Gospel Matters (Galatians 1:1-10)

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Good morning church. Go ahead, grab your Bibles. Open up to Galatians, chapter one. Galatians, chapter one. We’ll be starting our new series this morning, as you’ve already heard now, as you’re turning there, we quite obviously live in a deeply polarized culture right now, and there are really two groups of people. You’ll probably recognize them. You belong to one of them, almost certainly. On the one hand, we’ve got those on the extremes of whatever issue you’re talking about, very zealous, very passionate about it. And then on the other hand, you’ve got this kind of exhausted middle group, probably the majority. But who, just you know, so you can see it like social media, right? People who post about politics, post about politics non stop. No one likes them anymore, you know, like that kind of thing. And then people who would never post about politics ever. And I’ve actually gotten off social media because they’re so tired of people posting about politics like those are the two groups right there. You can see those same two groups in most churches as well, people who are really zealous about doctrine and people who become very apathetic about doctrine as well. So on the one hand, you got the group where it’s kind of, you know, if you’re not a Reformed Baptist, complementarian, Post-tribulational Congregationalist, I mean even Jesus, bro. Or you get the whole, I don’t even know what you just said. Recognized none of those words. Can’t we all just love Jesus and get along. Actually, I heard an elder say that once it was not here so that a previous church that I was at and the elder board was debating a theological issue that had practical ramifications for the church, like one of those issues where you actually have to take a stand as a church. And in the middle of this intense debate, one of the elders literally said, Can’t we all just love Jesus? So you had kind of like that side, almost like the lowest common denominator Christianity. And then I don’t know what the opposite is, the greatest common factor approach, or something. Where do we draw lines? Where should we draw lines as Christians, and why? I mean, do we even need to? So what we’re going to learn today as we look at the opening verses of Galatians is that, yes, indeed, we need to draw lines, doctrinal lines. We need to draw them in the right places, because correct doctrine matters. Matters so much. That’s Paul’s whole point, in fact, which is why the series and today’s sermon are both called gospel matters, and even our big idea is going to have that phrase in it as well. When we get there like this stuff actually matters. Now we do need some context, because Paul’s starting off a conversation here where the Galatians know what he’s talking about and we don’t. So it’s not gonna make a lot of sense to us unless we get some context in there to be a little bit like, you know, boss walking up to the person in the cubicle next to yours, saying, hey, try that again, and it’ll be the last thing you do at this company. And you’re going, what? And they’re going, Yeah, I know what that that is like. I know what he just told me in that moment. So what is it here? Because that’s very much the tone Paul has as we start this letter. What’s the that that they shouldn’t try again? We’re going to see as we keep reading the letter, that there’s a group of heretics that has infiltrated the Galatian churches. Galatia, by the way, modern day Turkey, especially the southern part of it. So group of heretics have infiltrated these Galatian churches, and they’re promoting what’s known as the Judaizing heresy, the Judaizing heresy, which basically teaches that in order to be a Christian, you have to be a Jew, not racially, but in terms of the law, especially so if you’re going to be a Christian, you have to keep the whole Jewish religion as well. Why that’s a heresy. We’ll see as we go now. You may be listening to that thinking, okay, that’s fairly arcane and archaic, but actually it’s deeply relevant to our lives today, even that heresy. Because what we’ll see as we go through Galatians, the debate isn’t really around the question, What’s wrong with the law, what we just looked like looked at in the book of Exodus, the debates around the issue of what’s wrong with us, what’s wrong with our hearts, that the law doesn’t work to bring salvation. If you get this wrong, we’re going to get it all wrong. It’s like you ever built one of those LEGO sets and you missed the first piece, and eventually it just means you have to take the whole thing apart and start all over again. That’s what will happen here with the gospel as well. So let’s get it right. So our big idea, I’m giving you up front in part because it’s our outline for the sermon as well. The Gospel matters. The Gospel matters, so learn it, love it, and live it. That will be our outline. We’re going to learn it, then we’re going to love it, then we’re going to live it. Okay, nice