Sunday Sermon: No Other Gospel (Galatians 1:6-8)

You are listening to the teaching ministry of Gabrielle Hughes, pastor of First Southern Baptist Church in Junction City, Kansas.

Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday on this podcast, we feature 20 minutes of Bible study through a

New Testament book. On Thursday is our Old Testament study, and then we answer questions from listeners on Friday.

Each Sunday we are pleased to share our sermon series. This is the sermon that was preached last week from our pulpit.

Here's Pastor Gabe. Writing to the churches in Galatia, Paul introduces himself at the start of the letter.

Paul, an apostle, not from men, nor through man, but through Jesus Christ, and God the

Father who raised him from the dead, and all the brothers who are with me.

To the churches of Galatia, grace to you and peace from God our

Father and the Lord Jesus Christ, who gave himself for our sins to deliver us from the present evil age, according to the will of our

God and Father, to whom be the glory forever and ever. Amen.

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.

Not that there is another one, but there are some who trouble you and want to distort the gospel of Christ.

But even if we or an angel from heaven should preach to you a gospel contrary to the one that we preached to you, let him be accursed.

As we have said before, so now I say again, if anyone is preaching to you a gospel contrary to the one you received, let him be accursed.

Let us pray. God, as we come to your scriptures this morning, may these words speak loudly to us.

May we understand your truth, what the gospel is. May our hearts be protected from anyone who would try to teach us a different gospel and say, oh, well, you also need this in order to be saved.

May there be nothing added to this glorious truth that Christ Jesus came to save sinners.

And by faith in Jesus Christ, we are forgiven before God. We are seated in the heavenly places with Christ and we await the coming of our

Lord Jesus with hope and with joy. We who are in Christ have nothing to fear of the judgment to come because we know that in Christ, our sins are forgiven.

If there is any way in us this morning, as we come to this text today, as we realize that maybe this gospel that we say we believe in, we've corrupted somehow, we've shaped it into something else to make it more palatable to us or to make it fit the way of life we want to live.

May we be convicted of those things and no longer walk in lies, being deceived by the deceiver, but we rejoice in your truth.

As Paul said in Romans 1 16, I am not ashamed of the gospel for it is the power of God for salvation to all who believe.

In the name of Christ Jesus we pray and all God's people said, amen. Thank you.

You may be seated. Paul starts this section, Galatians 1 6,

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.

We're done with greeting. Five verses greeting and concluded with amen at the end of verse five.

And now Paul gets right down to brass tacks. He gets immediately into rebuke because he has found out that the churches in Galatia are believing something different than what the apostles had first taught to them when the gospel came to that place.

And he says, so quickly you are deserting him who called you in the grace of Christ and are turning to a different gospel.

What is that different gospel that the Galatians believed? Well, it's mostly influenced by Judaism, legalists who came in and said, well, you also have to do this, this, and this.

And maybe the way that it was presented to them sounded something like this. Well, you believe in Jesus?

That's great. But Jesus was a Jew. And so Jesus did all the things that the Jewish people are supposed to do.

So if you want to be a good Christian, what you actually have to do, and then here's the list, circumcision being one of them, because that's one of the things that Paul will confront directly coming up in the churches, to the churches in Galatia.

In fact, when we get to it, the way that he puts this, you understand what circumcision is, right?

So when Paul gets to addressing this with them, he says, I wish those who trouble you would just go the whole way and castrate themselves.

That's how Paul confronts this problem. That's how serious this teaching is now that has come to the churches in Galatia with these false teachers saying to them, if you actually want to be saved, you have to do this work.

The apostle Paul reiterates for them again the truth that is in Christ. This gospel, that we are saved by faith in Jesus and no other way.

And anything else that gets added to that is a different gospel. Christ plus something is a different gospel.

And as I said when we kind of came in on our introduction to this letter, if that is the gospel that you've created for yourself,

Christ plus something else, whatever is in the blank gets the emphasis. Jesus just might be your lip service religion, but he's not actually who you love with all of your heart, soul, mind, and strength because you're sharing that glory with something or someone else.

There is not Christ plus blank. There's only Jesus. And it is by faith in Jesus that we are saved.

