Episode Transcript
[00:00:05] Open your Bibles. Galatians, chapter one. And we are gonna start in verse one this morning.
[00:00:11] We are launching a new series in the Book of Galatians. And I am very excited to open up God's Word with you through this book. If I have not met you, my name is Michael Fueling. I'm the lead pastor here and just wanna take a moment and introduce you to the Book of God, Galatians. Because unlike most other New Testament books, Galatia is not a city or a local church. Galatia is a region where there are a handful of local churches that the Apostle Paul started. And so in this map, if you look all the way to the left, to the west, you see a boot pop quiz. What country is that?
[00:00:53] Italy. And then if you go all the way to the right, south, southeast, is Israel and Egypt. And gosh, guys, I'm so dyslexic. The fact that I got that right is a miracle. But you can see right here in Asia, this is a region called Galatia. And to the south of that region are primarily four churches that Paul started. You may have heard of them. If you're familiar with the Bible, you have Pisidian, Antioch, you have Iconium, Lystra, and Derbe. And so these are churches that the Apostle Paul came into these cities. He proclaimed the gospel to them. They trusted in. He raised up churches, elders, et cetera. And so the book of Galatians is written to these local churches in this area. And it would be a letter that was going to be circulated. Now, when we parachute into biblical books, we can kind of have this idea that when the Apostle Paul sat down and he wrote these words, he wrote them with me in mind.
[00:01:53] And.
[00:01:54] And I just have really hard news for some of you.
[00:01:57] You weren't on his mind when he wrote this book.
[00:02:01] What was on his mind were the churches and some of the issues they were dealing with in Galatia. There's an author, his name's Gordon Fee, and he wrote a really helpful book on how to study the Bible called How to Read the Bible for All It's Worth. And here's what he said. He said the Bible was written for us, but not for to us.
[00:02:21] So there's an original audience that received this. In fact, it's probably not even the most appropriate to call it a book, as if he was sitting down to write nonfiction or fiction or something of the sorts.
[00:02:33] This is, in its purest form, a letter from one man, Paul, to a series of churches that he knows, loves, and started. And so we get this Privilege to parachute into a deeply personal and you're gonna find very emotional letter between Paul and.
[00:02:53] So what I want to do with you before we jump into verse one, is I want to share with you two pieces of context that if you don't get these and you try to read the book of Galatians, there's going to be a bunch of things that honestly just don't make sense. Okay, so here's the first point of context.
[00:03:09] Christian Jews and Gentiles were having a very hard time figuring out the role of the Old Testament law in the New Testament Church. Okay? So village church, pop quiz. Okay, the answer is no. Are you obligated or expected or commanded to obey Old Covenant law, traditions, et cetera, as a New Covenant Christian? The answer is no, you're not. Okay, this is great news, by the way, but this is one of the debates that they're having in this church. Okay? So there are some battles that you and I don't have to fight today, because centuries or millennia ago, believers who went before us already duked out those battles. Let me give you, like, a couple illustrations. If you lived in the 4th century and you got baptized, and then the pastor who baptized you left the faith because he was afraid of being persecuted by Rome, people would come along and say, well, then that baptism doesn't count, and we don't even know if you're a Christian. And so they debated this when they came to the right conclusion that baptism doesn't save you a B. Baptism isn't about the guy that baptized you. It's about a proclamation of Christ as your Lord. It doesn't matter what that guy does in his personal life. Your baptism stands because it was never about that guy. It was about your faith in Christ. Praise God. We don't have to duke out that battle anymore. You go to the years 1300ish to 1600 AD and here was the fight.
[00:04:43] Should we have the Bible in a language that every person can read, or do we just make it so that only a few people who are PhDs and elites in the upper hierarchy of the Roman Church that they can read? And they duked it out and people died over this. And Martin Luther finally translates the Bible into the common German language. Spreads like wildfire. You have the printing press invented, and all of a sudden what you find is in country after country and language after language still going on to this day, the Bible is. Is being translated and interpreted into language. The common language of every country in every language in the world, debate over how awesome Is it that they fought that battle then and we don't have to be debating whether or not we should be reading the Bible in English? Thank God, the American church, we're a funny crew.
[00:05:32] We really like to fight with each other. Okay? So I know you're gonna find this hard to believe, but in the 1700s, late 1600s, 1700s, here was one of the. It was a big debate.
