The Gospel [A]

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Transcript:

I have been called since I was in high school a grammar Nazi. I ran the newspaper in high school and I was called a grammar Nazi because the red pen marks when people would turn in their stories for editing. When it comes to writing, I very much am a stickler for grammar.

In speaking, not all the time. I mean, I am in Oklahoma. If I spoke with proper grammar all the time, nobody would know what I was saying.

And working on teaching grammar to the kids as part of their language class this last few weeks, we’ve been talking about words that don’t exist. And some of these are words that we use regularly. Evidently, busted is not a word. It’s not a verb.

You might be able to say something is busted, use it as an adjective. But it’s not a verb. Evidently, I didn’t realize this until I started teaching.

You’re not supposed to say, my groceries busted through the sack. Apparently, the word is burst. Okay, I’ll write burst. but I’m still going to say busted because, like I said, I still live in Oklahoma. There’s no such word as snuck, evidently.

It’s sneaked. Okay, I’ll say it. It sounds wrong to say I sneaked into the house, but if you’re telling me snuck is not a word, I’ll try.

There are some things that are not, I mean, they’re important. I would say, yes, write it correctly, but in our spoken language, I’d say it’s not that important whether it’s sneaked or snuck or it’s burst or busted. There are some things, though, where if you’re not careful about how you’re communicating, you change the whole meaning of things.

And you’ve got to be very careful about not changing the meaning and not changing how you’re communicating. I’m trying to teach the third and fourth graders about proper use of commas. And whenever you’re directly addressing somebody in writing, you’re supposed to have a comma to separate the name from the rest of the sentence.

Now, what I mean by that is if I said, Brother Dacus, how are you today? and I were to write that down, it would be, Brother Dacus, comma, how are you today? You have to separate it, even if it comes at the end of the sentence.

And what about you, Sister Shank? I would put a comma before Sister Shank. And the kids just sit there and their eyes glaze over like some of yours are now.

I promise this whole thing is not a grammar lesson. I’m getting to a point here. It’s not just you all.

Anytime I talk about grammar, people’s eyes glaze over. That’s all right. I’m trying to teach these kids.

It’s important where you put your commas. In writing, sometimes it’s going to make all the difference, whether it’s clear or not. And I always think of this example that makes me laugh every time.

And I’ve told the kids, I’ve given them this example and said, see, one little comma changes the meaning. You’ve got to be very careful about how you’re communicating something because you change one little thing and it can become something altogether different. And the example I give them is, let’s eat, grandma.

Let’s eat, grandma. You’re inviting grandma to eat. Guys, what happens if you leave the comma out.

Let’s eat grandma. It changes the meaning altogether, doesn’t it? We’ve got to be very careful about changing a little bit here and a little bit there about how we communicate something, what we’re saying, because it can change the meaning of something altogether.

A comma can be very important. There have been times I’ve been reading a passage from the pulpit and I’ve got tongue-tied. There I go again.

Spoken grammar, I would have never said, I mean, in writing, I would said, I’ve got tongue-tied. I’ve gotten tongue-tied. Anyway, and I’ll see a word that’s not there, and I’ll put a word in there, and then I’ll realize, wait, it doesn’t say that, and have to go back and correct it.

You take a word out, or you add an extra word, it changes the meaning sometimes. We’ve got to be very careful when it comes to the things of God, even more so. I mean, it’s a big deal for grandma, whether we have that comma in there or not, because it changes the meaning.

Let’s eat, comma, grandma, or let’s eat grandma. Big difference to grandma. There are some times that if we change what we’re communicating just a little bit, it has even worse implications.

And Paul talked about this with the gospel. As we’re going through this series on non-negotiables, the gospel and what the gospel means is a non-negotiable. And it’s one of these areas where we cannot change what we’re communicating even just a little bit or it changes the whole thing.

It becomes something altogether different. It has terrible implications. Now, I’m not saying you have to have, when you’re telling someone the gospel, when you’re sharing the gospel, When you’re talking to someone about Jesus, I’m not saying you have to have a memorized presentation and you have to go through it verbatim and never deviate from the script.

