Sunday Sermon: Large Letters (Galatians 6:11-18)

You are listening to the teaching ministry of Gabriel 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 a study in the Old Testament, and then we answer questions from the listeners on Friday. Each Sunday, we are pleased to share our sermon series, presently going through the book of Galatians.

Here's Pastor Gabe.

Paul’s Closing Words in Galatians 6 and the Gospel of Grace

Galatians 6 beginning in verse 11. See with what large letters I am writing to you with my own hand. It is those who want to make a good showing in the flesh who would force you to be circumcised, and only in order that they may not be persecuted for the cross of Christ.

For even those who are circumcised do not themselves keep the law, but they desire to have you circumcised that they may boast in your flesh. But far be it from me to boast except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by which the world has been crucified to me and I to the world.

Neither circumcision counts for anything nor uncircumcision, but a new creation. And as for all who walk by this rule, peace and mercy be upon them and upon the Israel of God. From now on, let no one cause me trouble, for I bear on my body the marks of Jesus.

The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with your spirit, brothers. Amen. Let us pray. Our heavenly Father, as we come to your word today, I pray that we hear once again loud and clear from your Holy Spirit, the truth of your gospel, that we are justified by grace through faith in Christ alone and no other way.

And this is the gospel. This is the gospel that was taught to us by that apostolic ministry that was appointed by Christ 2 ,000 years ago. It is the gospel that we first heard and turned from our sin and believed in the Lord Jesus Christ and so were saved.

And it is that same gospel that we are now to take to the world so that others may hear the truth of the resurrection of Jesus, his atoning blood as a sacrifice for sins, and by faith in Jesus, we will be forgiven our sins and have right standing with God.

On the day of judgment, we will not be condemned, but we will be received as sons and daughters, fellow heirs of the kingdom of Christ. May we not forget this gospel. May it not be corrupted in our midst, but may we preserve the truth that was once for all delivered to the saints according to your word.

And it's this in the name of Jesus that we pray and all God's people said, amen. The letters of 1st and 2nd Corinthians and Galatians, these three letters which we've been in for the last two and a half years, are the most confrontational of Paul's letters in dealing with sin in the body.

Galatians is undoubtedly the most scathing of the three. The Corinthians were failing to live up to the implications of the gospel for which Paul issued serious rebuke and called for deep repentance and searching.

At the close of 2nd Corinthians, he said, examine yourselves to see whether you are in the faith. Test yourselves or do you not realize this about yourselves that Jesus Christ is in you unless you fail to meet the test.

But unlike the church in Corinth, the churches in Galatia were accepting a different gospel altogether, which has damnable consequences. At the very opening of this letter, Paul said, 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. He then sternly warned, 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.

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. What was this different gospel that had so easily wooed the Galatians?

It was a gospel of works, a corruption of the gospel of justification by faith in Christ alone, instead believing that we can be justified by our works. At the beginning of this series, I gave you this equation, Christ plus blank equals salvation.

And whatever goes in the blank has your worship. That's the thing that you think that you need in order to be saved. Christ plus this thing I need in order to be satisfied. Christ is not sufficient. Christ is not enough.

I need this in order to be happy. It doesn't matter if you give 99 of yourself to Christ and 1 of yourself to this other thing. Your life is incomplete without that other thing filling in the blank.

And that is the meaning of your life. And so bringing this letter to a close, Paul says, see with what large letters I am writing to you with my own hand. All caps, bold print, underlined, extra exclamation points.

Do not believe another gospel. For another gospel is no gospel at all. Now, of course, we know that the other gospel the Galatians believed was the message of the Judaizers, specifically that they had to be circumcised in order to be saved.

Excuse me. We don't have a lot of problems with Judaizers coming in here and telling us to be circumcised. I highly doubt any of this flock would even believe such a false teacher if someone came in here claiming such a thing.

But this false doctrine of faith and works is still rampant in the world today in many other forms. The entire Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox religions are built upon a foundation of faith and works.

Islam and Mormonism are faith in a false version of the God of Abraham plus works. Hinduism, Buddhism, shamanism, and other folk religions and pantheism are faiths in other gods plus works. Atheism, agnosticism, and secular humanism are faith in the God of self plus works.

A doubling down on justification by works. The further you get away from the belief in the one true God who has spoken, the more you believe anything I say goes. Proverbs 21 .2 says, Every way of a man is right in his own eyes.

