You're listening to audio from Red Rocks Baptist Church. For more information about our church, visit our website at redrocksbaptist.org or follow us on Instagram at redrocksbaptist. A couple years after Kate and I were married, we heard about a scam her grandmother had fallen prey to. Her grandmother at the time was up in years, I think in her late 70s, early 80s, somewhere in there. And she had received a message pretending to be from one of her grandsons. She lived in South Carolina. Her grandchildren in that part of the family were in Oregon. And they were very active in missions and she got a message from someone pretending to be her grandson saying that he was on a mission strip and had run into some trouble and needed some emergency money to help him. And oh, by the way, don't tell dad because he'd be upset, you know, dad, which is not true at all. But it had enough. truth to it. It sounded real enough that she fell prey to it. It ended up wiring a couple thousand dollars to some scammer out there and felt bad by it, didn't want to talk about it with anyone because they said not to talk about it. When the truth came out, she felt awful about it. It turns out She was scammed into several thousand dollars and sending those to criminals. And sadly, this type of situation plays out all over the country every year, thousands of times. Elder fraud, as it's called, cheats older folks out of about $3.4 billion with a B. per year. That's 2023 alone, 3.4 billion. Yet, if this isn't encouraging, elder fraud is just one of 18 different types of fraud that the FBI lists on their website to be aware of. Now I hope I'm not making you paranoid this morning because there is a lot of schemes in our world. There are things in our world that would attempt to deceive us and trick us and swindle us. Yet, there is a more dangerous, more destructive fraud scheme out there. Because the threat is not to our bank accounts, but to our souls. I'm talking about gospel fraud. False teaching that communicates error and packages it with a robe or a garb of truth in an attempt to lead people away from Christ. To lead people away from truth. And this spiritual fraud is so common in our world that it feels like our world is saturated with it. It's harder to find the truth than it is to find the error, almost. And just like scammers who want to steal from your bank account make their scheme look legitimate, they make it look real, many spiritual frauds look very similar to the real thing. It's hard to tell the difference between truth and lies because false teaching is intentionally meant to look good. And so the simple point of this passage, the simple point for us today is for us to remain faithful to the Lord, for us to have a walk with God that continues to honor him and please him, for us to grow deep in our love for Christ and our love for others, we have to develop the ability to spot and resist false teaching. spot and resist false teaching. But that's easier said than done, isn't it? How do we do this? How do we spot and resist false teaching? Well, our text today gives us some guidance in this. Now Paul wrote this letter of Galatians, remember, to true believers. These people he had ministered to, they had professed Christ, but they were being pressured by false teaching to abandon the truth. And throughout the letter, he's arguing against that false teaching. In chapters three and four, he's exposing it and showed how faulty it was as compared to the true doctrine. as compared to the gospel of truth. And here in chapter five, verses one through 12, he reaches his emotional climax where he's calling them, true believers, to stand fast in their liberty in Christ. To not forsake the truth and run after error. To stay away from these false teachers. And in fact, to reject the ungodly influence of these false teachers so that they could remain faithful to the truth. And when we come to texts like this, we have to apply sound interpretation because our situation is not identically the same as theirs, hopefully. Hopefully your pastors are not preaching false doctrine, you need to kick them out. Wink, wink, is that be me? Okay. Some of you are alive out there today. The difference here is that there are principles that we can distill out of this context to say, okay, what was the underlying principles that we can then apply to our situation today? And so there are three principles about false teaching that are found in this text. And these principles, if we would apply them, will help us to notice and to spot false teaching and say, oh, that's not correct, that's not true. And will help us guard our faith and protect our faith so that we can remain faithful to Christ. The first principle comes from verses seven and eight. Look at these verses again with me. Paul writes, you ran well. who hindered you from obeying the truth. This persuasion does not come from him who calls you." These are choppy statements almost. There's no connection grammatically between them, but there's a flow of thought here. Paul is referencing in verse seven, when the Galatians at first received the gospel, he's using perhaps his favorite metaphor for the Christian life, which is running a race. He's already used this metaphor in chapter three, verses one through five. Did you begin by the Spirit