This is the gospel. It's the gospel that we as a church here proclaim, and it is the gospel that the church is built upon.

Paul says, I'm astonished that you're so quickly deserting him. And so you see right away the direct language that he uses with the

Galatians. There was somebody that Becky found online this past week who was summarizing the book of Galatians, and he said,

I feel like Paul is writing to the Galatians in all caps. It's just this constant shouting letter, what's wrong with you?

You had the gospel. You were doing so well. Who has bewitched you?

And even when you get to the end of the letter, Paul says, look at what large letters

I am writing with. It's like this is his John Hancock at the end, right?

The largest signature in our nation's documents. And Paul puts that at the end of his letter to the

Galatians, big letters. In fact, we shouldn't call it the John Hancock anymore. When we talk about somebody's signature, we should just call it the

Apostle Paul. Big letters right at the end of the letter to emphasize just how passionate he is for the hearts of these

Christians. I'm astonished that you're so quickly deserting him who called you in the grace of Christ and are turning to a different gospel.

There's something I would like to correct before we keep going this morning, and that is the way that I have defined grace for you.

Last week, we even talked about it. What is grace? And I said, two -word definition, unmerited favor.

I don't know how God stirred in my heart this past week to investigate that again, but there was just something.

It was on Monday. It was the day right after I had preached last week that I thought, is unmerited favor really the best definition of grace that we can come up with?

Is there another way that we can put it? And sure enough, there is actually a deeper definition to this word that we can use that's better than unmerited grace, or unmerited favor, rather.

It's not that that's a wrong definition. We can just do better than that. So remember, unmerited favor, meaning that you don't do anything,

God gives his grace to you. Without any works that you have done, you have received the grace and love of God through faith in Jesus Christ, unmerited favor.

That is really the definition of grace that you would find in the dictionary. But how about grace when it comes to the way

God gives it to us sinful man? And the way that we define

God's grace actually goes a little bit deeper than that, a little bit deeper than just simply unmerited favor.

Because when it comes down to it, there is not any such thing as unmerited.

Something is either merited or it's demerited. And that's actually where we find a better definition of grace, that it's demerited favor.

Jerry Bridges, once a longtime leader of the Christian ministry Navigators, explained it this way.

God's grace addresses itself not merely to the absence of merit, but to the presence of demerit.

To understand divine grace, we must see it as more than unmerited favor. The idea of demerit is an essential element in the biblical meaning of grace.

In our relationship with God, there is either merit for obedience or demerit for disobedience.

But there is no such thing as unmerit. There is either merit or demerit, but no unmerit.

In our case, of course, there is no merit. Even our best deeds are stained with sin, and in a strict view of justice, we deserve to be punished rather than rewarded.

That is why the Apostle Paul wrote of us that in our condition before salvation,

Ephesians 2 -3, we were by nature children of wrath, like the rest of mankind.

So a better definition of grace, going a little bit deeper than what I've told you in the past, would not be unmerited favor, but rather demerited favor.

It's because we know by our demerits what we deserve is judgment.

But by the grace of God, which we have not earned and in fact deserve the opposite of, he has shown us his love through his

Son, Jesus Christ. So bringing that to correction this morning as we continue in an understanding of the gospel of Christ, which we looked at last week, verses 3 -5,

Paul gives that brief gospel at the greeting of his letter. Grace to you and peace from God our

Father and the Lord Jesus Christ, who gave himself for our sins to deliver us from the present evil age, according to the will of our

God and Father, to whom be the glory forever and ever, amen. And as we come to understand, this being delivered from the present evil age does not merely mean that we would not walk in the evil of this age, although that is certainly implied.

But it also means that we will not be judged with this present evil age.

The judgment of God is coming and it is only by faith in Christ that we will be standing with God on that day instead of being judged by God.

I'm astonished that you are so quickly deserting him who called you in the grace of Christ and are turning to a different gospel.

And then Paul says in verse 7, clarifies this, not that there is another one, because there isn't.

The gospel is good news and there is only one gospel that saves. So there is no other news that is proclaimed that would be to our salvation except the truth that Christ died for sinners and rose again from the grave so that everyone who believes in him will not perish but will have everlasting life.

