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Father, we're grateful for the
opportunity to study your word this morning, and we come to
you with expectation that you would teach us. Lord, we are
people who are easily deceived because we have an enemy that
wants to deceive us. Then we have a flesh inside of
us that wants to deceive us. We have minds and desires that
easily stray from what they ought to be. And so Lord, we pray that
as we study this portion of your word that you would make us more
solid. Lord, we We don't want to be
like the Galatians, where we're easily defecting from the truth. So we ask you to work in us.
It's in Jesus' name that we pray. Amen. Okay Galatians chapter 1 if you
didn't hear last week It might be helpful. It gives a little
bit of background into the book of Galatians and what the situation
was when we started so We've got CDs of that if you want to
hear that Galatians chapter 1 verse 1 Paul, an apostle, not from men
nor through man, through Jesus Christ and God the Father who
raised him from the dead, and all the brothers who are with
me, 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 this 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. 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 men or of God? Or am I trying
to please men? If I were still trying to please
men, I would not be a servant of Christ. We may get further
than that, but I hope to at least get that far. So let's begin
in verse one. Paul introduces himself and he
says that he is an apostle and we need to define that a bit
because even in scripture it can be a little bit confusing.
We have the 12 apostles from the beginning and then Judas
betrayed Christ and another apostle, Matthias, was appointed in the
early part of Acts. And then we have the apostle
Paul. Now in our day and time, there are certain movements who
call lots of people apostles. And in some ways, an apostle
could be defined as someone who is sent with a message, in some
ways. It still makes me a little bit
uncomfortable, but if people's definition of apostle is apostle
little a, someone who is sent with a message, That's probably
an appropriate usage, but I think it breeds confusion. So therefore,
it would be my advice to avoid its use if you can. To distinguish
it between Apostle A, these men who received revelation directly
from the Lord Jesus Christ, and Paul fits into that. Paul fits
into that category because of his experience with the Lord
on the road to Damascus. And then though it's not clear
for us in terms of it being laid out his experience with the Lord
that we're going to read about later where he spends two or
three years by himself as Christ teaches him about the gospel. So apostle we're only talking
about those guys and Paul He wants to establish his identity
early because the false teachers that are coming into the church
at Galatia are attacking not only the gospel, but they're
attacking Paul himself. So they are saying, well, you
know, Paul, he doesn't count because he wasn't among the 12
that were with Jesus while he was on the earth. So Paul doesn't
really count. He got his revelation some other
place, and therefore we don't have to pay attention to him.
And this is a common thing that happens. And we'll see it over
and over again, and it can happen to you as well. The degree to
which it happens is almost directly proportional to the degree that
you want to share the true gospel. But a means of attacking the
gospel is to attack the messenger. It's always been that way and
it still is. So the issue is if if Paul is
going to give a gospel to these people he started these churches
we read this last week if he's going to give this gospel one
of the ways that we can discredit what he's saying or add to it
is to attack the messenger and say this guy is not qualified. And so none of these words drop
to the ground when you read scripture even in the greetings and then
the farewells and then all of those things. Everything that
said there is very purposeful. Sometimes we read over things
fairly quickly in the scripture without giving them much thought.
And sometimes it's difficult for us to get why it's there.
Sometimes it's easy here. It's easy Sometimes it's not
as easy and we have to think and study and it may take us
a while to get there but every word Every word of revealed scripture
is important It's there for a reason and it's our job through the
spirits help to find what the reason is Paul is an apostle
and he says not from men but nor through man but through Jesus
Christ and God the Father who raised him from the dead. Now
in those words are some very important things and we're not
going to get all of them but we'll get some that directly relate
maybe to our situation. Paul is saying I'm an apostle
and I'm an apostle not because a group of men said that I was
an apostle. I'm an apostle because Christ
himself made me an apostle. Now, he says that's not through
men, it's not from men, and it's not through men, but it's through
Jesus Christ and God the Father. Well, we'll get to that part
in a minute. But first of all, this through men business. This is
important, okay? There are some ways in which
a person now who is called into some kind of ministry could say,
I have been called of God to minister in this way. But in
a sense, this is always now, past the apostles, this is always
now has something to do with other people. It should have.
