An Astonishing Tragedy

Introduction

A few weeks ago, a well-known Evangelical Christian pastor and author, Joshua Harris, announced to the world that he was renouncing his Christian faith. Harris rose to prominence in 1997 with the publication of his book I Kissed Dating Goodbye, a book that sparked the “Purity Culture” movement of young people seeking to guard their sexual purity until marriage (a book that is in our church library here at Bethel). Harris grew up in the Pacific Northwest, the oldest of seven children of Gregg and Sono Harris, pioneers in the Christian homeschooling movement that still thrives today (several families here at Bethel—including mine—homeschool our kids). In 2004 he became the senior pastor of Covenant Life Church in Gaithersburg Maryland, the founding church of Sovereign Grace Ministries (some of our favorite worship songs here at Bethel come from Sovereign Grace.) He was a prolific author and regular contributor and speaker with The Gospel Coalition, often partnering with some of the most reliable and trustworthy ministers of our day—D.A. Carson, Tim Keller, John Piper, Justin Taylor (men whose work I regularly consult in my study and research for preaching and teaching). Joshua Harris grew up, lived and ministered at the epicenter of Evangelical, Bible-believing, God-glorifying, Christ-honoring, Gospel-savoring, grace-saturated Christianity.

And then it all started falling apart. Last year Harris participated in a documentary called I Survived ‘I Kissed Dating Goodbye’, in which he repudiated everything he had written about Christian dating and courtship, and pulled the book from publication. Earlier this year he went on to announce that he was divorcing Shannon, his wife of 21 years, with whom he had three children. And then, in an Instagram post dated July 18th, Harris wrote:

I have undergone a massive shift in regard to my faith in Jesus. The popular phrase for this is deconstruction,” the biblical phrase is “falling away.” By all the measurements that I have for defining a Christian, I am not a Christian...”

How do we even process this? This was a man who wrote a book a few years ago called Dug Down Deep: Building Your Life on Truths That Last, based on Jesus’ parable in Luke 6 about the wise man building his house on the rock. In a promotional video for the book, Harris called people to commit themselves wholly to Jesus Christ so that “on the Day of Judgment, when the flood comes, you will be able to stand firm in Christ”. And now he has publicly rejected Jesus Christ altogether. This was a man who grew up homeschooled by loving Christian parents who trained him in the nurture and admonition of the LORD, a man who preached the Gospel soundly, biblically and faithfully to thousands as a pastor, conference speaker and author—and now he rejects that very same Gospel in his own life.

As a pastor and teacher, Harris knew exactly what he was doing—in his statement he even uses the biblical term “falling away”, which is the literal English translation of the New Testament Greek word apostasia, “apostasy”.

Apostasy is a denial of faith by those who once held it or professed to hold it.

And the heartbreaking reality is that Josh Harris is not alone. Apostasy happens every day in this country. According to one study,

“Around 2 out of 3 Christian students from conservative churches will leave Christianity by the time they reach adulthood.... Nearly 90% of those students who leave the church have already begun to doubt God’s Word by the time they graduate from high school.” Lisle, J. (2009, August 11). Surviving Secular College. Retrieved from https://answersingenesis.org/college/surviving-secular-college/

We cannot look on Josh Harris’s story and confidently assure ourselves that “that will never happen to my kids! They’re immune to apostasy!” If you sit here this morning and tell yourself, “I could never fall away!”, be careful. Be careful. Because the Apostle Peter said the same thing, loudly boasting that he would never deny Christ—and then only a few hours later swore up and down he “never knew that man!”

The Scriptures warn us, don’t they, beloved? We are warned not to be over-confident in our ability to avoid falling away. The apostle Paul writes in 1 Corinthians 10:12:

1 Corinthians 10:12 ESV

12 Therefore let anyone who thinks that he stands take heed lest he fall.

And so this morning I want us to turn to the Scriptures to understand the “astonishing tragedy of apostasy”. Because apostasy is a tragedy—imagine what Josh Harris’s children are feeling today? Not to mention his former church—how do you even process the news that the man who brought you to faith in Jesus Christ, who shepherded you faithfully and Biblically for years has now denied Christianity altogether?

So we need to understand what God’s Word says about apostasy this morning. Here in Galatians 1:6-10 I want us to see three things about apostasy: I want us to see what apostasy is, I want us to understand where apostasy comes from, and finally I want us to learn how to fight it.

