Subtraction by Addition

Number and was soon talking with the woman who was going to cure my despair. Though our conversation was meaningful, I knew it wasn't what my soul had been longing for. After this, I remember talking with my sister Melissa. She seemed pleased to hear from me after so many years.

Halfway through our conversation, she asked me about my religious beliefs. I told her I was a Christian and believed in God. She began to test my faith and told me that she was worried about my eternal salvation, worried that I was going to hell. I thought, man, this chick is a Jesus freak.

I remember thinking, I'm a good person. I've never done anything to keep me out of heaven, or had I? After I got off the phone, her words started to sink in. I remember weeping at the thought of being wrong about my eternal salvation.

I had always believed in God and thought I was going to heaven. It was at that point, I knew I had, I had created a God in my mind and to suit my life and didn't really know the true God. I began praying to God and asking him to show me his way. Shortly after these prayers, my brother Mike, came by with his family.

We talked about the Lord for a good period of time. Before he left, we prayed. I, I have prayed the sinner's prayer many times, but something was different here. I felt compelled to seek the Lord.

I remember lying in bed wide awake with my mind focused on God. I asked my Maker to continue to show me His way. The following day, I woke up with a feeling of refreshment. I had a passion to study God's word.

From that day forward, I have been living my life strictly for God. I have been given a new life through Jesus Christ. I no longer feel hopeless. I have been delivered from my despair.

Instead of living my life seeking what will please me, I now live my life for what pleases Him. This is a blessing because as I am pleasing Him, I am pleased with myself. I now have a passion to seek the lost and bring them the joy of truly knowing the Lord. I guess I have become a Jesus freak.

Well, because of your profession that you have made in the Lord Jesus Christ, His life, death, and resurrection for you, I baptize you in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Praise the Lord. afterwards, Hannah, could you raise your hand and And Michelle, Michelle and Hannah right here, if you guys want to get to know them a little bit, they'll be visiting with us, the rest of the day. All right, let's continue to praise God, worshipers.

let's just pray for a minute. Lord, we thank you for just, just a reminder of, of the revolution that you create in, in lives, that you can, you can reach down to anyone, that you can change hearts, that you completely turn lives around. Thank you, Lord, for, for the effect that you have in our lives. Thank you for the, for the safety, the security, the, the sense of purpose, the love, all that, that is, is ours because of Christ, because of what you have done for us.

Thank you for, for this testimony here this morning of, just another life change for you. And just thank you again for the opportunity of, of, praising you together, Christ. Amen. Wonderful, merciful savior.

Let's sing together. so you rescue the souls. To from. Lord.

I Oh you. Won't be here. N How deep the Father's love for us. Oh, sorry.

Pardon me for one second while I tune my guitar. How deep the Father's love for love. beyond all men. That he should give his only son.

To make. How great. The pain of feeling. He turned his face away.

which and one. Bring are. The On the cross. One Hello I'm mocking among the I know.

Knowledge, the need for prayer and support for all the people affected by the fires up in the mountain in San Diego and Santa Clarita. I know that we had, Kathy and Moses Tay that were affected. we've also got Keisha and. I'm not aware of everybody, but if, if we could continue to pray and and also if you guys would make a note, just call the office if of any some updated prayer needs or requests as we try to minister during this time of difficulty.

I know there was a couple of people in the church that were able to go out to the orange show and pass out Bibles and tracts. There's a lot of evacuees out there. You guys got to go. Great.

And so we're very thankful for those that went out to minister to evacuees, but just be praying that the Lord would open up opportunities for the gospel. This is a time when people realize maybe more than any other time that our material possessions in this life are temporal and so they begin to think of spiritual things. So we want to minister to the physical needs, but also press, press the spiritual realities behind what we're seeing. The title of this morning's message is Subtraction by Addition.

You've heard the phrase addition by subtraction. We're talking about subtraction by addition. That is, anything that you add to the gospel, as Paul's going to argue here in the book of Galatians, really eliminates the gospel. And I want to start just by mentioning a story I read about an instant cake mix that was a big flop.

And the reason this instant cake mix turned out to be a huge flop is the directions were just add water. And stick it in the oven and you have a cake. And when this company first put out their mix, when this first came out, the very first time they put it out, nobody really believed that you could just add water and come up with a cake. And so the sales were actually terrible.

So all the execs got together and they decided, well, let's throw in an egg into the directions and see how we do. So they just add water and one egg. And then cook, whatever it is, 375 degrees for so many minutes, and the sails just took off. Just by adding that one ingredient, suddenly people could believe that if you had an egg involved, then this must be a legitimate, legitimate cake.

And this story reminds us of how some people react to the plan of salvation. To them, it just sounds too easy, too simple to be true, even though the Bible says by grace, you've been saved through faith. It's a gift of God, not his works. They feel that there's something more they must do, something that must be added to the recipe of salvation.

