Same Gospel

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I remember being somewhat taken aback at that time when he referred to the Apostle Paul here in Galatians 1 as having been over the top, out of bounds.
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And you go, okay, there's someone who's standing in judgment of the Word of God and, you know, of course he's a part of an apostate denomination, so I understand that.
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Now that's, I just sense amongst a lot of Christians, a hesitancy and a, oh
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Paul, did you really have to say that? You'll notice in most of Paul's epistles, he will start off and he'll have a lengthy section of commendation and, oh, the works you're doing are being spoken about throughout the world and I'm so proud of you all, and you get to Galatians and that isn't there.
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You've got a couple of verses, this is Paul, this is who I'm writing to, and by verse 6, you're directly into rebuke.
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In fact, I submit to you that the strongest language in all of the New Testament, including
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Matthew chapter 23, where Jesus goes after the Pharisees with really strong words.
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The strongest language in all the New Testament is found in this epistle. What Paul says toward the end is just amazing, but he starts off pretty early.
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And keep something in mind, Paul may have written this letter with his own hand, normally he used an amanuensis, a scribe, he even mentions that in a couple of his letters, such and so, he dictated it and such and so wrote it down.
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He may have, toward the end of the letter there's this verse that talks about, see what large letter, it's either what a large letter or with what large letters
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I'm writing to you, and maybe that's because Paul had an eye issue and so he was writing with large letters, he was writing himself, he didn't want to burden somebody else doing this, there's different theories about it.
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But the one thing to keep in mind is, Paul knew that once this letter arrived, and this is not written to just one church, it's written to the churches of a region, that it was going to be read from what we would call the pulpit, they didn't have a pulpit at the time, but the leader leading the worship of the gathered
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Christians was going to read this letter out, and what Paul knew was that the people he was talking about in this letter and saying they were under the anathema, the curse of God, were going to be sitting in the congregation and everybody was going to know exactly who it was.
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Now can you imagine what that was like when it actually happened? Can you imagine what it was like for you to sit there in that congregation on the
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Lord's Day morning when this letter was first written and then read out to the people?
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Something tells me that the Baptist potluck afterwards was really a bummer, okay,
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I mean just not really what they had planned. A lot of appetites were lost that morning, a lot of people were probably mad at Paul.
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I keep saying these things and we haven't read it yet. So let's listen to how it starts.
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Verse 6, I am amazed that you are so quickly deserting, abandoning
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Him who called you by the grace of Christ for a heteronewangelion, a different gospel, a different gospel.
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Heteros over against Hamas. You know what Hamas means, you know homogenized milk of the same kind.
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But heteros is of a different kind. So you say I am amazed, I am shocked that you are so quickly deserting
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Him who called you by the grace of Christ for a different gospel which is not really another gospel.
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Only there are some who are troubling you, disturbing you and they are wanting to distort, to twist the gospel of the
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Messiah, the gospel of Christ. But even if we or an angel from heaven should preach to you a gospel contrary to other than what we have preached to you, let him be anathema, cursed with the curse of God.
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So even if an angel from heaven, a supernatural being should preach to you a gospel contrary to what we preach to you, let him be anathema as we have said before.
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So I say now again, if any man is preaching to you a gospel contrary to what you received, he is to be accursed.
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Then he asks a question, am I now seeking the favor of men or of God? Evidently, those who were preaching a different gospel had been saying, you know that Paul, he's sort of a man pleaser.
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He's preaching a gospel but you see he's pleasing men. You see what was going on when we look at the rest of the epistle is that there were some people who had come into the churches in Galatia and you know they had added just a little something.
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In fact, in comparison to what we have in most of our culture today when it comes to false gospels, these guys were amateurs.
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They're amateurs. Now if you're uncomfortable with naming of names, you're going to be uncomfortable for the next few minutes.
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In fact, let me just warn you ahead of time, I am not a politically correct individual.
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I am a cultural heretic. The great dogma of our culture is that thou shalt not offend.
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Well, I offend and I don't do so just simply for the sake of offending. I recognize that truth offends.
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I was raised in an era, notice it's all white now down here. I have passed the half century mark and I'm of a generation of the past where to be honest with you, it seems to me that the cultural standard of our generation now
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I grew out of in third grade and I mean that. I grew out of it in third grade.
