Beginning this morning, at least in an introductory
way, we're going to launch into a study of the epistle to the Galatians by the great
apostle Paul. It is a very suitable epistle for us to be
considering at this particular time in our own lives, as well as in the life of the church
and evangelical Christianity, as we look at its current condition. This is a powerful, clear proclamation of
the gospel and its implications. The apostle Paul obviously is the great New
Testament apostle given the responsibility for clarifying the gospel in its most careful
way; thus, he has written all his epistles, which in one way or another enrich our understanding
of the life and ministry, death and resurrection, ascension and return of our Lord Jesus Christ,
all of which encompasses the glory of the good news. It's going to be important for us to understand
the gospel as its revealed through the Holy Spirit in the letters of Paul, and most particularly
the book of Galatians. But beyond that, and in a general sense, Galatians
had a very strong impact on the Reformation. This is the year 2017. Five hundred years ago 1517 a monk, an Augustinian
monk and priest by the name of Martin Luther, launched the Protestant Reformation. He did that by writing up 95 theses, all of
which condemned some practice in the Roman Catholic system. He posted those 95 condemning theses on the
door of the Roman Catholic Church in Wittenberg, Germany; and with the posting of that launched
essentially the Reformation. That was the first shot fired and eventually
heard around the world. He saw what was wrong with the Roman Catholic
Church. And, in particular, when he came to Galatians
chapter 3, and verse 11, and the words, "The just" - or the righteous - "shall live by
faith," he understood for the first time the true gospel. That statement, of course, drawn out of the
Old Testament, Habakkuk 2:4. Paul refers to it in Romans 1:17. It is referred to here in Galatians 3:11;
and again, a third time in the New Testament in Hebrews 10:38. A very critical statement: "The just shall
live" - or the righteous - "shall live by faith." That launched Luther's understanding of the
gospel, brought about his salvation, and gave force and power to his ministry as God used
him as a key part of the great recovery of the gospel known as the Reformation. But let's back up a little bit. Before Luther was a clear-headed theologian,
he was a confused monk. Before he was a powerful force, he was a tormented
failure. Before he had spiritual peace, he lived in
constant spiritual pain. Luther was depressed. He was profoundly depressed. He was so depressed, so overwrought with guilt
that he lived with constant anxiety and fear. On one occasion when he was still pursuing
a career as a professor of Law, he encountered a thunderstorm, and a bolt of lightening hit
the ground very near to him. It terrified him to the degree that at that
moment he committed himself to God to become a monk, believing that maybe that was the
lightening from God that would come again and take his life if he didn't devote himself
to God. He became an Augustinian monk and moved into
an Augustinian monastery. In the monastery he found the road to salvation
was very hard, very hard. In fact, it was not just hard for him, it
was hard for everyone. It was so hard that the Catholic Church invented
a place called purgatory, and the purpose of purgatory was to purge the remaining sins
of certain people who were too bad to go to heaven, but too good to go to hell. And there seemed to have been a lot of people
too bad for heaven and too good for hell who needed some purging, and that was what happened
supposedly in purgatory. I suppose the best that Luther could have
hoped for was purgatory, because no matter what he did he never ever got over the reality
of his own sinfulness. He was tortured on the inside by guilt and
fear. Monks so feared God and the wrath of God,
so feared Christ and the just throne of Christ and judgment of Christ that they turned to
Mary. Mary, they were taught, was more compassionate
than either the Father or the Son; and they would go to her, pleading with her to plead
with Christ and plead with God on their behalf, to grant them salvation. In Luther's case, he knew he did not deserve. Luther was terrified of God and terrified
of Christ. Luther was taught like all monks, that salvation
is by grace, but you have to earn that grace. In other words, you have to reach a certain
point of worthiness. You have to have accumulated a certain amount
of merit, and if you are worthy enough, God will give you grace. So in order to become worthy, Luther went
to the very extremes as the apostle Paul said he did in the chapter that I read. Luther gave himself over to every conceivable
and inconceivable severe discipline. He renounced all self-will. He was told that if his food was meager that
was a way to the worthiness that God desired; and so with the rest of the monks they ate
basically a meager bread and water kind of diet. They were also told that if they struggled
with uncomfortable clothing and some other additional things in their shoes and around
their waists that inflicted pain, that too could accumulate some worthiness for them. So he gave himself to meager food, he gave
himself to the denial of self-will, he gave himself to uncomfortable clothing. He gave himself to sleepless vigils that went
on and on and on. He gave himself to begging, which was the
most humiliating thing a human being could do. And even though they didn't need to beg, they
begged because they thought that somehow could attain worthiness that would qualify them
to receive grace. He fasted so often that his friends were afraid
he was going to die. He knew that he didn't have the merit that