They think they must perform good works to gain favor, the favor of God and eternal life. But the Bible's clear that we are saved, not by works of righteousness, which we have done, but according to His mercy, as we heard this morning during the worship. So unlike the cake mix manufacturer, God has not changed his formula to make salvation more marketable. The gospel we proclaim must be free of works, even though it may sound too easy.

And, a survey was conducted not too awful long ago by the Barna Study Group of 7000 teens that are growing up in evangelical churches, churches that preach a salvation by grace alone, through faith alone, and some of the things they found were very interesting that when presented with this statement, the way to be accepted by God is to try sincerely to live a good life. 60% of these teens growing up in evangelical churches said that's true. God is satisfied if a person lives the best life he can.

70% of the evangelical teens said, Yeah, I agree with that.

The main emphasis of the gospel is on God's rules for right living. More than half of the young people said that's right. And these are kids that are growing up in churches just like Cornerstone, where the gospels being preached on a regular basis, by faith alone, grace alone. And yet, we are convinced that somehow we need to smuggle our works or smuggle our character into the justification doctrine.

One of the things that we're going to see as we look at the book of Galatians last week, Milton laid out that the key issue is you have some people coming down, these Judaizers that are saying, like it says in Acts 15:1, unless you are circumcised according to the custom of Moses, you cannot be saved. They're saying, yeah, Jesus is great, but there's something else that you must do in order to be saved. It's Jesus plus something, it's grace plus something else. And we're going to be confronted with this time and time again in this book, is things that we are tempted to add to the plate of justification.

Now is Paul making the argument in this book that circumcision has always been a terrible thing? No, God Himself was the one that gave circumcision to whom? Abraham, right? Abraham believed God was accounting him for righteousness, and God gave him the sign of his relationship with the covenant keeping God of circumcision.

And God gave the law of Moses and the sacrificial system to Moses, and the law was a good thing in its context. But one of the things that we learned in this book is that the law had a built-in expiration date. It was a tutor to lead us to Christ, but after Christ came, you no longer need the tutor. It's like you get up in the morning and you're going to have a nice bowl of cereal.

Maybe you've done this, and you're groggy and you go in, you grab the milk and you pour the milk into the cereal and you take that first bite and you're like, wait a second, this is expired. This is spoiled milk. Nobody would conclude based on the fact that the milk I'm drinking is spoiled, that milk, all milk is terrible, right? For any reason, don't drink milk, right?

Is that what you conclude? No, milk does a body good. It has a purpose, right? And Paul's going to tell us that the law does have a purpose.

But if you get the purpose wrong, and if you put law into the wrong category, if you put the law of Moses into the wrong covenant, you've moved it into an expiration time. Now you've got some bad stuff. Now you've got, as we're going to see this morning, damnable teaching. And so as we continue through the series, we're going to be answering, trying to answer a lot of questions that are going to be raised by Paul and raised by you and raised by us.

We're not going to be able to answer all the questions in one sermon. But as we continue through the book of Galatians, here's some of the questions that we're going to need to be answering, answering, and sometimes we're going to answer them several times. What is the gospel? We're going to be answering that over and over and over again, because it's so easy to get that wrong.

What is grace? What is saving faith? What is justification? What is law?

What is the role of the law under the old covenant, under the new covenant? What is the place for works obedience, holiness? What is legalism? How do we recognize apostasy?

How do we treat brothers and sisters who are doubting the gospel? How do we treat false teachers? And here's one question we will try to answer this morning later is, how is it that Paul can condemn circumcision in the book of Galatians, and yet have Timothy circumcised in Acts 16? How can he be so passionate against circumcision in one respect, and his enemies are going to accuse him of actually promoting circumcision in another respect.

Those are some of the things we're going to deal with. Let's go ahead and read our text Galatians chapter 1, starting in verse 6. Paul says, I'm amazed that you are so quickly deserting him who called you by the grace of Christ for a different gospel, which is really not another. Only there are some who are disturbing you and want to distort the gospel of Christ.

But even if we, or an angel from heaven should preach to you a gospel contrary to that which we have preached to you, let him be accursed. As we've said before, so I now say again, If any man is preaching to you a gospel contrary to that which you've received, let him be accursed. Am I now seeking the favor of men or of God? Or am I striving to please men?

If I were still striving to please men, I would not be a servant, a bond servant of Christ. Let's bow in prayer, Lord, we ask that Your Spirit would aid us as we look at this text inspired by your Spirit given to the apostle Paul and preserved for us this day. Lord, we ask that you would use me as sinner to preach your word to other sinners and that Your Holy Spirit would illumine and make your word operative, that we'd put it to work, it wouldn't just rot in our minds and become other facts to add, but it would become life changing.

We pray this in Christ's name.

Amen. We're going to look at 3 points, 3 facts, I think we can applications that we can derive from this text 6:10. And the first one is, this is where our children can begin filling in their outline if they have an outline, to depart from the gospel is to desert God. To depart from the gospel is to desert God.

