Why Paul Went to Arabia: The Revelation of Grace

Welcome to Through the Bible with Les Feldick, a 30-minute walk through the Scriptures, teaching in-depth Bible truths that change people's lives. Now, here's your host, Les Feldick. Okay, good to see everybody again tonight, and we'll just pick right up where we left off in Galatians. But for those of you watching on television, we haven't forgotten about Genesis. We'll be going back, but this is just an extension of Genesis 24, if you'll remember, where Abraham sends the servant up into a far country to get a bride for his wife, Isaac. Remember, we made the correlation that that is a beautiful picture of God sending the Holy Spirit out amongst the Gentiles to gather a bride for his son, which, of course, is the church. And so what I've been doing now for the last couple weeks is showing how that this Old Testament program that we found in Psalms 2 and various other places of the Old Testament would be interrupted, and it would be actually brought about through the conversion of the Apostle Paul, and then his revelations of these great doctrines of grace that you'll find nowhere else in Scripture. And this, of course, is why there's so much confusion. I had a young man tell me the other night, now, he said, you're the first one that hasn't taken all the Bible, put it in a blender, turn it on high, and then dish it out and give everybody indigestion. And I said, boy, now that's hitting the nail on the head, because that's what most of them do, you know. They mix it all up, and then they wonder why people can't keep from regurgitating. But all you have to do is just keep it all in its progressive revelation as all these things unfolded in God's own time and under His sovereign grace, and I think then the Bible just becomes so exciting. It just is so much easier to study and to understand than I think of all the hundreds of people I've had in my classes over the last 20 years. I don't think anyone would disagree with me on that, that it's when they begin to—see, I see heads nodding already—that it's when you begin to keep all these things in their rightful place instead of mixing them, then there isn't any confusion. So, all right, we'll be going back to Genesis in another week or two, but for now we've got to get to where the Bride of Christ is actually brought on the scene, and then I've had a couple by phone and as well as by letter, which reminds me also—I want to remind our television viewers how we do appreciate your letters. Just a sentence or two is all we need just to know that you're listening and that you're enjoying it. It is of great help. But anyway, we'll be getting back to Genesis, but several have asked if we wouldn't delineate a little more the end-time events as I see them, and so since we're back here in the New Testament and we're dealing with the church age, we'll probably take a half hour or so in the next week or two to go on into the tribulation, the rapture, and the actual return of Christ. Now, we won't do it in depth. We won't do it in detail, but we'll lay it out enough that hopefully you'll be able to understand it. Now if you'll come back to Galatians chapter 1, where Paul has defended his apostleship. We explained last week what Paul's gospel is, that it's all centered on the death, burial, and resurrection of Christ, the Son of God, Israel's Messiah. And then in verse 12, picking up—I think that's about where we left—he said, I neither received it of man—in other words, we pointed out he didn't go back to Jerusalem and check in with the Twelve—neither was I taught it but by the revelation of Jesus Christ. In other words, everything that Paul teaches and writes came directly from the Ascended Lord in glory. Now, I've had people kindly say, well, now wait a minute, Les, if you say that we go by what Paul says, I've always thought we had to go by what Jesus said, and that, of course, would be in the Gospels. Well, now wait a minute. Everything that Paul writes is what Jesus said, but it's what Jesus said after his death, burial, and resurrection, and ascension. And that's just like if you make a will. If you made a will five years ago, and you now made a new one, and tomorrow you die, and they bring both wills before the court, which one is valid? Well, the last one, because it's what you spoke last. Now, this is the way we have to look at Paul. Paul's revelations are from the Ascended Lord, whereas the Gospels are talking about Christ on his earthly ministry. And as I always remind people, please remember that in his earthly ministry he was living under the law. He was ministering to a people under the law, and so everything that he taught was in that flavor. Now, granted, we can go back, and we can study the Gospels, and we