Deliver Us From Evil - Galatians 1:1-5

A few days ago there was a knock at our back door and I took delivery of some tires I ordered on the Internet. The tires were delivered to me from some place in Ohio. The delivery man worked for UPS. They deliver parcels all over the world. That’s what the word “deliver” means: to take something from one place and carry it to someplace else . . .

Unless you’re talking about about babies. UPS doesn’t deliver babies. Doctors deliver babies. But doctors don’t deliver babies to their moms. Moms are delivered of their babies. All of this usually takes place in the Delivery Room at the hospital. That’s not the room UPS delivers babies to. That’s the room where babies are delivered by their Moms. That’s what the word “delivery” means: to give birth to a baby . . .

Unless you’re talking about the legal term “deliver”. Then it means something else. To deliver means “to transfer possession of (property) to another; to put into the possession or exclusive control of another.” So it has to do with transferring ownership of something from one party to another party.

But then there is the term “deliver” as it is used in the Song of Moses found in Deuteronomy 32.

[35] Vengeance is mine, and recompense, for the time when their foot shall slip;
for the day of their calamity is at hand, and their doom comes swiftly.’
[36] For the LORD will vindicate his people and have compassion on his servants,
when he sees that their power is gone and there is none remaining, bond or free.
[37] Then he will say, ‘Where are their gods, the rock in which they took refuge,
[38] who ate the fat of their sacrifices and drank the wine of their drink offering?
Let them rise up and help you; let them be your protection!
[39] “‘See now that I, even I, am he, and there is no god beside me;
I kill and I make alive; I wound and I heal; and there is none that can deliver out of my hand.
[40] For I lift up my hand to heaven and swear, As I live forever,
[41] if I sharpen my flashing sword and my hand takes hold on judgment,
I will take vengeance on my adversaries and will repay those who hate me. (Deuteronomy 32:35-41 ESV)

The word “deliver” in this context is synonymous with “rescue”. God is a righteous and just avenger who repays those who hate Him. There is no higher crime than to hate God. There is nothing that deserves more punishment than the rejection of the God of glory. No trespass is more heinous than to disregard what God has commanded. God is absolutely right in avenging the rebellion and insolence and insubordination of His creatures against His rule over us.

See now that I, even I, am he, and there is no god beside me;
I kill and I make alive; I wound and I heal; and there is none that can deliver out of my hand.

In other words, there is no escape. No one escapes God’s wrath. God even resurrects men from the dead in order to condemn them to hell. There is no one who can rescue us from it. There is no avoiding His justice. There is no one to deliver us from the eternal punishment we all so rightly deserve. We have perpetually disregarded God, and ignored who He is. We have spurned His right to reign over us. Our rejection of His Law has earned us the sentence of death. Then judgment. Then Hell.

Now you should be anticipating a very precious word which we see rather often in the Bible. When things look bleak and all hope is lost, when we realize God is absolutely right to take His vengeance out upon us because of our sin against Him, and we understand that we fully deserve whatever punishment a holy God determines is just, . . . it is right about that time when we start looking for some kind of exception clause. There must be some footnote or caveat or appendix or postlude or an angelic permission slip to excuse ourselves from the final judgment. There has to be something more than what we read here. Surely, someone will come along to say, “All hope is lost, BUT . . .” Truly? Is there no hope at all? Is it really true that there is none who can deliver us out of the hand of an angry, wrathful, avenging God? Turn with me to Psalm 79.

[79:1] O God, the nations have come into your inheritance; they have defiled your holy temple; they have laid Jerusalem in ruins. [2] They have given the bodies of your servants to the birds of the heavens for food, the flesh of your faithful to the beasts of the earth. [3] They have poured out their blood like water all around Jerusalem, and there was no one to bury them. [4] We have become a taunt to our neighbors, mocked and derided by those around us.

[5] How long, O LORD? Will you be angry forever? Will your jealousy burn like fire? [6] Pour out your anger on the nations that do not know you, and on the kingdoms that do not call upon your name! [7] For they have devoured Jacob and laid waste his habitation.

[8] Do not remember against us our former iniquities; let your compassion come speedily to meet us, for we are brought very low. [9] Help us, O God of our salvation, for the glory of your name; deliver us, and atone for our sins, for your name's sake! (Psalm 79:1-9 ESV)

The only hope sinners have of escaping the deserved vengeance of an insulted God . . . is that insulted God. The One offended is the only Person who can remove the offense. He is the only source of any possible deliverance from His own wrath. There is no other recourse. There is no other appeal, no lawyer to get us off on a technicality, no plea of temporary insanity. There are no higher powers to rescue us, no other gods, no hero that will be riding over the horizon on a white steed to save us from the vengeance of God. There is no hope of deliverance from God anywhere other than God Himself.

