So this is Galatians for beginners we're
in lesson number two of this series. And we're going to cover Galatians
chapter 1:6-9, Lord willing. The title of this lesson is, The Dangers
of False Teaching. So let's do just a bit of review to kind of cover some
things that we've talked about. In this letter, Paul is writing to
churches in the Roman province of Galicia, concerning the false teaching that
is being spread among these churches at that time. And the idea of the
false teaching - we talked about it at length last time, was that
what was being taught was that in order to become a Christian one
first had to become, well, a Jew. This was being
proposed and taught and promoted by Jewish teachers. We called them the Judaizers or the
circumcision party. Basically they said if you want to become a Christian before you're
baptized, you have to be circumcised. And of course you can kind of understand
these things. These Jewish Christians, their world had changed all of a sudden. They were used to going to the temple and they had the feasts. And now with Christianity, well there
is no more going to the temple. They're the temple. So there was a great change and
you can almost understand the effort to kind of hang on to some of their
cultural and religious heritage. But of course, this was violating
the principle of the gospel. As I say, this was being taught by a group -
sometimes he talks about them, Paul talks about them as the Judaizers
or the circumcision party. Now the danger of this teaching, it was dangerous for several reasons.
First of all it added to the Gospel by requiring additional responsibilities by the
believer, beyond a confession of faith, repentance, and baptism. They were adding to the spoken word of Jesus. And this was not, of course,
permitted. Nothing new. People are always trying to add to the word of Jesus,
especially for salvation's sake. You've got to do this - you've got to buzz your head, you've
got to shave your hair off. You've got to wear a different kind of clothing. You've got to
do all kinds of things. You have to rearrange your marital status, because
it's not acceptable for one reason or another. Just to look at Acts
chapter two, watch Peter preach. There's thousands of people there listening to him and
when they say, so what must we do to be saved? What are we going to do? Men and brethren, what
are we going to do? What does he say? Repent and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus, for the forgiveness of sins, you will receive the gift the Holy Spirit. And it says 3000 people that day were baptized. That very day. Now I
ask you this question, don't you think among those 3000 people that came forward to
be baptized, there were some people who had some bad habits they hadn't completely overcome yet?
You think maybe there were some people in that group there whose marital
situation was not quite right? Do you see what I'm saying? You think
some people maybe were over-eating? We talked in our other course, that one of the big problems is over-eating. You think there were some people having trouble with food issues? And yet, what was Peter saying to
them? Repent, be baptized. He wasn't adding other conditions.
Now we'll talk about repentance in a minute, some of the things that it
requires. So getting back to my original point. This additional teaching was
dangerous because it added more stuff to the gospel that Jesus didn't ask of us. Also, specifically for their
teaching about circumcision, by accepting circumcision, the person was in
effect saying that he was abandoning salvation through his union with
Christ based on faith and now would pursue salvation
based on perfect law keeping. Now there's two systems. There's
two ways to be saved. One way is perfection - don't sin. Don't break the law.
Don't break any of the commandments at any time. And if you do that, you go to heaven. You'll be judged sinless, you'll
be judged - you're perfect. Then the other way to go to heaven is:
you're forgiven for your sins and God gives to you
perfection. He imbues you with perfection. He gives you - He
considers you perfect. Because you've performed perfectly? No.
Because through faith you have appropriated the perfection of
Christ and it's been put upon you. Those are the two systems. All right. The danger for these people was that
salvation by faith in Christ, that's possible. We can do that. Despite our imperfections, despite our weaknesses, being saved
through faith in Christ, we can do that. We have the ability to
do that. To believe, to respond to Christ. But salvation by
law keeping, well, that's impossible. We can't do that. We're unable to accomplish law keeping
sufficiently to achieve perfection. See that's the point. Jesus, He lived the perfect life. He's the one that kept all
the commandments. He's the one, he didn't need to be saved,
but he is the one that fulfilled all of the commandments. He never sinned. That
was the significance of His perfect life. He did it. And because He was perfect, He was then permitted to offer that perfect life
in exchange for our imperfect life. So the Galatians were abandoning
the system by which it was possible for them to be saved and they
were going over to a system where it was impossible for them to be
saved. That's what the danger was. Paul says in another epistle, Romans 3:28, just in case you're not sure
of this, "For we maintain that a man is justified by
faith apart from works of the law." We're not saved by
works of the law. Do we do works of the law? Sure. Sure we do.
