The Rescue from This Present Evil Age

Transcript

GR 2077
03/05/2017
The Rescue from this Present Evil Age
Galatians 1:3-5
Gil Rugh

We are privileged to look into the Word together, the book of Galatians chapter 1. We looked earlier at the church at Laodicea and a difficult letter because of the deteriorated spiritual condition in that church and sadly the churches in Galatia are wrestling with similar kinds of problems that are going to cause Paul to, I wouldn’t say despair, but to reach a frustration of concern whether they really understood and believed the Gospel.

False teachers, the devil never changes his tactics and he just works them overtime, over generations and the process continues and it was happening in the church at Galatia. The church had been infiltrated with teachers who professed to be believers. This is the confusing element. They claim to come, believing the Gospel. They come to clarify the Gospel. They come to make clear that the Gospel that Paul preached was not a complete Gospel and furthermore Paul was not really a genuine apostle. And those are the two areas of attack Paul has to deal with and they come out in the introduction to the letter in the first five verses.

In verse 1 he clarified his position as an apostle, a genuine apostle. It wasn’t an honor bestowed on him by men. It was a responsibility, an authority delegated to him by God. That will be developed and a defense of his apostleship really through the first two chapters. And then in verses 3 to 5 he will focus on the message that he preached, the Gospel in a very summary manner again but in chapters 3 and 4 he will expand and defend that Gospel.

So here in the opening to this letter he addresses the two crucial issues and the way the devil works. He attacks the authority and credibility of the messenger, Paul, and his position as an apostle with authority to speak and he attacks the message in an attempt to corrupt the Gospel that had been proclaimed, that had brought them salvation.

One commentator noted this: “It is customary to describe these agitators as Judaizers whose aim was to convince Gentile Christians that in addition to putting faith in Jesus as the Christ they must follow the same procedure as converts to Judaism, namely to accept circumcision and observe the Mosaic Law and the customs. In order to attack the Gospel that Paul had proclaimed among these people, it was expedient to attack with legitimacy his position as an apostle and to make it appear that he was inferior to the original apostles. For this reason Paul found it necessary to defend his apostleship as well as his Gospel to show that he had an independent call directly from the risen Lord and he had his Gospel from the same unimpeachable source.”

So we are going to look at verses 3, 4, and 5 which these first five verses comprise the introduction to the letter. It is an abrupt introduction. There were no words of greeting. There are no words of thanks and commendation as some of his letters. “I have heard of your faith and your love” or so on. It is going to deal with the message that he proclaimed with the authority that he had as an apostle and then in verse 6 he will jump right in with a full bore attack declaring that those who had come into their midst attacking him and his message were cursed to hell. They were anathema and he didn’t care whether it was an angel or a man. It is the same, so
very abrupt. You get an idea of the seriousness here that Paul sees at hand.

There is a greeting in the sense that he expresses his desire and prayer for them in verse 3: “Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.” And that is even a reminder of the message that he preached, it is a message of grace. It is a Gospel of grace that leads to a life of grace. Grace is one of Paul’s favorite words. In his letters he uses it about 100 times. It is only used 55 times in all the rest of the New Testament. So you could say this is a favorite word of Paul as he is directed by the Spirit to emphasize God’s grace.

Grace by definition is that which is unmerited, unearned and undeserved. Foundational is the grace of God provided for us in the death of Christ. He will get to that in verse 6. “I am amazed that you were so quickly deserting Him who called you by the grace of Christ,” and the grace we have experienced in Christ

Over in chapter 2, verse 21: “I do not nullify the grace of God.” His grace, it comes from Christ, it comes from God. You are undermining grace. Grace is unmerited favor, undeserved. It stresses what God does for us in His kindness, in His mercy. We contribute nothing. He does everything.

Come back to Romans 11. This is a constant battle and it is the battle fought down through the history of the church. It is the battle fought today. It was the issue in Protestant Reformation that we emphasized at our Men’s Retreat. Paul here in chapter 11 of Romans 11 emphasizes, verse 5: “In the same way then there has come to be at the present time a remnant according to God’s gracious choice,” or literally “according to the election of grace or the choice of grace.” And then he elaborates. “But it if is by grace, it is no longer on the basis of works otherwise grace is no longer grace.” You cannot mix them.