and easy. So I’m going to read the whole passage for us, and then we’re going to take three passes through it as we work that out. I normally read the passage in chunks. I don’t get to do this very often, since I’m reading the whole passage all at once. We’re going old school. Why don’t you guys stand up as we read the Lord, the word of Lord, together? All right. Here it is Galatians, one, one to 10. Paul, an apostle sent not from men or by a man, but by Jesus Christ and God, the Father who raised him from the dead, and all the brothers and sisters with me to the churches in Galatia, Grace and peace to you from God, our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ, who gave Himself for our sins to rescue us from the present evil age, according to the will of our God and Father to whom be glory forever and ever. Amen, I am astonished that you are so quickly deserting the one who called you to live in the grace of Christ and are turning to a different gospel, which is really no gospel at all. Evidently, some people are throwing you into confusion and are trying to pervert the gospel of Christ. But even if we or an angel from heaven should preach a gospel other than the one we preach to you, let them be under God’s curse, as we have already said. So now I say again, if anybody is preaching to you a gospel other than what you accepted, let them be under God’s curse. Am I now trying to win the approval of human beings or of God, or am I trying to please people? If I were still trying to please people, I would not be a servant of Christ the word of the Lord. You can have a seat. All right, so let’s learn it. First of all, learn it. First of all. Now there are some oddities compared to Paul’s other introductions. So we’ve we’ve got a number of his letters. He usually follows a pretty similar pattern as he greets the churches to which he’s writing. But this one is a little bit different. First of all, we get a longer description of who he is. Now, he usually gives some description, Paul, here’s my resume kind of thing, but this one’s a bit longer, and intentionally so, because it anticipates the arguments that are coming in the rest of the letter. So Paul lets us know, first of all, that he’s an apostle. Not unusual. He does that in a few letters. What is an apostle? The word literally just means sent one, but it also has this more technical meaning, and that’s what he’s talking about here. An apostle is one who personally encountered the risen Christ and who was then personally called, really, to lay the foundation for the church, as we’ll see. Now, what’s important here in the introduction, when he calls himself an apostle, is that he is called to be an apostle by God Himself, by Christ Himself, in fact, not by people. Somebody didn’t come along and say, hey, you’ve got some some gifts here. Maybe, maybe you should consider leading a church. That’s how it normally works. Today, I can talk about the fact that I was called by God all I want. But at the end of the day, if those of you who weren’t here at the time didn’t vote me in, I was not called by this church, right? And so that’s very different, like I was, in a sense, called by people. Yes, the Lord stands behind that. Call, not Paul. No. People involved. Okay, it’s Christ, Jesus Himself, who calls Paul. Now, why does he say this? Paul’s not insecure about his credentials. He’s not like a doctor. You know, where they got to put their diploma on the wall? You know, I really am a doctor. You know, I’m just joking, by the way. Okay, I’m glad my doctor has their diploma on the wall, because I would like to know that he or she is qualified. Of course, that’s not it at all. Right? He’s not insecure about his credentials. It’s an issue of authority. An issue of authority. If God called him to speak to the church, then implicitly, he’s called the church to listen to Paul. So who gets the final say? That’s one of the major issues that we’re talking about here. And it’s an issue, an issue under some debate. I mean, even today, we have the progressive view. Today, for example, been around for, I don’t know, 100 years or so. The Bible is written by fallible men. So we can, and really even should disagree with it at points, as we do with other people. Here’s one progressive writer some time ago, wrote what they tell us, talking about Paul Peter John, people like that, what they tell us must have a self authenticating quality, like music. If it doesn’t, we must be prepared to refuse it. I mean, that’s interesting. What this writer has just said then is that truth doctrine is just a matter of subjective taste, the way we feel about music. This is the best song. Well, no, I think this is the best song. There’s not really any choosing between them, so there’s no authority higher than our gut feeling then, and if that’s the case, well then obviously doctrine can’t matter. Truth doesn’t matter in that scenario. Or we could compare that to the Roman Catholic view. The Roman Catholic view would be that the Bible is written