he needed, and so he did what Roman Catholics were told to do, he applied for some merit
that was available to him that could be passed down to him from somebody else. This is how it worked: some people died with
more merit than they needed. Excess merit was accumulated in what the Catholic
Church calls the treasury of merit, and it sits there in an available place for you to
tap into, and you can receive that merit that was more than somebody needed; but what you
need, it can be applied to your case. And here's how: if you commit yourself to
visiting and venerating relics like imaginary bones of Peter, pieces of the cross, milk
from the breast of Mary, blood of the martyrs. He walked 800 miles to Rome and 800 miles
back, and when he got to Rome he went there to ascend the Scala Sancta, the holy steps
which were supposed to be the steps that our Lord went up into Pilate's judgment hall that
were transported to Rome, and sinners could gain merit if they crawled up those steps
and kneeled at every step, bowed down, kissed the step, and progressed all the way to the
top. After having done that and been exposed to
Rome, he saw more corruption than he had ever seen in his experience as a monk in Wittenberg,
or anywhere else in Germany. He was so overwrought by sin that he would
confess his sins incessantly, up to six hours. He confessed them to his priestly confessor,
a man by the name of Staupitz; and Staupitz was so worn out by these long confessions
that he said to Luther, "Do not come back unless you commit adultery or fornication. Stop with the endless confessions." He had no peace; he had no salvation. What was driving Luther to this level of terror
and fear was he desperately wanted to be right with God, because he understood God, and God's
wrath, and God's judgment, and the reality of eternal punishment in hell. You could say it this way: he had fear of
God. The fear of God is a necessary truth to drive
sinners to seek reconciliation. Where there is no fear of God, sinners go
blindly and blithely to hell. And, naturally, Romans 3 says there is no
fear of God before their eyes. That's not natural. Pride is natural. Sinners have to be taught to fear God; and
that, for sure, the Roman Catholic Church did. Luther was so afraid of God that it tortured
him. He wanted God to forgive him; he wanted God
to accept him. He wanted to escape hell; he wanted to enter
heaven. And even as a monk in an Augustinian monastery
doing everything he could possibly do, he could not satisfy his own heart and find relief
for his fear and guilt. He inflicted extreme torment on his soul and
body. Here's a quote from Martin Luther: "I tortured
myself with praying, fasting, keeping vigils, and freezing. The cold was enough to kill me. I inflicted such pain as I would never inflict
again." All of this self-imposed torture, along with
his sacraments, pilgrimages, and other deprivations, gave him no peace, no rest, and no sense of
forgiveness; they only increased the torment. He was doing everything he could do, and God
was not responding. He knew that he was by nature and behavior
a sinner, and that God was by nature and behavior absolutely holy, and the gulf was infinite,
and he could not cross that gulf, and he left to himself could not satisfy God. In fact, Luther was convinced that it was
impossible for any sinner to satisfy God and be accepted by God. So he began to feel that God was cruel, brutally
cruel, and he actually came to hate God. Let me read you what wrote. Here's a quote from Martin Luther: "I did
not love, yes, I hated the righteous God who punishes sinners; and secretly, if not blasphemously,
certainly murmuring greatly, I was angry with God, and I said, 'Is it not enough that miserable
sinners eternally lost through original sin are crushed by the law of the Ten Commandments
without having God add pain to pain by the gospel, and also by the gospel threatening
us with His righteous wrath?'" And then Luther said, "I raged against God with fierce and
troubled conscience." One wonders where such raging is in the shallows
of contemporary Christianity. Where is such raging? Where is such fear of God and holy wrath? The shallows of contemporary Christianity
with its false gospels generate no such raging, because they generate no such fear. Martin Luther though would have found a companion,
a companion in the Bible, another man who was in the very position he was in. He was literally being racked by fear and
guilt and anxiety and dread, and didn't know how to be right with God. Who was that? Turn back to the book of Job, the book of
Job; probably the first book of the Bible ever written, written even before Moses wrote
the first five book from Genesis on. All the way back at the beginning, as man
begins to face God, there is a compelling question on his mind. It's in Job 9 and verse 2: "How can a man
be in the right before God? How can man be right with God?" That was Luther's question, and that was Job's
question, and that - listen - is the question that every religion in the world attempts
to answer. All religion assumes a deity, and all religion
assumes a means by which you can pacify that deity and move from being harmed by him to
being blessed by him. That's what religion is. All religion proports to offer an answer to
the question: "How can a man be made right before God?" And, I might add, all religion gives hell's
answer. Only the gospel gives the true answer. But that is the question: "How can a man be
in the right before God?" "How can I be right with God?" That was Job's question. Job, you remember was a good man. He was the best that a man actually can be. In fact, in chapter 1, we read that he was,
in verse 1, "blameless, upright, fearing God, and turning away from evil." That's as good as it gets on a human level.