If it doesn't, then we have to question the call. What I mean
is that someone who is going to be recognized to be a minister
of some kind or to do a certain thing, the issue is that the
church itself, a group of believers itself, is behind that, recognizing
those gifts in people, supporting them, encouraging them, exhorting
them, telling them where they get off base and those things.
That's our base of support. Yes, God ultimately is the one
that calls, but that sort of calling that we receive now is
a different sort of calling. It comes through God's people. But at this point in time, when
we talk about the apostles, what Paul is saying is, there was
not a church that told me that I was an apostle. And quickly,
your mind should go to, well, then what happened at Antioch?
if you're thinking about scripture. The issue is there is that Christ
had already put his call on Paul's life told him what it is that
he was supposed to do. Paul already knew that the issue
was then the brothers there at Antioch and the church the sisters
were praying for him that he would be sent out. God made the
calling clear through his people but there is a difference when
someone has a visual Manifestation of the Lord Jesus
Christ. People claim that all the time
I know now. I'm very skeptical of those things. Because the
apostles themselves, they were the ones who actually spent time
with him in bodily form. And we have to be really thoughtful
about folks that claim that thing and look at the fruit of what
it is that they're getting at after that happens or they think
that that's happened because I have actually met with people
who think that they have seen the image of Christ in a tortilla.
There are Weird things that that go on and that's not the same
thing as this So Paul is saying Jesus himself came to me in a
bodily form Knocked me off a horse and said you are set apart to
be an apostle and that's different than the way That people come
into ministry now Now the latter part of that he
says Christ through Jesus Christ and God the Father Paul is making
a Huge point here. It's a doctrinal point to equate
the Lord Jesus with God the Father And this is important because
this bears on the false teaching that was going on in the church. They wanted to separate those
two things. Jesus was going to be an example
that we should follow. Jesus, yes, he did make some
atonement for our sins, but that was not enough. You have to do
other things on top of that. That's what it is that the false
teachers were claiming and God the Father Raised Christ up from
the dead to indicate that the true, pure gospel of Christ was
the most important piece of all of this, and that it was affirmed
by God the Father himself. And we're not going to separate
the Trinity. We're not going to separate the
Godhead in terms of saying, well, part of it disagrees with the
other part. And that's what was going on here. Now another thing
that you should know, in verse 2 he says, and all the brothers
that are with me. So Paul's got some folks with him. Now I want
to point out something to you also about this greeting. And
maybe we won't spend too much time here, but it's like this.
Paul goes through all of these places and starts churches. Starts
churches in all of this region of southern Galatia. This would
be like let's say that Ron The Lord wants him to go somewhere
for six or eight months and he leaves us here and he hears that
there are some things going on here that are not good and The
reason that those things are not good is because the scriptures
have been attacked but not only that the thing Ron himself has
been attacked so that people are convincing us that he's not
what it is that we thought he was. He's somebody else. And he has led us down a path
that is not a good path. And so now Ron is having to write
us a letter, and his letter starts like this, if I just put it as
crudely as I can. Hey, you guys, remember me? The
guy who's been here for 30-some-odd years? The guy who preached the
word to you, who led you in these ways? Hey, you remember who I
am? The guy who the Lord worked in your life through, you guys
remember that? You get how ridiculous that kind of is, that Paul now,
being an apostle, which is of course a lot greater case, is
having to remind these churches, hey, you guys remember me? Like,
the guy who first preached the gospel to you to start with?
Like, the guy who appointed leaders in your churches? The guy who
gave you a foundation? You forgot that? Remember and
now he's having not only to introduce himself to them again, but he's
having to He's going to have to list his credentials for them
again He's gonna have to say hey you remember me. This is
who I was This is what I said when I was there. This is who
I was before you knew me I told you all these things, but apparently
you forgot them all Because the false teachers Starting with
attacking Paul. They're attacking Paul and saying
you shouldn't listen to him. You should listen to us So already,
even in the greeting, we see that the Galatians are in trouble.
There's mass defection going on. Now, ultimately, we know
that it's not right for us to follow men, right? In other words,
we don't do hero worship. We don't do that sort of thing.
And that's a dangerous thing that can happen in churches.
At the same time, we can tell from the scriptures that God
uses people in order to teach us, to bring us closer to himself.
