Aren’t you glad you go to a church with no rules? Isn’t that better than having a lot of rules about what you have to wear and what you have to drive and rules that say you can’t eat brownies in the auditorium? Those are dumb rules, right? Let’s eat some brownies. Now, I have two pans of freshly baked brownies here. These brownies with the skull and crossbones on them are for the people that are very worried about getting the virus. I added a bunch of rat poison to these to kill the virus so you don’t have to worry about that. It might affect the taste a little bit but they are still good brownies.
Now, these over here are for the folks that are not as concerned about the virus. These are for the brave, the courageous folks that go without a mask to Walmart. These are for the people screaming to open Texas back up. If you want one of these brownies, just raise your hand. They only have a little bit of rat poison in them. You probably won’t even taste it at all. So…who wants which brownies? I’ll pass them around.
What? Nobody wants any brownies? Why not? We don’t have any rules around here about eating brownies. It’s okay. These just have a little bit of poison. These are virus-free brownies. These are probably virus-free brownies. So…you don’t want ANY rat poison? Is that it? Man, y’all are picky.
Now, let me ask you a question. What if I stood up here today and gave you some fresh, hot and wonderful spiritual brownies but I threw in a lot of poison? What if I stood up here and told you that Jesus and Allah and Buddha are all equally good ways to get to Heaven and that all God wanted is for you to be sincere? What would happen? You wouldn’t wait for the sermon to be over. You would justifiably kick me out and tell me to never come back, wouldn’t you? An overt amount of spiritual poison is not much of a threat for a mature church like this, is it?
But what if I stood up here and told you, like some pastors are doing right now in churches all over America, that Jesus is the only way to Heaven; Jesus is God and is alive today and wants to have a relationship with you and all you have to do is believe and be baptized and take the Lord’s Supper and come to church to get to Heaven? How does that sound? That sounds right, doesn’t it? The problem is, there is just a little bit of life-killing poison in there.
Jesus said that to go to Heaven all you have to do is believe in Him. Period. He didn’t say anything about the Lord’s Supper or church or being good or keeping the Old Testament Laws or anything else. So, which Gospel is the more dangerous in the church today? The Gospel with a lot of poison that says you can do anything as long as you are sincere or the Gospel with just a little bit of poison that says Jesus plus anything else? The most dangerous Gospel is not the Gospel at all and Paul tells us that in Galatians chapter 1.
We are continuing our look at the early churches in the New Testament to see what they did right and what they did wrong and we have come to the letter Paul wrote to the church in Galatia. The Book of Galatians is in between 2 Corinthians and Ephesians and is overall a letter of grace. It talks more about God’s grace than probably any other book in the Bible. What is grace? How would you define it?
There are different ways that it can be used but Paul uses it here as a means of saying God’s unmerited favor. We didn’t do anything to deserve it. God just chose to show His grace and favor because of Who He is. Let’s turn to Galatians 1:6-9. Here, Paul talks a lot about the Gospel, which simply means “Good News” so let’s see what Paul says about grace and the Gospel of Jesus. Galatians 1:6-9 says,
“I am astonished that you are so quickly deserting the one who called you to live in the grace of Christ and are turning to a different gospel- 7which is really no gospel at all. Evidently some people are throwing you into confusion and are trying to pervert the gospel of Christ. 8But even if we or an angel from heaven should preach a gospel other than the one we preached to you, let them be under God's curse! 9As we have already said, so now I say again: If anybody is preaching to you a gospel other than what you accepted, let them be under God's curse!”
A farmer went into his banker and announced that he had bad news and good news. "First, the bad news..."Well," said the farmer, "I can't make my mortgage payments. And that crop loan I've taken out for the past 10 years -- I can't pay that off, either. Not only that, I won't be able to pay you the couple of hundred thousand I still have outstanding on my tractors and other equipment. So, I'm going to have to give up the farm and turn it all over to you for whatever you can salvage out of it." Silence prevailed for a minute and then the banker said, "What's the good news?" "The good news is that I'm going to keep on banking with you," said the farmer. (Bits & Pieces, April 30, 1992)
Have you ever gotten “good news” like that? I heard an old bull rider tell the story of getting his head stomped on by a bull and the cowboy went to the hospital where the doctor said, “I have good news. You’re lucky. It could have been a lot worse.” To which the old guy said, “Well, doc, I been lucky before and it didn’t hurt near this bad.”
There is good news like that and there is the Good News of Jesus Christ. And before we go any further, somebody tell me the Gospel. What is the Good News and don’t make it any harder or complicated than it has to be?
