interspersed amongst us with this Sermon on the Mount stuff as well as he has opportunity. Let's pray. We thank you, Father, for the day that you've given us for this evening, for the opportunity to come together and to worship and to hear your word. Lord, I pray that as I speak and as I teach that my flesh would not inhibit the truth Indeed, it cannot, but that you would be gracious to allow us to see it by your spirit, and that we would embrace it, we would understand it, we would apply it in such a way, Lord, that our joy would be full in Christ Jesus. We continue to pray for our church family, for all the needs that we have among us. You know us, you know the depths of our hearts and minds, and so, Father, we thank you that you are the Lord that provides. We thank you that you have provided eternal life and eternal hope and assurance through Jesus Christ, and it's in his name we pray. Amen. All right. We are going to do a reading through Galatians, and we started last week with a little introduction here, and we are not really formatting this in such a way that it would be as thorough as exposition. I'm just reminding us of what it looks like. But at the same time, it's still going to be beneficial so that we can get through the book. I've also decided that I may, at times, as I move into some of the Colossian stuff that we're supposedly continually reading, and I'll pastorally give some insight there. I may throw a couple of those Colossians in since I've already done two. I might as well do it. So just to give you an update on that. Here we are. Let's start reading verse one. Paul, an not from man 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'm astonished that you were so quickly deserting Him who called you in the grace of Christ and turning to a different gospel. Not that there is another gospel, 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 preach to you, let him be accursed. As we've 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 God? Or am I trying to please man? If I were still trying to please man, I would not be a slave 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. For you heard of my former life in Judaism, how I persecuted the church of God violently and tried to destroy it. And I was advancing in Judaism beyond many of my own age among my people. So extremely zealous was I for the traditions of my fathers. But when he who had set me apart before I was born and had and he called me by his grace, was pleased to reveal his son to me in order that I might preach him among the Gentiles. I did not immediately consult with anyone, nor did I go to Jerusalem to those who were apostles before me. But I went away into Arabia and I returned again to Damascus. Then after three years I went up to Jerusalem to visit Cephas and remained with him fifteen days. But I saw none of the other apostles except James, the Lord's brother. And what I am writing to you before God I do not lie. Then I went into the regions of Syria and Cilicia. and I was still unknown in person to the churches of Judea that are in Christ. They only were hearing it said, he who used to persecute us is now preaching the faith he once tried to destroy, and they glorified God because of me." Now look at this little resume. Now Paul gives another resume to the Philippians. He gives the resume about how he was a Jew of all Jews, born from the tribe of Benjamin, circumcised on the eighth day, given the name of Saul, the first king of Israel. And he was a zealous person after the law, indeed a Pharisee. A Pharisee was a Jewish reformer to bring back the right worship, to bring back the Word of God as the authority of Israel. By the time Paul is in that place, to be a Pharisee was to be an unbeliever. To be in Judaism was to be an unbeliever. And here he is, on his missionary journeys, going to the regions of Galatia, to the assemblies there, preaching the gospel, and God is saving his elect out of those people, out of the world. And he leaves, and the Judaizers come in. Now last week when I talked about this, I sort of entitled the message, uh, uh, anger because of a false gospel, a holy anger. Now some commentators disagree with my assessment that this is an angry letter because they cannot fathom that anger is not sin. But Paul himself actually says to the letter to the Ephesians, be angry, but sin not in your anger. Do not let the sun go down on your anger unless you give the devil a foothold and When I preach that specific thing some years ago, I preach it this way, is that anger, if it is that which makes God angry, is justified, is righteous indignation. But the way we understand anger in our flesh is not the way God exhibits anger. For God does not walk in anger in any way or express anger in any way that's not decisive. So where I may get upset and have to withhold words or withhold hands or withhold funny faces, God, if He says anything or reveals anything in anger, it is decisive because He is not controlled by emotion. So as we are angry, as Paul was angry, I'm sure he didn't hear of the Judaizers in Galatia and then immediately pop off a text message or a Facebook post to tell them how terrible they were and how sorry they were and how wicked they were. No, that is sinful. It is a lack of