I’m not talking about word for word not changing what we’re communicating. But I’m talking about the truths of the gospel. We cannot change the meaning.

We cannot change what we communicate because if we change just a little bit of the truth of the gospel, it becomes something altogether different. Paul was very emphatic on this as we look at Galatians chapter 1. He was writing to the churches at Galatia, and he was writing to them because people, you know, they’d heard the gospel, they had responded to the gospel.

These people were believers, that’s why they were in the churches. And yet in the churches in Galatia, people had come along who had begun to preach another gospel. They had begun to change the gospel a little bit here and there.

In the early churches, there were people called Judaizers who would say, yes, of course, it matters that Jesus Christ died for you. but now because he’s died for you, you have to follow the law in order to be saved. Well, they’re not denying that Jesus Christ died for them.

They’re just adding a little bit to the gospel, but it makes all the difference in the world in the final product, whether it’s the gospel of Christ or whether it’s some man-made invention. They would have also, in addition to the Judaizers, the people would say, you’ve got to follow the Old Testament law in order to be saved. You’ve got to earn your salvation on top of what Christ did for you.

They had people called the Gnostics who were teaching all sorts of things, And they might incorporate aspects of the gospel. They might incorporate that Jesus Christ really lived and that he taught. And they might incorporate aspects of the gospel.

But then they would say you need to have this secret knowledge that wasn’t taught in the Bible, that wasn’t taught in the scriptures, that wasn’t taught by Christ and the apostles. There’s this secret knowledge you’ve got to be privy to in order to be saved. And they would take some of the gospel and some of their own invention and they would mix them together and change what they’re communicating and it became something altogether different.

and some people were beginning to buy into these lies and Paul said don’t you dare don’t you dare because you change just a little bit you change the gospel just a little bit you tweak it here and there and it becomes something altogether unrecognizable and so he says in verse 1 Galatians chapter 1 verse 1 Paul an apostle not of men neither by man but by Jesus Christ and God the Father who raised him from the dead and all the brethren which are with me unto the churches of Galatia don’t forget this was written as a letter and so he’s explaining you know nowadays we would put at the end love whoever whatever our name is they would put at the very beginning who it was from from Paul the apostle and he says by the way here in parentheses not by men not of man neither by man but by Jesus Christ and God the father who raised him from the dead and what he’s saying there is some of these teachers in order to justify the false things that they were teaching would come along and say, oh, as the people would say, well, that’s not what Paul taught.

Oh, well, let us tell you something about Paul. Let us tell you something about Paul. He just calls himself an apostle.

Nobody appointed him to be an apostle. He wasn’t a follower of Jesus Christ during his lifetime. Well, you know what?

I happen to believe he was there in Jerusalem during parts of Jesus’ earthly ministry. And he did see the resurrected Christ on the road to Damascus. Those were the qualifications that were needed for an apostle.

And then Jesus Christ called him to be an apostle. And so to those who would say, well, Paul came later and just declared himself to be an apostle, so you don’t have to listen to him. Paul says, it was not by man, whether that means him or somebody else.

It was not because he said he was an apostle that he was one. It was not because the other 11 said that he was one, that he became one. It was because he was called by Jesus Christ who set him apart to be an apostle.

He said, so you’re not challenging my authority in challenging these teachings. You’re challenging God’s authority as he speaks through his apostles. Not of man, neither by man, but by Jesus Christ and God the Father who raised him from the dead.

He says, and all the brethren which are with me. So it was Paul and all of those who were with him who were writing unto the churches of Galatia. Then he gets into the body of the letter in verse three and says, grace be to you and peace from God the Father and from our Lord Jesus Christ, who gave himself for our sins that he might deliver us from this present evil world According to the will of God and our Father.

Okay, a couple of things here. He wishes them grace and peace. That was sort of a typical greeting.

But he says, from God the Father. Evidently, it was normal in their culture to wish people grace and peace, whether you were a Christian or Jew or pagan. And for him to say grace and peace from God our Father.

