02 Galatians 1:11-2:10 Paul’s defends his gospel

Speaker: Today is September 14, 2011. Our Bible is Galatians chapter one, verse eleven, and chapter two, verse one, and our teacher is Krisan Marotta. Have um have you ever received an instruction or a message where you weren't sure if the message was true? And I bet if you have kids this happens all the time, you know one of them comes running in and says, But Daddy said I could have ice cream now. And you're like, mm, really? Is that that really true? Or, you know, maybe back in high school when you got that message that said, you know, oh, but Billy said that, Steve said that, John told him that he was gonna ask you out, you know. Yes. They're on the back, um, there's a box of them in the back shelf for the books. So, yeah, you can just bring them out. I wasn't sure how many to stick out. So, how do you know if a message is true? That's what we're gonna talk about today. Sometimes it's really, really important that you know that the message is true because the message is so important, especially if it's about God. I um ran into a dear friend of mine a few weeks ago and she said she was struggling with doubt about this whole Christian thing because life had really hit her hard. And I think that that's something that rolls around every now and then, where we where you hit those times where you think, is this really true? How do I really know that what I've studied in the Bible or what I've heard about God is true? What if it's just someone's clever invention, or or maybe these twelve people just made it up, or how do you know maybe you're not just here because your parents took you to church and now it's a habit uh and you've just been uh you know, kind of following in their footsteps. So, or how do you know that you didn't just hit bottom and somebody told you this and you clung to it? So I think we all have those doubts at time, and Paul's gonna address, well, not one of the applications of what Paul's gonna say is we can have absolute utter confidence in the message of the gospel because it comes from God, not from men. So we didn't make it up, God Himself revealed it to us. So let me just review where we are in the book for those of you who may be new. Last week we did Galatians 1, uh, verse, the first ten verses, and that was Paul's opening to this letter. He's writing to the churches in Galatia, they're churches he taught, and now they're turning away from the gospel. Now they're getting confused and being taken in by a different teaching. So a group called the Judaizers is a hanging around the church now, and they're teaching, yes, you believe in Jesus, but after that, to finish your salvation, you have to keep the law. Particularly, you have to be circumcised. And the Galatians are beginning to believe this. So there's these two competing versions of the gospel spreading through the Galatians churches, and it matters. They conflict. They the issue is how do you obtain salvation? And they have two groups and they're teaching two different things, and they both can't be true. And Paul's saying, This is how you know which one is true. This is how you can weigh one against the other. This is how you know this is the voice to trust. So last week he opened the letter by saying, You can recognize the true gospel by its substance, its source, and its result. So its substance is grace. That is grace based on the blood of Jesus Christ. Its source is divine revelation, and its result is freedom, freedom from sin. So we're gonna go through a rather long section today where Paul continues that question, and he's answering the question of his trustworthiness, and he's gonna claim you can have utter confidence in his message and the message he preaches because he received it by divine revelation from Jesus Christ. So we're gonna break this section down into two big pieces, and I've put an outline up here for those of you that like to kind of follow along, just because it's a long section. I'll be reviewing it, so if you can't read it from where you're sitting, don't worry about it. I'll tell you what's up here. So first we're gonna look at chapter 1, 11 through 24, and then we're gonna look at 2, 1 through 10. So the outline of our first section, which is the verses in chapter 1, are is this. In 11 through 12, he states his main point. He says, My gospel is in divine origin, is is from divine origin, not from man. Then he supports it. And he supports it three ways. In 13 through 14, he says, what happened before his conversion, in 15 and 16, what happened at his conversion, and in 16 through 24, what happened after his conversion. So 11 and 12 are the main point. 