wisdom in our fleshliness even when we are angry about that which angers God, when we respond in an immediate state without wisely waiting, praying, and asking, how did Paul write? I'm writing to you before God and I do not lie. And that's everything, not just what he's saying there, that's the whole letter. We need to take and apply that. If we don't get any pragmatism out of this letter, let us get that. that though we may assert in some way that Paul just got up off his couch and wrote this letter and shoved it by camel to Galatia, it was probably a very prayerful and well-thought-out writing. Now, of course, higher critics may say, well, you just don't understand. The grammar shows something different. I disagree, because I believe that if it is indignation from a righteous point of view, that it is the same attitude and heart that God would have. So I believe if God gave him these words, and that's what the whole first 10 verses really deal with. This is God's word. This is God's gospel. This is God's message. This is a letter from God. Then I seriously doubt that there was any part of Paul's flesh involved in writing this letter. And when I say flesh, I meant his sinfulness. None whatsoever. So some people say, well, he's astonished. Look at verse 6. I am astonished. I'm flabbergasted. I am so perplexed. I am puzzled in such a major way that you've deserted so quickly Him who called you in the grace of Christ. Now we'll just leave it there for a second. So of course in Paul's anger against false Gospels, not against the Galatians, it's against false Gospels, it is It is something that he, what does he normally do here? I mean, when Paul writes a letter, he introduces himself, he says, grace and peace from the Lord Jesus Christ and God the Father, somewhere in that construction. And then the very next thing he always does in all of his letters is what? I thank God for you. Praise be to God. Even Corinth, I'm thankful for you. And he gives what, it's hard for me to get away from these two terms, he gives commendation before he gives condemnation. Not for Galatia. Of course, this is Paul's first letter. Maybe he hadn't fit the pattern yet. I don't think this is the first thing Paul ever wrote. You don't become a Pharisee and sit on the Sanhedrin having not written. But I believe that the passion and the zeal for and against, for the truth and against false gospels is so important that Paul does not want to take away the severity of why he's writing. So instead of being thankful, they have to wait for the Thanksgiving, don't they? They have to wait for it. Matter of fact, you get over there in chapter 2, then in chapter 3, then in chapter 5, you start seeing Paul say he's thankful. He lets his gratitude be to God and then he goes straight into a rebuke. I'm astonished. I'm amazed. I cannot believe what I'm hearing. I cannot believe what is happening here. Now let me explain something to you. In verse 6, it shows us the nature of what was happening. Paul is not astonished and angry at the message of the false gospel. In as much as he's angry at the fact they're listening to it. That's what he's upset about. Now let's put that in our pipe and smoke it for a few minutes. What does it look like in our present day with many people who defend the faith and they are angry and belligerent with everybody who has a false gospel. But yet, they make no distinction between that anger and belligerence with the anger and belligerence they may have with the saints who follow in some sense a false gospel at times. Now, I'm gonna get away from what you might be thinking. You might be thinking, well, Tippins is gonna just sort of lay it out there and say it's okay to be confused by a false gospel. No, it's not. There are many areas of doctrine that we can be confused with, but there is a difference in doctrinal confusion and a false gospel. A false gospel, as I said last week and as I say almost every time someone asks me what it is, is to take away from or add to the doctrine of Christ. Who is He? What did He do? Where did He come from? What did He accomplish and for whom? All of those and many more comprised the teaching of who Jesus is, comprised the reality of the proclamation of the gospel of sovereign grace and the gospel of free grace, the gospel of Jesus Christ. This good news about what God the Son has accomplished and who it is for and how it is obtained and all of this. There is no room for us to have another gospel and say we believe the gospel. And that's what Paul is writing about. That's what he's writing about. And his anger is not that there is another gospel, because he's not going to stop that, is he? The whole of the religious world, as a majority, will have a false gospel. And I'm not even talking about the cults and world religions. I'm talking about what we would say would be Christianity, evangelical, Protestantism. We most have a false gospel. But yet, we can't be all up in arms about that every time we hear it because we would never be able to find peace, instruction, unity, fellowship. That's right. None of that. And He's not upset that some people are believing it. He's also not upset that there are charlatans preaching the true gospel. As a matter of fact, we see what Paul says in