Galatians - Why The Gospel & God's Word Must Be Defended - Andy Cain

God Centered Theology

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Once the devil was walking along with one of his cohorts, and they saw a man ahead of them picking up something shiny.

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"'What did he find?' asked the cohort. "'A piece of the truth,' the devil replied.

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"'Well, doesn't it bother you that he found a piece of the truth?' asked the cohort. "'Nah,' said the devil.

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"'I will see to it that he makes a whole religion out of it.'" Because you see, truth taken out of context and twisted is the basis for many a false teaching in many false religions.

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You see, in every period of time since man was created by God, the devil has been working to get man to question

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God's holy and inerrant word. It started in the garden when the serpent, devil in the serpent, asked

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Eve, "'Has God really said?' And it's continued throughout all the generations.

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And today the word of God and the gospel of Jesus Christ seems to be attacked with more ferocity than ever before.

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One has to look no further than the news with all the false gospels infiltrating, and we covered that when we looked at chapter 1 of Galatians, so it won't bear repeating today.

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Satan always goes after the foundation of the Christian faith. You see, he's perfectly fine with someone believing a half -truth or part of the truth, just as long as they do not get and believe the whole truth and believe in the authority of Scripture.

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Satan is perfectly fine with man -made religion. He's perfectly fine with people filling up churches and believing things, quote -unquote, about God.

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We see this in some of the largest churches. I'm thinking of one in Texas fills it up every Sunday, only to never really crack a

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Bible, never speak of repentance or life and eternal righteousness in Christ, but just simply how to be the champion inside of you.

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And he's perfectly fine with all that, just as long as you do not believe what God has said in His Word. And you see,

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Satan, he gets quite a bit of joy out of it. He gets quite a bit of joy out of people professing

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Christ, but denying His Word by how they live and by how they operate. You see, every false religion is born out of Satan's desire to purposely twist and pervert the very

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Word of God. God's people of every time, including the day and age in which we live, must stand for truth, stand for the

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Word of God and for the Gospel, because it's the only Gospel, as we saw in chapter 1 of Galatians, that can truly save.

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In fact, I told you that any other Gospel that purports to be the Gospel that is not the

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Gospel of Jesus Christ is really not a Gospel at all. It's a false Gospel. In fact,

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Paul asked Him, he said, why are you so quickly deserting the Gospel which I preach to you? Why are you letting these

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Judaizers disturb you with another Gospel which is really not another Gospel? There's countless false

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Gospels. There's countless ways in which this world, fueled by Satan, who is the God of this world, intends to purposely twist and pervert

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Scripture. And the same was true for Paul's day. Think about the situation in which he finds himself as we begin chapter 2.

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He receives his revelation completely and uniquely straight from the Lord Jesus Christ on the road to Damascus.

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He went a period of three years before he even seen any of the disciples. Then there's this other period we're going to see in just a minute in verse 1 of chapter 2 when he says, then after an interval of 14 more years

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I went up to Jerusalem. So, before he goes to Jerusalem, which is in Acts chapter 15, the

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Jerusalem council that transpires where they deal with the nonsense that the Judaizers were putting out there.

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Before he even gets to that point, 17 years have gone by. And so naturally people would be like, well, you know, who is this guy?

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You remember at the end of chapter 1 it said, he says in verse 22, I was still unknown by sight to the churches of Judea, which were in Christ, but only that they kept hearing he who once persecuted us is now preaching the faith which he once tried to destroy.

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And they were glorifying God because of me. So to a large degree, these churches had not yet seen

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Paul, but they have heard of him. And so naturally they wanted to make sure what gospels is he preaching?

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What is it he's teaching? Is it in accordance with Scripture? Is it in accordance with the gospel that Jesus Christ taught us?

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And so this section in chapter 2 verses 1 -10 is the initial point in which Paul is telling about how he had to put forth his teaching and show that it was consistent, not just with the apostles and the disciples, but also with Christ and also with Scripture.