Proverbs 16 .25 says, There is a way that seems right to a man, but its end is the way of death. Every group that I just mentioned needs the gospel. They need the truth that Christ came to save sinners and he gave his life as a ransom for many.

Whoever believes in him will not perish under the majesty of Almighty God, who is storing up wrath until the appointed day set by his own authority. And he will pour out his righteous judgment on all flesh, every man and woman who rebelled against God.

It is only belief in the gospel, the true gospel, the pure gospel, Christ's gospel, the unblemished, untainted, uncorrupted good news of Jesus that will save a person from death and raise them up to eternal life with God in heaven.

My brothers and sisters, we have that gospel and we must proclaim it. Now, lest any of us think that we are safe from gospel corruption, anyone here is just as vulnerable as any one of the Galatians, and any church is just as susceptible as the churches in Galatia to hear and receive a false gospel of faith and works.

Regarding your own weakness, there have likely been times, even in your Christian walk, when you did not feel Christ was sufficient for your every need, and you became weak to the passions of your own flesh.

You felt unsatisfied, incomplete, so you turn to some other appeasement, and it probably looked like one of the works of the flesh that we've been talking about in Galatians 5 the last couple of weeks.

Perhaps you strayed into some kind of sexual immorality. Maybe you became at odds with another person and you refused to forgive them. You felt better about your grudge than you felt about grace. Maybe you envied someone else, or you were jealous of them for something or an opportunity that you did not have.

They had this opportunity, you didn't have it, maybe you thought, I could do it better if I just had the opportunities they had. Maybe you turned to substance abuse, intoxication, or drunkenness. And when this is the direction that we go, what we are saying to Christ is, the life that you have purchased for me by your blood is not enough for me.

I must have this in order to have comfort. And my friends, when we do that, that's idol worship. But these kinds of behaviors that I just talked about here, these are supposed to exemplify your previous way of life, not your present walk as a Christian.

You are to walk by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh, for the desires of the flesh are against the Spirit, and the desires of the Spirit are against the flesh. Galatians 5, 16 and 17.

And so, as we read last week, if anyone is caught in any transgression, you who are spiritual should restore him in a spirit of gentleness. Keep watch on yourself, lest you too be tempted. And so, just as you are vulnerable to being tempted by the ways of this world, so is the church, which is full of people, in case you didn't notice.

The church is also vulnerable to temptation. Any Protestant, Bible-believing church is just as susceptible as the churches in Galatia. Look, they had an actual apostle of Jesus Christ come to them and preach the gospel to them and even confirm that message through miraculous signs and wonders.

And yet, even the churches in Galatia fell away when the Judaizers came in, saying, you know what? Faith isn't enough. You also have to do this in order to be saved. And the Galatians fell into believing a false gospel.

Do not be so proud as to sit in your Southern Baptist pew, looking out at the rest of the world and saying, if only they were as enlightened as we are. For I tell you that false gospel rhetoric has even slithered its way into our own denomination.

The SBC, the Sexual Abuse Crisis, and What the Gospel Is Not

This past week, the 162nd session of the Southern Baptist Convention's annual meeting was held in Birmingham, Alabama. At the top of the agenda this year, and some of you knew all about this, was to discuss the sexual abuse crisis that had been uncovered by the Houston Chronicle this past February, and many other secular news sources reporting on this as well.

How are we to care for victims? And how can we ensure that this will not happen again or will become more rare and more scarce than it has been? What we need to do first and foremost is hold fast to the gospel that we first believed and the church was built upon.

And we need to encourage our churches to teach that which accords with sound doctrine. However, while addressing these matters in his presidential address to the convention, President J .D. Greer said the following, At its core, the gospel that you and I preach is about God's commitment to protect the vulnerable.

Let me repeat that to you again. J .D. Greer said, Brothers and sisters, no it's not. That is not the gospel that I preach about. That is not the gospel that we've embraced as a church. The core of the gospel is not God's commitment to protect the vulnerable.

The core of the gospel is God's commitment to save the damnable. Protecting the vulnerable is certainly an important and loving work. But it's a work. And how many times have you heard me say this? Works are not the gospel.

To say that the core, the center, the most important part, the thing that holds our faith together is the protection of the vulnerable, that's a false gospel. It's closer to what we've called or what we've termed the social gospel.

The idea that the gospel is the good works that we do for others. That's not the gospel. The gospel is that we are justified by faith in Christ alone and nothing else. Now I want to give our brother J .D. Greer the benefit of the doubt.