Read again verse 6. I am amazed that you are so quickly deserting him who called you by the grace of Christ for a different gospel. The fact that Paul can be amazed at this situation implies a couple of things, doesn't it? it implies that the Galatians were expected to last the long haul when he led them to Christ.

He had every expectation that this was the real deal. So he had actually a high esteem of those in Iconium, Lystra, Derby, Antioch, all those places that Milt talked about last week. That this is the real thing. He had no expectation that there was false profession, false conversion.

These people have received the gospel, they believe the gospel. And so he had a high esteem of their, their gospel profession. But now he hears this news, and he's amazed. that they are so quickly deserting him quickly could be the idea that since their salvation, or it could mean that Paul is surprised that at the first onslaught of trouble, at the first onslaught of false teaching, they've caved in.

This group had come to Christ, had demonstrated fruit of repentance. And then the first time they're confronted with false doctrine, which Paul had warned them would be coming, they cave in, and they start following these false teachers. And notice, there's a few observations I think we can make from this verse about the Galatians desertion. About this desertion, this, this deserting.

of the gospel. When Paul uses the word desertion, by the way, the idea here is that these are folks that were considered to be part of Paul's army, and now they're deserting. They are spiritual deserters. They are religious turncoats.

They are Benedict Arnold's. If you're a Red Sox fan, they are Johnny Damon's. Maybe not that bad. But these, these folks have deserted.

And there's a few things that we could see about this desertion from the text. First of all, it was a progressive desertion. We get this from the ING word there in the middle of the verse, the participle. I am amazed that you are so quickly deserting him.

This is something that was, it wasn't completed. It was in process. It was progressing. The Galatians aren't at the final point of apostasy where there's no hope.

Paul's going to tell us later in chapter 5 that he has great hope, but they're in the process of turning away from the simple gospel. There is a process that happens when people apostasize. Unless we think that it's only the Galatians that this could happen to, just realize the Holy Spirit hasn't given us the book of Galatians just so that we can study about what happened to them. This is what can happen to us here at Cornerstone in our hearts.

We take our eyes off of Christ for a moment. Before it, we're slowly, quickly, quicker than we think it should be deserting. I was listening to a story this week about a, a, a boy, and this actually, I remember this experience myself. I remember going to the beach when you're a young child and your parents tell you about the undertow and watch out for the undertow.

And I personally, I thought the undertow was some monster that would come grab you and suck you underneath. And, but I'm sure people have had the experience, you get out there a little bit, and you don't really look back and you're not really looking at the shore and before it, You turn around and you have progressively moved out away from the beach. And I've had that experience where I thought I was literally going to drown, trying to get back to the beach. And this is what's happened.

It's been a slow progression, but in this, in another sense, it's been very quick. And how many times have we've been walking, filled with the Spirit, walking, sucking in the gospel, as Milton says, and then halfway through the day, we've turned And we've progressed away from our belief in the gospel. This is what's going on in the lives of these of these Galatians. And One of the things that Martin Luther says about this particular passage, he says a man may labor 60 years.

To build up some little church. To be rightly ordered. And when it's so ordered, there creepeth in some malbrained idiot. And he in one moment, overthroweth it all.

That's a wonderful Lutheranism. That you can be working, you're working on preaching the gospel at Cornerstone. And then without it can seem so quick, we progressively before it, we can be off believing something that's just not gospel. On both sides we're going to talk about the legalism side, but there's also the license side that we'll be talking about a little bit later.

So it's, it's a progressive desertion. It's not that these people have arrived at apostasy, but there's always the threat that any one of us can apostasize, whereas a church, as a movement, we look at our church right now in the IFCA, and we're, we're comforted and encouraged by what we're seeing, but it doesn't take but a generation, and the IFCA could have no impact. The cornerstone could be some liberal church that doesn't even believe the gospel anymore. So another observation we could make about this is it's a personal desertion.

It's not just progressive, but this is personal. Notice Paul says, I'm amazed that you're so quickly deserting him. The one who called you. It's not just that they're deserting a concept.

It's not just that they're deserting finer points of theology, where Paul's got his view, and they've got their view, and they've just moved away from his view. No, they've moved away from, they're moving away from God Himself, the one who sovereignly called them, effectually called them in space and time to come to himself. Paul says to his audience in general that God had called them to Himself. And he warns them, though God has called you by your actions, and moving away from this God, you are making this personal.

You are personally denying the God who has, who has called you. And this God who has called you has called you into this grace, this gracious atmosphere, the grace of Christ. The grace of Christ, this term that we see Paul use time and time again, MacArthur defines the grace of Christ as God's free and sovereign act of mercy and granting salvation through the death and resurrection of Christ, totally apart from any human work or merit. They're moving away from this free gospel into this thing that is earned by works and merit.

So it's very personal. It's not just difference of opinion. It's they're moving away from a person. A third observation that we could make about this particular verse is it's a pointless desertion.