by the church, in that it is written by people who belong to the church, so the church not only has authority to interpret. Separate it, but even to supplement it as necessary. But Paul here says exactly the opposite. What he’s saying is, I am not a churchman under the authority of the Church, writing under the authority of the Church, I am an apostle of Christ wielding authority over a wayward church. And so what we believe here, and what I believe the Bible teaches as well, is that the highest authority then, is the written word, the word written by the apostles and prophets, the foundation upon which the church is built, as Paul says in Ephesians two. So this is Paul who’s writing, but then he mentions in verse two, also all the brothers and sisters with me. Now, who is he talking about there? And we’re not talking about Silas or Barnabas. Some of these people who do help him write some of the other letters. It seems like he’s talking about really everyone else, like just the Church of God. He’s saying, This is not private opinion. This isn’t Paul, but this is what we all think. It’s settled truth, which is important, because if we can’t say that, we’re on pretty shaky ground, and we would want to believe this, what we believe has been held by the church across really, space and time, so across the globe, but across the centuries as well, even in the areas where we disagree, I think it’s important to go, okay, but people have disagreed in this way from the beginning. We there are things that are a little bit beyond our comprehension, and so we’ve got some debate about, say, the relationship between sovereignty and human responsibility, okay, but that debate has always been there, or doctrines where even the church has battled. You talk about Luther, you know, as there’s this view that at the Protestant Reformation, the church, like discovered the gospel of salvation by grace alone, through faith alone, they didn’t, they didn’t. You read Calvin’s Institute, sometimes he’s quoting church fathers on every page very intentionally to say, this is what people in the church have always believed. So if you’re holding to a viewpoint that no one believed before the 19th century, I’d question it like that’s the idea we want to be able to say, yes, all the brothers and sisters with me, or a viewpoint that’s held by just kind of one geographical space. We’re going to want to question that as well. So we get all this about Paul and who’s writing the letter, and then the second half of verse two, we just get to the churches in Galatia. That’s it. Now that’s much shorter than most of Paul’s introductions. Usually he says a little something about himself, and then he says a little something about the churches as well, but not here. And so we’re sensing his frustration already. Kind of, if you don’t have anything nice to say, don’t say anything at all. Is maybe where Paul is here. He then offers grace and peace, which is pretty standard for him, but grace, as we will see even today, is very much the letters theme. And he offers grace through Jesus Christ, who gave Himself for our sins. And that is a necessary reminder, because Jesus gave Himself for our sins long after Sinai, and the covenant that was established there, the 10 Commandments, the law which we just went through long after Abraham the promises given to him, long after the seal of circumcision was given. And see, there’s an argument there, right? So, how did this go? How did the covenant with Abraham and Moses go in terms of saving people? Well, it went so badly that God had to send his Son, Jesus to come and rescue them. So like it wasn’t working, the law wasn’t working. The law was never intended to work that way, as we’ll see in Galatians, but that’s why he had to come. So the question there is, why would you turn back from what works Christ’s life and death and resurrection to what we know doesn’t work the law. That’s exactly what he says when he gets to the letter body there, starting in verse six. Although it’s interesting in starting the letter body there, he’s skipping past another usual part in his introduction, verse six is where he should say, I thank my God every time I remember you and all my prayers for you. That’s what he normally does. He offers Thanksgiving and prayer. Doesn’t hear right? He’s just getting right to business at this point, I’m astonished that you are so quickly deserting the one who called you. I’m flabbergasted. I’m dumbfounded. Like, what are you thinking that you would leave this this is very strong language. It’s meant to shock the Galatian church awake. Reminds me a little bit of a story that Tim and Kathy Keller share in their book, the meaning of marriage. One point, Tim Keller been planting the church there in New York City, and he’d kind of told his wife, like, for a year, this is going to be rough, like, I’m going to have to put in extra hours. She said, Okay, I understand. That kind of thing. Well, at the end of two years, this was still happening, and he, like, wasn’t