13 and 14 is before conversion, 15-16 at conversion, and then 16 to 24 after conversion. So that's how we're gonna walk through this. So if the text is in your um homework on page 8, and if or if you want to follow along, there are also Bibles in the back on the back shelf. Okay, so let's look at chapter 1, verse 11 and 12. For I would have you know, brothers, that the gospel that was preached by me is not man's gospel. For I did not receive it from any man, nor was I taught it, but I received it through a revelation of Jesus Christ. So that's his main point. He's gonna defend this in this section, he's gonna defend his gospel by saying, God revealed it to me. I didn't make it up, I wasn't taught it, God revealed it. So the truth that we believe comes from God in a miraculous way. It's not, you know, some first century oracle at Delphi, you know, spouting out in unintelligible words, or we didn't, you know, study the stars or the horoscopes and then kind of reach some conclusions, or it's not, you know, some wise elderly, you know, hermit type priests or monk somewhere spending a lifetime searching the universe and then teaching us. He's saying the truth we have comes from God Himself. We have a personal God who revealed himself to plain ordinary people. And this is a message that's not unique to Paul. You remember that John in his gospel opens by saying, In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. And the name, the Word of God there is the name given to the Messiah, and the idea is this is God speaking to us, God revealing Himself. The book of Hebrews also begins: God, after he spoke long ago to the fathers and the prophets, in many portions and in many ways, in these last days has spoken to us in his Son, whom he appointed heir of all things, and through whom also he made the world. Again, making the point, we have this gospel because God himself revealed it to us. So the truth that we believe comes from a revelation from God. Now, think of what that means the gospel is not. It's not according to man. It's so this is not the best attempts of the smartest human beings on the planet trying to think of all possible possible scenarios and coming up with the one they thought was most persuasive. It's not according to us. We would never have thought about it, we would never have come up with it. And that's what Paul's point is. I didn't receive it, I wasn't taught it, I didn't sit at some rabbi's feet and learn it, I didn't uh some human rabbi, or I didn't, you know, I wasn't an apprentice in this, I didn't go to the best schools to figure this out. The gospel he was given comes from God Himself, and therefore we can have utter confidence in it. Okay, so now he's gonna prove that claim. So in 13 through 14, he talks about this is what he was like before his conversion. For you have heard of my former life in Judaism, how I persecuted the church of God violently and tried to destroy it. And I was advancing in Judaism beyond many of my own many of my own age among my people, so extremely zealous was I for the traditions of my fathers. So he's saying, okay, before I heard this, I was everything you want to be. So remember the Galatians are trying to keep the law, the Mosaic law, and they are being seduced by a gospel that says, to be a true Christian, not only must you believe, you must also be a Jew and be keep all the law. And Paul's saying, I did that. That's how I was before. So you think that that's what gives you faith, that's what makes you um acceptable to God. You want to look like a Jew, act like a Jew, well, that's what I was, and I was particularly good at it. I was better than everyone else around me, my peers, I was outstripping my contemporaries, and at the same time I was doing all that, I was persecuting the church. So he was looking great on the outside, keeping the law, and inside he was persecuting and terrorizing people. So, all the advantages of keeping the law, he said, didn't do him any good. He was still corrupt on the inside. So before his conversion, he was a zealous Jew who persecuted Christian, and now notice the pronoun change in verse 15 and 16. So in 13 and 14, it's I persecuted the church, I was advancing in the Judaism, I was zealous. Now he says, but God. So 15 and 16, but when he who set me apart from before I was born and who called me by his grace was pleased to reveal his son to me, in order that I might preach him among the Gentiles, I did not immediately consult with anyone. So notice the pronoun shift. Now it's but God called me, God set me apart, God revealed to me. And in verse 15, he's echoing the call of Jeremiah. The language of he who set me apart from before I was born is the way Jeremiah describes his call to be a prophet. And I think the idea behind that is I had nothing to do with it. So God chose him to make him an apostle, to give him this message. It existed before he was born, before he had a chance to do anything good, before he had a chance to compete with anyone or impress anyone or learn anything or pass any quiz any quizzes. He's saying, Before I did anything to deserve it, God had already called me and put this job for me to do in place, and he contributed nothing. So now he turns to his post-conversion experience, and in this section, I think he offers three alibis to prove what he just, how he ends 16. He said, I did not immediately consult with anyone. So he's going to prove that by saying three things. First, he goes to Arabia, then he goes to Jerusalem, but only briefly, and then what's the last one? Back to Syrium. So the first alibi is verses 16 and 17. He says, I went to Arabia. So he says I did not immediately consult with anyone, nor did I go up