Galatians | Nothing Compares To The Gospel (October 1st, 2017) - Mike Armstrong

Time to open your Bibles now.

Get them open to Galatians.

We're gonna be in Galatians chapter one this morning.

Now, as you're turning there, uh it may or may not surprise you uh to hear that Galatians is actually my favorite book in the entire Bible.

You might be thinking, really, that sounds kind of interesting.

Like, why not Romans?

That seems like a pastory book full of theology and whatnot, or you know, maybe, you know, one of the old testament narratives, or, you know, some story like that.

Well, um, no other book in the Bible has quite pierced my heart and shaken me to the core uh like Galatians has.

All right, it's been called, it's been referred to as mini Romans uh in some ways because of the attention that Paul gives to the gospel in it.

And so what we're gonna unpack uh over the next uh 13-week series, we're gonna have a break in there uh in between all of that, but what we're gonna unpack through this letter to the Galatians is how the gospel changes everything.

The gospel changes everything.

Now, if you are uh, I don't know, if you're like a skeptic or something like that like that, you might hear the words, you might hear me say that and think, huh.

Kind of seems like maybe a bit of uh an overpromise there.

Right?

Really?

Everything?

It changes, you know, absolutely everything.

Are you sure about that?

Seems a little dramatic.

Okay, well, hopefully you'll soon see as we work our way through this uh that it's not, it's not dramatic.

It really does change everything.

The gospel really does deliver on that promise.

See, I don't know how many of you totally know my story, uh, but I grew up as uh I got saved as at a young age.

And I basically grew up in the church my entire life.

My parents both got saved when I was one year old, and so you know, I was the kid, you know, my parents would be the first ones to arrive, the last ones to leave.

Now my kids get to enjoy that.

But that was us.

I was, you know, in every single kid's program imaginable.

Right?

I went to you know, every youth group and every retreat and all of that.

By the time I was in grade seven, my family moved out to Saskatchewan.

I actually uh went to Christian schooling from grade seven all the way to grade 12.

So Christian school, chapel, every single morning, all of that.

Now, for me, kind of unfortunately, uh, I kind of learned how to act the part.

Right?

I learned how to kind of fit in and you know, play the role, if you will, of uh good little Johnny Christian.

Okay, that was kind of me, and I learned how to kind of fly under the radar.

You know, no one really kind of asked how I was doing, and and I didn't ask for people to ask how I was doing.

I, you know, I think people just kind of assumed that you know I'm good.

I you know, uh outwardly.

I'm pretty sure that I I looked like a, you know, I looked like a great kid.

You know, I was I was polite, I, you know, I didn't give my parents a whole lot of grief or anything like that.

I was certainly the kid, you know, who knew how to raise my hand and answer all the questions correctly, and you know, as we you know were in different classes and all of that type of thing.

Hey, but listen, it wasn't until my early twenties, actually, uh I was a newlywed, and I had the opportunity uh to lead a Bible study uh through the book of uh Galatians.

And it was actually uh by a guy named Tim Keller.

I know a lot of you would be familiar with him, and uh it was actually, this is now the book version of that Bible study, and I got to walk through uh this book.

I commend it to every one of you.

You need to pick up a copy of that, because it has heavily, heavily influenced my life.

And the Lord busted through and broke through uh in my life in a way uh that he had never done uh before.

And he really revealed to me how much of my goodness, okay, my behavior, kind of so to speak, uh, was really just a whole lot of self-righteousness and legalism.

That was me.

Okay, I wasn't truly relying on Christ's righteousness alone for my salvation.

Okay, sure, I would have said all of that, I could have given you the right answer, like maybe a lot of us here can.

Yeah, our salvation is by grace alone.

You know, through faith, I could have said all of that, but functionally speaking, I was kind of adding to what Christ did through my through my behavior.

I was essentially a performer.

