WWUTT 1743 No Other Gospel, Part 2 (Galatians 1:6-8)

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The Apostle Paul said to the churches in Galatia, I am astonished that you have gone to another gospel.

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Not that there is another gospel. They were adding to the gospel, which made it a different message entirely when we understand the text.

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This is When We Understand the Text, a daily Bible teaching podcast that we may be steadfast, immovable, always abounding in the work of the

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Lord. Tell your friends about our ministry at www .utt .com. Here once again is

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Pastor Gabe. Thank you, Becky. Today is part two of the sermon that I preach from Galatians 1, verses six through nine.

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Let me read that text for you again. Paul said to the churches in Galatia, 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.

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

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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.

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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.

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Where we left off last time, I was talking about some of the major false religions in the world.

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There was nothing bigger than paganism. That is the number one false religion that most people have in the world.

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Of the category religions, the largest is Islam, and then the second largest is

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Hinduism. And so now we pick up with the third largest religion in the world as we continue this sermon.

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

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

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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

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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

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

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

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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

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

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

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

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

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

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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.

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And then of course, there's also Orthodox Judaism. It's a false religion.

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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

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

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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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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John says, 1 John 4, one, 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.

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

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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.

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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.

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

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

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There are certain things that we would disagree with with the Assemblies of God Church down the street, they're not

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New Apostolic Reformation, they're Assemblies of God. Now the New Apostolic Reformation takes teachings that are common in like the

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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.

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One of the most prominent New Apostolic Reformation churches on earth is here in the

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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

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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.

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It's a gag. Or they'll fill the air vent with a fog machine, 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

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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.

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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.

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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

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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

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

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

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

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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

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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.

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

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

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So beware of 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.

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I mentioned Catholicism, Roman Catholicism. You know, I was talking with a friend,

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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

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

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Roman Catholic Catechism number 841 says the following, the plan of salvation, this is according to the

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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

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Muslims. These profess to hold the faith of Abraham and together with us, they adore the one merciful

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

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God because they reject Jesus Christ. First 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.

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

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

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Jesus said to the Jews in John chapter eight, which is where I'm going in the podcast teaching this coming week.

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So I'll be in John eight and in this particular section where Jesus said to the Jews who were saying to him, we have

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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.

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

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

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

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Christian like the prosperity gospel. God just exists as a vending machine to give you stuff.

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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.

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That's not what faith does. Faith doesn't give you things. It's by faith in Christ that we have salvation.

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Heavenly reward, not earthly prosperity. There's also the social gospel.

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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.

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

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

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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.

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

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

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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?

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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.

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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.

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

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

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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.

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

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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.

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

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

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

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

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

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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.

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

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

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

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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.

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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

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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.

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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

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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

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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.

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

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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.

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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

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Bible's changed, it's different, can't trust what the Bible says, you have to unhitch yourself from the

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Old Testament, just believe Jesus, just believe in the resurrection, that's all you gotta do, but then they don't ever actually define those terms or what they even mean.

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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.

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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?

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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?

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That's the American gospel. God bless the USA, God bless America, but you're not saved just because you're an

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

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

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

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Jesus, but Jesus also said, "'Not everyone who says to me, "'Lord,

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Lord, will enter the kingdom of heaven, "'but only the one who does the will of my Father "'who is in heaven.'"

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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?

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"'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.'"

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Going back again to what Jerry Bridges said, and the quote that I read to you earlier, even our best deeds are stained with sin.

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

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

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We're saved only by the work of Christ, what He did on the cross for us.

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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

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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?

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

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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.

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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.

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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.

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

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

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

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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.

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You shall not listen to the words of that prophet or that dreamer of dreams. Get this, Deuteronomy 13 three, for the

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Lord your God is testing you to know whether you love the

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

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You shall walk after the Lord your God and fear Him and keep His commandments and obey

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His voice. And you shall serve Him and hold fast to Him. You say, but brother

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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

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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.

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

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So if you say you love God, affirm it. By obeying God, walking in righteousness, desiring

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Christ with all that you are. The Lord God through Moses goes on here,

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Deuteronomy 13, five 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 has taught rebellion against the

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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

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

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

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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 into the parking lot and stone him.

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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.

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Furthermore, we must also understand by this that God will judge those false teachers on the last day.

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

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

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You've been listening to When We Understand the Text with Pastor Gabe Hughes. Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday, Gabe will be going through a

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New Testament study. Then on Thursday, we look at an Old Testament book. On Friday, we take questions from the listeners and viewers.