can get a lot of moral application. It's certainly nice to know all the things that Christ did and his compassion. I have no argument with that. But you won't find the Gospel back there, because he hadn't died yet. He hadn't shed his blood. He hadn't risen from the dead. All right, now if you'll come on in Galatians, verse 13. For, he says, you have heard of my conversation, or my manner of living, in times past in the Jews' religion. Now, I've made it evident over the last year that I detest the word religious. I hope nobody ever calls me religious, because Christianity is not a religion. But see, Paul uses the word in a bad light. What does Paul think of the Jews' religion? Well, just like he implies, it's what made him what he was. It made him a hater of the Messiah, of the Christ, see? And so he said, I profited in the Jews' religion. Well, what did he mean, he profited? Hey, he was a wheel. He was one of the top men, and I honestly think that Paul was a member of the Sanhedrin. And the reason I think that, because he says back in the book of Acts that when they brought these followers of Christ before the Jewish authorities, he said, I voted to put them to death. Well, now, he couldn't have voted if he hadn't been in the Sanhedrin. That also tells me that I think Paul was married at one time and probably had children. Now, we don't know what happened to them, but I certainly don't think that Paul was celibate in no stretch of the imagination, because again, if I know Jewish law at all, in order for them to be a member of the Sanhedrin, they had to be a husband and a father. And the reason was, how can you identify with family problems if you haven't experienced what it is to be a parent? I think that makes good sense, don't you? So anyway, he profited, verse 14, in the Jews' religion. He profited politically. He had power. I think he profited financially. I think Paul was probably quite well-to -do. And then how that beyond measure, I persecuted, and here again the word church, the assembly, the called-out ones, I persecuted the church of God and wasted it. Now, you want to remember that was the Jewish church there at Jerusalem. Then verse 14, just to finish that, no it isn't. Verse 14 again, I'm sorry. And profited in the Jews' religion above many my equals in my own nation, being more exceedingly zealous of the word, what? Traditions. Traditions. Oh, listen, that's one of the most dangerous words in the Christian community. Tradition. Tradition is sending millions to a lost eternity. And oh, let's be on guard that we don't just subscribe to something because that's what daddy believed and that's what great-granddaddy believed. Hey, how do we know that they believed what was right? We got to come back to the book. And I always tell people, don't ever go and tell someone, well, this is what Les says. Because what I say doesn't count, but you can say, now, Les says, look at such and such a verse. I don't mind that, but don't ever ascribe anything to what I say or what any other human being says. We have to rest on the word of God. All right, reading on. Verse 15, but when it pleased God who separated me from my mother's womb and called me by his what? Grace. Remember, I emphasized last week when Saul was on the way to Damascus, a total enemy of Christ, instead of zapping him, taking him off the scene, Christ saved him. Now, that was grace. And Paul recognizes it all through his writings. Verse 16, to reveal his son in me that I might preach him among who? The heathen, the Gentiles. See? Not amongst the Jews so much, but amongst the Gentiles. And immediately I conferred not with flesh and blood. Now, you remember when we were back in Acts chapter 9 last week, I told you there had to be about a three-year gap between those two verses when he led him down the wall and then where he went to Jerusalem? Well, now, Galatians fills that gap in. He did not go to Jerusalem from Damascus, but he says here, immediately I conferred not with flesh and blood. Now, there's a colon there, so don't stop the thought. Neither went I up to Jerusalem to them who were apostles before me. But where did he go? I went into Arabia. Now, the reason I put Sinai along with that is because back in chapter 4—you might want to turn there with me a minute. Back in chapter 4, verse 25, he uses the term Mount Sinai where? In Arabia. And so that's why I have to put the two and two together and come up with a fact that here in chapter 1, when God sovereignly drove him out of Damascus, sent him down into the desert of Sinai or into the desert of Arabia to Mount Sinai. And I like to make the analogy—and I've done it in programs in the past—that just as surely as God gave the law to Moses and Moses took the law down the mountain and gave it