"He was blameless, upright, fearing God and turning away from evil," and it repeats exactly
the same thing in chapter 1, verse 8. This is a man who is a good as it gets. This is a good man from a human viewpoint. Why is he asking a question in chapter 9,
verse 2: "How can a man be made right with God?" Because a good man, an upright, blameless
man, a man that people look at and say, "Wow, his life is all that it should be," very much
like the apostle Paul, who if measured by the law was blameless, how can a man be a
good man and not be right with God? Answer: because being a good man doesn't make
you right with God, because you can't be good enough. Well, Job needed to understand that. Job then, a good man, a good man, has all
his children die, loses all his fortune, all his land and crops and animals, all becomes
a waste. He loses his health, he's sick, all his sons
and daughters have died, everything he had is gone, he's a physical wreck, and he's saying,
"God, I'm doing my best to be the best I can be. What is happening here? What's causing this? I don't know what to do." Chapter 7, verse 3, he says it's day and night,
"Nights of trouble are appointed me. When I lie down I say, 'When shall I arise?'
But the night continues, and I'm continually tossing until dawn. I can't sleep. Life is torturous. My flesh is clothed with worms and a crust
of dirt. My skin hardens and runs. My days are swifter than a weaver's shuttle,
and come to an end without hope. Remember" - he says to the Lord - "my life
is but breath; my eye will not again see good. The eye of him who sees me will behold me
no longer; Your eyes will be on me, but I will not be. I'm losing it, I'm going out of existence,
I'm going to die under this. I'm going to be gone." And so he says, in verse 11, "Therefore I
will not restrain my mouth; I will speak in the anguish of my spirit, I will complain
in the bitterness of my soul." And his complaint is, "God, what are You doing? I'm the best a man can be. What's happening? Am I the sea, or the sea monster, that You
set a guard of me? Am I dangerous to people? If I say, 'My bed will comfort me, my couch
will easy my complaint,' then You frighten me with dreams and terrify me by visions;
so that my soul would choose suffocation, death rather than my pains. I waste away; I will not live forever. Leave me alone, my days are but a breath. "What is man that You magnify him? Why am I this big a deal to You that you're
concerned about him, that You examine him every morning and try him every moment? Will You never turn Your gaze away from me? Can't You go look at somebody else, nor let
me alone when I swallow my spittle? Have I sinned? What have I done to You, O watcher of men? Why have You set me as Your target, so that
I am a burden to myself? Why then do You not pardon my transgression
and take away my iniquity? For now I will lie down in the dust. I'm going to die, and You'll seek me, and
I'm not going to be there." This is profound confusion and agony, very
much like Luther. Then in chapter 8, one of his useless friends
shows up: Bildad the Shuhite, which makes him the shortest man in the Bible. He gives him - some of you are a little slow.
