Courageous Testimony. (443)

Keith is briefly joined by Nathan Caldwell, who offers and epilogue to our spiritual warfare series. Then we turn to our main topic, a study of the last half of Galatians chapter 1.

 

 

THE ARRESTING HAND OF GOD

 

Paul insisted  that the gospel he preached was not a second-hand tale; it had come to him direct from God. That was a big claim to make and it demanded serious proof. For that proof Paul pointed to himself and to the radical change in his own life.

 

from a fanatic for the law, to grace.

Paul was characterized by:

• passionate intensity
• tried to earn God’s favor,
• but he was now content
• he had a humble faith

 

He had ceased to glory in what he could do for himself; and had begun to glory in what God had done for him.

 

He had been the arch-persecutor of the Church.

He had ”devastated” the Church. The word he uses is the word for utterly sacking a city. His one aim became to spread that same Church over all the world.

 

What caused the change?

When a man is rushing headlong in one direction and suddenly turns and proceeds full speed in the opposite direction some explanation is required. For Paul the explanation was the direct intervention of God. It is a notable thing about Paul that he is not afraid to recount the record of his own shame

 

in order to show God’s power.

 

He has two things to say about that intervention.

 

It was no unpremeditated thing;

it was in God’s eternal plan.

It may be large or it may be small.

It may be to do something of which the whole world will know

or something of which only a few will ever know.

 

Paul knew himself to be chosen for a task.

He thought of himself as chosen not for honor but for service,

not for ease but for battles.

 

 

Paul’s reaction

 

First, he went away to Arabia.

• he had to think out this tremendous thing that had happened to him.
• he had to speak with God before he spoke to men.

 

Second, he went back to Damascus.

• That took courage. He had been on the way to Damascus to wipe out the Church
• He went back at once to bear his testimony to the people who knew best what he had been.

 

 

Third, Paul went to Jerusalem.

Again, he took his life in his hands.

• His former friends, the Jews, would be out for his blood, because to them he was a renegade.
• His former victims, the Christians, might well ostracize him,

 

 

Paul had the courage to face his past. We can deal with it only by facing it and defeating it.

 

Fourth, Paul went to Syria and Cilicia.

Tarsus was there. His hometown.

His family and childhood friends would be there. What would they think about him now? What they think he was crazy? With they mock him, or be angry over him?

 

In these verses Paul was seeking to defend and prove the independence of his gospel.

• He got it from no man;
• he got it from God.

 

he was the man who had the courage to witness to his change and preach his gospel in the hardest places of all.

 

Keith uses notes derived from:

 

Daily Study Bible

William Barclay

Copyright 1976 by William Barclay

Westminster John Knox Press

 

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