If you have a Bible, I would ask that you turn to Galatians chapter 1. And when you find your place, if you would stand with me as we honor the reading of God's Word together. Galatians chapter 1. Galatians chapter 1, and we'll begin reading in verse 1. Scripture says, 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 forever 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 we preached 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 you received, let him be accursed. For am I now seeking the approval of man or of God? Or am I trying to please man? If I were still trying to please man, I would not be a servant of Christ. For I would have you know, brothers, that the gospel that was preached by me is not man's gospel. For I did not receive it from any man, nor was I taught it, but I received it through a revelation of Jesus Christ. This is the word of the living God. May he write its eternal truths on our hearts this morning. Let's pray together. Father, as we come before you, We come in the name of Your Son Jesus, our Savior, our Lord and Master, through the way that He opened up by giving Himself up at Calvary, as we just sang about. Father, we come with thanksgiving for the Gospel. We come with thanksgiving that we can enter with praise and in grace and with acceptance because of Your love that drew the plan of salvation, carried it out, securing redemption for us. As we consider who we are to be as a church, may this word speak to us. May we be a church that is marked by the one true gospel. We pray this again in Jesus' name for your glory. Amen. You may be seated. We have reached an interesting time in history, a peculiar time really in history. A time where truth has become relative. That is, truth is different for each person, and people are okay with that. The mainstream society pushes and teaches that. And what we see in our own culture is that for us, freedom partially means the right to determine one's own truth. Part of what we mean here in America in 2017 by you are free here, you have the right to say what you want, to believe what you want. Partially what we mean by that is everyone is allowed to determine their own truth. People are free to decide for themselves what is true. And we've seen the effects of this on our culture that truth has become relative regarding biological composition. There's no truth standard to that. You can be whatever you want to be. Truth has become relative regarding morality. What's right for you may not be right for someone else, and what's wrong for someone else may not be wrong for you. After all, everyone determines their own truth. Relativism has redefined social acceptability. Nothing matters whether it's true or not. It simply matters if the culture accepts it as true or false. People are free to decide really anything that they desire to be true or false. And what has happened as a result of the influx of relativism in our culture is now anybody who makes a truth claim is labeled as one who is discriminatory. Truth claims are seen as bigoted, exclusive, prejudiced, and hateful. And what we've seen arise as the greatest virtue in our culture is tolerance and acceptance. Because what is meant by tolerance is really not tolerance, it is acceptance. We are told that we have an obligation to accept whatever claims anyone makes, to embrace them in their claims of identity or of morality, in their interpretation of social justice, because everyone is entitled to their own opinion and no one has the right to judge anybody. The world would just be a better place if we set aside our differences, focus on what unites us, and just live in peace and harmony with one another. And these ideas have moved from being introduced to our culture little by little to being the actual driving theme of everything that exists in our culture. Social media exists to push relativism and tolerance. Entertainment is driven by the ideas of tolerance, acceptance, relativism. Journalism focuses on it. Education is built around it. Politics discuss it. Civil right movements are formed and founded on it. Lawsuits are engaged in because of it. Supreme Court rulings are handed down due to it. Every single aspect of our society has been influenced by relativism, the belief that everyone is free to determine their own truth. And this is not just happening on some outskirts of society. This is happening among us, in our communities, in our schools, in our families, and most discouragingly, in our churches. We live in a time where because of society, the church is now viewing the gospel as too exclusive. Too abrasive, too gloomy and doomy, too bigoted, too hateful, too discriminatory, too divisive. What we see as a result is the church then relates to the world by setting aside the Bible as the authority, by setting aside the gospel as the message of truth, by setting aside Christ as the only one who is truth itself. They set all of this aside for the sake of coming across as inclusive, welcoming, as an organization that seeks to unite all people from different backgrounds, different beliefs, different orientations, different gender identities, different