Look with me at verse 6:

Galatians 1:6 ESV

6 I am astonished that you are so quickly deserting him who called you in the grace of Christ and are turning to a different gospel—

First, we have to understand that

I. Apostasy is Deserting God (Gal. 1:6)

As we saw last week, Paul wrote this letter to the Galatian churches because they were listening to the false teachers who told them that they could only be followers of Jesus if they became Jews first. And Paul wasted no words in telling them what they were doing by going back to the Mosaic Law and demanding what they deserved from God instead of receiving His grace in Christ: They were deserting God who called them.

The word translated “deserting” here is used to describe a soldier who “goes over to the enemy” and fights on their side against his own people—this is no small thing! No wonder Paul is “astonished”—the Galatians are doing the unthinkable—they are rejecting God Himself! Notice here that there is no hint from Paul that their rejection is in any way about him, is it? He’s not upset because they are walking away from him or rejecting his message. He is astonished that they are rejecting God Himself!

And not only are they deserting God Himself, Paul goes on to say that they are

Deserting the grace of Christ

Apostasy means turning your back on everything Jesus did for you in salvation! It means looking on His sacrifice, His agony on the Cross, the blood that He shed to wash away your guilt before God, and saying: “Thanks, but no thanks! You did all that for me, but I don’t want it. You loved me enough to die for me before I even knew you? You willingly suffered the most agonizing death ever devised by the brutality of wicked men, and you did it for my sake? Well, Jesus, you were wasting your time.” No wonder Paul was astonished!

Paul tells the Galatians that they were deserting God who called them, they were deserting Christ’s grace for them, and they were

Deserting the only Gospel that saves

Now, to be sure, the Galatians probably didn’t see it that way. Most often when people apostatize, they don’t believe they are abandoning the Gospel, they see it as enhancing the Gospel. But what Paul will go to great pains in this letter to demonstrate is that it is impossible to “enhance” the Gospel by adding anything to it! If you add anything to the Gospel, you are in fact rejecting the Gospel!

Think of it this way: In my day job I serve as a School Certifying Official for Veterans Affairs, managing GI Bill Educational Benefits for student veterans. Under Chapter 33, Post 9/11 GI Bill, students have 100% of their tuition and fees paid by the VA, they have a $1000 per month housing allowance, and $500 per month book stipend. Every last penny of their cost of attending Penn State DuBois is paid. Imagine that one of those students were to come into my office and say, “Good news, Tharren! I just added on to my GI Bill by taking out a hundred thousand dollar loan! Look at how much money I have now for school!” But by adding a loan to his benefits, he essentially lost his benefits, didn’t he? Because now he has to pay where before he didn’t!

And this is what was so astonishing to the Apostle Paul—this is what broke his heart over the Galatian churches slide into apostasy—instead of the free gift of salvation by grace in Jesus Christ, they insisted on working to save themselves! But

If you try to add anything to the Gospel, you are in fact losing the Gospel

Apostasy is desertion—desertion of God, desertion of the grace of Christ, desertion of the only Gospel that saves. But where does apostasy come from? Why would anyone in their right mind abandon the free and magnificent and glorious grace of God in Jesus Christ? Look at what Paul said about the Galatians’ apostasy in verse 7:

Galatians 1:7 ESV

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

What we see here is

II. Apostasy Thrives in Trouble (Gal. 1:7)

Paul says here in verse 7 that the false teachers are “troubling” the Galatians. The idea of the word here is to be badly shaken, to have trouble and distress that (in our modern parlance) “rocks your world”. When things are going smoothly, Christian, it’s the most natural thing in the world to look to Christ, to love Him, to trust Him with your whole life. But then comes the bombshell—that lump turns out to be Stage IV cancer, your wife runs off with your best friend, your only child is killed by a drunk driver—and suddenly you are tempted to wonder whether Jesus really is enough? Why did He allow this to happen? If this is what I get for following Jesus—if this is how He rewards people who serve Him—then maybe it’s time for me to look somewhere else!

The old Puritan preacher Thomas Watson once warned,

Thomas Watson: “The Devil loves to fish in the troubled waters of a discontented heart”.

When you experience that deep, shaken-to-the-core “soul-trouble”, that’s when the Devil grabs his spinning rod and his tackle box and heads right in your direction! Now, if you’re a fisherman, I’ll bet you have your favorite lure that you use, don’t you? The can’t-miss, gets-’em-every-time lure that you’ve been using for years? Well, the Devil has one too—he’s been using it for centuries. In fact, it’s the lure he used to land his most famous catch of all, when he caused Adam and Eve to fall away in the Garden of Eden. And he casts that same shiny lure into the troubled waters of your anguished heart: “Did God really say…?”