[00:05:45] Should churches use organs or are organs worldly?
[00:05:51] This is the debate, right? This was the drum debate from, like the late 90s, right? But like, hundreds of years ago, and they finally realized, well, you know what? Like, God gave us these instruments, we can use them to glorify God. It's fine. And so, like, now people are like, organs. I wish we went back to organs. Okay, so that debate is done. It's settled, it's over. Then in the 1800s, there was a debate, real debate. Should we use electricity?
[00:06:19] Because we don't want. Here's the argument. We don't want people to be too comfortable in church, right? And so people debated whether or not it was worldly to use electricity. And thank God they did. Those churches must have been in, like, San Diego where it's the same temperature, like all year long or something.
[00:06:36] And then. Humor me for a moment. Would you raise your hand if you've ever heard of pew renting? Anybody ever heard of this? Yeah. Okay, let me bring you into the world of pew renting, okay?
[00:06:49] What you would do is you would pay for a specific pew or place to sit in the church.
[00:06:57] And guys capture this. This is crazy. There were people.
[00:07:01] It was their ministry to remove people who were sitting in the wrong pew that they didn't pay for. Oh, and you wanted better sight lines. You could pay better so that you could be closer or see the action up front more clearly. And then, like, that seat, that was yours and it was protected, and this was the way that churches would raise funds. Okay? So, like, debate over it. That's dumb. Okay, could we just agree that's dumb. It's dumb and it's unbiblical because we don't give people preference on where they sit based on how much money they have. Okay? And so, like, debate over settled, like, pews. Don't even worry about that. And then it's like, ah, pews, chairs. Aren't you so glad that, like, that debate is just over? Who cares where you sit if you're worshiping Jesus Christ, right? And so we just kind of like all these fights and battles, they have been fought way before us. And we don't have to deal with them. But when it comes to the most important, the tier one, the most central doctrines of the Church, the vast majority of these were fought over and settled within the first three to four to 500 years of the Church. Praise God. And Galatians is actually picking up the first, if not one of the first major duke out battle arguments amongst believers in the first century, right after the death and resurrection of Jesus.
[00:08:23] And so let me just summarize for you the conclusion and then we're going to unpack this. Here's the conclusion.
[00:08:30] No one who comes to Christ, no matter what their background, will ever be required to follow any Old Covenant Law or tradition not repeated in the New Covenant in order to become a Christian or to live as a Christian.
[00:08:46] In other words, no one is required to become a Jew in order to become a Christian.
[00:08:54] Okay, we don't have to argue now about whether or not everybody should be circumcised or whether or not you have to follow all of the Old Covenant laws or follow the sacrificial system. Like this battle. This is one of the first battle that the early Christians had to deal with because there were a bunch of Jewish Christians who were saying, no, no, no, no, no, no, if you're gonna follow Jesus, you gotta get baptized into Judaism first. Then you can get baptized into Christ.
[00:09:23] You have to become a Jew and then you can become a Christian. And this was the fight. Do I have to become a Jew before I become a Christian? Because Jesus was Jewish and the Old Testament were written for the Jewish people all the way back in the book of Galatians. This is the argument. Now this is the second piece of context vital for you to kind of make sense of this letter.
[00:09:43] Jewish Christians from Jerusalem were following Paul after he left the churches he planted and they were intentionally undoing his gospel.
[00:09:58] And so Paul planted these churches, trained these churches, warned these churches. I mean, this was the pattern. Paul would leave. And the evil one would raise up people to contradict his teaching. They would slander the apostles and they would come in and they would say something like, the Apostle Paul got you 80% of the way there. Now we're going to take you 100%.
[00:10:25] That Jesus, he didn't just come to save you, he came to help you obey the Old Testament or Old Covenant Law.
[00:10:37] They would teach that in order to be saved, you have to be circumcised. Otherwise, hell. You have to follow the Old Covenant Law, otherwise hell. And essentially here is their Gospel. Salvation equals faith in Jesus plus Commitment to Old Testament law.
[00:11:00] By the way, that's not the gospel. That's not salvation.
[00:11:05] So these imposters from Jerusalem, they were teaching an altogether different gospel. The gospel that they were teaching was not true.
[00:11:14] The gospel they were teaching had no power.
[00:11:17] The gospel they were teaching could not save anyone.
[00:11:20] Most importantly, the gospel was not Jesus gospel, and it was not blessed by Jesus.