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I learned you had to develop a tough skin. I got past where simply saying something to me would offend me.
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I thought that was part of growing up. Our society has lost that. Oh, you've offended me.
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You've offended me. Therefore, you should be silenced. Where, what happened?
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It's like it happened overnight. So I'm going to warn you ahead of time. If you are easily offended,
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I'm probably going to offend you. Not because I'm trying to find some way of doing so, but because there are certain things where there's truth and there's error.
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And if you're believing error, I'm going to tell you you're believing error. And I don't see any other way to read this text than to realize that's what these men did too.
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That's what Jesus did. That's what Jesus did. In Matthew chapter 22, there were some men who came to Jesus and they were tempting him and remember it was the story of the
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Sadducees. They were arguing about the resurrection and they talked about the woman who had had the seven husbands and Jesus's immediate response to them was what?
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You're wrong. Does anybody do that in our culture anymore?
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You can't even do that in a math class anymore. I remember math was my bailiwick.
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I mean, I got all A's, but I got 89 .55 in math. Okay. I mean, that was my weak area.
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And when I got something wrong, the teacher went with red ink. Remember that?
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I guess you're not allowed to do that anymore because it hurts people's self -esteem. But Jesus's first words to these people is, you're wrong and you don't know the power of God.
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These were religious leaders. So, from the standard of our society,
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Jesus was not a nice guy and yet we happen to know he was the very embodiment of the love of God, which tells me my society doesn't know what love is anymore.
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Because when someone's really wrong, it's actually an act of love to tell them they're wrong. So, when
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I talk about naming names, what I'm saying is what the Jews were doing, and they're called Judaizers, what they had done is they had come in and they had said, look, no problems with the
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Trinity, deity of Christ, resurrection, no problem. That's right.
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Jesus is the Messiah. No problem. But you see where this Paul guy has missed it?
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He's sort of trying to please men because, you see, the old covenant, which includes circumcision, is an eternal covenant.
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And Jesus is the Jewish Messiah. And so, believing in Jesus is a wonderful thing.
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We believe in Jesus. Because these people called themselves Christians. And they sang the same songs and they dressed the same.
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They looked like, they used the words of believers. But they said, you see, before that faith in Jesus thing can actually do you any good, you've got to enter into the covenant.
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So, you've got to be circumcised. You've got to become a Jew because Jesus is the Jewish Messiah. And then you believe in Jesus and then you have eternal life.
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Just adding one thing. Faith in Christ, that's good. You've got to have faith in Christ, but it's not enough.
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You've got to have something else. Just one thing. And when
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I think of what parades under the name of the gospel in our land today, one thing?
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I mean, last time I was here, I spoke about a couple of different groups.
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I talked about the Mormons. And when you look at their gospel, it goes way beyond anything the
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Judaizers ever dreamed of doing. Adds all sorts of stuff beyond just one thing.
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It adds dozens of things. Changes who God is and everything else. Jehovah's Witnesses, same thing, just opposite direction.
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Not quite as fancy. Don't have as many dances and things like that. Still a different gospel.
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And, of course, last month, all the media was a Twitter over a new pope.
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Got a new pope. And he seems to be just a wonderful, nice guy. Doesn't he look like a grandpa? Just a nice, cuddly man.
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And he washes people's feet. I mean, that's wonderful. That's awesome, isn't it?
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And everybody's like, oh, it's just great. And how many evangelicals were going, oh, I just hope they get a real nice pope.
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And I'm just sitting here going, really? Do you know what the man teaches?
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Have you heard of purgatory? Have you heard of indulgences? Do you know what the sacrifice of the mass means?
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This man claims every name of the
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Trinity for himself. Do you know that? He's called Holy Father. Who's called
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Holy Father in the Bible? Only the Father. Only what's called Holy Father. As a
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Roman Catholic priest, in his ordination, he is called an alter Christus, another Christ. And I've debated
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Roman Catholic priests who have defended that. It's not even a question. And he's also called the vicar of Christ.
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Do you know what vicarious means? The one who takes the place of. Who's the vicar of Christ biblically? The Holy Spirit of God.
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He has titles of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit applied to himself. But you say he washes people's feet.