The Gospel is just that Jesus came to earth and lived a sinless life so He could die on the cross to pay the price that God the Father had set as the payment for sin. Jesus then rose from the dead and lives today so we can have a relationship with Him. And all we have to do is believe in Him. Period.
John 3:16 tells us, “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.” That is the Good News, the Gospel, and the reason why it is called the Good News is because we don’t have anything to do with it except to accept that free gift by faith.
The Apostle Paul started this church in Galatia and, as usual, as soon as it was on its feet, he moved on to start other churches. But while Paul was at that church, do you think he ever told them the Good News? Do you think he ever shared the Gospel with them? I think that’s a pretty safe bet. I am pretty positive that the Gospel was brought up, probably many times as it was what all New Testament churches were and are built on.
But here in Galatians chapter one we see Paul start off with his usual, “Hey, how ya doing? It’s your buddy Paul, grace and peace and blah, blah, blah…” and then he just unloads on them right off the bat in verse 6. “Are you people out of your ever-loving minds?” Don’t you know he wanted to say that? He was a little nicer but not much. He had evidently heard that this church that he had started had changed and was now accepting as truth something besides the true Gospel.
He says, “I am astonished…” It means to be blown away and not understand at all. “I am astonished that you are so quickly deserting…” They haven’t been lured away subtly. This is not a small slip by accident. They went quickly after something else, deserting God, not just putting Him off to the side but completely abandoning Him and found something else and called that the Gospel.
Now, I have some questions. Number one: why? Why would somebody replace the Gospel that we just laid out? I think there are probably several reasons. Some people might replace the true Gospel for money or power. There is always going to be those kinds of people. Maybe somebody will say, “You have to believe in Jesus and then send your check to this address made payable to me and you will be saved.” That’s very possible.
Somebody else might say you have to believe in Jesus but you don’t have to go to church. You don’t have to repent. You don’t have to pray or anything else. Just walk the aisle and say a few words and you are saved. Now you have a ticket to Heaven plus fire insurance to keep you out of Hell. But that’s not adding to the Gospel. It is taking away from it. And that might sound good and make a person real popular but it’s not truth.
But I honestly think that some people change the Gospel because it is just too easy. There has to be more to it. Surely you have to do something or give something or give up something but Jesus said all you have to do is believe.
Now, let’s just stop right here and talk about what it really means to believe. That word that Jesus used in John 3:16 is “pisteuo” – pist-yoo-o – and, according to my 39 pound Strong’s Expanded Exhaustive Concordance, means not just to believe mentally but also to be persuaded of and to place confidence in, reliance upon and be committed to.
Now, here is my standard illustration for what it means to believe. It’s an old demonstration. I’ve done it a thousand times and it was old before I started using it but it’s the best visualization I know of what it means to believe.
This is just an ordinary chair. I can say I have faith in this chair. I can say I believe that this chair will hold me up. I can look it over and study it and it appears to be sturdy and I can say I have great faith in this chair. But standing over here, am I really believing? No, not until I sit in the chair completely.
Now, some people will say they believe but they only put a little bit of weight on it. They are just barely touching the chair and it may look like they believe but they don’t really believe. You don’t actually have saving faith until you fully commit your life (in this instance, sitting in the chair with your feet up). And every time I do this, I wonder if this is going to be the time the chair breaks and we will laugh about this for a hundred years.
So, I say all of that to say that when Jesus said all you have to do is believe, He means all you have to do is fully commit your life to His plan and His will and if the chair breaks, the chair breaks and in the end, we will laugh about it because even that is God’s will and sometimes God has a strange sense of humor.
So, I asked the question why. Now, let me ask the question, how? How do some people change the Gospel? In what ways? We kind of skipped over this answering why but sometimes we see people adding to the Gospel and sometimes people will take away from the Gospel.
I had a dear friend come visit me the other day. He is the pastor of another small church in the area of another denomination. He is actually part of my “crazy pastor” group that I have told you about but he is the least crazy one of the bunch. But he has told me that he has some crazy members of his church. Those are my words, not his. He told me that he knows of some people in his church that truly believe in the Gospel of Jesus but that if you get to Heaven, having done everything right and believed in the right way and in the right One but you weren’t baptized…that God is going to see you and frown and say, “Go away. I never knew you.”
He said it’s the same with the Lord’s Supper and even instruments in worship. Can you believe that? Some people do. Some people believe the Gospel means you believe in Jesus AND refuse to worship God with musical instruments. That is so sad to me.