to Jerusalem to those who are apostles before me, but I went away into Arabia and returned again to Damascus. Now, we know from Acts 9, verse 20, that Paul spent a very short time in Damascus preaching after his conversion. So he already had some understanding of the gospel, but he stayed there only briefly, and then he goes to Arabia. Now, some scholars debate, did he go there as a missionary to preach the gospel? That's one theory. But the majority theory is that he went as a kind of retreat, that he went away to now restudy the scriptures with his eyes opened and to relearn. And he stays there three years. So it's kind of the equivalent where the original apostles had three years walking with Jesus while he was on earth. Paul has these three years in Arabia studying and learning the gospel in the same way. So he says, I didn't go to anyone to learn this gospel, I went away to Arabia, and then verse 2, his second alibi, he says, After three years I went to Jerusalem, but I only stayed there briefly. So this is 18 through 20. Then after three years I went up to Jerusalem to visit Cephas and remained with him fifteen days, but I saw none of the other apostles except James, the Lord's brother, and what I am writing to you before God I do not lie. Now Cephas is another name for Peter, the Apostle Peter. So he says, I went to I did go to Jerusalem, but it was three years after my conversion. I was only there fifteen days, hardly long enough to be taught anything, and I only saw Peter and James. Now most scholars think this is the trip that's referred to in Acts 9, verse 26. And it says in 923, after many days had elapsed, the Jews plotted together to do away with Paul. So we think that many days is the three years that Paul has just mentioned in 118. So he goes to Arabia for three years, he returns to Damascus, preaches a little bit, it causes so much trouble and so much agitation that the followers of Christ have to lower him over the wall in a basket in the middle of the night to get him out of the city. And he's running for his life. So although he's known the Lord for now three years and faithfully proclaimed the truth and walked with God, the result is at this point in his life is nothing significant has been accomplished. He has to run for his life. We never hear him refer to this ministry in Damascus or those three years as having amounted to anything. So he never talks about churches he planted then or leadership trained in nothing. So he goes to Jerusalem, but it's after his gospel is fully formed, and he's only there fifteen days, which is hardly enough time to be taught by them. And then he finishes that with his third alibi, this is 21 through 24. He says, Then I went to Syria. So in verse 21, then I went into the regions of Syria and Cecilesia, and I was still unknown in person to the churches of Judea that are in Christ. They were only hearing it said, He who used to persecute us is now preaching the faith he once tried to destroy, and they glorified God because of me. So scholars think this is the incident that is recorded in Acts 9, verse 30, which reads, But when the brethren learned of it, they brought him, that is Paul, down to Caesarea and sent him away to Tarsus. Tarsus is one of the cities in Thessalysia. So Paul says he went into these regions of Syria. He may have revisited Damascus on the way, but the point he's making is I was far away from Jerusalem. I was far away from the other apostles. They didn't even know me by sight. They only knew me by hearsay. So his point is I couldn't have learned this gospel at their feet. I spent too little time with them, I had too brief contact, and he was almost totally isolated them. And all that is to make the point, the gospel I'm teaching you came from God Himself. I didn't invent it, I didn't learn it from the other apostles, I didn't learn it from other scholars, and his lack of contact with the other apostles he offers as proof to the divine origin of his message. Okay, that was kind of a whirlwind tour, we're gonna, but we're gonna keep going on. So that raises the question, okay, Paul, if you got this gospel completely independently of all the other apostles, how do we know you got the right one? Maybe you're teaching some strange hybrid or some variation. After all, if you didn't consult with them and they were the ones who walked with Jesus when he was here on earth, how do we know you got it right? Okay, so your message may be independent, but how do we know it's true? And that's the question he's going to answer in two verses one through ten. Okay, so he's he's anticipating that objection and he's going right on. And he's saying, How do we know that it's the same one? In this section, he says, after 14 years, so 14 years after his conversion, he goes to Jerusalem for a prophet proper visit and he consults with the other apostles. So look at 2, 1 to 2. Then after 14 years I went up again to Jerusalem with Barnab Barnabas, taking Titus along with me. I went up because of Revelation and set before them, though privately before those who seemed influential, the gospel that I proclaim among the Gentiles, in order to make sure I was not running or