I believe he made a mistake. And again, I believe the error he made was because he, like the rest of the Southern Baptist Convention, or like most of the convention, has been focusing on the problem more than the solution.

In an effort to guard the SBC while at the same time ensuring those who have been hurt that we have not forgotten about them, he made a statement that conflated the gospel that we love with the work for those we love.

That work is to be in light of the gospel, but it is not the gospel itself. Brother Greer has made several foolish statements, and you've heard me address some of them before in other contexts, but I don't believe that he's a heretic and don't hear me saying that about him.

Back in 2011, he wrote a book called Simply Enough Gospel. And I read that book. It was a terrific book. And in his book, Greer gave this definition of the gospel. He said, That's right. That's the gospel.

The word gospel means good news. So as Brother Greer said, it's an announcement. It's the news that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners. He gave his life as a ransom for many. He has purchased us by the shedding of his blood.

He conquered death for us by his resurrection, by faith in him. We are forgiven our sins. And we have eternal life with God. God has chosen faith as the mechanism to transmit his grace to us. We believe in Jesus.

We have the grace of God. That is the gospel. That is the power of God for salvation. And we must preach that message to others. And my friends, we must also preach that message to ourselves every day, lest we forget it.

That we may be reminded every day of how good God is and the precious promises that he has granted to us through his son to be received by faith. In the same book, Greer also said, quote, unless we are actively preaching the gospel to ourselves daily, we fall back into works righteousness, unquote.

Believing that we can be justified by our work. So in his own teaching, Greer has said that when we forget the work of Christ and what he has done to give us his righteousness, we go back to believing in the work that we must do in order to obtain our own righteousness.

And this is what I believe is happening in our own denomination, in the Southern Baptist Convention. Over the last several years, the major news issues that have come out of the SBC look a lot more like we're trying to save face before the culture than it looks like we're trying to face the culture and preach the gospel.

We have to show them that we're not abusers. We have to show them that we're not racists. We have to show them that we're not like Donald Trump. We have to show them that we're against white supremacy.

We have to show that we don't like the Confederate flag. Some of those things are all well and good, but again, we're focusing on the works instead of the one who did the work in our place, and that is our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.

If we glory in our work over Christ's work, we will believe statements like the core of the gospel is God's commitment to protect the vulnerable. So is our focus on Christ, submitting to him while he deals with our sin issues, or are we focusing on the sin issue and talking about Christ at select points because we're Christians and that's what we're supposed to do?

The latter method is a disaster because as we read in Romans 7, pointing at the sin and saying, don't do that, actually awakens sin. Consider a resolution that passed on the last day of the convention, Resolution 9 on critical race theory and intersectionality.

The purpose of this resolution was to implore critical race theory and intersectionality as, analytical tools that can aid in evaluating a variety of human experiences. The resolution also stated that critical race theory and intersectionality should only be employed as analytical tools subordinate to scripture, not transcendent ideological frameworks.

But here's the paradox of that resolution. I understand the intention of what the convention was trying to do or the resolution committee, but if critical race theory and intersectionality were truly regarded as subordinate to scripture, the convention would have rejected the resolution outright.

Critical race theory and intersectionality are completely incompatible with biblical Christianity. You may as well have been saying, Darwinism should have been employed as an analytical tool. Now, I wish that I could just hit this subject and get off of it and not have to explain all of these things and make it a point of understanding.

But since this is the kind of language our convention is going to start using, even voting in it in our resolutions, it is necessary for me as a pastor to tell you what it is. One of the reasons I suspect the resolution passed is because the majority of our messengers really didn't understand what it was that they were voting on.

In case you're unfamiliar with critical theory, it is by definition a neo-Marxist philosophy that drew on the critical methods of Karl Marx and Sigmund Freud. According to the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, its purpose is, quote, to liberate human beings from the circumstances that enslave them, unquote.

Now, this is not a tangible slavery we're talking about. It's theoretical slavery. You can't point to it and say, look, slavery. You have to imagine that it's there. Critical theory is about its own message, not the interests of others.

It's less about people and it's more about propaganda. So bear with me as I explain this. The Encyclopedia Britannica defines critical race theory in particular as, quote, the view that race, instead of being biologically grounded and natural, is socially constructed and that race, as a socially constructed concept, functions as a means to maintain the interests of the white population that constructed it.

