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Going Deeper

Going Deeper

No other Gospel (1-3-15)

Grab your Bible, and let’s go deeper into Galatians 1.

Read: Galatians 1:1-5

In this opening salutation, Paul gets right to preaching the Gospel to the people in Galatia.

What is the Gospel?   

-It is the truth that God reigns supreme over all created things.  Everything is from Him, through Him, to Him, and is for His glory forever and ever: that’s Romans 11.

– It is the truth that man has turned away from God’s glory in sin to make their lives about their own glory; man worships the idol of Creation instead of God: that’s Romans 1 & 3.

– It is the truth that because of our sin, we deserve the righteous eternal wrath of God: that’s Romans 6.

– It is the truth that by God’s amazing grace, He saves sinners by the perfect shed blood of His Son: that’s Romans 3.

– It is the truth that those whom God gives ears to hear and eyes to see,  who repent of sin and self and trust wholly in Jesus Christ alone for salvation and lordship, He justifies and adopts as His own for eternity: that’s Romans 8.

According to the authority of SCRIPTURE ALONE, we are saved by GRACE ALONE

through FAITH ALONE in CHRIST ALONE for the GLORY OF GOD ALONE

This is THE GOOD NEWS.   The word gospel means “News.”     THE GOSPEL OF JESUS = “THE” GOOD NEWS!

There is no other news that has been or ever will ever be bigger then this.

The scriptures teach us there is only one true GOSPEL!

The only one way to have lasting joy, real hope, total pardon from sin, and life everlasting with God is Jesus!

Only Jesus perfectly lived the life you and I failed to live;

Only Jesus paid the penalty in death that you and I should pay for eternity;

Only Jesus produces in us the redeemed life you and I could never attain on our own.

This is THE GOOD NEWS!

But the problem in Galatia is new Christians are being taught there is more to it than… Jesus!

This is a problem we still face today.

Read Galatians 1:6-7  

What is a False Gospel?  

It is any “news” that proclaims to change your life based on a savior or lord who is not Jesus Christ.

It is any “news” that proclaims to change your life with a different instruction or revelation that is not God’s Holy Word.

Some False Gospels are easy to recognize, because they are proclamations from Looney Ville.

But many are harder to discern, because they claim Scripture and Jesus to be central to their belief.

Many False Gospels are simply perversions or variations of the one true Gospel.

What they will say is, “Oh we are God’s people. We believe in the Bible too. We believe in Jesus.”

What they do is take the Scriptures and then lay another teaching or extra biblical revelation over them.

For example:

-Mormons will claim the Holy Scriptures and Jesus, but then lay the revelation of Joseph Smith over them.

-Jehovah’s Witnesses will claim the Scriptures, but lay the teachings of Charles Taze Russel and the Watchtower Society over them.

-Christian Scientists will lay the teachings of Science and Health from Mary Baker Eddy over the Scriptures.

Whatever the agenda (Socialism/Marxism, Prosperity Capitalism, Moralistic Therapeutic Deism, etc.), take your “ism,” take its primary teacher, and that team’s primary motivations or goals, and add it to or lay it over the scripture, and you have a false Gospel.

A false Gospel is any teaching that is not solely rooted in the living Word of God and the authority and work alone of Jesus Christ.

It is any teaching that doesn’t say with clarity that all of us are wicked and dead in our sin!

We are without hope for life or even the ability to pursue life apart from the atoning work of Jesus’s life, death and resurrection and the sovereign work of the living God who redeems his people for his eternal glory and our eternal Joy!

Paul is bringing a very important clarity, which is:

The Gospel of Jesus is not inclusive.  It is exclusive.  Jesus alone is the way, the truth and the life!  That is not an inclusive statement.  The cross of Christ cannot and does not “COEXIST” with or “INCLUDE” any other religion.

This is an aggressive denial of a common modern belief called Universalism or Pluralism!

Universalism says everyone who dies will go to heaven and be reconciled to God.  Pluralism says all religious paths are equally valid and can and should coexist.

The common statement by grieving people who have lost love ones is, “They are in a better place”, even though that person has no redemption for their sin by the substitutional atonement of Jesus Christ. They have no true repentance and belief in Jesus alone.

à Still, people cling to the False Gospel that their loved ones will be accepted because they were generally thought of as a good person.   Hear this today very clearly:  There is no accurate biblical teaching that a person can go on rejecting the gospel of Christ and still be saved.

There are other man-made religions besides Christianity,

and there are other man-ordained leaders besides Jesus Christ,

but there is no other Gospel,  no other good news of salvation.

This is what Paul is fired up about. People in Galatia were being lied to and led astray.