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Our logical thinking capacity has been, I don't know what happens in public schools, but it just gets sucked right out of people's brains as if, well, it's okay if you take the titles of the
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Trinity as long as you wash someone's feet. Really? Is that what we get from Scripture?
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No, it's not. And so we look around and we see all sorts of people saying, this is the gospel and that's the gospel.
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And Paul seemingly is saying, if anyone preaches unto you a gospel other than what we've preached, let him be anathema.
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Now, turn down to the second chapter for a moment and see, because Paul goes into a whole discussion of how he received the gospel and things like that.
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But then look at what had happened. Beginning in chapter 2, He's saying, look,
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I presented my gospel, which I got from God. They said, same gospel. The apostles were all united as to what this message is.
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But notice what he says here in verse 4. Now, did you catch that?
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False brethren. Pseudadelphoi in the original language. Pseudo, and we all know
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Adelphos means brother, right? Philadelphia, you know, city of brotherly love, la, la, la, la.
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One of our first Greek lessons that we got in school. Pseudadelphoi.
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False brethren. That's pretty unloving, isn't it? That's pretty unloving.
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Remember, this was to be read in the very churches where these people were.
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And Paul was saying, they may have walked up to you this morning giving you a big hug.
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They may have brought the donuts. They may have set up the coffee maker.
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One of their wives might be teaching Sunday school for your little kids right now. They're false brethren.
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They have snuck in. They're really not of you. They're really not of you. They are false brethren.
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Not true brethren. Not brethren just a little bit off. They are false brethren. He says it was because of the
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Pseudadelphoi who had snuck in.
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And they had a reason. They snuck in to spy out our liberty which we have in Christ Jesus.
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They don't have pure motives. They want to take people captive. You might say, how can someone read someone's heart?
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Well, Paul evidently could understand that when it comes to something as central as what defines the
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Christian faith, that these individuals did not have pure motivations. He did not operate upon the dogma of our society which says, everyone's religious opinion is equal to everyone else's religious opinion.
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That's what our society says. And you know as well as I that out there amongst the people, when you say something other than that, you know you're going to get a disapproving look.
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Well, who do you think you are? Shane and I were up on Tantalus and we were looking out and he pointed over to where University of Hawaii.
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Is it University of Hawaii? The campus is over there. You and I both know that if we go just a couple miles that direction and we start talking with folks and you dare say something along the lines of that there is truth in religious teaching.
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There's true teaching and false teaching. Who do you think you are?
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Didn't you get the message? Did you just crawl out from the sticks? You must want to be one of those haters, one of those fundamentalists, right?
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But Paul, he's operating on the foundation here that these people, they actually have the wrong motives.
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They want to control other people. They're spying out the liberty which we have in Christ Jesus to do what?
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To take it away from us. To put us under bondage once again. That's why he's going to say by the end of the letter, stand for freedom, do not be placed under bondage again.
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In order to bring us into bondage, Paul recognizes that the gospel is the issue.
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And so what does he say in verse 5? But we did not yield in subjection to them, the pseudodelphoi, for even an hour, for even a moment.
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For what reason? So that the truth of the gospel would remain with you.
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I submit to you that that phrase, two things.
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It is a hill that we must be willing to die on. Because without it, we have no reason for existing.
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And secondly, it is the focus of attack in our day.
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It's the focus of attack. You want to cripple a Christian? You want to silence a
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Christian? You want to make sure that a Christian just goes with the flow?
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Society decides to turn itself upside down, redefine marriage and ethics and morality, call everything that's good evil and everything that's evil good.
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And you want to just sort of flow along with that? Convince them that they can no longer know the truth of the gospel.
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It's just a personal thing. Yeah, you know, at our church, what binds us together is we're a bunch of people who have freely and autonomously decided that this is our version of the gospel.
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But that doesn't really mean it's true. It just happens to be what we think it's true for us.
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It doesn't have to be true for somebody else. There's a lot of people who think that way.
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A lot of people who think that way. And once you have caved in on that, well, it's an epistemological issue, a matter of how we know what we know.
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Once you've caved in there, Katie, bar the door. You're going to be open to anything. You're going to be open to anything.
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You have no foundation to stand on. You're Wile E. Coyote who's just run off of the cliff chasing the roadrunner again.
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And for some reason the roadrunner doesn't fall, but you do. Somebody got it.