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And so the same is true for Paul's day, that attack on Scripture, that attack on the gospel. And it's also an attack on the freedom that we have in Christ.

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And it is that backdrop that this letter to the Galatians is written. Paul makes it clear in this letter, and we're going to see this more when

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I'm back with you in two weeks as we continue to move forward in the letter. But Paul makes it abundantly clear that the

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Word of God does not teach what the Judaizers were teaching. You see they were teaching that one must still be circumcised, that one must still keep the law along with faith in Christ to be saved.

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They were sort of doing this hybrid thing, it was weird. It wasn't fully Judaism because Judaism would reject

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Christ as Messiah. It wasn't fully Christian because Christianity, based on the clear teaching of Scripture, would obviously reject a keeping of the law.

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In fact, there's one really interesting meme that is on Facebook a lot, and it shows a picture of this man, he's called the

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Judaizer, and he's got this humongous boulder. I mean it's obviously something he could not have picked up, but it shows him struggling to pick it up.

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And on the boulder it says, The Law. And then it shows a picture of Christ over to the side, it says, Grace.

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And it's so amazing to me that man so often wants to keep going back to this boulder, and to the law, and to what none of us would be justified by anyway.

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But in some fashion, in some way in our minds, we keep trying to convince ourselves, well

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I can do it, I can have my own self -righteousness, I'll have that personal favor with God, look at who

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I am, look at my status, look how much money I got, or look at this, it won't matter.

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It won't matter. It'll never justify you before a righteous and holy God. Only the very righteousness and the blood of Jesus Christ can do that.

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And so Paul made this clear, what the true gospel is, that it's justification by faith alone.

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You see what was at stake in Paul's day, what is at stake in our day, is not some lower level issue, or something that's not clearly or fully revealed that can be debated, obviously without division.

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There are certainly those things. What was being attacked in Paul's day, and what is being attacked in our day, are the very definitional issues that define the historic

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Christian faith, which was once for all handed down to the saints. An example of this would be creation.

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The definitional and foundational issue that is clearly revealed in Scripture that unites all

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Christians is the fact that God created the heavens and the earth. Evolution is a myth.

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It's not real. There's no deistic or theistic evolution. There's none of that.

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God created the heavens and the earth, period. The debatable issue that should never divide any

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Christians, you'll have some that will believe in an old earth, and they'll link cosmic and human history in that regard and say that both human history and cosmic history is relatively young and short, 6 -8 ,000 years, somewhere in that regard.

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Evolution obviously takes the other extreme example that cosmic and human history by necessity must be millions upon millions of years old.

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But then you also have some Christians like myself that sees no basis in the Word of God to link human and cosmic history.

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Science and cosmic history speaks for itself, hundreds of millions, if not billions of years old.

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But human history, based on the Word of God and based on science, it's very evident that human history is not that old.

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Human history is, in my opinion, at most 8, maybe 9 ,000, if you really stretch it, years old.

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There's no need to link the two. Now, good Christians can debate that. I have some recent creationists that I know, and we don't talk about this very often because we've said all that can be said about it.

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There's really no need to keep rehashing it. But they disagree with me. But we both agree that God created...

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Not everything in Scripture is foundational and definitional, but it's all inerrant, inspired and authoritative.

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So while there are some issues that good Christians can disagree on, that's not what

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Paul was dealing with here. And it's not what we're dealing with in our day. It is an attack on the very foundation of Scripture, the inspiration of Scripture.

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It's an attack on the inerrancy of Scripture. You see all these false gospels attacking the very core of who

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Christ is, His deity, whether He was the only uniquely qualified Savior, the only one that could make the payment for sin.

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You see an attack on God as Creator. You see this when they try to tell you there's more than two genders.

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I hate to break it to you. It's funny how so many of us as Christians are told we're anti -science, but in that very realm of the issue of genders, the ones telling us there's more than two are going against science to tell you there's more than two genders.

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There's not. He created them male and female. That's foundational and definitional to Scripture.

