Day of November, right after service, we will have the info
session until you can sign up or you can just show up that day
and we'll let you know everything that we know about
the trip. Coming up in April May 2026, I
want to invite you to open your Bibles to Galatians, Galatians
Chapter 1. Have you ever gotten a phone
call that changed your life? Have you ever had a call that
changed your life? In Galatians we get to read the
story and life of the Apostle Paul and how he believed that
the resurrection of Jesus Christ is the call of God that changed
his life and there was no looking back beyond that or even
forward beyond that without his life being informed and shaped
by the resurrection of Jesus. When we read the book of
Galatians, you may feel like, my goodness, this guy had problems
I don't have. And it's true, the apostle Paul
had problems that you and I don't have.
But we have similar problems. And as we make our way in the
coming months through the book of Galatians, you're going to
find ways in which the life and story of Paul, the message of
Jesus and his writing to this group of churches that were in a
region called Galatia, can really touch our lives and
change the way we see ourselves. How we see our church, how we
see our campus and our city, how we engage with life and all of
our relationships. Paul is convinced that there's
no other gospel. And so he starts out this letter
and you're going to start to notice that Paul seems a little
spicy, a little fiery as he's working out what is going on
with the Jewish and Gentile followers of Jesus in Galatia.
This is how it begins. Paul, an apostle, sent not from
men nor by a man, but by Jesus Christ and God the Father who
raised him from the dead. And all the brothers and sisters
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. I am astonished that you are so
quickly deserting the one who called you to live in the grace
of Christ and are turning to a different gospel which is really
no gospel at all. Evidently some people are
throwing you into confusion and are trying to pervert the gospel
of Christ. But even if we or an Angel from
heaven should preach a gospel other than the one we preach to
you, let them be under God's curse, as we have already said.
So now I say again, if anybody is preaching to you a gospel
other than what you accepted, let them be under God's curse.
Am I now trying to win the approval of human beings or of
God? Or am I trying to please people?
If I were still trying to please people, I would not be a servant
of Christ. Have you ever had a call that
changed your life? In 2002, in May, a man named
Leonardo Diaz was hiking in the Andes.
He and a group had decided to do some serious hiking.
He was so excited. Their goal was to reach the
summit of Nevada del Ruez, a volcano in the Andes.
I promise you, the little mountains around Cusco aren't
this bad. But on the second day, they were
caught up in a Blizzard, and before he knew it, he lost sight
of his team of hikers. And he realized, my friends are
gone. I am by myself.
And he was lost. He began to run out of rations.
He began to suffer in the bitter cold, and although he had a cell
phone in his backpack, the prepaid minutes had expired.
Who are you going to call? He was out of minutes.
He couldn't call anyone. He figured he didn't have long
and he would die on the mountain.
As he's sitting there shivering in the cold, eating his rations
that he's now rationing out even more, his phone rang.
How many of you have ignored a call when your phone rings and
you don't recognize the number? How many of you think if the
phone rings, it must be a scammer?
If the phone rings, it's my parents.
I'm not going to answer that call.
The phone rang. He was out of minutes.
He answered it. This is Belle calling to see if
you want more hours on your phone.
Would you like a few more minutes?
He's like, I'd like a few more minutes in my life.
I'm so glad you phoned. Let me tell you where I am.
And he described where he was as best he could figure on that
mountain and a search team was launched to find him.
For the next 7 hours, someone from that company called him
every 30 minutes to try to keep him awake and save his life.
He answered a call that changed his life.
The Apostle Paul answered a call that changed his life, and from
his perspective, he was preaching the true gospel of
Jesus. It appears that Paul has been
accused of not preaching the true message of Jesus because
Paul preaches to both Jews and Gentiles.
Paul preaches the sufficiency of Jesus for the salvation of
anyone, Paul says. This has been my calling in
life. I'm so glad I answered it.
Galatia was an area where he had been and helped start multiple
churches through the communities of Galatia.
Galatia was a retirement community for Roman soldiers and
officials. It had the best roads that led
back to Rome. Have you heard it in your
history class? All roads lead to and in Galatia
they did. They all LED back to Rome.
And so the conservative nature of the Roman officials in this
area created pressure. The Jewish people were already
getting a pass as people who didn't worship other gods.
They worshipped only one God, the one true God.
And so in Galatia, they were already under pressure for not
worshipping the Greek gods or the Roman gods or giving
allegiance to Caesar as a God. And now there was a group of
people that Paul was leading who were actually Gentiles, some of
them Roman, who were now also following Jesus and seem to want
that pass that they don't have to worship all the idols.
They get a pass, they don't have to swear allegiance to Rome as
clearly because Jesus is Lord. What?
And so now the Jewish people in this area were also anxious.
You're going to ruin our Roman pass.
This is a very difficult place. You gentile Christians need to
become a little bit more Jewish. You're going to hear this
problem all the way through the book of Galatians.