only to continue by your works? Well, no. Here he's saying you started the race well. You ran well. They began the Christian race and were progressing in it, until someone put an obstacle in their path. That's the end of verse seven. Paul asked, who hindered you from obeying the truth? Now, this obstacle to them was not a physical obstacle like a roadblock or a large boulder or something in their path. This was an argument that sought to persuade them away from the truth. In fact, the word obey here has the implication of doing something because you were convinced or persuaded to do so. So this isn't blind obedience where they're just following orders. There's reasoning and argumentation and persuasion that the false teachers are applying here. And then it's hard to see in the English, but Paul uses a play on words at the beginning of verse eight. Because the word persuasion comes from the same root word as the word obey. So what's going on? The Galatians were running their Christian race well when someone or someones prevented them by persuading them to do something different. They persuaded them to take a side trail from the course. And then here comes Paul's key point in verse eight. This recent persuasion does not come from him who calls you. What these people convinced you to do was not something that came from God. It didn't come from him. And it didn't align with what God says. We see our first principle from this then. First, number one, false teaching does not align with the true gospel as revealed in scripture. So as we are out in our world today, as we're on the internet, on YouTube, as we're listening to the radio, as we're talking with other people around us, how do we know what's false and what's true? If something disagrees with the revealed scriptures, it's not true. Let's unpack this a little bit more. Clarification as we begin, we're not talking about doctrinal disagreement between believers. For example, who should be baptized? Infants should be baptized or adults. There's a disagreement among believers, like Presbyterians, and what we would practice. Those are between genuine confessing believers. The difference here is that false teaching gets it wrong on gospel level issues. Things like how someone is saved, the sinful condition of man, or the nature of Jesus. If someone disagrees about the deity of Jesus, that's not a disagreement that believers can have with one another. That's false teaching. And gospel level issues have been the problem all along in the book of Galatians. In fact, Paul in chapter one started off referring to this teaching as a false gospel. Remember what he said? Verses six and seven of chapter one. I marvel that you Galatians are turning away so soon From him who called you, same idea as here in verse eight. 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. What was being taught was not a different brand of Christianity, a different form of Christianity, it was a different thing altogether. And Paul is saying beware, don't run after that. And unfortunately, it's the same in our world today. There are a lot of people, there are a lot of churches that call themselves Christians, that act like we do, that dress like us, that talk like us, that sometimes even use the same words as us, but mean totally different things, and they've departed from the truth. False teaching tampers with the true gospel. So how do we know then what the true gospel is? Because we don't have the benefit of apostles like Paul walking into our church and saying, I'm Paul the apostle, and I'm gonna read from you from my inspired letter. We don't have Paul here, but what do we have? We have the word of God, the completed word of God. And the Bible is so important here when we talk about false teaching because it is our standard that we measure everything against. What is the Bible? It is inspired by God. It's breathed out from him. The Holy Spirit oversaw, superintended the human authors using their unique personality to write the holy word of God. And because he has used humans, the Holy Spirit has, to write his word, it is inerrant. It's free from error. It's without mistake. It's also sufficient. The word of God provides for us everything we need for life and godliness. It's also authoritative. There is no other authority for our lives other than the word of God. So what is the Bible? The Bible is God's complete revelation that teaches truth and explains the true gospel. So how do we spot and avoid false teaching? Well, we have to know the scriptures. Knowing the scriptures helps us to discern truth from error. And there's a troubling trend in American Christianity on this issue. Every two years, Ligonier Ministries conducts a survey of evangelical believers that they call the state of theology. They've been doing it since 2014, I think it is. So they've got about 10 years now. And there is a very disturbing trend that over the last 10 years, the percentage of those who claim to be evangelical believers and who don't believe that the Bible is truly the word of God, that percentage has gone up. In fact, The most recent survey, last year I think it was, in answer to the question, is the Bible completely true, over 50% of professing believers says no, it's not. That the Bible is not completely true. It's just like the other