Please turn with me in your Bibles to this morning's text. It is found in the book of Galatians, chapter one, and we will read together the first five verses.

Paul, an apostle, not from men, not through man, but through Jesus Christ and God the Father who raised Him from the dead and all the brethren who are with me to the

churches of Galatia, grace to you and peace from God the Father and our Lord Jesus Christ

who gave himself for our sins to deliver us from the present evil age

According to the will of our God and Father to whom be the glory

forever and ever.

Amen.

Father in Heaven, Satan would just love to have this message Peter out and not be finished.

And I pray that you would bind him and put a bar across the doors of this sanctuary so that in every

person's heart here there would be free access to your word.

Our trust is in your mercy. Thank you for your help. In Jesus,

name, Amen.

Today we begin a series of messages that will take us up into the summer from the epistle to the Galatians that the

apostle Paul wrote.

And one of the reasons that I have chosen to preach from Galatians is that of all the books in the New Testament

this book seems to me to be alive.

Paul here is at his most vigorous. The sheer emotional force of the book has captured me again and again. Something so great is at stake. You can't read the first 10

verses of this letter without feelings that something stupendous is in the

offing in this letter. You can't read Galatians and when you're done say, well now that was a nice little piece of spiritual reflection any more than you can take a live coal and examine it with your bare hands.

Galatians is a virile statement of the central truths of Christianity,

and I would just love to see us as a people get those truths into our head and that virility into our faith so that our faith has bone and marrow and strength and is not easily toppled over by any fads or winds that

blow along our day.

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