Philippians, there were some that took advantage of his imprisonment and began to mimic his message so that they can make money on it. But he told the disciples and the church of Philippi, he said, y'all let them preach because they're mimicking the truth that I preach. So Christ has proclaimed, what a dumb bunch of fools. Let them preach it, because it's right. However, had it been wrong, He would have said, no, stop this stuff. They are not authentic. So there's a lot of things in the way of application that just sort of swells around in our hearts and minds. But specifically now, look at verse 6 again. I'm astonished that you are so quickly deserting Deserting. What are they deserting? What does it mean to desert something? Put out a cake? Put out some snacks? No. To leave it. To abandon it. To stop approving of it. To consider it no longer valid. When you desert something, you leave that thing and you go someplace else. So you are deserting. And look what Paul says. Paul doesn't even deal with doctrinal things here explicitly. He does later. But this is the first punch to the gut of the Christians of Galatia. 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. So see that for a second. But keep in mind, if we just leave it there and we don't look at this holistically, this letter, we don't remember what he says in verses 3 and 4 and 5, we may think that Paul's so upset he's cursing the church. He's not. Paul does not reject the true believers of Galatia. Paul rejects the ones who believe the false gospel. That means, beloved, that there were some professing Christians of that day in that region who, because of the influence and the preaching of the Judaizers, were believing the gospel of the Judaizers. Did you hear that? And Paul sets the record straight. So when he says, I'm astonished that you were so quickly, he's not talking about all of them. He's talking about those that are. Simple grammar in the English. Those that are. You who are so quickly deserting. And if we're one body and half of us are deserting the gospel, then we're deserting the gospel. There's a problem. Not everybody was guilty of the sin of incest in Corinth. Yet the church was guilty of the sin of incest. Why? Because they're one body. And they weren't doing anything about it. They weren't willing to say what needed to be done and do the hard thing because they just didn't want to get in it. And if Paul teaches harshly about the discipline of someone in grievous public sin, how much more serious is it for those who spurn the Son of God by receiving and believing a false gospel? You want to know who is and who is not a believer? Listen to their gospel. Don't watch their lives because you may catch them on a bad day. You may catch them in a bad week. You may sneak up on them and they say an ugly word. Ask them what they believe. Ask them where their hope is. Ask them, how are you righteous before the Father? And what is your assurance of that righteousness? What is the good news of Jesus? Let that come out of their mouths and ring true. But these Galatians were being inundated and troubled by false teachers who were not perverting the truth or twisting the truth. they were adding to the truth, and I emphasize that a lot. And I'm going to emphasize that for the remainder of our time in this letter, because I want you to see that the simple gospel, the simple grace of God, is the only truth. And that when God saves His people with the gospel, He cannot save people with another gospel. Now see, that makes sense, doesn't it? Does it make sense to say something like that? It makes sense. And as I spoke yesterday in our Hebrews class for our high school students, we have a really hard time recognizing or putting ourselves in the shoes of first century Jewish people. Or what it must have been like to grow up in a culture that's thousands of years old in its religious practices. with the oracles of God, and these great men of God, these priests and teachers, rabbis, and all of these high priests who every year would do all this religious, bloody, nasty work to show the severity of the righteousness of God in justice and wrath. in order that it may point to the good news of all of this is that Christ would go into the holy places, give Himself and His blood for His holy people, and then be raised to life and ascended to the Father as a mediator of the one true covenant. God saves through that gospel. Faith comes through hearing that gospel. Guess what? Faith doesn't come through hearing a false gospel. God will not regenerate in the moment, in the season of a false gospel. So some people have argued with me through the years, well, you know, all those evangelistic approaches and strategies, God used it. No, He didn't. If I tell you the way you know that you know that you know that you have eternal life is because you stepped down here, then your hope is that you stepped out in good faith. Your hope is that you said the right words in good obedience. Your hope is that you put down your cigarettes, and put down your beer, and put down your cuss words, and got rid of all the girls that you used to date who did the same thing, and you put up all your car magazines, and you stop going to football games, and all the transformation of your