getting the message, kind of thing. So he came home from work late one day, and she’s out on the balcony of their apartment. As he walks in the door, she smashes one of their china plates, one of the saucers. And he’s like, what just happened? Moving over towards her, she sees him coming. Second saucer down, shatters, kind of thing, like, Hey, Baby, what’s wrong? Third saucer goes, kind of thing, like, he’s down. Like, okay, I am listening what, what is happening here, exactly? And that’s when she had his attention. She was able to say, Hey, do you remember that thing about how many hours you’re gonna work and how long that was gonna take? Like, they had a good conversation, by the way, the rest of that story was they’d already broken three China mugs, so the saucers were useless. So this was actually a very intentional, uh, getting his attention sort of thing that she had done. But that’s what Paul’s doing here, right? Like China’s shattering, as he’s saying. I’m astonished, and I’m astonished not just that you’re turning, but that you’re turning so quickly. That’s actually the almost a direct quote from Exodus 32 which we just studied, like from the golden calf. Exodus 32 verse eight. It says they’ve been quick to turn away. It’s the same idea, like we were astonished when we got to Exodus 32 in the golden calf. You know, you’re thinking like, how many days ago was it that you walked through the Red Sea on dry land, and already you’re turned into an idol, like he just saved you, and that’s what Paul is saying to the Galatians as well. He just saved you, and yet you’re deserting him. That word deserting isn’t even strong enough. The word has the sense of switching sides, like this is what you would say to a turncoat. This is Benedict Arnold stuff here. But deserting what deserting God, the one who called you to live in the grace of Christ, they’d abandoned God. It’s not that they changed doctrine, it’s that they left God behind. And so I don’t think we could be clearer than we are right here. Doctrine matters. We got to get the truth right, because you get certain truths wrong, and it’s actually leaving the faith, which means it is not enough for us to say, why don’t we just love Jesus? Because what does that mean anyway? Who is Jesus? Why should we love him? What does it mean to love him? All of those questions require doctrinal answers, and worse, then they’re abandoning the one who graciously called them when they were lost, desperate, even rebellious against God, still he called them at that point. He called them in grace. Now you may be sitting there a little bit nervous. I know I am when I read this passage, because if we got to get doctrine right, well, what happens if we get it wrong? Because just say it up front here. I don’t think anybody’s gonna have their doctrine 100% right. When we get to glory, we’re gonna go, oh, okay, that makes more sense than what I was thinking. So what part do we need to be absolutely sure of? That’s a good question. And the answer is, the gospel, the gospel, that’s what Paul says here. That’s the issue. They had turned to a different gospel, which isn’t even a gospel. So we can get some things wrong. I mean, we can get the End Times wrong. I’m pretty sure we’ll all get the End Times wrong in some way. And we did this when we talked revelation right. We’re going through Revelation, and how many times we go maybe I don’t know like so, yeah, we’re going to have that one wrong. Half of us are getting baptism wrong, aren’t we? You baptize believers, you baptize infants. Okay, well, somebody’s getting that one wrong anyway. But you can’t get this wrong. You cannot get this wrong. Christ died for our sins. You can’t get wrong that at one time we were helpless. In verse four, right? He had to rescue us. We were helpless, in need of rescue. So Jesus did for us what we could not do for ourselves, so that when we trust in Him, now, there is therefore no condemnation. How could there be condemnation? Christ already punished our sin. God already punished our sin in Christ. And so if he were to punish it in us, he would be punishing it twice. That would be unjust. That can’t happen. So God then accepts us, not just as innocent citizens, though, but as beloved children made already three times in the first five verses, we’ve heard that God is our father. That’s what we need to get right. We both sang and said the Creed earlier this morning, because those are the primary. Doctrines, the doctrines we have to have right are those doctrines without which the gospel fails. Like if Jesus isn’t God, then there is no salvation in him, because he needs to be an infinite being in order to pay an infinite penalty, or if he didn’t really rise from the dead physically, there is no hope of resurrection. If the Bible is not the word of God, not authoritative, and we can never be sure about these doctrines that we preach. Those are the primary doctrines, the ones that we need to believe, without which the gospel fails. The problem is there are