The False Gospel Paul was specifically confronting was the Judiazers’ teaching that in addition to Jesus, you need to be circumcised and act like a Jew to be right with God.

Instead of the Good News being, Jesus saves us by his power, they were teaching:

  1. it is Jesus’s work 2.  and you also need to ….(fill in the blank)

This is “Jesus +” language.  This is a false Gospel!

This teaching is adding to what the Scriptures clearly teach: Jesus alone saves us and redeems us.   We can do nothing to help or assist our salvation.

Ephesians 2:8-9: For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast.

Anytime you hear someone say you need JESUS plus something else…STOP and be warned!

All we need is Jesus! Period. That is the Good News. Jesus paid it all.  It is an undeserved gift of epic proportions.

It is Jesus work for Jesus’s glory, and it is our utter privilege to be called by God into it.

There is nothing else you and I can do. The Bible says even our faith is a gift from God.

Philippians 1:29 For it has been granted to you that for the sake of Christ you should not only believe in him but also suffer for his sake.

God made it this way so that He gets all the glory, and not you or me.  He made it this way so we have nothing to boast in.

I encourage people all the time to stop testifying, “This is the day I accepted Jesus.”  I encourage this not only because it is not a biblical statement, but also because in the smallest way, it is a boasting in oneself.  “Let me tell you about the day that I did this.”

Instead, I encourage people to proclaim, “This is the day that God saved me.”

This way, all praise and glory goes to God!   “He pursued me while I was His enemy; God chose me and awakened my depraved heart of stone to see and savor His Gospel; Jesus did the work I could not do and claimed for me eternal victory and right standing with God.  All praise to God!”

We have nothing to brag about.  Only Jesus!

The Good News is JESUS!   Nothing else!

It is not Jesus plus something else. He is our end! Our victory! Our greatest JOY!

Jesus is not the means to another end! He is the prize!

Why is the Gospel of Jesus THE Good News?    One word: GRACE!    Look at verse 3-5 again.

-Did you and I do anything to deserve the Son of God to come to earth and be tortured in our place so we could be pardoned from our selfish rebellion against him?  NO!

-Was he obligated to do this anyway?   NO.

That’s why it is called Grace!   Grace is: An undeserved gift from an unobligated giver!

If you want to sum up Christianity, what distinguishes it from everything else is The Gospel of Grace.

We are saved by grace, which means by nothing we have done.

What the Judiazers were teaching the Galatians is that they needed to “do” something else to be in the true family of God.

They needed to get circumcised and act like Jews.

Next, Paul says we are to look very carefully for those who proclaim false gospels, even among those who claim to be in the church or who claim to be connected to God.

Read: Galatians 1:8-9 

Many modern day self-proclaimed Christian teachers, preachers, and churches are the greatest danger to true Christianity.  False teachers trying to satisfy fleshly desires will preach false gospels to gather a crowd, get rich and start a movement.

Brothers, just because it’s on TV, or just because it is a big church, or just because the leader is a famous preacher doesn’t mean the true Gospel is what is being preached.  The worst thing we could do is think, “They talk about Jesus, so it can’t be that bad.”  No, it CAN be that bad: bad enough to convince lost people who are under God’s wrath they are saved when they are not.

The testimony we are called to bring to the lost in the MC world is not one of pandering to others’ man-made beliefs that somehow they are good with God because of their (fill in the blank) point of view. Instead, our call is to testify the true, life altering, exclusive Gospel of Jesus Christ alone to them and trust in God’s perfect will and timing to set them free.

Finally, Read Galatians 1:10 

Let me ask you:  Who are you trying to please?

Often, we are working so hard to try to please someone else, to win the approval of man.

We desire to be accepted by our loved ones, our work associates, our brothers, other clubs, so we can be known and liked.

Often, we are looking to meet the approval of ourselves.  Trying so hard to get to a level of life we think we should be at, such as the way you look, your intelligence, the bike you ride, the accomplishments you have made, the success of your kids.

God is whispering to you through this passage today,  “There is no other Gospel.”

There is no other GOOD NEWS you can get from anyone else or you can tell yourself that will ultimately satisfy you and eternally save you from deserved eternal death.

Jesus is the only one who ultimately pleased God and the Good News is He satisfied God’s perfect wrath on our behalf so we could be a part of the family forever.

In Christ, we have a new identity!  We are accepted because of what Christ alone has done.

This is the Good News of JESUS!

Like Paul, the greatest joy in my life is to be a servant of Jesus: to be a solider for Jesus!

–Soldiers, hold fast to and proclaim no other gospel than “Christ alone.”

By His grace and for His glory,

-Shepherd / Soldiers for Jesus MC / Bakersfield CA

 

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