I was trying to earn God's love, earn God's approval and even his forgiveness at times through, again, this behavior type uh mindset and mentality that I had through through staying away from the major sins, you know, the really bad ones that people look down to, and we tend to put all of our emphasis on.

I stayed away from all of those, so I kind of thought that I was I was good.

Okay, outwardly I wasn't very rebellious, but guess what?

Inside I was.

I was big time and I was I was not following the Lord.

I was not filled with joy in the gospel and filled with joy in my salvation and and operating from motives that were grounded in the gospel.

I wasn't there.

Again, I was kind of a legalistic Pharisee.

Okay, now some of you, I'm sure, can relate to that.

Right?

Maybe you have a you know a pretty similar, you know, the details are gonna be a little different, but pretty similar upbringing to me.

You know, and you're kind of the behavior person, and and you know, you like to follow the rules, and and you're pretty good with all of that, and and you can, you know, your tendency is to kind of think, hey, look, I'm I'm pretty good here.

You know, the Lord's pretty fortunate to have me on his team.

Right?

Maybe that's you.

Okay, but what if your story is different?

What if you're you live kind of the opposite, you know, kind of life as me, and you've done all the outward rebellious things, and and and you've dabbled in all of those kinds of issues, and you've got you know the wild lifestyle kind of in your rear view mirror, and you know, what if your story is like that and you got saved later in life?

Or what if you are different entirely?

Okay, maybe you're sitting here today and and you're not a follower of Jesus Christ, period, and you know that, and and you're just like, I'm trying to kind of figure this out, and I'm, you know, maybe you're a seeker, you're a searcher, and you're you know, trying to put together all the pieces.

You know, what if that's what if that's you?

Well, the beauty thing about the book of Galatians is that it shines a spotlight on the answer, no matter who you are and what your story is, how broken you are, or how whole you think you are, okay.

Galatians shows us that the gospel is the power to radically transform us like nothing else can.

Nothing else can do it.

The gospel is, listen, it's so much more than a Sunday school story.

We often think of it like that.

It's kind of like, you know, what the primary, you know, the little kids are doing down the hallway.

They need to hear the gospel.

And then we, you know, adults, as after we get saved, we sort of somehow graduate to, you know, deeper doctrine and and all of that.

Listen, uh, we we think that the gospel saves us, and that's absolutely true.

It does.

That is gloriously true.

But here's the thing, it also continues, continues to save us, it continues to change us, is what I mean by that.

Right down to our our heart's very intentions, the intentions of the heart.

It exposes our warped motives for obedience.

You got any of those?

I know I do.

It gives us rest for our weary souls, it gives us hope, it unleashes us to love.

Through the gospel, Christ followers have all of these things.

We have everything that we need.

And listen, it's all found in a saving relationship with Jesus Christ.

And understand this, and then a heart that operates out of that reality.

Okay, the gospel really is everything.

We're gonna unpack this, we're gonna see how there's just nothing like it.

It's unique, it's special, it's powerful, it is life-changing, it is awesome, it is all of those things.

And so, again, we're gonna get into this here through the first nine verses.

You ready to go?

No?

Should I keep that?

Okay, good.

Okay, we're ready to go here.

All right, here it is, verse one.

It says this Paul, an apostle, not from men, nor through man, but through Jesus Christ and God the Father who raised him from the dead, and all the brothers who are with me to the churches of Galatia.

Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the 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 for ever and ever.

Amen.

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.

Not that there is another one, but there are some who trouble you and want to distort the gospel of Christ.

But even if we or an angel from heaven should preach to you a gospel contrary to the one that we preach to you, let him be accursed.

As we have said before, so now I say again, if anyone is preaching to you a gospel contrary to the one that you received, let him be accursed.

Let's pray.

God, we just read those first nine verses, and in just a passing glance, a casual reading of it, we can see pretty clearly that to deviate from the true message of the gospel in any way is dangerous.

It is so dangerous.