life, and your front row, or your back row Baptist, that might be the more holy place, the back row Baptist, but you're here every time the doors are open, And that's the majority of our culture. Or worse, they get to the place where they think that they made the right choice in order to be saved, and so their hope and their assurance is in the choice they made. I think I made the right choice in the shoes I bought. They feel pretty good. Two days later, what happens? You ever bought a bad pair of shoes? Because they were on sale, name brand you couldn't pronounce, you thought, this is pretty good for three bucks, let me see. And uh-uh, I ordered a pair a couple of years ago, some steel-toed slip-on tennis shoes. That don't even sound right, does it? I mean, that would be great to work in the yard in, your feet could breathe. It'd be like steel-toed flip-flops. And I put them on, they were like $5. I put them on my feet, walked around the house, went outside, Started bleeding. I mean, I just almost immediately, what's going on? Because the steel toe rubbed my feet raw. Well, now I got to send these back. Got to send these back. I made the wrong choice. But I was so sincere when I chose them from Amazon. They looked good. The reviews were all awesome. The pictures were great. Start matching what I'm seeing with what I'm reading. It doesn't match up. Boy, was I sincere. Did my choice and my sincerity have anything to do with the outcome of the quality of those shoes? No. Just like our choice and our sincerity will have nothing to do with the quality of our eternal life. Because I may choose and be sincere today, but tomorrow I may have a really bad day and I may not make the right choice. And that's another thing that people don't understand is a false gospel. It's another gospel. The Gospel of Decisionism, the Gospel of Sincerity, the Gospel of Works, the Gospel of Public Service, the Gospel of Church Attendance, the Gospel of Baptism, the Gospel of Membership, the Gospel of Ministry. I've never met a pastor tell me he was lost. What do you mean I'm lost? I've been in the pastorate 30 years. But what is the Gospel, my friend? Well, you know, when people say that, And it's atypical for them to say, well, you know what that means? They're trying to make it up. And I will say this to you, that in the last year in our area, I won't tell you what town it is, I've had a pastor who'd been pastoring for over 35 years, and I just asked him, what is the gospel? And he gave me the strangest, most convoluted string of run-on sentences that made no sense, biblically, that I've ever heard. So are you sure you have eternal life? Yep, I've been in the ministry 35 plus years. That's the gospel of being in the ministry. Just like Paul was dealing with the gospel of circumcision. It's not good news. You want to add something to the gospel of grace? It's no longer grace. You want to see a response to the gospel of grace? It's no longer grace. It's works. It's earned. By grace, you have been saved. See, salvation is of the work of God. It's a merciful act for His people that we, in spite of our ability and our inability, in spite of our righteousness or our wickedness, we are saved by His mercy. And He's justified in that and He can justify His people because Jesus Christ pays the penalty for their sins. And so Paul was upset with the Christians of Galatia who were all of a sudden falling for this false gospel and he wants to defend the truth. He wants to protect the sheep and he wants to fleece the false converts. You have to remember that. There will be a sermon one day. You are quickly deserting. Him who called you. I always get ahead of where I am in the text. I say a bunch of stuff and there it is. But the calling. What is this calling? Jesus Christ who calls you. God who calls you. The Spirit who calls you. Now if you remember what we, maybe week 50 something, 54, 64, I can't remember exactly, but we spent many weeks in Romans chapter 8. And I read that and taught that in a reading pattern, like I'm doing this, contextually, without systematizing it as the Ordo Salutis, or the Order of Salvation. Because all of those things are true and absolute in the context of believers at all times. And the promises are there. So these qualities are there, these promises are there, and if you look those whom He foreknew, He predestined, He called, He justified, He glorified. The call is the work of God the Spirit with no means What do you mean by no means? The gospel has to be heard. Absolutely. But I can preach the gospel to someone today and God may not save them until tomorrow. But He's not going to save them today and then they hear the gospel for the first time tomorrow. That's impossible. Faith comes by hearing the words of Christ. How are they going to know? How are they going to call out on the one they have not already believed? This is Romans 10, 7, 10, 10. They cannot call on the one they have not already believed. What's the calling? When Rome is taking your head because you proclaim Jesus as Lord, not Caesar. That's the context. They can't call out to the one they've never believed, and they cannot believe on the one that they've never heard, and they cannot hear unless someone preaches, blessed are the feet of those