It's not enough for you to take your Bible and read it and on
your own to determine what it says and then therefore live
your life by that. Okay? And there are a lot of
people who think it is. There are groups of people who
think it is and they read it and they decide what it says
for themselves. That's not how it works. While certainly God
has given us individual responsibility to relate to Him through His
Word, The Word has always been communicated to God's people
through the church. And I don't just mean the local
church, though that's a big part of it, but I mean the historical
church. These are what things mean. We have historical precedent
to go back. Because you and I both know that
you can go into Scripture and find all kinds of things there
that are odd, if taken out of context and by themselves. This
is what's happening here. You say, well, we would never
do that. Well, I think not only would we do that, I think we
do do that. So who's the letter to? We're going to get to that
part about how the thing gets twisted. Well, we're in the verse
two, and it says the letter is to the churches of Galatia. Now,
in many of Paul's letters, he gives a commendation. He says,
he says something to them and praises them about their love
or about their zeal for Christ or something like that. But here
Paul does nothing of the kind. He does nothing of the kind.
He doesn't give them any condemnation. I mean, commendation. We're going
to get to the condemnation, but he just gives them no commendation
at all. He doesn't say, well, you guys
are doing good here. We appreciate your zeal. You're
giving to the poor. You're doing something that's,
you're doing, there's nothing good that he says to these people
here. What he does say to them is grace to you and peace from
God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. Now this is a fairly
standard greeting, but in this situation, it has a whole lot
more punch to it. When Paul greets these people
by saying, I want you to experience grace and I want you to experience
peace. He's not making some light little
greeting. Grace is the issue of what the
problem is. It's the core root issue of what
the problem is in Galatia. It's a misunderstanding of grace. And because there's a misunderstanding
of grace, there's not peace. There's false teachers that are
going in. And there's people that are appropriating things
that God never intended them to appropriate as Gentiles. And
so the problem is, there is trouble. There's tumult. There's confusion.
All of these things are happening. And so when Paul says, I want
you to experience grace, and I want you to experience peace,
he is then going to go into Here's how. Here's what this looks like.
It's important in our own lives that when we look at our state,
where are we in life? How am I feeling about what's
going on around me? What are things looking like?
What lenses am I seeing my world and my circumstances through?
That the words grace and peace surround those things. If they
don't, if worry and anxiety and anger and jealousy and bitterness,
if roots of those things are there, they crowned out grace
and peace. If there are false ideas of our
own self-worth, If there are, I'm okay as long as someone else
in the world somewhere thinks that I'm okay, someone that's
important to me, then that's where I'm going to derive my
ability to be okay. Then that's not the grace and
peace that Paul is wishing for the Galatians here, nor for ourselves. Well, we need to define those
things, but, and we will because Paul's going to do that for us,
but we need to also get a handle on the fact that Grace and peace
are always going to surround those people who are believers
in Christ. They have to. And they're not
just words. They're not just concepts. They
are those things, but they are actual real experiential things. Grace and peace. They can be
misidentified. So we want to be careful that
we don't do that. We can call Certain things grace we can call
certain things peace that are really not because they're being
derived from some other place outside Of the gospel of Christ
outside of the person of the Lord Jesus Christ Okay Now I have a question before
we get to verse four. I I'm going to make a statement
and you're going to tell me whether or not you agree with my statement
or not, okay? A Christian is someone who follows
the teachings of Jesus Christ and emulates his example. Is that true? Yeah, you don't commit chickens. Is that true? Okay. Everybody okay with that? Partially true. Yeah. Okay. This is why I'm teaching through
the book of Galatians. Because what I just said, that
statement, that's a poison pill that'll kill you. Okay? That's like having a fresh gallon
of water and putting two or three drops of cyanide in it. Okay? And you're not even going to
know it's there. And you're going to hear somebody preach you a
sermon about that. and it's going to kill you, because
it sounds so good. Christians are people who follow the teachings
of the Lord Jesus Christ and emulate his example. And we do
have the humility to agree, well, we're not going to get there.
This is exactly the gospel that was preached at Galatia. It was more specific than that,
but that's what it was, was that. And you say, well, what's the
problem? That sounds so good. Let's read verse four. The end of three is talking about
the Lord Jesus Christ, that's where the grace and peace comes,
and it says, who gave himself for our sins to deliver us from
this present evil age according to the will of our God and Father.