He’s identifying God the Father as the ultimate source of grace and peace. And it doesn’t matter who else extends grace to you. It doesn’t matter who else tries to give you peace in this world.

If you don’t have grace and peace from God the Father, it basically is meaningless in the greater scheme of things. Grace be to you and peace from God the Father. He says, and from our Lord Jesus Christ who gave himself for our sins.

In case there’s any confusion there, because there’s a split between two verses, that is one complete thought that it was the Lord Jesus Christ who gave himself for our sins. It was Jesus Christ is the one who gave himself on the cross, And he gave himself for the purpose of dying for our sins so that he could deliver us from this present evil world according to the will of God and our Father. And that’s not identifying two separate people, God and our Father.

He is our God and he is our Father. Still one person. To whom be glory forever and ever.

Amen. Pretty standard stuff so far, writing to a church. You would say things like that.

You would wish them grace and peace. You would talk about the gospel. You would say it’s all because of Jesus.

But then he gets into the meat of the matter here in verse 6. He says, I marvel that you are so soon removed from him that called you into the grace of Christ unto another gospel, which is not another, but there be some that trouble you and would pervert the gospel of Christ. So he changes tone from verse 5 to verse 6 and says, and by the way, I cannot believe. I am amazed, I am shocked that you have so quickly changed your minds, that you have so quickly gone away from believing the gospel of Christ, the grace of Christ, unto this other gospel, this other way of teaching, this other false teaching that these people have brought in where they say you can get salvation this way, this way, or this way, in opposition, in contrast to what you’ve already been taught, that it was through the grace of Christ. He said, I’m amazed that so quickly you have forgotten.

I say this all the time. I say this almost every day in class. How is it that you so quickly forgot what I just told you?

Every one of you in here who have raised children have probably uttered that phrase. How did you already forget? I just told you to stop talking.

And while I was in the middle of telling you to stop talking, you started talking again. I don’t understand. how you can so quickly forget what I have just told you.

Why are you not writing your spelling words? I told you 10 seconds ago to do that. And you’re already up dancing around the room.

You know, but we do that same thing too. God tells us to do something and we may hear a word from Him. We may hear something in church or as we’re studying His word that sort of illuminates a truth He’s already revealed from His word.

And we think, yes, that’s what God wants me to do. And we no sooner get home than it’s forgotten. And God could very easily say to us, how did you already forget what I told you to do?

That was five minutes ago. This is basically what Paul’s communicating here. You were just taught the grace of Christ. You were just taught and you believed salvation by grace that it was because of what Jesus Christ did.

He said, and I don’t understand how so quickly you’ve forgotten that and moved on to another gospel, which he says in verse 7, is not another. Now that sounds like a contradiction there, but Paul would have to be pretty dumb to contradict himself so close together and say a gospel, and it’s not a gospel. What he’s saying here, he’s using the term gospel in two different senses.

He’s saying you’ve gone from the grace of Christ to another gospel, another idea of teaching about salvation, which is not a gospel. And what the word gospel means is good news. So what he’s saying here by saying you’ve gone away to another gospel, which is not another gospel.

He’s saying you have been deceived into buying into a false gospel that is not good news and does not have the power to save anyone. He says, I don’t understand how you’ve so quickly forgotten what you were taught. And he says, but there be some that trouble you and would pervert the gospel of Christ. He said, maybe it was that they were so convincing these people who crept into the churches and they’ve troubled you.

They’ve got you confused and twisted up. They sound good. They sound logical. They make good points and they orate well.

They speak well. You know, we see sometimes that sometimes people are such good public speakers. I am not one of them.

But sometimes people are such good public speakers that people get caught up in what they’re saying and they go along with it. And it makes them abandon sometimes what they previously thought because they sound so good and so convincing. He said, there be some that trouble you and would pervert the gospel of Christ. He says their goal is to alter, to change.

And the word he uses here is a really good one, to pervert the gospel of Christ. Not just to change it, but to change it from something wonderful, something heaven sent, into something low, into a lie. To change it from something good into something bad. And he said that was their intent, to pervert the gospel of Christ. They didn’t come here wanting to clarify what they’d been taught.