who preach the gospel of peace. Faith comes from hearing, hearing from the word of God, or from the words of Christ. That's the exact literal translation. So this call. Some of you Christians in Galatia, Some among you are deserting the gospel, but moreover you are deserting the one who called you in the grace of Christ. The calling of the Lord Jesus is eternal life. Remember John 10? Goodness, I could go through John 6, 7, 8, 9, 10 right now and then apexes chapter 11 and the calling of Lazarus out of the grave. So in John 6, many hear, they cannot stomach what they hear. Jesus calls them to eat of His flesh and drink of His blood. Then we get over and skip over to chapter 8, He calls them to see. And then chapter 9, we understand that little boogaloo there. Chapter 10, He continues and He talks about the sheep hearing His voice. And he says that those who are my sheep hear my voice and they follow after me. They know my voice and I know them. I love them and they love me and the Father loves me and so on and so forth. They recognize my voice and they come and they follow. And when they hear my voice, I lead them to eat truth. By the way, in John 11, I am the truth, in case you didn't know what I was talking about. You're the truth, yes, and the resurrection and the life. And let me show you what that looks like. Lazarus! This decomposing body comes to life. Lazarus didn't hear it and contemplate it and think about it. Just like the old blind man born blind, he didn't consider, do I want to see? Oh yeah, I think I want to see. Let me do this. Just like everybody else in the New Testament. Christ commanded them and they were. That's the calling of God. It is eternal life. If God does not call you, you cannot believe. And if God does call you, you are believing at the moment. You're called unto eternal life by faith. Some were turning away from the truth of this. Some were turning away from grace that is in Jesus Christ that God the Spirit had called them to and turning to another gospel. See, I don't believe theology is in view here. I don't believe this is a doctrinal problem in Galatia. I think it's the foundation, let me give you a few more words, the hope of these believers, the assurance of these believers, here's a better, the loyalty of these believers. Were they loyal to the message of Christ or were they loyal to the message of works? It might seem odd to you, but I'm just using synonyms. The hope that these people had was not about dividing over theological differences. It was about believing now they had confidence in the flesh. Because somebody came along with a very, very rational, reasonable argument. Do you want to know the argument of works assurance? You wanna know the argument of what it looks like to add the law back in? You wanna know the argument of seeing good works as proof of salvation? It's very simple from the context of a Jew, because salvation is from the Jews. Jesus is a Jew. Jesus came to fulfill the law. Therefore, Jesus is Messiah, and he'll make you do the right thing. That's their logic. And by the way, all that was an example of their rationale. I'm not saying I agree with that. For those of you who look confused, wait a minute. He just undid 10 years of preaching. Some were turning away from their foundation of Christ. They were becoming loyal to their own flesh. Loyal to Judaism. Loyal to the law. Loyal to circumcision. Now, the greatest irony of this is that Paul is a Jew now preaching to Gentiles because that was his calling and these Galatians are not Jewish. But yet the Jews have come around and decided to trouble them. If you are truly a believer, this is how the argument would go. If you are truly a believer, you need to understand that we've had the Bible a long time. And we've been religious a lot longer than you have. And we've been in churches a long time. And y'all were worshiping goats just last week. And I know you, Johnny, I mean, you worship your little statue over there. You pick your nose with it, nobody's looking, but you worshipped it in public. I saw you. And we've been worshipping the one true God for centuries. You need to listen to what we have to say concerning the good news of eternal life. Jesus is the man, but buddy, you better learn the ropes. You better sharpen your lives around the law. Pun intended. And you better cut out that flesh by cutting off that flesh. And Paul uses the play on words of being cut away immediately, doesn't he? Let him be accursed. Let him be cut away from Christ. So here, you're turning to a different gospel, not that there is another one. Not that there is another one. In chapter 2 verse 16, we'll see when Paul finally takes a breath, he says what? Verse 15, we ourselves are Jews by birth and not Gentile sinners like y'all. Yet we know that a person is not justified by works of the law, but a person is justified through faith in Jesus Christ. So we also have believed in Jesus Christ, we the Jews, have believed in Jesus Christ in order to be justified by faith in Christ and not by works of the law, because by the works of the law, no one will be justified. Look at verse 17, I'm getting ahead. But if in our endeavor to be justified in Christ, we too were to be found sinners, is Christ then a servant of