faiths, different ideas. The church hasn't just changed in the way it relates to the culture, it's changed in the way it relates to itself. Churches no longer talk about doctrine. Rather, we set that stuff to the side. We see it as just a preference or just a personal interpretation. And the essential non-negotiable truths of the gospel are seen as nothing more than causes of division. So let's not talk about that. Let's only focus on the things we agree upon. And the church will be unified. After all, isn't that what Christ wanted us to do? He wanted us to be united. One body. We're all God's children. And in order for us to communicate that to one another and to the society, we have to become an institution that celebrates the diversity of ideas and that promotes the diversity of ideas. And the result is that the church has lost one of its true marks. The mark that essentially makes a church a church. And that is the mark of the gospel. And this morning as we conclude our series on the marks of a true church, we're going to consider together the marks of a true church, the gospel. And we're going to consider this from the first chapter in Paul's epistle to the Galatians. The church here in Galatia has been planted by Paul. He came to them at great cost. He suffered great physical and spiritual and emotional harm while he was there planting this church. You could literally say Paul built this church with his blood, his sweat, and his tears. And yet, as we read the opening of this letter, there's no greeting filled with thanksgiving. If you read Philippians 5 verse 3, Paul is saying, I thank my God every time I remember you. Not here in Galatians. There's no remembrance of their good times or the fellowship that they had shared. There is no softening up of this church by affirming their perseverance in the faith. Or there's no commendation of their purity and patience. Rather, Paul opens this message with a full-on frontal assault against their diluted distortion of the gospel. This is what he says in verse six, 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. Does that sound like the loving, affirming Apostle Paul that we think about? This is how he starts this letter, and the reason for that is, when the church turns away from the gospel, it ceases to be a church. Regardless of church attendance, regardless of the church's image in the community, regardless of how wide a variety of cultures and ideas exist as part of its membership, when a church turns away from the gospel and embraces a different gospel, they are no longer a church. Therefore, we turn to consider together this morning the marks of a true church, the gospel. As we consider this, I want you to notice, first of all, the source of the gospel. Paul begins this letter in verse 1 by saying, 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." If you go down to verse 11, he says this, "...for I would have you know, brothers, that the gospel that was preached by me is not man's gospel. For I did not receive it from any man, nor was I taught it, but I received it through revelation of Jesus Christ." The issue here in this church, all the churches of Galatia, is that they had been led to believe by false teachers that Paul had no authority and his gospel had no authority. Oh, who's Paul? We don't know him. He has no authority. He's not teaching you the right gospel. You need to believe this gospel. And there has been this challenge to the message and this challenge to authority. And Paul begins to address the gospel here, and he begins by addressing the source of gospel authority. We see this as he says, I, Paul, am an apostle, not from men. That is, no man sent me out. I'm not signing my name with the seminary that I came out of. I'm not pointing back to some famous preacher who sent me out that I'm his disciple. He says, I am not an apostle from man, nor am I an apostle through man. That is, I was not made an apostle by man. There was nobody who looked at me and said, hey, you would make a good apostle. Go be an apostle. Rather, he is saying, I was made an apostle through Jesus Christ, and God the Father who raised Christ from the dead. And he's referring back to his conversion on the Damascus road, where Jesus Christ Himself literally thunders from heaven, shines in His glory, knocks all the men off their horses. Paul goes blind, and Christ personally converts and commissions Paul. And Paul says, this apostleship that I have, this authority that I'm speaking with, this gospel, it has the authority of Jesus Christ. It's not open for you to change it. It's not open for other men to come with their human authority and make revisions to it, or various interpretations of it. I'm not an apostle of man. I'm an apostle of Jesus Christ. What that means is, the gospel preached by Paul has as its authority, the authority of Jesus Christ Himself. The commission given to the apostles was to speak the words of Christ, in Christ's name, with Christ's authority, in the power of Christ's Spirit and His presence, for His glory. So apostles then were going around preaching a truth that was not just another ideology, not just another