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That's good. I'm glad. They still have Wile E. Coyote? Is he still out there?
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That's good. I'm glad he's timeless comedy. Anyway, no foundation.
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We did not yield in subjection to them. In other words, Paul recognized this is a battle.
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There can be no compromise. A lot of people will tell us, well, you know, we all ought to just get together and we should have some discussions and some talks.
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What Paul really should have done, if he wasn't such a hothead, what Paul should have done is he should have gotten together with these guys and had some coffee, get to know them a little bit, find out what their life experiences are.
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Can you hear people saying that today? But you see,
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Paul recognized that might be quite appropriate in some areas. It might be absolutely appropriate in some areas, but when it comes to the heart of the faith itself, that's not appropriate.
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There are some things you do not even pretend that there is the possibility of compromise on.
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And Paul doesn't set up some ecumenical meetings with the Judaizers.
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He says, what you're teaching is anathema. It is under the curse of God.
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And the issue here is the very truth of the gospel.
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Paul says, when Peter was in Antioch, the men came from James, remember?
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Here at the end of this chapter, he's going to say, when I saw what was happening, when I saw this false gospel was even influencing
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Peter and Barnabas, I saw that they were not walking straight in accordance with the truth of the gospel.
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He uses the very same phrase, the truth of the gospel again. Orthopodeo, to walk straight in a line, unlike the person who sort of, you know, the guy gets pulled over and walks this line, and we've all seen the cop shows and the 10 ,000 videos of people falling all over themselves and so on and so forth, and we all go,
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I'm glad they got him before he got me, you know, type of thing. But that's an inability to walk straight.
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And Paul's saying they were not walking straight in accordance with the truth of the gospel. We have a rule.
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We have something that's been given to us from outside of us. And in honesty, folks, when we don't take this seriously, who are we disrespecting?
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We're disrespecting the one who gave it to us. When we respect the culture so much that we are embarrassed to talk about the truth of the gospel, who are we really most concerned about?
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Offending the culture or offending God? That becomes the question.
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The truth of the gospel. We live in a day where you and I together must be convinced in our hearts, and I hope it starts with you this evening, or has started with you long before this, but if it hasn't, starts with you this evening, you have to come to a conclusion.
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You have to come to a firm conviction. Has God, by His Spirit, through the building of the church, through the preservation of the scriptures, has
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God preserved the message of the gospel, or has
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He not? Sometimes I have the opportunity of circulating in Christian academia.
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Get to teach a class here and there and rub shoulders with some of the big guys.
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Back, well, it's been, wow, coming up on 15 years ago or so, I presented a paper at a scholarly meeting, and I won't mention exactly which one it is, because there are really good folks involved with them, and maybe it was just that year,
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I don't know, but big, big meeting with big, big scholars and all this stuff, and I had never been there before, and I'm listening to how people are talking,
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I'm listening to conversations, I'm attending some of the plenary sessions and stuff like that, and I just sit back and I go, man,
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I don't hear any servant's hearts. All these academics are sort of, well, we're the academy, and we need to sort of lead the benighted church, and in their simple faith, we can help them, and so on and so forth, and I'm just sort of like, oh,
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I've never gone back. I've never been invited back either, but I've just never gone back.
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It just turned me off. It was just, oh. But I know enough about Christian academia to know that for a very large portion of what calls itself the academy, very few of the people in it are willing to say, yes,
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God has, in fact, preserved His word and His gospel so that we can know it with sufficient clarity and accuracy to be able to stand with the
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Apostle Paul and say, this is the gospel, it's the power of God and the salvation, and that is not.
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Very few. Very few. You know what part of the reason for that is?
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Part of the reason for that is that many in the Christian academy want to be looked upon with favor by those who are not
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Christians. They want to be accepted as fellow scholars in a land amongst people who, quite honestly, mock and deride the lordship of Christ and will never accept anybody who says that even in the area of the mind and the academic pursuits that Jesus Christ is
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Lord, even in those areas. They will always mock and deride that. And if we try to be accepted by those folks, we are fools.
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Just read 1 Corinthians chapter 1 sometime. We've been warned about it for a long time.
