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Why its important to get the gospel right...pt1 with Matt Breeding and Kevin Michael
All right, welcome to the Here I Stand Theology Podcast. Matt, Here I Stand.
I can do no other.
God help me. God help me.
At the Here I Stand Theology Podcast, we are a podcast dedicated to a pointed and sometimes spirited debates of biblical doctrine. We're not afraid to get riled up if we have to. And we have with us, of course, in the studio and in the studio via satellite, we have Matt Breeding live in studio and Kevin Michael via, it sounds so cool, don't it, saying via satellite.
Yeah, we wanna welcome Kevin back with us again. For those of you all that have watched some of our previous episodes, he should be a familiar face. We enjoy having Kevin on. He's got a lot of good insight.
So glad to have Kevin back with us this evening.
Yes, so today this is going to begin a multi-episode series, correct?
Yes, we, for those again that have watched many of our episodes, one thing we strive to do on each and every episode, whatever topic we're discussing is to bring it back to the gospel of Jesus Christ.
So we wanted to spend a little more time just kind of digging into that. On our second episode, we spent about 30 minutes kind of touching on the question, what is the gospel? But we really wanted to get into more detail on that.
So hoping to do, again, a little series of episodes on that. And to start that off with this episode, we're gonna be focusing on the question, why is it important to get the gospel right? But before we do that, if anybody's got anything else they wanna say before we jump into it?
Well, let's front load. Let's front load the gospel, right? I mean, normally we wait till the end, but let's front load with the gospel. So Kevin, I think you actually on the last episode that you were on, you closed us out with the gospel.
Would you care to front load us with the gospel here as we go into this episode?
Sounds good, I was gonna anyway have everybody give just a little succinct definition of the gospel. So hit us with it, Kevin.
All right, when we talk about the gospel in the case of Christianity, the gospel of Jesus Christ is the telling of the good news of Jesus Christ, his birth, his life, his purpose, his death, his burial, his resurrection, and his ascension to heaven where he now sits according to scripture with the right hand of the father.
And I have been long in the habit, I say long for a few years now, I've been in the habit of when I explain the gospel, I do it in four main parts. Talk about God, talk about man, mankind in general, talk about Jesus, and I talk about the response that's necessary.
And to just kind of jump in with it, the Bible teaches that God is holy, meaning that he is without any evil thoughts, any evil words, any evil deeds, or any evil intentions. Now, conversely, man, and that's speaking of all people that's ever existed, man is wicked, and our wickedness separates us from God, is what the book of Isaiah tells us.
Jesus, being the only begotten son of God, being God in the flesh, according to scripture, died upon the cross, that cruel Roman way of capital punishment, and as he was on the cross, he experienced God's wrath, God's anger, God's frustration being poured out upon him, and he experienced God's frustration and anger and wrath against sin.
And as such, the Bible teaches abundantly and clearly that Jesus is the only way for people to have that relationship with God repaired. We call that reconciliation. When a person repents of their wicked unbelief and believes the gospel, they are adopted into God's family and reunited with him.
Now, all of that having been said, I wanted to, I came across this quote from R .C. Sproul that I thought was worth sharing. R .C. Sproul said, "'The gospel is Jesus, the person and work of Christ, "'who Jesus is and what he did.'".
Amen. Amen.
That's awesome.
I think we can just quit right there.
That's it.
That's good, yeah. And I think what you pointed out is important that yes, the gospel has a specific content to it. And so again, that's why we wanna focus this episode on why it's important that we get the gospel right, because whether we get the gospel right or wrong, there are consequences to that.
So you got anything you wanna jump in with, Claude, before we
I'm here with y 'all. You take it.
All right, so well, let's just jump into it. So first, I'm gonna act like a Sunday school teacher here. Anybody got their Bible and wanna read Romans 1 .1 for me?
Yep, hang on.
Let me reach over here and grab my Bible.
Or has anybody got that memorized?
Romans what?
1 .1.
Paul, an apostle of Jesus Christ.
That's how it starts, yeah.
Yeah.
Go ahead. Go ahead with the memorization.
I actually, I'm trying. My brain is stretched like a piece of Laffy Taffy right now. Paul, a bondservant of Jesus Christ, called to be an apostle, separated to the gospel of God, which he promised before through his prophets in the Holy Scripture concerning his son, Jesus Christ, our Lord, who was born of the seed of David, according to the flesh, and he was declared to be the son of God with power, according to the spirit of holiness, by the resurrection from the dead.
Thank you.
That's actually one through four.
That's good. So I wanna start out focusing on verse one, the phrase, the gospel of God.
Amen.
And so the first thing that we can see is that God is both the source and the theme of the message of the gospel. It originates with him, because it's the gospel of God. And that means it's about him and from him.
Any thoughts on that from either of you guys?
I may get ahead of myself, but I did have some notes on God being the source and the theme.