to Israel, so God gave to the apostle Paul at Sinai the doctrines of grace. And Paul says in Ephesians that we Gentiles have what we have because he, Paul, gave it to us. Now, we won't look at it just now, but we'll probably catch it on another time. Now reading on. Verse 18, Then after three years—now, that's where I get that Paul must have spent almost three years down in Mount Sinai where God revealed all these tremendous truths of this age of grace—but after three years I went up to Jerusalem to see Peter and abode with him fifteen days. But other of the apostles I saw none, except James the Lord's brother. Now, remember that James wasn't in the twelve. He came on the scene later as the moderator in Acts chapter 15, but James the Lord's brother was not one of the twelve. That was another James. So, actually, the only one of the twelve he saw was who? Peter. And he only stayed with him two weeks. And, of course, Paul and Peter didn't hit it off too good. You know that later here in the book of Galatians. And then verse 20. Now, the things which I write unto you, behold, before God I lie not, afterwards—in other words, after that three years in Arabia, after the two weeks with Peter in Jerusalem, and then afterwards—I came into the regions of Syria and Cilicia. Now remember, Cilicia—I guess I've got room up here to put up another one of my little favorite makeshift maps. Here's the Mediterranean Sea, and down here is Jerusalem, and up here was Antioch, and down here is present-day Beirut. But up here is the river valley of Cilicia, and this, of course, was Saul's home area. This is where we had the city of Tarsus, of which he was often referred to as Saul of Tarsus. And this, of course, is present-day Turkey, but in Scripture it's referred to as what? Asia Minor. And so he makes his way from Sinai up to Jerusalem for a couple weeks with Peter, and then he comes on up here into the area of his old home stomping grounds of Cilicia and Tarsus. Now, don't lose sight of the fact that here is Antioch. It's an important term as we go back to the book of Acts in just a moment. Then chapter 2—we're going to touch that one because it's going to be appropriate once we go back to the book of Acts in here a minute or two. Now in chapter 2 he says, then, 14 years after—now see how time is unrolling? Just get an idea. From Pentecost to the Sermon of Stephen, about seven years. Then within a year or two of that you've got Saul's conversion. Then almost after that, probably within the next year, Peter goes up to the house of Cornelius. Now we're about, what, 12 years after Pentecost? Then Paul goes down for three years into Sinai, and then he comes back up into the area of Cilicia, and then 14 years after all of this has taken place, he comes back to Jerusalem—and we're going to pick that up in Acts chapter 15, and we call it the consul in Jerusalem, where they're going to call him on the carpet for preaching salvation to Gentiles. So 14 years after, I went up again to Jerusalem with Barnabas and took Titus with me. And then, of course, you can read that in your spare time, because we haven't got time to look at that in this program. Now if you'll come back with me, please, to Acts chapter 11, Acts chapter 11, where you want to remember the Jews have now been under intense persecution that was brought about, of course, by old Saul of Tarsus, and they were forced to flee, and you remember back in chapter 8—in fact, you might want to go back and look at it, I don't like to say things without letting you see it in Scripture—but you go back to Acts chapter 8, verse 1, where Saul was consenting unto Stephen's death, and at that time there was a great persecution against the assembly at Jerusalem, and they were all, every Jewish believer—because I'm a stickler for words in Scripture. I don't think the Holy Spirit would permit a word to come in that is used loosely. And so I think when it says they were all, it meant all. And so they were all scattered abroad throughout the regions of Judea and Samaria, except who? You see that? We pointed it out a couple of weeks ago, but I know you're prone to forget. Everyone does. They all scattered, except who? The Twelve. Now, they're the guys that we all think should have been out around the world, but here it is eight years after Pentecost in chapter 8, and they're still in Jerusalem. All right, now come on over to chapter 11, where we were, and then you come down to verse 19. Now, this is the verse that just literally blew my mind some years ago, because as I've mentioned more than once, I wasn't raised in the teaching that I now teach. And this is one of the verses that opened my eyes, because I was of the same mindset, you know, that Christianity began back there, I guess, with