Why Paul Says Follow Me, Not Just Jesus Explained

Hello, and welcome to Through the Bible with Les Feldick, an Oklahoma rancher and farmer. Les Feldick has been teaching homestyle Bible classes for over 20 years in Iowa, Oklahoma, and Texas. Les Feldick's unique style of Bible teaching has made the books of the Bible come to life. When Les is teaching, it's so interesting that people say, time just seems to fly by. And now, here is Les Feldick. Okay, good to have everybody back. And once again, we're just going to pick right up where we left off in Galatians chapter 4, and I guess Roy's got it on the board. We're going to jump right back at verse 10. And again, we'd just like to welcome our television audience and those of you who are bringing us into your living rooms, your den or whatever. And again, we just hope that you can feel like you're a part of our studio audience. And we just love to hear that you're taking your Bible and you're following with us. Because as I've said so often, I don't want you to go by what I say, but line it up with the book. Oh, listen, there is so much false teaching today that is not according to the Word of God. And I'm not going to point them out or make any accusations, but all I tell people is, whatever you hear, I don't care whether it's from my denomination or yours or Timbuktu, search the Scriptures and line things up with the Word of God, because that's how we're going to be judged. Not according to what some denomination criteria, but what does the Word really say? And you know, I've often qualified that with the opposite. You know, you've got to be just as cautious about what the Word does not say, because a lot of people have got a lot of ideas that the Word says something, and it doesn't. It's not in here. But you've got the freedom to search the Scriptures and see if these things, as the Bereans did, are really so. All right, chapter 4, and let's just drop right down to verse 10, and remember how we closed the last program. These Galatian believers were turning back to the weak and the beggarly things, which tells you what the law really was from man's point of view. It was perfect from God's point. It was absolute. It was righteous, but from man's point, it was weak and beggarly because it had no power to help people keep it. I hope you all understand that. The law was weak and beggarly because it had no power to help mankind keep the demands of the law. But this gospel is empowered by the person of the Holy Spirit, and He is the one that now sets us in the right direction, and consequently, we do not need the law. We're not under it because the Holy Spirit takes up where the law leaves off. All right, so now then, verse 10, and oh, Paul says, this is all a sign of their weakness, and they're going back under legalism. He says, you observe days and months and times and years. Now, what group of people did that? Well, not only the pagans, but Israel. The whole Israeli economy was based on the new moons and on the holy days, the high Sabbath, the regular Sabbath, and everything was regulated according to the moons and the signs and so forth. And Paul says, and you're going back into that same stuff? Listen, we're not under any particular day or feast day or celebration day. All right, reading on in verse 11. So now he says, I am afraid of you. He's beginning to doubt the veracity of their profession of faith. I'm afraid of you, lest I have bestowed upon you labor in vain. Now, what does he mean? Listen, I stressed especially when we studied the two Corinthian letters, how much the apostle Paul suffered and deprived himself that the gospel might go to these Gentile communities. And now he says, if you're turning your back on everything that I have taught you, that I've proclaimed and preached to you, and now you're turning back under the law, did I do all that in vain? Well, listen, it was bad enough that it was in vain for Paul, but oh, how much worse than you realize that it was in vain for what Christ had done. You know, I've been stressing that for the last several months. What a waste when Christ has already accomplished everything that needs to be done for every human being, and then they walk it underfoot. Go on their merry way, totally unconcerned and indifferent, and the blood of Christ is accounted as nothing. Oh, indeed it was in vain for those, for those of us who believe, of course, it wasn't. All right, so he says, I'm afraid lest I have bestowed upon you labor in vain. Now look at verse 12, where once again he says almost identical what he said to the Corinthians and the Philippians. Brethren, I beseech you. Now, he's not commanding. See, that's not grace. He never says by commandment, but he says, I beseech you, I beg you, be as I am. Now, he was an apostle, of course he was, but was he beyond the reach of the ordinary believer? No, no. He was a sinner saved by grace, just like you and I. And so he says, be as I am, for I am as you are. See, he didn't put himself above the rank and file. He said, I'm nothing more than a sinner saved by grace like the rest of you. Oh, granted these Galatians had come out of paganism, but what had Paul come out of? Judaism. And in the final analysis, how much difference was there? None, none. They were all, as he says in Romans chapter 3, they are all without God. They