A troubled heart can be lured into distorted truth

The Galatians were being pressured and troubled and shaken in their faith by the false teachers who were threatening them that they could not come to Jesus by faith apart from obeying the Law of Moses. The Judaizers knew the Scriptures better than the Gentile Galatians; they had all their arguments lined up as to why Paul’s teachings were incomplete. And the more they pressured and troubled the Galatians, the more they threatened them with the suggestion that they weren’t really Christians until they became Jews, eventually they began to cave, and began to abandon the grace of God revealed to them in Christ.

As one author puts it:

“The reality is that one doesn’t wake up one morning and decide to forsake the Christian faith. Instead apostasy happens more subtly and slowly… [Forsaking] Christ can feel like something that happens to you as much as something you choose to do. Apostasy, in other words, means slowly drifting from the seashore of faith on a raft of doubt, driven by the winds of disappointment and carried by the currents of false teaching.” Wilson, T. (2013). Galatians: Gospel-Rooted Living. (R. K. Hughes, Ed.) (p. 31). Wheaton, IL: Crossway.

Apostasy means deserting God, its distortions and lies can take root in the soul-trouble that we all experience. And so how do we fight it? How do we recognize that shiny, deadly lure of “Did God really say”? What do we do when we find ourselves in the midst of the kind of deep, agonizing anguish that we never thought we would have to endure? Paul goes on to tell us in verses 8-9 that we must

III. Hold On Against Apostasy (Gal 1:8-9)

Galatians 1:8–9 ESV

8 But even if we or an angel from heaven should preach to you a gospel contrary to the one we preached to you, let him be accursed. 9 As we have said before, so now I say again: If anyone is preaching to you a gospel contrary to the one you received, let him be accursed.

Paul’s instructions to the Galatians in the midst of their soul-trouble boils down to those two words: Hold On!

First, see how Paul tells us that we must

Hold on to the teaching we received

He is so adamant about this that he tells them that “Even if I come to you and say I’ve changed my mind, don’t believe ME! Even if I wander away from Christ, don’t you follow me!” And he goes further— “Even if an angel from heaven should appear to you and preach a different Gospel to you, don’t listen!” And then, in case they thought he didn’t mean it, he says it again! “If anyone is preaching a different gospel to you than the one I am declaring, let him go to Hell!” This is how we fight apostasy—we never let go of this Gospel! The famous 19th Century British preacher Charles Spurgeon had it right:

“Cling tightly with both your hands; when they fail, catch hold with your teeth; and if they give way, hang on by your eyelashes!” Charles Spurgeon, C. H. Spurgeon Autobiography, Volume 2: The Full Harvest 1860–1892 (Edinburgh: Banner of Truth, 1973), p. 114. Quoted in Wilson, T. (2013). Galatians: Gospel-Rooted Living. (R. K. Hughes, Ed.). Wheaton, IL: Crossway.

Don’t let go of the Gospel! No matter what happens—no matter how painful, how dark, how monstrous the loss or heartache you suffer, don’t let go of your hope in Christ!

Hold on to the teaching we received, and

Hold on to the Word we received

When you see the lure of “Did God really say...” floating in the troubled waters of your devastated heart, that is not the time to begin building a robust conviction about the reliability of the Bible! If we are to be ready when those breakers roll over us, we must make it our aim now, when the waters are calm, to study this Word, feed on it, learn everything we can from it, taste and see that the LORD is good in it! We really can have genuine, rational and well-grounded certainty that this Book is true—from Genesis 1:1 through Revelation 22:21. Our faith is not based in rationalism, but it is a rational faith.

As one author puts it:

“We must be people of the Book, knowing it top to bottom, front to back. And we must resolve, before the fact, to have absolutely no problem with any passage of Scripture once the meaning of that passage has been ascertained through honest exegesis. This means, among other things, that Christians must be prepared to condemn sodomy, embrace the doctrine of creation, say that husbands are the heads of their wives, believe in giants and dragons, and believe in Noah’s ark right down to, if necessary, the giraffe’s head sticking out the window” Wilson, D. (2002). The Case for Classical Christian Education. (p. 99). Wheaton, IL: Crossway.