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And it is that basis that we stand on. I'm not going to fall on the sword, or take a bullet in the head, or get put in jail the rest of my life arguing over whether the earth is young or old.

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I have very strong views on it, and I believe I can back it up. But I'm not going to do that. If the tax man standing out in front of our church today and says, if you go in there and believe like you do about creation,

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I'm going to raise your taxes, well, I'm going to come on here and take my raised taxes because God created the heavens and earth.

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But if he stands out there and says, well, if you believe in a young earth, I'm going to tax you. Like, dude, really? I mean, y 'all got to sit down here for this?

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No. The things that we're willing to fall on the sword for, the things that we'd be willing to be martyrs for, are those things that are most clearly revealed, the foundational, the definitional issues of the historic

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Christian faith. Authority of Scripture, deity of Christ, justification by faith, which

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Paul addresses in Galatians, the Trinity, the triune God, all these things that are most clearly, the most fully revealed, the things in which there are not only no doubt, but there's no question, going and dating back all throughout history in God's people.

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And it is to that end that we find ourselves in chapter 2 as we move quickly through these first couple of verses in Galatians.

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In chapter 2 verse 1 it says, Then after an interval of fourteen years, I went up again to Jerusalem, with Barnabas taking

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Titus along also. Now, for context purposes, this is right along in coinciding with the book of Acts here at Acts chapter 15.

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And in Acts chapter 15 verse 1 it says, Some men came down from Judea and began teaching the brethren,

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Unless you are circumcised according to the custom of Moses, you cannot be saved. So, you see in our context here, we have the direct correlation with Acts chapter 15, and this is the backdrop he's using, and this is the understanding of the point in time where we find ourselves in Galatians 2.

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Because Paul's saying, look, this wasn't just some, you know, absent -minded ignorance.

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This wasn't just, you know, a mistake. This wasn't just, well, we had a misinterpretation and took further study.

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These men came down with the express purpose of teaching a perverted gospel, teaching something that was contrary to the

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Word of God. And so, notice what happens after that. It says, When Paul and Barnabas had great dissension and debate with them, so they naturally debated with them.

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Now, what was their thing that they debated? What was it that they were showing him? Well, the same thing that Paul points out to them in Galatians, the true gospel, the true

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Word of God. The way you know error is by knowing the truth. If you don't know the truth, you won't be able to spot error.

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And so, in Galatians here, going back over there, in verse 2, it says, It was because of a revelation that I went up, and he says,

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And I submitted to them the gospel. Now, this word submitted means to lay forth a case, to lay out your case.

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It'd be sort of like in a jury trial or something like that.

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Your prosecutor will lay out his case, and your defense will lay out their case and say, This is what I'm going to show you.

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This is what I'm here to tell you. I'm going to prove this to you. So Paul goes up, and he submits to them his case, because they don't know where he's coming from.

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They're like, This guy could be teaching something just as crazy as his Judaizers. And they were trying to claim that Paul really wasn't part of the apostles.

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He wasn't really a disciple. He wasn't really part of the apostles. This is some rogue agent out there.

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I mean, can we really even trust him anyway? I mean, after all, he was killing Christians. Are we doubly sure he's not going to do that?

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I mean, he could be just pulling one on us to get in good with us, and as soon as we got our backs turned, he's going to kill every one of us.

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He submitted the true Word of God to them. He submitted the true gospel to them. And he says,

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I submitted the gospel to them, which the same gospel, he says, which I preach among the Gentiles.

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The same gospel he had already been preaching for 17 years. He says,

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I've been consistent. My life shows it. There's that real and true transformation and change.

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And he says, I have nothing to preach to you but the gospel of Jesus Christ. Notice he says,

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I did so in private to those who have reputation for fear that I might have been running or had run in vain.

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The reason he went to the elders and the apostles and these leaders in private first was not by mistake.

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He did it for a reason. You see, Paul wanted to ensure that the leaders and elders at this particular place had not been corrupted by this false teaching.