philosophy or another religious framework invented by man. They're going around with the authority of Christ Himself, the authority of God Himself. That's the gospel Paul was preaching. And he doesn't just refer to the source of gospel authority, he also refers to the source of the gospel message. This is what he's getting at at the end of the passage we read. In verse 11 he says, "...for I would have you know, brothers, that the gospel that was preached by me is not man's gospel. For I did not receive it from any man, nor was I taught it, but I received it through a revelation of Jesus Christ." The message of the gospel is not a message invented by man. It's not a personal truth for some people that's up for debate or rejection to other people. It's not open to disagreement. It isn't open to various interpretation based on people's personal preferences. It's the very message of Christ Himself. And Paul is in essence saying, listen, I'm an apostle. I was given this gospel personally by Jesus Christ, God the Son. And the gospel I preached to you came directly from Him. I'm not just some teacher out here bidding for your attention. I came to you with not man's gospel, but the gospel of God Himself. God is the source of the gospel. The conclusion then is that the gospel belongs to God. It's not an open for us to sit around and say, well, this is what the gospel is to me. The gospel is one gospel and it is the gospel of God Himself. And the importance of this source of the gospel's authority and the source of the gospel's message is seen as we go on through this passage and notice, secondly, the heart of the gospel. Paul identifies himself, his authority, his apostleship having been sent from God. And then he says this in verse 3, Grace to you and peace from God our Father, 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. Amen. As I said earlier, there's no thanksgiving for their faith. There's no remembrance of their labor of love. There's no recalling the fellowship that Paul had with them in the ministry. There is just this stern, short, simple reminder of the heart of the gospel. And in this little reminder of the Gospel, we see all the glory of the Gospel brought forth in this phrase. The Lord Jesus Christ who gave Himself for our sins to deliver us. That's the heart of the Gospel. There's no other message invented by man anywhere that brings God Almighty, the perfect Son of God, down among man to dwell, to save them. There's no other message that would allow man to be brought from spiritual death to spiritual life by the offering up of the Son of God. Just the Gospel. There's no other message that says, you are in bondage, but Christ died to deliver you. Turn in repentance and faith and you can be free. There's no message like that. And that's why Paul brings them back to the heart of the Gospel. And we see that the gospel is painted so beautifully here in this small little section, that every aspect of the gospel is stated either explicitly or implicitly in the words that he's using. First of all, we see the heart of the gospel begins with God. He said to them, grace to you and peace from God. This is not just another God who is one among the pantheon of world religions. This is not just an idol or an image that has been constructed and fashioned in the mind of men. The gospel begins with the one true God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Creator, the Sustainer, and the Governor of all things, the Sovereign God of all, who Paul says is working all things according to the counsel of His will. This is God Almighty, the Holy One who sits enthroned in the heavens and whose kingdom rules over all. The God who Scripture tells us does as He pleases. This is the one from whom angelic beings hide their face, because His holiness is too great to look upon. This is the one of whom the same angelic beings, while covering their face, cry out, Holy, Holy, Holy is the Lord God of hosts. The whole earth is filled with His glory. This is the one whose glory all of creation is proclaiming. The reason a sister would say, thank God for His glory being displayed in spring as everything comes to life and we see the colors and we feel the warmth of the sun and we see the flowers growing and fruit growing and we hear the birds singing. Scripture tells us as we read this morning, the reason for that is the heavens declare the glory of God. The one true God. This is the God who shines forth with infinite manifold perfections, the God who is influenced by none, changed by nothing, whose years have no beginning nor end, the God who is from everlasting to everlasting, God Almighty and God alone. This is the beginning of the gospel. There is no gospel without God and His glory. So Paul begins, God, our Father. And then we see the next aspect of the gospel is that of man. Because the gospel doesn't just tell us about God, it tells us about man. And there's so many things concerning man that the gospel could tell us, and does tell us. But Paul feels the need to mention one thing. The chief concern of man. The greatest problem that we have. He sums it up here in two words. Our sins. In