had not run in vain. So now he says, I did go to Jerusalem. It's fourteen years from his conversion, and he went because of Revelation. So God told him to go. It wasn't because he was summoned or called on the carpet, you know, like, oh, we got to get this renegade in here. He says he went because of revelation. Um and he takes Barnabas with him, Barnabas is a Jew, and he takes Titus, who is a Gentile believer, who is not circumcised. And that's significant to his the point he's gonna make. Now, most scholars think that this is the incident recorded in Acts 11, verses 27 through 30. And in that uh incident, a prophet named Agatha speaks of an impending famine, and they organize a relief effort and they send the money to Jerusalem in the care of Barnabas and Paul. And when Paul uh summarizes this, he talks about uh remembering the poor, most people think that's what he's referring to, that this effort they were collecting money for relief for the famine. So notice he goes to Jerusalem, he meets with the apostles, and there are three groups present at this meeting. Paul and his companions, as one group, the pillars of the church, as Paul describes them, which we will later he will identify as James, uh the brother of the Lord, Peter, and John. And then the false brethren, who Paul will call the false brethren, and these are probably the Judaizers who were teaching that you had to be circumcised in order to believe. So Paul says two significant things came out of this meeting. In three through five, Titus was not compelled to be circumcised, and in six through ten, he says the other apostles did not change his message in any way. In fact, they approved of him wholeheartedly. So he's answering the question, how do you know my gospel is the same as theirs? In one through two, he says, I went to Jerusalem, and they did not compel Titus to be circumcised, that's three through five, and six through ten, they approved of him. So let's look at those. And then we're going to talk about so what does this mean for us? So look at verses two, three through, or chapter two, verse three through five. But even Titus, who was with me, was not forced to be circumcised, though he was a Greek. Yet, because of false brethren secretly brought in, who slipped in to spy out our freedom that we have in Christ Jesus, so they might bring us into slavery, to them we did not yield in submission even for a moment, so that the truth of the gospel might be preserved for you. So this is the test case. Remember, there's two competing messages of the gospel going on. Paul's teaching grace and peace with God based on the blood of Jesus Christ alone, and the Judaizers are saying, okay, yes, you do have to start with faith in Jesus, but then you have to be circumcised and you have to keep the Mosaic law. So belief alone is not enough. You have to follow law-keeping. So Titus is the case in point. Titus is a Greek who is not circumcised, but he has come to faith. So he's a Gentile. And the question is, the church in Jerusalem now has to choose which one of these is right. Will they force Titus to be circumcised, saying, Yes, to be a believer, you must do this, or will they accept him as he is? And Paul says they accepted him as he is. That vindicates the gospel that he teaches. Now realize that this is not just a question of custom or tradition. So this is not the same kind of issue of, you know, oh, what kind of music should we sing, or um, you know, should we stand or should we sit? Or those kinds of questions. This is the essence of the gospel. The question is, how do you get how do you uh are you saved? Is the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ enough to set you free from sin? Or must you then faithfully and s and on uh keep the law? So must you also become a Jew and follow all that the Mosaic Law teaches, or is is faith enough? So Titus is a test case because he believed and he was not circumcised, and Paul says, My gospel was vindicated. The leaders of the Jerusalem church did not compel him to be circumcised. Not only that, in 6 through 10, they wholeheartedly approved Paul's teaching. So let's look at that. And from those who seemed to be influential, what they were makes no difference to me. God shows no partiality. Those I say who seemed influential added nothing to me. On the contrary, when they saw that I had been entrusted with the gospel to the uncircumcised, just as Peter had been entrusted with the gospel to the circumcised, for he who worked through Peter for his apostolic ministry to the circumcised worked also through me for mine to the Gentiles. And when James and Cebus and John, who seemed to be pillars, perceived the grace that was given to me, they gave me the right hand of fellowship, they gave the right hand of fellowship to Barnabas and me, that we should go to the Gentiles and they to the circumcised. Only they asked us to remember the poor, the very thing I was eager to do. So we know from two, two that Paul went and explained the gospel as he'd been teaching it. He explained it to those he calls the pillars, James, Cephas, who is a Peter, and John, with two results. They did not change his message in any