And God, I pray that as we begin this series, as we launch into the book of Galatians, Lord, I pray that we would recognize where our hearts tend to stray from it.

Lord, we would say, we could probably all regurgitate and say what the gospel is.

But Lord, in our in our own ways, in our heart, we have all kinds of functional saviors and different ways that we think, uh, different things that we think that we need to make us truly complete or whole.

Which is, Lord, a rejection that Christ is enough.

And so, Father, I pray that maybe for the first time you would expose these areas in our hearts.

Lord, I pray that you would give us a great joy in the fact that you were our Savior, that you went to the cross, that you paid it all.

God, would we be done with the classic Christian boredom with the gospel?

And Lord, I pray that it would ignite our hearts with passion and love for you.

Lord, I pray that it would transform our motives.

I pray that this would be a church unleashed, full of joy, on mission, because we have the gospel message, the heart of it, locked into our hearts.

So, God, would you accomplish all of this, we pray?

In your name.

Amen.

Amen.

All right, well, here we go.

You've got your notes there.

Here it is.

There is quite simply nothing like the gospel.

There's nothing like it.

It's God's astonishing act of grace towards me.

It's God's astonishing act of grace.

Do you realize how astonishing it is, or are you getting kind of bored with it a little bit?

Right?

This is a big deal.

Take a look at verse 1 here.

Verse 1, it says, Paul an apostle.

Okay, so obviously Paul wrote this.

He says, not from men nor through man, but through Jesus Christ and God the Father, who raised him from the dead.

He's making it really clear here that God himself made him an apostle.

This is not something that he chose.

Okay, keep going.

He says, and all the brothers who are with me to the churches of Galatia.

Grace, great word you should highlight there.

Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the 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.

Now I love how Paul jumps in right into the intro here.

He wastes no time at all.

He just jumps straight into the gospel.

He's like, I'm I'm leading with this.

Right?

He's like, it's it's it's why I'm an apostle.

I've been called because of what Christ has done.

It's why you started as a church.

It's the reason I'm writing you now.

And then notice what he does here in verses three to five.

As you kind of look at this with me, he lays out kind of uh kind of a gospel outline.

It's like the gospel in a nutshell.

You might want to even write that down there in the margin of your Bible.

He gives us a kind of a brief overview of what the gospel is, but it's extremely revealing to us because it tells us a lot.

Again, no outline is complete, but it tells us um quite a bit.

All right, for we learn three kind of really critical things.

First thing we learn here is that we're helpless and we're lost.

Okay, we're helpless and lost.

That's what the word deliver there from verse 4 implies.

Right?

We need deliverance.

The the NIV, if you've got that copy, that translation in front of you, is uses the word rescue.

Right?

We we are in need of a rescue.

Now, if you were to talk to like the average person on the street and ask them, you know, what do you think, what do you think Christians are all about?

Right?

If they were gonna say something, you know, even a little bit positive, they would probably say something along the lines of, well, you know, they're you know, they're they're they're trying to be really good people, right?

They're trying to follow uh the teachings and example uh of Jesus.

That's kind of their whole thing.

That's what Christians are about.

Okay, but but understand this.

That word deliver there shows us that that all that's impossible.

Right, right?

We can't follow Jesus' teaching and therefore, you know, be good.

We can't do all of that.

We're we're we're we're we're helplessly lost.

Right?

We we need to be delivered.

Right?

Christ came, it's it's it's a rescue mission.

That's what the gospel is here.

It's why he it's why he came.

Okay, Jesus didn't just come to be imitated, he came to save.

He came to save.

All right, second thing we learn here from this from this little outline here, uh, we learn what was done to deliver us.

Okay, we learn what was done.

It says there that Jesus gave himself for our sins.

Jesus gave himself for our sins.

The word for there, you see that word there, gave himself for, right?

It means in place of.

In place of.

It means that he wasn't just a general sacrifice.

He wasn't just kind of some guy who died.