Okay, I'm going to make this really, really simple, and I
don't mean to pick on you, but this is how you're going to get
led astray, this stuff. That statement that I gave you,
this is where you're going to get God. If you're going to get
God. Because it sounds so good. If you define Christianity in
any other terms, besides, maybe the best one, this translation
says deliver, some say rescue. Okay? Whenever you define Christianity,
and Christianity cannot be defined, cannot be defined, very far away
from the Gospel being defined, right? We would agree on that.
You have to be thinking in your mind. I'm going to give you one
word, and you always think of this. The word is rescued. Christians
are rescued. Do you notice that the definition
that I gave you had absolutely nothing to do with sin? Did you
notice that? Somebody would have come up here
and preached that to you, you would have thought, maybe that's a
good sermon. And maybe part of it would have been. It's not
like we can cover the whole thing. I'm not saying that emulating
Christ is a bad thing. But a Christian, a Christian
is someone who has been rescued. Always. And you start there.
Because if you start any other place, where you're going to
get to is some place that's not very good. And then you're going
to have to be written a letter. And God has written you one here. And you're going to have to be
chastised, because you're going to get to a place that's not a good
place. Now, I'll admit, I set you up.
But it was necessary. Because how good did that sound?
It's not all bad, it's not all incorrect. The problem is, it's
where you start. And we always start with the
character of God, we start with sin, and we start with being
rescued. And the reason I use the word
rescue, we'll study the verse in a moment, is because some
of the words that the scripture uses They become kind of dead to us. I feel like they kind of pass
over us. They hit a wall and we don't
we don't get it so When we hear verses like, by grace are you
saved through faith, and that not of yourself, it is the gift
of God. We've heard some of that so much that we don't internalize
it maybe like we did at one point, or we think that we're past it.
So I would encourage you at some point, sometimes when you're
reading the scripture, when you see the word saved, particularly
in that context, substitute the word rescued I'm not saying saved
is a bad word, but I think sometimes we've got to be turned a little
bit to get back to where we always have to come back to. We are
never, ever, ever going to get very far if we define Christianity
as following the teachings of Christ. Now, of course, if we
define the teachings of Christ enough, we could say, Well, yeah,
he does talk about the gospel. And yeah, he does do that. But
that's a pretty good extrapolation that most people are not going
to understand. When they hear we're going to follow the teachings
of Christ, the world is going to agree with that very, very
nicely. Well, that means you be nice people. That means you
take care of the poor. That means you don't do bad things.
Right? They don't mean And I fear sometimes
we don't mean what we think. Because we don't like to think
of ourselves as helpless sinners that need a rescuer. And Christianity
is always going to start there. The Galatians forgot that. And
we can never forget that. Because as soon as we do, we
will be led astray someplace. Everybody understand? Does that
make sense? You want to argue with me? Now's
the time. I can take it. It's okay. Paul in verse four gives this
synopsis of the gospel to remind them where this all starts. So
he says, Who gave himself for our sins to deliver us from this
present evil age, this present darkness. Why? It was according to the will
of our God and Father, to whom be the glory forever and ever.
Amen. Christ came to deal with sin. Christ came to deal with sin.
Because God His will was that Christ come
to deal with sin. And the reason that it was God's
will for Christ to come to deal with sin is primarily for his
own honor and glory. That doesn't take the love that
he has for his people out of the equation. But Christ comes
to deal with sin to rescue helpless sinners like us who can't do
anything We have no ability to make ourselves acceptable to
God. Christ comes and he deals with sin. And what happens then
is God gets glory forever and ever. Amen. And Paul starts his
letter this way. So verses one through four, Paul
has to remind everyone of who he is. He has to remind everyone
that he is an apostle that was assigned to be an apostle by
the Lord Jesus himself. God raising the same God who
was raised from the dead and the same God who raised him from
the dead was responsible for that. This is to the church at
Galatia who he wants to have grace and peace but right now
estimates that they don't. Grace and peace from who? From
God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ who gave himself for our
sin to deliver us. Grace and peace is all wrapped
up in a right understanding of the gospel. And that's why you
can't ever get away from the gospel, you have to stay right
there with it. Grace and peace is all wrapped up in the gospel.