are all on their own way, and the fear of God was with none of them. All right, so he says, you have not injured me. They couldn't touch him. But oh, I want to come back to what he says early on. Turn with me to 1 Corinthians chapter 4. And a lot of people, I suppose, either don't know it's in their Bible, or if they do know it, they don't like the fact that it is. But in 1 Corinthians chapter 4, verse 16, 1 Corinthians chapter 4, verse 16, and he's got a couple others in the Corinthians that say almost word for word the same thing. But we won't take time to look them all up. But I just want to take a scattering so that you see that he wrote it to all of his churches, that they were to follow his example. Now today, most people say, well, follow Jesus. That's not what Paul writes. Paul says that we're to follow him, because who is he following? He's following the ascended Christ, see? He's following the ascended Christ, and we follow Paul. You got 1 Corinthians 4, verse 16, wherefore he says, I beseech you, same word, I beg of you. He can't command it, but he says, I beseech you, be ye followers of me. See how plain that is? Be ye followers of me, and for this cause I have sent unto you Timothy, my beloved son, and know that he might bring you into remembrance of my ways, because after all, did Timothy learn what he had from Paul? And so everything is going out from this one apostle. Barnabas learned everything he had. Silas learned everything he had. Timothy, Titus, Epaphroditus, and all of these friends and fellow labors had all learned it from the apostle Paul. And so he says, be followers of me, and bring into remembrance, verse 17, my ways which be in Christ, see? As I teach everywhere in every assembly. All right, now flip all the way forward, if you will, to Philippians. Philippians. Galatians, Ephesians, Philippians. The last chapter, I think it is, chapter 4? Chapter 3. Philippians chapter 3. Philippians chapter 3. Verse 17. Philippians chapter 3, verse 17. Brethren, now of course he had a real warm place in his heart for the Philippians, didn't he? Not a word of criticism in this letter. And they had loved the apostle so much, and I think mostly because he nearly went into physical death in Philippi, and they nursed him back to strength. And so he has a warm spot in his heart for them, as they did for him. But look what he says. Brethren, be followers, verse 17 now. Brethren, be followers together of me, and mark them who walk so as you have us, himself, and of course his Timothy and Titus and so forth, and that you have us for an example. Because they had experienced God's saving grace, and they had suffered for the sake of the gospel, and they had given up so much for the gospel. And so Paul says, be willing to follow me for the sake of the gospel. All right, now then as you come back to Galatians 4, just a second, then we're going to go back to 2 Corinthians. So he says, I'm afraid of you, verse 11 and 12, repeating it now. Galatians 4, 11 and 12, I am afraid of you, lest I have bestowed upon you labor in vain. I beseech you, be as I am, for I am as you are. You have not injured me at all. You know how that through infirmities of the flesh I preach the gospel unto you at the first. And my testing, which is a better word than temptation, and my testing which was in my flesh, you did not despise nor rejected, but you received me as an angel of God, even as Christ Jesus. So they immediately recognize that the apostle was the emissary of Christ. All right, come back with me to 2 Corinthians. We saw all this, and I emphasize it in our Corinthian study, but I don't want you to forget it. Oh, I don't want you to forget this, because as I said in an earlier program, Paul is castigated. He is, what shall I say, rejected, and he is ridiculed many times. But oh, look what he says, 2 Corinthians chapter 11 and verse 5, and this theme runs all the way through his epistles, that this is why he is the major writer of the New Testament. You know, somebody sent me, I think it was a lady here in Tulsa, in fact, I think, El, it was your wife Betty, sent me an article that substantiated what I've always claimed, that Luke was a Jew. And I've always put it on the idea that when Paul said that Israel was more, what shall I say, they were more advantageous than any other group of people, because unto them were committed the Word of God. Well, I've always used that verse as the basis for my claiming that Luke must have been a Jew, because otherwise Paul couldn't have written that. Because when you take the Gospel of Luke and the book of Acts, that is a goodly portion again of the New Testament, and Luke wrote them both. Well, if Luke was a Gentile, then Paul could not have rightly written by inspiration in Romans 2, what prophet then hath the circumcision, much every way, because unto them were committed the Word of God. And so this article just substantiated, and I was so thrilled to read it. And he said, the only, only hope that these people have to claim that Luke was not a Jew is as thin and weak as cotton thread, that far more likely Luke was a Jew, although he had a Roman name, but so did Saul. See, Saul was the Jewish name, but what was Paul? That was the Roman name. And so many of the Jews of that time had Jewish names as well as Roman names, and so Luke was