No, it's it's it's talking about he was a he was a substitutionary sacrifice.

It means that through his life, through his life of moral perfection and and through his sacrificial death, he did everything that we needed to do to be pleasing to God.

He did it all for us.

And God accepted his sacrifice, okay?

His sacrifice on the cross as fulfilling all of the each and every requirement that we were supposed to fulfill, but couldn't because our sins render us incapable.

Right?

You see how you learn a lot here from this from this little outline?

Jesus literally paid it all.

And he did it on our on our behalf.

Okay, third thing we learn here, we learn why God did it.

You ever wondered this?

Why?

Why, oh Lord, would you go to the cross?

Why, why would you subject yourself to the torture and the humility and and the shame and have the people that you love, that you created put you there?

Why would you endure the spitting and the mockery and and and the humiliation of all of it?

Why would you do it?

It must be because, wow, we were, you know, we're something else.

We're pretty special, we're pretty, you know, we've got it all together.

Wrong.

Wrong.

We realize here that it's all because of grace.

Right?

The word there is grace.

It says, according to what?

According to the will of our God and Father.

The reason he did it is because he wanted to.

He wanted to do it.

Again, not because of anything you or I did or or deserved.

It's purely a gift.

It's purely a gift that we receive.

And he knew that if if he didn't initiate the rescue, if he didn't do something about our sin, we'd all be dead in the water.

You know, we would be we would be spiritually and and morally bankrupt and eternally separated from God.

So Jesus had to step in if the problem was gonna get fixed.

And these verses here show us that he wanted to do it.

Isn't that an awesome thing?

Listen, there's nothing like the gospel.

Right?

There just there isn't.

There's nothing like it.

It's the most astonishing act of uh of pure grace ever.

We do we do nothing whatsoever to earn or or deserve our salvation.

Post-salvation, you will never be able to do anything to pay God back for it.

Hey, listen, we actually, if you think about this, we actually do everything, okay, to deserve the opposite.

Our sin, what we bring to the table is our sin.

That means we deserve death, we deserve punishment, we deserve humiliation, we deserve separation from God and all of that.

The gospel shows us that we deserve the worst, but God gives us his best.

He gives us his best.

Now, a lot of us here in this room, I think, have been have been struck by that truth.

Right?

You can probably point back to that.

You know, at one point that that realization swept over you for the very first time, and and God's spirit kind of cut through you like a hot knife through butter, and and you turned to Jesus Christ and you gave your life to him, recognizing that he takes away sin.

Okay, but maybe what's kind of happened over time since that is that God's grace and the gospel message has kind of lost its luster.

Right?

We don't even really like to admit that, do we?

We don't like to be that honest with ourselves, but you're like, you know what?

If you're honest, the the sheen has kind of have kind of worn off that for me.

And now the the gospel and reading about it and thinking about it and and singing about it kind of just feels like like old news.

You know, I heard it before.

You know, doesn't it doesn't really excite me or motivate me the way that it used to.

You know, the whole thing kind of feels meh.

You ever felt like that before?

Listen, if if that sounds familiar to you, okay, let me tell you that's extremely common.

That's extremely common for uh followers of Jesus Christ.

So I want you to know you're not alone in this.

Right?

It's the entire reason why we're doing this series.

You know, instead of going about the problem wrong in all the wrong ways, we're gonna try and get our hearts here and our minds kind of rewired and brought back to you know a good place where we are operating and and functioning according to the grace of the gospel.

Because listen, it really does change us.

It really does.

Now, all of this, we're starting to kind of get into the second thing, so let's get to it.

Okay, there's really quite nothing like the gospel, but it's alarming how easily I abandon it.

It's alarming how easily I abandon it.

Verse 6, take a look.

Listen to Paul here.

He says, I am astonished.

Hey, I'm astonished that you are so quickly deserting him who called you in the grace of Christ and are turning to a different gospel.