John the Baptist. I don't know what we thought, but I had always had it all mixed up too, you know, and I already see some heads nodding, and I never differentiated. But here this verse hit me one time, and I thought, now wait a minute. This tells me something. And what does it say? Now, they that were scattered abroad upon the persecution that arose about Stephen, that is back there in chapter 7 and 8, they traveled as far as Phenis, that is up the coast towards present-day Beirut. They went out to the island of Cyprus, and then they went up to Antioch, and that's why I put it up there on our little makeshift map. They went on up to Antioch, preaching the Word. Now, how much Word did they have? Old Testament, that's all. And so they preached that Christ was the Messiah from the Old Testament, and they preached that Word to—what's the next word? None, but what? Jews only. Now, isn't that plain? And how many people wouldn't get the idea that as soon as Christ left the scene, the twelve went all over the world preaching the gospel. No, they didn't. They stayed in Jerusalem, and even the believing Jews that were scattered because of the persecution preached to nobody but Jews. They had no idea that God was going to go to a Gentile. That was anathema to them. Now, read on. They went to none but Jews only, and some of them were men of Cyprus and Cyrene, which when they were come to Antioch—where am I? Here. Now, they've come to Antioch. Cyprus is out here, and they've scattered away from Jerusalem, and now all the way out this part of the Mediterranean, and now some come to Antioch, which when they were come, they spake unto—now, the King James says Grecians. If you happen to have a newer translation, and I looked it up again in the Amplified Bible, and it's what I've always thought it should be, and what has anybody got besides Grecians? Anybody got Greeks? Yeah. Okay. And that's right, because it wasn't unusual to speak to Grecians, because Grecians were Jews who were living in Greece, or at least speaking the Grecian language, or the Greek language. But Greeks speaks of what? Gentiles. Oh, that's what I want you to see. So now, you see what God is sovereignly doing? Even these Jews who had been forced out of Jerusalem have now come up as far as Antioch, and without their even realizing what's going on, God is beginning to cause Gentiles, Greeks, to be interested enough to listen to what these Jews have got to say. All right, now read on. And so they came and spoke unto the Greeks, preaching the Lord Jesus. Now, still no reference to death, burial, and resurrection, because that they didn't understand either yet, but at least they're approaching these Gentiles. And the Lord was with them, and a great number believed and turned unto the Lord. And then tidings of these things came to the ears of the church, or the assembly again, which was in Jerusalem. Now, what do you suppose the Jewish people at Jerusalem thought? Hey, what in the world's going on here? They can't be talking to Greeks. This is our business. Now read on. And so they sent forth Barnabas, that he should go as far as Antioch, to check this whole thing out. Verse 23, Who when he came, and had seen the grace of God, was glad. Now most Jews wouldn't have been, but Barnabas was special, as you'll see in the next verse. For he was a good man, and full of the Holy Ghost, and of faith, and much people was added unto the Lord, including Greeks. Now, here's where the Holy Spirit moves in, in a special detail. Now that Gentiles are being approached, and showing interest, and many are even believing, which I would still call the Jewish message, that Jesus was indeed the Messiah of Israel, what does Barnabas understand has to be done? There's only one man for the hour, and who is it? Paul. And so what does the next verse say? Verse 25, now this is all crucial, Then departed Barnabas to Tarsus for to, and what's the next word, seek, look for, and find Saul. Then the next verse, And when he had found him, see how all this fits, he went up into the area of Tarsus and Cilicia from Antioch, not that far, and I can just see Barnabas going up and down the streets of these cities along that river valley. Have any of you seen a little Jew? Have any of you heard him preach? And Barnabas finally finds him. Now look at verse 26, When he had found him, he brought him to Antioch, and it came to pass that for a whole year they assembled themselves with the church, that is, this assembly now of Jews and Gentiles, and taught much people. And the disciples, or these believers, were called, what, Christians first, where? Not Jerusalem. And you know, I'm so amazed that every writer that I read and great men all over, they all refer to those Jewish believers in Jerusalem as