heretics there in Galatia who are throwing them into confusion and trying to pervert this pure gospel of Christ. How? As I mentioned already, by saying they need to be Jews in order to be Christians, the men need to be circumcised. You need to keep kosher, all that kind of stuff. I mean, these heretics certainly think they’re enhancing the gospel, but they’re not. They’re destroying it because they’re making it about us and our effort, and in so doing, they’re stealing Christ’s glory and throwing us back into slavery, which is why it’s so serious, so serious that Paul says in verses eight and nine, if you preach a different gospel, you should be damned. It’s what the word means. You should be damned. Verse eight, he says it kind of hypothetically, right, if even an angel should happen to maybe hypothetically here preach a different gospel. But in verse nine, it’s in the present tense, if anybody is currently right now, they’re in Galatia preaching to you a gospel other than what you accepted, let him be damned. And why? By the way, because, in turning people from the Gospel of Christ, the only gospel in which we may be saved, they are damning others, and so their punishment is just. That certainly means, though, that we need to learn the only true gospel, why it matters so much that we get it right. But as we learn the one true gospel, we will see that it is very good news, which means we cannot just learn the gospel. But then second love it as well. Alright, so second time through love it, we won’t hold fast to the gospel unless we believe that it is truly good news. So what makes it such good news? Can we agree that the gospel being good news isn’t necessarily intuitive? I did this Christmas Eve. We were talking about a different passage in Paul where he talks about the gospel. And kind of the takeaway there, at least to begin with, was the message of Scripture is, You’re the worst. You’re the worst. Paul says it himself. I’m the worst of all sinners, the chief of all sinners. You can understand why there would be some psychological resistance to that. Message doesn’t sound like good news. Sounds like bad news. It kind of bruises our egos. And so it is here as well. There’s this sense of like, What do you mean? I can’t save myself. I can take care of my I can pull myself up by the bootstraps. That’s what we do around here. But again, that Word Rescue in verse four means No, we cannot the vision that you have here in Galatia. It’s like somebody who’s out there drowning in the ocean, as a lifeguard comes out to them to save them. They’re going, Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, why don’t you just give me some swim lessons real quick? Like, I know my head’s underwater, but just show me the stroke again, so I’ll get it down this time. The lifeguard is going, No, nope. That’s not how this is going to go, like I’m just going to scoop you up. We’re going back. If you struggle, I will punch you and knock you out and then take you back that way so you don’t drown me. Also, it’s the same resistance that we have when we need to ask people for help. I’ve shared this before, but you know, as one of the ones who gets to work the benevolence fund when people need to request financial assistance from the church, without fail, they apologize. I’m so sorry. Like, I hate to ask, Why do you hate to ask? It’s more blessed to give than to receive? Like, we’re thrilled to be able to do this, but no, there’s something in us that goes I don’t want to have to receive it. I want to be able to earn it. And and that’s where then it becomes so attractive to us to start adding requirements to our faith, because then we’re doing something. And not only that, this part gets even better. We’re doing more than other people, because we love to seek approval in comparison to others. You ever been to a high school reunion? You know what this looks like? You need to prove to people that you’re successful. Evil and again, it doesn’t matter if you’re rich, it just matters that you’re richer. Don’t matter if you’re thin. It just matters if you’re thinner than the people around you. We like to seek approval in comparison to others, so we bring that into religion. You were saved by grace, were you? Oh, that’s good for you. You look like you need it, by the way, I’m glad, but I earned mine. In fact, I even did the extra credit, because I’m keeping kosher. We like to pursue outward conformity to the law. But of course, that masks inward corruption. We talked a lot about this when we did the 10 Commandments, right? Just how easy it is go. Don’t murder. Did it? Make sure you tithe 10% of your spices. Even absolutely don’t always use my rosemary anyway. It’s fine. You can have it. You see, I’m doing everything here. Okay? Now Love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind and strength, love your neighbor with the same zealous devotion with which you take care of yourself like it gets harder all of a sudden, right? And so that the only problem with all this is it doesn’t