probably one of those. But anyway, that was just an aside. I just happened to think of that, that I so appreciated that confirmation that I was right on when I say that Luke is part of the Jewish writers of Scripture. All right, now 2 Corinthians 11, verse 5. Look what Paul says again. For I suppose I was not a whit behind the very chiefest apostles. Now, I don't know what the average person thinks, but when I read that term, the chiefest apostle, who do you have to think of? Peter, of course. He was the spokesman. He was the leader. And when you go back into Acts 2 and Acts chapter 3, when those Jews sold all their goods and transferred it into cash, at whose feet did they lay it? Peter. So Peter was the spokesman. He was the authority, even of the twelve. So I'm sure this is what he's relating to, that he was not one whit behind Peter in authority. You know, I had another thought here not too long ago, at least since I taught the 2 Corinthians, because you remember I made mention of the fact I thought it probably took three years in Arabia so that God could have two and a half years to get Judaism out of Paul. But then I thought of another one not too long ago. You know, as these various opposers of Paul and his apostleship, I'm sure their argument always was, but Peter and the others, they had three years with Jesus. They spent three years with him going up and down the dusty roads of Palestine. You didn't. Oh no? He may not have spent three years in Palestine, but he spent three years with, I think, a private tutorage from the Lord Jesus himself. So you see, again, even in time spent with the Lord, he's not one whit behind the twelve. I think now that's why it had to be three years at Mount Sinai. Surely it didn't take that long just to learn the things that he was going to be preaching, but in order to give him that full authority of time spent with the Lord, I think now that that's why he spent three years in Arabia. All right, and still again in 2 Corinthians chapter 11, coming over to verse 23. 2 Corinthians chapter 11, verse 23. Well, I almost have to start verse 22. 2 Corinthians chapter 11, verse 22. Are they, and again he's speaking of, I'm sure, Peter and the eleven. Are they Hebrews? So am I. Are they Israelites? Well, so am I. Are they the seed of Abraham, which of course were the crowning bragging rights of a Jew that he was the son of Abraham? And what does Paul say? So am I. So they've got nothing on him there. In labors even more abundant, in stripes above measure, in prison more frequent, in deaths often. And then he goes on to show, and then this is what he has in mind for these Galatians. You mean to tell me I went through all of this in vain? And look what he did. Five times from the Jews he received the 40 stripes, save one which was 39. Now listen, if you understand scourging, which this was, usually a man could not take 39 and he would die. And so they usually had to stop short. But he went through it five times without benefit of antibiotics, without benefit of hospital care. And so how he suffered. Three times I was beaten with rods. Well, you know, that's sort of like the poor kid in Hong Kong a couple of years ago when they caned him. And all the world screamed, you know, brutal, inhuman. But listen, this apostle went through that three times, three times, and he was not guilty. Once he was stoned, and we know the account of that back up there in Asia Minor. Three times he suffered shipwreck. He was dumped in the ocean. A night and a day he'd been in the deep. And then on top of that, of all the perils of robbers from his own countrymen, from the heathen, perils in the wilderness, perils in the sea, weariness. The man was human. He got tired just like we do. He hurt. He ached. Of course he did. And then in hunger and thirst, cold, nakedness, fastings, all of these things he experienced. And then he comes down to chapter 12 now and repeats again. Why? He can write the things that he writes, and we can just literally rest on them. Chapter 12, verse 11. 2 Corinthians chapter 12, verse 11. For he says, "...in nothing," the last part of the verse, "...in nothing am I behind the very chiefest apostles." And again, I'm sure he's making reference to Peter. He wasn't a half a step behind Peter in his authority or in his revelations or anything else. Although he always makes sure of the fact that in himself he was nothing. Well, I didn't even read verse 23 up in chapter 11. Sorry about that. So he says, are they Hebrews? Are they the children of Abraham and so forth? I am more, or maybe I did. I don't remember. But I am more. So now he's even taking a little head step against Peter in the 11. He has a half a step ahead of him. All right, all of this to show then, as you come back to the Galatian letter. Chapter 4, verse 13 again, "...you know how through infirmity of the flesh I preached the gospel unto you at the first." Now I won't take the time to turn to it, but do you remember what he says in 1 Corinthians 15? "...how that you receive that which I had first received." See? And he's always bringing this up, that he is at the head of that long line of sinners saved by grace that comprise the body of Christ. All right, then verse 14, Galatians 4, "...and my temptation," and I think the word testing fits this word better, "...and my testing