The Cranberry Gospel
Notes
Transcript
Paul had composed this letter for his friends in Galatia. Paul had likely traveled through their area multiple times during both of his missionary journeys in Acts. Paul had helped to plant a church in Galatia, and had made many inroads the community. However, what he was hearing about now was greatly concerning to him. You see, his friends in the Galatian church had begun to accept, teach, and live out a false, or perverted, Gospel.
You see, there were 2 main religious groups in Galatia when Paul was writing this letter. First, there was this new Christian church that Paul helped to plant. It is important to remember that the church was still really new as Paul is writing- not just the church in Galatia, but the church in the world. Scholars agree that Galatians was written somewhere around 45-50 AD. So we are talking about pretty early in the life of the church. So, if you think we are the first generation to deal with false teaching- think again.
The church in Galatia was also extremely new in the time of this letter. The Galatians had probably just began following the new teachings of Jesus 1-2 years before Paul was writing to them.
The second group within the church was a group called Judaizers. This group was taking the doctrine taught to them by Paul and attaching old Jewish law and customs to it. They were preaching the Gospel plus.
It’s interesting how Paul kind of backs off his words in v6-7. First, he says that the Galatians are turning to a “different Gospel” then he immediately backs off that idea and instead drives home the point that there is only one true Gospel. Only one- no more. The Gospel is original and one of a kind.
My Aunt loves Elvis. She spent her teen years listening to him and she knows more Elvis songs than anyone I know. In fact, she once won a contest from a radio station by guessing one note from an Elvis song. Now, there are lots of Elvis impersonators out there- but there was only one Elvis. I bet you could line up the best impersonators in the world and she could point out all the things that are off. Why? Because there is only one and anything other than that is wrong.
So it is with the Gospel of Jesus. There is only one Gospel. There is not a “kind of Gospel” or a “partial Gospel” There is the Gospel of Jesus and then their is everything else.
But this leads us to an important question- why? Why do people choose to follow a false, twisted, or perverted Gospel? The Scriptures never shy away from the fact that some people will teach and accept that kind of Gospel. But with such an amazing book like the Bible, why would someone abandon it? And how can we guard our hearts to not fall into the trap of abandoning the proper teachings of God? So, today we are doing 3 D’s. Three D words dthat can cause us to accept a false Gospel, and how we can guard ourselves from them.
Deception
Deception is real, and it is real serious. Part of the problem that plagues the church is pastors/teachers/leaders who preach/teach a Gospel that is different from the Scripture.
In 2 Corinthians 11:13-15 Paul talks about teachers like these “For such men are false apostles, deceitful workmen, disguising themselves as apostles of Christ. And no wonder, for even Satan disguises himself as an angel of light. So it is no surprise if his servants, also, disguise themselves as servants of righteousness. Their end will correspond to their deeds.”
When someone adds to the Bible, when they take away from it, when they twist it- there are practicing a false Gospel. But false teaching- especailly inside the church- is deceptive. It is not obviously or boldly presented as false. Most pastor’s don’t wear name tags that say “false prophet” and most churches an not named “1st Street False Gospel Church.”
Deception words by trying to make something fake look as much like the authentic as possible. Let’s think about one of the most common deceptions of our day; many Christians fall into a trap of thinking that Jesus is not the only way to Heaven. The thing is, false teachers will make this sound really good. They will say “God is love and would never send good people to Hell” or they say “Jesus is a way to Heaven, but there are other ways as well” They will even use Scriptures out of context to support their ideas. I have heard people use Phil 2:9-11 “Therefore God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.” to support that everyone will be saved not matter what they believe in.
So, how do we combat deception in the church?
We must fact check and hold preachers and teachers accountable. We talked about this a little bit a few weeks ago when we talked about community discernment. Hear again the words of 1 John 4:1-3:
Beloved, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God, for many false prophets have gone out into the world. By this you know the Spirit of God: every spirit that confesses that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God, and every spirit that does not confess Jesus is not from God. This is the spirit of the antichrist, which you heard was coming and now is in the world already.
I like to think about testing preachers like tracing. Preachers can have some different takes, different interpretations, and even some different applications of Scriptures- but it all needs to be faithful to the Bible. Like tracing a picture, you place a blank page over the image and follow the pattern and outline- that is what I am called to do as a pastor. The goal is that when my sermon is done you can lay it across the pattern of Scriptures and they line up.
When we use Bible Study curriculum, Sunday School materials, and other things like that; when we invite in preachers and speakers; whenever you buy a book or watch a teaching we should be looking at how it lines up with the pattern of the Bible.
It also means we need to take that seriously. Even if something is just a little off. What it someone told you that your kids pancakes just had a little poison in them, would you feed it to them? What if there was just a little asbestos in your insulation? Would you risk it?