way. That's verse six, they added nothing to me, and they accepted him completely. That's verse nine. That's the right hand of fellowship. Now, he has this strange language in here about those who are of high reputation, what they were makes no difference to me, and those who were reputed to be pillars. So you kind of have to ask, what's going on there? Why why is he being disrespectful to them? Um or what? So we know that Peter, John, and James, the brother of the Lord, remained in Jerusalem, and that's where they have the headquarters of their ministry. So this is maybe, you know, fifteen or so, twenty years after the resurrection of Jesus. So they're a little older, their beards are grayer, you know, they're they're more well known, and they're well rooted, and so they we can assume that they had taken on this reputation or this kind of mystical aura of these were the people that knew Jesus when he was here on earth. And you can imagine how in a in a church in Jerusalem they would take on kind of this larger than life aura. So what's Paul doing? Is he kind of disrespecting them or what? And I think he's acknowledging that they have this awesome reputation and he but he's saying it makes no difference. It it's kind of a helpful idea because I think when all is said and done we have to realize Christian leaders are human beings and the apostles are human beings even though they have this incredible gift and role to play in the kingdom of God. And Paul's saying yes God has used them in a mighty way yes they had a great task and a job to do but in the end we are all fellow heirs of the grace of life. We are all on the same footing there's no hierarchy in the body of Christ which he will argue elsewhere in letters there's no like super spiritual believers and lesser believers there's no rank like in the army where you have higher and lower Christians. We are all on the same playing field. And so I think Paul's saying he's kind of acknowledging their reputation but saying you know reputation is not everything. They are only human their reputations may be observed. We should listen when they speak faithfully in the name of the Lord but we don't want to put them up on a pedestal. And in fact we're going to see in the very next section next week that Peter is going to make a really big mistake and Paul's going to call him out on it. So apostles may fail in their personal decisions but when they teach and preach and says thus says the Lord they are inspired in what they say is true. So Paul has argued all of this to say I had very little contact with the apostles in my early years. They had no chance to teach me the gospel. I learned it as a direct revelation from Jesus Christ when I did have a chance to tell them the gospel that I was teaching they wholeheartedly approved. Therefore you can have absolute trust and confidence in him as a messenger and in the gospel he preached. And that's the whole point he's trying to make here so the question for us is okay what does that mean for us today? So what? And I'd like to give you three points of application this is this is the part I'm most excited about. I love this part. So first as an apostle Paul probably had an ongoing problem everywhere he went that people said you know you don't really count because you weren't one of the original twelve you know you have this kind of weird history where you were persecuting people you're a little bit peculiar you're different and how do we know that anything you have to say is worthwhile? And we see him kind of addressing those challenges here in Galatians and we see it in other letters as well but the interesting thing to me is how he responds to this problem. Because if someone was attacking me that way here's what I'd do. I my first reaction was well let me give you the list of all the reasons why you should listen to me. You know I'm actually I may not look like much but I'm really much weightier than you give me credit for, you know, and I'd go through so maybe I wasn't trained at the right schools but I was trained at this school and and I've always been nice to my mother and I never kick the cat and you know all the things that make me worthwhile and I try to defend my reputation. What Paul does is he agrees with them. In fact when his enemies charge him with things he says yep that's me I'm the foremost of sinners and he says um in one of his letters he was one he was as one untimely born I think he referring to the fact that he was born too late to walk with Jesus he missed that opportunity to walk with him when he was in the flesh and the best descriptions we have of Paul's life about in his life before his conversion come from Paul himself. He doesn't uh he not only does not disagree with his enemies or contradict them he says yep and let me tell you how bad I was let me just explain how sinful I was I am not the right kind of person. So he kind of turns that argument on on its head and says it's precisely because I was this rotten sinful unregenerate person, what does he call himself the chief of sinners, a persecutor of Christians that what I'm saying now must have come from God because there's no other way to account for it. I