this reminder of the gospel, there is two words that Paul says about us. Our sins. The message of the gospel is not that man is generally good and that nothing is wrong except for bad habits or bad choices. The message is not that all God requires of man is to do the best he can, to help and love as many people as he can, to live a life as honest as he can, and everything will be okay. That is not the message of the gospel. The message of the gospel regarding man is about our sins. The scripture tells us that this sin has corrupted man completely and universally. Paul says in his letter to the Romans, as it is written, none is righteous. No, not one. No one understands. No one seeks for God. All have turned aside. Together they have become worthless. No one does good. Not even one. That's the message of the gospel regarding man. A message that you will not hear in many evangelical churches in our nation today. The Scripture tells us not only of our sin, but it tells us that the sin of man has caused this great impassable chasm. A chasm that man is unable to cross, and a chasm over which man has no desire to cross. We say, oh well, we're all just feeling our way to God in different ways. That's wrong! Scripture says no one seeks for God. No one! All the religions of the world are not man's attempt to seek for God. They're man's attempts at becoming their own God. That's what religion of the world does. But the scripture tells us in John chapter 3, and this is the judgment, that light has come into the world and people love the darkness rather than the light because their deeds are evil. For everyone who does wicked things, hates the light, does not come to the light, lest his work should be exposed." This is the true human condition. This is the true predicament of man. It's not clean water. It isn't poverty. It isn't world peace. It isn't world hunger. It isn't social justice. The true problem of man is man's love of sin, man's corruption in sin, and man's hatred of God. This sin is described by Paul here in Galatians 1 as something that we need to be delivered from. It's bondage. It is slavery, captivity. And the result of this sin is death. Scripture tells us, therefore, just as sin came into the world through one man, and death through sin, and so death spread to all men because all sin. For the wages of sin is death. And this is not only physical death one day, it's spiritual death. From the very moment of our existence, we are dead in sin. The psalmist proclaims it this way, Behold, I was brought forth in iniquity, and in sin did my mother conceive me. Sin is not based upon what you do. Your sin nature is based on the fact that you are born. You are descended from man and you are a sinner. That's the message of the gospel. The message is not, don't worry, you're fine. The message is not, don't worry, you can make yourself good enough. The message is that you are dead in sin spiritually, you are hostile to God, you are not at all righteous, and one day physical death will be the reward for your sin. And this despairing condition of man is even greater when it's realized that the gospel is also a message of justice. Justice is where God and man meet. Justice is the collision of the holy perfections of God and the sinful condition of man. This is where we see the relationship between this God whom angels cannot even look upon, who in His presence the only thing they can do is hide their face and say, holy, holy, holy. And this God looks upon us and here is the collision. And you were dead in the trespasses and sins in which you once walked, following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience, among whom we all once lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the body and the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, like the rest of mankind. Our catechism question we heard at the beginning of the service, how do we know there is a God? Well, God has revealed Himself in the Scripture. And this is what we read as we read in answer to our catechism question from Romans 1. For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth. The reality of God and man is that God in His infinite manifold perfections cannot and will not accept man in His sin, nor will He pardon those guilty of sin. The relationship between man and God is not God is our loving Father and we're all His children. The relationship is God is the Almighty Holy One and we are all children of His wrath. This is the message of the gospel. God and man meeting in justice and God imparting His wrath on man as the just reward for their sin. But the very reason we call it the gospel, the good news, is because this same God has decreed and purposed and planned and brought about salvation for sinful men through His Son, Jesus Christ. So we see not just God, not just man, not just justice, but we also see Christ. And again, this is the very heart of the gospel, as Paul says, the Lord Jesus Christ who was, who delivered Himself up for our sins to deliver us. The message is not about how we can fix ourselves. The message is not what we must do to achieve deliverance for ourselves. The