"Bildad the Shuhite answers," - now he's going to give him some advice; he's going to give
him worldly counsel - 'How long will you say these things, and the words of your mouth
be a might wind? How long are you going to keep this up? How long are you going to keep saying this
to God complaining? Does God pervert justice? Or does the Almighty pervert what is right? "If your sons sinned against Him, then He
delivered them into the power of their transgression. He killed them all because they sinned. This is what God does. God doesn't pervert justice. God doesn't pervert what's right, He does
what's right. If you would seek God and implore the compassion
of the Almighty," - and here it comes; here's the answer of all religion - "if you are pure
and upright, surely now He would rouse Himself for you and restore your righteous estate. You just have to be good enough." That is the answer of all religion. Down in verse 20, Bildad goes on to say, "Lo,
God will not reject a man of integrity, nor will He support the evildoers. He will yet fill your mouth with laughter
and your lips with shouting." All you have to do is be upright, blameless,
pure, righteous. That is the answer of all religion: Be a good
person. And Job answers in chapter 9: "In truth I
know that this is so. I know God is just and righteous. I know it's important that I be blameless;
I know that. But even so, how can a man be in the right
before God? I've done everything I know and it hasn't
happened. God has not forgiven me. God has not accepted me. What am I going to do," - he says, "argue
with Him? If one wished to dispute with Him, he couldn't
answer Him once in a thousand times. I can't argue with God; I'm no match. Wise in heart, God is mighty in strength,
who has defied Him without harm? "Look, it is God who removes the mountains,
they know not how, when He overturns them in His anger. It is God who shakes the earth out of its
place, and its pillars tremble. It is God who commands the sun to shine, sets
a seal on the stars. It is God who stretches out the heavens, tramples
down the waves of the sea. It's God who made the constellations: the
Bear, the Orion, the Pleiades, and the chambers of the south. God who does great things, unfathomable, wondrous
works without number. "Were he to pass by me, I wouldn't see Him. Were He to move past me, I wouldn't perceive
Him. Were He to snatch away, who could restrain
Him? Who could say to Him, 'What are You doing?'
I don't even know where He is. I don't know when He comes and goes. I'm no match for Him. How can I possibly find out how to be right
with Him? "God will not turn back His anger; beneath
Him crouch the helpers of Rahab," - some kind of a great beast. "How can I answer Him, and
choose my words before Him? Though I were right, I couldn't answer; I
would have to implore the mercy of my judge. If I called and He answered me, I couldn't
believe that He was listening to my voice. For He bruises me with a tempest and multiplies
by wounds without cause. He will not allow me to get my breath, but
saturates me with bitterness. If it is a matter of power, behold, He's the
strong one! If it's a matter of justice, who can summon Him? Though I am righteous, my mouth will condemn
me; though I am guiltless, He will declare me guilty. In other words, in my eyes I'm righteous,
in my eyes I'm not guilty, but in His I am. "What am I going to do to be right with God? My days are slipping by;" - verse 25 - "what
is my future? How can a man be right with God?" This kind of angst, this kind of fear, this
kind of dread comes to the heart of one who fears God, who fears judgment, who fears wrath. That is the missing proclamation in the church
today, and so sinners live with a deception. They constantly hear, "God loves you unconditionally." You're headed for God's eternal wrath unless
you are reconciled to Him. Job's question is the original statement of
the issue of all religion: "How can a person be right with God?" And Bildad gives the answer that everybody
in other religions gives: "You just need to be better; you just need to be blameless. You need to be more righteous, have more integrity." It's the question the psalmist asked in Psalm
130, verse 3, "Since You, Lord, mark iniquities, since you keep a record of iniquities, who
can stand?" Or Psalm 143:2, "In Your sight no man living
is righteous." The prophet Isaiah grapples with this question
in the 64th chapter of Isaiah. Listen to verses 6 and 7: "For all of us have
become like one who is unclean, all our righteous deeds are like a filthy garment; all of us
wither like a lead, and our iniquities, like the wind, take us away. There is no one who calls on Your name, who
arouses himself to take hold of You; for You have hidden Your face from us and have delivered
us into the power of our iniquities." Micah the prophet, in chapter 6, says, "With
what shall I come before the Lord and bow myself before God on high? Shall I come to Him with burnt offerings? Shall I come with yearling calves? Does the Lord take delight in thousands of
rams, in ten thousand rivers of oil? Shall I present my firstborn for my rebellious