work. They go back to our drowning in the ocean. Illustration, we cannot learn to swim on our own. No amount of swim lessons are going to help us out here, because spiritually speaking, it’s like we got no arms or legs, so we’re not even flailing in the ocean. We’re also wearing a pretty heavy weight vest, which is our sin nature, which means we need to be rescued. Passive, tense, somebody else is gonna have to do it for us. So thank God that Jesus gave Himself for our sins to do just that, because think of how exhausting it is to try to keep ourselves afloat spiritually, you have to be perfect always, and what happens when you’re not because, by the way, that day is coming, you’ve already had that day a bunch of times, already a little too much to drink, made some dumb choices afterwards, gave into temptation when I told myself I was done with that, wasn’t going Back to that anymore was I’m gonna visit that website blew up in traffic at my kids at work, or shaded the truth just a little bit when I was telling that story. Like, if it depends on you, what happens, then it’s devastating, overwhelmed by guilt and shame before God and others, not that it’s much better, by the way, on your good days when you actually keep the law, what happens? Then you’re puffed up with pride because you’re better than others in your mind, so you can disdain and judge them. You certainly see plenty of that, even among Christians who got a little eglesh and heresy in them, where it’s a Jesus, plus sort of religion Jesus, plus all the good things that I’m doing, the Gospel deals with all of that. That’s why it’s such good news. That’s why we should love it. The Gospel deals with all of that like we know that we are going to mess up, not just because we’ve got objective proof in our lives, but because of what the Gospel says about us. The Gospel says that we are so bad that somebody had to come and rescue us. We could not rescue ourselves, which means it’s no surprise that you should find yourself in a spot where you need to be rescued. That was the promise. And there’s also, well, I mean, that means that the guilt is wiped away, then, because Jesus took our objective guilt on himself, and shame is overcome because the Father loves us, not because of what we’ve done, but because what Christ has done for us. He remembers who we are. You see this in the prodigal son, right? The parable The prodigal son. Every time we mess up, what do we think we need to do? We need to sleep on the couch for a couple days. How many of you find it hard to pray after you’ve sinned, because you’re like, Well, I can’t, I can’t talk to you. There’s no way God wants to talk to me, right now, why don’t I mess up with my wife? She doesn’t want to talk to me. So probably the same way with God, right? So we put ourselves in a dog house for a couple of days, and the father’s going, I’m here. I’m ready to forgive, just come. Just come. So deals with the shame as well, but also deals with the pride. There’s no chance of pride or judgment, because we remember he humbly extended grace. We humbly extend grace because he extended it to us, because we received it, which is why another one of those weird introductory things that verse five has a doxology in it. You don’t ever get a doxology in an introduction. Doxology goes at the end of a letter, but Paul’s going, it’s all of grace, and if it’s all his work, that means it’s all his glory. We better talk about that. Right? Now it’s such good news, so why would we turn from it? And God raised Jesus from the dead, verse one, right? God raised Jesus from the dead as proof that it’s true. We don’t ever have to doubt whether or not it’s real, because we have the resurrection to go. Yep, that vindicates the message of Jesus Christ, and that, then is the first fruits of this new age that is breaking into the world we can experience its joy now. So why would we go back to the present evil age? That’s what the Galatians are being tempted to do. It’s like, I don’t know, today, and you can have, you know, your 85 inch HD TV, you know, full color, surround sound to watch the NFL playoffs or whatever. And then after you do that for a little bit, you go back to the 13 inch, you know, grainy, black and white. You got to move the little rabbit ears and stuff, or just listening on the radio even, like, what would possess you to do that? You learn the gospel so you can love the gospel. There’s only one, there’s only one true gospel, but it’s so good you can’t imagine why anyone would ever want to look for another one. Because grace like this changes everything, or at least it should change everything. And that’s the third point. So you learn it, you love it, and then you live it. We put it into practice in our lives, all right. Third pass through the text. Now this idea of living the gospel is taken directly from the text. It’s right there in verse six. I’m astonished that you are so quickly deserting the one who called you to live in the grace of Christ to live in the grace of Christ, Paul’s