So believers shouldn’t get confused. So at least they believe the Gospel, the death, burial and resurrection of Jesus Christ but you understand if you add anything to that you have undermined grace. It is no longer a Gospel of grace.

We have what are called sacraments today. You see Protestant and Catholics with dirt on their forehead, ashes. There was someone on TV on a news program and I was going to call the station and tell them to give that person a face rag. They are pagans. The Roman Catholic Church is built on a system of sacraments which are what? What you must do to be a recipient of God’s grace. There is no salvation apart from you partaking of these sacraments. What have you done? You have destroyed a Gospel of grace. You must be baptized, you must partake of communion, you must do this and you must do that. By their very definition they are means of grace.

I looked up in the dictionary before I came in just to see what they defined of the sacraments. They are things you do to have earned salvation, to acquire salvation. Sometimes it is put “They are things you do as means of grace.” Now that is a contradiction in terms. These are things you do to what? Earn grace, and acquire grace. Well now grace is no longer grace because you have put works into it. That is what he says in verse 6. How do we get confused? The Scripture is not confusing.

So Paul has to deal with this in the churches at Galatia. So he wants to remind them of grace. It is not grace that brings salvation. It is the grace now that envelopes our life and we live by grace. We have noted this before.

Come back to Galatians, chapter 3 where he puts both what we would call salvation and sanctification together as the result of grace. Verse 2: “This is the only thing I want to find out from you. Did you receive the Spirit by the works of the law or by hearing with faith?” How did you get saved? Well Paul you came and presented the Gospel and we believed it, right. “Are you so foolish having begun by the Spirit are you now being perfected by the flesh?” So when he said his desire and prayer for them is they experience the fullness of God’s grace and live in that. That is his desire. Grace and peace is his wish and his prayer for them, that enabling grace and their continuing to live in that grace. There are things that we do as a result of that grace but not to obtain grace, not to acquire grace. Grace is the enablement for us in God’s provision.

So he says in chapter 1, verse 3 “Grace to you and peace,” and peace. God’s peace starts out with peace with God, Romans 5:1 “Having been justified by faith we have peace with God.” Before that we are God’s enemies. We are under condemnation but when we place our faith in Christ we are now brought into a relationship of peace with God and so then the peace of God as Philippians 4 says now “stands guard at our hearts and minds in Christ Jesus.” This is the provision of God for us.

Over in Galatians chapter 5, verse 22, what does the Spirit produce in the life of the child of God? “The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy,” and here’s our word “peace.” He wants them to be living within the realm of God’s grace enjoying His peace. There is conflict. There is division. There is trouble but He wants them to experience God’s peace and they will as they are faithful to the truth. The problem is the confusion that has unsettled the church, has unsettled the believers, brought confusion of how the sufficiency of God’s grace, do I really need the law? Do I really need to be keeping the law? Then we get unsettled. We say well, “I don’t have peace.” But he wants them to enjoy God’s peace and that would bring peace with other believers as well as we see in various Scriptures. This is in contrast to the world.

Come back to Isaiah chapter 57. Look at the last two verses of that chapter, verse 20, Isaiah 57:20 “But the wicked are like the tossing sea for it cannot be quiet. Its waters toss up refuse and mud. ‘There is no peace,’ says my God, ‘for the wicked.’” No true peace of heart and mind that can sustain them in all kinds of turmoil because the peace that God provides is an inner peace.

The peace the world has depends upon circumstances, situations, what is going on in life. God’s peace transcends that. It is not peace like the world gives, Jesus said. He gives His peace but not like the world gives. The world has its artificial peace that the devil provides but true peace that transcends every circumstance in every situation – that is God’s blessing and provision for us. “It stands guard at our hearts and minds in Christ Jesus” as Philippians 4:6 says.

Back in Galatians 1, verse 3: “Grace and peace come from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.” Again here is a clear statement of the deity of Jesus Christ. We sometimes study the deity of Jesus Christ and look at specific passages that call Him God. “The Word was with God, the Word was God” as the Gospel of John says but the fact is the deity of Christ permeates the New Testament here. “Grace and peace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.” Paul couldn’t write this “Grace and peace to you from God and the Apostle Paul.” Paul can’t bestow grace. He can’t bestow peace. He can pray for it for them. He can express it as his desire for them but grace and peace only come from God and the Lord Jesus Christ.

