The Tibetan Plateau is called the Rooftop of the World because it is the highest plateau in the world. This area is four times the size of Texas and draws die-hard mountaineers and wealthy thrill-seekers. But in one small corner of this vast scenery is a small little home. Two humble Christians, Jampa and Dranma, were called by God to a small town in northwest Nepal. The reason? There was a small hospital nearby where many who came down from the mountains and remote areas for medical care but were confused and at a loss for how to do the most basic things from where to get medicine to where to go to the bathroom. Seeing how uninterested the hospital staff was in helping people, Jampa and Dranma were moved to do something. With a desire to reach their own people with the Gospel, they bought a small home, and use it as a guesthouse to take in sick people coming from far away to be treated at the hospital. In opening their home this way, they have been able to minister to the needs of many sick people, and in doing so they’ve been able to tell many the Gospel, give out bibles and tracts. Their ministry of mercy has opened the countless doors for the Gospel. (VOM, Aug 2026)
There is mercy in Nepal. And today we are going to see in the same way, there is Mercy in Galatia. The Galatians – like Jampa and Dranma – were Good Samaritans, and when the Apostle Paul showed up sick in their hometown, they readily took him in. Apparently if you’re going to be sick, and you want to be well cared for, get to Galatia. There is Mercy in Galatia. And that is our sermon title today: Mercy in Galatia.
Mercy is seen in two ways in Scripture: legally and practically. Legally it refers to the idea of a judge sparing someone from the consequences of their crime. They deserve the punishement, but they are shown mercy. The other idea of mercy is the idea of helping someone who is in need. Someone who needs help and you are moved by their situation to act so that you can bring some relief. That’s the idea here today in our passage.
I want to pull out 3 aspects of the mercy that Galatians had: 1) Their commitment to mercy, 2) their compassionate mercy, and 3) the honor their mercy showed.
COMMITMENT TO MERCY
Paul points out their commitment to showing him mercy. He says his illness “was a trial” to them, and he says, yet, they treated him with great care. “You guys would’ve torn out your own eyes and given them to me if you could’ve” he said. That line reminds me of when I’ve heard people watching a loved one suffer say, “I wish I could take the cancer out of their body and put it in mine instead.” You get a clear idea here of how the Galatians took Paul in and took on the burden of caring for him with great commitment.
The word “trial” is actually “peirasmos,” and it means “temptation,” or “test,” or “trial.” It has the idea of a burden or a difficulty….You’ve read this same word in
- James 1:2 when it says, “Consider it pure joy whenever you face TRIALS of many kinds.”
- Jesus in the Garden in Matthew 26:41, “Watch and pray so that you will not fall into TEMPTATION.”
- The seed on rocky soil “fell away during the time of TESTING.” (Lk 8:13)
- Jesus taught the disciples to pray, “Lead us not into TEMPTATION.” (Mt 6:13)
- “There is no TEMPTATION” 1 Cor 10:13 says, “that has overtaken you except what is common to man…”
- “Those who want to get rich” 1 Timothy 6:9 says, “fall into TEMPTATION…”
- First Peter 1:6 says, “You greatly rejoice, though for now for a little while you suffer grief in all kinds of TRIALS.”
You can see that the idea of a trial has a relationship with the idea of temptation too. How can a trial be a temptation? Its actually pretty simple: during difficulty what do we say about God? What is our faith really like during a hard circumstance? Do we only trust God and worship Him and praise Him when everything goes our way? Remember this was the essence of Job’s trial – Satan was confident that he could get Job to spit in God’s face if he hurt him bad enough.
APPLICATION: Let your faith shine even more during trials.
The Galatians were “trialed” you could say with Paul’s illness. What would they do in the moment this sick man lay before them? Their trial was a test, and they no doubt could’ve been tempted: what would they do with the burden of taking on the job of nursing this man of God back to health?
- “He’s no man of God, otherwise he wouldn’t be sick. How can God let one of his men be sick?”