Not that there is another one, but there are some who trouble you and want to distort the gospel of Christ.

Now, again, it doesn't take a genius here to kind of realize and sense the tone in Paul's writing here.

Right?

It's is he happy or maybe not so much?

Right?

He's he's not thrilled.

It says that he's uh he's astonished.

Okay, right?

He's shocked, he's he's devastated by it.

You can tell that he's even angry.

And actually, this plays out later uh throughout the letter, and we see the anger and the frustration in him as he writes to the church that he loves that had started off so well but had gotten sidetracked, and we're in danger of going into the ditch completely here and uh and maybe never getting back.

Right?

He's upset because they've abandoned the gospel and consequently Christ Himself.

He's like, You're one.

Wandering away from him.

Now you might be kind of reading that and be thinking, like, what on earth did this church do?

Right?

What have they done to like to provoke Paul to this type of response and reaction to abandon this gospel that they had once clung to?

What's up?

What's up with Galatians and the church there?

Well, let me give you a little bit of context here so you kind of know some of the things that were going on in this community as this church was launched and as we see it kind of develop here.

Okay, the pe the reason that Paul wrote uh this letter to this church uh was to um was to really deal with some false teaching and to call it out.

He's like, this is this is wrong, this is happening uh in the church, and uh this has really dangerous consequences and effects, and I am writing to uh put an end to all of this.

All right, and so he is he is going after it.

Now you have to understand here that the very first converts in the church of of Galatia, okay, they were they were Jews.

Okay, they were Jews, and they they came to faith uh through the ministry of uh of the apostle Paul, and he kind of started this church and launched this church, and so they were uh the kind of the core team there that helped kind of launch this church and uh and get it going.

But as you can imagine, as they were fired up in their community, they started reaching out to the unsaved and the lost neighbors in their towns, and so what would happen is people started getting saved, and people started joining the church.

Now, what you have to understand about this is that the people that started joining these churches weren't Jews like the original Christians were.

They were Gentiles, just meaning, just meaning that they were they were non-Jews.

Okay, they were non-Jews.

And so what started to take place here is you've got two very different cultures coming together under one roof, under the uh under the roof of the church, and and and going after Christ.

This is something that didn't happen a whole lot in those days.

There was a lot of of ethnic exclusivity, and and and there wasn't a lot of of blending of people groups in this time.

And so you've got Jews and you've got Gentiles, both of them uh had converted either from Judaism or or Paganism.

And so what eventually started to transpire here is that some of the original Jewish Christians, who again kind of helped start this church, they naturally became the leaders.

They were the leaders of the church, and they would have taken on a bulk of the teaching ministry and the discipleship that was happening here.

And so what they started to do is they started teaching these new Gentile believers that they needed to adopt certain Jewish customs if they wanted to be truly pleasing to God.

Do you kind of sense what's happening here?

Right?

And the two main, the kind of the two specific issues that kept coming up time and time again were was the issue of circumcision, okay, and the issue of obeying certain dietary food laws.

Okay, so think Old Testament rules and regulations and laws.

Okay, again, Judaism.

And so they were kind of like if you if you really want to get this whole Christianity thing right, this is what they were saying, okay, to the to the Gentile converts, if you want to get the whole Christianity thing right, okay, on top of the gospel, you also need to become like us.

Okay, you need to behave like we're we behave.

You need to adopt our cultural practices here.

You need to eat the right kinds of foods, you need to get circumcised to show that you are really one of God's chosen.

And so this is the false teaching that was starting uh to creep in here and get back, get into the church.

Now, what's the drawback with everything that they're saying here, everything that they're teaching?

What's the drawback?

It's not the gospel, right?

It is in fact the opposite of the gospel.

It really is.

Okay, the gospel, what does it tell us?

Okay, it tells us very clearly that we cannot earn our salvation through our works.

We can't earn it through that.

There's nothing we bring to the table.

Christ earned it for us.