It's not like they're moving to a substantive gospel. Paul says, for a different gospel. The idea here is a totally different species, a non-gospel, if you will. Paul says in 2 Corinthians 11:4, when he's talking to them, he says, there are those that preach another Christ.

And you're accepting another gospel which is not even a gospel. And that begs the question, this is the first time in this book as we're looking at it expositionally that we come to the word gospel. While Milton did an overview last week of the fact that the gospel occurs all over the book or a couple weeks ago, this is the first time we're actually hitting it here in verse 6. And so it behooveh, let's define the gospel for a moment.

I want to pull out a definition from the gospel primer. And our care group a couple of weeks ago, our care group leader Chris Johnson said, What is the gospel to the kids? And one of our kids, just from memory, said, Here's the gospel. Good news of salvation for hell deserving sinners through the person and work of Jesus Christ.

It's a great summarization of the gospel. Good news. It's a good news of salvation, rescuing hell deserving sinners, we who are doomed and heading towards hell through solely through the person and work of Christ, believing in the finished work of Christ, this God man who came and became flesh, who never sinned, he didn't deserve to die. The Bible says the wages of sin is what?

Death. How many sins did Jesus commit? 0. If there's anybody who didn't deserve to die, it was Jesus, but Jesus died as a substitute for you and I.

And it's his work, it's his righteousness that he comes and he dresses us with. And that's what we call justification. And that's the real, as Milton was talking about last week, that is the real contention that Paul's making in his book, is that when we talk about our salvation, he wants to talk about the fact that we are justified by Christ's life, death, and resurrection. Now lest we misunderstand Paul's point, I want to make a side turn here and look at another passage.

Turn to Philippians 1:15. it could be, you could be thinking, well, Maybe Paul is really after the Judaizers because they're, they've got terrible motives, and they're really insincere in their presentation of the gospel. It's not so much that they've got a different view. It's just that Paul's really rankled because of their sincerity.

Really, the opposite is true. There's no indication in the book of Galatians that these Judaizers that these false teachers have bad motives. They seem to be operating from a belief system that says we've got to do something to rescue these Galatians. They're coming in to rescue the Galatians from what they really believe is the false Gospel of Paul.

And they seem to be very sincere in their approach. But notice what Paul does with people who are preaching the true gospel, but have terrible motives. Philippians 1:15 to 18 says this, some, to be sure, are preaching Christ, even from envy and strife, verse 17 out of selfish ambition rather than from pure motives, thinking to cause me distress in my imprisonment. He's talking about these guys who are teaching the gospel to cause Paul harm and his ministry harm.

What's, what's Paul's response to them? Verse 18? What then? Only that in every way, whether in pretense or in truth, good or bad motives, sincere or not sincere, Christ is proclaimed, and in this I rejoice and rejoice.

If the truth of the gospel is being proclaimed, even by terrible representatives, Paul's not saying these are great representatives of the gospel, right? But even if they're terrible representatives of the gospel, but it's true. Paul says, I'll rejoice with that. Here in Galatia, you have people that are very sincere in their belief, but they've got the gospel wrong.

And as we're going to see, Paul, He's not too happy with that, to understate it. Paul was more concerned about the truthfulness of the gospel than the sincerity and motives of those who preach it. And so this again, it begs what is the gospel begs the question, if Paul can get to go so rankled about a slight alteration, a slight addition, a slight subtraction from the gospel, what is it? Sinclair Ferguson, I, I love his discussion of this topic, a book called the Christian Life.

The glory of the gospel is that God has declared Christians to be rightly related to him, in spite of their sin. But our greatest temptation and mistake is to try to smuggle character into his work of grace. How easily we fall into the trap of assuming that we remain justified only so long as there are grounds in our character for that justification. But Paul's teaching is that nothing we do ever contributes to our justification.

Justification is not subject to degrees. God's work, God, God's work in us is subject to degrees. We differ in the extent to which we allow His Spirit to make us like Christ, and it is possible, therefore, to be more or less like Christ. But it is not possible to be more or less justified.

Paul was not more justified than you are, as a Christian. Think about that. the apostle Paul, he's the hero of heroes, right? When it comes to the doctrine of justification, I'm not talking about sanctification, OK?

I'm not necessarily talking about fruits of repentance and so on. We're going to get there, but when you talk about just the justification plate. Paul is no more justified than any other true believer in this room. If you're truly born again, you are just as justified as any other believer.

That's ever been a part of the body of Christ. That is the gospel. And that if you understand it is scandalous. And that's why it's so tempting for us to go on this side and try to smuggle stuff that ought to be the results of our salvation actually onto the justification plate, and we can so easily get it backwards and actually move ourselves into apostasy if we're not careful.

Notice what John Piper says and trying to understand this balance between justification and holiness. He says, so the crucial question now is, why does practical holiness or love inevitably accompany justifying faith? He's wrestling with, OK, if we're justified, By faith alone. Does that just mean that shall we go on sinning that grace may abound that's the ultimate question that gets raised, right?