They didn’t come here wanting to clarify the gospel. They came wanting to change it. And folks, when we begin to change any aspect of the gospel, we pervert the whole thing.

When any teacher begins to change aspects of the gospel, they pervert the whole thing. I don’t care if they’ve got a huge following or not. I don’t care if they are attended by 20,000 people in their church every Sunday and seen on dozens of TV channels.

If they change any aspect of the gospel, they pervert the whole thing. And they are leading people astray into another gospel, which is not another gospel. And just to make clear here, just to help them understand, in verse 8 he says, But though we or an angel from heaven preach any other gospel unto you than that which we have preached unto you, let him be accursed.

And what he says there is if anybody comes along, you’ve already heard the gospel, you’ve already received the gospel, you’ve already trusted in the grace of Christ, you know what the gospel is. He says, if anybody else comes along preaching any other message, he said, I don’t care if it’s me and I come back in five years and say, wait, I have a new idea about the gospel. Here’s what it is.

I don’t care if it’s me or any other man or even an angel from heaven. An angel from heaven wouldn’t preach another gospel, but the Bible does say that even the devil comes as an angel of light. And sometimes people can get caught up in the appearance of spiritual experiences and take leave of what they’ve already heard from God’s word.

But he says, I don’t care if somebody else comes along and it’s me or it’s some other trusted preacher or if they even claim to be an angel from heaven. If they are preaching any other gospel than what you’ve already heard and received, he says, let them be accursed. Let them be accursed.

And those are harsh words. I’ve tried to study that word out, accursed. Tried to understand, well, what is God really saying here?

You get into the Greek and the Greek word is anathema and you know what it means? Exactly what it says. Let him be accursed.

And Paul sometimes could get very excited about topics as he’s writing. I get that impression. And you get the impression from reading some of his works that sometimes people didn’t believe him or thought, well, surely he didn’t mean that because they would question what he said.

Folks, just to make sure they understood that he really didn’t mean it and he’s not speaking hastily, he repeats himself in verse 9. Just for emphasis, just to make sure they get it. As we said before, so say I now again.

If any man preach any other gospel unto you than that which you have received, let him be accursed. Let him be accursed. It means the same thing as the previous verse.

You know, sometimes a politician will make a statement that people don’t like, the media doesn’t like, or the public doesn’t like, and they’ll have to do the thing where they go and apologize, and, oh, I misspoke, or, oh, it was inartful is the new word that, seems the new word that the politicians use for 2014. They’ll have to come out and make some kind of obligatory apology. Oh, that’s not really what I meant.

Sometimes, though, you’ll get somebody who has the right or wrong, has the courage to stick to their guns and double down and say, that’s exactly what I meant. Let me say it again. Paul here was not going to make some half-hearted apology and say, well, I spoke hastily when I said, let them be accursed.

What I really meant was that. No, he says, I’m going to tell you again, if anybody preaches any other gospel, I meant what I said the first time. God says, let him be accursed.

And that word, you can agree, because it has so many meanings, and they’re all summed up pretty well in this English word. It means let them be cast out of the church. It means let them be run out of ministry, and let them be placed under the curse of divine judgment.

I mean, everything negative we can think of that could be done to someone for preaching a false, now it does not mean kill them. I’m just going to say everything that could be thought of to do to somebody for preaching a false doctrine is summarized in that word of curse. But in some faiths, if you preach something that they find to be a false doctrine, they kill you.

That’s not what it’s saying here. It basically says you’re to be put out of the ministry. You’re not to be listened to anymore.

You’re not to be part of the church anymore. And may God have mercy on your soul. And I puzzled over these two verses for a while and thought, well, what if someone is saved and begins to preach one of these things?

But the more I think about that, I still do not believe you can lose your salvation. Once you’ve truly been born again, I don’t believe the Bible teaches that you can lose your salvation. But the more I puzzled on this verse and thought about it, the harder it is for me to imagine that someone who has truly been born again, someone who has understood the gospel and realized that there is nothing I can do to earn or deserve my own salvation, but it was all because of what Jesus Christ did.