could not have done that made that brought that change about myself. So you have to conclude that God took this broken vessel and made something useful of it. And that I think is the point of application that ought to be most encouraging. God does not recruit superheroes. He recruits broken people just like you and me. So Christianity is not attractive or true or commendable because the nicest people in the world have gravitated toward it or the most effective or the most brilliant or the most capable or the most powerful or all the winners in life find their way to the Christian faith. It seems quite the contrary that the people who come to the Christian faith are those who are humble, who are broken, who have been knocked down by life and have learned from it, who are maybe the losers as Paul is in one of his letters he describes Christian leaders as the offscoings of the earth and that ought to be encouraging because Paul because God makes something useful out of those kinds of people so what commends our faith and what we see when we see God working it's not because we're such fabulous people it's because God takes broken people and uses them. So Paul's argument is they say I'm a bad guy? I am I am exactly they say I have this weird horrible history I do. You have no idea how terrible my background is let me tell you how bad my background is but that's all the more evidence that this whole thing comes from God. There's no other way to account for it. So from our perspective it may look like God chooses the wrong person in the wrong place at the wrong time from the wrong circumstances to accomplish his ministry. So you may be looking at yourself going, well you know God can't use me because I'm too old or I'm too young or I'm too extroverted or I'm too introverted or I didn't go to the right schools or I don't have the right degrees or I didn't come from the right background or I'm too you know obnoxious or I'm too hypocritical or I'm too whatever. And you're probably right but that makes you precisely the person God can use because he doesn't recruit superheroes he recruits broken sinful people just like you and me and then he uses them for great things. So God calls you by grace not by your accomplishments. And I find I find that really encouraging. How are we doing on time? Let me tell you a story since we have a little bit of time. This uh you know in here Paul says that um Peter's the apostle to the uh Jews and he's the apostle to the Gentiles world I figured out what my calling is I am the teacher of last resort and it is true I this is my calling in life. In fact I started teaching at Wednesday in the Word. Some of you will remember Julie Wynne, a very gifted teacher who founded this Bible study and I only started teaching when she became too ill to continue. God has since called her home. The year I taught the women's retreat was the year that everybody canceled and we were at the Friday deadline. We either have to cancel the hotel and cancel the retreat or someone has to teach and it's like oh croissant will you do it okay save the retreat. In fact this happens all the time in fact I'm teaching not this Saturday but a week from Saturday at a retreat and the woman called me and said would you do this retreat for us? We have called everybody we know and they have all turned us down. It's like okay that's me the teacher of last resort it's true. I just it's my calling in life I and I always try to have something prepared because it happens all the time in fact one of my favorite ones is this woman called me from a well it doesn't matter where the church was but she called and said asked if I'd do their women's retreat and we worked out all the details and I said I would and then she said oh good because last year we had this really great speaker and we don't want to set the bar too high so we don't want to have two great speakers in a row it's my calling so if you're willing to let God use you in any way it's amazing what he can do. And I I it's funny it's what God uses to keep me humble. But um it's a it's a gift you know somebody somebody has to be the last resort that's me. So and but if you think about it you know if if some small measure of glory comes to the kingdom for this make it so because that's what counts. We have to get over what the world says is great and figure out what God wants us to do and then just do that. Okay so the first application is uh God doesn't recruit superheroes he recruits broken sinful people just like you and me. The second one I think is also encouraging lack of visible results doesn't mean you're running in vain or you have the wrong message. So notice in Galatians 2 2 Paul says he's wondering if he's run in vain. He's wondering if the ministry he's been called to would result in him finally concluding that everything was worthless. Because at this point in his life it's 14 years after his conversion and he's looking back and going what do I have to show for this? Everywhere I teach I get run out of town and stir up trouble. Now I don't think he can mean that he's worrying whether his gospel is true or not because the whole point of this section is he's arguing that