It's wrapped up in being rescued and recognizing you day by day,
moment by moment. Not just at the point of salvation,
but always. And if I can hammer that through
this study of Galatians you will then be much less likely to be
led astray. Because that whole thing of being
a helpless sinner before a holy God and needing to be rescued
is hateful to all people. It's hateful to our flesh. And
I can prove that to you even within yourself. Because how
often do you meditate on that part of it. hopefully maybe quite
a bit but for me I can I can meditate on definitions and doctrine
and church stuff and all of which are good and biblical and and
in a sense have their place. But I will get in a lot of trouble
if I don't always couple everything that I study, everything that
I think about the scripture, if I don't always couple that
right back to the gospel itself, which means God is holy. I'm
helpless. He rescued me. So I'm going to
say that a little bit again, because I want to give you a
simple gospel. God is holy. I am helpless. and he rescued
me now when you're going to then explain that gospel to somebody
if you will hang it on that framework all of you I know know the rest
of it all of you can fill in that structure okay but that's
Christianity and as long as you hang it there you won't get in
trouble like the Galatians did because That whole thing of having
to suck up my pride and say I had to be rescued is something that's
filthy to us as as unregenerate people. We don't like it. We
want to take care of ourselves. This is the Galatians problem. All right. Six. He doesn't wait
very long before he just hammers him. OK. Now. I will tell you that this
is an anomaly, right? Most of the time he's more gentle.
But when it comes to a gospel issue, he's not gentle. I mean,
he just hammers. He'll get a little gentle later
as he writes in the letter, maybe a little more. But he won't back
off of this because here's our problem, and I think we fall
into this too. Paul doesn't allow for this problem. We have this
whole thing where we want to live and let live, right? Well,
you could believe something a little different and it'll be okay. You could maybe not understand
the whole thing and still be okay, right? There are some things
that are like tertiary issues that are kind of out there a
little bit. We can have disagreements about it. God can perhaps even lead us
in different ways as we deal with those things. But the gospel
itself, there is no margin for error in the gospel. Now, I will
submit that there are some people who have gotten benefit from
the gospel without being able to articulate it as well as they
should be able to. But that's because most of the
time they're in a place where they've not been taught well
and God's been gracious anyway. But in terms of our understanding
of the gospel, Paul is not allowing you to have your own interpretation.
And so you remember the statement that I made about following the
teachings of Jesus? That would be aberrant. And if
we said that we believed that, to start with, Paul would come
unglued. Because that's what these people
did. That's how they got to where they got to. I'm astonished that you so quickly
are deserting Him who called you in the grace of Christ and
are turning to a different gospel. That's a huge charge to make
against somebody. But Paul sees it, and he calls
it like it is. He hammers him. He said, I'm
astonished. I just can't believe it. Now that word deserting in
this ESV, it speaks of defection. In a military sense, it speaks
of desertion. You were It looked to us like
you were part of the military. You put your name on the line,
and you found a better deal, or you didn't like how it was,
so you just went AWOL. You left. That's what these people
are doing. And the interesting thing about
it is, is obviously they didn't leave physically, because he
has to have somebody to write the letter to. So, the people are
still there, in terms of that they're showing up, they're still
around, because he has to have somebody to write the letter
to, but they're AWOL. And they're AWOL in terms of the real gospel.
They've forgotten what it means to be rescued by the blood of
Christ. And they have turned to other things in order to gain
them merit. To a different gospel. A different
gospel. I'll teach this as we go through
this in a minute, but I think it's important to just say this
part plainly. The false teachers who came into Galatia, I'm just
going to give you a synopsis of what they said so that you
understand. It wasn't as though they came
in waving signs and picketing and saying, guess what? We're
false teachers and we're going to lead you astray. Come with
us. False teachers don't do that. That's the first thing. They
had the right decorum. They stood up. They look like
devout people. If you asked them if they love
Christ, they would absolutely say that they love Christ. We
are often, and should be to some degree, but we think sometimes,
and Christian culture sometimes irritates me a little about this
because it's not that it's not important, I guess, but everybody
is so concerned about what the atheists are going to do to us.
Okay? It's the bad people on the outside.
The bad people on the outside, if we have the gospel right,
won't get to us. It's the bad people on the inside that we
don't recognize that are going to get us. That's and that's
always been true all throughout church history. The outside won't
get us. We but it's the ones who come
on the inside. They get us so deserting faith. Yeah this is
what I was going to do if. Here's the message that they
preached. They would have affirmed the
atonement without any problem. They would have said that Christ
died for people's sins. They would have affirmed that.