According to CRT, racial inequality emerges from the social, economic, and legal differences that white people create between races to maintain elite white interest in labor markets and politics and as such create the circumstances that give rise to poverty and criminality in many minority communities.

Here's what this means in layman's terms. All of our social ills are white people's fault. All racial, social, gender, sexual, and religious constructs are under the control of specifically white men and everyone else is being oppressed.

That's critical race theory. Critical race theory is racist. When the messengers voted to implore such verbiage as, quote, a useful tool, what the convention was saying, unbeknownst to most of them, I believe, is that the gospel is insufficient to heal and unite us and we need anti-gospel tools in order to recognize our sins and mend our differences.

Now, this was not the resolution as it was first presented to the convention. The resolution was originally written to warn fellow Southern Baptists against embracing cultural trends. Resolution 9 was written to oppose what Resolution 9 proposed.

The original author was Stephen Feinstein, a graduate of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, a pastor in California, and a chaplain in the United States Army Reserves. Major Feinstein was, in his words, quote, alarmed at the proliferation of toxic, divisive, and satanic rhetoric designed to divide humanity and facilitate constant opposition in our society, unquote.

So he drafted a resolution denouncing these toxic ideas, namely critical race theory and intersectionality. In the original resolution, Pastor Feinstein began, quote, all scripture is totally true and trustworthy and reveals the principles by which God judges us and therefore is and will remain to the end of the world the true center of Christian union and the supreme standard by which all conduct, creeds, and religious opinions should be tried.

He followed that with this statement, quote, critical race theory and intersectionality are founded upon unbiblical presuppositions descended from Marxist theories and categories and therefore are inherently opposed to the scriptures as the true center of Christian union, unquote.

He went on to warn that critical race theory had infiltrated Southern Baptist churches and institutions, including our seminaries. CRT divides people into racial, social, gender, sexual, and religious categories, placing unequal value on one another and reducing us down to our differences rather than our commonalities.

It promotes rage rather than grace. It breeds division rather than unity. While the Bible does acknowledge our differences, male and female, slave and free, Jew and Gentile, it does not begin with those differences.

Instead, the Bible begins with what unites humanity. We are all made in the image of God. The new covenant purchased by the blood of Jesus Christ unites us further by creating a new humanity, one that will one day inhabit the new heavens and the new earth.

A people descended from every tribe, tongue, and nation, from every ethnicity and race, every socioeconomic background and culture made one in Christ. This should be what unites us, not the rhetoric of critical race theory and intersectionality, which has been causing unnecessary and unbiblical division among the body of Christ and has invited charges of theological liberalism, egalitarianism, and Marxism.

The Southern Baptist Convention is committed to racial reconciliation, but built upon the Bible, the Word of God, seeking biblical justices through biblical means, not according to the words and theories of men.

Pastor Feinstein called on the convention to, quote, decry every philosophy or theology, including critical race theory and intersectionality, as antithetical to the gospel of Jesus Christ, since they divide the people of Christ by defining fundamental identity as something other than our identity in Christ, unquote.

But the resolutions committee dropped the original language of Pastor Feinstein's proposal, and instead of rejecting critical race theory, they embraced it. When the new Resolution 9 came to the convention floor for a vote, Dr. Tom Buck, a friend to this church, called for its rejection, and he quoted Colossians 2 .8, which says, see to it that no one takes you captive by philosophy and empty deceit according to human tradition and not according to Christ.

Dr. Tom Askell of Founders Ministries proposed amendments to the resolutions that would have outright called critical race theory godless, but the convention voted down these amendments. From the 2019 Southern Baptist Convention, we had a statement about the gospel that was actually not the gospel, and we had a resolution promoting the effects of the gospel that would actually have the opposite effect of the gospel.

One is the result of the other. If you have a wrong understanding of what the gospel is, you'll have a wrong understanding of what the gospel does. In 1 Timothy 6, 3 through 5, we are warned, if anyone teaches a different doctrine and does not agree with the sound words of our Lord Jesus Christ and the teaching that accords with godliness, in other words, the gospel produces godliness in the people who believe it, and if that is rejected, he is puffed up with conceit and understands nothing.

He has an unhealthy craving for controversy and quarrels about words which produce envy, dissension, slander, evil suspicions, and constant friction among people who are depraved in mind and deprived of the truth.

That is exactly what Pastor Feinstein was warning us about in the resolution as he first presented it. Now, I have presented this to you today not just to inform you about our denomination, but in context.