And in this day and age, in the cultural climate that we live in, this kind of unapologetic, full-throated affirmation of every last word of this Book is not a popular stance—far too many Christians (and far too many churches) spend far too much time apologizing over what the Bible says instead of proclaiming it! But we must have the same mind as the Apostle Paul here in Galatians:

Galatians 1:10 ESV

10 For am I now seeking the approval of man, or of God? Or am I trying to please man? If I were still trying to please man, I would not be a servant of Christ.

Beloved, we will not guard ourselves or our hearers from apostasy by mumbling where the Word of God shouts! We cannot call ourselves “Servants of Christ” if we will whisper where His Word roars! So hold on to the Word you received!

And finally, let us

Hold on to the grace we received

This was the astonishing nature of the tragedy Paul witnessed in the Galatians’ apostasy, and it is what astonishes us in the lives of those who walk away from Christ today—how could anyone deliberately turn away from this kind of undeserved favor from God? When you were dead in your trespasses and sins, when you were utterly broken and crushed by your guilt, the stench and filth of your own shame filling your nostrils like an overflowing outhouse, Jesus Christ willingly went to the Cross to suffer your punishment, to be broken for your guilt, to be mired in the filth of your shame, so that you could be free from all of it before God forever!

And so, beloved, hold on to that grace! When you are overwhelmed by tragedy and fear, when your life is devastated by grief or violence or loss, when the pressures and hatred and unjust attacks of a hostile world goad you and trouble your heart—hold on to this grace! When you feel your faith begin to slip, when doubts begin to creep into your heart, look again to what Jesus Christ did for you on the Cross! See how He loves you, see how He gave everything He had so that you would be with Him for eternity!

Is your faith weak today? Take heart—a weak faith can lay hold on a strong Christ! When you feel that your faith is slipping away, beloved, remember: What matters is not how strong your grasp is on Christ, but how strong His grasp is on you!

And that is the hope that we have for the sake of the apostates who break our hearts this morning! Because

The grace of God can reach even those who are walking away!

So hold on to the grace of God for yourself, and hold on to the grace of God for the one who has walked away! Because God is able to bring that wanderer back—no matter how far he may fall! The grace of God in Jesus Christ means that anyone—even if they renounced Christ in the strongest possible terms, even if they filled their mouths with the vilest curses against Him, even if they ranted and raved and denied Him before the world—when they come to Him in repentance, they will be forgiven!

And when that apostate comes home, he doesn’t come home to a wounded, sullen Father who won’t look him in the eye—he will come home to a Father overflowing with joy! A Father who can’t wait to exchange his child’s filthy rags for His own clean robes of righteousness, put His signet ring on their finger and make them the guest of honor at a feast, shouting to everyone within earshot:

Luke 15:24 ESV

24 For this my son was dead, and is alive again; he was lost, and is found.’ And they began to celebrate.

Beloved, we need to be astonished by apostasy, but even more, let us be astounded by the grace of God that forgives apostasy! There is no depth to which you can fall that the grace of God cannot reach you, there is no darkness to deep for the light of His faithfulness to pierce, there is no sin in your past too heinous for His blood to wash away! You can have forgiveness, you can have purity, you can have restoration and freedom and righteousness and holiness and eternal joy today—not by following the false gospel of your own personal discipline and resolve to “be a better person”, but by calling on the grace of God in Jesus Christ!

Benediction

Jude 24–25 ESV

24 Now to him who is able to keep you from stumbling and to present you blameless before the presence of his glory with great joy, 25 to the only God, our Savior, through Jesus Christ our Lord, be glory, majesty, dominion, and authority, before all time and now and forever. Amen.

Questions For Reflection:

Charles Spurgeon once said, “Ah! What a mercy it is that it is not your hold of Christ that saves you, but His hold of you. What a sweet fact that it is not how you grasp His hand, but His grasp of yours that saves you.” How have you experienced this in your own times of soul-trouble and doubt?

Before the Apostle Peter’s denial of Jesus, He promised to pray for him so that his faith would not fail (Luke 22:31-32). How does the fact that Jesus is praying for your faith in times of doubt encourage you?

How does this passage teach us to pray for people we know who are in the process of falling away from Christ? How can you be an encouragement to someone who may be moving into apostasy? How does this passage give you hope for them?

How can you guard your own life from falling away from Christ? What are some ways you can strengthen your confidence in the truths of the Gospel this week?