We try to tell the truth. We try not to steal. We attempt these things. But it isn't our attempt to do
these things that saves us. So in the first verses Paul establishes his
authority as an apostle and he reminds them of the
core of the gospel. And the core of the gospel is that
the debt for sin was fully paid by Jesus. He makes restitution for all of our sins, on the cross. I know
I've repeated that, but it is so important to understand this idea. Restitution is what we owe God
for having broken His laws. If you speed and it's 40 miles an hour and
you're doing 50 miles an hour, well, maybe your ticket is 60 bucks
plus 20. If you're doing 60 in a 40 zone, well, maybe it's 50 bucks
plus 50 more dollars. If you're doing 80 in a 40 zone, then it's 200 bucks and,
I don't know, they take your license or something. There is a consequence for having broken the driving law. And what
happens when you get caught and judged? You've got to make
restitution. And how do you do that? Well, you pay. You pay your fine. And once you've paid
your fine you've made restitution. That's what restitution is. So Jesus makes restitution for every single sin that we have ever made in all of our lives, and
every single person on earth He has made restitution for us. And trying to be saved by a
system of law is trying, somehow, to begin paying some
of that restitution off. Can't do it. We don't have anything to give. Now, repentance. Now that's another thing. Let's
not confuse restitution with repentance. Repentance is a change, a turn around. The Greek word simply means to turn around. Like you're - do you ever do that? You're driving - not a lot of one-way streets in Oklahoma, but in Montreal there are plenty of one-way streets. You can only go in one direction. And it happens to a lot of people who drive in that city, they're not thinking, they turn down the street, and all of a sudden they notice the arrow is pointing this way. Meaning, I'm going down the wrong
way on a one-way street. I need to turn around. And a lot of times you go
into a driveway, you back up, you know what I'm saying. Well, if you were saying that in the
Greek, I'm going down the wrong way, I need to repent. That's what the word repentance means. It's a change of attitude. It's a
recognition, oh I'm going the wrong way. I'm going to turn around. It's a recognition that we've been wrong. It's a change of attitude that I have toward God. It's a change
of attitude that I have towards sinfulness. Before, I didn't care about sin.
It didn't matter to me. And as long as I didn't get caught, as long as I didn't get punished. Doesn't matter. But now repentance requires that I do care about sinfulness.
I want to do what is right. Think of it this way,
repentance is not going back and making right every wrong in your
past. That's not repentance, that's restitution. Jesus has already done
that for you on the cross. Repentance is forward looking.
When I repent I'm looking to the future. From here on in, I repent. What I did badly, incorrectly, whether
I did it willfully or not in the past, in the future, I'm going to do or I'm going to
try to do what is right. That's repentance. That's why I say on the day
of Pentecost those 3000 people who repented, they couldn't go back and change all the dumb
stuff that they have done in the past. But they did decide from that moment on that
they were going to follow Jesus and that they were going to change, and that they were
going to do what they could to do what is right before God. And this plan, this
is a plan from God. And He deserves glory for
devising this plan. So salvation is offered by grace.
What does that mean? Well, it means, because God is gracious and
merciful, He's offered to us salvation based on a principle of
faith rather than salvation on a principle of law. That's mercy. Thank you, God. Thank you. You could have said hey you
want to get to heaven? Great. Just don't sin. And even if He said, you want to get to heaven? I'll tell
you what, I'll make a deal with you, just don't sin from here on in. I got your past covered, but from now on, don't sin if you want to go to
heaven. Well, how many of us would make it, if that was the deal? We wouldn't. So His grace is seen in the fact that
He's offered us this marvelous salvation and all the many gifts that
come with it. And He's offered it to us based on faith. That's why
salvation is by grace, because of His wonderful grace He
offers us salvation. In a way that we can attain it,
achieve it. And we accept it how? We accept it by faith, by the principle of
faith, not by the principle of law keeping. So once having done this,
Paul goes on to immediately chastise them for moving away
from this basic teaching. He is not happy with them because they've
taught them properly and now they're going back to a works-based type of salvation. And circumcision, that was the heart of it.