Hit us with it.
Well, we talked about, or we talked briefly that little segment where we talked about the gospel. And essentially, the gospel is the self-sacrifice of Jesus Christ to be the propitiation, if you will, that's a theological term, that to be the payment to appease the wrath of God against sin.
Okay, well, let's examine what Matt has said here. Briefly, before we go too far into this, Matt talked about God being the source and the theme. Well, look at it this way. Genesis chapter three is what we call the fall.
That is where it describes Adam and Eve's fall from grace, so to speak. And they actually, it is the description of how Eve was deceived and how Adam made the choice as sinfully to choose Eve over God.
Well, here's the thing. After all that happened, guess what? God was not under any obligation to provide them a way to be reconciled or have their relationship with him repaired. Furthermore, and I don't wanna go too far down this rabbit hole, but God's not under any obligation to give any part of humanity anything, really, other than what he has covenanted through scripture, and that's it.
But God, and I've said this a million times in preaching and teaching, God would have been well within his right to wipe Adam and Eve out and start over, but he didn't. Instead, in Genesis chapter three, we have what we call the protevangelium, which is another theological term.
It's the first mention of the gospel of Jesus in scripture. In Genesis chapter three, verse 15, Jesus, or excuse me, God gave a warning to the serpent. He said, I will put enmity between you and the woman and between your seed and her seed.
He shall bruise you on the head and you shall bruise him on the heel. And God's telling Satan here, he's telling him about the coming defeat that he will experience at the hands and feet, if you will, inside of Jesus.
And I just wanna touch on one more thing before we go on. This was not reactionary. In other words, this was not God saying, oh, Adam and Eve messed up and they did something against my plan, so let me kinda change things around.
In order to get these back.
Yeah, it's not planned. The gospel was not plan B. The gospel was always plan A. The death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus Christ was ordained in God, or excuse me, by God in eternity past during the covenant of redemption.
I know Claude loves that. But point being, this is not God saying, well, hey, they messed up. No, this was always part of God's plan. So I think I got long winded there, fellas. Sorry about that.
All right, that's good stuff.
And that covenant language that you're using is very, very important, particularly going back to Genesis 3 where the Lord told them that, that the serpent would bruise his head and he would bruise the heel of Christ, right?
So that's setting that up. And it begins just a short time after that. Really, the Lord really begins to, or what we have disclosed to us in the scriptures, to Abram when God makes his covenant with Abram, right?
And he splits the animals in pieces that night. And he causes a deep sleep to fall on Abram. And what many folks really, concerning getting the gospel right, many folks think it's about their part and God's part.
But the covenant that God established from the very beginning has never been a two-way covenant. It's a unilateral, one-way covenant. God caused a deep sleep to fall upon Abram. And he woke him up in the middle of this when between the pieces, I mean, it tears me up with joy to consider this covenant that God made and that God himself put his name on.
He walked between the pieces like a smoke and a flame, walking between those pieces, symbolizing that he was making the covenant and that man cannot, what is it? I think it's, is it in Hebrews? Man cannot disannul the covenant that God makes.
I think that's the statement that you all may have to correct me on that. But it is beautiful when we consider that, when we consider the gospel and the power of the gospel. I mean, when Paul makes that statement, and I'm not ashamed of the gospel of Jesus Christ, it's the power of God unto salvation.
I mean, it is amazing when we think about that and all our hope, all our peace, all our joy, all our comfort rests in Christ and his work. It's beautiful.
Well, we can stop now.
Well, with all that said, it goes to show that again, it's God's message. It originates from him.
And we know from throughout scripture that we are not to add to or take away from God's words or his commands. We can see that just a couple examples. I put down Deuteronomy 4 .2, Deuteronomy 12 .32, Proverbs 36, Revelation 22, 18 through 19.
And again, don't add to or take away. God's message is complete and it's sufficient. And if we try to add to or take away, in essence, what we're doing is we're sitting in judgment over God's word and over his message and we're finding them lacking by our own judgment, by human standards.
And that shifts the basis of our knowledge from God and the scriptures that he's revealed to us, shifts it onto ourselves. And as Kevin talked about, we can look back to Genesis, Adam and Eve, the fall, to see what a pursuit of knowledge outside of God and his truth leads to.
That's good stuff, yep.
So I think my first point in my notes was that we need to get the gospel right so that we don't alter God's message, so that we're not speaking contrary to the message that God himself has revealed to us.
Right, and it's important, I think, Matt, for us to take time as we do, you've made all those scripture references. Let's take a minute to look at some of those as well because, I mean, the scripture is what's most important here.
Do you want me to try to go to it? There we go, Deuteronomy 4, right?
Yeah, verse two.
Verse two, so if we look at that, is that showing up? I can't tell, yeah. So Deuteronomy 4, two, you shall not add to the word which I command you nor take from it that you may keep the commandments of the Lord your God which I command you, what's the next reference?