saying, keep watching the color TV. Don’t go back to black and white, remain in it. But how do we do this? Practically? This is tough. It’s a tough passage to preach to apply, because it’s theological more than behavioral. So it’s very easy in a passage that’s saying, you know, watch your tongue, watch your speech, like, okay, we can talk about that easily. What do you do here when it says, Watch your doctrine, and yet we must apply it, and following Paul’s lead, we can see how we can go on living in the grace of Christ. So first of all, we live in His grace by holding fast to it. We live in His grace by holding fast to it. We will not abandon God by turning from his gospel. It’s true. How do you obey the truth? You obey the truth by believing it to be true and then contending for the truth of it. There’s this sense of, you know, here I stand. I can do no other. But we would also extend that a little bit right here I stand. You need to stand here also. So we’re watching out for each other, right? We might read verses eight and nine and think Paul overdoes it, and we’re probably uncomfortable when we read this. Really, you don’t agree with me, and you get damned. Like, that’s why I’m not a big fan of religious types, right? No, not at all, though, like, we may think Paul over does it, but, but we should be so strong as Christians. I mean, ask yourself, would you be this shocked and this grieved if someone you knew abandoned the one true gospel? Think of how angry you would be if you know your favorite player, switch teams like next year, we all got to watch Caleb Williams playing for the Packers, fourth and 11. He’s killing us. I mean, people get angry and sad about this stuff, don’t they, our priorities are out of whack. That’s why that doesn’t matter. I hope you know that that doesn’t really matter, and yet we could see somebody desert the gospel and be like, Well, I don’t want to, I don’t want to step on toes. No, we should step on toes. That’s what Paul does here, also, because eternity is at stake. If you know someone is turning from the truth, you need to love them enough to warn them urgently. Smash some China, if you have to second, we live in His grace by proclaiming the only true gospel I get that this is wildly counter cultural. We have very much a live and let live approach to people’s religious beliefs. That’s not again, what Paul has here, if there’s only one way to be saved, as the Bible teaches, then it would be unloving not to tell people that one way to be saved. It’s going to sound intolerant. Let me help you out here for a moment. By the way, everybody’s views are intolerant because everybody thinks. Their views are right. That’s why they’re their views. You wouldn’t hold it if you thought it was wrong. If there’s narrow and wrong to say that there’s one true religion, then it’s narrow and wrong to say that there’s one true way to think about religion like we should all just believe whatever we want. That’s as exclusive a statement as proclaiming the gospel of Jesus Christ. But here’s the thing that’s kind of a side point. Every other religion, including irreligion, like secular humanism kind of stuff, teaches us how to swim. You’re on your own, okay? Showed you the stroke. So go ahead, keep the law, make sure you do better than the people at your high school reunion. Good luck to you. Hope you don’t drown. There’s only one religion that says there’s the lifeguard and you can’t do it. You need him. That’s the religion we proclaim. So go on proclaiming it. Third, we live in His grace by seeking to please Him, because we know he’s pleased with us. That’s verse 10, which I didn’t really hit in the first two passes, right? Paul says, Am I now trying to win the approval of human beings or of God? Am I trying to please people? Are still trying to please people. I would not be a servant of Christ. Now there’s an implicit argument here. The shift from verse nine to verse 10. Apparently, Paul has been accused of people pleasing because he’s making it easier for the Gentiles to come into the faith. Don’t worry about that. Like you don’t need to keep the law. It’s really hard. Just don’t worry. Circumcision. No fun. Okay, trust me, skip it. Don’t do it, guys. So that’s the argument, right? He’s trying to make it easier for them, but considering what he just said in verses eight and nine, the strong language, the accusation isn’t going to stick. Like, really, do I sound like a people pleaser here? Of course, he doesn’t. But there is that temptation there for all of us to seek the approval of others, to win it by our good works. Again. We talked about this at Christmas. What kind of Christmas cards do you send? Are they ones where you catalog everything you did wrong that year? No, never did you brag about your kids. What a good parent you are. Facebook posts things like that, right? It’s always just this, like relentless personal PR campaign that we’re all running, if we’ve got that, that temptation to please people, it will lead us to