message is not how good and how worthy we are that God was so motivated by our worth that He sent Christ to die for us. The message is that Jesus Christ, God the Son, submitted perfectly to the will of God the Father, took on flesh, lived the life of perfect obedience, and died in our place. He became the substitute, and He suffered the wrath of God in the place of sinners, that He might be raised and deliver sinners from their bondage to sin. deliver sinners from the present evil age and deliver sinners to God. The heart of the gospel is summed up by the Apostle Peter in these words, He Himself bore our sins in His body on the tree that we might die to sin and live to righteousness. By His wounds you have been healed. That's the message of the gospel. This is the solution to the human condition. This is the way to life, to truth, to God, Christ alone. That's the message of the gospel. This wondrous mystery that Jesus Christ, the Lord, God, the Son, would give Himself for our sins. To deliver us, to offer us to God, that we may stand before Him, that we may know Him. And the mystery becomes even greater as the Apostle Paul says, all of this was according to the will of our God and Father. This was God's plan from all eternity. This was not His backup plan. This was not plan B. This was not the response of God to how badly we messed everything up. This was His plan all along. So may we, as a church, hear the heart of the gospel that these Galatians seemingly walked away from. The Lord Jesus Christ gave himself up for our sins to deliver us. That's the gospel. What we see is Also here, the result of turning from our sin and repentance and turning in faith to Christ, depending on what He has done, is seen here as the Apostle Paul reminds them of the Gospel. He says, Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. Grace. That is the giving of what has not been earned or deserved. This is looking on sinful man and saying, I will save you, not because of your works of righteousness, but because of my mercy. Ephesians tells us that God, being rich in mercy because of the great love with which He loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ. By grace you have been saved. The only way you can look at someone and say to them, grace to you, is if Jesus Christ gave His life to take away their sin. And He doesn't just say grace, He says peace. Grace to you and peace. This is what Paul is getting at in Romans 5 when he says, Therefore, since we have been justified by faith, since we know who God is, since we know who we are, since we believe the truth about God's justice and wrath, since we turn to Christ as our substitute, we believed in Him in faith, we've been justified by faith, we now have peace with God. through our Lord Jesus Christ. This peace means we are no longer objects of wrath, no longer children of wrath. This is the power of the gospel. Grace and peace is from our God and our Father. Those who have been transformed by the gospel are no longer children of wrath, they are now children of God. He is our Father. For those of us who believe, And when we become children, we become heirs of eternal life. Whoever believes in the Son has eternal life. That's the result of the gospel. This is the heart of the gospel. This is the non-negotiable, authoritative gospel of God. And as it brings sinners to life, we respond as Paul does here, and we say, to Him be the glory forever and ever. Amen. But we remember that Paul is writing to this church who has turned away from the heart of the gospel. Paul is writing to the church and he's reminding them of the message of the gospel. He goes on to speak about the third thing we notice, the seriousness of the gospel. He says in verse 6, I am astonished that you are so quickly deserting Him who called you into 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 we preached 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 you received, let him be accursed. For am I now seeking the approval of man or of God? Or am I trying to please man? If I were still trying to please man, I would not be a servant of Christ. Now we begin to see how important, how defining the gospel is for the church. It's seen here in the amazement, the anathema in the audience. First of all, you see Paul's amazement. He says that he is amazed, bewildered, astonished, dumbfounded, that in the place of this glorious gospel, the one true gospel, these Galatians have turned away from the graciousness of it. They've turned away from the sovereign God who called them in Christ, and they have turned to a different gospel. This is the biblical response to those who would call themselves Christians and turn to embrace a false gospel. Astonishment. Shock. Because you see, these Galatians have turned away from salvation by grace alone, through faith alone, and Christ alone, to the glory of God alone. And they've turned to a salvation that says, faith in Christ, plus our own works. Plus the keeping of the law of Moses. They've embraced a false gospel. The seriousness is seen that Paul actually says they haven't just turned away from a message. They have not just abandoned a doctrine. They have deserted God Himself. 