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That unwillingness, that embarrassment, that doubt, then is transmitted to others so that unfortunately for many people today, oh,
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I love to preach the gospel to people, but when you really push someone hard, they'll admit, well, it's just my understanding.
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Now, I'm not saying any one of us has a complete handle on everything there is to know about the gospel. I'm not saying any one of us has perfect knowledge.
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That's one of the myths of our society is that unless you have perfect knowledge, you don't have any knowledge at all. Thankfully, none of us function in that way, but that's the argument that's made.
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Well, if you can be wrong about anything, you can be wrong about everything. Think that one through sometime and you realize no one can live that way and it doesn't make any sense, but that's how people think, especially when it comes to religion.
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That's why, well, you've got your religious beliefs and everybody else has got theirs and they're all equal. What's the assumption of that?
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That God has never spoken. That's the assumption. If all religious opinions are equal, what is necessary to believe that is that God has not spoken.
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Because if God has spoken, can all religious opinions be equal? Of course not. Of course not.
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So I take you back to what Paul said initially. We know who he's talking about now.
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We know he's talking about men that he is going to identify as false brethren. They've snuck in.
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The truth of the gospel is at stake and so he begins and he says to these individuals, you're deserting.
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You're deserting the one who called you by the grace of Christ. Who was that? God the
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Father. God the Father called them by the grace of Christ. You're deserting him. Again.
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Oh, such black and white thinking. For many today this is just so simplistic.
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We can't accept this. Paul, come on, you're way over the top. But think about what he's really saying.
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An abandonment of the gospel is an abandonment of God.
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It is apostasy. It is serious. This is not just, well, you are not remaining faithful to being one of my followers or disciples, the
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Apostle Paul. No. You need to start your own Christian church. No.
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You are deserting. You're a deserter. There is a day in our land where that term had a pretty negative connotation.
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Really did. Where we really honored the person who did not desert in the face of battle in the armed forces.
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And if you did desert, oh, you were looked down upon by society. We don't have those concepts of shame anymore.
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Well, actually we do. We're just turning them backwards. But you are quickly deserting him who called you by the grace of Christ.
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See, so many people today say, oh, look, you narrow -minded fundamentalists, you are just so dogmatic about what you believe, and you just need to understand that there are people, they just experience
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God differently than you do. Ever heard that? If you've attended almost any philosophy of religion, history of religion, introduction to religion 101 at the university, you've heard that over and over and over again.
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But Paul says, no. If you have made a commitment to Christ, if you began following the gospel that I proclaimed to you, and you have gone after this heteros, this other gospel, don't think that you've just got a different version.
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Don't think that there's just some other little way you can go. No. It's not really another gospel at all.
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It's not of the same kind. But you, by following this gospel, have made a choice to abandon the one who called you by the grace of Christ.
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And I don't think that it's in any way, shape, or form an accident that Paul uses the phrase grace of Christ here.
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Because what it's going to boil down to is that there are two ways of being right with God.
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There is the way of law and obedience, and then there is the way of God's gracious imputation of the righteousness that comes to us by Jesus Christ.
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You cannot go down both ways at once. His whole point in Galatians is, if you're going to start down the road of law, that's the only way you can go.
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There is no grace over here. There is no place for stumbling. There is no place for forgiveness.
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If you go this direction, he who goes that way must live by that way.
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That's the only way. Perfect obedience. And you see what the Judaizers are saying is, you've got to go that way too.
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And Paul is saying, this is the opposite direction. This is grace. You can only, you can't go very far down roads that go 180 degrees different from one another.
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And so what he's going to say in Galatians chapter 5, if you try to be justified, if you get circumcised, you start down that road, you try to be justified by your works,
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Christ will be of no benefit to you.
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You hear those words? Those words were being spoken to people who called themselves Christians.
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And ask yourself a question. How many even of our best leaders today would look at someone and say,
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Christ will be of no benefit to you. See our society says,
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I don't like that Jesus. He's too narrow. He's not inclusive enough.
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I don't like that Jesus. And so you need to change your Jesus. No, you need to change your heart.
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And only God can do it. You can't edit Christ. You can't edit God. You can't edit the
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Gospel. But you see, that's what our society says. I won't accept this.
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Christ will be of no benefit to you. I won't worship that God to which I say, I know. I know you won't.
