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All right, God's grace to you,
and I would invite you to Galatians chapter 1. Last week we started a preaching
series in the book of Galatians, and so we are going to pick up
with that. And so we find ourselves in chapter 1. When you go to the doctor, if
he finds something wrong, he has to tell you. He can't sugarcoat
it. He can't hide it. He can't lie.
If he finds something wrong, he has to tell you. Likewise,
if you take your car to a mechanic, if he finds something wrong,
he has to tell you. And you students, we have quite
a few students here, no matter what the grade or the age. You
students hand in assignments and you hand in projects. If
the teacher finds something wrong, he has to tell you. And this
kind of scenario is true in hundreds of ways in our lives. And it's
certainly true when we come together as a church, whether it's our
church or any other church, if there's something wrong as a
church, we need to be told. And that's what's going on here
in the book of Galatians. All six chapters, Paul is dealing
with something wrong. He's telling these churches in
Galatia what's wrong, and he's calling them back to where they
need to be. And even as we read the first
12 verses of Galatians 1, we will see that something's wrong
and that Paul is addressing it. And so this is God's word, Galatians
1, beginning in verse 1. We'll read all the way to verse
12. 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 brethren who are with me, to the churches of Galatia,
Grace to you and peace from God the Father and our Lord Jesus
Christ, who gave himself for our sins, that he might deliver
us from this present evil age according to the will of our
God and Father. To him be glory forever and ever. Amen. I marvel that you are turning
away so soon from him who called you in the grace of Christ to
a different gospel, which is not another, but there are some
who trouble you and want to pervert the gospel of Christ. But even
if we or an angel from heaven preach any other gospel to you
than that what we preach to you, let them be accursed. As I have
said before, so now I say again, if anyone preaches any other
gospel to you than what you have received, let them be anathema. For do I now persuade men or
God? Or do I seek to please men? For
if I still pleased men, I would not be the bondservant of Christ. But I make known to you, brethren,
that the gospel which was preached by me is not according to man. For I neither received it from
man, nor was I taught it, but it came through the revelation
of Jesus Christ. Amen. This is the hearing of
God's word. Let's pray. Our Father, we pray
that you would bless us. You bless us in so many ways,
and now we pray that you would bless us yet again. We pray that
you would bless us spiritually. Bless us with what you say. Bless us with your promises.
Give us understanding. Awaken us that we might receive
what you say. And be glorified and bring your
good to us, we pray. Help us, Holy Spirit. Father,
we cry out to you, and we do so in Jesus Christ, our Lord. Amen. I suppose one of the hardest
things in the world is to try to tell somebody that they're
wrong. It's never easy. And probably all of us have been
in that situation, whether the giving end or on the receiving
end, but it's never easy to tell someone that they're wrong, especially
in our society. Because if you dare to tell somebody
that they're wrong, you could be blacklisted, you could be
called a hater, you could be called proud and unloving for
pointing out something that's wrong. Again, especially in our society,
because nobody's wrong and everybody has to be right. And so if you
talk about what is wrong, you're very offensive. Of course, there's
a tactful way to do it, and there's a right way to do it, But the fact of the matter is,
is that in our society there will be people that get it wrong.
But not just other people, there are times when each of us get
it wrong. I've been wrong before and you
have been wrong before. It hasn't been the first time
and it won't be the last time for every one of us. And so there are times when we
have wrong actions and wrong words, and we have wrong perspectives,
and we have wrong attitudes and wrong feelings, and we have wrong
beliefs. And biblically, when we talk
about wrong things, we're basically talking about sin. And the fact of the matter is,
is that if we're doing wrong, we have to be told. Now, there
are times when something that's wrong isn't a big deal. So if
my little 10-year-old son comes up and he shows me his hands
and says, Dad, I'm holding a quarter. Which hand is it? And if I pick
his left, but it's actually in his right, I'm wrong, but it's
not a big deal. There are a lot of things that
aren't a big deal about being wrong. But on the flip side of
that, there are plenty of things that you can't afford to get
wrong that are a big deal. This is a pretty emotional story,
but 10, 11 years ago at our old church, there was a young man
and his wife. They were in their 20s. They
had two little kids. And she got sick, and she went
to the doctor. The doctor prescribed medicine.