We looked at verse 6 already where it referred to the grace of Christ. We looked at chapter 2, verse 21 and it talked about the grace of God. So you can talk about the grace of Christ, you can talk about the grace of God but you are not talking about a different kind of grace. It is the same with peace.

Come over to Philippians chapter 4 – what I have been quoting and then verse 7, “The peace of God which surpasses all comprehension.” You know it is “The peace of God which surpasses all comprehension standing guard at your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus.”

Go to the next letter, Colossians and look at chapter 3, verse 15, “Let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts.” See, you can go back and forth and talk about the grace the God the Father, the grace of Christ Jesus, the peace of God the Father, the peace of Christ Jesus because they are the source, because Christ is Himself God as well as the Father and these blessings come from God.

Back to Galatians, with this desire, the foundation for this has been the finished work of Christ. That is the foundational provision of God in His grace, providing salvation for us, that brings us into a relationship of peace with Him. So when he mentions, “The Lord Jesus Christ” then he continues. It is “the Lord Jesus Christ who gave Himself for our sins that He might rescue us from this present evil age according to the will of our God and Father to Whom be the glory forevermore.” So he picks up with Jesus Christ and what He has done and then concludes in verse 5 with a description of praise to the Father.

“Christ gave Himself for our sins.” This states concisely Paul’s Gospel. It is what I say. The things that are under attack, his authority as an apostle and thus the message that he preached. Well here is the message, reminds you right at the beginning, “Christ gave Himself for our sins.” That is the heart of the Gospel, the death of Christ for our sins, to pay the penalty for our sins, to pay the price necessary for our redemption. “The wages of sin is death but the free gift of God is life in Christ.”

Paul wrote to the Corinthians. Why don’t you come back to that, I Corinthians, chapter 15? If we are not clear on the Gospel, we are adrift in a sea of hopeless confusion. I Corinthians 15 where we often come for a little bit more expanded statement of the Gospel. The heart of it, verse 3: “For I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures.” That is the heart of it. Otherwise the resurrection to be sure is the seal of it but we are not saved by Christ’s resurrection although if He hadn’t been raised from the dead that would indicate there would have been no value accomplished in His death but the heart of it is “Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures.”

Come back to Romans 5. This is the chapter that began with the verse that I referred to, we didn’t turn to it, verse 1: “Having been justified by faith we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.” Down in verse 6: “For while we were still helpless at the right time Christ died for the ungodly.” Verse 8, “But God demonstrates His own love toward us in that while we were yet sinners Christ died for us.” Verse 10, “For if while we were enemies we were reconciled to God.” Great statements of the work of Christ on our behalf, taking our place, paying our penalty. We have to keep this in mind.

When we talk to the lost we want to talk to them about the Gospel, not some general talk about God has been good to me and we can appreciate God’s work. We don’t want to talk generally about Christ, we want to talk about the issue. We are sinners and you will note while you are still in Romans 6, verse 6 says: “We were helpless.” That is why we needed grace to do for us what we could not do for ourselves. We were helpless. We could not pay our penalty and be redeemed. If we weren’t redeemed, we would pay our penalty ourselves which is an eternal hell. We were helpless. God reached out to the helpless while we were in our sins. That is why we don’t talk to people about cleaning up their lives. We are not here to help people reform themselves and again we have to fight in this day of 24 hour endless news. We get caught up in it; we get worked up about it. We begin to think, “This isn’t done or this doesn’t happen. What is going to happen to our country? What are we going to do with this?” You don’t find Paul talking about that at all. We go from one Roman emperor to another during Paul’s ministry but it is like it is a non-issue and when he does speak before Roman authorities, he doesn’t talk to them about their responsibility to provide a better context for this or that. He speaks about sin and righteousness and judgment, about their need of a Savior.

So we want to talk to people. We want to get to the point which is what? You are a sinner. Christ said that He would send His Spirit into the world to convict of sin, of righteousness and judgment. We want to talk about that so the Holy Spirit can do His work of convicting. That doesn’t mean we can’t start out, “Are you a religious person, something like that.” But we know where we are going and we are going to get there as quickly as possible. We are not going to debate creation versus evolution. We are not going to get sidetracked with other things. We want to talk about what is of greatest importance. They want to talk about, “Well you say you are a Bible believing Christian, do you believe the opening chapters of Genesis?” Well you know that is worth discussing but there is something more important that we ought to talk about first. Where will you spend eternity? You know God says that you are a sinner, just like me and we get into the Gospel.