- Or “let him be sick and die, if he’s a man of God then let his God save him.”
- Or, “this man speaks against Moses so let him die in the streets.”
They could’ve said all that. They could’ve even rejected the idea he was from God and thought the opposite – that he was under God’s judgment as seen in the fact he was sick. This was embedded in the thought of ancient cultures, consider the disciples’ own question in John 9:2 of the man who was blind from birth, “Teacher, who sinned that this man was born blind – his parents or this man?” Or think of Acts 28:3-4 when Paul was bit by a snake and the natives expected him to die, and they said, “This man must be a murderer, for though he tried to escape, the goddess Justice has not allowed him to live.”
But the Galatians didn’t think any of these things of Paul. Even while he apparently was quite repulsive physically in his sick condition, they didn’t reject him because of that either. They were committed to Paul’s healing despite his loathsome appearance, despite the prevailing thoughts of the day that he must be under divine judgment, and despite some of his enemies no doubt telling them to let him die since he was undermining Moses.
It was a moment of choice for the Galatians. And they were committed to Paul. Their mercy and compassion were carried out with great commitment, and it was a sacrifice to them.
APPLICATION: Be ready for good works God might put in your path. Ephesians 2:10 says, “We are God’s workmanship, created to do good works which he has prepared in advance.” If God has prepared good works for us, we should be prepared to do them. That means a readiness in our minds and hearts. The Good Samaritan is the shining example of readiness to show mercy. He had business to get to, but he wholeheartedly took up the burden set before him to take care of a man in need.
COMPASSIONATE MERCY
You see their compassion in their mercy too. Paul says, notice, “You did not treat me with contempt or scorn.” “Scorn” literally means to spit out – it has the idea of being disgusted and repulsed by something. The word contempt means “to look down on,” or “to despise and ridicule.” It has the idea of seeing yourself as superior to someone in a way that makes you mock them and hate them. The word is used in Romans 14:3 when Paul instructs believers not to have contempt for each other over secondary issues and not to use areas where there is room for disagreement as measures of judgment against other Christians. Don’t let secondary issues become a basis for having contempt for other Christians.
Paul says when he arrived sick, they did not look down on him, and see him beneath them, and they were not disgusted with him and “spitting” him out, away from them. Apparently they could have – but they did not. Instead they had pity on him, and readily and wholeheartedly took up the job of nursing him back to health. They probably took him into their homes, gave him his own space, stayed with him constantly, stayed up late watching over him, made sure he had clean bedding and clothing, cleaned any sores he may have had, cleaned up after him in other ways too (toileting), made sure he was as comfortable as possible, gave him medicine, food, water, and covered all the expenses of all his care. The Galatians wanted Paul to get better, and they did everything they humanly could to help him get well. Their mercy was full of heartfelt compassion.
APPLICATION: Compassionate mercy enables us to readily be inconvenienced. What I mean is that if I allow my heart to be filled with compassion for people, and I have a posture of readiness if the Lord brings an opportunity my way, then the inconvenience to my day or my life is not an “inconvenience.” The reason is because compassion makes me WANT to help. Inconvenience is only in relation to what I don’t want to be bothered with. The Galatians took up the “inconvenience” readily, just like the Good Samaritan when his day was inconvenienced by a guy in a bad situation, he readily set everything aside he had planned to help.
There is something Paul is doing here that commentators point out that I want to explore a little bit. Paul is invoking their love for him that they had. He is reminding them of their great affection for him they had at the beginning. His motive, it is suspected – and I agree – is that he wants to draw back out of them that love and devotion they had for him at the start when he first met them. This section is very emotional and personal. Paul, you notice, has shifted from all the theological and historical argumentation and is now using a tactic called “pathos.” Paul began with Logos – which is reasoning with people – and now Paul is using pathos to influence the Galatains, which is appealing to people’s emotions and shared experiences, “Think of how much you were devoted to me in my time of weakness, and how much love you showed me when I needed you. Think of how highly you thought of me and how hard you worked to help me. I owe you so much for all of it, my heart is yours, think of how much your hearts belonged to me. Let me have your hearts and devotion again like I used to. These people who are trying to win your devotion and take it away from me are not good for you. Think about all we went through together when I was with you and let that weigh in with all that I am saying in this letter!”