Become a little bit more Jewish for men.
Change your Physiology. Gets circumcised for men and
women change your diet, change the places you go, change the
way you serve your food, take up more of the law, the Torah in
your life. And then there were a group of
people appears that came from Jerusalem and also supported
that message and said, well, we're from Jerusalem.
We've got the real message of Jesus.
We don't know about Paul, but Paul's insisting I answered the
call of the gospel. It changed my life.
Paul recalls that the resurrection is the turning
point for all humanity, that it is the defining moment in
history. There is no other king, there's
no other ruler, there's no other event that has a such a dramatic
change in the history of the cosmos.
This is the defining event of all history, the resurrection of
Jesus. If that were true, would it be
taught in your history class, your socials class?
See, this is the same Roman problem that we have, is that
these religions were actually viewed as story that connects us
with spiritual realities, spiritual beings, spiritual
powers, but they're not necessarily events.
And so the Christian claim that the event of the resurrection of
Jesus radically changes life and is God's call to all people.
It's historic, it's transformational, It is the
ultimate act of God. On behalf of everyone.
Paul claims that What defining moment defines your life?
Monday was Thanksgiving, right? Who had a wonderful Thanksgiving
dinner, Friends giving dinner. You had something.
We were cooking in the kitchen. Ellen and I actually, she was
doing more cooking. I was just messing around.
I decided I wanted some breakfast.
I said, can I put this pot back here?
And she said I'm a little nervous about that.
I said, oh, it'll be OK, I'll just put it here.
And I turned it on and then I said, oh, I'll, I was trying to
do something nice in the moment. I said I'll take the recycling
out and the compost. So I took the compost out and on
my way back I heard and I was like, that didn't sound good.
And by the time I got to the kitchen, Ellen was surrounded by
this mess of glass and a Pyrex dish that had been on the stove
blew up and the glass went everywhere.
There was glass on the floor. There was glass in the other
dishes she was making. There was glass in the new thing
of Bessel that was opened. I said, what happened?
She said there were two eyes on 2 burners on.
I said oh I must have turned on 2 burners.
I said what was in that and I lift off the pizza pan that was
holding a pie and then underneath I could see the sweet
potatoes. I blew up the sweet potatoes.
There were sweet potatoes everywhere.
Were you still found sweet potatoes yesterday?
And Ellen says they were the most beautiful sweet potatoes
I've ever made in my life. I was like, oh, I am really in
trouble. I said I'll clean it up.
She said OK, I'm going away. She went upstairs. 30 minutes
later, I'm still cleaning. She comes down, I said, well,
you OK? She says, well, it took 30
minutes, but I think I'm all right now.
That moment could have become the defining moment of our
Thanksgiving. Thanksgiving could have been
ruined by me. Not only did I blow up a Pyrex
dish, not only did I blow up the most beautiful sweet potatoes
ever made, but I blew up Thanksgiving.
But do you know Ellen has another defining reality in her
life? A defining reality where it
looked like death had won. A defining reality where it
looked like sin had won. A defining reality where it
looked like a tyrant had won. A defining reality where it
looked like the the crowds had swayed the opinions of everyone
and Jesus was dead. But no, the resurrection of
Jesus is the defining moment of her life and of my life.
And though in this week I've suffered some setbacks, in this
week my family has experienced death as it feels like a
defining reality. But no, the resurrection speaks
a better word. It speaks the word of Jesus
winning, of Jesus, setting things different.
Some of you have blown up sweet potatoes.
I don't mean literally like I did, but some of you, like me,
have had events in our life that we think that is the defining
moment of my life. It shattered me.
That's the defining moment of my life.
It messed me up. That's the defining moment of my
life. It changed all my relationships.
And somehow you act as if that is the defining moment of your
life. But Paul says, look, no, it's
the resurrection of Jesus that it's the ultimate defining
reality of life. Now for Paul, this was huge.
In fact, it was the realignment of everything in creation.
Let me show you this. Paul is convinced that in the
resurrection of Jesus that God has an inaugurated a rescue of
people. That all those who trust in
Jesus will now be rescued from this present evil age.
Would you say that to your friends, This present evil age?
Yeah, Go ahead. This present evil age.
Have you been rescued from this present evil age?
This was actually a Jewish mindset.
The Jewish mindset was that somehow God would show up and
rescue them from a present evil age.
Notice what Paul says here. Grace and peace to you from God
our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ who gave Himself for our
sins to rescue us together from the present evil age according
to the will of our God and Father, whom be glory forever
and ever. Amen.