[00:11:27] And here's what was going on in Galatia. These people from Jerusalem, they come in and they say, the Apostle Paul, he didn't get it all right? And the Galatians were falling for it. The men were getting circumcised and they were subjecting themselves and their family back under the yoke of Old Covenant law because they believed they had to be Jewish in order to go to heaven. How do you guys think Paul felt about that?
[00:11:55] Well, Paul was rightly furious.
[00:12:01] Furious, of course, with the false teachers. They're super annoying. But more furious with the Galatian church who were trained and knew better.
[00:12:13] So this letter, this letter is a rebuke.
[00:12:17] This letter is corrective. This letter is protective. This letter is cutting. This letter is blunt. This letter is angry. I mean, the softest parts of this letter might be the introduction and the conclusion, and that's about it. But almost every sentence in between, you're going to just palpably feel the weight of emotion that Paul has behind this letter. All right, with this context. Galatians, chapter one. Look at verse one with me.
[00:12:46] Paul asserts his divine authority. Paul, an apostle, not from men, nor through man, but through Jesus Christ and God the Father who raised him from the dead. And right off the bat, Paul is unashamedly asserting his authority as a capital A apostle, one of the men chosen by Jesus, trained by Jesus and commanded by Jesus to teach the pure gospel, the apostles would be the ones who established the foundation doctrine of the Church. The buck stopped with the apostles. If you an apostle, debated on doctrine, who wins?
[00:13:26] The apostle, they are in charge. They are the leaders established by Jesus for the founding of the doctrine, the purity, the teaching of the gospel of the church. And so Paul was chosen, trained by Jesus to be a apostle, Catholic apostle. His job was to the Gentiles. Other apostles, they were to the Jews. But this was his job, to go to gentile regions, bring the pure, simple gospel to to them. In verse 2, Paul says this, and all the brothers who are with me, this might be one of these sentences you're tempted to kind of just like read and skip. But when your boss or your leader writes you a letter and then ccs a bunch of people on it. You kind of know things have probably gotten serious, right?
[00:14:14] So essentially, here's what Paul is saying with this sentence.
[00:14:19] Hey, Galatians. Yeah, it's me. I'm writing a letter to you on behalf of Jesus who commissioned me. Don't forget that.
[00:14:25] And to validate that there's a bunch of other Christians and apostles who are standing behind every word, I am writing to you. So listen carefully. I've got some things I want to say to you.
[00:14:37] We get to verse three, and we're not even to the hard part yet. This is kind of just all greeting and preparation. So despite his strong emotions, he gives them a standard greeting.
[00:14:46] Grace to you. Peace from God, our Father, the Lord Jesus Christ. This is like a common way he opens up his letters. But then in verse four, he kind of gives. Like, I bet as they read this, they're like, yeah, yeah, yeah. But he's kind of given like a sneak peek to what he's gonna talk about, says, who gave himself Jesus, for our sins to deliver us from the present evil age.
[00:15:07] Like, what Jesus did is he gave you the good news of salvation that would remove you from the domain of darkness and Satan's authority and would bring you into God's kingdom that would save you and forgive you. And he's kind of given them this little, like this hint right there is a true gospel that saves, but you are subjecting yourselves to a gospel that keeps you under the slavery of this present evil age. Now, we're going to get there, you're going to see this. But it's kind of a sneak peek.
[00:15:38] Verse 6.
[00:15:40] Paul's righteous anger is now released. Here we go.
[00:15:45] I'm not a yelling pastor. If I was, I would yell this.
[00:15:49] I am astonished that you are so quickly deserting him who called you in the grace of Christ and are turning to a different gospel. You know, sometimes you write an email and someone thinks, is he angry? Is he upset? What was that about? Right. I think Paul's tone's pretty clear. What do you guys say? Like, he's not thrilled. Now, there are some lines that when people cross them, if we don't get angry, something is wrong with us. When you are given responsibility to shepherd, whether it's a church or your children, and someone crosses certain lines with them, you know those lines, like, you probably got a few of them. Like, if you cross this line, then you're gonna arouse, like, actual, appropriate, legitimate anger. And so for Paul, like, you might be tempted to look at him and be like, dude, chill out. I think as we go along, you're gonna realize why he shouldn't chill out. Paul's anger is just and justified Galatians. I imagine him saying to them, I just left you. And I left you with a simple, pure, powerful, true gospel. You believed it.