That’s what Paul is saying. He has to remind the Galatians. What has happened? They have lost their grasp on the simplicity of the Gospel and now the danger is they will think they can hold on to the Gospel and add to it the Mosaic Law. Here we are, “Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures” as Paul just said in Romans.

Now come back to Galatians. “He died for our sins,” to pay the penalty for our sins, Peter said. “He Himself bore our sins in His body on the cross but that we might die to sin and live to righteousness.” He is taking our place, paying our penalty “So that He might rescue us from this present evil age.”

A number of commentators have noted that we are on a rescue mission. There is a Gospel song, “Rescue the perishing, care for the dying.” That is what we are doing; “That He might rescue us.” People don’t understand. You know they are like a drowning man who doesn’t know he is drowning. He can’t touch the bottom and he can’t swim. He’s helpless and he doesn’t know it. What is he thinking? He’s not. It’s like a little two or three year old that jumps in the deep end of the pool. What are they thinking? They’re not. This is their condition. They might rescue us from this present evil age.

The period of time in which we live is an evil time. It is the present evil age, the evil age. This time period is an evil time. It is amazing how quickly we believers get taken back and I can’t believe what’s happening. I can’t believe what people are doing. I can’t believe what? You know, believe the Bible. You come back and we get ourselves reoriented. We get the idea, yes, if we get people in this position and this position and this position and pretty soon we find ourselves in league with those we are happier with. We are happier to have Roman Catholics in charge in our government because at least they have a system of moral values that we can identify with as though that changes anything. Well we may get a better Roman emperor next time who will set some standards and some did. Some put some requirements down about marriage and valuing marriage and doing those kinds of things. Paul doesn’t get caught up in that. We’ve got to rescue people from this present evil age. We are not trying to improve life for them in an evil age we are trying to rescue them out of this evil age. It is a time in which Satan rules.

Look over in 2 Corinthians chapter 4. You will note verse 3: “If our Gospel is veiled it is veiled to those who are perishing in whose case the god of this world” and as you have with the little “1” in front of world in the margin, the god of this age. This is an evil age because it was a period of time when Satan rules and he moves his people for the accomplishing of his purposes which is what? To oppose God and His purposes, to keep people from hearing the Gospel, blinding the minds of the unbelieving so that they might not see the light of the Gospel of the glory of Christ who is the image of God. Do everything you can, make them religious as could be, make them as moral as could be because that will help blind them to their need of the Gospel. That is fine. We think well the devil is an immoral being. Well he can be very moral. If by moralism he can get people thinking that they are good enough to go to heaven. That is fine. That is just as opposed to God as the most vile activity and the end of both is an eternal hell.

This is the problem in an immoral, godless world. It was easy for the Judaizers to look like the best companions we could hope for. Here are Jews who say they believe the Gospel and want to wed the Gospel to the Mosaic Law and in our day and in our society can there be anything wrong with that? They want to keep the Ten Commandments. They want to recognize the God, the one and only true God, but want to implement moral conduct and require it. Pretty soon Christians begin to think and wed it to their Christianity and without thinking we have corrupted our Christianity. Then we think, “Wow, now we will make a difference in the world,” but it is the Gospel? We have to rescue people out of this age dominated by the devil. You can’t improve the devil’s work. You have to rescue people out of this present evil age, a time when Satan rules, Satan dominates.

Look at a couple uses of this word ‘age’ and its condition. Come back to I Corinthians. We will just go through a few of these, I Corinthians chapter 1 so that we don’t forget the simplicity of the Gospel and the narrowness of the focus that we have. I Corinthians chapter 1, verse 20, “Where is the wise man? Where is the Scribe? Where is the debater of this age,” the one defending and promoting the values and thinking of this age, this time in the world? “Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world? For since in the wisdom of God the world through its wisdom did not come to know God, God was well pleased through the foolishness of the message preached to save those who believe.” “We preach Christ crucified,” verse 23 and this is the message in the world of what? Verse 18: “The word of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing but to us who are being saved it is the power of God;” always the danger that Greek wanted to mix wisdom with the Gospel. In verse 17 Paul said “Christ did not send me to baptize, but to preach the Gospel, not in cleverness of speech (not in wisdom of speech) that the cross of Christ should not be made void.”

