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Hi, this is Pastor Tom Holliday and I want to welcome you to our study of the
book of Galatians and daily drive time devotions. We're beginning that study
today, the study of this incredible book that's all about the freedom that you
can experience in Jesus Christ. I am really looking forward to this study.

If you are new to drive time devotions, what we do in drive time devotions is
take a chapter a week, five days a week, ten minutes a day or so, and we can
walk through the Bible that way because you and I are convinced that God's Word
has the power to change our lives. And if you're not convinced of that yet, I
know that as you walk through it that something's going to happen in your life
where you'll become convinced. I didn't become convinced that God's Word can
change my life just as a philosophy of life.

I became convinced as an experience of life through what He does in His Word.
And Galatians, it is a life-changing book. This book of Galatians that we're
going to study the next six weeks together as we walk through its six chapters
has been given many powerful names over the years.

Some have called it the Magna Carta of Spiritual Liberty, others the Charter of
Freedom, some the Battle Cry of the Reformation, some have called it the
Christian Declaration of Independence. These are names that attest to the power
with which this letter speaks. These are names that also attest to the
conviction with which this letter speaks.

This is all about God's power to do something new in your life. Galatians, it's
a great history-changing book. And the way that it changed history, you and I
can see the way that it has the power to change our lives.

This is a book, Galatians, that solidified the distinctive Christian message of
grace in the early church. And made sure that the first century church knew that
salvation was by grace alone. It wasn't grace plus what I do, it was by God's
grace, God's gift alone.

And many say that the Reformation that came thousands of years later was sparked
by a commentary, a commentary written by Martin Luther on this book of
Galatians. It's a powerful life-changing book. If you're caught up in your life
with some confusion about what's really true, what can I really trust, Galatians
proclaims the certain security of the good news of Jesus Christ in your life.

If you're bound up by old rules and traditions and legalism and self-instituted,
self-doubt, self-empowered style of living, Galatians tells you that if you're
tired of living the Christian life the way you've been living it, you can have a
fresh freedom of life in Christ. Now today we're going to look at just the first
two verses of Galatians and sort of introduce the book where we're headed. Look
at Galatians a little bit as if it were a play.

We're going to look at the characters today, the setting today of this book, and
tomorrow we're going to look at the plot of the book of Galatians. Let me read
for you Galatians 1, 1 and 2. "Paul, an apostle, sent not from men, 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.

To understand Galatians, first you have to understand the characters. And there
are three main characters or groups of characters to understand in Galatians.
First Paul, the very first word in the book.

Now you may know a lot about the apostle Paul, but in this letter you and I need
to especially remember three aspects of his character. He's an apostle, he's
speaking as an apostle, he's speaking as a missionary, but he's also speaking as
a parent to these people that he loves. He's speaking as an apostle.

An apostle was one who had a certain closeness to Jesus. Remember the apostles
were the twelve that walked along with Jesus during his three years of public
ministry. But Paul says, "I'm an apostle.

" Why? Well in other books of the Bible Paul says he's an apostle like one chose
lately, one chose out of time. The first twelve walked with Jesus the three
years while he was in public ministry.

Paul had an opportunity to walk with Jesus at a later time, and he was chosen as
an apostle. He had a personal experience with Jesus Christ. He actually got to
see him in his resurrected body.

An apostle was one with a certain closeness to Jesus, and it was also a person,
an apostle who had a certain authority from Jesus because they actually heard
personally his commission that we're to take the gospel, the good news, to the
whole world. Now this idea of a closeness to Jesus and an authority from Jesus,
it's not so much about a greater honor as greater responsibility. They had been
entrusted with something to pass on to others.

That's what Paul is saying when he says, "I'm an apostle. " He also says, "I'm a
missionary. I have gone out to the Galatians as a missionary to tell someone
else the good news.

" And it's obvious as you read this book that Paul had a missionary heart
towards the Galatians. He had an interest in them even more than that. He had a
depth of love for them because he'd been the first to share the good news with
them.

He'd gotten them started in their Christian faith. And that's why he also speaks
to them in a third way, not just as an apostle and a missionary. He also speaks
to them as a parent.

In fact, in Galatians 4 when we get there, we're going to see that Paul says he
labored for their spiritual growth like a mother laboring to bear a child. He
has this love for them like a parent would have for a child. He has a deep
commitment to these people.