[00:17:01] I gave you the gospel. You, you were reconciled to God. And now you're like, maybe Paul was wrong. So all it takes is a couple PhDs in Old Testament theology from Jerusalem to undo the Gospel of Jesus Christ.
[00:17:15] I want you to catch, like, what is. What is being implied here.
[00:17:19] He is accusing the Galatians of deserting Jesus, rejecting Jesus grace, abandoning the gospel, and embracing a cursed, false way of salvation.
[00:17:35] Some big accusations now, for most Galatians, I imagine their intentions were probably not nefarious.
[00:17:44] Here's the deal, guys. People go to hell with good intentions.
[00:17:49] And there are some things. I don't care how good your intentions are. I don't care how noble you think you're trying to be. There are some things we never, ever, ever mess with.
[00:17:59] One of those things is the gospel. The good news of salvation of Jesus Christ.
[00:18:04] And what these false teachers from Jerusalem came in and were doing was egregious of the darkest, highest level.
[00:18:13] Now let's pull back for a moment.
[00:18:15] Every false Christian gospel all throughout history, they follow the exact same dumb formula. And it goes like this.
[00:18:25] Faith in Jesus plus fill in the blank. People filled in the blank with all different sorts of things.
[00:18:33] Mormons, fill in the blank. Faith plus good works. Jehovah's Witnesses, faith plus good works. Catholics, let's just add an extra one. We got Catholic, we got faith plus sacrament plus merit or a good work, right? And you're like, pause.
[00:18:48] Anybody who puts anything in that blank, okay, is messing with something we are not allowed to mess with. Because the moment you put something in the blank, it ceases to be the real, the true gospel. So Paul, in verse seven, his bluntness continues. And I love this phrase, not that there is another one, but there are some who trouble you and want to distort the Gospel of Christ.
[00:19:15] Now, most people, we don't use the word gospel unless you grew up in church or you're reading the Bible or talking about the Bible or spiritual things.
[00:19:22] The word gospel can be and feel kind of Christianese. And so at its core, gospel, really at its most central part, means this good news.
[00:19:33] Specifically, a gospel is good news about a way of salvation. Okay? So if you're in a war, there might be a few gospels, there might be a few ways that we can end this war. A way of salvation out of this insanity. If you're in a. A really, really broken marriage, there might be a few different gospels, a few different ways of salvation out of this crazy mess that you are in. But when it comes to our relationship with God, our willful sin has severed that relationship and broke it. And there are not multiple gospels. There is one singular way of salvation. There is one message of good news. There is not another. It is faith in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ alone, not faith in Jesus plus good works or faith in Jesus plus sacrament, or faith in Jesus plus your affiliation or your great grandma prayed for you, so you're really good, or because you had the right last name or you went to the right church. None of that matters when it comes to your broken relationship with God being made right. You can't put anything in the plus section. It is faith alone in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus. And these guys are coming in and they're saying, maybe it's not faith alone. Maybe we also have to become Jewish. We had to become circumcised. We had to follow the law. We have to be baptized into Judaism. And he's like, what in God's green earth is wrong with you?
[00:20:53] Why would you abandon Jesus and the gospel so quickly? Again, it took a couple Old Testament PhDs to get you to throw away the gospel of Jesus Christ, and now you're gonna add to it as if what Jesus gave you was not enough. Do you feel the emotion? Right? This is tip of the iceberg of what Paul's going through. All right? One of my favorite words in the English language is curmudgeon, okay?
[00:21:17] If you don't know what it means, look it up. It's a great word, but I can use this word right now because I truly can't think of a curmudgeon at Village Church. I'm sure there are a few of you out there. It's just not going through my brain, okay? But I can think of a few curmudgeons growing in the church that I grew up with.
[00:21:35] And curmudgeons, they just sort of fight about anything that changes that they don't like. You know what I mean? It doesn't matter. It could be big, it could be small. Just everything upsets them.
[00:21:45] And I want to be clear, okay? What's happening in Galatia? This isn't the guy that's upset about the pews. It's not the lady who's upset about the volume of the music. It's not the person who says the only godly biblical worship is 18th century Hymns with an organ ironically using electricity. Okay?
[00:22:04] Those are preferences that have most likely turned into idols. What is happening in Galatia is not that this is far more dangerous.