They would not have had any disagreement with them. If you said that he
rose the third day, there would have been no disagreement about
those things. There would have been no issue about Christ substitution,
even mostly when we talk about the nature of God. A great deal of the understanding
of the Old Testament scriptures, there would have been a problem.
So then where's the issue? Don't they just have a little
different slant on this? The different slant is that they
would have affirmed all of those things, but they added something.
They said, yes, it is true that Christ died for your sin. But
if you really want to be a true Christian, if you really want
to do what God wants you to do and be acceptable to him, you
need to follow the Mosaic law, particularly the ceremonial law
when it comes to dietary issues and circumcision. That's what
they said. Now, I didn't tell you that as
well as I would like to have told you that, because I'm too
blunt. But the way that that would have
been presented would have sounded very similarly to that statement,
very similar to that statement that I made to you a little bit
ago. They didn't come in and say, guess what? We're going
to change it. Pay attention. We're going to change this. No. It was reason. They spent time
in people's homes. They ate with them. They seemed
like very devout people. We should, we should, they came
in and knew people by name. All of those
things. It was not some hardcore thing
where this is out there and it's going to get us. This cancer
started growing from the inside. And nobody recognized it. Nobody
saw it. So, what's the problem? You're
saved. You're rescued. Through grace,
by faith, plus nothing. But they said plus something.
And they made it sound very, very good. That's the problem. That's what they preached. And
because of that, Paul said, you don't even have the gospel anymore.
I'm telling you, it was there in its entirety. They just added
a little. They said, well, you want to be really good, you need
to follow these original things that God said in his word. Look,
I can show it to you. You should do these things. No, that's another gospel. And Paul says that. He says,
you're turning to a different gospel. Verse 7, not that there
is another gospel, but there are some that trouble you and
want to distort the gospel of Christ. This point is important. We can and should use different
terminologies to explain the gospel, to give the gospel out,
to make it, to give people the ability to think about it and
understand it. All those things are good and
right. We should do that. But we can't get back, we can't
ever get away from the core of it. So our framework, God is
holy, we are helpless, all of those things, and we need rescued,
those three, you never get away from that. You never get past
that. You don't add anything to that. That's the gospel. And
really, think about it, because this is another place that people
get confused, and so I just want to deal with it here, and then
we'll move through the rest of this text quicker. It's not just how you get saved.
And I think sometimes we make a, I think sometimes this is
how we get messed up. Okay, I was saved, and that means
I was rescued, and it was true I couldn't do anything then,
but now that I have been saved, now I can. Now I'm going to,
now God is going to be pleased with me. Let me set your mind maybe at
ease or maybe at turmoil, depending on where you're at in life. You are sanctified. That is,
you are brought to maturity in Christ in the very same way that
you were saved. Oh yeah, you understand more.
You get more of the character of God. That's a necessity. But
it must start with, this is God's character. I can't do anything
about my issues, my lack of understanding, my sin, and I need somebody to
rescue me. You will grow through your Christian
life through that same message, the same way that you started
it. And if you take any other path, and that's what happens
with the Galatians, and if you take any other path, you'll get
lost. You'll get lost. Okay. And we'll move more quickly
because these are a little more simple. Verse 8. this is not a different gospel,
this is not a gospel at all, Paul says, and in verse eight
he says, 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 we say again,
if anyone is preaching to you a gospel that is contrary to
the one that you received, let him be accursed. So what he's
saying is, if I fall off my nut myself, and I say something different
than what I told you before, don't listen to me, because I'm
wrong. If an angel in all his glory were able to come down
and contradict the gospel of Christ, don't believe him. God
is holy? I'm not. I need rescue. And I'm
not going to go through all the rest of it. I mean, obviously
there's more, but you guys know the scriptures well enough, you
know the deal well enough to hang everything else that needs
to be hung on that. But you've got to stay there. And Paul says,
I don't care who says it, I'm telling you twice, pay attention
to me. If anyone says anything but that, They're wrong. And Paul, now then having to
defend himself in verse 10, says, Do I now seek the approval of
men or of God? Am I trying to please men? If
I were still trying to please men, I couldn't be a servant
of Christ. What's that bit about? I think
we're going to stop here, but we'll deal with that. It's first of all a jab at the
false teachers who are doing what they do to get followers. They are doing what they do to
get followers. You say, well, that's horrible.