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Unless God by His mercy changes your heart, takes out that heart of stone which is rebellious against Him, and gives you a heart of flesh, you will never worship this
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God. And you will be destroyed as a result. Oh, I can't believe he just said that.
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Paul did. He says, Christ will be of no benefit to you.
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You have been severed from Christ. You have been cut off from grace. Don't you dare try to walk down that road on your own and then say, oh,
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I need grace. Too late. Sorry. Oh, such harsh words.
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But you know what the real problem is? We as creatures are arrogant.
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We are so arrogant against God and what He has done. Step back for a moment and think with me.
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If what the Gospel says is true, that God created all of this to glorify
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Himself and we are His creatures. And He's given us every good thing, but we walk in our own way and we take
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His good gifts and we spit in His face. We're supposed to love Him perfectly and we don't do that one day of our lives.
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And yet He doesn't wipe us out instantly, which He could do if He wanted to. And then, amazing message of all things,
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He actually comes down into His own creation, the person of His Son, the second person of the
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Divine Trinity, takes on human flesh. He condescends to be amongst us.
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He walks amongst us for three years. And then we take Him and we nail Him to a cross.
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And yet God then raises Him from the dead on the third day. And He says, look what
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I have done. I have shown my love. I have made the perfect way of salvation available.
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I've done it out of my own grace, my own bounty, with my own blood.
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And then we sit back and say, well,
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I'm not sure I like the way you did that. I'm more comfortable doing it this way.
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I would be more comfortable if you would allow us to do this. Could we add a little codicil here?
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Could we modify it here? Can you imagine that? Can you imagine if you got yourself into just so deep a hole financially that you're never going to be able to get out.
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And someone comes along and they provide everything you need. Just do this, this, and everything's going to be taken care of.
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And you start going, well, thanks, but could we do it this way?
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I know you're actually going to provide a place for me to live, but I saw some pretty nice places up on Tantalus today, and maybe we could go for...
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Can you imagine? What would you be? An ingrate, absolutely ungrateful that someone has done something for you that you didn't deserve any of it.
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And yet that's what man does when he preaches false gospels. What he's saying is, okay, that's what
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God has done, but for my own purposes, in the case of the Judaizers, so they could have control over others, glory in their flesh, have people who follow them, make disciples, etc.,
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etc., etc., that follow after them. For whatever purposes, I'm going to change all of it.
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I don't know why God doesn't just simply cause every false teacher in the history of man to just go, vroom!
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Because if I were God, that's what I would do. You know? But he doesn't.
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We actually are told in Scripture why that is. And it's not just his long -suffering impatience, either.
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It's so that we have to epagonizamai, we have to contend earnestly for the gospel.
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We have to actually love it enough to speak in its defense. My friends, what our society is doing to every single one of us every day, and I don't care where you are,
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I don't care where you are in life, how much money you have, education, what you do, what our society is doing to every one of us every day is saying to you in much more overt ways than has ever been said before, deny
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Christ and bow the knee to Caesar.
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The society, the state, whatever it might be, don't you dare bow the knee to Christ.
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You can be as religious as you want, as long as in your actual behavior and thinking and words and speech you're bowing the knee to the world.
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When the world says to you, be embarrassed by what the New Testament teaches about the fact that there is one gospel only and that the truth of the gospel is something that should be absolutely precious to every single one of us.
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When the world says, be embarrassed by that, what it's saying is, be embarrassed by Christ. Be embarrassed by the cross.
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Be embarrassed about what we were singing about earlier. Deny it.
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Don't rejoice in it. Deny it. That's what our society is saying to us. We need to understand that, and we need to be able to explain that to others.
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Because people in our society, they may not understand that. I mean, let's face it. Man, most of the people
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I talk to in our society, the deepest theological, philosophical, ethical and moral thoughts they get come from Stephen Colbert.
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They're not thinking this stuff through. Some of you are going, who's that? They're getting it from media.
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They're getting it from movies. It's all emotion. Most of them, not all, but most of them don't even realize that there's just being puns used to put pressure upon you to deny
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Christ. So you need to be able to explain it. Tomorrow we will address the hot button issue of our society today.
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The hot button issue. We'll talk about homosexuality.
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And the society looks at us and they say, what's the phrase now? You're on the wrong side of history.