[00:22:14] This is false Christians tearing down the apostles reputation, subverting the gospel and bringing in an entirely new gospel which is no gospel at all because it can't save. All their gospel can do is damn and curse you to hell.
[00:22:33] That's it. And that's why this is so unbelievably dangerous. We can fight about so many things in churches and then we agree to disagree on some things. But on the gospel of Jesus Christ there is no argument, there is no fighting. We do not mess with this. We keep it pure and we keep it simple. And if you think Paul didn't have more emotion, he amps it up in verse eight. Here we go. But even if we or an angel from heaven should preach to you a gospel contrary to the one we preach to you, let him be accursed.
[00:23:08] Another fun word. Raise your hand if you've ever heard the word anathema.
[00:23:12] Anathema, not maranatha, anathema.
[00:23:16] This is actually the Greek word behind accursed.
[00:23:19] And it's interesting because here's what it means.
[00:23:23] If a glorious angel in the presence of God comes to you and puts anything in the, in the faith plus line item over here, that angel is going to be anathema or damned or cursed to hell. It is a powerful word. And so then he looks at these Galatians, he says, I don't care if it's a person, I don't care if Michael, right, the archangel comes down. They will be accursed anathema, damned to hell forever if they mess with the gospel. You see how serious he's getting with this. This is important. Now you would think, like if I could go on a little Michael rant for a moment, that when, I don't know, an angel came and the religion of Islam or Mormonism, that you would think we were warned about this. So the moment they said Jesus plus you go, wait a minute, it's almost like God in his omniscience inspired scripture and has prepared us for all of these possibilities. So I don't care if an angel came to you and miraculously started a religion. The moment you went jesus plus I'm out, you're accursed anathema. You don't get to do that. And you would hope that people would kind of wake up and be like, wow, like literally, the Bible predicted the very thing that happened, and people fall for it and are duped. Now, imagine Paul saying, hey, Galatians, do you think you're being too emotional or I'm overreacting.
[00:24:41] Well, verse nine, as we have said before. So now I say again.
[00:24:46] He's so funny. If anyone is preaching to you a gospel contrary to the one you received, let him be accursed, damned to hell. Dragon, drop the mic. Except he doesn't drop the mic. He's got five more chapters of review to go. Okay, I want to close. There's so much more in this book, but I want to close with two. So what's. I want to bring this home. Number one, be crystal clear on the gospel so that you and all you preach to might be truly saved.
[00:25:17] I want to read to you from 1 Timothy, chapter 4, verse 1. This is Paul again to a younger pastor. He says, now the Spirit expressly says that in later times, meaning as we get closer to the second Coming, some will depart from the faith by devoting themselves to deceitful spirits and teachings of demons.
[00:25:40] Can we just agree that demons have a pretty heavy investment in you not hearing or believing or understanding the simple, pure gospel, because that is the power of God for salvation. If they can keep that away from you, they can keep you damned and cursed to hell. And so let me share with you a word that church history has come up with. I really appreciate the word. It's a word I've preached on many times. So I want to make sure we're all clear on it. It's the word heresy.
[00:26:04] Heresy is any idea that changes a gospel. Essential. And so we have an equation here. Three plus three equals six. That is not the gospel, by the way, to be clear.
[00:26:17] But if you were to change any factor in this equation, it ceases to be true. And some of you, you're gonna do it right now. You're gonna check every single one. You're rotating your head and every other service that I'm right on this one. So, all right, any factor you edit, you add, you change.
[00:26:36] It ceases to become a true statement.
[00:26:38] In fact, it becomes a false statement.
[00:26:41] And such it is with the gospel. The gospel is simple and it is pure. And the moment you edit it, add to it, take away from it, it no longer is the gospel anymore. It is the way of damnation and cursing, not of salvation from this present evil age.
[00:27:01] Let's put rubber to the road. So what number two clearly distinguished between gospel issues and every other issue.
[00:27:11] So what heretics do is they reject.
[00:27:14] When we at village church, we call them tier one doctrines. And so about once a year, I try to teach on this so we can kind of have a shared vocabulary and try to think as biblically as we can. We have tier three doctrines, Tier two and tier one. I wanna start backwards and work with tier three.