acts, the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul?" In other words, "Shall I burn my babies like
the worshipers of Molech?" "How can I be righteous before God?" That is the pleading cry of psalmists, and
prophets, and Job, and Martin Luther. "How can I escape guilt? How can I escape death? How can I escape eternal punishment? How can I receive eternal life and heaven?" All religion gives the wrong answer: "Be good. Be better. Go about to establish your own righteousness." Paul faced that in Romans 10: "They don't
know about God's righteousness, so they seek to establish their own righteousness rather
than subjecting themselves to the righteousness of God, which is available to them" - he says
- "through Christ who is the end of the Law for righteousness to everyone who believes." It doesn't come by working, it comes by believing
in Christ who puts an end to the tyranny of the law. That's Paul's gospel, and that's what Luther
found when he was teaching Galatians. So in reality there are only two possible
options to acceptance with God. There is, what Jesus called, the narrow way
and the broad way: they both say heaven, they both don't go there. The narrow way is the way of the gospel, the
way of grace, the way of faith, and it leads to life. The broad road is the way of works and religion;
and it says heaven, but it goes directly to hell. There's no salvation apart from belief in
the true gospel. All other messages, all other religions, all
other gospels are demonic deceptions, Satanic religions in one form or another. Now to say that the gospel is the only way
of salvation, to say what Paul did in Galatians 1, that "if anybody preaches another gospel,
let him be anathema , accursed, damned forever," to speak in that kind of narrow language is
not a popular perspective. The Roman Catholic Church doesn't even like
that, so they have developed what they have called natural theology. And the Roman Catholic Church says people
without the Bible, without the gospel, without any knowledge of Christ will show up in heaven
and the kingdom of God. They will be reconciled to God. They will be forgiven and given eternal life. On the basis of what? According to the Second Vatican Council interpreted
by the pope, he said this: "Those who live in accordance with the beatitudes and who
bear lovingly the sufferings of life will enter the kingdom of God." So if you're poor, and humble, and mourning,
and suffering, without the Bible, without the gospel, without Christ, you're going to
be in the kingdom of God. That's what they call natural theology. In other words, there's a natural way to God
if you behave in a certain moral configuration. Protestants came along and they have another
idea, and they call it wider mercy, and they say that God's mercy is wider than just Christianity;
it's wider than just the gospel. One writer said, "God has more going on by
way of redemption than what happened in first century Palestine." Really? God has more going on by way of redemption
than what happened in first century Palestine? In other words, what this writer wants us
to believe - and he once called himself an evangelical - is that God saves through all
different religions. Raimon Panikkar wrote a book called The Unknown
Christ of Hinduism . In that book he said this: "It is through
the sacrament of Hinduism that Christ saves." Really? That's just one illustration. So you see it in sort of classic Catholicism
in the natural theology idea. You see it in Protestantism in the wider mercy
that God's salvation is not limited to just the gospel. And even in evangelicalism, there is what
is now being called the new perspective on Paul. The primary influence of that is coming from
a man named N. T. Wright who is a British theologian. He's written hundreds of pages, hundreds of
pages on the gospel, including a very thick book on the resurrection of Christ. I have read books for years, as you would
expect and you would know, and I have read his writings, and they are a mass of confusing
ambiguity, contradiction, and obfuscation - academic sleight of hand. I cannot tell you what he believes after reading
all of that, but I can tell you exactly what he does not believe. The only time he gets explicit is to make
sure we know what he does not believe. Let me quote a new book by him, N. T. Wright, The Day the Revolution Began . Here is a quote: "We have paganized our understanding
of salvation, substituting the idea of God killing Jesus to satisfy His wrath for the
genuinely biblical notion we are about to explore." So he calls Jesus becoming the substitute
that God killed to satisfy His wrath for us paganism. Further, he says, that "Christ died in the
place of sinners is closer to the pagan idea of an angry deity being pacified by a human
death than it is to anything in either Israel's Scriptures or the New Testament." So he rejects substitutionary atonement. He rejects Jesus as the sacrifice that God
chose to die for our sins. He is very clear on what he rejects: he rejects
the idea that our sins are imputed to Christ, he rejects the idea that his righteousness