It was like that was the point of no return, if they
had that done to themselves. So here's the accusation part. He says, "I
am amazed that you are so quickly deserting Him who called you by
the grace of Christ, for a different gospel."
So he marvels at the speed with which they are turning away
from God. Not that they are turning away from God, but at the speed at which
they are turning. I mean, you people have just been saved. I've just saved
you. Well, I've just preached you the gospel. You've just avoided
the flames of hell and already you're abandoning that. The gospel comes from God. And to turn away
from it, is to turn away from God. He's amazed that this thing is happening so
quickly after their conversion. They're at the early stage of their faith, a critical
time, and they're already having problems. They're in the process of
turning. Maybe not completely yet, but they're on their way. So God calls all men - when I say "man" I use that in the
generic terms: men, women, of course, humanity. God calls all men to be saved.
The gospel is the tool that he uses. When we say,
I've been called by the gospel, what we mean is that the
gospel contains the message about this salvation offered by
faith. And the response of faith, repentance, and - well belief,
of course, and repentance, and confession, and baptism. That's how
I'm saved, I hear that message and I respond to that message. The
grace of Christ can better be translated as, God called you graciously through Christ. A little easier way to translate
what he's saying there. It is through the gracious work of Jesus and the proclamation of it,
that men are called by God. That's what we do. Why
do we support missionaries? Well, we support missionaries in Haiti. And what are
they doing down there? They're calling men to be saved by faith. And we support a missionary in Africa. Why? Well, he is calling men
to be saved by faith. Why do Hal and I have a website? I mean,
after you get through all the technical jargon and the internet and all that kind of stuff. What are we doing? We're calling men and
women to be saved by faith. We're calling them on their phones and on
their tablets, but it's the same thing. So in verse seven he says, "which is really
not another," he says, you've been called - you're listening to
another gospel. And then he makes a kind of editorial statement, "which is really not another;
only there are some who are disturbing you and want to distort the
gospel of Christ." So in reference to the quote gospel brought to them
by the Judaizing, Paul makes the following statement. He says, the
Judaizers were bringing their teaching as the true or the superior
gospel claiming that Paul was not teaching them accurately. In response Paul says, there's no such thing as an
other gospel. There's only one gospel. There's no other. There are not
two gospels or five. There's just one. What was happening was that the original
Gospel was being changed into something else. Something which did not resemble or
achieve what the original Gospel achieved. So Paul charges these people with their true motives. And what
are the true motives? The teachers, the Judaizers. What
are their true motives? Well, first of all, they are disturbing and
unbalancing them in their faith. They want to shake them up. And secondly,
they're distorting and changing the gospel to suit their own
prejudices. They wanted to be saved by law keeping. And they
wanted others to follow suit. Misery loves company, error loves company.