You know whenever you mix anything with the gospel you have corrupted it. It is a pure Gospel. It is a powerful Gospel. “For the Gospel is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes.” But the devil is brilliant. He can nullify that power by mixing it with the thinking of men and thinking we are accomplishing something. We are meeting the world on its level.

In future studies I am going to be sharing with you some quotes in connection with our study of the book of Revelation on this very thing. A writer who gets a Christian award for his book and it really is a book that criticizes taking the Bible literally which closes us out from the scholarly world and being accepted and influential there; this constant battle that is going on.

You come down to chapter 2 of I Corinthians, verse 2. Paul’s approach is clear. “For I determined to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ, and Him crucified.” It just simplifies. What would you do if you were required to go to the university and present your belief to the university faculty? Simple, just make up your mind to know nothing but Jesus Christ and Him crucified. You would probably be present there in weakness and fear and much trembling but you preach the message that is powerful and let God do with it what He will.

Come down to verse 6: “We do speak wisdom.” The world doesn’t view us as wise but “We speak wisdom among those who are mature; a wisdom, however, not of this age, nor of the rulers of this age,” and a reminder, “they are passing away.” Remember that is why Christ Jesus died for our sins to rescue us from this present evil age.

So we are not trying to fit in. We have been rescued out of it. Now we have been sent with a message to rescue others out of it. Verse 8: “We speak God’s wisdom (in verse 7), (Verse 8) “It is the wisdom which none of the rulers of this age has understood. If they understood it they would not have crucified the Lord of glory.”

Chapter 3 of I Corinthians verse 18: “Let no man deceive himself. If any man among you thinks he is wise in this age he must become foolish so that he may become wise. For the wisdom of this world is foolishness before God.” God has chosen to do that which the unbelieving world sees as foolishness. That puts us in the awkward position of coming to tell them the wisdom of God and they think we are idiots, we are fools. It is only those dumb fundamentalists who never did have any intellectual credibility in the world and so it gets written off and then we begin to think we are not making an impact. We are not making things acceptable. Perhaps if we would be viewed as more scholarly. Neo-evangelicalism, the new evangelicalism started in the 1940’s which has permeated Christianity. It was on that basis that we would have more of a social involvement; we would develop more intellectual credibility. Where does that leave the Gospel of foolishness? It gets sidelined because we have come up with an idea no different than the Judaizers, just another form of Satanic corruption.

Come over to Ephesians chapter 2, note this as it opens up the chapter, “You were dead in your trespasses and sins,” spiritually dead, cut off from the life of God, any relationship with Him “in which you formerly walked.” Interesting the way it is put, “according to the age of this world.” That word translated ‘course’ you see in the margin is ‘age.’ “According to the age of this world.” This world, this time – it all gets packaged together because Satan is not only the god of this age. He is the god of this world, this world system that operates during this time, the evilness that characterizes a fallen world. That is where we live and you note when you walk according to the age of this world, you are walking according to the prince of the power of the air. That is the spirit that is working now in the sons of disobedience. We are talking about the devil and his demonic forces. “Among them we all too formerly lived.”

You see why we can’t come and just try to help people improve their lives or we want to improve our country. We are on a rescue mission. They want to interview you and say, “What do you think should be done with the next Supreme Court? What kind of person would you like to see appointed? I want to say, “I will leave that in the hands of God. I am concerned with something of much greater importance, where are you going to spend eternity?” That won’t be determined by the next person to be appointed to the Supreme Court or the next person that is president of the United States. That will be determined by your response to the greatest person, the most important person who ever lived, the One who came to this earth to die to pay the penalty for your sin. That is what matters.

You can get a Christian involved in a political discussion that has heat but a few sentences but sometimes you’ve got to slap them across the face to wake them up to talk about the Gospel. “Hello, anybody there?” If somebody mentions something about politics we are in it, we are there. I’ve got some strong feelings here. People need to be rescued out of this present evil age. It is where we lived. I didn’t need someone to come and help me improve my life. I needed someone to rescue me out of that life and only Christ could do that. He came to die to rescue us out of this present evil age and all that characterizes it.