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You see, these Judaizers, and not just them, but when you look at John's writing and 1

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John dealing with the Gnostics and all these people, there was just so much corruption and false teaching.

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And it's really no different today. Gnosticism takes on different form, but it's still alive and well. But he wanted to go to these leaders because since elders have the responsibility of the teaching in the church, he wanted to make sure, see if their doctrine and teaching was corrupted, then the people's understanding of Scripture would have been corrupted as well.

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So, Paul wanted to make doubly sure before they went out into public dealing with the issue of the

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Judaizers. He wanted to make sure that the teachers and the leaders and the elders' doctrine and teaching was clear and right in accordance with Scripture first.

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So there's a reason why he did things the way he did. Now notice, in submitting to them the

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Gospel, that Paul opposes man's wisdom and false teaching, not with his own wisdom, not with just another opinion of man, but with the truth of God's Word.

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The truth of God's revelation. Man's teaching will always seek to exalt and glorify himself.

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You see it in every man -made religion. It's always about, well, this leader, or this teacher, and that's why you've got to really be careful in Christian circles.

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You never want to have a church that's a cult of personality, where it's all about the pastor and that guy, like, look, he's a sinner too, okay?

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I am. We're all sinners. It's never about, it's like I said in the prayer earlier,

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I'm the waiter, God's the origin and the cook of the meal, I bring it to the table. It's not my message, it's

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God's. And you get in so much trouble in churches when elders get prideful and they turn it and start exalting or seeking to glorify themselves, and it turns into a man -made religion.

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And that was the issue here, because man always seeks to exalt and glorify himself, but see, the truth of the

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Word of God, which is preached not just by preachers, but by all Christians who live that life like Christ, never make the mistake to think that you don't preach.

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You may not preach a sermon per se, but your life will preach a sermon. And if your life is preaching the sermon that comes from the

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Word of God, it will only exalt God, and it will only exalt Christ and seek to glorify

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Him. Then notice in verse 3 it says, But not even Titus, who we have a letter written to him later in the

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New Testament, who was with me, though he was a Greek, was compelled to be circumcised. And this is one of those things where I say a lot of times, you know, we fly through Scripture so fast, we don't really see things, and you really have to slow down.

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Notice what it's saying here. Paul goes to these people, submits them in the Gospel, and look, we get our first result here.

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Titus, who was a Greek, was not compelled to be circumcised. So notice that as a result of that Jerusalem Council, which took place in Acts chapter 15,

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Titus was not required to be circumcised. Well the Judaizers are over here teaching that you've got to be circumcised, you've got to follow the law to be saved.

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Well the Christian elders and apostles got together and said, is that what the Word of God teaches? Well no.

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And as a result, you don't have to be circumcised. No. Because it would have been contrary to the

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Gospel. It would have been contrary to the Word of God. So as a result,

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Titus is not compelled to be circumcised. And notice in verse 4 it says, but it was because of the false brethren.

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And this word, false brethren, could also be translated as sham Christians. The understanding of, it's sort of like the same vein as hypocrisy, it's the idea of you're playing a part, or putting on a mask, or it's not really who you are.

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You profess to be what you really aren't. It was because of the false brethren, secretly brought in, who had sneaked in to spy out our liberty, which we have in Christ Jesus, in order to bring us into bondage.

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You see the reason for this council that occurred in Acts 15, and the reason for Paul's efforts that he's outlining here in Galatians chapter 2, was because of false brethren, fueled by Satan, who came in with the express purpose of attempting to bring

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Christians back into legalistic bondage, or slavery. And you've got to be very careful with that.

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There's a difference between, say, you take something like what the Bible teaches about modesty, and you need to dress modestly, you need to present yourself modestly, and then going in and actually defining where you can do this, but you can't do that.

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Or, taking something like one of the fruits of the Spirit, and saying you should be these things, but then trying to legalistically define and dictate to every

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Christian, well you have to do it like this, but not like this. You've got to be very careful. Where the Word of God ends is where our teaching ends.