And so this false teaching was a regression back to law-based, works-based salvation and living.

They were basically like, do these things, and then Christ will really approve of you.

Can you see how backwards that is?

It's so, so backwards.

They're they're reversing the gospel in all of that.

Okay, uh the this is what they were saying.

They were saying essentially, um, I obey, therefore I'm accepted by God.

Okay, that's not the gospel.

The gospel is the opposite.

The gospel is I'm accepted, therefore I obey.

And you see how how we get, we, we, we reverse that, we get it backwards, and we've essentially tossed the entire gospel of grace.

And so that's what was happening here.

It's a complete step in the wrong direction.

It's an abandonment of the original message that Paul and the apostles and all of them proclaimed.

And it's an abandonment of Jesus Christ.

And so these Jewish Christians they're imposing Judaism and the law on their, on their Gentile, you know, brothers and sisters, even though all the requirements of that law had already been met and fulfilled in the person and work of Jesus Christ.

Right?

It's already done, it's taken care of.

Now you might be thinking, like, how did they, how did it come to this?

Right?

How did they allow this teaching to you know to make it to the forefront and and pull some things apart?

Well, if you really think about it, you can probably actually understand why these, you know, these new Gentile converts kind of got roped into this.

Because in their minds, they would have been like, well, well, of course I want to be truly pleasing to God.

Right?

What one of us would not think that?

Of course I want the Lord to love me even more.

So sure, I'll I'll obey your rules and your restrictions and your law and all of that if it means that God will love me, you know, even more.

Okay, but again, remember, the problem with all of that is that our works don't make us good.

Right?

And they don't improve our standing with God whatsoever.

Only Jesus Christ makes us right in God's sight.

Right?

And the gospel tells us, listen, he's already done it.

He's already done it.

We already have all of God's favor, 100% of his love, his forgiveness, his grace, his approval of you.

We have that already.

How do we know this?

Because the gospel tells us.

Do you see how we need to remember this?

Do you see how we continually need to go over this and bring ourselves back to this amazing reality?

Because the tendency and the function of our hearts is to look outside of that to other things to make us feel better, to get God to love us more or approve of us more or to forgive us.

Listen, thinking that we can add our works to what Christ has done, that doesn't improve the gospel.

It ruins it.

It ruins it.

It creates uh, you know, as Paul says here, a different gospel or or distorts it.

I like how he uses that word.

That word distorts literally means pervert.

It perverts the gospel.

And again, we all these years later, we we do this, we pervert it, we distort it, we we turn from that gospel all the time, kind of on a heart function level.

And something that you and I, you know, really need the Lord to do is to really show our hearts how we do just that.

How how do we how do I distort the gospel, God?

How do I do that?

What are the what are the specific ways that you and I turn to a different gospel as the as the Galatian church was doing?

I'm gonna tell you right now, it's not circumcision.

Right?

Like when was the last time you heard someone encouraging adults to do that?

Yeah, probably not happening, right?

That was a big time cultural thing back then.

That doesn't sound very enjoyable to me, I don't know, at all.

Okay, so that was their cultural issue, circumcision.

It was also dietary food laws.

Right?

You gotta eat certain foods, you gotta stay away from these foods that are unclean and all of that.

Do we really do that kind of thing anymore?

Not really.

Right?

You might be thinking, well, vegans kind of do, right?

Justification through vegetables.

No, I'm just kidding.

We love vegans for sure.

We're all on the same page, right?

We have lots of love for you.

Okay, no, but we don't really do that.

We're not pumping dietary food laws at people and and and all of that.

No.

So, what are what are the different ways that we do it?

How do I start to mine deep into kind of my motives and and the inclinations of my heart?

How do I start to figure out what those those are and unearth them so that I can actually start to deal with these things and bring the gospel to bear on it?

Okay, well, a good question.

It's really a simple question, but it's very profound.

A question that you can ask yourself if you want to get down into the nitty-gritty of this is this.