In context with what we're studying here in Galatians chapter 6, this is an example of just how easy it is for us to lose the core of the gospel and everything else that grows from that. We have a sound biblical statement as the Southern Baptist Convention, the Baptist Faith and Message 2000.

There is not a reason for us to stray away from that, and yet when we're making statements about the gospel that aren't true and passing things like critical race theory and intersectionality, that's exactly what we're doing.

We're doing what is contrary to what our own statement of faith asserts. We must learn from these errors so that we will correct them and not repeat them. I do not think that our president, J .D. Greer, is a heretic, nor do I think that the Southern Baptist Convention is beyond repair.

I want to believe with the Apostle Paul when he said to the Galatians, I have confidence in the Lord that you will take no other view and that the one who is troubling you will bear the penalty, whoever he is.

The Apostle Paul gave the Galatians the benefit of the doubt. You have stumbled in this, but I am confident that you are going to return to the true gospel, and I want to believe that reform can indeed take place in our convention.

In fact, let me give you five reasons why we should remain with the Southern Baptist Church, lest any of you think that I'm presenting this and going, hey, we need to get out of our convention, that is not my proposal at all.

I give you five reasons. Number one, the convention is no worse than the seven churches in Asia in the book of Revelation. A couple of those churches were actually very solid, just like we have churches in the Southern Baptist denomination that are very solid churches.

This is one of them. But one of those churches had forgotten its first love. One of those churches was permitting sexual immorality. One tolerated false teachers. One was not doing any good works. And one had become lukewarm in their faith.

Yet Jesus still called them churches. He said in Revelation chapter three, quote, those whom I love, I reprove and discipline, so be zealous and repent, unquote. We may have to call certain churches to repentance, but likewise keep watch on ourselves, lest we too be tempted.

Here's a second reason why I think it's good to be a Southern Baptist. The Southern Baptist convention is neither formally nor informally embraced first order heresy or sin. The Baptist faith and message, which we as a church adhere to as our statement of faith is an orthodox evangelical Baptist confession.

Nothing biblical has been removed from that confession and nothing unbiblical has been added to it. So we really have no good reason to divide from our convention. What could we accomplish next week that we're not accomplishing today if we cease to be a Southern Baptist church?

Reason number three, it's good to be a Southern Baptist. If we as a Bible believing gospel teaching church were to leave the denomination, we would be unable to help the denomination. Romans 1 15 verse one says, we who are strong have an obligation to bear with the failings of the weak.

And we do this to benefit our neighbor, to help build one another up in the faith. What benefit are we to like-minded brothers and sisters in the faith if we separate from them? Reason number four, we should remain with this denomination.

In his high priestly prayer in John 17, Jesus prayed for unity in the church. And if we break away from the denomination, we're not fostering that unity. Are we praying for unity? Do we desire that unity and strive for that unity?

Would we be rebelling against Christ if we were to break from the denomination? Your church is not your high school girlfriend that you can dump when you get tired of her and someone better comes along.

We should not treat our denomination that way either. The church is the bride of Christ to which we must be committed. Now here's a fifth reason to remain a Southern Baptist. Dr. Al Mohler is a Southern Baptist and that's good enough for me.

By the way, Dr. Mohler was against the version of Resolution 9 that passed on Wednesday and he spoke about it at the convention and on the briefing on Friday. He recognizes the danger that it presents.

We do have some strong leaders in our denomination preaching the truth and let us together promote the gospel of peace and through the preaching of the gospel, we will be united. I believe that gospel has united us as a church and we continue to preach that gospel to others so that they may repent and be saved and they too would become unified with the body of Christ.

As diverse as it is and as diverse as it should be, we are all one in Christ Jesus. Paul wrote to the Galatians with large letters reminding them of the truth of the gospel. The Spirit continues to speak to us through this letter even today facing all the different false gospels that try to ensnare us.

Boasting Only in the Cross and the New Creation

In Galatians 6, 12, we read, it is those who want to make a good showing in the flesh who would force you to be circumcised and only in order that they may not be saved. They would be persecuted for the cross of Christ.

See, here's the thing about a gospel of works. No one disagrees with it. The false gospel of good works offends absolutely no one. If you say the gospel is feeding the poor, guess what? The world is going to belly up to the trough.

If you say the gospel is love one another, the whole world will say amen because the world's idea of love is to tell someone that their depraved desires are okay. And if you say they're not okay, that's unloving.

As long as you don't stand between the world and their sin, you can even buy them a pizza and entertain them for a little while and put on a good show. And you know what? The world will love you for that.