Deuteronomy 12, 32.
I've got that one pulled up if you want me to read it.
Okay.
You say Deuteronomy 12, 32?
Yes.
Whatever I command you, you shall be careful to do, you shall not add to nor take away from it.
Perfect, perfect. So, I mean, just those two spots right there, there's so much there. So God's message, is it partial and insufficient?
It is complete and sufficient. So, all right, so staying in that same original text that we read in Romans 1, 1, another thing I want to look at is Paul writing, obviously inspired by the Holy Spirit.
So speaking on behalf of God, this points out to the exclusivity of the gospel as well, because he tells us that it's the gospel of God and the use of the word the implies it's the one and only gospel.
There is no other gospel.
And Paul writes this also other places in scripture. We can look at a couple of those real quick. First one's just a couple of verses down, Romans 1, 9, which we'll look at that a little more later anyway.
9, God is my witness, whom I serve with my spirit in the gospel of his son. Let's see, what's the next? Verse 16, as Claude referenced earlier, Paul says, for I'm not ashamed of the gospel. So we can see throughout his writings, Paul references it as the gospel, again, implying that it's the only gospel.
Right.
You got another reference you want us to look up?
Let's see, I got 1 Corinthians 15, 1.
Oh yes. Anybody quote that off the top of your head?
Hey, my Bible drill is lacking, sorry.
It's Bible drill time.
Kevin, you can look up Galatians 1, 7.
All right. I've got Galatians 1, 7 whenever you want it.
So 1 Corinthians 15, 1. Actually, it's on the screen here too for us. So moreover, brethren, I declare to you the gospel, which I preach to you, right? So the context here, right? It's very important for us to understand context when we're looking at any passage.
We don't want to just do like a lot of people do, snatch it out of context and just smack it where we want it to be. But Paul is writing to the Corinthians amongst their other issues. Some are claiming the resurrection's already passed and his foundation point, his anchor point is the gospel.
Moreover, brethren, I declare to you the gospel, which I preached to you. It's kind of a reminder, right? Which also you received in which you stand, by which also you are saved. If you hold fast that word, which I preached to you, unless you believed in vain.
First of all, I delivered to you, first of all, that which I received, right? So he's not promoting something that he don't know nothing about. He experienced the gospel, Jesus. He experienced Jesus Christ firsthand, that Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures and that he was buried and he rose again the third day.
How?
According to the scriptures. How do we know? How do we know Christ did this? The scriptures teach us.
The Bible says it.
What was that? There was a bumper sticker years ago. Folks used to like to claim, God said it, I believe it, and that settles it. No buster. God said it, that settles it. It don't matter whether you believe it or not.
I was wondering if you were gonna go there. I remember that, having a discussion.
Go ahead there, Kevin.
So I have Galatians 1. I'm gonna start in verse six and read, I think it's pertinent to read through nine. It says, I am amazed that you are so quickly deserting him who called you by the grace of Christ for a different gospel, which is really not another.
Only there are some who are disturbing 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 what we have preached to you, he is to be accursed.
As we have said before, so I say again now, if any man is preaching to you a gospel contrary to what you received, he is to be accursed. One thing I am in the habit of doing when I preach is repetition bears relevance.
So when the apostle Paul says something more than once, he's trying to get a good point across, especially how this text goes into, it's like the last couple of verses in scripture where it says the same thing.
If you add or take away from this book, you will be accursed. It's just important.
Yeah, and we'll talk about that text you just read. We'll get into a little more detail on that later. So it's a good little preview right there. But again, he focuses on the gospel. And in scripture, we can see when the word gospel is used without the definite article the, and in scripture that Kevin just read, where he said a gospel, it's always referring to something contrary to the true gospel.
So you can see that the gospel versus a gospel and how Paul differentiates there and the gospel of God, the true gospel is always presented as the one and only gospel. So again, kind of second point, we need to get the gospel right so that we are not in opposition to the exclusive nature of the true gospel.
So you're using the term exclusive. Would you care to elaborate on what you mean by the exclusivity of the gospel?
It's the only one. There's no others are allowed. It's narrow. It's however you wanna put it. It's the only one. Nothing else is allowed.
Do you not think, let me play devil's advocate for a moment. So to both of y 'all, I would say this. So there are a lot of other good teachings out there. There are a lot of other good teachers throughout history.
There's Muhammad. There's the other prophets. What makes the gospel, as you call it, better than any of the other messages that are taught in the world?
Because it's the message of the true God. It's the message of scripture that's proven historically.
So you mentioned earlier, the source, right? God being the source and the author and the content of the gospel. Kevin made the quote of R .C. Sproul, right? Jesus is the gospel, right? So I think bearing to the point of the gospel being exclusive and what makes and how dare us even say it, but here I stand, right?
