Apostolic Astonishment
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I am shocked that you are turning away so soon from God, who called you to himself through the loving mercy of Christ. You are following a different way that pretends to be the Good News but is not the Good News at all. You are being fooled by those who deliberately twist the truth concerning Christ.
Let God’s curse fall on anyone, including us or even an angel from heaven, who preaches a different kind of Good News than the one we preached to you. I say again what we have said before: If anyone preaches any other Good News than the one you welcomed, let that person be cursed.
Obviously, I’m not trying to win the approval of people, but of God. If pleasing people were my goal, I would not be Christ’s servant.
I. False teaching is real (S)
False teachers are spreading another gospel. To make matters worse, they are listening to them.
A. We see Jude dealing with false teaching as well. I think this illustrates my mentality today.
Dear friends, I had been eagerly planning to write to you about the salvation we all share. But now I find that I must write about something else, urging you to defend the faith that God has entrusted once for all time to his holy people.
B. Defend - to contend or to struggle for. An athletic word. Another way… to agonize for. The greek imagery should be seen as an agonizing athletic contest. So it goes to show why it is difficult to deal with false teaching today. It is agonizing. Many Christians today do want to do it either… we don’t like working out. But we are called to defend… always be ready to give an...
C. One of the reasons why… people need us to. I cannot tell you how many youth that I know that have given up the faith when they go to college. Or just one or two sermons by a false teacher. People walking away from Christ to follow other belief systems. I have watched people curse God and die miserable because of bad teaching and beliefs. What is even worse, many of them will go to hell because of it. It is hard and it is agonizing. What makes it really hard is that it happens so fast. Years of training gone in minutes.
D. I am astonished, I marvel, I am shocked… thaumazo. Amazed. It is the same word used to describe the reaction of the people when Christ did all of his wonderful miracles. The people were astonished… they were overwhelmed. Why so quickly? Now remember if there is one person who knows the depravity of man and how quickly we rush into evil… he witnessed it constantly. So for him to be be astonished by this is showing the gravity and seriousness of what is happening here.
E. The golden calf - 2 months. After telling your child not to do something… and the minute you turn around they do it. I am astonished.
F. Astonished that you are so soon removed… greek metatitheme. Metamorphosis. Change … or in the military sense “change ones allegiance” in other words a traitor. I am astonished that you so quickly became a traitor. Treason a defection. And I can’t believe it is happening from among you. But this is why Paul is indignant… the greatest threat is not from outside, but from the inside of the church.
The golden calf
G. If you look at the history of Israel … the ups and downs and especially it shames. You see times of real prosperity and time of real shame. And always and all times there are threats all around her and her borders are always dangerous. Enemies all around. Assyrians, Babylonians, Egyptians, the Phillistines, the Amalekites all ready to pounce and devour. Constantly exposed and threatened from outside. But if you look at the all of the downfalls of the nation of Israel, it was not from those outside…it came from within. The threat of the false prophet who leads the people of Israel into a false sense of security. To be at ease in their sin and their sinful beliefs. The ones who were killed first in Israel were the true prophets.
But there were also false prophets in Israel, just as there will be false teachers among you. They will cleverly teach destructive heresies and even deny the Master who bought them. In this way, they will bring sudden destruction on themselves.
H.
H. This is what we see this first part is about… the false teachers vs the true Apostle. From inside the church who will deceive with their destructive heresies telling people what they want to hear. That is the main tool of the false teacher… they tell them what they want to hear. Peace peace when there is no peace. Fight against that? Agonizing. The agony that Paul is feeling while he is writing this.
I. And it is happening so soon… this is hard for me personally. Hear Luther
(SLIDE) Martin Luther Galatians
Paul deplores the fact that it is difficult for the mind to retain a sound and steadfast faith. A man labors for a decade before he succeeds in training his little church into orderly religion, and then some ignorant and vicious poltroon comes along to overthrow in a minute the patient labor of years. By the grace of God we have effected here in Wittenberg the form of a Christian church. The Word of God is taught as it should be, the Sacraments are administered, and everything is prosperous. This happy condition, secured by many years of arduous labors, some lunatic might spoil in a moment. This happened in the churches of Galatia which Paul had brought into life in spiritual travail. Soon after his departure, however, these Galatian churches were thrown into confusion by the false apostles.
Paul deplores the fact that it is difficult for the mind to retain a sound and steadfast faith. A man labors for a decade before he succeeds in training his little church into orderly religion, and then some ignorant and vicious poltroon comes along to overthrow in a minute the patient labor of years. By the grace of God we have effected here in Wittenberg the form of a Christian church. The Word of God is taught as it should be, the Sacraments are administered, and everything is prosperous. This happy condition, secured by many years of arduous labors, some lunatic might spoil in a moment. This happened in the churches of Galatia which Paul had brought into life in spiritual travail. Soon after his departure, however, these Galatian churches were thrown into confusion by the false apostles.
The church is a tender plant. It must be watched. People hear a couple of sermons, scan a few pages of Holy Writ, and think they know it all. They are bold because they have never gone through any trials of faith. Void of the Holy Spirit, they teach what they please as long as it sounds good to the common people who are ever ready to join something new.
We have to watch out for the devil lest he sow tares among the wheat while we sleep. No sooner had Paul turned his back on the churches of Galatia, than the false apostles went to work. Therefore, let us watch over ourselves and over the whole church.