religious writings out there. It has some good things, but it's myth. That's from people who profess to be Bible followers. And then we wonder why so much false teaching is pervasive in our world. If we would just know our Bible and believe the contents of it, so much false teaching doesn't appeal to us then. Turning away from the scriptures makes a person far more susceptible to gospel fraud. It's impossible to know when something doesn't align with the truth when you don't know the truth to begin with, right? So we have to study the word of God. We don't bow down and worship the Bible as if it's some thing that's separate from our God, but it's the word of God, the written word that proclaims the living word who is Jesus Christ. False teaching often looks authentic. That's what makes it tricky. It's hard at times to discern. But there are three common tactics that false teaching will do. So as we think about false teaching and as we think about how we spot truth and error, let's identify three tactics. There are probably more, but I wanna give you three. First, false teaching will twist scripture. They'll twist scripture. This is the most difficult type of error to spot, right? Because it's like 90% true and 10% false. There's a high degree of truth with just enough error mixed in to change its substance. Well, how do people twist scripture? Twist scripture. Say that five times fast. That's hard. How do people do that? They can take verses out of context. In fact, I can make the Bible say just about anything I want if I take it out of context. You can too. I have some humorous anecdotes about that that I will save for another time. We can twist scripture by misinterpreting it to say what it doesn't say. Sometimes false teaching simply misunderstands scripture because they're spiritually blind. Peter says in 2 Peter 3 that in Paul's letters are some things that are hard to understand, which the untaught and unstable twist to their own destruction as they do the rest of the scriptures. So this is something that even Peter identified as a problem 2,000 years ago. I want to give you one example of this that's so popular in our world. It's called the health and wealth gospel. It even uses the term gospel to try to convince us it's real. This is also known as the prosperity gospel. And it twists the truth. well-dressed, smart-sounding people wearing a smile that you can't remove, talk about verse after verse, and they present so well, and everything sounds so real and so good, but what they're doing is twisting truth to present something that does not come from God. They would claim that the Bible was written to make you happy, healthy, and wise. No, the Bible was written to reconcile sinful man to a holy God. They would say that God's greatest desire for you is to be rich and comfortable. And the Bible says that God's greatest desire for us is to be saved in Christ-like. Certainly, does God delight in blessing his children? Well, yes, God loves to bless his children. But we cannot assume that blessing us means that we get to have our wildest dreams materially. In fact, scripture when talking about money often warns us of the danger of loving money. Now we can use money for God's kingdom advance, praise God for that. But to fall in love with money and to believe that God exists to make me happy with my money is a total lie. We cannot manipulate God into giving us what we want when we give a little bit to a certain ministry, or by repeating a prayer every day. That's not what God exists to do. We're human, he's God. We worship him. We find delight in him. We don't use him to try to satisfy the desires of our hearts. That's an example of twisting scripture. A second tactic is adding other things to scripture. And this is a common strategy that cults use. What cults often do is they place another holy book on par with the Bible. So there's the Bible and the Book of Mormon, for example. Or they claim to have a divinely given interpretation, like the key to science of health and scriptures. And anyone who disagrees with their interpretation is wrong. Well, what ends up happening? By raising something else to the level of scripture, inevitably, when there's a disagreement between the Bible and this other book, which book wins? Not the Bible. And so they have conveniently found a way to claim to follow scripture while actually doing what they really want to do. That's the scheme. They can claim to be Bible believers while getting around the parts or re-explaining the parts that they don't agree with. We have to be clear that our doctrine says that the Bible alone is authoritative and sufficient. No other book shares that status. A third way that false teachers twist or a third tactic of gospel fraud is by taking things away from scripture. And this error is less common today but it does show up from time to time. And usually that claim is that this part of scripture is corrupt or it's just unnecessary so we can do away with it. There's actually a recent example of this from a well-known pastor named Andy Stanley. He's a megachurch pastor in Atlanta, and in 2018, he preached that the church needed to, quote unquote, unhitch our faith from the Old Testament. In other words, we can just cut the Old Testament out of our Bibles, we don't need it as New