She went to the drugstore, got medication. She took that medication
and died. Come to find out that they gave
her the wrong prescription. Now that's a big deal. But if you go a little bit further,
if you go a step further here in the book of Galatians, Paul
was with these people for three years, serving and loving on
them, teaching and preaching the word of God to them, and
for three years, He was planting churches and establishing churches,
and then he left after three years of ministry, and within
a year, in just a few months, he found out that something was
wrong. You look in verses six and seven,
you see that these people so quickly were departing from the
gospel, that they were actually twisting and mutilating the gospel. And Paul writes this whole book,
and he says, it's a big deal. Because if you get the gospel
wrong, if you get salvation wrong, you not only perish, but you
perish forever. And when Paul is talking about
the gospel, he's talking about the only thing that can cure
you from your sins, from all your wrong, and the only thing
that can cure you from death, it's the gospel. And if we don't
have the true unadulterated gospel, then we have a misdiagnosis,
we have a false cure apart from the gospel, and it's deadly.
And so Paul, he writes, if you will, a polemic. It's just a
fancy way of saying that the book of Galatians is a rationale. In the book of Galatians, Paul
is arguing for the gospel with these people. Years ago, R.C. Sproul wrote a book called Getting
the Gospel Right. Because the fact of the matter
is, there are so many people that get the gospel wrong. These
Galatians were getting the gospel wrong, and it's detrimental.
And there are people in churches that get the gospel wrong. There
are people all over this world that get the message of salvation
wrong. And so Paul here contends, he advocates
for getting the gospel right. If you want to get the gospel
right, it's the book of Galatians. Especially when so many have
it wrong. And so let me ask you, do you know the gospel? Gospel literally
means good news. Do you know what the good news
is? There are a lot of things that could be good news. Your
team winning, inheriting money, losing weight, clean bill of
health, lots of things. But above that, what's the good
news? Do you know the good news, the gospel? And it's not simply
that Jesus died on Calvary, that's the beginning, but it's so much
more. How do you unpack that? What
does it mean that Jesus died on Calvary? Lots of people sing
that today and they talk that today in churches, but what does
it mean that Jesus died on Calvary? I mean, if you think about it,
a lot of us could wax eloquent and we could have conversations
with each other about movies and about music and about sports
and about politics and about a million things. We could go
on and on and talk, but what about the gospel? Could we hold
a conversation about the gospel with each other? Do we know the contours and the
facets and the shapes and colors of the gospel? The gospel is
not one-dimensional. It's beautiful and deep and rich. And not only do we know the gospel,
but do we believe the gospel. It's not enough to have it with
your head, but do you embrace it by faith? The good news. And not only that, but do you
treasure the gospel? And I say that because in Galatians
6, Paul talks about how he boasts in the cross. He boasts in Jesus
Christ. And what he is saying there is
that he talks highly of Jesus. What is it when somebody boasts?
They talk highly of themselves. But Paul boasts he treasures
Jesus Christ and speaks highly of him. that the best thing about
Paul wasn't Paul, it was Jesus. And so he boasts in the cross. Do you know the gospel so much
that that becomes your highest treasure, that you boast in it? And that's what Paul, he preaches
the gospel for five chapters, and in chapter six, he boasts
in that gospel. He speaks highly of that gospel.
Now, I was a teacher, and from time to time with my students,
after a concept, after a story, I would say, OK, why don't you
summarize that thing in one word? Capture it all in one word. And
I know that's quite challenging. And sometimes to my kids, I say,
OK, give it to me in one word. And I've kind of done that with
all of you. Boil it down. Give it to me in
one word. And so how can we boil it down?