Come to Titus chapter 2. In Titus chapter 2, verse 11 “For the grace of God has appeared.” We talked about Paul’s desire for grace for them. “This grace has brought salvation to all men instructing us to deny ungodliness and worldly desires, to live sensibly, righteously and godly in the present age.” So that grace of God has brought us salvation and now we can live in this age but not part of it, not controlled by it, not under its authority or the authority of the one who rules it. God has provided Christ, verse 14 “to redeem us from every lawless deed and purify for Himself a people for His own possession.”

God forbid that we ever give people the idea that being moral has made them more acceptable to God in the general sense of moral, if they are good, upright, moral people. What are we saying? That is not what God says about them. We have to shine the light of the Gospel on them so they can see themselves.

Back to the book of Romans and then we will wrap up, Romans chapter 1. We mentioned Romans chapter 1 where we are told “The Gospel is the power of God for salvation.” And then he moved in Romans chapter 1 and he is going to spend the bulk of the next three chapters, the rest of chapter 1, all of chapter 2 and 3 to make the point that there is nothing but the power of God that can rescue people from the power and evil of this present day and this world system and the domination of the devil.

You see something of our miserable condition as God sees us. Down through chapter 1 and all kinds of sinful activity. Then you come to chapter 2 and you deal with the Jews who would agree those Gentiles need to be rescued but he tells them that they don’t have any excuse because just having the law and going through the motions of trying to in one degree or another keeping the law can’t save them because they have no ability to fully keep it and the ongoing sacrifices are a demonstration of that.

So being a moral Jew in contrast to an immoral Gentile doesn’t mean you are in a better condition. So you come to chapter 3 and the only benefit that the Jews have which is a great benefit is the Word of God was given to them. The problem is they haven’t believed it and so verse 9, Paul writing, “What, are we Jews better than they, those Gentiles? Not at all. We have already charged both Jews and Greeks are all under sin.” Then he quotes all these verses. “None righteous, not even one, None who understand; None who seeks God.” All the way along. And the purpose of this. It is God’s intention, verse 19 that no one have any excuse before Him. They have all been shown to be sinners.

And that brings you into verse 21 then. “The righteousness of God has been manifested. The righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ for all those who believe.” And we went through here in a previous study. You may have it marked in your Bible. We marked all the times that faith and believe are mentioned from verse 21 all the way down into verse 2 of chapter 5. If you haven’t done that you should do that, maybe this evening, maybe sometime this week. It is the righteousness of God that has been manifested. Verse 22: “The righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ for all who believe for there is no distinction for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.” There is no other way to be saved. Every other way, every other religion is false. Now that is viewed as narrow, bigoted and intolerant. I am not intolerant. You can believe as you choose but I am telling you there is no other way of salvation. “All have sinned and come short of the glory of God.” Verse 24, we have to be justified as a gift by His grace and he piles these words up.

What is a gift? Something you didn’t earn or deserve. Your boss comes to you at the end of the week and gives you your paycheck and says here’s a gift to you. You were expecting more than what you earned. I earned that. It is a gift by His grace through the redemption which is in Christ Jesus. God displayed Him as a propitiation in His blood. Remember He gave Himself for us that He might rescue us. It is the sacrifice of Himself. It is to satisfy God’s righteous requirement. Verse 28, “For we maintain that a man is justified by faith apart from the works of the law” and this is true for Jew or Gentile.

So down to the end of chapter 4. “Righteousness will be credited to those who believe in Him who raised Jesus our Lord from the dead. He was delivered over because of our transgression.” He was raised because He had provided righteousness for us. His work had been effective and had accomplished its purpose.

So come to chapter 12 of Romans and what does he say? “I urge you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies a living and holy sacrifice, acceptable to God, which is your spiritual service of worship. And do not be conformed to this world” which is literally ‘age,’ to this age which we are talking about. We were rescued out of this. You don’t want to go back and live according to it. We live in the world but we are not part of the world. We don’t live according to the world. We are not to be conformed to this world in our thinking, in our conduct. “We are to be transformed by the renewing of your mind so that you may prove what the will of God is. That which is good and acceptable and perfect.” That is the overall flow.