compromise, change the truth, to make it more palatable, maybe we’ll just shave off some counter cultural commands, maybe about human sexuality, let’s say, or to keep the truth to ourselves so that we don’t offend people, family, friends, neighbors, colleagues, or even to compromise our morals to fit in like the stereotypical teenager who takes a swig when The bottle is passed around because I’d rather count my morals and have people think I’m a loser. But if we seek to please people, we cannot please God. So Paul says, right, I wouldn’t be a servant of Christ. I wouldn’t be a servant of Christ if I were trying to please people. That feels important, which means we need to put this tendency to death then. So how do we put people pleasing to death? We need to fear God more than we fear people. Proverbs tells us that the fear of people will prove to be a snare, a trap. We get caught in it. So let’s talk about this for a moment. What does fear mean? Exactly to fear. We don’t. We’re not terrified of God like scared of him. To fear God is to be filled with awe and reverence and wonder at His goodness and greatness. Psalm 130 right with you. There is forgiveness. Therefore you are feared. We’re not scared of his forgiveness. We’re in awe of his forgiveness. So if that’s what it means, and what does it mean to fear people would mean to elevate our opinion of them because we’re in awe of them. We want their approval more than we want the approval of this God of the gospel. And the remedy, then, is to rest in the Gospel, you already have the approval of the most important being in the universe when you trust in Christ, because God looked at his son Jesus and said, with you, I am well pleased. And when he looks at us, if we put our faith in Christ, he sees Jesus, which means he looks at us and says, with you, I am well pleased. That changes how we live. Knowing our Father loves us like picture a kid learning baseball. Dad is the coach of the team, if that. Kid is not sure about what dad thinks about him, harsh or abusive dad, something like that. What happens when he strikes out and he’s walking back to the dugout where dad’s standing? He’d be scared, he’d be devastated. He’s certainly going to try harder. There’s no rest there at all. What if that kid knows that dad loves him no matter what. It’s baseball doesn’t matter. It’s fine. I can come back. What’s that kid gonna do? Was he’s gonna rest in the Father’s love. Doesn’t mean he’s gonna do nothing. He’s gonna come back. He’s gonna talk to dad. What happened? You know, when dad said, what’d you do? I stepped too early, you know? Okay, fine. You got it. Let’s work on your timing. That’s fine, but it totally changes the nature of what we do, or it’s like, it’s like a man pursuing a woman, if this is early on, you know, he’s trying to please her. He’s trying to please her for his sake so that she’ll go out with him. And a little bit scared, because what if she won’t go out with him? But how different is that after 20 years of marriage, I’m trying to please her, because I love her. I just love her. I’m thrilled that she loves me, so I just want to make her happy all the time in Christ, in other words, our identity is secure. You don’t have to prove yourself at your high school reunion. It’s good news when you think Prince William worries when he goes to his high school reunion, well, you lost a lot of hair. You’re going to love the tower. He’s got a great view of the scaffold. Not going to want to miss it, right? He doesn’t care at all. He knows who he is. We know who we are. In Christ, we don’t have to worry either. The Gospel matters. It matters eternally. So learn it, love it, live it. We’re going to keep working through all of those as we go through Galatians. The message of Galatians is a message that Luther captured. Well, I want to close with this. Luther writes, God accepts only the Forsaken, cures only the sick, gives sight only to the blind, restores life only to the dead, sanctifies only the sinners, gives wisdom only to the unwise fools, and we might say, rescues only the drowning. In short, he has mercy only on those who are wretched, and gives grace only to those who are not in grace. Therefore, no proud saint, no wise or just person, can become God’s material and God’s purpose cannot be fulfilled in him. He remains in his own work and makes a fictitious, pretended, false and painted saint of himself that is a hypocrite. Leave off pretending that you can do it and instead live in the grace of Christ and the love of Him who called you to it. Let’s pray. Father who rescued us when we could not rescue ourselves, who sent your Son to die for our sins. We stand in awe of you. We worship and revere you, and we would live in fear of you, because with you there is forgiveness, Father. We pray that we would rest in that grace that is offered to us. We can’t earn it. We don’t need to earn it. We can only receive it in Christ help us to receive it, even now and then, to live in light of it. We pray for Your name’s sake. Amen.