How can we capture the gospel? How can we capture Christianity
in one word? All these biblical words, look
at a whole book of them. How can we pull it together in
one word? What a question. And I'm going to give you the
answer here from what others have said. And I'm going to give
you the answer here because it seems quite apparent from the
Bible. what the essence of Christianity
is. And it's a word that Paul uses
a hundred times throughout his New Testament writings. He uses
it a hundred times. And in the book of Galatians,
he uses this word seven times. So you see that it's obviously
a big word. And it's actually the word that
you find in the first few lines of Galatians 1. He uses it a
hundred times. He uses it seven times here in
this book. He uses it right in the opening.
And the way that you can summarize Christianity in one word is that
first word in verse 3. That's Christianity. It's grace. In verse 3, he talks about grace. And what's beautiful about this
is that he begins the letter with grace, and in the very last
verse of this book, in Galatians 6.18, if you fast forward there,
you see that he ends the book with grace. He begins and ends,
like bookends. He begins and ends with grace,
which is to say everything else is in a context of grace. And when you look at Paul's 12
other letters, 13 in all, every single one of them begin and
end the way Galatians do. He begins with grace and he ends
with grace, and everything contained within is grace. And even when you look at John
chapter one, what does it say there? The law came by Moses,
but grace came by Jesus. When he came, he came with grace. The way you want to walk away
this morning is with this understanding. This whole book is a word of
God's grace. Christianity is not, oh, I can't
do this and I can't do that. It's grace. Christianity is ultimately,
I can't go to hell because of grace. That's one thing I don't
want to do. And so we have then a religion
of grace. When we write letters, it could
be cards, postcards. It could be emails and texts.
Oftentimes, there are certain formats that are customary and
that we're used to. And so when you and I write letters
to people, we start off by saying, hi, how are you doing? I hope
it's going well. Hopefully, this finds you in
good health. We say those kind of things.
Pretty typical. Well, in the ancient world, they had a customary
way of opening up their letters as well. And they would basically
say, cera to you. Cera is the Greek
word meaning happiness. They would say cera to you, happiness
to you. So if you were living 2,000 years
ago on Paul's day, you open up a letter, and it would basically
say to you, cera, happiness to you. And Paul borrows from that
everyday format that was customary for him. He borrows from his
culture, but he tweaks it. He makes it a distinctly Christian
greeting here. He doesn't say chara to you,
happiness to you. He says charis, which is the
Greek word grace. He tweaks it from happiness to
grace. And in doing so, he cranks it
up and makes it distinctly Christian. Everybody's talking about happiness.
Christians talk about grace, which really is the fountain
of happiness. And so you see here, not chara, but charis,
grace, he says. And that's wonderful because so many times in our lives, we
have to work hard. You have to work hard for what
you have. You have to work hard in school and in college. You
have to work hard in your career. You have to work hard at home
and in your relationships. Some of you, when you come to
church, you work hard in your ministry. We have to work hard
in so many facets. We have to labor to get what
we have. And if we're not careful, we
can take that Jodeo Christian work ethic into our religion. If we're not careful, we can
take a work attitude into Christianity. And just like all the other places
in my life I have to work, work, work, when it comes to Christianity,
if we're not careful, we can start to think I have to work,
work, work. I have to work for favor with God. I have to work
for salvation. I have to work to get to heaven. I have to work to merit something
and to be rewarded by God. Because after all, I have to
work for my boss, and I have to work in every other way. I have to
work for a trophy. And so we could think that we have to work
to gain from God. But that's not what Paul says
here. And I suppose that The world offers grace and it offers
peace. Because actually there in verse
three, you see not one word, but two distinctly Christian
words. Martin Luther said that the summary
of Christianity is found in verse three. The summary of Christianity
is found in these two words, grace and peace. And I suppose, When it comes
to grace, that the world has its offerings,
its varieties, its versions of grace and peace. So you get on
the internet or you turn on the TV and you get its version of
grace and peace. You go to the mall. You go shopping,