This is where we are. What makes the gospel of Jesus Christ better than any other gospel? I mean, I would say personally, according to the scripture, I would say it's better because it has a, there is continuity going all the way back to the beginning of scripture itself concerning the person and work of Jesus Christ.
The person and work of Jesus Christ itself makes it exclusive because no other religion in history has a teacher, has a prophet that actually was fully God and fully man in the flesh. I'm probably running ahead there too, but still, yeah.
We'll get into that in later episodes. We'll touch on a lot of the things multiple times.
I think that's why it's better in Christ himself being God in the flesh, taking upon himself. And again, Kevin used the term, I praise God. I wish that more and more churches would go back to biblical language, propitiation.
No other religion can claim that their founder became the propitiation for the sins of the world because every other religion is a works-based religion.
And the gospel. Substitutionary atonement.
Christianity, Christ died for his people.
As you said, all other religions, work-based, trying to do what they can to appease their God.
Yep.
Where in Christianity, we had the God-man appeasing God on our behalf.
There's another.
Go ahead.
Sorry, I just, I had something I wanted to, I know Matt may be chomping at the bit to move on, but one thing that I really picked up in Bible college was the exclusivity of Christianity in general. This applies to what we're talking about, the exclusivity of the Bible.
Matt was talking about how the gospel is exclusive. Well, think about it from this viewpoint. When we get to heaven, after all, after the new heaven and the new earth and all this stuff is done, whether you're pre-meal, post-meal, a meal, whatever, when all this stuff is done and over with and we're standing there with Jesus and we're looking around, not every single person from human history is gonna be there.
Only God's people. And there's a lot of people that say, well, I believe everybody's gonna be in heaven or I believe that everybody is a child of God or so forth and so on. Matthew 7 and Revelation 20 make that abundantly clear that that is not true.
Here's a way to look at it. Salvation through faith in Jesus Christ is the only way for someone to spend an eternity in heaven. All these other religions that they're talking about, like you both said, there's something that you have to do.
Well, Christianity is different because Jesus has already done it. He said, to tell us about it upon the cross, it is finished, not what I have done. But, and let me add a little bit of grace to it by going to church and taking the Eucharist and so forth and so on.
No, Christ has done it and he is the only way to heaven. I hate to say this, but Steve Harvey, Oprah Winfrey, and the off chance that you're ever gonna see this, you're wrong. There's not more than one way to get to heaven.
All roads do not lead to heaven. Only those who are saved by faith alone, through Christ alone, in Jesus Christ alone, in accordance with God's word alone, for God's glory alone. Only those people, and we call those people God's elect, only those people will be in heaven.
And don't just trust my word. I'm just an old, broke down, salty sea dog, halfway pastor every now and again. Listen to what Jesus said. Jesus said, the way that he said in John 14, six, he is the way, the truth, and the life.
No one comes to the father, but through me. Speaking of himself, he made that.
He made that exclusive claim himself.
That's right.
All right, so before we move on, do you wanna play the promo clock?
Oh yeah, so real quick, we are going to, yeah, cause we're at 30 minutes. Time flies when you're having fun. So real quick, I wanna kinda show this. This is just gonna be a quick, like 30 seconds we're gonna show this, but for the local folks around the Knoxville area, Eden Chapel, Pastor Aaron Case, he's been on here once before with me.
He'll be on in a couple of weeks again, but they are going to be having a men's conference at Eden Chapel and just for a moment so we can all get a drink, take a breath. We're gonna show this promo. There's not a lot of, there's not a great deal of detail in the promo, but just some basic info.
We would like to invite you all to come out on November the 6th to the Eden Chapel Men's Conference. Hey, we're back. And it looks like there's a few comments coming in very quickly there. So love this podcast.
Again, if you're the Facebook user that's saying you love this podcast.
Yeah, we forgot to talk about that.
Oh, we did. Yeah, so very quickly, one more thing. Housekeeping, that's my fault. I apologize.
We were too excited to get into it.
But as you can see on the bottom of the screen, you're just a blank image and there's no name or anything like that. It just says Facebook user. In order for us to see who you are, when you make comments, you'll need to go to streamyard .com forward slash Facebook and grant them access to, you'll grant them permission to,.
To use your Facebook profile.
It's not a scam.
It's not a scam. I was trying to switch to that, but my brain's not wanting to.
It's easy. It'll, like I said, if you go to streamyard .com forward slash Facebook, it'll just be like a blue tab.
Give them permission. That way we can see your name and profile picture.
Yes. Yeah, so we got a few others.
We'll show them.
Thanks for the comment.
Yes, thumbs up. Thank you. Happy face laugh. Yes, there's nothing. Oh, that was Casey Stout actually. Hey, thank you, Casey.