his gospel is true. So I think what he's looking at is I'm looking back at my life and I don't see results. I in fact the very churches Galatians that he's planted that he's writing to they're turning away from the gospel and he's looking at that going will I ever amount to anything? Will I ever will all this work that I'm doing actually produce any results? Is God going to give me the honor of seeing that or not? So am I just this voice shouting in the wind? Has the Lord called me to preach what I know to be true and yet I will never see any lasting response? Is that my calling from God? Now you may think that's ridiculous but that's exactly what the prophet Jeremiah was called to he was called to tell the truth to Israel to declare it sin to warn them that the exile was coming and that the exile would end and no one listened to him and he did not long live long enough to see all his prophecies vindicated the exile came and the exile ended. So Paul's looking at this and saying after 14 years of hard dangerous ministry am I going to be allowed to do anything that will last because I look at my life and I think I have nothing to show for it. Now the irony of that is here we are two thousand later two thousand or so years later studying his letter right I mean Paul has influenced thousands and thousands of Christians over generations and yet he didn't see it at that this point in his life from his point of view he's looking at it and going did I run in vain? And I think that may be where we are sometimes lack of outward success or visible outward success is not an indication that you're running in vain. So you know day after day if you're uh working in your children's lives or maybe your students' lives or your family or your workplace and you don't see you know great visible outward signs, maybe there's not thousands flocking to your small group or your Bible study or responding to your work or whatever, that's not an indication that you're doing the wrong thing. Paul says in Ephesians 4 that our job is to faithfully use our gifts in service of the Lord and let him worry about the results and the results may be something we see now or maybe our great grandchildren will see them and we will never know. And that's take heart because just because you don't see success as the world measures success doesn't mean you're running in vain. So the first application is God does not recruit superheroes, he recruits broken sinful people like us. The second one is lack of outward visible results does not mean you're running in vain. And finally the last application I think the most important is there is one and only one gospel and it doesn't change. The truth we have comes from God himself. It's trustworthy we can count on it. And I think in the church we're often tempted to kind of jump on the latest fad you know you get tired of of the same hard work of teaching and preaching and discipling and all that over and over again and we want to hunt for that one big fad thing that will make you know instant results or quick change you know whatever it might be. So there's things kind of blow through the church now and then of oh we got to um work in uh I don't know you probably can think of different fads that people get on that think this is this. If we just do it this way we will finally you know just spread the gospel to the entire city or whatever and we we kind of look for these fads. And I think Paul if if he was here he would say no just keep faithfully preaching the gospel. Just as outward success is not a measure of our message so we dare not change that message to try to gain that outward success. So we don't want to try to compromise the gospel to make it more appealing or to inflate or reach some goal. So the message of the gospel is that the blood of Jesus Christ frees us from our sins and if that fails to win friends and influence people, that's still the message we teach. So truth is not enhanced by the person who if the person declaring it has some impressive degree or speaks eloquently or looks good in the world's eyes, it's there's one gospel it doesn't change. Now that's not to say there are certainly different ways you can apply it to different settings to different audiences may need to hear different aspects so I'm not eliminating that but the essential gospel remains the same. So just to wrap this up then lack of outward immediate visible success does not mean you have the wrong message or you're running in vain. God calls us by his grace, not through our accomplishments and um God calls broken sinful people just like you and me and uses them greatly. So you don't if you're sitting here thinking I'm not the kind of person he could use, that's a good sign. You pr that means you are so the gospel is the power of God for salvation. It's revealed to us by God himself um to people he called and set apart to reveal it. From our perspective it may look like oh I'm the wrong person in the wrong place at the wrong time from the wrong background but that doesn't mean God can't use you. The message is true and reliable and we can count on it. Okay let me pray to close this and I'll give you a chance to ask some questions