you go on holiday, you go on vacation. When you frequent places
in this world, they will offer you their versions of grace and
peace. But Paul here is talking about
a deeper, richer, everlasting grace and peace. Not as the world
gives, but he's talking about a true grace and peace. I know this has happened to you,
I'm sure. When somebody gets something new and they show it
to you and you like it, one of the first things you say is,
where did you get that? Where'd you get it? I want to go get
one. Where'd you get it? We do that all the time. Well, when
Paul here is talking about these twins, these two words, grace
and peace, where do we get it? And again, the world has its
versions, but where do we get this grace and peace? And it's
not by working for it. Paul says here, It's not by our
own hearts, our own endeavors, it's not by our own works, it's
not by our own ministries, it's not by our own charities, it's
not by baptism, it's not by giving to the offering, it's not by
Holy Communion, that grace and peace don't come from any of
those things. When Paul says grace and peace,
he doesn't say from the world, or from your works, or from your
heart of hearts. But when he says it there in
verse 3, he says grace and peace from God our Father and the Lord
Jesus Christ. It is the Father and the Son
that are the source of this. that if you're going to have
true and lasting grace and peace, there is only one place. Everything
else is a lesser form. Everything else is a counterfeit.
Everything else just won't cut it in your life. Grace and peace from God, our
father and the Lord Jesus Christ. And you see in verse three for
the second time, he did it in verse one and now in verse three,
does it the same thing? He puts the father, God, the
father and the Lord Jesus Christ together. He lays them out as
parallels. That here you have, for the second
time in our passage, the Father and the Son, and that there is
a co-equality, that there is a oneness between the Father
and the Son. This is the beginning of a Trinitarian
passage. You have the Father and the Son.
You have here the deity, the divinity, the godship of Jesus
Christ. He is there paralleled with God
the Father, and he is called the Lord. That just like in the
Old Testament, God is called the Lord, he's called Adonai,
all over the Old Testament he is the Lord God. Now that divine
title, Lord God, is applied to Jesus Christ because he is Adonai,
because he is the Lord God the Son. He is paralleled here with
the Father and the Son. And in that day with Paul, it
would have been Caesar that is Lord of Rome. But here, it's
Jesus that is Lord of all. He is King of Kings. You name the man, Jesus is number
one. This is his divinity. the Father
and the Son, and as such, it's the Father and the Son that are
the fountain, that from the Father and the Son comes grace and peace. So if you're gonna have it, it's
only gonna come from God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.
And without the Father and the Son, you simply won't have it. You think about your life, don't
you need grace and peace? You think about the world and
the things that we live in, don't you need grace and peace? Things
that are going on in your body and in your mind and in your
temptations and the 10,000 things that trouble you this week. From the Father and the Son comes
grace and peace. This is a call to action, this
is a call to come and believe it, to call and ask God who is
the source to give us grace and peace in our marriages, in the
rearing of our children, but it's more than that. We all know as you travel around,
you go to the stores, you go in the neighborhoods, we all
know that it's Halloween and I'm not condoning it, I'm not
advocating it. But we all know it's Halloween,
and when you look at those scenes, you inevitably see monsters. Halloween monsters. And as scary
and ugly as they might look, we know that they're not real.
Their decorations, they're not real. But it was Martin Luther
that actually, in light of verse three, he talked about two monsters
that are real. They're hideous. And Luther said, the first monster
that torments us is our sins. Do you know that because of your
sin, you're going to die? The payment of sin is death?
Sin is ruinous. It is devastating. You live your life long enough,
if you continue in sin, it'll torment you. And the end result
is death. That is just the fruit of sin. You plant sin in your life. Galatians
says here, be not deceived. God is not mocked. Whatever you
sow, you will reap. You sow apple seeds, you will
get apples. You sow sin, you inevitably will
get death. And so Martin Luther is aware
of this, and he says that sin is a tormenting monster, lying,
cheating, stealing, pride, selfishness, adultery, lust, all of its forms. It's ruinous, it's a monster,
and it's real. That monster will pull you down.