Thanks for your encouragement, Casey. Casey, for those of you that don't know, I don't know if either of you guys have met Casey. Casey and I have worked together now for the last year and a half. He's a solid brother in Christ.
He goes out with the proclaimers of Christ and does a public preaching of the gospel. And I will tell you this, every officer that walks through that facility, Casey stops them and talks to them about the gospel.
I'm telling you right now that this happens. So I love Casey. Thanks, Casey, for the encouragement.
All right.
Thanks for the comments, everybody.
All right, yeah, thanks. Thanks. So got you. So if you're going and you do that, we'll be able to know who you are moving forward. All right, guys.
All right, so we'll jump back into it. We'll, let's get into Romans 1, 16. Again, a familiar text to most people. I'll read it. Somebody read it earlier. I think it was Claude. It says, for I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes, to the Jew first and also to the Greek.
So in that, let's focus on the phrase, for it is the power of God for salvation. And this is of the utmost importance because a false gospel cannot save. And actually the English word dynamite comes from the Greek word used here for power.
Do you know what that word is?
Do you, Kevin?
I'm sure.
No.
The Greek word for power there in that verse that we get our word dynamite from.
Is it dynamo? I don't know.
It's awesome. It's fun to say dunamis. Dunamis. And it's the dynamite power of God.
Yeah, it's here.
It's showing, yeah, the explosive power of the gospel. And it says that the true gospel is effective because it carries with it this omnipotence, this power of God behind it.
And a false gospel does not contain this power.
That's exactly, it's kind of like a natural illustration might be a placebo versus actual medication, right?
In largely, I think probably the majority, we were talking in Bible study last night, the majority of the churches, I mean, you just take a small sampling, you could take it from where the churches in the area where you are, Matt, the churches where you are, Kevin, the churches just up and down Chapman Highway here where we are, you just take those churches.
And if you actually like went to their church or good thing is we have the interwebs. You just go to the interwebs and look up a sermon and listen to it. A lot of those churches are sadly preaching a placebo for salvation.
They're not preaching the dunamis of God. They're not preaching the gospel of Jesus Christ.
I'm sorry, Matt, go ahead.
Well, I was gonna say it's, yeah, the gospel is where God has placed his power for salvation, not in any other thing. So go ahead, Kevin.
I was just gonna ask, and I know that I believe Matt in the notes that you shared with us that you probably gonna touch on this, but why do they do that, Claude? I mean, I'm playing devil's advocate here and for the listeners that may be listening, why is it that you have, when you go to these, quote, worship services, unquote, it'll either look like a Pink Floyd concert with the smoke and the lights and the lasers, or it looks like a night out at the movies.
And we're talking about churches right here in Knox County. Why is that? Why do they do that?
Well, I would say, number one, because it's the easiest thing to do, because pragmatism has so permeated the minds of preachers. And again, I wouldn't go so far as to say so-called preachers. I mean, literal preachers are falling prey to the pragmatism of our day.
They're falling prey to the idea that if we can just do something, that the world will like, we'll grow our church and we'll become and have a greater influence, when in reality, the influence is a placebo effect, actually, that's going out and kind of, it's literally tricking, tricking the hearers into thinking they have something that they don't.
I mean, a placebo or an idea can work two ways. It can work positively or negatively. If we all work together and every day, let's say, Kevin, you and I, we determined that we're gonna walk up to Matt every day for a month that we see him.
And we're gonna say, Matt, are you feeling okay? You look bad. No, I'm feeling great. First day, second day, third day, I'm feeling great. I don't know what you're talking about. Fourth day, Matt, are you feeling okay?
Well, you know what? I am feeling a little bit funny. You just get this idea continually shot at you. And all of a sudden, you're pumped full of, it's sewage is what it is. The false gospel is sewage.
And people have come to love sewage rather than the sweet fragrance of the gospel of Jesus Christ.
Well, and I don't wanna knock anybody or speak ill of anybody, but Paul warned Timothy about this. And I'm paraphrased loosely, but he talked about how people will gather unto themselves ear ticklers and that they will preach what people want to hear.
They will give motivational speeches or they'll give a 25 minute quote sermon unquote filled with anecdotes and cute little stories and maybe 10 minutes worth of actual biblical content. And this is what, this is not what God's people wants.
This is what lost people who are deceived into thinking that they are saved. That's what they want. Well, the real people of God and God, those people that God has brought to himself that God has saved, real Christians, we have a desire to hear the word of God preached to us.
We may go about it in different ways, but sometimes like, for instance, when Pastor Mike's bringing that fire at Norwood, sometimes it's good. I can't help, but say, amen, or that's right, or something like that, because that's the kind of stuff that I wanna hear.