If you understand what Paul's saying about justification, it will almost always lead to the question of Romans 6, right? You understand that you are saved by grace alone through nothing you've done, only by Christ's death and resurrection. If you understand that part of the gospel properly, it will always lead to this question. Well, if that's true.

Shall I just sin that grace may abound? If you come to that question, you've understood the free grace properly. If you don't come to that question, you're probably mixing legalism in over here. You're probably trying to establish character as a basis for your salvation if you're not asking that question because the gospel is so free.

And so powerful that it must lead to this question. And so that's, that's what John Piper's wrestling with. His answer is faith itself is the agent of works. They do not merely accompany faith, they come through or by faith.

Faith is the agent that produces the works, and it does so necessarily. Thus, the works are evidence of true faith and are not the means of our salvation the way faith is. They are the evidence that faith is real and are, and that are, and thus are necessary for final salvation, though not the ground of it. As the death and righteousness of Christ are, or the means of it, as faith is.

I'm gonna, I'm just throwing that out to get you guys thinking we're not going to cover every aspect of that quote. I just want, I want you to wrestle with that and chew on that, that there are some, There are some particulars that we need to deal with as we're moving through this doctrine. I also want to give you a quote from some lady named Ann I found on a blog site. I don't know who this gal is, sister of the Lord, but I just love her statement here.

If we think we've earned our salvation, we're trapped on a performance roller coaster. If we think we're saved and forgiven, so we don't have to obey, we belie our profession. We must pay attention to the difference between our justification and our sanctification. And we need faith for both.

I think Ann's got a teaching ministry going on. That's a good summary of what we're talking about here. But the thing that Paul is focused on, the thing I want you to keep your attention on is what Paul's really concerned about here in this book. He's not so worried about having fruits of repentance that show that you're generally born again.

He's not so worried about that side. He wants to make sure that you get the justification thing down because this is where it all starts. If you get justification wrong, all of that can get all messed up. You've got to get justification right.

If you start saying that you've got to do such and such in order to be right in God's eyes, You start doing what the Judaizers have done. And it's so easy for any one of us to either think that, or be or relate ourselves to God in that way. So the first point is to depart from the gospel is to Desert God. Secondly, to distort the gospel is to oppose God.

Now Paul has actually been fairly kind in his tone towards the Galatians. He doesn't say it's done, it's true. There's no hope. But now he's going to turn to the teachers, the people that are teaching this false doctrine.

And now watch his tone change, verse 7, which is really not another gospel. Only there are some who are disturbing you. They want to distort the gospel of Christ. And then we'll look at verse 8 and 9 with the anathemas here in a moment.

Notice that these teachers are coming in, and they're using gospel terminology. Paul said he, Paul is the one that says, You are believing another gospel, which is not a true gospel. And probably the reason he's actually picking up on that is because these Judaizers are coming in and they're using the exact same terminology as Paul, but they're redefining it. Paul is the one you understand that before Paul started writing epistles by the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, the word gospel itself wasn't really a classified.

term in the church yet. The Holy Spirit used Paul to classify this common Greek term good news as a religious term as a Christian church term. Paul uses gospel over 60 times. If you go to the Gospels themselves, you find it 5 times in Mark and like 3 times in Matthew, but you come to Paul, and it's 60+ times.

The Judaizers come into Galatia, and they start using Pauline terminology. They're talking about gospel. They're talking about grace. They're talking about faith.

And oh, yeah, law. They're packing Paul's terms with their own definitions. Chrissostom says that for those who wished to deceive them did not do so all at once, but they gently estranged them from the faith, in fact, leaving the names unchanged. And isn't that so true with false teaching as they come in and they're using faith alone, grace alone, we believe in Christ alone, and yet they're packing all of those terms today with totally different meaning.

Luther says that the devil comes dressed in black to tempt us towards overt wickedness, but more frequently comes to the church in white to tempt us towards spiritual sins. And these false teachers that are coming to Galatia say something to this effect, Christ is a good workman, who hath indeed begun a building, but has not finished it. That must be finished by Moses. And that's what Paul repudiates.

These people coming in the name of God, pretending to build up the church. There's an old German proverb that says, In God's name beginneth all mischief. People come in God's name to try to do God's work. And actually, it's not God's at all.

These folks notice they come to distort and to disturb. These are the two observations we want to make. Notice a couple of observations about the false teachers that they were distorting the gospel. The idea is they're not denying.

the gospel, they're twisting it, they're adding to it, they're just making slight adjustments. Nobody would listen to a false teacher that just walked in and just utterly denied Christ and utterly denied his death and resurrection and utterly denied the gospel. They're just wanting to make little additions to it. And then secondly, they're not just distorting the gospel, but these folks are disturbing the church.

They're in the process of disturbing the consciences of men, bringing works and righteousness of law into salvation. There's a lot of things that can disturb a church. Gossip can disturb a church. Immorality can disturb a church.