And they're in spiritual danger, we're going to find out as we walk through this
book. And so he talked to them as a child would be spoken to who was in danger
by their parent. There are urgent tones and strong convictions in what Paul has
to say.

There's also anger. There's anger at those who are doing the attacking, as any
parent would. If somebody's attacking your child, you have anger towards them,
and you're going to hear anger from Paul towards those who are spiritually
attacking the Galatians.

You also hear surprise. Surprise at the Galatians, that they're so quickly
falling into this trap. It's almost like a parent saying, "Oh, I'm so
disappointed in you.

" You know how we say this as parents, "I'm so surprised that you could go down
this road. " Paul talks that way to them. He also speaks to them with urgency.

He knew the destructiveness of the doctrine that they were listening to. And so
just as a parent would speak to a child who was in trouble, in danger, urgently,
Paul speaks to them very urgently. So if you look at the characters in this
book, you have Paul.

You also have the Galatians, whom we've already been talking about. These
Galatians were a group of young Christians deciding on Christ's direction for
their life. Now Galatia was a region in the ancient world.

It included the cities of Antioch and Lystra and Derbe. It's a place where Paul
had gone on his first missionary journey. So he writes to this region, we might
call it a county today, and he says to them, "I want you to know that I love
you, and I want to impress on you the urgency of the grace of God.

" Now as you look at the Galatians, it's interesting, even in the first couple
of chapters, the kinds of words that Paul uses to describe his emotions, his
feelings towards them. He says he's amazed by them, but in this case, he's
amazed that they're so quickly deserting the good news, that they're leaving
their greatest strength. He says that they are foolish because they're trusting
in all the wrong things.

He even says that they're bewitched because they're confused about what the real
truth is. He speaks in very clear language to these people that he loves. And
the reason he could do that is because he made a commitment of love to them.

He'd gone to them. He'd spoken to them. He'd given his life for them in
ministry, and so he speaks to them clearly and urgently.

You have Paul. You have the Galatians, but there's also a third group to
understand in the plot of what happens in this book, and that is a group known
as the Judaizers. Who are the Judaizers?

Well, it's a group of Christians who are also Jews, just like Paul, by the way.
He was a Jewish Christian. What's the difference?

In this case, these Judaizers were Christians who were telling new Christians
they had to become Jewish in order to be Christian. In other words, you have to
keep all the Old Testament law in order to follow Jesus Christ. So even though
these people they were speaking to in Galatia hadn't grown up in a Jewish
family, they said, "You've got to take all of our traditions, all the things
that we've done in order to truly be a follower of Jesus Christ.

" They sought to make their experience, they'd come to Christ after they'd
followed God as a Jew all of their life, they sought to make their experience
the church's doctrine. And they taught in the end, because they were seeking to
do this, that Jesus was actually an addition to the truth of salvation and not
the sum total of the truth of salvation. We're going to talk about that a lot
this week.

They also fought, they fought for position by means of personal attack on those
who disagreed, specifically Paul. And we're going to see how Paul defends
himself against that attack this week. So those are, in brief, the characters in
what happens in Galatia.

The setting, the time is AD about 49 to 50 when Paul wrote this letter. The
place where Paul wrote it, from which he wrote it, he just returned from his
second missionary journey, and he finds, he gets the news that the Judaizers
have swayed or swaying the Galatian church, that they're beginning to accept
this false teaching. So he sits down and you can tell, you can feel it in the
letter, to rapidly write out this letter, and inspired by the Holy Spirit, you
and I get an insight into the passion that God has for our spiritual growth.

Warren Wiersbe, writing in his introduction to his commentary in the book of
Galatians, says this sentence, "Galatians is a dangerous book. " It is. It's
dangerous to false ideas of faith, and it is also, in my life, in your life, a
dangerous invitation to real freedom, to break out of the box of faith that's
only as big as I am, and to discover the real life of faith that only Jesus
Christ can give.

So as you and I begin to study this book together, I'd like to ask, I'd like to
pray that God will do in our hearts, in our lives, what only he can do, bring
genuine freedom, new freedom into our lives. Jesus Christ, we ask that you would
use this book and our reading through the words to bring a new freedom into our
lives, in an overall way and in specific ways, an overall sense of freedom, but
also freedom at specific points in our lives where we need it. That's what this
book is written for, and we believe in the power of your word, so we ask that
your word would work in power in our lives.

And we ask it, Jesus, in your name, amen. And join us tomorrow. We're going to
launch out into this great book about our freedom in Jesus Christ.