sure many of you have at one time hired a bad babysitter. They showed up late. They didn't put the kids to bed on time. Or perhaps you've been under the tyranny of a bad babysitter. They didn't let you play video games. They didn't let you watch TV. Well, imagine if you came home and found out that the babysitter you had hired had fed your children nothing but chocolate. You came home from vacation and found out that it was chocolate, breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Some of the kids are starting to, I can see their mouths watering at this point. Breakfast, lunch, and dinner, nothing but chocolate. You might be upset. You certainly wouldn't hire that babysitter again. But that's as far as it would go, right? But imagine if you came home and found out that instead of chocolate, your children were being slipped poison in their food. To say you'd be angry would be an understatement. Paul is furious in this letter. False teachers had arisen in the church professing Christians who history would later called the Judaizers had come in and had slipped poison into the food of the Galatians' churches. They had slipped false doctrine, false teaching into their message. And you see, the Judaizers, they couldn't beat Paul's theology. And so they decided to attack his reputation. They decided to drag his name through the muck. And so Paul is here, he's defending his apostleship He does that for the first two chapters of Galatians He says that his apostleship is on par with Peter, James, and John That he himself had been commissioned by the risen and reigning Lord Jesus To announce a message Why is Paul's apostleship so important? Is he just trying to gain self-respect? Trying to boost his own ego? Certainly not. Paul is here declaring that when you read Paul, when you read the words of Paul, you read the words of the Lord Jesus Christ. Paul's just the messenger. He's just Jesus' ambassador. And he has a message to announce. He has a message to declare. And that message is an unmatched message. And what Paul is saying is here, every teacher, every pastor, every professing Christian must herald that same message. must have that same message on their lips at all times and that's how you determine whether or not someone is in the faith. By Paul's message. Are you in line with Paul's message? That's what Paul's saying. And it's not just Paul's message, it's the message of the Lord Jesus Christ. It's an unmatched message. That's point two. Well, it's important to see the subtle, the slight difference in Paul's teaching and the teaching of the Judaizers. The teaching of these professing Christians who are nothing but false teachers. It's a slight difference. See, what Paul had said was a sinner believes in Jesus. And then he's justified, he's reconciled, he's made right with God. And then, he begins for the first time to obey the law of God. But the Judaizers said that a sinner was to believe in Jesus, was to try as hard as he can to obey God's law, and after that, to be reconciled, to be made right, to be justified. And you see how slight, how subtle the difference is there? Paul taught justification by faith. And the Judaizers taught justification by faith. Paul believed in grace and the Judaizers believed in grace. Paul taught that Jesus was the Messiah and the Judaizers taught that Jesus was Messiah. Paul believed in the resurrection of Jesus Christ and so did the Judaizers. See, the difference is slight. The difference is subtle. The difference is one little word. Paul's gospel was a gospel of Jesus alone. And the Judaizers' gospel was a gospel of Jesus and. Jesus and circumcision. Jesus and keeping the works of the law. Jesus and good works. Jesus and reading your Bible faithfully. Jesus and looking like good Jews. See, you can always tell false teaching. You can always tell that something is opposed to the unmatched message of Jesus when it says Jesus plus something equals salvation. And I know some of you may be saying to yourself, isn't this just a trivial point of doctrine? Isn't this something that is a debate for overzealous seminarians? A debate that can be handled by synods and church councils and elders and pastors. Paul's saying, no, I'm an ambassador. I'm an ambassador of the Lord Jesus Christ and I have a message and it's an unmatched message. A message that Jesus Christ alone forgives sins. Jesus Christ alone makes us right with God. That's what he says in verse 3 and 4. That grace and peace come only from God the Father. Only from one source. God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ who gave Himself for our sins. It's Jesus alone. Now I know most of us sitting in this room are Christians. Most of us believe that message. We confess that message. Martin Luther, who I referenced earlier, Martin Luther, who wrote a brilliant commentary on Galatians, he gave a brilliant series of lectures on Galatians, and in those lectures he said that it is very easy to confess, to talk about, to believe that forgiveness of sins comes only from Jesus. That the Gospel of justification by faith alone, the Gospel of looking to Jesus alone, he says that's easy to confess. But in experience and practice, it is most difficult of all. And you see what Luther is saying there. He's saying that it's easy to recite the Gospel. It's easy to confess the Gospel. But it's much more difficult to live in step with the Gospel. To have the Gospel be the motivation of our lives. To have the Gospel influence all the desires of our hearts. to be gospel-centered and gospel-focused people. That was the problem with Peter in Galatians 2. Peter in Galatians 2, who at one point found it convenient and easy to eat with Gentile converts. But as soon as the conservative Jews came along, Peter, because of his fear, because of his insecurity, moved away from the Gentile Christians, stopped associating with them, stopped eating with them. See, what Peter did, he forgot. That's the great problem for us as Christians. We forget. We forget, as Peter forgot, that we have been purchased. We've been bought body and soul. We've been redeemed by the blood of Christ. We no longer have to justify ourselves to men because we stand justified in the sight of God because of a gracious and wonderful Savior. Well, circumcision is the problem in Galatians. The Judaizers had come in and said, Jesus and circumcision. But