Testament believers. That's heresy. That's not right. The New Testament is built upon the Old Testament. It brings to completion the Old Testament. The entire Bible is God's word and none of the truth can be taken away from it. So the tactic of gospel fraud here is to twist scripture or add to it or take away from it. And we have to discern that. And you may be wondering, that sounds really hard. You know, Zach, you're the pastor. You've got a theology degree. You've studied this stuff. You can do that. But how do I do that? I don't have seminary training. How do I do that? And the wonderful news about this is that the Bible doesn't tell us you have to have a pastoral degree to develop discernment. What are we to do? We are to follow the model the Bereans set for us in Acts 17 when they heard the gospel from Paul and Silas from the apostle of all people, an apostle, they didn't blindly accept what he said. What did they do instead? They searched the scriptures. How frequently? They searched it daily, daily, to see if these things were so. And the reason they searched it daily is probably because Paul was teaching daily. They compared what was taught to the revealed scriptures. And that's what we as a congregation are called to do. Any pastor who comes up and just says, take my word for it, you don't need to worry about it, warning lights in your brain, sirens, not good. Because we have nothing to hide. When we preach, we're showing you what the word says. You can study it for yourself. And sometimes you can take a slightly different interpretation, we can have a conversation between believers, that's fine. I've had several of those in the last month, not a problem. But if someone comes up and says, you need to just accept what I'm telling you, just trust me on it. Don't worry about it, I'll handle it. No, you be like the Bereans. Study the word of God. Understand it for yourself. The Holy Spirit helps you. The word of God shows you. The local church supplies you with other people to minister to you in this way. So, we need to beware of these tactics. We need to remember that false teaching will not align with the truth, but when you discover error, then what do you do? You've come across something you're troubled by, what do you do? And you've confirmed that it is true, truly wrong, that is. Verses nine through 10 address this situation. Look at verses nine and 10. A little leaven leavens the whole lump. I have confidence you in the Lord that you will have no other mind, but he who troubles you shall bear his judgment, whoever he is. When you discover gospel errors and uncover a scheme of gospel fraud, we have to remember that false teaching has to be dealt with quickly. Quickly. We don't put up with it and hope that the situation will go away. We don't put up with it. We change the channel. We turn it off. We have conversations with people. In verses nine and 10, Show us this through an illustration and an assurance. Verse nine shows us through an illustration this point. Because even a small amount of false teaching is poisonous, it must be purged. Okay, there's an urgency then to our actions. This is not something we dabble in and hope that everything will be okay. What Paul does is use a simple illustration to make a point. When baking bread, a little yeast or a little leaven is added and spreads to the whole lump of dough. So the picture then, leaven then, is a picture of something spreading and filling something else. Now, if you've read through your scriptures, you're probably thinking, wait a minute, I've heard this before. And this is a common illustration in the Bible, actually. It's used in both the Old Testament and the New Testament of something that completely permeates something else. The first use of this comes from the book of Exodus when Israel ate unleavened bread as they fled Egypt. The Passover feast that God instituted includes seven days of eating unleavened bread. So when the Passover was celebrated the lamb was slain to atone for sins and that's the picture of blood covering sin of which Christ is the final Paschal lamb. The unleavened bread pictured sin being purged. In the New Testament, Jesus used the metaphor of leaven in both a positive and a negative way, actually. In Matthew 13, verse 33, I think it is, he compared the kingdom of heaven to leaven. It starts out being hidden, but over time, the kingdom of heaven will spread and one day will reign in the earth. Negatively, Jesus, just a couple chapters later in Matthew 16, warned the people against the leaven of the Pharisees, against their teaching, which he implies would corrupt the entire person. Paul uses this same illustration over in 1 Corinthians chapter five. It's in the context of church discipline where a man has an incestuous relationship with his mother-in-law, his father's wife, or not his mother-in-law, his father's wife, his stepmother. And Paul says this, quote, do you not know that a little leaven leavens the whole lump? It's the same expression as we find here. And in 1 Corinthians 5, he makes explicit what they are to do. He says, therefore, purge the old leaven out that you may be a new lump since you are truly unleavened. The church is supposed to be free from sin. So we purge the leaven from our midst. Here in Galatians 5, he doesn't draw the