Rob Bell Story??
District Ordination?
Desensitizing
Our world is more twisted and immoral that most of us ever thought we would see.
The problem is that many Christians and many churches have the same problem as the frog in the pot of water. You know what I mean, right? Put a frog in cold water and turn up the heat and he will sit there until he boils because he acclimates to the water temp as it rises. It’s a form of desensitization- and we have it in the church.
The world has normalized so many unethical things that some of them we don’t even care about in the church anymore. For example, there are more and more Christian music artists that are using profanity in their music- because it is seen as socially acceptable now. The amount of Christians that see premarital sex as acceptable for Christians; or the way many churches no longer consider divorce as sinful- these are all things that have become so socially acceptable that the church has become numb to many of them.
So, how do we keep ourselves from being desensitized to sin?
Well, Romans 12:2 give us this thought “Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect.”
So, one of the main disagreements that we have in my house around Thanksgiving is about cranberry sauce. While almost everyone in our house loves cranberry sauce, there is a huge difference in the kind of cranberry sauce we prefer.
I love the homemade cranberry sauce- the stuff that’s chunky, full of spices, like the inside of a cobbler. The kids, on the other hand, like the canned cranberry sauce; not that I don’t like it, but it is not my preference. You, know the canned stuff where you open the can, pry it out, and when it hits the plate or bowl it has the perfect shape the can- even the little metal rings from the can. You can tell where it came from, am I right?
In the same way, we can be conformed by this world or by the Gospel. Reading the Bible is drastically different than any other thing in this world. We do not read the Bible merely for knowledge or entertainment like other books, we read the Bible to transform our minds, our souls, and our spirits.
But we can also work to be conformed to the likeness of Jesus by the other influences in our lives. Does the music, the entertainment, even the relationships we keep help conform us to Jesus; or the world. We talk about this a lot in youth ministry, but let’s be honest, we adults can often use this reminder too. If I listen to music that uses profanity all the time, profanity becomes less problematic to me. If I watch TV shows with adultery in their storyline, adultery becomes less problematic to me. If I go out and drink with my friends on Fridays, drunkeness becomes less problematic to me.
This is why Biblical holiness is so important to us as people of faith.
Desire
Paul reminded us that there is a war going on inside of us. Listen to his confession of his own battle in Romans 7
For I know that nothing good dwells in me, that is, in my flesh. For I have the desire to do what is right, but not the ability to carry it out. For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I keep on doing. Now if I do what I do not want, it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells within me. So I find it to be a law that when I want to do right, evil lies close at hand.
Paul names it, there is a lot living in these bodies of ours, and sometimes our worldly desires can get the best of us. Sometimes we can reject the Gospel because of our own desire. I think about a conversation I had many years ago at an Annual Conference with a lady who was probably in her 70s or 80s. She had told me that she supported homosexuality in the church. I asked her how she came to that conclusion, and the long story short was, though she had been taught the sinfulness of homosexuality her entire life- she now had a grandson who was homosexual, and she could not believe that he was living in sin- so she decided that the Bible had to be wrong. Her desire to keep her grandson from judgement caused her to abandon the truth.
How to avoid
Create in me a clean heart, O God,
and renew a right spirit within me.
Development
Not everyone who believes a false gospel is a raving heretic. Some of them have just not learned, progress, or been disciples to a point where they fully understand. This is tragic, but it’s true. There are some folks out there who have not believed The true gospel because they have not heard it yet. Were they part of the gospel but they have not taken out their part and discipleship.
do you remember what Paul said about the Corinthian church in
1 Cor 3:2-6 “I fed you with milk, not solid food, for you were not ready for it. And even now you are not yet ready, for you are still of the flesh. For while there is jealousy and strife among you, are you not of the flesh and behaving only in a human way? For when one says, “I follow Paul,” and another, “I follow Apollos,” are you not being merely human? What then is Apollos? What is Paul? Servants through whom you believed, as the Lord assigned to each. I planted, Apollos watered, but God gave the growth.”
The Corinthian church had not grown to where they could understand the entire gospel.
you’re right, there are plenty of Christians out there that do not believe that Jesus is the only way to salvation, or th sexual conduct to the Bible, or any multitude of truths. But some of them don’t know because they haven’t been discipled yet. Perhaps God is putting you in their life to show them a different way. Instead many times we run from them, we treat them like outcasts, and we act like they are lepers that we are to avoid at all cost.
It’s easy to sit in church and point the finger at other Christians and say that they are false teachers, or false believers. But it takes the real heart of Christ to go out and deliver the true gospel and try to win them over for the truth.