sin? Certainly not. I'm not going to rebuild what I've torn down. I'm not going to make myself a slave to what I've been set free from. Do you remember why it's called Good News? It's because God proclaims His Good News from His Word concerning His Son who has set His people free from the law, from the works of the law, from the curse of the law. We are free. Oh, buddy, for some reason, to the unconverted man who's uber-religious, when somebody hears that, they automatically think, licensed to sin, let's just hand out the devil cards now and get it over with. Here's your free pass to go pick your nose with your idol this week. Here's your free pass to cuss at your mama. Here's your free pass to steal a little bread if you're a little hungry. Nobody does that. Nobody that preaches the gospel does that. Many people think they preach the gospel. Just like nobody that preaches the gospel adds morals to the gospel. They may think they're preaching the gospel, but they're not. Because someone uses a Bible, because someone reads it, because someone may even go verse by verse. Listen to what the Bible says in response to what I say. and vice versa. And if it doesn't flow with the reading of the scripture, then dismiss it. Especially concerning the work of Christ. But the problem there again is, in most Christian homes, we have verses memorized. We do not know what the Bible is teaching. We do not know what the letter of Galatians is about, but we all know what 522 says. For the fruit of the Spirit And then we put people right back under the law and go, you better be patient. You're not patient, you're not sane. You better be kind. You better be loving. Remember John 15, 16? Jesus says in fellowship with Him, you should love one another. And when you love one another, you're actually loving Him. And when you obey Him to love one another, you're actually loving Him. And when you don't, you're not loving Him, because love is what you do with what Christ has given you. But love is not a prerequisite for being saved. Love is an action, a discipline. And God has loved us first. And Christ shows His love for us in this, that while we were still sinners, He died for us. I'm astonished. There are some people, latter part, second part of verse 7, who trouble you and want to distort the gospel of Jesus Christ. But I want you to hear it. I want you to hear it. There are always going to be people who will distort the gospel of Jesus Christ. And let me say this, back in the 90s there was this little phraseology that people would talk about in conflict resolution. Quit majoring on the minors. You ever heard that? You ever heard that? Okay, it's silly, but it makes sense. There are a lot of distortions of the gospel that are played off as majoring on the minors. Quit making so much do about that. Quit making so much do about all this other stuff. Just teach people to love Jesus. I hear it. I've heard it my entire life. Now, if I were to have an index card and give you all a card and a pencil and say, would you write down How someone can love Jesus? Now, by the Lord's mercy, I pray you'd all get it right. But for most professing Christians, man, we'd have, if we had a thousand cards, we might have a thousand different answers. But Jesus gives us one answer. Love my sheep. The primary call of a shepherd is to love Christ's people. How? Pray for them, love them, carry their burdens, teach them, counsel them, encourage them, rebuke them, instruct them in righteousness. Give watch over their joy and souls, willingly. Anybody can teach, but not everybody can love. Some want to trouble you. They want to distort the gospel of Christ. And that's not going to change for us, beloved. Here's the one way we answer that. Want to know how to answer distortions of the gospel? Teach the doctrines of Christ. And when people trouble you with a distorted gospel, you need to show them Galatians 1-10. You need to say sometimes in a very loving way, and in a very kind way, and in a very forward and confronting way, because it's going to be confrontational. When someone begins to distort the gospel, and you have tried to help them see through the means of teaching, sometimes you just have to say, you know what scripture says about if you believe what you believe, which is different than what I say I believe, then one of us is an unbeliever, or both of us are unbelievers. One of us is cut off from Christ. And you know, I've said that to a lot of people. I said that publicly last year in a small group. And it didn't go well. It didn't go well. That person doesn't talk to me much anymore. But everybody heard it. If anyone Preaches! Now get this, but even, verse 8, but even if we, let's just use we, even if we should preach to you a gospel contrary to the one we have already preached to you, let him be cut off from Christ. Let him be condemned, let him be cursed, let him be damned. That's what Paul is saying there. So Paul is showing, now he's not saying that the possibility of the apostles could preach a false gospel one day. The apostles were saved of the uttermost, just like we who are truly saved are saved of the uttermost. We're not going to preach a false gospel one day. It doesn't mean we won't give ear to one and we won't bog down in it and we won't