You can write this down.

Okay, what are the things that my heart feels it must have?

What are the things that your heart feels it must have?

Okay, in other words, what drives you?

What are the things that motivate you as a person?

What are the things that get you up out of bed and gets you going as a person?

Take a couple of examples.

Is it is it respect?

I crave, I desire, I yearn for respect.

And maybe you didn't get it from your father growing up.

And so you're looking for it now in all the wrong places.

And maybe you're a Christ follower, but you don't understand that Christ loves and very much respects you, and so you're looking for that from other people.

You see how you start to stray from the gospel is enough, Jesus is enough, to I need something else as well?

That's a rejection of the gospel.

Maybe that's something your heart feels it must have.

Here's another one.

Maybe it's money.

You're just driven by this.

I have to have it.

I am not complete as a person unless I have wealth, unless I have stuff, unless I have things.

Money has gripped your heart.

It is a false savior, and it's perverting the gospel for you.

Maybe it's control.

Maybe you're a control freak.

And everything, I have everything neat and order and tidy in my life, and everything has to go this way.

And if I don't have it, I kind of blow up, or I, or I flip out, or I get depressed and I get down really easily.

What's another thing that your heart feels it must have?

Is it a relationship?

Relationships are big, aren't they?

I have to be dating someone.

I I have to have that special person, and if I don't have it, I am kind of a mess.

And it's this extra thing outside of the sufficiency of Christ.

I think I need it.

It's a relationship, it's comfort.

Comfort drives me.

I want my life to be easy and have comfort, and and when life is hard and difficult, I have a hard time.

Okay, another way of kind of putting it, one question again, of course, is what are the things that my heart feels it must have?

Another way of kind of putting it, what what things make me feel lost or broken or or angry and bitter or insecure and empty if I don't get them?

Right?

What are those things?

When we insist on having those things, listen, on a heart function level, we've abandoned the gospel.

We've abandoned it.

We don't think what we're saying is we don't think Christ is enough for us.

We think we need more than just Him.

There is quite simply nothing like the gospel.

Trusting in counterfeits is more harmful than I realize.

Do you realize how harmful this is?

Again, notice a strong language here as Paul writes to this church that he loves, verse 8.

He says this, but even if we or an angel from heaven should preach to you a gospel contrary to the one that we preached to you originally, let him be accursed.

Okay, you don't just like toss that word around, right?

Like that's a heavy-handed word.

But then look what he does.

He says it again, he repeats himself.

But as we have said before, so now I say again, if anyone is preaching to you a gospel contrary to the one that you received, let him be accursed.

Like, wow, I guess I guess Paul meant business.

You sense here how how livid he was.

Uh that they were they were wandering away from this.

Okay, and he knows that the the natural inclination of the human heart here is to live according to the far false gospel of I need more than just Jesus to satisfy me.

I need these other false or functional saviors to make me feel whole.

He knows that we tend to revert back into this.

I need to impress God.

I need to jump through a bunch of hoops before I'm gonna get blessing from him.

I need to, you know, perform like a dog in order to get him to love me and care for me.

He knows that's how we're we're wired.

And so when he hears that the church he's planted is now just straight up blatantly teaching a gospel of works, he's pretty fired up about it.

And it kind of feels like the guy's just about to lose it and snap.

And I think it's because, well, well, he is, right?

He loves them.

And he and so he uses very strong language here to wake them up.

And he knows that if it's just kind of uh like, hey, try and try and get them next time, it may not have the same effect.

And so he comes at them pretty strong here and he and he repeats himself.

He says, if anyone, he amazingly he includes himself in this.

Do you notice that?

But even if we, or an angel from heaven, he's like, literally, if an angel shows up in front of you and you can see that, or comes to you in a vision and starts to proclaim another gospel where Jesus is not enough, listen, let him, let that angel, let that quote unquote apostle be accursed.