APPLICATION: Preaching appeals to the whole man – your head and your heart. Preaching is not simply an academic lesson to stuff you full of bible facts. Nor is it simply a “pump-you-up” and get you all excited rally. Preaching preaches at your whole self – it gives you knowledge to think with, and it reaches your heart so that your feelings form around truth, and it reaches your will so you are actually acting more in line with truth and biblical knowledge.
APPLICATION: Preaching with pathos requires hands-on ministry. Paul was not unapproachable and merely showed up to give academic lectures to a group of people whom he knew nothing about. Read Romans 16 and see how intimately he knows the believers. It’s the same in Galatia – Paul and the Galatians had their lives woven together in significant ways and Paul was able to draw on that and appeal to that in his efforts to renew their commitment to him and the Gospel. Paul knew their names, he knew what they needed prayer for, he knew their personal situations, their personal struggles, he knew their joys and sorrows, their strengths and weaknesses – he did what Proverbs 29 says, “Know your sheep.” He was a shepherd just like Jesus, who said, “I know my sheep and my sheep know me.”
APPLICATION to the APPLICATION: Get yourself a pastor who knows you – and wants to know you.
APPLICATION to the APPLICATION: Be a church that knows each other, and cares for each other. I know you are. I’ve seen people in this church take dying people in this church into their home because they had no where else to go and they ministered to that person until they died in their home. I’ve seen people devote enormous amounts of time and energy to caring for a dying woman. I’ve seen people in this church form shifts to minister to women who’ve had babies. I’ve seen people give sacrificially to help financial needs of people here. I’ve seen loads of meals delivered to people who were sick, grieving, or recovering or having children (FYI: watch out for a meals ministry opportunity coming up fast). I’ve seen crowds of people here turn out to rake leaves for widows. I’ve seen you here come alongside people with enormous love and compassion during the most difficult times of life. I’ve seen countertops at home stacked full of cards where people have sent them in a small effort to “mourn with those who mourn.” Real local church ministry has a deep pathos – a deep emotional attachment formed by sharing the experiences of life together.
APPLICATION: Let your heart be filled with compassion so you are ready to show someone mercy who is in need. First John 3 says, “If anyone has material possessions and sees a brother in need but has no pity [mercy] on them, how can the love of God be in that person?”
SHOWING HONOR THROUGH MERCY
Finally, something that we’ve circled a lot so far, is the point that in showing Paul mercy, the Galatians showed him honor. Look how Paul says it in verse 14, “Instead, you welcomed me as if I were an angel of God, as if I were Christ Jesus himself.” They did the opposite of despising him and looking down on him – they held him in high esteem. You can detect almost some surprise in Paul over how well they treated him. But that makes sense when you realize that in the ancient world, and in Israel, it was common to consider a person who was seriously ill to be under diving judgment (remember the examples earlier from John 9 and Acts 28)
The Galatians didn’t receive him that way, but instead they held him in high honor and helped him with great commitment and sacrifice.
APPLICATION: In your love, show mercy as a way of showing honor. Don’t look down on those you help, but honor them.
APPLICATION: Get credit for someone’s Gospel ministry by helping them. Think of how they took Paul in and helped him, and how that helped his ministry. Then contrast that with John’s warning in 2 John 10-11 not to take a false teacher into your home. Turn there with me…
Then turn to 3 John 6-8….see how John urges believers to help ministers of the truth because they share in that work when they do? The Galatians took Paul in and so they shared in his work, they helped his work, and they will get credit for that when they stand before Christ and be rewarded.
CONCLUSION
The Galatians showed mercy to Paul. Then Paul showed them God’s mercy. By receiving Jesus, the ultimate mercy came to Galatia