But there are some who trouble you and want to distort the gospel of Christ.

But even if we or an angel from heaven should preach to you a gospel contrary to the one we preached to you, let him be accursed.

As we have said before, so now I say again. You see the emphasis that Paul is putting on this here.

If anyone is preaching to you a gospel contrary to the one you received, let him be accursed.

We read this morning out of Psalm 5, where the psalmist says,

Make your enemies bear their guilt, O God. Let them fall by their own counsels, because of the abundance of their transgressions cast them out, for they have rebelled against you.

And you might read that out of Psalm 5 and think to yourself, is that really the Christian way that we should go about saying that?

God cast out your enemies because of their transgressions? What's what the Bible says is going to happen to the enemies of God.

But our hope and what we should be sharing with those who are at the present outcasts in the kingdom of God is that next part of Psalm 5, which says,

But let all who take refuge in you rejoice. Let them ever sing for joy, and spread your protection over them.

So the person who does not know, but is cast out by God, we must say to them,

Take refuge in Christ, and you will be saved from the judgment that is to come.

Yes, it is necessary for us to know that there is a judgment by the great judge over all of creation,

Christ Jesus, who will sit on his glorious throne. As he describes in Matthew chapter 25,

And it is only by faith in him that we will not perish in that judgment. Everyone will face judgment.

As it says at the end of the book of Revelation, All of those dead or alive will be brought before that throne, and great books will be opened up, it says, and everybody will be judged according to what they have done that's been written down in these books.

And those who will have done the will of the Father will enter into his kingdom that has been prepared for them from the foundation of the world, and those who did the will of Satan will be cast out with Satan and the demons into the hell of fire that has been prepared for them.

Know the gospel, believe in Christ, and we will be saved.

Adding to this gospel makes it a different gospel, and that is a gospel that does not save.

Subtracting from this gospel makes it a different gospel, and that is a gospel that will not save.

Hence why Paul says, not that there is another one, but some are presenting something to you that they call the gospel, and it's actually a lie.

Where I want to go from this this morning is I want to look at the most common false teachings that we will encounter in the world, and we're going to start from the macro and go to the micro.

So macro, what do I mean by that? The largest religions that are in the world, and then we're going to go smaller and smaller all the way down to even personal things that you might adopt upon yourself and think that this is the gospel, but you've created a distortion of the gospel.

So let's start big and go small. What would you say is the largest false religion in the world?

No, although it's part of it. Largest false religion in the world is actually, if we go by the biblical definition, paganism.

Whatever is not Christianity is paganism. It is the worship of another god or gods.

Generally in paganism, it's a polytheist religion, so there's multiple gods, and since there are indeed beliefs in multiple gods out there in the world, anything that is contrary to Christianity is falling under the category of paganism.

So that would be, in a very broad sense, the largest false religion in the world.

Now if we were to narrow that down a little bit more and we were to look at those non -category religions, these are these religions that are not organized religions, here are the basic beliefs that you would come into—gnosticism, unbelief, and folk religions.

So now you're taking paganism and you're narrowing it down to gnosticism, unbelief, and folk religions.

Gnosticism is the idea that there is some knowledge that exists out there that is outside what

God has revealed. And in some way, shape, or form, every other false religion in the world falls under that category.

It's not exactly the kind of gnosticism that we see that reared its ugly head at the end of the first century and started to try to corrupt the church, the gnostic teachings and the gnostic gospels, some of those writings that came about in the second and third century.

But all other religions in some way, shape, or form, become a sense of gnosticism, for it's

God's words not enough, instead, this has been revealed to me and here's the truth that you need to know.

Another non -category religion is just simply unbelief. But even when you encounter somebody who says they don't believe in anything, they don't have a religion, maybe they call themselves an atheist or an agnostic, you will actually find in their belief system a great deal of spiritualism.

It may not be organized, it may not fall into a particular category, but there's always something there.

In fact, a friend of mine who lives down in Florida, he lives on the beach, as a matter of fact, and it was just because he went down to Florida one day, loved the beach, and said,

I'm moving here, and so he did. Moved all of his family to the beach, he said, I'm going to get a job that pays me enough money that I can afford to live on the beach, and so that's what he does.