seek out the truth and God will show us the truth very quickly. That's why we must read the Bible. Read, read, read, read, read. Don't study so much, just read it. God will study you up. And you hear it and you go, hmm, that don't sound right. Who said that? Satan? Yep. But he wants to emphasize the severity of it, that even if another apostle were to dare come back and preach something like this, let them be condemned. Let them be condemned. Even an angel from heaven If you see a vision from heaven, if you see a bush burning, if you hear an audible word, if some prophet comes and floats in the air and bursts into flames and through the flames comes a face and says, listen to me, and some other gospel comes, if you see a mountain crumble to a pile of sand, if you see the ocean parted to its deepest trench, if you see the skies fall from heaven and the planets dissolve like rain, And they teach you anything other than what I've already taught you, Paul says, let them be accursed. So what does that say about signs and wonders? They have no power over the truth of Scripture. None. New Year's resolutions are silly because they've never really been a resolve. They've just sort of been a wish upon a star. and the star burns out by February. You know, nothing wrong with having goals. Please have goals. Great. Make reading the Bible not from front to back, but in diligent and disciplined sequence. Make it part of your daily routine. But what really bothers me sometimes this time of year is I see these New Year's resolutions, and worse, they become New Year's promises by a lot of people who distort the gospel. This is the year of increase, or this is the year of power, this is the year for you. To what, die? I would love to be the sideline commentator, the heckler. It would be such a wasted life, but it would be so funny, until I realized what a waste it was. Time wasting, I talked about that last Wednesday night too, didn't I? This is the time, this is the year for you. It may be the year God kills me. Glory, hallelujah. I will miss y'all for the second my breath stops. And then I ain't gonna miss you no more. And don't cry too bad at my funeral. Keep reminding my children and my wife that I made it. And I break dancing for real. And no more sin. That in itself is worth the trip. Even if I get to heaven and Jesus says, no more sin, and I go to sleep for the rest of eternity. Dude, what glory? I don't want to, but I'm just saying, what if that was just it? Just knowing that it was finished. No one preaches a false gospel and gets away with it. As we've said before, and now I say again, verse 9, if anyone is preaching to you a gospel contrary to the one you received, let him be a curse. Now, here in verse 10 and 11, or verse 10, is sort of the crux of Paul's dilemma. And this is where our dilemma will be, and then we'll be finished for tonight. Paul asks a question. He actually asks two questions and then an assertion. For am I now seeking the approval of man or of God? Or am I trying to please man? Now why would he say that? Because a false gospel, listen to this, is 100% of the time humanistic. It will always pander or patronize or placate or postulate, or any other P that can come into my vocabulary right now, it will always point, there it is, I knew I had one, to the flesh. It will always point to the flesh. It will always come to the place where the fleshliness, especially, listen to this, especially the religious fleshliness, The spiritual side of our fleshliness. I didn't say anything about righteous or godly or divine or redeemed. I'm talking about unconverted people. But even the church, it sometimes gives us a little taste of what we can hold, what we can see, what we can measure. What we can enjoy, hear, taste, smell, and feel. That's what we really like. That's why Paul continually asserts and exhorts and admonishes. There's a warning in these things. The church to not look at that which can be seen and heard and touched and tasted. And the glorious thing there is that John in his first epistle says that which we have seen and touched with our hands and heard concerning the eternal life which was manifest to us and now which we declare to you. So the only thing that we're supposed to consider is that which is now not seeable, not touchable. who is Jesus Christ, but He is eternal. That which we can see and touch and smell and deal with today is passing away. It is of the world. It is not of God. And the Gospels that seemingly are better in their measuring of our hope are always fleshly. There's always something. There's always something that man has done or needs to do or is doing that he can feel a little bit more confident about the work of Jesus. Now what does that sound like? Genesis 3. innocent human beings, one of which talked with God the Son in the garden, who just breathed the breath of life into him, put him to sleep, took out a rib, took the dirt in the rib, made another out of man, thus she was called woman, and God gave him a direct blessing, the world is yours, subdue it, take it over, rule it, Everything in it is yours, eat it all but that. Don't eat that. If you do, you die. And I'm sure that Adam, when Eve's there, she's like, this is beautiful, where are we? This is earth and