On the other hand, there are a lot of really popular preachers out there that say the Gospel means to believe in Jesus but you don’t have to really commit your life. You can just barely sit on the chair and you can just barely go to church or just barely pray or just barely change and as long as you are sincere (whatever that means) in your love for God, that God understands you aren’t perfect. So, why try? That sounds pretty good, right? Too bad it isn’t truth and if you believe it you will wind up right in Hell.
I want to give you a couple of sentences that should be a red flag when you hear them. They actually aren’t even full sentences but if you hear somebody say that the Gospel means to believe in Jesus AND…that’s a red flag. Or if you hear somebody say the Gospel means to believe in Jesus BUT…that, too, is a red flag. I say it’s a red flag because maybe they finish the sentence with, “You have to believe in Jesus AND…isn’t that wonderful?” Well, that’s okay. A little weird but possible and okay.
But if anybody ever adds to or takes away from the Gospel being belief in Jesus then that is a false Gospel. Even if the thing added is a good thing. Even if they say you have to believe and be baptized or believe and take the Lord’s Supper or believe and follow the Law or anything else, that is a false Gospel, which Paul says in our text is not a Gospel at all.
The Gospel means “good news” and if you have to be baptized along with belief in Jesus then there is no lasting peace in that and it is not good news. What if the guy baptizing you didn’t do it right? What if you didn’t get all the way wet or he said the wrong thing or you did it with the wrong motive. Oh dear. That’s not good news because it somehow depends on you or somebody else. But the Gospel, the true Good News, doesn’t depend on you or anybody else. It only depends on God through His Son Jesus and His great and amazing grace – that unmerited favor of God. Thank you, Lord.
Now, one last quick question before we close. We answered why and how. Now, what? What should we do when we see or hear somebody preaching or teaching a false Gospel? What do you think? Well, go back to our passage in Galatians 1 and look again at what Mr. Subtle says about it. Paul was never one to sugarcoat anything, was he?
He says in verse 8 and repeats in verse 9 that anybody that preaches another Gospel besides the one that Paul preached, let him be eternally condemned. “Eternally condemned” is “anathema” in Greek and it means just what it sounds like. That person is headed to Hell so you stay away from them.
In 2 John it says, “I say this because many deceivers, who do not acknowledge Jesus Christ as coming in the flesh, have gone out into the world. Any such person is the deceiver. If anyone comes to you and does not bring this teaching, do not take them into your house or welcome them. 11 Anyone who welcomes them shares in their wicked work.”
In other words, if you hear somebody preaching a false Gospel, don’t listen to them...ever. Don’t bring them into your house through the radio or the TV or internet. You stay away from them and let God work in their lives to change that false teaching.
When I was talking to my pastor friend the other day, we got to laughing about how different some of us are in this crazy pastor group. I told him what my brother in law, Randy, told me one time that helped me. He said there are several passages in scripture that talk about how the church is made up of a bunch of different members but we are all one body. You know that. We have talked about that a lot. But until recently, I have always taken that in context of just one church like Christ Fellowship.
We know that Christ Fellowship has a bunch of different kinds of people but it helped me to be reminded that Christ Fellowship is not the only church. There is the whole global Christian church that is a body as well and while what those other crazy pastors do and believe may be way different than what we do and believe, I have no doubt that they believe in the same true Gospel that we believe and so we will see them in Heaven.
But not long ago, we all met at a certain church in the area and it came out that the pastor of this church was adding all kinds of stuff to the Gospel of Jesus. He believed the one true Gospel but he also believed you have to do this ceremony and pray in just this way and add these folks to the One that we pray to. You know what happened? He was never invited back. As one of the guys so eloquently put it, we gave him the right foot of fellowship.
Now, nobody got mad or called him names. We just don’t fellowship, much less worship, with that guy. Paul says in verse 7 that some people “pervert” the Gospel. That word “pervert” means to take something and twist it into something it is not supposed to be. Satan loves to do that. He loves to take something God has given and just twist it into something completely different. He has done it with love and marriage. He has done it with work and money and he especially likes to do it with the one and only way to get to Heaven.
He wants you to think that surely there has to be more to it. Surely you have to work for it and yet you don’t really expect to have to change things in your life. That would be crazy. But the Gospel of God through the grace of Jesus is simply to believe in Him and fully commit yourself to Him and allow Him to change you however He wants to. It is simple but it’s not always easy. But without it, there is no way to Heaven. There is no grace. There is no lasting peace. There is no joy in the difficult times. Accept it right now as a gift wherever you are.
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