explicit commandment out, but he leaves it as an implicit instruction. What are the Galatians supposed to do? A little leaven, a little false teaching spoils the whole lump. It permeates the whole body. Therefore, what are they to do? Purge it. Get rid of it quickly. And the application for us is that we cannot put up with even a little error. A little false teaching. Okay, remember what this is. This is not a doctrinal disagreement between believers. This is a gospel level issue. We cannot tolerate abandoning the gospel. It's the job of pastors to hold fast to the pattern of sound words, to guard the good deposit of faith in our church gatherings. It's our privilege and responsibility to preach and present the pure milk of the word to you. That's our calling. But what about in your home? There's only one family here that takes me home with them. So the rest of you then do not get the liberty of having your pastor at home with you. So what are you supposed to do at home? How can you guard from gospel fraud in your homes? Well, where does error come from? It filters in through what we watch. Through the personalities we listen to. If a preacher is on TV, nine times out of 10, they're probably not telling you the truth. Just a rule of thumb. If someone on YouTube says it's true, it doesn't matter that it's on YouTube. Anyone can put anything on YouTube. Be skeptical of that. Be like the Bereans. Be wary of televangelists. Be careful through the religious fiction that we read because even a small amount of false teaching can spoil one's heart. So purge it quickly. Now, taking this to heart means that maybe we're starting to get a little paranoid. Well, what can I trust then? What can I believe? Where can I turn for truth? Well, slow down. Because even though a small amount of teaching is poisonous and must be purged, Paul says, false teaching should not unsettle our hearts. It shouldn't unsettle true believers. And that's where he comes back in verse 10. He says, I have confidence in you, in the Lord, that you will have no other mind. Paul's tone shifts here to confident assurance. There's comfort here to true believers. He's saying, don't fear. The Lord will protect his own. He's confident that the Galatians will take his view of the false teachers and act, and his confidence is not grounded in them. It's not grounded in their ability to discern. His confidence is grounded in the Lord. And that's the key thing here. We don't have to fear the threats and the schemes around us because God protects us. The Lord watches over his own. Yes, we exercise discernment. That's one of the means by which God protects us. But our God is a protecting God. He preserves us through the ups and downs of life. And one of the ways he preserves us is by helping us take the right view of false teaching. That's what the phrase have no other mind refers to. Have no other mind means to adopt the right view of the situation. Paul is saying that now that they have the truth clarified, he's confident that they'll embrace the truth and hold fast to it. And when we uncover and unpack the word of God, we should hold fast to it. And that's one of the benefits of the local church gathering. As we listen week after week to the preaching of the scriptures, we're being built up in the faith, we're being established in what we're taught. The benefit of doctrine, the benefit of learning what the truth is, it has a preserving, guarding effect. The more grounded we become in the truth, the more impervious we are to error. Now some people would say, well doctrine, that's dry, that's stuffy. You can't preach that. No, we must preach that. Because the Christian life is not just giving sugar snacks and letting you run for a little bit. True endurance spiritually comes through knowing the meat of the word through the doctrine of the scriptures. That's what protects you. I just want to appeal to you on this that yes, we come hopefully each week, but if we're not coming consistently, if you're not coming consistently, you're going to get scattered thoughts. No one sermon can preach everything. I've tried before in the early days. I've tried. But you can't cover everything. I will never be the final word on a subject. Never. There's always more to say. There's always more to add. And if you come once a month, twice a month, you're in and you're out, you're here and you're there, you're not going to get the steady diet of truth. But when you come week after week and you gather together, a body of truth will be built up and communicated to you that builds you up. That's the benefit of the preaching of the local church. But within the local church, there's also several folks that have gifts of discernment. The ability to have wisdom, to see error and say, ooh, that's not right. I have several that come and talk to me on a regular basis and I value their gifts of wisdom and discernment so that we can sense truth and error and know which one is right and which one is wrong. And that gift spiritually protects the whole church. We need one another. We need the ministry of our fellow brothers and sisters. That's how the Lord protects us, one of the ways at least. So we're not to fear. The Lord will protect his own. And there's also an assurance here in the justice of God. What a difference knowing Christ makes for our view of God's justice. Far from being a terrifying thing now, the justice of God is a comfort to us. That in the end, he will make all things right, that God will sort out punishment and correction and reward. In the end, God faithfully preserves and works. And as Paul says here, whoever troubles you will bear his judgment. He will face the condemnation of God. And I love how he kind of just dismisses this false teacher or these false teachers. He doesn't name them. He doesn't give them the time of day. He just kind of waves his hand and says, whoever he is. God is not partial. Doesn't matter the false teacher's status, their popularity, their following, God's justice will reign. That's what we hope in. And so in the culture of gospel fraud that we live in, we can be confident that God is going to work and preserve us. He will judge those that are spreading lies. We can remain faithful to him. Now verses 11 through 12 give us our final principle about false teaching. And verse 11 doesn't continue the same train of thought. The commentators show seven through 10, there's clear line of logic. 11 kind of comes out of nowhere. And then 12 feels almost like, one commentator said, a snort that's coming out. What's being said here? And if I, brethren, and I, brethren, if I still preach circumcision, why do I suffer persecution? Paul seemingly is addressing an accusation against him. that he's still preaching circumcision. He says, if I still preach this, like he used to when he was a Pharisee in Judaism. And his point is, if I'm still doing that, why am I suffering persecution? In that case, I would be agreeing with these Judaizers. The fact that Paul suffers persecution from the Jews shows his break with Judaism. Paul has rejected circumcision as contributing to one's standing with God. As he said back in verse six that we read at the opening, in Christ Jesus neither circumcision nor uncircumcision avails anything. And so he continues in verse 11 by showing the result of preaching circumcision. If he were still doing that, then the offense of the cross has ceased. The scandal of God dying on a tree goes away if we preach that you can be saved and right with God through what you do. Paul embraced the offense of the cross. He embraced the persecution that came with it. Therefore, he has no sympathy for those who teach something else. And verse 12 proves this. Now this is a scathing piece of sarcasm. a denunciation in the style of Old Testament imprecatory prayers. And he's dismissing these troublers. In essence, he says that those who unsettle the believers shouldn't stop with circumcision, but should go all the way with emasculation. That's quite a statement. And I will be discreet here, but we have to understand why Paul would say that. It's a little bit shocking. He's certainly not teaching that self-harm or self-mutilation is good, but he's showing how silly it is to think that cutting off a small amount of skin in circumcision makes someone holy, but cutting off a little more skin makes one unholy. It's your faith in Christ that saves, not what you do with this area of the male body. But there's a deeper message in this, actually, that drew upon the cultural background of Galatia. You remember all of these churches in the New Testament, Ephesus, Philippi, Corinth, the region of Galatia, all of them had a culture that they were part of. Just like we here in Metro Denver have a culture that we are part of. And it's a different culture. than Alabama, it's a different culture than Massachusetts, it's a different culture than California, although we're trying to be like California, sadly. The culture of Galatia had a pagan religion in it who worshiped the goddess Sibyl. And the priests for this wicked religion, again I'll be discreet, were men who cross-dressed and did immoral things. with the highest position of priest reserved for men who did what Paul suggests here in verse 12. If Paul is comparing circumcision with this pagan cult then his conclusion is all the more shocking. The call for circumcision and returning to the law is nothing more than a different form of paganism because both do not rely on the Lord Jesus Christ. That's how important Jesus is for salvation. Well, what's he doing? Is he simply just letting off some steam here? No, Paul is exposing a tactic of false teaching that is just as true today as it was back then. Principle number three says that false teaching minimizes the offense of the cross. Count on it. False teaching will minimize the offense, the stumbling block of the cross. The cross is offensive. You know that, right? Far from hiding that fact, the Bible proclaims it. 1 Corinthians 1.23, Paul writes, but we preach Christ crucified to the Jews, a stumbling block. Same word. To the Jews, an offense. To the Greeks, foolishness. To Jewish ears, the cross is an offense. Their Messiah, shamefully rejected by the nation and brutally hung to die on a tree? No way. To the Gentiles, the cross is foolishness, it's folly. Especially to the Roman world of that day. A king executed like a criminal? A God that died a brutal death not fit for a Roman citizen? No way, can't be. And so there's a repulsion to the cross. It offends our notion of the way things ought to be. And it produces a reaction so strong that for