Don't you remember you were in high school, you had the midterm tests. What do
you get? Well, I got 30 on one hundred, 28 on a hundred. Yay! Misery or error loves company. So these people preached about Christ, and they claim to be from God,
but they were false because what they preached was different than what Jesus
had preached. Even today this holds true. If what you teach about
salvation is false, then you are a false teacher. Don't get fooled by - I used to watch on TV, I haven't seen that much now, but
there was a time maybe a year or two ago that the Mormons had these fantastic
commercials, you remember, on TV. They were so slick, they were so
cool. They showed beautiful, energetic, intelligent, young
people - successful. And the guy would be skydiving. And he'd be
driving his car, and he'd be biking, and he'd be doing this and that. And at
the end, the tag line says, and he's a Mormon. Because they were trying to dispel
the idea that Mormons were fanatics, or kooks, or something like that. So
the marketing effort was to portray them as, not just
normal people, but successful people, and smart people, and something -
you should pay attention. And a lot of people bought into that. How can they be
wrong? They're so good looking, so successful. The thing I hear all the time, look at the family values. Look at the family values. They don't smoke, don't drink coffee, they
don't drink. Look at the values. And I would answer, look at their preaching. You don't get to heaven on your looks. It's
a good thing, isn't it. We won't go there. We don't get to heaven on
our looks. We don't get to heaven on our successor. It's not
a marketing campaign. We get to heaven based on the gospel. And if you
haven't got the gospel, it doesn't matter how good looking and successful you are. Check out what they're teaching. Well,
they're teaching that Jesus is not really the son of God. That's it for me. I don't
care what else you have. If you don't have that, I'm not interested
in everything else that you've got. So Paul quickly goes to a warning
directed at these Judaizers and anyone else who would distort -
meaning, change or add or subtract, from the gospel, in verse eight. He says, "but
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 accursed!" So
everybody who preaches a different gospel originally preached by
Paul and the Apostles - that's what the "we" stands for - those people stand condemned by God. The Greek word there, anathema,
they're anathema. They're accursed. So this included, imagine, this
includes apostles. He said even if one of the twelve apostles are
preaching to you a different gospel, they're going to be cursed. Even he himself. Even an angel, he says. If an angel comes,
because remember, Jews, they had a very strong
thought about angels, a very strong relationship and history in
their relationship with angels. Because in their history, angels had appeared to them
in the Old Testament. And the angel who appeared to Mary, and an angel who appeared to
the prophets, and so on and so forth. The presence of angelic beings
was very important to the Jews. And he's saying here, even if an angel appears to
you and brings you a different message, that person and the
angel should be accursed. Well, how many false prophets,
even in today's age, claim that their doctrine comes from a vision that
they've had, an angel that they've seen. And yet Paul says, even if an angel
appears to you. And even if it's not like hallucination, like it's a real
angel, if they bring you a different gospel, they are to be accursed. And angels, they're the
powerful beings next to God, in the presence of God. So
condemned, not because Paul orders the church to pronounce this curse
on those who distort the gospel, but rather condemn because Jesus has
already condemned those who do this. Didn't He condemn the
Pharisees - Matthew 23:13? Too long a passage to read. Woe to you
Pharisees, woe to you Pharisees - you know know what they did. Keeping people outside the
kingdom because they were distorting God's word. Then in verse nine he says -
and we said tonight we just do six, seven, eight, nine. Just that
little passage in verse nine, he says, "As we have said before, so I say again now, if any man
is preaching to you a gospel contrary to what you received, he is to be accursed."
So he repeats the injunction, including any person - it includes
Pharisees who are not spirits and have no apostolic authority, who
distort the Gospel. So Paul repeats that this is not a new
warning. He has said it before. Now the Judaizers were deserving of the curse for several reasons: they knew
the Gospel, and they believed it. If you go to Acts Chapter 15, they're called
the Jerusalem Council, there were they were discussing should Gentiles be circumcised
and should they be allowed in the church. The Pharisees, they were Jewish Pharisees who
had become Christians, they were part of that council, part of that discussion. So they
believed. It wasn't that they didn't believe. And they were now knowingly
changing their teaching despite the warnings and the letters sent by the apostles.
Remember, the apostles sent the letter to all the surrounding churches saying to them,
you Gentiles who have become Christians, you don't have to be circumcised. Stay away from sexual immorality,
stay away from strangled blood. And that mainly was for the the very delicate sensibility of
Jewish Christians who still were adhering to food laws. In the first century, the Jews who became
Christians, they still didn't eat pork. They still adhered to the food laws. It was too
much of a change for them. That's what was causing the friction in the
church. Gentiles were coming in, they were like, alright, we're saved, we're going to
heaven. Let's go barbecue. Because they
had no qualms about eating pork or anything else. That
wasn't part of their heritage. But within that same church you had Jewish
people who were very fastidious about what they ate and how it was prepared and
feasts and so on and so forth. They didn't just throw all that away. They
continued practicing their Judaism. But this here, was the sore point. And of course, they were encouraging others
to follow their example in this heresy. So Paul rebukes them for being
unfaithful to the Gospel in such little time. And then he establishes that
there is only one true gospel and that was the gospel originally preached by
himself and the other Apostles and he condemns anybody who changes it. All right. So that's the only section we're going to do. I want to
just draw a couple of lessons from that for tonight and then we'll quit. And maybe if we finish a little early, if
you have any other questions, we can discuss them. So a couple of lessons.