So I went down there and visited him once and just lived for a week in jealousy over what it is that he lives in every single day.

And I asked him about what the churches were like in that area and what some of the things were that he encountered, because he would do evangelism just on the boardwalk out there.

Just share Christ with people that he would encounter by the pier. And he said, you know, this is an area that they would say is largely atheist.

You would encounter somebody and they would say, oh, I don't believe in anything, I don't believe in God, I don't think God is real. But as you try to unfold that conversation, what you actually discover is what they believe is some form of like Buddhism or Hinduism.

They may not know that's what it is, but that's exactly what it sounds like. So a person can say that they have unbelief, but there's something there, some sort of spiritualistic nonsense that they believe that's really nothing but subjectivity.

It's what they, in their mind, just they want to accept as true. And they let their lives be governed by it, unaware that they're actually following the devil.

The third in those non -category religions or not organized religions would be the folk religions.

And folk religions would be like popular cultural beliefs or the civic religion. It may not look exactly orthodox to the religion that is prominent in that area, but it's what people say they believe in just because everybody else believes it.

So that would be what's called a folk religion. So now let's look from the non -category religions to the largest category religions, the largest organized religions in the world.

The biggest one is Islam, two billion adherents.

Now, Islam falls into what is referred to as the Abrahamic monotheistic religions.

And the Abrahamic religions include Christianity, Islam, Mormonism, Judaism, and the

Jehovah's Witnesses. Those are kind of the big five. Although, for whatever reason,

Mormonism falls into that category of Abrahamic monotheistic religions. Mormonism is actually not a monotheistic religion.

It's polytheistic. As James White has said, of all of the religions on earth that he has studied, he has never encountered a religion more polytheistic than Mormonism.

They not only believe in multiple gods, but some Mormon apologists would say that there is an infinite number of gods.

But as far as the Abrahamic monotheistic religions are concerned, those religions that in some way could trace their roots back to Abraham—indeed, Islam can—so

Islam is considered to be the largest. Islam teaches that there is one god,

Allah, and that Muhammad is his prophet. It was invented in the 7th century

AD. Their primary text is the Quran, the word of God verbatim.

Now that's different than the way that we define the Bible. They say that the Quran is the word of God verbatim, meaning that every single word that's in the

Quran is exactly what God said, word for word.

Now in the Bible, we don't say that. Because when you go from Hebrew to Greek to English, using different words, different phrases to understand what was originally written, but we don't have those exact manuscripts that were first written down by the apostles.

We have copies upon copies. Now that does not mean that what we are reading did not come from God.

This has been preserved by the power of God. So what we have is indeed the word of God that the

Holy Spirit led his apostles and prophets to write, as Peter says in 2 Peter 1.

So don't think this isn't the word of God. But it's something else entirely to say that it's the word of God verbatim.

And this is why many Muslims will say you cannot read the Quran in any other language but the language that it was originally written in.

Because once you translate it to another language, it's no longer the word of God verbatim. They believe that God is one and God is single.

In other words, God is not triune. He is not Father, Son, and Holy Spirit in Islam.

They deny that Jesus is the Christ. In the Quran, chapter 4, verse 171, it says,

O people of the scripture, do not commit excess in your religion or say about Allah except the truth.

The Messiah, Jesus, the son of Mary, was but a messenger of Allah and his word which he directed to Mary and a soul created at a command from him.

So believe in Allah and his messengers. Do not say trinity. Desist.

It is better for you. Indeed, Allah is but one God. Exalted is he above having a son.

Islam is the fastest growing religion on earth. Of course, it is common in the Middle East. The largest concentration of the population is in Southern Asia.

And there's also a great number of Muslim adherents in Northern Africa.

The second largest category religion on earth is Hinduism. 1 .2 billion adherents among the

Indian Dharmic religions. And Buddhism would be another one. So among those Indian religions, Hinduism and Buddhism are the largest two.

Hinduism is believed to be the oldest religion on earth, but that's difficult to say because Hinduism does not have a founder.