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. The gospel is not a doctrinal issue. It's a personal issue. Through the gospel, you know God. And when you embrace a false gospel, you desert God. It should produce shock and confusion and bewilderment. And the reason is there is only one gospel. Paul clears it up. He says, I'm astonished that you are so quickly deserting Him who called you into 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. He's saying there may be many religions, there may be many leaders to follow, there may be many forms of what seems to be Christianity, but there is only one gospel. And there are some among you who are troubling you and causing you to turn away from the true gospel to what he calls a perversion of the gospel. And this is the danger for us, brothers and sisters. The greatest attack against the gospel does not come from atheists. It doesn't come from Darwinian evolutionists. It doesn't come from Muslims, or from Hindus, or from Buddhists, or from any other sect you want to name. The greatest danger and the greatest attack on the gospel comes within the church. And these men, like they did in Galatians, they sneak their way in. And they use Christian words and Christian terms and Christian ideas. And they distort the true gospel. The Galatians were not turning to pagan gods. They weren't going into the Roman temples and worshipping the pantheon of gods. They weren't becoming Satanists or atheists. They said, let's take the gospel and add one little thing to it. And as we see Paul's amazement at this, we also see Paul's anathema. He says, but even if we, that is us apostles and the brothers who are with me here, even if we apostles or an angel from heaven should preach to you a gospel contrary to the one we preach to you, let him be accursed. That is anathema. As we have said before, so now I say again, if anyone is preaching to you a gospel contrary to the one you receive, let him be accursed. This word translated accursed is the Greek word anathema, and it means set it aside and devote it to God that He may destroy it. Let it be devoted to God for damning destruction. This is how serious the gospel is. You see the severity and the primacy of the gospel. It is not a secondary issue. It's not up for debate or personal interpretation. If anyone is purposefully preaching a gospel contrary to this one, they are to be devoted to destruction. That's how seriously the church is to take the purity of the gospel and what we see all around us. is false gospels being preached. We hear the gospel of social justice, the gospel of prosperity, the gospel that preaches the goodness of man, the gospel that preaches that God loves and accepts you just the way you are, you don't need to change, the gospel that says we are all basically seeking after the same God, whether you call Him Allah, Jehovah, Jesus, or you call it enlightenment, or nirvana, or just the improving of the quality of life. Whatever it is, it's just a universal gospel open for everyone. There are also messages that claim to be the gospel that say, Jesus isn't enough. You have to be baptized. Or you have to keep the law. Or you have to pass out literature and go on missionary journeys. You have to pray five times a day towards a certain place. You have to do all the good you can. Confess to the priest. Walk the eightfold path. Call on Mary. And if you do all of this, and your good outweighs the bad, maybe God will let you in. These are false gospels. The mark of a true church of Jesus Christ is to stand on the authority of God's Word and preach the only true gospel of salvation by God's grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone, to God alone the glory. That's the gospel. The job of the church is to draw the line in the sand and say, we will not move from this gospel. We will not desert Him who called us. We will not accept or tolerate any other gospel save this one. What this means is that anything that diminishes the all-sufficiency of what Christ accomplished on the cross, or anything that adds to that sufficiency, or anything that says it is unnecessary, is damnable heresy, anathema. The reason is that false gospels will not save. And churches that accept, tolerate, and preach false gospels are no longer churches. We see that Paul also speaks here of the audience, not just his amazement, not just the anathema, but the audience. I think Paul refers to the audience because of how harsh this sounds. Does this sound harsh to you? Especially in the 21st century, the United States of America. A message like this is completely opposite of what is acceptable. You can't say that. You can't tell people they're wrong. What's wrong with you? However, that mindset, according to this passage, is the exact motivation of a false teacher and the false gospel. This passage tells us the false teacher and the false preacher preaches his false gospel because he seeks the approval of man and his greatest desire is to please the hearers. But Paul contrasts this with a true apostle and with the true gospel. He says in verse 10, Am I now seeking