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You're on the wrong side of history. Now, of course, I find that incredibly presumptuous, as if you know where history is going to be going.
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The only person who could say that is someone from the future, by the way, just in case you're wondering, but anyway. Never figured that part out.
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But when they say that to me, in my mind
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I'm going, look, the real issue is, what is
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God's law on the matter of human sexuality?
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What is God's law? Can we know? Many people will say, we can't. Can't know. Or others will say, well, you've misunderstood all along.
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We'll talk about all of that. But this is something you and I need to understand.
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Why do we believe the cross was necessary? There are many people today who call themselves evangelicals and aren't even sure it was necessary.
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But why do we believe it was necessary? What have Christians believed down through the centuries? Jesus said, it is necessary that the
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Son of Man go. D -E -I, die, in the original Greek, necessary. Not just, this is what we've decided to do.
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It is necessary to accomplish the divine purpose of the Father, Son, Holy Spirit, that the
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Son go and that He die upon that cross. He give His life as a ransom for many. Why?
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Because God's holy, just law, which represents His very being, which represents
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His very character, and there are very few Christians who believe that anymore, had been broken.
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Had been broken. And you see, there's this strange theme in the
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New Testament that most of us don't even pick up on. About the justification of God.
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The vindication of God. It's right there in the middle of the gospel presentation.
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Remember Romans chapter 3? Probably one of the most important passages of Scripture in regards to justification in the gospel.
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And right there in the middle of it, there's this strange discussion of, you know, God overlooked sins committed in the past, and how could
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He have done that? Well, it's because the certainty of the perpetuatory sacrifice of Jesus Christ. That's how
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God could do what He did with people before Christ, because it was an absolute certainty that Christ was going to die.
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There still had to be that perpetuatory sacrifice of Jesus Christ. His law had to be vindicated, or God isn't
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God. And the cross is the most massive statement on God's part that His law is good, just, and holy, because He Himself took on the penalty of that law so that we might have life.
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And see, the point is, that law says adultery brings death.
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That law says fornication brings death. That law says homosexuality.
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The practice of homosexuality brings death. In other words, the point is, that when you say you can't say that anymore, what is actually being said is, you must deny the cross.
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You must deny its purpose, its foundation, its reason for being, its outworking.
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You have to deny all of that. Now, how many people who are making those statements recognize that purposefully?
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Very few. Because most Christians don't even know. But that's what's being said.
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That's what's being said. Very quickly, I've kept you a while.
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Notice Paul says, it's not another. It's really not another. He uses the term alas there, another of the same kind.
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There is no other. This is an exclusive message. There is only one gospel. And the question really is, are we really going to come to the conclusion that God the
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Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit went through all of this, the incarnation, the death, burial, the resurrection of Jesus Christ, the founding of the church, but they just couldn't keep it going for 2 ,000 years.
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Just couldn't preserve the word, couldn't preserve the message.
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We just don't know anymore. No. The gospel has been preserved.
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When the Spirit of God changes a man's heart and mind, He places within that heart and mind a reverence for His word and a reverence for the gospel.
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But see, there are those who want to distort. The term actually doesn't refer to twisting it into something that can't even be recognized anymore.
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Most false teachers try to look like us. They try to sound like us.
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They don't come in proverbially dressed in a clown's costume with pink and purple polka dots.
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They try to use our language. They try to be subtle. But they want to just twist it just enough that it becomes something that isn't the true gospel any longer.
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There's all sorts of illustrations we could use, but we all know that there are certain things that have to be just right, or it's just not going to work.
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The gospel needs to be just right. Why? Because the real reason for the gospel is the glory of God.
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And man, should we not have learned something from the Old Testament? God's concerned about His own glory. Ask Aaron's sons if God is concerned about His own glory.
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Ask Uzzah if God is concerned about His own glory. He is. So there isn't another gospel.
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There isn't another way. And if we're going to stand before God and have peace with Him, He has to be the one that provides the way for that to happen.
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And He's done so in the gospel of Jesus Christ. Now, I've been speaking primarily to my fellow believers this evening.
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I figure if it's a Friday night, it is Friday night, right? You get the time shift thing going, get a little lost, you know.
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If it's a Friday night and you're here, you're probably a believer. I mean, I don't know that. I can't look into your hearts. I don't know who's here.