The more I think about that, the harder it is for me to imagine that somebody who has really been born again and understood that could ever go away and start preaching something else. And if they did, I’ve got to believe that they never really had it in the first place. I understood at five years old enough about the gospel to be saved.

I understood that Jesus Christ died for me because I was a sinner, I was going to hell, and he died in my place. But as I go on and I study God’s word more as I get older and think more about these things and begin to ponder all the implications of the gospel, that he didn’t have to do that, of just how utterly hopeless my condition would have been apart from him, how hopeless my condition still is apart from him. To think of how unfair it was to him, to God the Father and God the Son.

To think through the love that it took to put him there. To think through now even as a Christian, the good deeds I do are still to God as filthy rags. That there’s nothing I can do to get myself one step closer to heaven.

When I start to think about all the aspects of the gospel there are and all the implications, the more amazed I am by the simple gospel that God put into place. And it makes me love God all the more. I’m still not saying I love God as much as I could or should.

But the more I think about and learn about and know about the gospel, the more it makes me in awe of him and the more it makes me love him for the love that he first showed me. And I cannot imagine somebody believing that and experiencing that and then saying, wait, I’m going to go back to teaching that it’s something you can earn or do. That’s going to make me think you never really understood it.

You never really had it. You may have taught it clearly, but you didn’t understand it. So he says here, if they preach any other gospel, whether it’s me, whether it’s some other trusted preacher, whether it’s an angel from heaven, let them be accursed.

Put them out of the church. Don’t listen to their teaching. And may God have mercy on their soul.

Now, I think of this verse often. And the one that says even Satan comes as an angel of light because there have been many people who’ve been led astray by these visions of heavenly beings. The Book of Mormon supposedly was given to Joseph Smith by an angel of light.

The Koran supposedly was given to Muhammad by an angel of light. How many charismatic preachers are on TV preaching something even this morning that is contrary to the revealed word of God because they heard it from some sort of spiritual experience, maybe even an angel of light. and yet God says in his word, God says through Paul, if anybody preaches any other gospel, let him be accursed.

He says in verse 10, for do I now persuade men or God? Am I here trying to honor you, to make you feel better, to ease your conscience, or am I doing what I do for God? Or do I seek to please men?

For if I yet pleased men, I should not be the servant of Christ. It makes people feel better, I think, in a way. to believe they have something to do with their salvation. Because if we are taught to believe that we can earn our salvation, that if we’re just good enough that God will have to love us and let us in, there can be an element of pride in that to think, look what I did, I’m such a good person, and surely God must love and accept me.

Whereas with the gospel, we have to humble ourselves and say, even my good is not good. Even my best is not good enough. I have absolutely nothing to offer God, and the only option I have is to throw myself on his mercy.

That does not sit well with human pride, with human ego. We like to think we earned it, we did it ourselves. We don’t like to think that it was something that was done for us or that we weren’t good enough.

Now from the other side of that, I can say, thank God it has nothing to do with my ability to earn it because I still wouldn’t be there. What he’s saying here, is it for me to persuade you? Is that the most important thing for me to make everything right in your mind?

To tell you what you want to hear? Or am I supposed to tell what God has revealed to me? He said here, in what I preach, I can either please men or I can please God.

And there are some people who preach God’s word and preach it faithfully and people love them. But by and large, the bigger a following a preacher has, the more suspicious I am of them. Now, I’m not saying you have a big church, you’ve sold your soul to the devil or anything like that.

But if thousands of people hang on your every word and the media loves you and people in power love you, it makes me very suspicious because it is very hard to serve God and please man at the same time. And he says here, I’ve got a choice to make. Am I pleasing you or am I doing this to please God?

Is the gospel I preach to please you and to make you feel warm and fuzzy? Or is it to honor the God who made salvation available? If I tried to please you, I couldn’t be the servant of Christ, he says.

But I certify to you, brethren, I certify you, brethren, verse 11, that the gospel which was preached of me is not after man. He says, the gospel I preach is not my idea. It’s not something I came up with or put in play.