What does that word accursed mean?

It means condemned.

You might go, why such a severe language?

Well, because literally, literally, this is life and death stuff.

Okay, it's not just like a preference about a bunch of things that don't really matter.

No, eternity hinges on what he's talking about.

Now, listen, if pastors and and leaders and teachers in a church aren't proclaiming the true, accurate, doctrinally pure gospel, then are people gonna get saved?

No! Because they're not hearing the right message.

And so that's why doctrinal fidelity here is just so important.

And you might be like, well, they can't get saved if they're not hearing the message correctly.

Listen, I would say that that's that's harmful.

Right?

Not great.

Okay, also, if you or I kind of claim to accept the gospel of uh of grace alone, and this is this is not by works, but but our hearts continually function from this position of I need to earn it still through my works, right?

If that's kind of how we live, then listen, we're in the danger of kind of worst case scenario showing that maybe we were never saved in the first place.

Because those who are truly saved will begin to exhibit fruit.

They will exhibit fruit that shows that the gospel is truly, truly taken, taken root.

I mean, maybe we've you know kind of gone through the motions and we've we've said the magic words, so to speak, or we've given lip service to understanding Christ, but but maybe our salvation wasn't wasn't genuine.

And I mean, who knows how many people are you know in evangelical churches everywhere, you know, thinking they're saved, but but at the end of the day, they're not.

Okay?

Harmful, harmful, and then there's the kind of harmful that we've been kind of touching on sort of all morning here.

You know, we're gonna expose this big time throughout, again, the next 13 weeks.

All true Christians wrestle with this constant battle of gospel forgetfulness.

I love uh uh Paul Tripp is the kind of the one who I've I've heard kind of popularize that that phrase.

Gospel forgetfulness.

Our hearts forget very quickly that our salvation is secure in Christ, right?

And that we must we must rest in that.

We must not look to other things to to uh to bring us that that hope and and that joy and that standing with the Lord.

We can't add to it through our works.

We don't need to impress God.

Okay, that is uh that is a never-ending treadmill where you will just be weary and frustrated and tired and joyless over and over and over again.

You run like I did for so many years, thinking that, oh no, I didn't I didn't read my Bible today, therefore the Lord probably won't bless me.

Therefore, he probably won't he won't hear my prayers.

I remember literally driving to work thinking that.

My salvation isn't based on on me performing like a puppy.

It it it my my salvation is based on what Jesus did.

Right?

Christ already did all of that for us.

We don't need to look to false saviors like like money and relationships and all of that to fulfill us.

Why?

Because Christ does that.

We don't need to be insecure about anything ever, because in Christ, through the gospel, we learn that we have all the security we would ever want and ever need.

If God is for us, who can be against us?

Right?

That brings security, that brings joy, that brings such hope.

Right?

The gospel tells us of all of this.

And listen, it tells us of even more.

And that's why nothing compares to it.

Nothing.

You ready for this?

I am so, I don't know if you can tell, I am so pumped about the book of Galatians.

I can't wait to go through this and be continually remember uh reminded as I need to be to stop looking to these other functional saviors and these other, these other things that I think I need on some heart level.

And instead, learn to apply the gospel, learn to walk in step with the truth of the gospel.

I am psyched about this.

I am praying for you, know this.

I'm praying for you that the Lord would unlock your hearts.

We are so legalistic and we can be so pharisaical and think that we're good and we don't need Jesus as much as the Bible tells us we need him and all of that.

I am praying that the Lord would unleash us in greater joy, in greater passion, in worship, and in greater joy reading the word as our motives get flipped around and we realize the Lord loves me, therefore I want to obey, as opposed to I'm gonna obey so to get the Lord to love me.

Listen, I think the Lord wants to accomplish a ton.

I think he wants to bring a lot of glory to his name, to his son through all of this, as we plumb the depths of the gospel through Galatians.

You with me?

You ready for this?

I can't wait.