is imputed to us. "This is not the gospel," - he says - "this is paganism. To worship God as one who justifies by imputation"
- he says - "is nonsense." I quote: "If we use the language of the law
court, it makes no sense whatsoever to say that the judge imputes, imparts, bequeaths,
conveys, or otherwise transfers his righteousness to either the plaintiff or the defendant. Righteousness is not an object, a substance,
or a gas which can be passed across the courtroom. This gives the impression of a legal transaction,
a cold piece of business, almost a trick of thought performed by a God who is logical
and correct, but hardly one we want to worship." He goes on to say, "No one will be justified
until he reaches heaven." Further, he said, "I must stress again that
the doctrine of justification by faith is not what Paul means by the gospel. The gospel is not an account of how people
get saved." Really? First Corinthians 15:1 and 2, "Now I make
knows to you, brethren, the gospel by which you are saved." N. T. Wright is N. T. Wrong. And all who accept his high-sounding words
raised up against the true knowledge of God are still in the state of Luther, but without
the fear; and if you're without the fear, you're going to hell happily. What amazes me is that people can do this
and have no fear, and propagate it; and many, many young men, evangelical young men in seminary
and training, are influenced by Wright to believe the wrong thing. To be propagating a false gospel and denying
the true gospel and have absolutely no fear, and no angst, and no guilt, and no dread,
and no terror, and no torture is to be void of the work of the Holy Spirit who convicts
of sin and righteousness and judgment. The good news about Martin Luther was the
Spirit was at work in his soul. But it was the knowledge of the revelation
of God as a righteous judge, and the wrath of God from Scripture that was activated in
his soul to cause him to fear until he found the truth. What doesn't exist today in the church is
that fear. Where are the terrified people? Where are the terrorized sinners? Where is the angst? Where is the dread? To propagate a false gospel and feel nothing
but pride is to be in the most dangerous place possible. To have no interest in the true doctrine of
justification, but to be a happy heretic, and an ambiguous one at that, is to be in
a place of the most grave spiritual danger, and to make yourself an equally grave danger
to those who follow your influence. No, Luther had been exposed to the wrath of
God on the pages of Scripture, and he knew his heart was evil, and his behavior as well. But he just wanted to know how to be right
with God like Job did. And he began to teach the book of Romans. Romans 1:17, "The just shall live by faith." And he began to teach the book of Galatians,
chapter 3, verse 11: "The just shall live by faith." And when he was in Galatians, the light dawned
on him, and he realized that salvation is not by works, it's not by merit, it's by grace
through faith alone; and that the just lives by faith, and that the righteousness of God
is imputed to the believing sinner. And when the gospel broke on his soul the
Holy Spirit gave him life, and peace and joy flooded him. He was forgiven, he was accepted, he was reconciled,
he was converted, he was adopted, he was justified solely by grace through faith, and he wrote
this: "Through faith in Christ, therefore, Christ's righteousness becomes our own righteousness,
and all that He has becomes ours; rather He Himself becomes ours. He who trusts in Christ exists in Christ. He is one with Christ, the same as He." Galatians 2:20, "I am crucified with Christ;
nevertheless I live, yet not I, but Christ lives in me." Look, the issue of the gospel was not settled
500 years ago, it was settled over 2,000 years ago. It was settled in the book of Galatians, and
Romans, and the rest of the Scripture. It was settled, and it was clear that "salvation"
- as the apostle Paul describes it in Romans 3:21, listen - "is apart from the law. It is witnessed by the Law and the Prophets." It's the same salvation given testimony to
in the Old Testament. It is the righteousness of God that comes
to the sinner through faith in Jesus Christ for all those who believe. "They are justified"
- verse 24 - "as a gift by His grace through the redemption which is in Christ Jesus." Salvation is by grace through faith, and the
righteousness of God is imputed to the sinner who believes. Righteousness is not by the law. Galatians 3:21 says that. It's not by the law. And on that verse Luther wrote this in his
commentary on Galatians: "Here Paul is saying that no law of itself is able to give life,
it only kills. Such works as are done, even according to
God's own law, do not justify us before God. They make us sinners. They do not pacify the wrath of God, they
kindle it. They do not obtain righteousness, but hinder
it. They do not give live, but kill and destroy. The law in itself does not justify, but has
the opposite effects." Galatians 3:10 says, "As many as are of the
works of the Law are under a curse." Luther discovered that, and then he discovered