Christians. The Bible never does. Just think about that. The Bible never calls those Jewish believers from the time of John the Baptist all the way on up until Paul never calls them Christians, but yet all the theologians do, the Christians there at Jerusalem. I don't know where they get it, because you see, it wasn't until Paul came on the scene and began to expound on the age of grace based on the death, burial, and resurrection that the Bible says those people were Christians. Those Jewish believers, I don't maintain, were in that category. They were not like these Gentiles. But whatever, they were called Christians first up there at Antioch. Now then, if you'll come down to trying to lay the groundwork so that we can introduce the outcalling of that Body of Christ, the Bride of Christ, the church in the age of grace. Acts chapter 15 now. Well, then, before you go to 15, just look up into chapter 14, verse 27. Paul and Barnabas have now come back from their first missionary journey up into Asia Minor, and they've established churches. Gentiles have been saved. I don't know by how many, but by quite a few. And then verse 27, they're coming back to Antioch, and when they were come and had gathered the church together, they rehearsed all that God had done with them, and how He had opened the door of faith unto who? The Gentiles. The Gentiles. Now, only got a couple, three, four minutes left. Before we go into Acts 15, keep your finger there a minute, and we'll jump over to Romans chapter 11. Romans chapter 11. On my way home after a while, I'll probably think I didn't use these things in the right order, but let's hope that the Holy Spirit is taking over and doing it right. But here in Romans chapter 11, these three little chapters in the middle of the book are dealing with the nation of Israel. And now look what he says in verse 11. Paul says, I say then, have they, the nation of Israel, have they stumbled that they should fall, in other words, be canceled out of this Old Testament program? Is God all through with the Jew? What's his next statement? God forbid, or banish the thought, but rather through their fall, through their rejecting their Messiah and crucifying Him, through their fall salvation has come to who? Now, do you see it? Can you get it any plainer? Israel rejected it, crucified Him, by so doing they brought about God's plan of salvation by grace. All right, now come back quickly then, if you will, to Acts 15, and I'm not going to have time to do it justice, but we'll try to wind it up enough so that you can get the gist of it. Acts 15. Now the Jerusalem believers are all shook up that Gentiles are supposedly being saved up in Antioch, and so they send men up there to check it out. And sure enough, and so they decide they better bring them back to Jerusalem. Now this is what Paul is referring to in Galatians 2 when he says, 14 years later I went up to Jerusalem. And now verse 2, when therefore Paul and Barnabas had no small dissension, in other words, a big argument, that these Jews from Jerusalem and that Gentiles could not be saved unless up in verse 1 they be circumcised after the manner of Moses. And then you come over to verse 5 in this same chapter. These Jews in Jerusalem, including the twelve, look what they're saying. There rose up certain of the sect of the Pharisees who believed, saying that it was needful to circumcise them, that is, those Gentile believers up in Antioch, and to command them to keep the law of Moses. Most people don't know this chapter's in the Bible. I'm sure they don't. But see, this was still the setting of the Jerusalem church. It was still based on the law and circumcision and everything else. The Gentile was based on the grace of God, and so they had to reconcile it. And so they call Paul down on the carpet, and I can just about imagine how they almost subjected him until finally—and I won't have time to finish it, we'll have to pick it up next week—finally Peter wakes up and realizes that by a previous experience God had shown him that yes, he would save Gentiles. And so had it not been that God providentially took Peter up there in chapter 10 to the house of Cornelius, he would have never come to Paul's defense here. But it's the only thing that kept it going. Thank you for watching Through the Bible with Les Feldick. Through the Bible is a partner-supported ministry. If this program has been a help to your study of the Scriptures and you'd like to see others enjoy the teachings, your support would be greatly appreciated. Write to us at Les Feldick Ministries, Route 1, Box 760, Kenta, OK 74552, or call 1-800-369-7856. Remember, all programs are available in printed form, audio cassette, and videotape. 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