Number one, well it begs to be said, there's only one
gospel. There's just one. In Matthew 28, Jesus
said to his apostles, "Teaching them," meaning the new disciples,
those who become Christians, "teaching them to observe all that I commanded you;
and lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age." Jesus gave the
apostles the ministry of proclaiming the gospel and teaching people. Not just teaching people the facts and
the information, but teaching them to obey the facts and the information And I'll make an aside here, for
those who may be involved in teaching smaller children. Sometimes
we overemphasize the idea of teaching them the names of
the Bible and who Moses was, and Noah and the ark, and Jonah and
the fish and that's fine. They have to upload all of this
information, it's very important. But we're not - we don't put a lot of
emphasis on the idea that the purpose of uploading all that
information is so that they will obey this information. Because that's what
Jesus - teaching them to observe all that I commanded you. It's both. It's - I know what's in
the Bible and I recognize that I have the responsibility to obey, to
respond to what's in the Bible. Loving your enemy, that's
just not like a suggestion. You know what I'm saying. To be sexually pure, that's not
just a lifestyle choice. These are commands that we as Christians must observe. In Mark 16:15-16. Jesus says to them, "Go into all the world and preach the gospel to all creation. He who has believed and has been baptized shall be saved; but he who has disbelieved
shall be condemned." Again, preaching the gospel, but preaching
that people should obey the gospel. When Peter was preaching in Acts chapter
two - repent, be baptized - a little later on, Luke says that he continued exhorting them to be saved. In other words, he told them what they
needed to do, he encouraged them to obey, and then he continued to encourage them to respond to the gospel. And that's what we do. Someone says, why the
invitation every week? Why do we do that all the time? We get it already.
Because as the Bible demonstrates to us, we must continue
to exhort the congregation to obey, to respond to God's word.
We have a couple of chances each week and we take that - whoever's in
the pulpit takes that opportunity. In First Corinthians chapter 15 it says, Paul says, "Now I make known to you, brethren, the gospel which I preached to you, which also you received, in which also you stand, by which also you are
saved, if you hold fast the word which I preached to you,
unless you believed in vain. For I delivered to you as of first importance what I
also received, that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures," there's the restitution,
"And that He was buried, and that He was raised on the third day
according to the Scriptures, and that He appeared to Cephas," that's Peter, "and then to the
twelve." Why did I read that? I read that simply to
demonstrate that the content of the gospel has never
changed. It's the life, the death, the burial, the resurrection
of Jesus Christ. That's what the story of the Gospel is. It tells that
story. It's always the same story. And then followed up with an encouragement to obey the things that Jesus has asked us to do. Th e content always remains the same. We've said this in other classes. Wow, what
if all of a sudden the Muslims take over America. There's this - is it Hightower?
There's a show, I know, it pretends that that the Germans won the
second world war. That they won. I haven't seen the show, I've seen some previews and I've read some stuff about it. And they've won. And America has the swastika flag, and the Germans are in charge or the Second World War Germans -
the Gestapo - they're in charge of Washington. It's a TV series that says, what would happen? And sometimes people say, what would we
do if the Muslims took over, if that would have happened? Well I
don't know about you, but I'd be doing the same thing. I'd be looking for other Christians that I know and
I'd be trying to get together with them to study God's word, to encourage them to be faithful
until He returns, to take the communion. And it might not be easy, but somehow -
either underground or secretly, somehow, do guerrilla evangelism. Now is great. We could get online. If we had a lot of money
we could buy TV - we could do anything we want. Get up on the tallest mountain
and shout out the gospel. If we were restrained because we were under some
foreign power or a dictator our job wouldn't change. Maybe we'd all be crowded into a secret
place now. We wouldn't have a sign out front. But our life, our job, our role or
expectations, our hope, our message would be exactly the same thing. It just would be a
little more difficult. But I dare say the church would probably be growing at a much
faster rate, because when things are going good, and we're enjoying it, and
everything's gravy, we
tend to take the church for granted.