And that’s a problem. What reason could we give to God that would persuade Him to pardon us for the multitude of our sins against Him? All those many sins which He utterly hates? He already knows everything about us. He knows our hearts and our minds and He knows we love sin and we hate holiness and we have no intention of bowing the knee to Him. We have no inclination to give up our sin in order to please and obey Him. There is no new evidence in our case which He has not yet considered that would cause Him to change His mind and grant us deliverance.

All that is left to us is an appeal to mercy: “Help us, O God! God, please, be merciful to me, a sinner.” But we can already hear the reply to that plea. Surely we would expect God to respond with a very simple question to us: “Why? Why should I have mercy on you? What possible reason could there be for Me NOT to cast you into outer darkness forever?” And the only reply we could give back is, “Help us, O God of our salvation, for the glory of your name; deliver us, and atone for our sins, for your name's sake!”

If God is not willing to save us for His own name’s sake, for the sake of the glory of His own mercy and grace, then indeed, there is absolutely no hope of being delivered from His avenging hand. If God is not willing to show mercy toward sinners for the sake of His own glory, then it is true that ALL hope is lost. The question then needs to be asked, “Is He willing?” Is God willing to help us for His name’s sake?

Suppose He isn’t willing. The guilty have no right to mercy. We cannot appeal to some innate human right to mercy and force God to spare us. Lawbreakers have no right to forgiveness. If God were not willing to somehow deliver us from His administration of justice, no one could accuse Him of wrong-doing. The Judge of all the earth will do right because He cannot do wrong. He will uphold His own Law.

He cannot be unjust, simply ignore sin, sweep it under His celestial rug and let the guilty go free just because He feels like being merciful. Just suppose that, not only is God not willing to deliver us from His own punishing hand, but if He did, He would be guilty of injustice Himself. He CANNOT pardon sinners and simultaneously violate His own Law. That would make God unjust. He would be a sinner Himself, and He hates sin to an infinite degree. A holy God CANNOT sin.

So what hope do guilty, lawbreaking sinners have? If God isn’t willing to violate His own Law in order to avoid pouring out His wrath upon us, which we readily admit we deserve, then what are we to do? Well, we could turn to Galatians 1 . . .

[1:1] Paul, an apostle—not from men nor through man, but through Jesus Christ and God the Father, who raised him from the dead—[2] and all the brothers who are with me, To the churches of Galatia:

[3] Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ, [4] who gave himself for our sins to deliver us from the present evil age, according to the will of our God and Father, [5] to whom be the glory forever and ever. Amen. (Galatians 1:1-5 ESV)

“Grace and peace from God our Father!” How is that possible? How is it that God extends grace and peace to the lawless, to the unrighteous, to rebels? How can the condemned experience grace and peace from our avenging, indignant Judge? Grace and peace? How did this happen? What caused God to change His mind towards us? This doesn’t sound anything like Deuteronomy 32 or Psalm 79. What happened? How did God become our Father? How were we delivered from His hand?

[T]he Lord Jesus Christ . . . gave himself for our sins to deliver us from the present evil age, according to the will of our God and Father,

We who believe were delivered from the condemnation of sin and from the judgment of God, according to the will of God, through the Lord Jesus, who gave Himself as the object of God’s wrath for our sins. Let me say that again. This is the most important truth in the history of fallen mankind: We who believe in the work of Jesus Christ upon the cross were delivered from the condemnation of sin and from the judgment of God, according to the will of God, through the Lord Jesus, who gave Himself as the satisfactory object of God’s wrath for our sins.

Now there are many, many, many people in churches everywhere, and maybe even some in this church who might think, “Yeah Keith, I know all that. I’ve heard this a million times. Jesus died on the cross for our sins. And if we accept Him, He gives us eternal life. I got it. I got it a long time ago. Tell me something I don’t know.” If you are sitting here today and you’re thinking anything that remotely resembles that, you are to be pitied.

Have you no soul? Have you no heart? Has your heart become so hard and your ears so dull that you don’t understand the wonder of what I just read? Are you so calloused as a Christian that even your own salvation doesn’t move you any more? Have you forgotten what it means to be grateful to God for His forgiveness of your sins which you should have been crucified for? Do you take it for granted that forgiveness came to you at the expense of the blood of God’s own Son? And that gift of His Son was the greatest act of mercy towards the most undeserving sinner in the world? Have you forgotten that?