First monster is our sin. And Luther referred to a second
tormenting monster, and it's a guilty conscience. That not
only do we have a bad record, not only do we have sin, but
then we have the shame and the guilt and we feel horribly, at
least we should. that an offended, wounded, guilty
conscience is another tormenting monster. It's ugly and it roars
at us. Not only have we done wrongly,
but we feel it. There are things in our lives,
in our closets, that we would never share because it would
make us guilty. It would make us scary if we
told. There are things in our lives
that we are absolutely ashamed about. Things that we've done
that have been hurtful, things that we have done that we can
never take back. And here you are decades later
and it still bothers you. And so Luther talked about these
two monsters. of sin and a guilty conscience. Think about that. What answers
to this? What is the solution to sin and a guilty conscience? It's grace that forgives and
takes away the torment of our sins. It is grace in Jesus Christ
that pardons our iniquities, that casts our sins away, that
washes all of our sins and does not charge them any longer against
us. It is this word in verse 3, grace,
that answers to the monster of sin. And it is grace that devours
the monster of sin and defeats our sin. And it is peace that
answers to a troubled conscience. That by grace, in Jesus Christ,
God says to your troubled soul, shh. And he quiets you. because it is forgiven in Christ. Never to be remembered against
you anymore. And if God before you, who can be against you?
Grace cancels out your sin and peace answers to a troubled soul. As you can see how these are
such beautiful words in Christianity, grace and peace, and they come
from heaven. They come from God, the Father
and the Son. It was Henry David Thoreau. Probably
some of you remember him from literature class, Walden's Pond,
Transcendentalism. He lived as a writer and a philosopher,
Henry David Thoreau. He lived back in the 1800s on
his deathbed. He was just my age. He was 44
years old on his deathbed. His family was so burdened. And you would be. A 44-year-old
on their deathbed, you would be troubled. And so they sent
the minister to Thoreau. And the minister came and said,
now, David, now will you make peace with God? And Thoreau said, I didn't know
I needed peace with God. I didn't know I was in war with
him. There are a lot of people out
there that don't realize they need peace with God. that as
the Bible says, there's hostility, there's enmity, that there is
a problem, a rift between us and God. It doesn't matter if you say,
I don't have a problem with God, I'm not at war with God, I have
no problem, me and God are cool, I like God, I have no problem
with God. You may not have a problem with God, but if you live in
sin, if you continue in sin, then he has a problem with you. If you lie, if you cheat and
steal, if you commit fornication, whatever you want to say, think
of the Ten Commandments. If you live that way, If you
have unconfessed sins, if you are not calling upon the grace
and peace of God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ, if you
don't have Jesus as your Savior, if he has never pardoned your
iniquity, if you've never cried out to him for mercy, if you've never repented from your
sins, If Christ is not Lord, if Christ is not your Savior,
then God is a problem. God is a problem with you. In your rebellion, there is a
war between you and God. There's only one mediator, there's
only one bridge, there's only one peace between you and God,
and it's graciously given to you through Jesus Christ. And so we have here grace and
peace. And when he says peace here,
for the Jews, and Paul was a Jew, he's dealing with lots of Jews,
even in Galatia, and when Paul refers to peace, he's referring
to the Jewish concept of peace, which a common greeting for those
people throughout Old Testament history, throughout Jewish history,
they would greet each other by saying, peace to you, and the
other guy would say, and to you, peace. They would constantly
say, shalom, peace. Shalom to you, and to you, shalom.
The Jews would often talk about peace. The word shalom means
well-being. It refers to wellness. The word
shalom refers to when everything is in the right place. When all
of it lines up, that's peace. You know, when you look in your
life, you may not have everything line up. There may not be wellness
in your body. There may not be wellness in
your wallet. There may not be wellness at home. There may not
be wellness in your country. There may not be wellness all
around you. But because of grace from God
through Jesus Christ, we can have peace, shalom, and we can
say it may not be well with my body and it may not be well in
10,000 ways in my life, it is well with my soul. because grace heals the sin and
death of the soul and takes away the war with God and brings you
to peace. And so as we would close, just
a few things. What's wrong with these Galatians?