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I've been primarily referring to you, trying to encourage you, trying to help you to think through these issues to see that the gospel must be precious to you.
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That it must be something you value above anything else in this world because, my friends, and I'm going to preach to myself here for a moment,
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I've said this almost every place I've gone these days because I think it may be one of the most important things I have to say to a church that will soon be experiencing persecution in this culture.
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And that is this. The only power that the world around us has over us to cause us to compromise, collapse, to abandon the gospel is the power we give to the world by our loving its things.
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Do you hear me? The only power this world has over us is the power we give it by loving its things.
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And I'm saying that to myself. I'm saying that to myself. What did
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John say? If we love the things of this world, the love of the
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Father is not in us. The martyrs, the saints who are suffering this day in faraway lands, who someday we will see from afar so close to the throne.
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We don't know them now, but we'll know them then. Why do they persevere?
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Why is it that they endure? Because they love the Father and not the things of this world which, as John says, are passing away.
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We are the ones who give to the world power over us. It's so simple.
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And yet we can become so involved in the love of our stuff. I've been speaking primarily to Christians.
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We need to know what's important. We need to prioritize. We need to have a foundation that we're going to be standing on.
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But maybe you're here this evening and you've heard a lot about the gospel, but you don't really know what it is.
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I've mentioned it a number of times. Paul summarized it very quickly in 1 Corinthians 15.
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That Jesus Christ was born. He was the promised
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Messiah, born of a virgin. He lived, we think, about 30 years.
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He lived a perfect life. He did not sin. He loved God, his Father, perfectly.
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For about three years he ministered, he taught, he did good deeds. But then he went to Jerusalem and he was arrested and he was beaten.
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He was condemned to death upon a cross. But you see, he had said that would happen.
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And he said, no one takes my life from me. I lay it down of my own accord.
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He did it voluntarily to die as a sacrifice for every single person who would repent and believe in him.
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He rose again the third day. And he promised to return. And the biblical teaching is every person who puts their faith and repentance, they repent of their sin, they put their faith in Jesus Christ, is united with him so that his death becomes our death.
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His resurrection becomes our resurrection. So you see, the wrath of God, which is against us, because we've broken
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God's law, it abides upon every unbeliever, every moment of their life, from birth until death.
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That wrath fell upon our substitute. It fell upon Jesus in our place so that he becomes sin.
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So we might become the righteousness of God in him. He loved God perfectly.
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I never have. But you see, I'll still be able to stand before a holy God because I'm clothed in his righteousness, because I'm united with him.
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But when I talk about repentance and faith, I don't get to choose what
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I repent from. God does. Repentance is a turning away from and a turning to.
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I turn away from my self -guided life, my love of my sin, and I turn toward God, and he determines what that means.
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Jesus said, if you'll be my disciple, you must take up your cross, deny yourself, and follow me.
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Now, taking up a cross today, no one really knows what that means, but in that day, everybody knew what it meant. When you took up a cross, you were joining the death march.
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You were going to your own death. A Christian is a person who's died with Christ.
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They've died to the things of this world, and now they live only to Jesus Christ. And if Jesus Christ says, give your life for me, we have absolutely, positively no choice.
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We're his servants. He owns us, every aspect of us. Radical message.
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You might be sitting there saying, you're actually telling me that you believe a guy who lived 2 ,000 years ago was actually the creator of the entire universe, and he lived in a backwards place, never went to Athens or Rome, and he died on a
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Roman cross, and that you live your entire life in light of him. Yep, that's exactly what I'm saying to you. And that message has united people from every single language and every single land together in one group called the
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Body of Christ, and it's been happening for 2 ,000 years. That's why we're here this evening.
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And so what we call you to, if you have never bowed the knee to Jesus Christ, and I mean bow the knee, I don't mean literally get down.
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You can do that if you want. But to recognize he is who he claimed to be, if you've never bowed the knee to Jesus Christ, that's what we're calling you to do.
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Because that's the only way of eternal life. That's the only way of forgiveness. That's the only way to be ready to stand before a holy
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God, is to abandon all your stuff and trust solely in him.
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That's the gospel that Paul said, don't touch it. Don't touch it.
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It's holy. It has to be for us the thing we value the greatest, because it's what's given us eternal life.