That's why in China the church is growing so fast. Why? Because it's
all underground. It's all secret. You can be thrown in jail for just having
an open Bible study. There's something about adversity that whets the taste for evangelism and living out our lives as
Christians. I hope that that's not what God is intending for us, to spark our faith. But if He did, the gospel doesn't change, our life doesn't change. It becomes, perhaps, more difficult. Second lesson, excuse me, so in the Galatian
letter we see that the first attack against the Church was an attack, not against
the people, it wasn't at the time of the writing of this - there
wasn't Roman persecution of Christians throughout the Empire. The first attack
against the church was inward and it was against the gospel message
itself. Lesson number two - So lesson number one, right, lesson number one, the
gospel is always the same. And I forgot one scripture here, where Jude says, "Beloved, while I
was making every effort to write you about our common salvation, I felt the necessity to write
to you appealing that you contend earnestly," fight for - for what? "The
faith," the teaching, "which was once for all handed down to the
saints." Notice he says in the first century, "which was once for all
handed down to the saints." The faith, the gospel, the message, it was given to
the saints in the first century one time. There is no new gospel.
There is no new information, despite what you might
read on TMZ or online. That they may have found some fifth, sixth
gospel. Or they may have found a letter by, or the bones of some
guy. Don't let that rattle you. The gospel is always the same. What was
delivered to the saints in the first century, we got it. We have
it. Our job is to preserve it in our era
and to hand it down to our children, intact. That's the task. Number two, lesson number two, judge the
messenger by the message. Many messengers claim to be from
God's - superior intelligence, vision, secret knowledge. But the true test of credibility
is the accuracy of the message. Reputation, college degrees, speaking style do not make up for a false message.
When I'm talking to someone, sometimes people on line, or I meet
someone and they're talking, they want to talk to me about Christianity and we get into it. The first real question that I ask
them, who do you think Jesus is? Because that's going to tell
me where I'm going to go. I once did a man on the street interview on TV
in Montreal for one of our shows, and I was downtown on like Main Street,
St. Catherine, and I would just go by - a typical man on the street - and
I'd ask people, so who is Jesus for you? Oh man, not one person gave the same answer. One
person said, He's the son of God. Okay, good. Another guy said, well, you know, He's like
Muhammad, He's just another guy. And everybody gave a different answer. One guy - the last guy that we showed on the video,
he was like - he hemmed and hawed for like 60 seconds and then he looked at me
and he said, you've got another question? And I said to myself, brother,
there is no other question. There is no other question. Who
is Jesus? I encourage you to keep that as your ace in the hole, when you're talking
to somebody about religion, and they're trying to give you - just ask them, tell me who do you
think Jesus is? You're going to find out very quickly who they are. Judge the messenger by the message. And beware of the
majority of messenger's trap. The gospel is written so all men can
understand it and it will be true even if the whole world is in error. So if you're outgunned five thousand to one
somewhere, and you're the only one that believes that Jesus is the Son of God and five
thousand other people are against you and don't believe that, don't worry about that.
It's not a question of who's in the majority. Jesus absolutely
told us that we'll always, always, always, to the end of time, we'll be in the minority.
It's the narrow way, not the broad way. And then thirdly, false
gospels do not save. In First Timothy 4:16, Paul says, "Pay
close attention to yourself and to your teaching; persevere in these things, for as
you do this you will ensure salvation both for yourself and for those who hear
you." Paul says that in continuing to preach the truth, Timothy would ensure
salvation for himself and the church. The opposite is also true, to fall away
from the true message, is to lose that salvation. The urgency with which
Paul writes to the Galatians is necessary because in turning away from
grace, they were turning away from their salvation. So those who preach a false
gospel will be damned, yes. And those who follow it. That's the unfortunate
thing, they'll be also lost. One through rebellion and distortion, the
other through ignorance and foolishness. So just remember,
please, please remember there is only just one gospel. Next time we
get together we're going to look at Paul's life,
chronologically, and really key in on his early life. And look at some
very little known things, or things we kind of just pass over about Paul.
We're going to take a look at that next week as we continue our study in Galatians. Thank you for your attention.