And so the beliefs and teachings that have come about from Hinduism have just kind of evolved over time. So it's difficult where to say

Hinduism actually originated. Yoga is from Hinduism. That's one of the things that we kind of accept as a common thing that we do in the

United States. It's derived from Hinduism. It can be broken down into what's called the Parashartha or the four aims of life.

They are ethics or duties, prosperity or work, desires or passions, and this leads to liberation or freedom.

By living a virtuous life, receiving material prosperity, and finding pleasure or emotional fulfillment, you will be liberated from life and death.

That's what it is that Hinduism teaches. In a sense, you will receive salvation if you do these things.

If you're a good person, if you prosper in your work, and if you find pleasure and emotional fulfillment.

That's how you have eternal life. You might find there's a lot of secular humanism that sounds a lot like that, right?

Hinduism contains hundreds of deities, but among the most notable include Shiva, Brahma, and Vishnu.

Deity worship is not required in Hinduism. You could actually be an atheist and be a

Hindu. So worship the multiple gods if you want to, but you don't have to just as long as you are pursuing those four aims of life.

The third largest category of religion on earth is Buddhism. 500 million adherents.

It's founded on the teachings of Gautama Buddha about 500 years before Christ. Like Hinduism, Buddhism also originated in ancient

India. Its main objective is overcoming suffering and the cycle of life and death and rebirth, either by obtaining nirvana or the path of the

Buddha. Buddhism believes in the Four Noble Truths. All life is suffering.

The cause of suffering is desire. This desire can be destroyed or overcome by achieving nirvana, and this can be attained by following the

Eightfold Path. And here's the Eightfold Path. Right view, right intentions, right speech, right conduct, right livelihood, right effort, right mindfulness, right meditation.

In other words, just be a good person. Religious skeptics will say that Buddhism is an atheist religion, but that's not true.

It's polytheist. There are multiple gods in Buddhism as well, and in some sense, there's the teaching that you yourself can become a god or you become the

Buddha, a Buddhahood. So these are the three largest category religions on Earth.

But then other religions, like the Far Eastern religions, for example, you have

Taoism, Confucianism. There's also shamanism, Sikhism. Then you have the naturalist religions,

Darwinism, secular humanism, agnosticism, atheism. Yes, they are religions.

I mean, to call yourself an atheist is really self -defeating. I don't believe in God. You sure talk about it a lot.

For somebody who doesn't believe in God, you have God in the very name of the thing that you say you believe or rather don't believe.

And then, of course, there's also Orthodox Judaism. It's a false religion. The Orthodox Jew denies that Jesus is the

Christ. And it's unfortunate that there's actually a number of American preachers that believe and will even teach that Jews are saved because they're

Jews. John Hagee wrote a book not long ago. It's not Four Blood Moons.

It was a different book. John Hagee wrote a book in which he said in this particular book that Jesus Christ never actually claimed to be the

Messiah to the Jews. Therefore, they could not have rejected what was never offered. So the

Jew is inherently saved for being a Jew, not because they follow Jesus Christ. He was never offered to them.

That was according to John Hagee. In all of these different religions that we have on planet

Earth, you will find ways either to get to God or be a

God or deny God, be better than God. But Jesus said,

John 14, 6, I am the way, the truth, and the life.

No one gets to God. No one gets to the Father but by me.

However, and we've looked at kind of the major religions on planet Earth. Let's narrow it down a little bit more.

Not everything that claims to be of Christ is true either. Now, we as Christians, we believe that Jesus Christ is the only way.

I am taking for granted that everybody who is hearing me today understands the bedrock gospel message that Paul is sharing with the

Galatians here in Galatians chapter 1, that we are saved by grace through faith in Christ and no other way.

But not everything that claims to be of Christ is true. In fact,

John says, 1 John 4, 1, Beloved, do not believe every spirit that claims to be from God, because there are many false prophets that have gone out into the world.

Here are some of those religions that claim to be of Christ but are not. Roman Catholicism, Mormonism, Unitarian Universalism, Oneness Pentecostalism, the

Faith Tabernacle Church down the street would qualify. And there are actually more than just that Oneness Pentecostal Church here in Junction City, that's just the largest one.

Heaven Tourism. What do I mean by Heaven Tourism? Those people that claim they've been to heaven, they saw it, and they came back to tell you about it, it's a false gospel.