They're in danger of walking away from God's grace and peace. And if we're not careful, that
could be true of us. In a few minutes, we'll watch a baptism.
In a few minutes, we'll go down and have lunch. In a few minutes,
we'll have a business meeting. In a few minutes, we'll go on
our way, go shopping, go home, watch TV, go back to our jobs,
go back to school. We'll go back to 10,000 things
in our lives. And like these Galatians, they
were walking away from grace and peace. And if you're not
careful, that can happen to you. Having heard of God's grace and
peace and how it forgives sins and how it gives ease to your
troubled soul, having heard these things, in a few minutes, if
you're not careful, It can just go out your ears, and you can walk away from it. We're about to witness Franklin's
baptism. This is not giving him grace
and peace. This is not giving him salvation
and favor. This is not earning for Franklin
heaven. Oh, heaven. Franklin's going
to heaven. After all, I was at his baptism. No. Franklin is not being baptized
for grace and peace, but because he already has this grace and
peace from God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. It is
a gift if he just receives it by faith. That's why he's being
baptized. This baptism is a confession. It's a testimony. If you want
a sermon, he's about to preach it. It is Franklin saying to
the whole world, I believe on the grace and peace of God in
Jesus Christ and him alone. And if anybody doesn't believe
that, they have no business of being baptized. But if you believe
that, then you have every reason to make that public in baptism. What was this baptism about?
God's grace and peace in his life through Jesus. That's what
you need to know. Grace that forgives and peace
with God through that grace. And notice the order. It's not
peace, then grace, but it's grace that brings peace. It's not peace,
peace, peace, peace. What can I do for peace? No,
it's grace that renders the peace. You know what? The picture here
in verse three with grace and peace. Think about grace and
peace. Is the picture here of grace and peace like a puddle?
I just saw a puddle yesterday. Is the picture of grace and peace
like a puzzle, puddle? Think about a puddle, small,
shallow, murky, and by tomorrow it's gone. Is that the picture
of grace and peace? Small, shallow, murky, and by tomorrow it's gone.
Or is the picture here more like a river? Deep, broad, flowing. The river of God's grace and
peace are flowing. Notice the text. There's action,
movement. It's not stale. It's not stagnant. It's not like
a puddle. There is a river of God's grace and peace from heaven
to earth. Notice there, it's to you. It's
moving to you. Grace and peace to you. It's a river that flows. Get
into it. Get in the way. Let it flow to
you. Let it wash over you. Let God
give grace and peace. If you would call on the river
to flow to you, then it would. It's not a puddle, but a river. And it's to you. Don't walk away
saying, oh, the preacher was talking about grace and peace,
and it's to sit on a shelf somewhere. It's to kind of sit in verse
three. No, grace and peace is to flow to you. It's to you. And isn't this really kind of a map?
Isn't this kind of a template or a blueprint? God deals with
us in grace and peace. And how should we deal with each
other? Grace that brings peace. That's how God is to us, and
that's how it is to be to each other. And if you wanna know
what grace and peace look like, if you want the expanded version
of verse three, if you want the expanded version of grace and
peace, look at verse four. Christ, who gave himself for
our sins, that's called grace, he gave himself for our sins. that he might deliver us from
this present evil age. The rescue from this present
evil age is called peace. Verse four is all about grace
and peace. So how are you gonna leave this service today? The
way you came? We're calling on God to let that
grace and peace flow to you through Jesus Christ. God bless it to us. through Jesus
Christ, amen.
Christianity in One Word
Series Galatians
| Sermon ID | 1016222243571809 |
| Duration | 39:04 |
| Date | |
| Category | Sunday Service |
| Bible Text | Galatians 1:1-12 |
| Language | English |
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