Like Alistair Begg was talking about, tell me the truth of what the Bible says. Don't tell me how you feel. Tell me what the truth of what God has said through scripture. And unfortunately, unfortunately, we are seeing less and less of that as time goes on and you'll see a church filled with people for Sunday morning at the movies and, but then when you have a church that preaches, now where a pastor and the elders, pastors preach nothing but God's word, that may be, they may be not as well attended.
And that's why, because the sheep, as you will, if you will, they wanna hear the word of God preached and exposed, they wanna hear expository preaching. And then the goats, the unsaved, they just wanna hear a motivational speech.
They just wanna be told how good they are.
And so, I mean, if that sounds harsh and rude and disrespectful, I hate that for you, but read your Bible because it says the same thing.
That's right. Robert Knapp said fear of man versus fear of God as to reasons, as to answer your question there too, Kevin. Power, greed, and jobs scared. There's all kinds of reasons. Robert, you're right on that.
Right, and we'll get into that some more near the end, but I was gonna say something too, Kevin. You said it may sound harsh, but so this'll be my kind of here I stand statement for the episode, but I think it comes down to, and I've felt this way for the last couple of years.
I think this is where our theology becomes of utmost important. I think that people that preach these kind of messages that you're talking about, they do not believe in the power of the gospel. That's the way I feel.
They flat out, they might say they do, but if they're not preaching the gospel, then they don't believe the power in it. They believe there is power in other things alongside a watered down gospel. So if you believe that there's power in the gospel, preach the gospel and don't rely on this other stuff.
And I'm pretty sure
Paul said Got away from the There you go.
Yeah, sorry, I was leaned up tapping in the keyboard. So let's, how do I bring that back in? Or is it still up? There we go. To what you just said there, Matt, the scripture says that, and I, brethren, when I came to you, did not come with excellency of speech or wisdom, right?
But I came declaring unto you the testimony of God, for I determined not to know anything among you except Jesus Christ and Him crucified. That's the statement. I mean, that's the statement. We could get into church shopping and a lot of other things there, but I won't.
So just going back to that phrase, the power of God for salvation, as Kevin mentioned in the beginning, his summary of the gospel, he talked about who man is, our sinful state. We know from scripture that we're in need of salvation, that we're dead in our trespasses and sins.
We're by nature children of wrath. We've all sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. So we know because the Bible tells us who we are, we know that we're in need of salvation. And again, only the true gospel has this power to save an individual from such things.
Excuse me.
And the regenerating life-changing impact of the true gospel through the Holy Spirit is essential because of humanity's bondage to sin and our weakness and our spiritual inability on account of sin.
That kind of goes to your statement there that you made about midways through that section there that we're dead in trespasses and sins, not just sick.
We need something to explode and wake, bring new life.
And a false gospel doesn't do that.
And so this shows...
No, go ahead. Because I was just going to kind of wrap up that section, but go ahead.
So what you're saying there, guys, is that the gospel is not a life buoy that's thrown to a drowning man. It is God's power to resurrect somebody from the dead.
I just want to clarify that.
That's what we got to do.
You understood.
We got it. That's exactly what we're here for. Praise God.
And again, that's a whole nother episode in itself too,.
Or multiple.
So again, with that, we got to get the gospel right because there are eternal consequences.
All right, so let's jump over to, we looked at this as well. Kevin read this earlier, but Galatians chapter one, six through nine.
Got it up for you there.
All right. You want to go ahead and read that?
You go ahead.
You can read it off the screen there.
So 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 brethren who are with me, grace to you and peace from God, the father and our Lord Jesus Christ, who gave himself for our sins, that he might deliver us from this present evil age, according to the will of God, our God and father, to whom be glory forever and ever.
Amen. And he said, I marvel. You said through six, right? I marvel.
Well, six through nine.
I'm sorry.
Oh, I'm sorry.
That's all right.
At least we got context.
Yes, it never hurts to read a little extra scripture.
I marvel that you're turning so soon away from him who called you into the grace of Christ to a different gospel, which is not another, but there are some who trouble you and want to pervert the gospel of Christ.
But even if we, or an angel from heaven, preach any other gospel to you than what we have preached to you, let him be accursed. As we have said before, we say again, if anyone preaches another gospel, then that what you have received, let him be accursed.
And we touched on this a little bit earlier, but there's a couple of things in this text I wanted to point out. And first we can note the strong language that Paul uses as well as the consequences of preaching a false gospel.
And again, we want to keep in mind that these are not just Paul's words and Paul's thoughts. Obviously he's writing these, pinning it down.
Inspired.
But these are coming from God, inspired by the Holy Spirit. So these are God's words. And we can see in verse six where Paul, depending on which translation you're using, I've got the ESV, Paul said, I am astonished, some say amazed.
What did you read right there?
That was a New King James, a marvel.
Marvel.
So Paul's here, he's showing, I mean, this was a big deal to him that they were turning to a different gospel. He's saying, I'm shocked at what y 'all are doing here. So this was a big deal to him. Verse seven, here's where he talks about there is not another gospel.
Again, as we talked about earlier, pointing to the exclusivity of the true gospel. So he says, he said, distort the gospel of Christ. Again, he talks about the gospel. Kind of what I want to focus on is verse eight and nine.
Again, as Kevin mentioned before, we see throughout scripture, repetition is used to emphasize the importance of things. We can see here, Paul is repeating what he's saying. And I think it's here we can look at the consequences too.
He said, if anyone's preaching another gospel, let them be accursed.
Can't say amen, you ought to say ouch.
And I'll ask again, I'm sure one of y 'all can answer, what's the word in the original language there?
Anathema.
And that basically means, I mean, to be damned.
That's right. That's awful strong language, ain't it?
Strong, strong language as a consequence of preaching a false gospel. And we can see too, Paul is so adamant about this that he includes himself.
The people he's writing to, they know Paul. And he says, but even if we, he's including himself, says, even if I, somebody you know, comes to you with a different gospel than what you have received before, don't listen to him.
Don't even listen to me. The message is so important. Don't even listen to a different one from me. So Paul was so focused on the message, he was willing to say, forgo me too, if I bring anything different, it's not about me, it's about the message.
So again, and he repeats this again to add that emphasis. So any comments on that text, about the consequences of the strong.
We kind of got our, we're just, we're making the rounds on that. That's incredible.
So again, strong language, dire consequences for preaching a false gospel.
So it's important we get the gospel right, lest we be accursed.
So.
I got a question for you. This might be a little further down the rabbit hole. Being accursed, let them be anathema. Is that a direct effect of the individuals? Is that, how do I say this to make myself understood?
Is the bad preaching of the gospel, is that a result of their unregenerate heart or is their damnation slash unregenerate heart a result of their bad preaching? That's what just came to mind as we were, as you were talking about that.
Go ahead, man.
That's a good.
That's a good question.
Thought provoking question, yeah.
Yeah, and so.
I would argue vehemently that the bad preaching of the gospel is an outpouring of a heart that is not changed by the life, death, burial, resurrection and ascension of Jesus Christ. I would argue that.
There are people who have been mistaken. Even, you know, we have a lot of great love for John McArthur. We call him Johnny Mac sometimes when he's not listening. But, you know, and he's gone before and he said, hey guys, look, I made a mistake.
So my point being is that we can be wrong, however, comma, we don't wanna be wrong about the gospel because either the best case scenario, A, we are just completely and grossly misinformed or B, which is more scary, or we're completely and totally without Christ.
That make sense?
That is a deep thought right there. And that is a, I think that's a soul pricking statement, a true soul pricking statement that you just made right there, Kevin. That's strong. I mean, strong, which actually, I think next section here in Matt's notes, that's what we're going to, which made me think about that, right?
Cause in Acts, when Peter preached the gospel there and, oh my goodness. The first, Peter's first message there after the Holy Spirit came.
Pentecost?
Yeah, Pentecost. Bad, bad, bad thinking. So at Pentecost there, right? So he preached and that's what the scripture says, right? Their hearts were pricked and they said unto Peter and the rest of the apostles, men and brethren, what shall we do?
Right? So for that statement right there, I think, and Kevin, you know, being preachers ourselves, I think that is very, very important. It's very, very important that men actually give consideration to the statement that you, and the question that you just asked.
Because what if their whole life, they're preaching a false gospel, a placebo message, and they come to the end of the way and the very thing that they spoke so eloquently about for folks to pin their hopes to.
They, as well as the folks they preach to, Paradventure, God saves them, are lost, they're damned forever. That is what is in that word there, that anathema, that damned.
Yeah, it's a sobering thought.
I mean, Spurgeon made a comment, something along the lines in one of his sermons that, you know, a little poison taken over a long period of time will certainly kill you just as a lot of poison taken in one gulp will kill you.
It'll destroy you. You're just dying slower and don't know it. That's a good statement, Kevin.
So kind of just jumping into our last little segment here, we've touched on this a little bit along the way in each section, I think, but we need to know the true gospel so that we can identify false gospels because scripture's clear and it's warnings about false teachers.
I was reading something today, and I don't know if this is true in practice, but y 'all may have heard, a lot of people may have, that they say people who are studied in figuring out counterfeit money, they don't study the counterfeits, they study the real thing, know it intricately, so when they see something different, they know it's not the real thing because there's gonna be 1 ,000 different things of counterfeit, be hard to study all of them, so you study the true thing, and then you'll be able to figure out what's false because most false teaching, most false gospels are gonna be a mixture of some truth and error because if somebody just gets up there and just spewing straight up nonsense.
Like Jonathan Cahn.
Most people are gonna see right through that, but it's the more subtle things, the subtle falsehoods that are harder to discern if you don't know and have a good grasp on the content of the true gospel.