Lack of unity can disturb a church. There's lots of things that can get into a church and disturb it. You see, some of those things in books like First Corinthians. But Paul doesn't treat the problem in Corinth, the way he treats this problem.

This disturbance will deal a death blow to any church. This is a disturbance in the very core of what the gospel is. And so what is Paul's response to those that would distort the gospel and disturb the church? Well, look at verse 8.

Read verse 8 with me. First of all, verse 8, he says, but even if we, Paul and his associates, or an angel from heaven, to preach to you a gospel contrary to that which we have preached to you. Let him be accursed. Accursed is the idea, let him be eternally damned.

Let him be set aside for the judgment of hell. Notice here that Paul is speaking in the hypothetical, in verse 8. He says, if we If Paul Or my associates. While this is theoretically possible.

He's speaking more hypothetically, if we were to come and preach a totally different gospel, let me be accursed. And even if an angel were to appear to you, a real angel, and preach you a different gospel, let that angel be accursed. Remember in Romans 9 where Paul says, I wish myself I could be accursed so that my brethren could be saved. This is a totally different type of curse.

If I were to go out, Paul says, if I were to go out and preach a different gospel and to add to the gospel or take away from the justification plate, let me be accursed. Then he moves on into the reality. Verse 9. And you can almost picture Paul slowing the pace down and whispering this just so you don't think I'm exaggerating.

As we've said before, Either in the last verse, or maybe he said this in an earlier warning, so I no longer we, I say now. If any man is preaching to you, which was no doubt going on, a gospel contrary to that which you received, this is a gospel they already received. Let him be damned. This is reality.

And this is the situation that Paul is dealing with in the Galatian church. Notice he says I. I say again, now this is I with a capital I. This is Paul saying, I, the apostle Paul, now say to you, Paul, as a divinely authorized, listen to this, Paul, as a divinely authorized apostle, and a prophet of the Lord Jesus Christ, pronounces divine judgment upon these false teachers.

Think about this. This is a real historical event. Real people went into Galatia, we're teaching real false doctrine. And Paul, under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, Now pronounces their eternal damnation.

That's heavy. He pronounces the damnation of these false teachers. With the authority of the gift of apostleship by the inspiration of the Holy Spirit. That's how serious this is to Paul.

This is not a mere wish that Paul is giving, but a divine authorized prophetic utterance, as King David would pronounce doom upon his enemies in the imprecatory Psalms in the Old Testament. You read some of those Psalms where David is pronouncing doom on his enemies by inspiration of the Holy Spirit. That's David as a prophet speaking by the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, doom on certain countries. It's not just David doesn't like somebody, the Holy Spirit is pronouncing doom on them.

In the same way, the apostle Paul is pronouncing doom upon these false teachers. And let me just suggest, and you can research this on your own and see what you think, but it's my opinion at this point that only those with the prophetic or apostolic gift would have the prerogative to utter this statement. None of us in this room could stand up and say, let them be anathema. Unless you've got the authority of the apostle Paul.

Now we could look at what the apostle Paul writes, compare it to what other people are saying, and judiciously try to interpret what's going on and say, if you aren't careful, you could fall underneath this condemnation. But Paul is making an apostolic Dictation here, when he announces this anathema. Notice Luther's quote. On this section, he says, Paul subjecteth both himself and an angel from heaven and all others to be under the authority of the scriptures, whether it be the Pope, or Luther or Augustine or Paul or an angel from heaven.

Neither ought any doctrine to be taught or heard in the church besides the pure word of God. That is to say, the Holy Scripture otherwise occurs to be the teachers and hearers together with their doctrine. Is Paul being too harsh here? Many people have thought that he's being harsh.

If you read the various commentaries and so on. What is the mighty harm, some would ask? Paul would I think to draw a picture, if you have a nice beverage, a nice, wonderful, gracious beverage that the Lord is offering, and you just add a little bit of poison to that. That's it.

Grace plus anything equals nothing, non-gospel. This is serious stuff. We need to ask ourselves, is there anything that we are trying to smuggle in the justification plate? Are we listening to teachers that are trying to smuggle in works in order to accomplish salvation?

It's rampant out there and we're going to be hitting some of the stuff in the future, but you've got this thing called the new perspective on Paul which is basically saying, well, Luther got it wrong and the Reformation got justification wrong. Really it's more of a synergistic thing of works plus grace. It's running around evangelical churches today. A lot of people are saying we're being too harsh.

We need to have a more humble orthodoxy. We, we need not to go out and make pronouncements of propositional truth, saying our doctrines better than your doctrine. We're in a postmodern age. Each community has its own truth.

We need to lighten up. I don't know what Paul would be saying about, lighting up. Let's look at a final point here. And that is, we've, we've said that first of all, to depart from the gospel is to desert God, to distort the gospels, to oppose God.