II. Another Gospel? (S)
It is a perversion of the real Gospel
A. We do realize that when a false teacher comes in they are not going to go hear ye hear ye come of come all and hear of my perversion of the glorious gospel of Jesus. Hear my heretical teaching. Every single heretic throughout all of church history has never ever claimed to be a heretic. They all thought that they were preaching the truth. They all were probably sincere. They all probably had good intentions. They were all good people according to history
B. But… Paul says, “You are being fooled by those who deliberately twist the truth concerning Christ.”
And remember, our Lord’s patience gives people time to be saved. This is what our beloved brother Paul also wrote to you with the wisdom God gave him—speaking of these things in all of his letters. Some of his comments are hard to understand, and those who are ignorant and unstable have twisted his letters to mean something quite different, just as they do with other parts of Scripture. And this will result in their destruction.
You are being fooled by those who deliberately twist the truth concerning Christ.
B. Paul is saying that there is no such thing as another gospel. There is only one gospel. There is not other gospel there is no second gospel. They are fooling us… they are twisting the truth. They are deceiving us.
For false messiahs and false prophets will rise up and perform great signs and wonders so as to deceive, if possible, even God’s chosen ones.
Oh but Shane how could they perform such things if they were not from God… none of their signs would come to pass or miracles would not happen. I think God lets it happen.
“Suppose there are prophets among you or those who dream dreams about the future, and they promise you signs or miracles, and the predicted signs or miracles occur. If they then say, ‘Come, let us worship other gods’—gods you have not known before—do not listen to them. The Lord your God is testing you to see if you truly love him with all your heart and soul. Serve only the Lord your God and fear him alone. Obey his commands, listen to his voice, and cling to him.
C. When you turn from the Gospel to another gospel which is no gospel, you do 3 things.
(S) You are deserting God Himself. v.6, “turning away so soon from God.” When you turn from the true gospel you are not simply turning away from a set of principles, theological inference, or an interpretation of scripture. You may have heard things like, I believe in Jesus, but I don’t care about theology or the Bible. I just want God. I just want to worship Go but I don’t care about knowing all the bible and theology stuff. The gospel, that we get from the Bible, and what we believe it means (theology), is necessary for us to know God and live and move and … in Him. To turn from the gospel and what it means is to turn away from God.
Disbelieving the Gospel or messing it up is no small thing. What we are going to see is that the teaching is not way out there. Look its not like their theology is way off. Paul is showing us that all it has to be is a little off. We will see this clearly as we progress.
turning away so soon from God,
But Shane so what… Jesus is my Lord.
“So why do you keep calling me ‘Lord, Lord!’ when you don’t do what I say?
But Shane … I love Jesus with all of my heart.
Jesus replied, “All who love me will do what I say. My Father will love them, and we will come and make our home with each of them.
John 14
2. (S) We turn from the Grace of God. v.6 “in the grace of Christ.” The Judaizers said the gospel was Jesus + Circumcision and OT Laws was the Gospel. Salvation is by grace alone through faith alone in Christ alone for God’s glory alone. Hear me when I say this…
(S)Jesus + Something = Nothing
The Gospel of Jesus is rather
(S)Jesus + Nothing = Everything
Jesus + Something is what is called “treadmill religion.” I do not like treadmill… the biggest reason… I run 2 miles in 30 minutes and I don’t go anywhere. No matter what we do, no matter how much or how hard we try, we will never get into the kingdom of heaven by our works. This is a lie and it will cause us to fall away from grace.
3.(S) We will be lost. v. 7 “not that there is another one.” We will have nowhere to go. Why? There is no other Gospel. NONE! This is it. If you don’t like it, to bad. There is no coexist. No roadway that leads to the same destination. All roads do not lead to Christ. I am the way the truth and the life, no one comes to the Father except through me. No other name under heaven by which man can be saved. Its not my word, it is God’s word.
not that there is another one.”We will have nowhere to go. Why? There is no other Gospel. NONE! This is it. If you don’t like it, to bad. There is no coexist. No roadway that leads to the same destination. All roads do not lead to Christ. I am the way the truth and the life, no one comes to the Father except through me. No other name under heaven by which man can be saved. Its not my word, it is God’s word.
False teachers have been using the we believe in Jesus line for centuries. But when you look deeper into what they believe, they believe another Gospel
Its really really sneaky… the way international.
III. Closing
III. Let
A. Many might feel that this is just Shane overreacting. Its not that bad out there. How do you know? And most people who have this mentality I could probably go to their hose and find false teaching somewhere.
B. Many people say I don’t need to do this… but I am doing my job!
“So guard yourselves and God’s people. Feed and shepherd God’s flock—his church, purchased with his own blood—over which the Holy Spirit has appointed you as leaders. I know that false teachers, like vicious wolves, will come in among you after I leave, not sparing the flock. Even some men from your own group will rise up and distort the truth in order to draw a following.
B. I heard a story once from a pastor who had a friend in the ministry as well. He surveyed his church and asked some key doctrinal questions. His church was in the Bible Belt and most of the people that attended went to church their whole lives. He found that 78 percent of the people believed that it is possible to go to heaven apart from believing in Jesus.
C. Do we all really believe that there is only one gospel? Are we sure that we know what it is? Could we recognize a false gospel if we heard it? I know that it is tiring to contend for the truth… to agonize for the gospel. As tired as I am of having to do this, I feel that the Gospel is worth it. All of our lives and the lives of our loved ones depend upon it.