It’s not something that I was told that I was taught by the apostles at Jerusalem. For I neither received it of man, neither was I taught it, but by the revelation of Jesus Christ. And he does talk later about how he barely spent any time with the apostles at all. And it was a few years after his conversion that he was already preaching the gospel before that time.

Because the day he was on the road to Damascus and Jesus Christ got his attention, he witnessed the resurrected Christ and Jesus Christ told him the direction his life should take. And I believe Jesus revealed the gospel to him without any man having to teach it to him. And so he says, I didn’t hear this gospel secondhand.

it’s not some human invention. I was told by Jesus Christ himself. In verse 13, for you have heard of my conversion in time past in the Jews’ religion, how that beyond measure I persecuted the church of God and wasted it, and profited in the Jews’ religion above many my equals in mine own nation, being more exceedingly zealous of the traditions of my fathers.

But when it pleased God who separated me from my mother’s womb and called me by his grace to reveal his son in me that I might preach him among the heathen, immediately I conferred not with flesh and blood. He said it was God who called me out to do ministry. It was God who revealed the gospel to me and it was God who sent me to preach it.

And he said it was not a man-made human-centered message. So this morning from this passage, what the gospel means, I preached here and I preached elsewhere that what the gospel means is summarized in 1 Corinthians chapter 15. And by now, if you pay attention to what I say at all, you should be able to quote the passage and maybe you’re tired of hearing it.

That Jesus Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures, that he was buried, and that he rose again the third day according to the scriptures and afterwards was seen of many witnesses. And I’ve said that’s the gospel. Well, I’ve probably misspoken.

There you go. I was inartful. I misspoke a little bit because that’s the story.

That’s the foundation of the gospel. But beyond there, there’s a response. to the gospel.

You see, the gospel is that Jesus Christ died for our sins, that he was buried and rose again. But now the further, the rest of the story is that God, because of that, because he died for our sins to be forgiven, God offers forgiveness of sins by his grace through faith. So the gospel this morning, as we see from this passage here, first of all, the gospel means that salvation is based on God’s unmerited grace.

He says in verses three and four, grace be to you and peace from God the Father and from our Lord Jesus Christ who gave himself for our sins. We didn’t earn the forgiveness of our sins. We didn’t do anything to deserve it.

God didn’t look down at us and say, I’m going to forgive them because they’re so wonderful. God didn’t even say, I’m going to send Jesus to die for them because they’re so wonderful. There was nothing good or worthwhile or lovable about us.

And yet, because God is love, he made the decision that he was going to make provision for our salvation. He was going to make a way for us to be forgiven, even though we didn’t it. And salvation from first to last is because of the unmerited grace of God.

It’s not just that those of us who believe in Christ didn’t deserve salvation, and yet he saved us anyway because of what Jesus Christ did. That’s amazing enough, but even more amazing is the fact that even having a plan of salvation, we didn’t deserve. For Jesus even to come to die for us, we didn’t deserve that.

For God to give us a second look after Adam and Eve sinned in the garden, we didn’t deserve that. we deserve death, hell, and eternal separation from God. That’s what we deserve.

And yet by God’s unmerited grace that we don’t earn or deserve, salvation is available. The gospel means that salvation is based on God’s unmerited grace. It was a gift of God.

Jesus Christ gave himself. You don’t earn a gift. You don’t work for a gift.

I finally got my first paycheck from the school such as it was. It was not a gift. I worked hard for that.

You know what? Salvation is a gift because there’s no work I can do. It’s because God was good enough to offer it.

So first of all, the gospel means that salvation is based on God’s unmerited grace. Second of all, the gospel means that Jesus Christ died to atone for man’s sin. The only reason God offers this grace, the only reason that God forgives, the only reason God can forgive is because Jesus Christ paid the penalty for our sins.

Jesus Christ shed his blood on the cross and died. for my sin and yours. The sin that we’ve committed all through our lives, the sin you committed this morning, the sin that you committed that you think nobody knows about, the sin you’re going to commit tomorrow.

Jesus Christ died for it because I couldn’t die for it. You couldn’t die for it. There was no