centuries, people not only have rejected the message of the cross, they've persecuted those who've embraced it. The New Testament tells us to expect this persecution, to endure it, to suffer well for the cause of Christ. What's fascinating is in Galatians chapter six, verses 12 through 14, Paul revisits this idea. And he goes into detail about why false teachers minimize the cross. And we're gonna have to save that discussion for a later time. False teaching minimizes the offense of the cross. Do we see this in our world today? Yeah, unfortunately, sadly. Many American churches downplay the offensive parts of the gospel. They downplay the cross because they've understood what's been true for 2,000 years. The less offensive a message is, the more receptive the world is to it. So let's take the offense out of the cross and we'll get more people in the door. We'll make people feel good about themselves. We'll gain a following. And the line between forsaking the cross versus an imbalanced presentation of the gospel is hard to know exactly where that is. There are some churches that preach the gospel that don't talk about sin like they probably ought to, but they're still preaching the truth. Many churches, though, who market themselves as seeker-friendly will intentionally downplay the cross not to offend their hearers, but this does a disservice to the audience. It's not love for people's souls that calls a pastor to diminish the cross. It's fear of man or love of approval. The cross communicates vital gospel truths because in the picture of the cross, we see man's sinfulness atoned for. We see God become man. We see a resurrected Jesus who is the son of God. we see salvation as the only way through him, exclusive, not by works. And the danger for some, I think the danger for all of us that some fall into that is, is swinging the pendulum too far the other way. Maybe you've heard some preachers who rail at people and they're harsh and vindictive about the cross because they're offending people with their mannerisms. Look, the cross is offensive enough. We don't need to add a brusque manner to it to make people offended. Telling them that they're a sinner bound for hell and that they can't do anything to save themselves, that's hard enough. So when we speak the gospel to people, when I preach the gospel, we can't do it because we're angry with people. We were just like them. In many ways, we're still sinning just like they do. We just know Jesus now. So let's have a heart of compassion. and communicate the truth graciously. Ultimately, we can't minimize the cross because of what it stands for. It's the symbol of our salvation. Some of you have jewelry that have crosses on it. Why? Because it is the picture of what Jesus has done for us. Jesus is not a piece of the gospel to be downplayed and shuffled into the background. Though the cross cuts against the grain of human sense and sensibility, we worship a crucified and risen Savior. The scandal of the cross is our glory. God forbid, Paul writes, that I should boast except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by whom the world has been crucified to me, and I to the world, Galatians 6.14. False teaching minimizes the offense of the cross and falling prey to gospel fraud is a real danger. Our world is saturated with false teaching but we don't have to be afraid. God has not given us the spirit of fear but of power and love, finish it with me, and of a sound mind. Our goal is to remain faithful to the Lord, and we can do that by spotting and resisting false teaching. And being faithful to the Lord, we have to make sure we understand, right, is not something we just put off. We don't just put off false teaching. We have to embrace truth. We have to put on what is right. And as verse 11 showed us, staying near the cross, embracing the message of the cross, is one way that we proactively fight against the spiritual scams around us. Fanny Crosby wrote a hymn, Jesus keep me near the cross, there a precious fountain, free to all a healing stream flows from Calvary's mountain. In the cross, in the cross, be my glory ever, till my ransomed soul shall find the rest beyond the river. That's our prayer, Jesus keep me near the cross. Let's bow together and close. Father, it is a stunning revelation that sometimes we're so used to, we don't remember the implications of it, that you would send your son to take on human flesh and to hang as a criminal on a cross. The scandal is a stumbling block to Jewish ears. It's folly to the cultural world around us. It's something that is mocked at, and yet it's something that we treasure and revere, because in the cross, the love of Christ was displayed, as we sung earlier today, that our boast is in the cross, where your love was shown to us. We thank you, Lord, and we pray for spiritual protection, fraudulent activity, is all around us, may we have ears and eyes that are discerning, hearts that are in love with Christ and in love with the truth, and may you protect us from the error of our cultures, in Jesus' name, amen. Thanks for listening to audio from Red Rocks Baptist Church. If you enjoyed this content, please consider sharing it with others. Our mission at Red Rocks Baptist Church is to know Christ and to make Him known. May God bless you as you follow Him.