the approval of man or of God? Am I trying to please man? If I were trying to please man, I would not be a servant of Christ. Everything we have said so far in this series on the church leads to this point. The church is Jesus' church. He owns it. He gave us the gospel. He brought about the gospel. We are His. He is the groom. We are the bride. He is the shepherd. We are the sheep. He is the master. We are the servants. And Paul says, my audience is Christ. I seek God's approval, not the approval of man. I'm not seeking to please man. I'm seeking to please God. I'm seeking the approval of the one who called us. The audience of the gospel is God. And the preaching of the gospel is to please God. And there is only one gospel that pleases God. His gospel. Finally, the fourth thing I want us to notice here is why this matters. As we bring not only this message, but this entire series to a close, the great truth of Scripture and the reason we end here on the gospel, every aspect of the church flows directly from the gospel. The church exists because of the gospel. The church exists because the Lord Jesus Christ gave Himself up for sinners to bring them to the Father and make them His people. And His people, the sheep of His pasture, are His church. The church exists because the gospel. So if you take the gospel out, there is no church. If you put another gospel in, it is no longer a true church. The church exists because of the gospel. We see also the church exists through the gospel. That is the only thing that would bring us together here is the gospel. Some of you are very wealthy. Some of you are not so wealthy. Some of you grew up extremely conservative. Some of you grew up extremely liberal. Some of you have a preferred way of life and a certain set of beliefs and others you have... You know the one thing that brings us here, that brings the church together? The gospel! The gospel. The church exists through the gospel. And if you put another gospel in there, the church is existing around a false gospel. So it is a false church. If you take the gospel out, it's not a church at all. It's just a group of people hanging out together. The church exists through the gospel. The church also exists by the gospel. We have heard so many times the words of Christ. In response to the confession, Peter said, you are the Christ, the Son of the living God. Jesus says, on that rock, I will build my church. The church exists because of the gospel. The only reason we haven't ruined this thing yet is because Christ is the one building it. The only reason here we are almost 2,000 years after Christ and we're still here calling ourselves by His name, preaching and teaching and reading and singing His Word, is because He's building it. The church exists because the gospel, through the gospel, And the church exists by the gospel. Also, the church exists to preach the gospel. We are to take this gospel, this message of reconciliation, and preach it to one another and to the world. What we see is it's all about Christ. It's all about the glory of God. The gospel is the story of the glory of God in saving His people through the life, death and resurrection of His Son. That is the gospel. And the church in every aspect, whether it's worship, whether it's doctrine, whether it's prayer, whether it's preaching, whether it's singing, whether it's nurture, whether it's evangelism, whatever it is, the church is to be centered and built and flowing out of the gospel. When people ask you, they're looking for a denominational name, what kind of church do you go to? You say, we go to a gospel-centered, Christ-centered church. Yeah, I know that. Well, what kind of name is it? We are a gospel-centered church. Because that is the only church we find in the Bible. A gospel church. We need to be a gospel church. And as we hear about the downgrade in the culture and the downgrade within the church, The truth is, and people have been saying this for years, I don't think it's ever seemed as relevant as it is today, that we may very soon face persecution. Not just mockery or rejection or people crumbling up your gospel track and throwing it out. Not just people protesting about their right to have an abortion and people making mockeries of Christ in the street. Real persecution. And I assure you, there is only one gospel worth suffering for. Only one. There is only one Christ worth living for. And there is only one God worth dying for. That's this one. He's the only one there is. This is the only Christ there is. Any other one is a false Christ. This is the only gospel there is. Any other one is a false gospel. This is the only way for a church to be a true church. Any other church, or Christian, whatever they want to call themselves, whether they don't go to church because of all the hypocrites they say, or whether they go to the biggest church there is. Anybody who embraces a false gospel, not a true church, not a true believer. So let us here at Smith Chapel humble ourselves under the Word of God, cast ourselves upon the Spirit of God, lift high the gospel of Jesus Christ, God the Son, and do all things to the glory of God.