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We don't need to be going into people's private matters between them and the Holy Spirit, and dictating past what the

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Word of God would teach. Now, when the Word of God does speak on something, it's always the final authority.

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But a lot of the legalistic bondage is going beyond Scripture. So the Judaizers are no different, right?

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See, they take the plain teaching of the Gospel, and they add to it the Law. They add to it circumcision.

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They add to it whatever the Pharisees were teaching at the time. You've got to strip all that away because it's not

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Gospel. And that's what Paul's submitting to them. He said, that's not Gospel, that's not truth, that's error.

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Take it all away because it's not true. And it's because not just, you know, and you always see this when they're confronted, well, hey,

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I'm sorry, I guess I just got, no, it wasn't one of those situations. They knew what they were doing.

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This wasn't blind ignorance. This was purposeful. This was intentional. This was satanic.

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You see, Paul warned about these false brethren in Acts chapter 20. If you want to turn there with me in Acts chapter 20, right before he's about to leave a certain area, he gathered all the elders together with him and he gave them some final instructions.

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In Acts chapter 20, verse 28, he says, be on guard, or you could also translate this, pay careful attention to.

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So pay careful attention, or be on guard for yourselves and for all the flock among which the

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Holy Spirit has made you overseers, to shepherd the church of God which he purchased with his own blood.

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He says, I know that after my departure, savage wolves, this word savage wolves means an impressive wolf, a violent wolf, not something that, you know, just looking for a nice little meal, you know, getting dark, getting a little tired, think

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I'll go to the fridge one more time, grab me a nice little rabbit, a little squirrel, and I'll go on to bed.

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No, this is violent, oppressive. This is like, anybody seen Lion King, the live action or the, all right.

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He's in a lion suit when Scar takes over, right? What does Mufasa tell him? Your method of hunting will not work because you violently go after meals, you seek to devour everything you can, and for long the herds are just going to leave.

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Well you fast forward in the movie, spoiler alert, all the herds go away because Mufasa's way of going about it was the correct way.

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It wasn't just, he wasn't there to be that violent oppressor that Scar was. Yes, that's right, we just had a

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Lion King reference in a sermon. Yes, I have accomplished all my life goals. But this wasn't what that was.

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These were violent oppressors and they came in for this reason. He warns them, and notice what he says, these savage wolves will come in among you, not sparing the flock.

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And then this is the more dangerous part here. He says, and from among your own selves, men will arise speaking perverse or twisted things to draw away disciples after them.

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You see, as much as people may claim, and you've got so much false stuff out there on TV, and on the internet, and just everywhere, and it's all, well we're just trying to preach this, or that, no!

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If you're preaching falsehood and you know it's wrong and you continue to do it, you're no different than these people described here.

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Because you always see the end result, it's never to point them towards Christ, it's never to point them to exalt and glorify

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God, it's just as Paul says here, it's Luke the writer recording what

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Paul said, that they are looking, and their end goal is to draw away, so they're taking from the flock of Christ, which

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He purchased with His own blood, to draw away disciples after their own teaching. And that's what these

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Judaizers were doing. That's why Paul and the other apostles in his Jerusalem council were so adamant about stopping it, and nipping it in the bud and saying, this is error, this is false, this is not what we're about, because they knew why they were there.

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And just in passing, let me, before I say, before we move on, it's very key to understand it says, the

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Church of God, which He purchased with His own blood, never ever forget that it will always be, it always is, and it can never be anything other than God and Christ's Church.

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It's not the pastor's church, the deacon's church, the guy that greets the people at the door, whoever it is, it will never be anybody's church but Christ's Church, because He's the one that purchased it with His own blood.

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When we ever go on a cross and purchase it with our own blood, then we can say it's ours. But until that day comes, it will always be

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Christ's Church, which He purchased with His own blood. So, how do we know?