the glories of the gospel, the blessed gospel of grace and faith in our Lord Jesus Christ. This is the gospel, the gospel. How can a man be right with God? How? By the righteousness of God being given to
him by faith in Christ. How non-negotiable is this gospel? Go back to Galatians 1. How non-negotiable is this gospel? Verse 6: "I'm amazed that you're so quickly
deserting Him who called you by the grace of Christ, for a different gospel; which is
really not another;" - because there isn't another; all the rest is not good news, it's
bad news - "only there are some who are disturbing you and want to distort the gospel of Christ." So you have a different gospel in verse 6,
or a distorted gospel in verse 7. And then he says, "Even if we, or an angel
from heaven, should preach to you a gospel contrary to what we have preached to you,
he is to be anathema ! And say it again: if any man is preaching to you a gospel contrary
to what you received, he is to be damned, anathema , cursed!" This was on the apostle's mind in the 11th
chapter of 2 Corinthians, verse 2: "I'm jealous for you with a godly jealousy; I betrothed
you to one husband, so as to Christ I might present you as a pure virgin. I'm afraid" - he says in 11:3 - "that as the
serpent deceived Eve by his craftiness, your minds will be led astray from the simplicity
and purity of devotion to Christ. For if one comes and preaches another Jesus
whom we've not preached, or you receive a different spirit which you've not received,
or a different gospel which you have not accepted, you bear this beautifully." What an indictment. Somebody comes with a different Jesus, a different
Holy Spirit, and a different gospel, and you bear it beautifully, you welcome them. This is frightening. Whatever form of corrupted gospel - the gospel
of works, the prosperity gospel, gospel of natural theology, the gospel of wider mercy,
the new perspective on Paul, whatever you want to call it - another gospel is not to
be borne beautifully. Accursed is to be pronounced on another gospel. I want to close by having you look at Revelation
chapter 5; and here's the final word on the exclusivity of the gospel. Let's go to heaven and find out which gospel
is being celebrated in heaven. There's only one heaven. What gospel is heaven celebrating? Are they celebrating any gospel of works,
human merit? Revelation chapter 5, John sees the throne,
verse 6: "There is the Lamb standing. The Lamb steps forward, takes the title deed
to the universe out of the hand of God on the throne, and praise begins. The four living creatures, who are angelic
beings, twenty-four elders representing the glorified church, fell down before the Lamb
- the Lord Jesus Christ, the Lamb - with harps, golden bowls full of incense, which are the
prayers of the saints. And they sang a new song." Now you're going to find out which gospel
is being celebrated in heaven. "Worthy are You to take the book and break its seals;
for You were slain, and purchased for God with Your blood men from every tribe and tongue
and people and nation." How do we come into God's presence? We were bought by the blood of Jesus Christ. That is the substitutionary blood atonement
of Christ. By that, "God has made them to be a kingdom
and priest to our God; they will reign on the earth. And I looked," - John says - "I heard the
voice of many angels around the throne, the living creatures, the elders. The number of them was ten thousand times
ten thousand, and thousands of thousands, saying with a loud voice, 'Worthy is the Lamb
that was slain to receive power and riches and wisdom and might and honor and glory and
blessing.' And every created thing in heaven, on earth, under the earth, on the sea, all
things in them, I heard saying, 'To Him who sits on the throne, and to the Lamb, be blessing
and honor and glory and dominion forever and ever.' And the four living creatures" - representing
the angels - "kept saying, 'Amen.' And the elders" - representing the redeemed believers
- "fell down and worshiped." All of heaven's worship goes toward the Lamb
who shed His blood. That is the only gospel celebrated in heaven. This is the gospel that Paul proclaims and
defends. Father, we are again so grateful that You
have called us to Yourself, that You have given us life for our death, light for our
darkness, sight for our blindness, knowledge for our ignorance, truth for our deceit. We're thankful, Lord, so thankful that we
have become permanent everlasting worshipers of You, the one who granted us this glorious
unmerited and undeserved salvation by grace through faith in Christ alone. We thank You for our Savior, we thank You
for His sacrifice, and we thank You for the gift of eternal life in Him. O Lord, I pray that there would be no one
walk out of this room today who has not understood the terrifying reality of being under the
wrath of God, appointed to everlasting wrath and punishment, and who will walk away, turning
his or her back on grace and forgiveness and joy and peace and everlasting love and salvation
that comes to those who repent of their sin, and even the sin of self-righteousness, and
cast themselves on Your grace by putting their trust in Your Son, the only Savior, Jesus
Christ. Amen.