But when you tell the world that the wrath of God is coming against all sinners and it is only by faith in Jesus Christ that they can be saved, that is a loving message. But you will be hated for it. That's what Paul is talking about here.

Those who came to the churches in Galatia preaching a gospel of works do so because they don't want to be persecuted. But as Paul concludes this letter, I bear on my body the marks of Jesus. In other words, his own scars tell the story of what the true gospel will cost you.

You will be hated for it. Some of us will even face serious persecution for it. But as Paul has said over and over, we share in the sufferings of Christ. When the Southern Baptist Convention finds itself in a sex abuse scandal being covered by multiple secular news outlets and the president of the convention says something like, the core of the gospel is God's commitment to protect the vulnerable.

What this looks like is that such a statement was made to appease the watching world. Why would any worldly person want to disagree with a statement like that? But as Paul said in Galatians 1 .10 at the start of this letter, for am I now seeking the approval of man or of God?

Or am I trying to please man? If I were still trying to please man, I would not be a servant of Christ. Back to chapter 6, verse 13, Paul says, for even those who are circumcised do not themselves keep the law, but they desire to have you circumcised that they may boast in your flesh.

In other words, these false teachers don't actually care about you. You're just a number on their scorecard. And I think it goes without saying that we Southern Baptist churches, we love our numbers. I hear it at every Southern Baptist gathering that I go to, whether it's local, state, or national, we're always talking about the numbers.

And hey, I don't discount that. I don't look down on that in any way. I think it would be great if every seat in this room was filled with a person. I would love it if we were dunking people in the baptistry every weekend.

But if we desire these things, if this is what we desire as a church, preaching the gospel, adding to our numbers, those who turn from sin and believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, coming and attending church here, getting dunked in our baptistry, if these are the things that we desire as a church, let us desire them for the right reason, not to make us look great, but because we rejoice to see God being glorified among his people.

In verses 14 and 15, Paul says, but far be it from me to boast except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by which the world has been crucified to me and I to the world, for neither circumcision counts for anything nor uncircumcision, but a new creation.

I am reminded again of Galatians 2 .20, where we read, I have been crucified with Christ and it is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me and the life I now live in the flesh, I live by faith in the son of God who loved me and gave himself for me.

Therefore, my brothers and sisters, we no longer live to ourselves, we certainly no longer live according to the passions of the flesh and let us not live in any malice toward one another and let us not treat each other with prejudice.

How shallow and how unchristian is it to judge anybody by their appearance, let alone the color of their skin. We do not need secular philosophies to diagnose the problem that exists in mankind. We know what the problem is in mankind, it's sin and the only solution to it is the wonderful, loving, gracious gospel of our Lord Christ who died for us so that we would not perish in our sin, but we would be clothed in his righteousness and we would have fellowship with our heavenly father.

That message has brought us together, that message has saved us and it will save a perishing world. Hold fast to the true gospel of Christ. We used to be dead in our sins and our transgressions in which we once walked, but that old man or woman is dead and gone.

We have been born again to live for Christ. Colossians 3 .10, we have put on the new self which is being renewed in knowledge after the image of our creator. Verse 16 says, and as for all who walk by this rule, peace and mercy be upon them and upon the Israel of God.

From now on, let no one cause me trouble. As Paul's saying, please don't let me hear about this nonsense from you again. Repent and return back to the true gospel. You ever said as a parent, don't let me tell you again.

Well, you say that because you want your child to do the right thing. So that they may not have to be warned again or therefore punished for the wrong that they continue to do. And that's what Paul wanted for the churches in Galatia.

For I bear on my body, he says, the marks of Jesus, the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with your spirit, brothers. Amen. He doesn't start the letter by calling them brothers, but he ends the letter that way so that they may know he has no animosity toward them, but only affection and love.

As we bring our study of the book of Galatians to a close, let me ask you this. Do you believe that Jesus is enough? Does he satisfy your soul? Do you delight in the word of Christ? And does it fill your heart with good things?

When your heart yearns, does it yearn for Jesus? Do you long to be in heaven above where Christ is? Do you ask that God's will be done on earth as it is in heaven? Are you seeking first the kingdom of God and his righteousness?

All this past week at VBS, we've been teaching our children to store up treasures in heaven for where your treasure is, there will your heart be also. And I put it also to you, moms and dads, brothers and sisters, make Christ your greatest treasure.