God just created us and it's all ours, just don't touch that or you'll die. Sort of like a man's garage, don't go into the ratchet drawer and get anything out if you need it, just ask. Don't touch it. The serpent comes along, hey, look at this fruit over here. Eve's like, yep, if I touch it, I'll die. Nope, God didn't say that. If you eat of it, you'll be like God. It's very tasty and it's going to give you smarts. You're going to know something that God is withholding from you. Do you know that was the truth? He deceived Eve with the truth, and she ate of it, and Adam, who had his arm around her at the time, ate of it. It wasn't like Adam going, no, running across the garden, no, falling going, ah, and it falls in his mouth. He was with her. It's humanism. That's the demonic gospel. It adds to the flavor of how we know we can know something about God. And God has made Himself known to His people only through the call of the Spirit to the truth of Christ, who finished the work of redemption for His people. So if we are going to preach a false gospel, it is always going to be tainted, in the Christian view of things, with the approval of man. Do my pastor friends approve of my message? No, but I got a lot of people over here who do. I'm in good company. Who approved of Jeremiah? Nobody. And I believe that if you really were able to tally up the intimate relationships of the apostles, they were hard to find a posse to go with them. They didn't have an entourage. I mean, Jesus is God the Son and He had 12. Friends, the message of the cross is not going to be appealing to unconverted people, but when we see it, it is the tree of life. It is the greatest aroma that we've ever smelled. Am I trying to please man? And he answers the question, and then I'm through. If I were still trying to please man, I would not be a slave of Christ. Now what does it mean for Paul to be a slave of Christ? That means that he has I almost tricked you. God has taken Paul's life from him. And God has given Paul Christ. And God has given Paul to Christ. And Paul says, this life that I live is not mine. This life that I live is not mine. Everything that I had I counted as worthless, as nothing, as lost. This world is passing away. If I can just preach Christ and be crucified, it's the only words I need. God took Paul's life from him and gave him the life of Christ. So if Paul were to patronize the fleshliness of religious people, He would no longer be a slave to Christ. He would be a slave to man. And men would have followed Him to the four corners of the world. That's round. Because of the call of God, in the grace of Jesus Christ, Paul would not, would not give up the gospel. And beloved, we're not going to give up the gospel either. No matter how hard it is, no matter how frustrating it is, no matter how popular it would be to just back up a little bit. It's easy. You might say, well, what's another example? Let me think of another example of how we twist the gospel without changing the doctrine. We may hold to the gospel, but we're quiet about it. And a lot of congregations who might have the gospel, but they don't want the press, they just deal with changing lives. We're going to have a 10-week series on how to have a better marriage. I mean, who doesn't want that? We all want that. And we're going to take notes, we're going to get outlines, we're going to give away door prizes. It's going to be packed out and everybody's going to have a real good marriage for that 45 minutes in service and they're going to fight about it when they get in the car. That's how it's going to work. Or how to guarantee success for your children. How to be a spiritual father instead of preaching the doctrine of Christ. Instead of exalting the finished work of Jesus, which every, even the instruction, now get me, you know me, you teach the whole counsel of God's word. You don't forsake the instruction, but even when you give the instruction, you don't forsake the gospel either. It's all there. This letter's about instruction, about the gospel, and then some other stuff too, because of the gospel. So we know that God has called us. with the one true gospel. And because of that, we have an eternal hope. Let's stop there. Let's pray. We thank you, Father, for your gospel of free and sovereign grace, for the work of Jesus throughout all the ages eternally. When he died on that cross, God, he satisfied the wrath you have for your people. Lord, call your people to salvation. Call them and grant them faith. Give them the eyes to see and the ears to hear the truth of Christ. Lord, embolden us through the power of your word by your spirit to see and believe the truth every single moment of our day, even when we're inundated with false gospels galore and help us to have wisdom and discernment and even kindness in our righteous anger. When we see brothers and sisters or professing Christians who twist it, help us to correct them gently. But then, Father, there comes a time where gentleness is over and separation must come. Lord, we know that those who separate themselves from the truth of Christ have never been born of You. But we do not give up. We continue to pray. And Lord, you will see your children home. We pray these things in the name of Christ. Amen.