Rescue. We talked about it last week
with Thanksgiving. That Psalm one O 7 is the story
of those who have been rescued over and over and over. 4
metaphors for how Israel had been rescued from Babylon But
the ultimate rescue in the Jewish mindset had been the
rescue that they had experienced when God came and rescued them
from captivity in Egypt. How many of you have seen the 10
commandments? It's that story of God rescuing
Israel from slavery under Pharaoh in Egypt, and God was
challenging all of the Egyptian gods to show that he was the one
true God. But they were looking forward to
an ultimate rescue, an ultimate rescue from this present evil
age. That's the little bit of
language they they would use to say we need a rescue from our
present evil age. Now, Paul says Jesus has done
it. Look at the four things he says
Jesus has done. Jesus gave himself for your
sins. Jesus rescued you from the
present evil age. Jesus has done this according to
the will of God our Father. He, he uses such an affectionate
word of God here to say God is like a Father who cares and
who's had a will and a plan for a long time and that this is all
for the glory of God. Now this, this image that we
have in our mind of the present evil age, what is it?
What is the present evil age? Well, there were three parts to
the present evil age. 1 was captivity to idols.
Idols were everywhere. The second is that their belief
was that if you get attached to an idol, you will get captivated
by sin, that every idol elicits a kind of sin in our lives
that's actually against the will of God.
You shall have no other gods before me.
That's the first commandment. But when you do, it leads to the
breaking of the rest of the commandments.
It leads to more sin, which ultimately leads to being
infected by death in all your relationships.
And so when they long to be free of this present evil age, they
long to say, we want. We're so tired of idolatry.
Those who worship idols, it says in Psalm 115, become like them.
They can't see, they can't hear, they can't speak, they can't
feel, they can't move. They become like an idol.
Nothing Notice we we may feel like we have no attachment to
idols, but I love what Tim Keller says.
Follow along as I read an idol is anything more important to
you than God. Anything that absorbs your heart
and imagination more than God. Anything you seek to to give you
what only God can give, that's an idol.
A counterfeit God is anything so central and essential to your
life that should you lose it, your life would feel hardly
worth living. An idol has such a controlling
position in your heart that you can spend most of your passion
and energy, your emotional and financial resources, on it
without a second thought. It can be family and children,
career and making money or achievement and critical acclaim
or saving face and social standing.
It can be a romantic relationship, peer approval,
competence and skills, secure and comfortable circumstances,
your beauty or your brains, a great political or social cause,
your morality and virtue, or even success in Christian
ministry. Is anybody starting to think you
might have some idols in your life?
The reformers would say of our hearts that our hearts are idol
factories. They look at anything and
everything that God has made and says, I could make that an
ultimate good in my life. When you're meaning Tim Keller
goes on. And life is to fix someone
else's life. We may call it codependency, but
it is really idolatry. An idol is whatever you look at
and say in your heart of hearts. If I have that, then I'll feel
my life has meaning. Then I know I'll have value.
Then I'll feel significant and secure.
There are many ways to describe that kind of relationship to
something, but perhaps the best one is worship.
And This is why idols go with worship.
And This is why God says, you shall have no other gods before
me. To be rescued from this present
captive age is to be delivered from idolatry and the sins that
it generates in the Jewish expectation.
This is what it looked like. Here's the present evil age.
The Messiah shows up and ushers it in.
Then there's the whole age to come, and it's all lived on
earth. It's the redemption and the
fulfillment of everything for which creation has been made.
It's just a break. Here's the Messiah.
In fact, the accusation that Jesus wasn't the Messiah seemed
to be because the new age hadn't come and the Romans weren't
kicked out of Israel. But here's the Jesus reality.
The present evil age is running on.
It's still going, but there's this fundamental break in
history. There's a hinge in history now
where the Messiah Jesus shows up, He lives, He dies on a
cross, He's buried, he ravages she'll, he's raised from the
dead, He ascends into heaven and he sends his spirit.
Now by his spirit, the age to come has come, and the age to
come is running parallel with this present evil age.
And, friends, that is a dangerous place to live in.
Paul was writing to people in the church who felt like we are
living in a time of great danger, where our allegiances
are being tested, where we need to find some allies, where we
need to find some safe places and some safe people.
And Paul's writing into that and saying that might be true.
You might think you need that, but don't add to the gospel of
Jesus. Jesus is enough.
So I wonder for you, as you look at this and as we start this
series, are you convinced that Jesus is for you?
Thanks a lot. Have you trusted Jesus for the
forgiveness of sin? Are you letting Jesus rescue you
from your idols? Do you know your idols, the
things that you're taking hold of and saying, oh, this is
becoming like an ultimate thing in my life?
Do you know the sin that's being generated by those idols?
Are you trusting Jesus for deliverance and rescue even
today? You've been rescued once, but He
will rescue again and again and again if you will trust Him.
That's why we need grace and power to live with Him now.
That's why we remember the cross of Jesus.
We're going to come to this table in just a moment, and I
want to encourage you. So just begin to reflect on what
has God drawn my attention to today?
How is God calling? Are you thinking, OK, God, I
heard that, but I think I'll ignore it?
Or is there a certain desperation in your heart today
and you're like, I'm going to answer that call because I want
to respond to God's work in my life.
I want to trust that what Jesus has done sets me free.