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Paul's saying there's these secret and false brethren coming in, he's saying, that's error, this is truth.

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Well, how did he know? How do we know? What's the dividing line, so to speak? Well, it's the

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Word of God. The Word of God is the dividing line. It is how you know truth from error.

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It is how you know what is true so you won't be drawn away by error. Notice in verse 5,

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Paul says, "...but we did not yield in subjection to them for even an hour, for even a moment, didn't even give it consideration."

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Why? "...so that the truth of the gospel would remain with you." This word translated, remain, in the

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New American Standard means something that's permanent. You remember in Galatians chapter 1 when He said, why are you paying attention to these people that are disturbing you?

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And I told you that that word disturbing was a word in the Greek that meant something that's meant to be settled, that's been twisted up and agitated and set in motion.

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It's sort of the same understanding, but it's just simply referring to the fact that the gospel is meant to be settled.

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It's meant to be permanent, because it's the Word of God. God says, I change not. I same yesterday, today, and forever,

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Jesus Christ is. It's meant to be permanent. While methods of discipleship and evangelism and cultures change over time, and we obviously live very differently now than they did a hundred years ago, the message of the gospel, the message of the truth of Scripture never changes.

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Never changes. And notice He says, we did not yield to them. We did not submit to anything they were teaching at all.

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Why? Because what they were teaching was in contradiction to Scripture. It was in contradiction to the gospel.

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They weren't teaching justification by faith alone. They were teaching justification by faith.

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Oh, well they would give lip service to faith, but what they really wanted to make sure was, are you circumcised?

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Are you keeping the law? And it isn't really, are you keeping the law according to Scripture? Are you keeping it based on my standards?

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Because in Acts 15, if you go down a couple of verses past one and two, which I read earlier, you'll notice

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He'll say that some of the sect of the Pharisees stand up and say, hold on a minute, you better make sure they're circumcised.

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And Peter and Paul and all of them say, uh -uh, no sir. No sir. We believe that we are justified by our faith in Christ, not by your law, not by circumcision, by faith.

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And that's why He says, we did not yield to them. We will not submit to them. Because what they're teaching is error, it's satanic.

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It's contradiction of God's Word. That's the dividing line. You see that's the test. Scripture is always the final authority in the

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Christian Church. It means if you have something over here, and something over here, and they don't agree, whatever

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Scripture says, that's what you go with. It's been like that through all the ages of the Church. It's always been the authority of Scripture and the

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Trinity and the deity of Christ, all these things. And that's why He said we didn't yield to them.

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You know, when we saw this, you remember the last couple of sermons about the I Am statements of Jesus?

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We saw this very clearly taught by the Lord Jesus Himself. You remember?

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John chapter 14, let's see what Jesus Christ Himself says about it. He says in John chapter 14, verse 15, "'If you love

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Me, you will keep My commandments.'" Verse 21 He says, "'He who has My commandments and keeps them is the one who loves

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Me.'" And then verse 23, "'Jesus answered and said to them, "'If anyone loves Me, he will keep My word.'"

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Jesus defines for us what the true love of God looks like. It's loving Him with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength, and keeping

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His word, and loving His word, and wanting to be obedient to it. Not out of a legalistic bondage or a legalistic slavery that these

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Judaizers and these Pharisees and these false teachers wanted to put the

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Christian people under. But out of a true love and faith and gratitude for your

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Savior. I don't do what I do as a Christian first, as a

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Christian father, as a Christian husband, as a Christian pastor. You wouldn't do what you do as a

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Sunday school superintendent, Christian husband, and father, and all the different roles that you all play.

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We don't do these things because it's a legalistic duty. Like somehow I'm going to stand before God one day and say, man, did

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I not do such and such in your name? He'll say, I never knew you. I never knew you.

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Who are you? I only recognize those that are washed in the blood of Jesus. My son. That's why it's so important.

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It's so vitally important that we tell all of our friends and our family, anything other than the true gospel of Scripture will not save you.

