Galatians 1:1-10       Good News and Bad News       Jan 3, 2010

     When the music composer Verdi produced his first opera in Florence, Italy, he stood by himself in the shadows during the show, watching only one man in the audience.  Verdi paid no attention to the crowd.  It seemed not to matter to him whether the people cheered or jeered his music.  Verdi watched one man.  You see, in the audience that night was the older master musician Rossini.  And Verdi only wanted a smile from him.  If Rossini was pleased with the Opera, then there was victory.  No one else mattered.

      The Apostle Paul was much like Verdi in that he too kept his eye on one place.  Paul had few worries about what other people thought. Paul did not fret about circumstances and situations in his life.  He had no anxiety.  His one concern in life was to please God.  That had set him free from everything else.  This morning, we are beginning a series on Paul’s letter to the Galatians.  It has been called one of the first documents of human liberty.  Paul describes to us what it means to be set free by the grace of God.  This letter is one of the central pieces of the New Testament.  And yet, it has been misunderstood by many Christians.  The key words used by Paul—Grace, Peace, Gospel, Faith, The Law, Love—are common Christian words, and yet, these words have been misused in the Church.  In some ways, we have missed the real meaning of who Paul was in his life, what he taught, and what were the practical results of his life and message.  Over the next few weeks, I want to open up your mind in some new ways about who was the Apostle Paul.  What was his message of Grace?  And what does it all mean in our lives?  We will have to take this slowly and step by step.  So today, in order to begin to clear away some false notions, we will begin with some good news and some bad news.

       Paul begins his letter as he often does with a greeting to those who read this letter.   “I Paul write to you as an Apostle—one sent not from men or through the power of men but sent from Jesus Christ and God the Father.”  It is an important opening because Paul will return to this theme time after time. It begins to tell us who is this man Paul.  The first thing we need to know is that Paul is a person of God.   This is a question that all of us must confront.  Is my life built on the things of man or on the things of God?  Am I living by human ways or by the ways of God?  If we ask, who is Paul?” it is always about Jesus Christ who has been raised from the dead.

     What is the message of Paul?  Jesus Christ has been raised from the dead.  We will see in this letter that Jesus Christ raised from the dead has radically changed the life of this man Paul.  This man once was Saul, a Zealot ready to kill those who disagreed with his religion.  Who wanted to build walls around himself to keep others outside.   But then, on the road to Damascus, he saw Jesus Christ raised from the dead.  Many Christians speak of Paul’s conversion on the road to Damascus, but we will see in coming weeks that Damascus was not so much a conversion to a new God.   Damascus was a new commissioning to tear down the walls and share the love of God with all people.  

       In verse three, Paul continues his message and introduces a key word in his vocabulary.  Grace.  This will be an important word for us.  It means a Gift from God.   We sing about “Amazing Grace” in church, but what does it mean?  As this letter proceeds, Paul will oppose this word Grace to something he will call “Works of the Law.”  But what does that mean?  Many Christians think they know about grace and faith and works of the law, but I want to open up some new thoughts for you in the coming weeks.  These are not what they seem on the surface.  It will take us some weeks to unpack these terms.  But Paul gives us the core meaning of this Gift in vs. 3-4. “Jesus Christ gave himself for our sins to deliver us from this present evil age.” 

      Now here we get the first hint of some bad news in Paul’s message.  We are living in this present evil age.  This world is not as God made it to be.  Something has gone badly wrong.  It is not just a little problem or a little mess up.  We are surrounded by evil.   Many of us do not want to see that.  Many people like to imagine that people and things are all just basically good.  We just need to tweak things a little and everything will work out.  But the Bible declares to us that the system has gone massively wrong.  At the core of each one of us is sin, selfishness, and pride.  Each of us wants things our way and we build walls to keep others out of our way.   We build these walls to protect ourselves and our stuff.  We build the walls higher and higher in the dream that this will keep us safe.  But in the end, these walls have made us a prisoner.  We are trapped by the very walls we have built.  Before we can ever grasp the Gospel message of the New Testament, we must see that we are prisoners trapped behind these walls.   

     The good news, the Gospel, the Gift is that Christ has come to set us free, to deliver us from this evil.  Here is the key message of this document of liberty.  Christ delivers us.  The word means to set free a slave or prisoner.  We, who are trapped, chained, in jail, have been set free.  This is good news.  This is the Grace about which we will learn.

       Who is Paul?  A person of God.   What is his message?  The Gift Grace of God.  And what are the practical results for our lives?  Peace.  Paul says in verse three that he brings Peace from God and from Jesus Christ.  When we understand the gift of God brought to us by Jesus Christ then we will have peace.   So why do so many of us who are Christians not feel any peace in our lives?   Now that is a very practical question.

     Immediately in this letter, we see that the Galatians are loosing any and all the practical blessings of the gospel because they have deserted and turned away.   After Paul had shown the people of Galatia the freedom of Christ, other teachers have arrived with a different message.  And Paul says in vs. 6 that he is astounded that the Galatian people are deserting their freedom to follow this other message of bondage.  You know, little children will sometimes follow a stranger who offers them candy and the result can be horrible.  And you and I are often tempted to follow ideas and lifestyles that will only lead us to bondage and captivity.  Paul is astounded, amazed, and horrified that his church members in Galatia are deserting the gospel of Christ for another way of living.   It is a breaking of the first commandment which says that we are to follow no other gods except the LORD.  But the Galatians have been tempted by these other people to desert and to pervert the Good News.  And the practical result is they have lost their peace and found trouble.

     Vs 7 says that this other message has brought trouble.  This verb in the Greek New Testament means to bring perplexity, confusion, and unrest.  Trouble is the word used in Matthew 14:26 when the disciples are caught in a storm on the sea.  They are afraid they will drown.  The waves are all around them.  The boat is sinking.  There seems to be trouble all around.   You know, that so often describes us.  We are so full of trouble.  Why is that?  If we are honest with ourselves it is because we have followed some other way.  We have broken the first commandment and followed some other god.  We chase everything else in the world when we should be chasing Jesus Christ.  We are busy with a thousand things when only one thing is needed.  America is riddled with unrest, anxiety, worry, and trouble because we are chasing the wrong things.  But the good news of Christ is Grace and Peace. 

       Who is Paul?  A person of God.   His message is about Grace.  The practical results are Peace.   But we are left with many more questions.  What happened in Paul’s life to make him such a strong person of God?  Can we do the same?  What is this Gift Grace of God and how do we open this gift in our own lives?  Who are these people who arrived in Galatia with a false message that brought trouble?  How do we overcome that to arrive back at Peace?   We will discover all these and more in the coming weeks.  I encourage you to read this letter several times.  Put aside some of what you think you know about Paul.  Open yourself to the New Testament message.  It is a way that can bring you liberty, freedom, and peace.  Amen.