[00:27:32] All of these are important, but tier three, of all the important doctrines, these are kind of like the least important. Okay. I mean, they're important, but, like, we're not gonna divide over them. I'm not gonna, like, break up with a girlfriend over these things. Well, maybe it depends on what they are. But by and large, we're gonna, like. We're gonna agree to disagree. In fact, if I were to poll the church on tier three issues, this place is all over the place. But here's what we want. We want to root our Tier 3 doctrine in God's Word.
[00:28:01] But here are just some examples of Tier 3 doctrines. Things feel free to disagree on. Arm wrestle. Debate them in your community groups. It'll be fun. All right, End times positions. Wait a minute, Pastor Michael. That's tier one. No, it's not. Stop it. Okay. Jesus is coming back. That's tier one. To judge the living and the dead. Okay, the best Bible translations. There are some bad Bible translations, but if I go to a different church and they're using a solid Bible translation, I don't lose my mind and think, I don't know if we can be Christians. You know, I'm dating this girl and she's using the new American Standard. I'm using the esv. I don't even know if we can even agree on anything. We just don't. This is not what we fight about.
[00:28:39] Infant baptism and believers baptism. Now, I want to be clear.
[00:28:44] Not all Protestant churches believe that baptism actually saves you. In fact, I think about our Presbyterian friends and our Lutheran friends. The ones that still believe in the Gospel.
[00:28:54] They don't believe baptism saves you. And so I grew up in a great Presbyterian church, and they practice infant baptism. And you know what? We're just not gonna fight over this thing. At the end of the day, we're right. But you don't have to fight.
[00:29:07] It's gonna be fine.
[00:29:09] There will be good Presbyterians and Lutherans in heaven with all of us.
[00:29:14] Worship style, alcohol in moderation, homeschool versus public versus private school. Again, these are important discussions, but, like, we're allowed to have a bit of difference of opinion and diversity.
[00:29:27] Here's one. This is gonna mess with some of you holiday Practices Halloween, Christmas and Santa Claus. Right. Like some of you, I mean, you're just like, tier one, I'm like, relax, okay, Debate, Yes. Like, please have good conversations. Just be nice. Pew renting. No, that's like tier 87. It's the stupidest thing in the entire world. All right, tier two, these are very important, but they're not essential.
[00:29:54] What you're gonna find with tier 2 doctrines is that often denominations in different churches, they'll kind of take a position on these things. And so most churches are gonna have pretty strong positions on tier 2 issues. But again, like, man, I got some really good friends and we're not on the same page with a bunch of tier two issues. And I, I know they're going to be in heaven. Their commitment to the Gospel and Tier 1 issues, it is strong and we debate heartily over these subjects.
[00:30:23] But I never am going to doubt their salvation. So here's a couple.
[00:30:29] The roles of men and women in the church and in the home. I mean, the Bible's clear, but if you want to debate, that's cool. Predestination free will. I mean, there's like seven of you who would love for me to do like a whole series on predestination free will.
[00:30:44] That's a great one. But like, listen, the Bible has so much to say on this subject. And I've never met anybody who has come to a final conclusion on that matter simply because they were yelled at or somebody preached a sermon. Like some of these doctrines, they're complex and they're hard and you gotta work through them. The answers are there, but it takes time and energy, creation. That's one elder led congregation versus congregational led.
[00:31:10] This is actually huge. Like the way a church is governed massively influences the way a church does everything. And so the Bible says a bit about both and trying to figure out what's best and right and biblical. But churches disagree. And you know what? Elder led churches and congregational churches, if they believe in the gospel, we're gonna be in heaven together.
[00:31:30] Divorce and remarriage, complex emotional churches have different positions on these things. But you can have a different position as long as you agree on tier one doctrines and you're gonna be in heaven with us. We can disagree on these things. In fact, part of what it means to be a follower of Jesus and the heritage and the history of Christendom is that we are intellectual, we think, we fight, we argue. Not sinfully, but we go head to head and we open up the word of God. And when we're Wrong. Or when we don't have the best idea, we bend the knee to the authority of Scripture. When you come to Christ, you probably didn't realize you're part of a multi century millennial long heritage of really working through issues to find what the Bible really teaches. It's a beautiful history and this is part of what we get to do together.
[00:32:21] But there is one thing that we no longer need to debate. And these would be the tier one gospel issues.
[00:32:27] You cannot reject these issues.
[00:32:30] So what I wanna do is just bottom shelf this to the best of my ability.
[00:32:36] All have sinned. Amen.