which was in my flesh, you despise not, nor reject it, but you receive me as an angel of God, even as Christ Jesus." Again, go back to 2 Corinthians chapter 12. Some may not be aware, may have new listeners on this program that have never heard this before. Oh, what was the apostle's testing? That three times he asked the Lord to take it from him. But the Lord didn't heal him, but the Lord answered him. All right. Verse 6, 2 Corinthians 12, we have to jump into verse 6, and this is just after he had seen the revelations of glory, and from which he could write, "...I have not seen or heard the things that God hath prepared for them that love him." All right, so now then he comes back from that experience, and he says before, verse 6, "...for though I would desire to glory." The word I always like to put in there is brag. Oh, how he'd like to brag. Oh, you have no idea what I saw. If only I could tell you what I heard. But he says, I'll not be a fool. Why? Because God told him he couldn't do it. "...for I will say the truth, but now I forbear." In other words, I withhold telling these things, even though the pressure was beyond imagination. "...lest any man should think of me above that which he seeth me to be, or that he heareth me." And of course, what was the danger? My, to be able to know somebody that had actually been to glory, and had come back and could tell about it? My goodness, the world would beat a path to his door. So that's why God had to tell him, you can't reveal it, you can't share it. But here's what I want you to see, verse 7 and 8, "...and lest I should be exalted above measure through the abundance of the revelations." Now do you see what that says? "...lest he should get boastful and puffed up because of everything God had revealed to him, not only with what he saw in glory, but even these tremendous revelations of Scripture." This is enough to give anybody the big head, but oh, he said, lest I be puffed up through the abundance of the revelations. What did God do? Gave him a thorn in the flesh. To keep him humble. And so there was given to me a thorn in the flesh, the messenger of Satan. Now we don't know whether it was a demonic angel or what, but somehow or other, God, like He did to an extent with Job, permitted the apostle to suffer an affliction. God didn't inflict it, God permitted Satan to, just like He did with Job back there in the Old Testament. And so He gave to me a thorn in the flesh, the messenger of Satan, to buffet me, and for what purpose? Lest I should be exalted above measure because of all that God had revealed to him. And then He says, verse 8, "...for this thing I besought the Lord three times, and asked him straight out, Lord, take this affliction away from me." And I'm sure it was an eye affliction. Others would have disagreed, but horror of horrors, I won't even repeat what some group of theologians, as I had it rehearsed to me, thought his affliction was. I mean, it just goes to show you how low people can get. But nevertheless, I think his affliction was a typical Middle Eastern eye disease, and it would matter, and it would flow, and it was awful many times to look at. And so the apostle just literally must have said, now, Lord, how can people stand to look at me? How can I stand up and preach to these people when I look so awful? But God says what? Paul, that's when I can use you. You remember always pointing out when he took Moses to the backside of the desert? Put 40 years with what? Sheep. You ever been around sheep? Hey, they don't smell very good. They don't smell very good. And there were no people, no population to speak of. And then on top of that, Joseph made it so plain to the brethren when they came down to Goshen, for goodness sake, don't tell Pharaoh that you're a shepherd of sheep, because a shepherd in the eyes of an Egyptian was what? An abomination. An abomination. In other words, for all practical purposes, Moses was Egyptian. That's the culture he'd been raised in. And then to look at himself and smell himself and say, I'm nothing but an abomination. And then God says, okay, Moses, now we're ready. We'll go to Pharaoh. And so you have the same thing. Paul, oh, he would like to have been something nice to look at. Paul would like to have been a big, probably handsome Jew like King Saul, but he wasn't. And yet, now look what God said. Verse 9, and I guess our time's about gone. Oh, God says, My grace is sufficient for thee, for My strength, God says, is made perfect in weakness. And so it was in that weakness with this affliction of the flesh when Paul thought that he was unfit to go into these pagan, sophisticated people. I can imagine, especially when he was on Mars Hill amongst all the big wheel philosophers. And here he is with this affliction that is not very nice to look at. And he must have, he must have just said, Lord, please, please take this away from me so that at best people will not be turned off by what they see. But God says, Paul, that's not the name of the game. The name of the game is your message and the power of my spirit. Box 760, Kenta, Oklahoma, 74552. That's Route 1, Box 760, Kenta, Oklahoma, 74552. Through the Bible with Les Feldick, is viewer supported, and your gift is appreciated. Thank you, and be sure to tune in next time for Through the Bible with Les Feldick.