If so, . . . if your heart and your emotions are not moved with inexpressible gratitude for the mercy you’ve been shown, and you are the recipient of that delivering mercy ONLY because God chose to show you His mercy for His own name’s sake . . .

Then you are in danger of the exact same sin as the Galatian Christians. If the saving grace of God does not move you to tears of joy and gladness and thankfulness on a fairly regular basis, you are dangerously close to the sin of desertion. If this salvation and this Savior doesn’t mean absolutely everything to you, you are in serious danger of walking away from it.

[6] I am astonished that you are so quickly deserting him who called you in the grace of Christ and are turning to a different gospel— (Galatians 1:6 ESV)

You say, “Well what kind of gospel would that be that I’m in danger of turning to?” I’ll tell you exactly what kind of gospel that is: It is a gospel that damns all who believe it. It is a worthless, condemning gospel which produces proud converts who don’t need Christ and who believe they can save themselves from God’s hand. It is a gospel that makes light of sin, it makes light of God, it makes light of Christ, and it cheapens salvation to the point where it is a salvation not worth having.

[2] Look: I, Paul, say to you that if you accept circumcision [or anything else as a supplement to salvation by grace], Christ will be of no advantage to you. [3] I testify again to every man who accepts circumcision that he is obligated to keep the whole law. [4] You are severed from Christ, you who would be justified by the law; you have fallen away from grace. (Galatians 5:2-4 ESV)

Who needs grace and mercy from God if we’re able to justify ourselves by being good? By keeping God’s Law? By living a life that is acceptable to God without the need for a Savior?

Look at verse 3 once again:

[3] Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ, [4] who gave himself for our sins to deliver us from the present evil age, according to the will of our God and Father, [5] to whom be the glory forever and ever. Amen.

Beloved, there is no grace or peace to be had from God apart from Jesus satisfying God’s wrath against us. He gave Himself as an acceptable substitute to God for our sins. And you do realize this was God’s solution for our dilemma? It was His plan, not ours, to provide a substitute for people who had no means of escaping His terrifying judgment. It is solely because of God’s willingness to work through Christ on our behalf that He can and does have mercy on any of us. That is why Paul can say to the Galatian believers and to us, “Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.”

Christ is our Deliverer! When there was none to deliver us from God’s judgment, God Himself sent His own Son. He was sent by God for this specific purpose! This is the collaboration of the Godhead in saving unsaveable people. Only God, in Christ, could save us from Himself. This is why the Psalmists’ cry is so critical to understand:

Help us, O God of our salvation, for the glory of your name; deliver us, and atone for our sins, for your name's sake!

God has answered that prayer. He has delivered us, He has atoned for us, He has saved us who believe for the glory of His own name. We have been the recipients of a miraculous deliverance. Consequently, we must be careful to give Him the glory He deserves. He has done for us what we certainly could never have done for ourselves because nothing we ever could have done would have satisfied God’s justice and allowed Him to set us free.

And all of this was according to God’s will. How grateful should we be that He was willing to do whatever was needful to maintain His justice and have mercy on us. That is exactly what Paul is talking about in Romans 3:

[21] But now the righteousness of God has been manifested apart from the law, although the Law and the Prophets bear witness to it—[22] the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ for all who believe. For there is no distinction: [23] for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, [24] and are justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, [25] whom God put forward as a propitiation by his blood, to be received by faith. This was to show God's righteousness, because in his divine forbearance he had passed over former sins. [26] It was to show his righteousness at the present time, so that he might be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus. (Romans 3:21-26 ESV)

When God saves us, He is just in doing so because:
- He made His own Son the propitiation, the satisfactory substitutionary sacrifice for us, AND
- Consequently, He Himself becomes our Justifier. It is God Himself who makes us right in His own sight when we trust in the Savior He sent to die for us. God not only forgives our sins, but grants us the perfect righteousness of Christ as a gift.

So those who were condemned, and under the curse of God’s wrath, are cleansed of their sins, forgiven of all their trespasses of God’s Law, and are blessed with grace, mercy, and peace by their adoptive Heavenly Father. And it all comes to us from Him. It is all the gift of God’s grace.

Beloved, this is a GREAT salvation in which we share. And it is summed up quite well in these two verses:

[3] Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ, [4] who gave himself for our sins to deliver us from the present evil age, according to the will of our God and Father, [5] to whom be the glory forever and ever. Amen.