And so here's my next question in my notes, which Kevin talked about earlier. Why would anybody want to alter the true gospel? Why would anybody want to preach something different? And my hat on here that because the true gospel is offensive.
And scripture tells us that. And when you, because in the true gospel, sin is confronted. We must speak about God's wrath and judgment. We need to use words such as repentance, obedience, submission, surrender, lordship.
And these are topics and words that people want to shy away from. And by doing that, they, as we've talked about, they want to make the gospel more palatable, more appealing to the culture because scripture tells us, and you said in Acts 17 32 talks about people mocking the gospel and heard just recently a quote by Luther.
He said, if you preach the gospel clearly and boldly, it will inevitably bring conflict. And I know myself and both of you all have seen many examples of that doing open air evangelism, and being bold in the truth of scripture brings conflict and it comes hard and heavy at times and doesn't take long either because people are offended by the true gospel.
Darrell, Hancock Jr. just said, I think this world has been desensitized to so much sin that many don't know the right from wrong without the knowledge of the true word.
And as Kevin pointed out, we've got to start out knowing who God is and who we are.
And who we are, I mean, it boils down, it all trickles down from our sin nature to show who we are. And with the gospel bringing conflict, obviously most people, myself included, by nature, we don't like conflict.
We want to please people, we want to be peaceable with other people. So in an effort to do that, they try to find ways to soften the message.
Again, make it more appealing to the culture and you see that play out in a variety of different ways.
So we're right at an hour. So next episode, we're going to talk about long sermons and how Eutychus died. No, just kidding.
As I said, if anybody else didn't have a comment, I was going to read one other thing.
Yeah, go right ahead.
Kind of finish up mine. It was, again, we've been planning on this and I've just actually listening to, you hear me say this a lot, I was listening to a Q &A with R .C. Sproul on Ligonier. That's, I love hearing those, but just last week, even after I had all my notes, I heard this, he was at a Q &A and apparently the night before he had made the statement talking about Paul preaching the gospel, that Paul was uncompromising, therefore loving.
And the moderator asked him to kind of expound on that a little bit, asking why he used the word therefore, instead of saying something like Paul was uncompromising and loving. And I thought Sproul's response was good.
He said, Paul in his ministry would not negotiate or compromise the truth that he had received from Christ for the sake of a carnal peace. Now, it doesn't mean Paul was intractable or that he was mean spirited, but the point is that he understood that it was the truth of God that redeems and sets us free.
And he understood that it was for the welfare of his people, that he maintained his purity and his fidelity to the truth of God. And that he would not compromise was an expression of his love for Christ and his love for his people.
Sometimes we will compromise thinking that we are being loving by compromising, but who is it we are loving when we compromise the gospel? Certainly not Christ and certainly not our brothers and sisters, but we want to be loved.
So in order to win people's approval, we will compromise. And that is not true love.
So I thought that was good. So again, this section, the point I wanted to make, it's important that we get the gospel right because our command is to be faithful to God's word instead of being pleasing to the culture.
Amen. Amen. Amen.
Well, guys, we will pick up right from where we leave off here today in our next episode. Be on the lookout for that. Kevin, thank you again.
I just said, it'll probably be our next episode on this. Probably be something along the lines of, as Kevin touched on, who God is, who we are, why that necessitates our need for a savior.
Kind of along those lines. So we may have an episode in between before we get to our next one. We've got a couple other things lined up too. So these may not be all right in order, but you can kind of look forward to that in the coming weeks.
So the next, actual next episode is going to be September 23rd. Doug Wilson is going to be on the podcast. Aaron Case, Pastor Aaron Case from Eden Chapel, where the main conference is going to be, on that episode with us on that.
So keep, be on the lookout for that. Keep Kevin, Michael, and Matt Breeding in your prayers regularly. Myself, we can use them every single day of the week. So guys, I want to say this publicly to you all.
You know, I don't think we communicate this to one another as we should. We don't know. This might be the last time we ever speak. Want you and Matt to know I love you.
Love you guys.
Kevin, I mean this. I want you to know I love you in the Lord, brother. I'm looking at my screen right now. I'm really not sure which screen to look at, but I'm looking at you on this screen, but we do love you in the Lord.
We're praying for you all regularly. We look forward to our next episode. Guys, anything you want to say before we roll out?
For anybody that joined us live, thank you. We enjoyed doing this. Hope it comes through that we have a passion for the gospel.
That's what it's all about.
Kevin, anything in closing?
Thanks for having me. It's always a great opportunity to be able to share a little bit with you and our listeners what God has taught me. And it's not very much.
It's a lot, brother.
But thanks for the opportunity.
And we appreciate you joining us, brother.
All right, we're going to play. We're going to roll out with the closing clip and then just kind of hang on line for a minute, Kevin.
We're watching this video.