Lastly, to defend the gospel is to honor God. And that's really what Paul's trying to do in this whole book is defend the gospel and rescue these apostasizing present tense believers who still have hope. Look at verse 10. And I'll be hitting some points here and Carlos perhaps may hit some points here from verse 10 next week for am I now seeking the favor of men or of God?

He's now keep in mind, he's just got through pronouncing apostolic anathemas, right? And now he's turning a question to his The false teachers here and he says, OK, am I now? Trying to seek the favor of men, or of God. Or am I striving to please men?

If I were still trying to please men, I would not be a bond servant of Christ. In other words, I just got through pronouncing anathemas over you guys. Do you think I'm man pleasers now? This raises a question, and as you look through the book, as we'll come to this more later verses, is, is these false teachers were obviously raising accusations against against Paul for him to ask this question.

And the type of accusations were like this. They would say among Paul's own people he preaches circumcision, for he knows that they believe in it. But he withholds the right from the Gentiles because they welcome exemption from it. Where's this criticism coming from?

You get the criticism. Like Paul, out of one side of his mouth, he preaches circumcision. On the other side of his mouth, he doesn't preach circumcision. Paul's just a man pleaser.

So Paul comes along and lays out these anathemas and says, Am I a man pleaser now? You almost can picture Paul just it's up with that. But think about this. Acts 16:1.

Paul is going back through this Galatian area, right? Lystra, Derby, and heavily populated with Jews. And he decides to take Timothy with him. And Timothy is half Jew, half Gentile.

And Paul knows that he's moving into a heavily Jewish area. And what does he do with Timothy? He comes over to Timothy. Now imagine you're Timothy.

Timothy, we're about ready to go into this heavy Jewish area. I was wondering if you could get circumcised so that we don't cause an offense for the gospel. What do you think Timothy said? Really?

Well, Timothy did it, for me. I'd be like, Paul, can I go to a Gentile area? so anyway, so he has Timothy gets circumcised. They go into this Galatian area preaching the gospel.

People know about this stuff. Everybody would have known somehow that Timothy was circumcised. They wouldn't have had a fence, and so on. And so this question gets raised.

Paul, you're so against circumcision on one side. On the other side, you're having Timothy get circumcised, you're paying for people to go through their religious rites and ceremony. Who's the true Paul? Is the question that's being raised.

I want you to turn to 1 Corinthians 9. This all wraps around this, this idea of defending the gospel. There's a important point that we want to make. About how Paul defends the Gospel.

1 Corinthians 9:19. And notice what Paul says here, we can't hit every nook and cranny of this passage, but just follow me here. For though I am free from all men, He's theologically free. I have made myself a slave to all that I might win the more to the Jews, I became as a Jew, that I might win the Jews, to those under the law, as under the law, though not myself under the law, that I might win those who are under the law, to those who are without law, as without law, though not being without the law of God, he's not talking about antonomianism, licentiousness, but under the law of Christ, That I might win those who are without law, that is Gentiles to the weak.

I became weak, that I might win the weak. I've become all things to all men, that I may by all means save some. And I do all things for the sake of the gospel that I may become a fellow partaker of it. I want you to just follow this, what Paul's doing here.

Paul is willing To go out and do things that could be misinterpreted. In fact, we're misinterpreted as legalism, and as adding to the gospel, in order to gain a hearing for the gospel. Now there are some shades of thought here that we need to keep in mind as we're trying to figure this thing out between legalism and licentiousness and so on. Think about it.

Paul, It says don't get circumcised. And then he circumcises Timothy. What is going on here? Let me just make a couple of observations about Paul's ministry as we close.

First of all, Paul's Gospel freedom. Looked like man pleasing. Paul's gospel freedom looked to some like man pleasing as he went out and said, I want to, I want to gain a hearing for the gospel. And I am willing to become all things to all men in order to get people to hear the gospel.

In his mind, this was in a totally different category from justification. He's not saying, Hey, Timothy, come get circumcised because you need to get saved. Timothy gets circumcised that we don't cause these Jews to get offended because they're still struggling with this stuff and they don't have it all figured out yet. We know that circumcision doesn't mean anything.

He says in First Corinthians, circumcision or not circumcision doesn't mean anything. So he says to Timothy, Hey, get circumcised. Let's go preach the gospel. Once they get the gospel, they'll figure it out for themselves.

You see what Paul's doing here? He's willing to open himself up to accusation of legalism, in order to preach the gospel. There's, there's some shades here that we need to be very careful with, lest we start judging people who aren't really perverting the gospel, right? Or lest we start judging others.

In a, in a wrong way, who are perverting the gospel or not judging others. A second point we could make is Paul's gospel defense was unmistakably God honoring. While Paul was willing to become all things, all men when it came to preaching the gospel and so on, when it came to justification, when it came to salvation by faith alone, he was utterly uncompromising and willing to pronounce anathemas for the glory of God. Paul was willing to observe certain Jewish traditions.