Yeah, it is. But most people that I know in
Christian ministry would like to have a lot of people there.
Wouldn't we? Yeah, but based on what? See how dangerous that is? If
I say it in one way, it sounds as though you're just trying
to get people to come. If I say it in this way, we just
want to have a lot of people here so they can hear the Bible
and be part of the community and those things. We have to
be really careful. We do. We do want a lot of people.
But Paul says, I don't preach the gospel for people to make
them happy. And why does he not do that?
Because if I preach the real gospel, it won't. Unless God
supernaturally works in someone's life, you don't win friends and
influence people by being true to the gospel. It's never going
to happen. Okay. People don't like it. So when
we talk about Paul saying, I'm not trying to please men. If
I were trying to please men, in other words, let's say it
another way. If I were trying to please men, if I just wanted
to claim you as followers, if I was just trying to get notches,
you know, I wouldn't be writing you this letter, because obviously
it's not going to make you happy with me to write you this letter.
I'm not trying to please men. And the last part of that, he
says, I'm not trying to please men. I am trying to be a servant of
Christ. The word for servant is slave. And it really does mean slave. And this is his desire is to
be a slave. And then we have something about
the real gospel that's very important that we should judge ourselves
and our leaders and people that we come into contact with all
the time. Start with ourselves start with
those around us. People who want to please other
people cannot serve Christ. Because they're telling people the character
of a God, saying that he's holy. They want
to think of God as someone else besides who he is. And then they're
being told that they're helpless, which is the last thing they
want to believe. And then we're saying that they need to be rescued,
which is also something that they don't want to believe. And
if you're going to be true to that message over time, people
will not be ultimately pleased with you. Christ will be. And you say, well, does that
mean that I have to be obnoxious? Does that mean that people will
never like me? They love me. They need to love
me. You gotta get over that stuff.
In your closest relationships, honestly, you gotta get over
that stuff. Because you only have one master, and he has one
message, and you can't dilute it, and you can't distort it.
And if you do, you're not a servant of Christ. You're not a slave
of Christ anymore. Do you see, I don't have time to develop
this right now, but do you see how easy that is to creep into
your life. If I just don't major on this
part enough, this little part right here, then I will be acceptable
to this person. If I just don't point out this
person's helplessness or their sin in the same way that I'm
pointing it out in my life, then they'll listen to me. If I just
don't present God as quite who He is, then they'll maybe accept
Him a little bit. If I just tell them that if you
would just do these things, the biggest thing that we need you
to do is if you'll come to church. If you just come to church, everything's
going to be okay. Well, of course we want people
to come to church because we want them to hear the gospel.
Be aware, though, when you invite somebody to church, they may
hear what we do here and leave, even before the service is over.
That happens. We hope not. We hope God works.
But we want God to do the work. We don't want our personalities. We don't want their personality.
We don't want to tailor it so much so that it fits them so
that they'll come be a part. Okay? Because that's not Christianity. Christianity is, everything that
you are is no good. That's why you need a rescue.
That's why you need to be rescued to start with. If you were a
pretty good person who just needed a little bit of a tweak, then
we wouldn't really need the kind of gospel that we have. But the
kind of gospel that we have says, there is nothing good about you,
and there is nothing about you that would move God to do anything
other than damn you to hell. But there is everything in his
Son. There is every merit in His Son.
There is every beauty in His Son. And when His Son applies
that love, that atoning blood, that covering to sinful creatures
like us, we can be rescued. Alright. I think we're going
to stop there. Remember, though, that you can be fooled. You can be fooled. Stay with
the Gospel. Character of God who's holy.
Character of me. Character of us. We're helpless.
We must be rescued. Let's pray. Father, thank you
for your word this morning. I ask you, Lord, to drive this
home so that as we study the book of Galatians that we'll
get everything out of it that you have for us. It's in Jesus'
name that we pray. Amen.
Galatians 1:1-11
Series Galatians
| Sermon ID | 51616722107 |
| Duration | 48:20 |
| Date | |
| Category | Sunday School |
| Bible Text | Galatians 1:1-11 |
| Language | English |
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