Jehovah's Witnesses, the Freemasons, the Word of Faith Movement, name it and claim it, if you say it, it will be, and the

New Apostolic Reformation. Now, the New Apostolic Reformation is basically what you would know of charismaticism, but on steroids.

There are certain things that we would disagree with, with the Assemblies of God Church down the street.

They're not New Apostolic Reformation, they're Assemblies of God. Now, the New Apostolic Reformation takes teachings that are common in like the

Assemblies of God Church or that charismatic movement, and then just amps them up times 10.

And it turns into just absolute craziness and chaos and manipulation. One of the most prominent

New Apostolic Reformation churches on earth is here in the United States in Redding, California, and it's

Bethel Church. If you've ever heard music from Jesus' culture, that's the praise band that comes out of Bethel Church.

And they use all kinds of manipulative tactics with members of their congregation, and they will call it

God, but it's not. For example, they will pour gold dust in the vents. And so in the middle of their worship services, gold dust will just start trickling down while they're singing.

There's videos of this on YouTube. And they will be told, this is the presence of God that has come to visit them in worship.

Here he is, gold dust. It's a gag. Or they'll fill the air vent with a fog machine.

You know, just the smoke from a fog machine will start coming. Oh, a glory cloud. It's the glory of God, like what filled in the temple in the

Old Testament. Here it is among us because God is on our side. You know, sometimes they have even dumped feathers on the congregation, and they've claimed that they are actual angel feathers.

All this is video documented. They don't even hide this stuff. I think there was at one point that they tried to do this without it being known by anybody else, but with how plentiful smartphones are, and you can just kind of upload the stuff right to YouTube from your smartphone, they couldn't do anything to stop it.

So now it's just out there, but they still get millions of followers and are adding every year, especially with the music that they do and how widespread

Jesus culture is. Churches like Hillsong would be along with that. Another new apostolic Reformation church we have close to us is in Kansas City, the

International House of Prayer. And they use these same manipulative tactics and claim that there are new apostles to whom

God is revealing new truth that you will not find in the

Bible. And these guys will absolutely say that. They will say that God is revealing new things you won't find in the

Bible. And in fact, Mike Bickle over at the International House of Prayer has said that these new apostles that are coming about will be superior to the apostles who gave us the

New Testament. And in heaven, those apostles who wrote the Bible, the New Testament for us, will be lining up to shake the hands of the new apostles of today.

Didn't we just read in 2 Corinthians, Paul warning about these super apostles?

These who say that they're better than those who were actually appointed by Christ to preach the gospel to the world.

So beware these movements. They will call themselves Christian, and they might even give you the warm fuzzies because it's all a manipulative tactic.

But not everything that claims to be of God comes from God. I mentioned

Catholicism, Roman Catholicism. You know, I was talking with a friend, I don't think it was this past week, because on Monday, the

Pope made a statement about how he had been meeting with an imam, a

Muslim priest, and he called him brother. And so this friend of mine pointed out to me the

Roman Catholic Catechism, number 841, says the following. The plan of salvation.

This is according to the Catholic Church's own official teaching. The plan of salvation also includes those who acknowledge the

Creator in the first place, amongst whom are the Muslims. These profess to hold the faith of Abraham, and together with us, they adore the one merciful

God. No, they don't. They don't know the one merciful

God, because they reject Jesus Christ. 1 John 2, 22 says, He who does not believe in the

Father and the Son is an antichrist, and the truth is not in him.

And yet the Catholic Church is saying that their fellow recipients of salvation, the Muslims are, because they claim to believe in this

God, which they say is derived from Abrahamic tradition, but it's not at all.

Jesus said to the Jews in John chapter 8, which is where I'm going in the podcast teaching this coming week, so I'll be in John 8 and in this particular section, where Jesus said to the

Jews who were saying to him, we have Abraham as our father, and Jesus said to them, if you had Abraham as your father, you'd be doing the things that Abraham did.

Abraham's not your father. You're of your father, the devil, and your will is to do your father's desires.

So we must be careful not to believe everything that claims to be of God truly comes from God.