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It won't. And you'll be in hell wishing that you had believed in the only

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Savior. Lastly, in verses six through nine, this is our last stop for this morning.

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Galatians 2, six through nine says, but from those who were of high reputation, what they were makes no difference to me.

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God shows no partiality. Well, those who are of reputation contributed nothing to me. This is just a way of Paul saying,

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I submitted them to the gospel that I had preached for all these years. This is what I'm all about.

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This is what I'm teaching. And they added nothing to it. That's basically what he's saying. They said, yep, we're cool, and we're going to see it in a minute because they said, skipping down to verse nine, the middle of the verse there, it says, they gave to me in Barnabas the right hand of fellowship.

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They extended that hand of fellowship. This is another important thing that's a sermon for another day.

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But when you talk about who has fellowship, who has fellowship among the believers, who is it that is in fellowship?

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John deals with this a lot. He said, these Gnostics that are coming in, they don't have fellowship with Christians. Why?

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Was it because they believed about some random thing that's not really clearly drawn? No, because of their faith in Christ, because they were teaching something else.

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We have fellowship one with another because of who we are in Christ. So you're either, there's two types of people in the world.

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You're either in the ship of Adam, or lost and dead in sins and trespasses.

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Or you're in Christ, you're set free, set free from the bondage of sin, set free from the bondage of law to live fully and freely, to love your savior, to serve him, be sanctified in him.

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And so he says, they added nothing to what I was saying because everything he said was true. Verse seven, but on the contrary, seeing that I had been entrusted with the gospel to the uncircumcised.

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Paul, if you remember, went out to the Gentiles. A lot of the other disciples stayed and preached to the

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Jewish people. So he points out that distinction here. He says, I'm the one that went to the uncircumcised or to the

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Gentiles, just as Peter had been to the circumcised or to the

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Jewish people. For he, meaning the Holy Spirit, who effectually worked for Peter in his apostleship to the circumcised, effectually worked for me also to the

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Gentiles. So let me explain what he's saying. What he's saying is that the Holy Spirit, who worked in Peter to the

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Jewish people, also worked and produced results in me to the Gentiles.

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What's the commonality? What's the thing they had the same?

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I can see on some of your faces, you know what's coming, it's the gospel. They had the same gospel.

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They preached the same Christ. They preached the same word of God. That's what they had in common.

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You see, the Holy Spirit doesn't just equip some.

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He equips all Christians. He equips Ephesians 4, the saints, for the work of ministry.

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And He will effectually, meaning He will produce all the results He has decreed and intended to produce in you when we are submitted to the word of God and following the words of Christ and understanding what we should be preaching and teaching and living out.

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You will not see these results if you are in disobedience to the word of God or not submitted to the word of God.

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The reason Paul and Peter had such grand ministries and such great results is because they fought for, they defended, and they taught scripture, the word of God.

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They defended Christ, the divine author of scripture. They defended the justification by faith.

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They defended it all. And He, the Holy Spirit, and they recognized the grace that had been given to me because after all,

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Paul, just like all of us, we have everything we are is by the grace of God.

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And he said, James and Cephas and John, who were reputed to be pillars, gave to me and Barnabas the right hand of fellowship so that we might go to the

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Gentiles and be circumcised. Two or three thoughts and I close.

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Barnabas were given this right hand of fellowship and recognized to be true and faithful brethren, not because of anything in and of themselves, but because they were teaching the truth.

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They were living the truth and they were defending the truth. In a day and age where there are so many false teachings, so many false religions, so many arrows coming our direction from Satan, in an attempt to destroy the church, ruin our witness, we need to recommit ourselves to God and His holy and inspired word, to the only true gospel, which is found in the word of God.

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We need to be committed to and studying the word of God before the battles come because that is the only way one can be ready when they do come and they will come.

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If you live for Christ, Christians, they will come and you need to be ready. Only God's word, only

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Christ's gospel comes from God and trust me when I say, it is worth defending because man will fail you, but God's word never will.