This would be a summary of what we've talked about right here. He's willing to observe certain Jewish traditions, as long as they were not considered means unto salvation. For Paul, there was room for flexibility, but only within the limits prescribed by the gospel. Basically what Paul is saying here in verse 10 is, would I be pronouncing anathemas if I were still seeking to please men?

That's his point. And then later in chapter 6 we're going to see that he calls his enemies. You guys are the ones that are men pleasers. You guys are the ones that are trying to avoid persecution.

You go out and try to get people circumcised so the Jews won't persecute him for the gospel's sake when it comes to justification. So Paul is willing to defend the gospel to honor God, and we need to be willing to defend the gospel in our own lives at Cornerstone in the church. But let me just offer you guys a word of exhortation and caution. As we go out to try to defend the gospel, we need to make sure that we keep those categories clear that Paul was able to keep clear in his mind.

He had a freedom to go out and do certain things. But yet he would not mix it with justification. And that's complicated at times. It's very easy for us to look at a behavior, or a particular doctrine, and accuse someone of teaching a false gospel.

When in reality, they might be over here on the freedom side. And they're just doing things they've just got a different skin, the gospels, the body, the gospels, the kernel, and then sometimes there's freedom in the skin that dresses up the colonel. there's all kinds of applications of this. some silly applications would be, years ago every church you walked into in America had pews and most people wore a suit and tie and and and a particular way of going about the service.

And yet the gospel was preached, and if you look at today, if you look at our church today, it's very different. The pews are gone. We've got chairs. What in the world are those chairs?

Where's the pews? You got people dressed very differently. I noticed that everybody here I think is modest as far as I can tell, right? Paul says be, but, we're not, not all of us are in suit and tie anymore.

Have we forsaken the gospel? Because we're, or are there's others, I see Ed Lindsay's wearing a tie and a and a jacket. Is he legalistic? Because he's got a coat on?

that's where our minds can run. If we're not careful to keep these, these categories clear, we mistake the skin for the kernel. Paul was able to keep both separate, and it's, it's a constant battle. The other thing that we're going to struggle with is, as you look through like say a book like Pilgrim's Progress, you have Pilgrim Christian on this road, this narrow road of salvation, and as he's going throughout this book, one little slip to the left, and he's into licentiousness.

and a little slept to the right, and now he's over here heading towards the mountain of legality. And you just realize as you start to wrestle with some of this, it's by the grace of God alone that any of us makes it. There's so many complex. on one side we're falling into legalism.

On another side we're caving in to wickedness. On another side we're judging brothers and sisters for illegitimate reasons. On another side we're letting things go that ought to be hammered, right? It's by the grace of God that anybody who even gets to the window of heaven.

But Paul, he has hope, he comes with the gospel. And he says, I see you guys turning away, you're apostasizing, but there's hope for you. And so he re-preaches. That's the hope, the hope is to preach the gospel again.

To keep the gospel always, always before us. And one of the things we're going to find as we continue to go throughout this book is as we continue to gaze into the gospel through the book of Galatians, it's going to kill our pride. MR Dihan says grace is the death of pride. If we really understand that salvation is by grace alone, and you and I don't offer anything on the plate of justification, it's humbling, man.

It is absolutely humbling. Yeah, it's so sad. There's a festival in India out there near where the Stevens minister and by the Ganges, Varasi. Every spring, you have 40 million Hindus that show up to, to this festival.

And they come for forgiveness of sins and salvation. Thousands come stark naked and roll in the dirt for miles, believing that festering sores in their bodies will earn them salvation. Hundreds have kept one arm lifted up for years until the arm gets shriveled and is dried with gangrene. Others will stand on one leg for years, hanging on to a suspended sling for sleeping.

All of these done to achieve salvation, and to appease the angry gods. Folks Even those in our country that totally reject the gospel, have a benefit in this society because the gospel has been around. Without the gospel, that's what you get. You have no gospel influence in culture.

Let's roll around on the dirt for 10 miles so we can put swords in our bodies, wash in the Ganges so that we can appease the angry gods. But folks, you and I, if we don't keep our eyes fixed on Christ, any given moment, we're turning there. We're wanting to beat ourselves for our sins. We're wanting to beat other Christians for their sins.

When it was Christ who was beat for all of our sins, amen. Let's go to the Lord in prayer. Lord, we ask that you would help us. This is just one of many sermons in this book.

We have not answered all the questions, Lord, that you are going to be raising as we study the book of Galatians. But we just pray, Lord, that you would help us to get the gospel right. Help us to get grace right. Help us not to try to smuggle character into our justification.

We pray, Lord, that we would be amazed, Lord, as we look around, not at our turning away from the gospel, but that we would be amazed, amazed, amazed at your grace, amazed at the gospel, and help us, Lord, to help each other. We're all in transition. Any given moment, there are going to be people all throughout our body that are struggling with doubt. that are struggling with confusion, they're struggling with disobedience, Lord, may we press on together as a family, in your grace.

I pray this in Christ's name. Amen. Let's all stand together and sing one.