So when you come back to Galatians chapter 1 “Christ gave Himself for our sins.” This is the permeating message “that He might rescue us from the present evil age.” And you know we sometimes think well what does the world admire? Well if the church does good work, social works, helps the needy, provides food and clothing, does all these things and we somehow think if we do the things the world will admire then they will be more open to what we have to say. You know all it does is corrupt the church. The church becomes a social center. The church becomes a place where good works are done. But who is going to present the message of the death of Christ to rescue people out of this present evil age, this corrupted world system? The church is busy about feeding the hungry. The church is about doing those things that the world admires.

Well we get too much admiration from the world. We need to back up and say something is wrong because God says the message Jesus entrusted to us is a message that the world says is foolishness. It is not admired by the unbeliever. So we try to get respectability. We try to find those we have something in common with. That is where we get into the moralism and social activity. You say, “well you can’t say it’s bad to do that.” No, the church can’t do everything that might not be bad in and of itself. The church has to do what Christ said it must do. We are the pillar and support of the truth. We do what no one else can do, what no other organization can. The government can feed the hungry. The social groups can do this. We are here to tell the Truth. It doesn’t mean you can’t take a meal to your unbelieving neighbor. We are to do good to all men in that sense but we cannot be diverted from our mission.

“Christ gave Himself for our sins that He might rescue us from this present evil age.” Now note this, “According to the will of our God and Father.” This is God’s plan. This is His will. Ephesians 1, we won’t go there but it says that “our salvation is according to His purpose, the One who works all things after the counsel of His will.” This is God’s will that Christ gave Himself for our sins that He might rescue us from this present evil age.

Now what has to happen? We must maintain what has been entrusted to us, the purity of the Gospel. That is the battle in these churches and the truth has to be the focal point. And people who come say, “Well that’s not quite what I was looking for. I was looking for something …” If the Spirit isn’t working in a heart, don’t expect your unbelieving friend to be excited about being here. It’s a different world but don’t hesitate to bring your unbelieving friend or share with them personally. What we want to do is get people exposed to the truth, to the Gospel and to that we must hold on to it tightly. This is God’s will. You say, “I want to do the will of God.” Well, the will of God, we just read it, is that people be rescued from this present evil age through faith in the finished work of Christ and this brings to God the glory. He is the One who deserves the glory and praise because I want to honor Him with my life and I honor Him by telling the greatest of His grace. He doesn’t want to clean up your life, dust off the dirt. He wants to make you new and we want to bring glory to Him. He is the God who will receive glory forevermore, literally into the ages of the ages. What a contrast to this present transitory evil age. We are in fellowship with the God of the ages for all eternity.

So now with that introduction we are ready to move in. Paul says, “I am amazed,” I’m dumbfounded, I can’t believe it. It has been a relatively short time and “you are already deserting Christ.” There is a bluntness about what he has to say here. There can be no middle ground. We talked about this with the church at Laodicea. We are always looking at a church today, some kind of middle ground but that luke-warmness is not acceptable. The churches of Galatia are in serious danger and they must be confronted very seriously.

Be reminded, this Gospel doesn’t have its source in men. It has its source in God. Why should I be embarrassed to tell people what God says? Why would I be embarrassed to be God’s representative? Think about it. How silly is that? I am a little embarrassed. You think, boy, there would be a boldness, a confidence. What greater honor. God says “Here is My Word, tell them.” Oh, but it is intimidating but we want to do it, we want to be faithful to it.

Let’s pray together. Thank You Lord for the riches of Your Word. Lord how awesome it is, the simple beauty of the Gospel is Your power to bring salvation to lost, helpless, hopeless sinners like each one of us was. Lord You rescued us according to Your perfect plan from this present evil age, being consumed and controlled by our own selfishness, our lust, our desires and the empty hopelessness of it all serving the devil, an awful taskmaster and yet in Your grace You provided a Savior who could rescue us but at great cost, the giving of His life that we might live, so that we could have a salvation that is free, that is given by Your grace to all who believe in Him. May we be bold with this truth in the week ahead of us as we serve You in various ways and in various places we pray in Christ’s name amen.