[00:32:39] You don't get to say, well, I didn't sin. I've never sinned. No, you did. The fact that you said that was a sin. So you're doubly a sinner. Okay?
[00:32:49] Sin has broken our relationship with God.
[00:32:52] Jesus is God. Most people agree he's a man. But we say Jesus is God.
[00:32:58] Jesus died for sin.
[00:33:01] Jesus rose from the dead and he is coming back.
[00:33:04] Salvation is by faith in Christ alone, not by. And whatever you put in that blank, I don't care what it is works, sacrament, law, tradition, affiliation, I don't care. Salvation is by faith in Christ alone.
[00:33:20] And then lastly, anyone who repents and gives their allegiance to Jesus will be received.
[00:33:26] And what I love about the word repent is, and the way that I mean it here is when you repent, you are changing your mind. You're no longer seeing yourself as God or not having a problem with God. You're agreeing with what God's word says. I am a sinner. I am changing. I believe in Jesus Christ, that he died for my sins and was raised from the dead. And what I love about the good news is that anybody who comes to God and takes ownership of that and wants to be saved, God's answer is yeah, are you sincere? I'm in. I'm chomping at the bed.
[00:33:54] I want to forgive you. God is not like, I don't know. That wasn't good enough. If you are truly sorry for your sin and you acknowledge the gospel. I believe in the gospel, like Jesus, forgive me, save me. His answer is going to be yes. But here's the deal. We don't get to mess with any of these.
[00:34:15] We don't get to say Jesus was man but not God or God or not man, or he was an illusion. The first four or five hundred years of the church dealt with all this, finalized it under the authority of God's word and with the teaching of the apostles. So we don't mess with any of this, it's secure. And so we debate about everything else, have at it, fight, duke it out. But when it comes to the gospel message, we don't mess with this. Because if you change one of these things, add, edit or take away, it no longer is the gospel of salvation, but it's a gospel of damnation. And I don't know about y', all, but when it comes to my kids or my church or the people I love, even the people I don't know, I do not wanna give them a gospel that is no gospel, a gospel that has no power. I want them to receive a gospel that has actual, true power to save. And so I just have wonderful news for you. If you're here and you're like, I got dragged here. I don't even know why I'm here. And you have never trusted in Christ. You've never become a Christian, as we say, you've never believed in the gospel. You've never come to God and said, I am sorry. I believe in the gospel. Will you forgive and will you save me? Do you guys know when the Bible says the best day to do that is today? And if you don't want to do it today, you can do it tomorrow. But I would tell you, you're not promised tomorrow, you're promised today. And so if you are, whatever stands. You hear me say this all the time, fellow church, but I mean it. Whatever stands between you and believing the gospel and asking God to save you from your sins, whatever stands between you and that, figure it out.
[00:35:45] It is appointed that man dies once and then faces judgment. There are not second chances. When you're dead, you have while you are alive. And so this is urgent. It's urgent for Paul, it's urgent for me, it's urgent for you. It is urgent that we come to grips with who God is and we believe the gospel. Not faith in Jesus plus, but faith in the life, death and resurrection of Jesus alone. Amen. Village church. Amen. Let's pray together.
[00:36:14] Father, we love you and we are so unbelievably thankful that we get to live 2,000 years after the life, death and resurrection of Jesus. We get to live after the apostles planted and started churches and wrote down your word. We get to live after all of these major tier one issues were being worked out and resolved amongst the early church. Thank you for the heritage that we receive.
[00:36:46] So much of this heritage was written down in creeds and statements and they're just reflections at the end of the day of the clear teaching of your Word. And we just see all throughout history that anytime there is a good work of God, there are people with false gospels waiting on the heels to undo if possible.
[00:37:04] And so God, I pray that you would continue to raise up village church to be clear headed and resolved on tier one issues.
[00:37:12] You would also continue to raise up men, women and students and children, all of us who are humble and teachable about tier 2 and tier 3 issues. That we are regularly submitting our ideas and beliefs and convictions to the authority of your word. That we would learn how to embrace really good dialogue as we try to work through things and that we would be patient with each other. But God, we want to be a people who are clear, clear, clear on the saving gospel of Jesus Christ. And we want to be stewards of that gospel. We want to keep it pure and we want to give it away. And so Lord we love you, we thank you for these privileges and we count it an honor to to study this book and to do this in Jesus name. Amen. Amen.