Then there are other sort of spinoff doctrines and theologies that will say they are

Christian, like the prosperity gospel. God just exists as a vending machine to give you stuff, and if you don't have the things that you want, it's because you don't have enough faith.

That's a false gospel, folks. That's not what faith does. Faith doesn't give you things.

It's by faith in Christ that we have salvation, heavenly reward, not earthly prosperity.

There's also the social gospel. Now, I was trying to figure out today how would I best quantify the social gospel.

I think it can be best summarized in this quote that is often attributed to St.

Francis of Assisi, preach the gospel, if necessary, use words. You ever heard that?

Two problems with that quote. Number one, St. Francis of Assisi never said it. There is no historical record anywhere that can tie that quote back to St.

Francis of Assisi. That's the first problem with it. The second problem with it is it's unbiblical. The gospel, as I said to you earlier, is news.

It's a message that must be spoken. So, it is necessary to use words.

The actions and the things that we do affirm that we believe the words that we say.

But actions themselves are not the gospel. You don't go out and mime the gospel to people and then they come and believe it, okay?

Just like you don't turn on the evening news to watch people kind of milling around and try to figure out what's going on in the world.

There's somebody there in front of the camera telling you what the news is. So, that's the same with the way that we must proclaim the gospel.

It must be announced. It must be spoken. The social gospel is a gospel of works.

It is at its foundation works and it is a false gospel. Now, it won't call itself that.

Like if you hear somebody teaching something that might sound to you like the social gospel and you say to them, well, that's the social gospel.

They'll go, what's the social gospel? It's not like they label it that, but that's the falsity of this doctrine.

Another false doctrine that is permeating the church in America in particular right now, and it is spreading very fast, is the social justice gospel.

Now, the thing about the social justice gospel is there's no end game to this. This is the whole thing of reconciliation between races and oppressed people groups in the country and stuff like that.

But there's no end game. There's actually no grace, forgiveness, or mercy that is in the social justice gospel at all.

As a matter of fact, Tom Askell, who is the founder of Founders Ministry, which is a

Southern Baptist ministry, and Tom Askell, by the way, is somebody who I would vote for as president of the

Southern Baptist Convention. I hope the Lord would so bless us to make him president one of these days.

But anyway, Tom Askell has said that if anyone says to you, blank is necessary for reconciliation between people, and somebody fills that blank with anything other than forgiveness, grace, or mercy, it's a false gospel.

And what the social justice gospel is doing is filling in that blank with something other than forgiveness, grace, or mercy.

Forgiveness is not enough for reconciliation. We also have to do this, this, and this. Different gospel, folks.

It's a different gospel. It's heresy. Then there's also a gospel of miraculous healing.

Now, this one is very popular among charismatics as well, kind of the more hyper -charismatics. They will say that the gospel itself is just miracles.

And so when you spread the gospel, what you need to do is go down to your local supermarket and find somebody and say, hey, can

I heal your knee for you? Like that's what they claim that the gospel is. And this is the full gospel teaching, name it and claim it, health and wealth.

This is the stuff that you see televangelists do. This is exactly their ministry. Todd White is a guy that does this, and he just started a church down in Dallas, which he calls

Lifestyle Church. And I just read a post from somebody, I think it was either this morning or last night, who said that Todd White's new

Lifestyle Church is just down the street from me. And so now these lifestyle Christians are coming into the local grocery store and asking to heal everybody.

That's what they think the gospel is. That's how you spread the gospel is just offer to heal somebody.

The Holy Spirit is telling me that you got shoulder cramps. Can I heal them? That's what they do.

But it's a false gospel. It's not an announcement at all. And nor is it even healing, by the way.

There's also the liberal gospel. And the liberal gospel is often marked with things like the

Bible's changed. It's different. Can't trust what the Bible says. You have to unhitch yourself from the

Old Testament. Just believe Jesus. Just believe in the resurrection. That's all you got to do.

But then they don't ever actually define those terms or what they even mean. That's the liberal gospel.

And then there's what I like to term the American gospel. And this is our own folk religion in America.

Do you understand the American gospel? It's basically, you just think you're saved because you're an American. Or you're from Texas.

Right, my brother? I'm from Texas. I got a big American flag on my truck and I've got a gun rack.