circumcision isn't our problem today. I haven't heard many Christians going around saying, you need to be circumcised in order to be saved. But isn't it true, people of God, that we, at least I do, often give in to the gospel of the checkout line? The gospel that says, You'll be happy when you have the greatest sex life. You'll be happy when you have the trimmest abs. You'll be happy when you have the biggest 401k. You'll be happy when you have the plushest vacation home. What makes you feel good about yourself? See, what Paul is saying is you'll never be satisfied, you'll never be secure until you come to a greater understanding, a greater knowledge that Jesus Christ is our satisfaction, that in Him we have security from the wrath of God, that we've been delivered once and for all from sin. See, it's easy to say to ourselves that we'll be happy. We'll be happy when we've achieved a certain level of holiness. And then we base upon our own holiness, we turn and judge others. And what Paul is saying is your holiness, you have to look somewhere else. You can't look for holiness within you because you're covered with sin. You have to look to an alien holiness. A divine holiness. A holiness that comes only through the Lord Jesus Christ. And that's a holiness you receive by faith in Him, by looking to Him, by trusting in Him. And that's a message that not only ignites our lives as Christians, but that's the fuel, people of God, the fuel that keeps us going throughout our entire lives. Well, Paul's message, it's an unmatched message. And it's a message that has the power for universal transformation. That's the third point this morning. See, what Paul says in verse 4 is, That the Gospel is about Jesus giving Himself for the forgiveness of sins. Giving Himself for our sins. To satisfy the wrath of God. And because the Gospel is always better, always greater, always grander than we can imagine, it doesn't stop there. But rather the same Gospel that delivers us from our sins also delivers us from this present evil age. And you know, I don't need a degree, I don't need a PhD to convince you that the age we're living in is a present evil age. The world in which we find ourselves is corrupted and stained by sin. And if you're not a Christian here this morning, how else do you explain that? How do you explain that earthquakes and tsunamis take the lives of thousands of men and women, thousands of boys and girls? How do you explain the guilt and shame of our consciousness that so often accuses us? How do you explain that? How do you explain what happened recently in Tucson, Arizona? I read earlier this week in the New York Times an op-ed piece in which the writer is commenting on some of the events surrounding the shooting in Tucson. And he says at one point, but chances are that Loeffner's motives will prove as irreducibly complex as those of most of his predecessors in assassination. Violence in American politics tends to bubble up from a world that's far stranger than any Glenn Beck monologue. A murky landscape where worldviews get cobbled together from a host of Baroque conspiracy theories and where the line between ideological extremism and mental illness gets blurry fast. Is the source of this present evil age, is the cause of this present evil age a murky landscape of ideological extremes? Is this present evil age accounted for because of violent video games and R-rated movies or conservative talk show radio? Or is it due to sin? every need, every injustice, every problem in this world is rooted in sin, is rooted in rebellion against the Creator. And Paul says in Galatians 1 that Jesus is the answer to that problem. See, there's only one solution. There's only one solution to the forgiveness of sins. There's only one solution to this present evil age. And it's not in ourselves because we're full of sin. Jesus was given for our sin. And it's not out in the world because this world is one of present evil. There's only one solution and that's Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ is the only solution. He's the only one who can make a new heavens and a new earth. He's the only one who can deliver us. He's the only hope for salvation. Jesus Christ is the only solution. Jesus, Jesus, Jesus. Should we ever get tired of hearing that message? Husbands, after a long day of work, out in the sun, facing the struggles of the office, coming home to your wife and she says, I love you. Do you ever get tired of hearing that? See, the message of the church, the mission of the church, the purpose of the church is Jesus, Jesus, Jesus. That's a message we should never get tired of hearing. That's a drum we should continually beat over and over again. You should hear it week in and week out. The problem of your sin and the great satisfaction, the great salvation that is found in Jesus. Sinner, if you've come here today as a sinner, then Jesus is for you. Christian, if you've come here today recognizing that you are a sinner, You've spent a week with accusations thrown in your face by Satan himself. Then remember and believe that Jesus describes himself in Galatians 1 as the one who has given himself four sins. Jesus is four sinners. He is the one without sin who gave himself for sin. The only one adequate to save us. And may that gospel, may the good news of Jesus Christ, God's announcement of his defeat over sin and death and Satan himself, through the Lord Jesus Christ, may that gospel soak into our being this year. May the Holy Spirit drive it deep into our bones that in Christ we have satisfaction and security so now we're free to give all that we have to Jesus because in Jesus Christ, friends, we have everything. Everything we will ever need. Praise God for such a wonderful salvation. Amen. Pray with me. O Lord, our Lord, how majestic is Your name in all the earth. We give You the glory and the honor and the praise which You alone deserve. You have forgiven us for all of our sins through the Lord Jesus Christ who came to this world to offer Himself as a perfect sacrifice for all of our sins to deliver us from this present evil age according to Your plan, according to Your great purpose. O Lord, we thank You for loving us. Holy Spirit, drive that message deep into our hearts. May we walk and step with it. And may it be our only hope in this world. It's in the name of Jesus we pray. Amen.