I know I'm a Christian, okay? That's the American gospel. God bless the

USA. God bless America. But you're not saved just because you're an

American. We're saved by faith in Christ. And my friends, this country needs the gospel as much as any other country on earth.

There are more Christians in China right now than there are in the

United States. We need the gospel. All these different things claim to worship

Jesus. But Jesus also said, not everyone who says to me, Lord, Lord, will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only the one who does the will of my

Father who is in heaven. Matthew 7, 21. He said, many will come to me on that day and will say to me,

Lord, didn't we do many mighty works in your name? We healed the sick. We fed the poor. We did all of this in your name.

And Jesus will say to them, depart from me, you worker of iniquity.

I never knew you. Going back again to what Jerry Bridges said in the quote that I read to you earlier, even our best deeds are stained with sin.

Isaiah 64, 6. Even our best deeds are as a filthy rag before a holy

God. We are not saved by our works because they aren't good works.

We're saved only by the work of Christ. What he did on the cross for us.

Now, let me conclude with this. As we've come to consider and understand all these different false religions that are in the world and all these different things that'll even present themselves as Christianity, but are not.

Usually when I give a talk like this, the question will come to me, why does

God allow so many false religions and deceptions in the world?

Why? You know, when it comes down to it, there's really only two choices.

There's follow God or all this other stuff. That's it. So you're either a child of God.

It was either last week or the week before I said this. You're either a child of God or you're a child of Satan. You're either adopted into the family of God through Jesus Christ, or you're still a follower and a child of Satan and will be judged with him in the last judgment.

It's one or the other. Doesn't matter if you pick one of these other religions that are in the world, you're either following God or you're following Satan.

So why does God allow there to be so many different deceptions and false religions in the world?

The answer to that we find in Deuteronomy chapter 13. This is all a test.

It was a test for the children of Israel. It is a test for those who claim to love God even today.

If a prophet or a dreamer of dreams arises among you and gives you a sign or a wonder, and the sign or wonder that he tells you comes to pass, and if he says, let us go after other gods which you have not known and let us serve them, you shall not listen to the words of that prophet or that dreamer of dreams.

Get this. Deuteronomy 13 .3. For the Lord your God is testing you to know whether you love the

Lord your God with all your heart, with all your might, with all your soul.

You shall walk after the Lord your God and fear him and keep his commandments and obey his voice.

And you shall serve him and hold fast to him. You say, but brother

Gabe, we just heard you say it is not by your works that you're saved. And now here you're saying you must love the

Lord your God and keep his commandments and obey his voice. Right. Because remember, it is by the things that we do that we affirm we believe what we say.

And Jesus himself said in John 14 .15, You will show me that you love me when you obey my commandments.

So if you say you love God, affirm it by obeying

God, walking in righteousness, desiring Christ with all that you are.

For the Lord God through Moses goes on here. Deuteronomy 13 .5 to say,

But that prophet or that dreamer of dreams who has led you astray, who is trying to lead you after other gods, shall be put to death.

Because he is taught rebellion against the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt and redeemed you out of the house of slavery to make you leave the way in which the

Lord your God commanded you to walk. So you shall purge the evil from your midst.

Now, Paul uses that same word, you shall purge the evil from among you, in 1 Corinthians 5, when he talks about discipline in the church.

So let's understand this rightly. This doesn't mean that if we have somebody that comes in here teaching a false gospel, we drag the guy out to the parking lot and stone him.

That's not what that means. But such a person should receive the discipline of the church. What you believe is false, and you must either repent of it, or you're excluded from this brotherhood.

Because you believe something that is not of God, and you're attempting to lead people astray with it. Furthermore, we must also understand by this, that God will judge those false teachers on the last day.

And so may the teacher stand in fear and repent and know Christ and be saved.

And my brothers and sisters, you must be discerning and know the difference between truth and falsehood, so you likewise are not led astray.

Thank you for listening to our weekly sermon presented by First Southern Baptist Church of Junction City, Kansas.

For more information about our church, visit fsbcjc .org.

On behalf of our church family, my name is Becky, inviting you to join us again this week, Growing Together in Christ, when we understand the text.