Good to see you all. Quick announcements, and then we’ll get into Galatians tonight. Congratulations. You guys are buying a building. And I’ll tell you about your building you’re buying. It’s between here and Fremont, two and a half miles away. It is on 14th and Leary, corner of 14th and Leary, the old Dock Freeman’s building next to the new Office Max down there, the Leary exit off the Ballard Bridge. What has happened is is that God has been very kind to us. This building, we have completely – sort of – used it to its maximum potential and we’re needing to move somewhere else. We started services here a year and a half ago with an initial core group of 40. In that time we’ve grown to between 700 and 800 some odd – sometimes 900 a week in this building. Services at 8:00, 10:00, 12:00 and 5:00. We have one legal parking place and we need to improve our scenario.

So, what we are doing is we have been actively pursuing rentals, leases, hundreds if not thousands of hours have been spent over the last few years. Finally, an opportunity has arisen. We’re taking it. We’re going to buy this building that will seat over 1,000, park over 500, have children’s space for hundreds of kids. The sanctuary itself is ten times the size of this room. Lots of room for growth. I would encourage you guys just to be in prayer. Our goal is to sign the contract tomorrow, then to finish all of our financing within 60 days, down payment and such. And then to be in by summer – excuse me – by fall or winter is our goal to get in.

So here’s exactly where we’re at on the deal. We need to put $50,000 dollars down tomorrow. We have it. We’re gonna put it down. We will then need an additional $180,000 – $150,000 for the down, $30,000 for attorneys and brokers fees and those sorts of issues, $230,000 total we will need in 60 days, basically from right now. Clock’s ticking. And right now we’ve got about $105 – 110,000 dollars, something of that nature, so we’re almost halfway there. Once we obtain that, the building’s ours, we’re in. Then we’re gonna have an additional about $650,000 of renovations to do to get carpet down, some seats in, some paint on the walls, some basic things. It won’t look nearly as finished as this. It’ll still be a fairly rough space, but that will get us in and then we can grow into the space over the years.

What we are doing, then, is we’re asking you all to participate at whatever level you can. So far the $105,000 – 110,000 we’ve obtained is given by roughly about 60 people. So, if you could help us out it would be an enormous help. We’re hoping that like fishes and loaves, God takes what we give and sort of multiplies it and makes it sufficient. This is a big issue for us as a young church. It is a big step. Enormous step. I don’t believe it is beyond us. I don’t believe it is anything we cannot obtain as a reality, but we’re all gonna have to just row together on this one to make it happen.

So, to accomplish all this, tomorrow night at 7:00 in this room we’re going to have an informational meeting. We’re asking that all members of the church be there and we’re asking that anyone else who is concerned, please join us. You are all welcome. Our goals will be very simple. We will have a final finished contract. We will answer any questions that you might have, in case you have any concerns or questions. We’ll have a few hours with me and the elders and the deacons to resolve those and to answer any questions you might have. We’ll figure out where we’re at financially, spend some time in prayer and sign the contract. And then we’ll go from there and get to work. I would just encourage you to please join us, please be in prayer for us, please help us out. As you will see tonight, this room will fill up, absolutely pack itself out. What you will see as well is the 10:00 service is over capacity 40-50 people a week on a video downstairs, most of them non-Christians and visitors that are here for the first time that we can’t even get in the room. The 8 and the 12 are actually in the process of filling up, which is weird because I don’t know who gets up at 6:00 in the morning to go to church, but they’re actually doing that, and we appreciate that. But statistically, usually when the fall hits, in September – this is our dullest point of the year – and we statistically grow by 60, 70 percent come September, which means by September, do not be surprised if we’re a church of 16, 17, 1800 a Sunday. And in a room of 220 we can’t run ten, eleven services out of here. We gotta figure out what we’re gonna – I can’t do ten or eleven services. I’m in a coma right now. This is number four, so we gotta figure out what we’re gonna do.

I hope you’re excited. I am. I hope you’re scared. I am. And I hope God shows up. We’re gonna need it all to come together. I’ll pray and turn to Galatians. If you don’t have a Bible, there’s one on the end of your row, and we will get to work.

Lord God, thanks for being our God. Thank you that we do not have a false God or another God, but we have the true and living God. And thank you, God, that You are our Father, that You care for us and love us. Thank you that You came up with a plan for our salvation, that You sent the Son. And Lord Jesus, we thank you for coming and dying for our sins, and rising to conquer enemies of Satan, sin, and death. And Holy Spirit, we thank you that, in addition to authoring the scriptures that we have the privilege of studying, that You also live in your children, to lead us and to guide us and instruct us and convict us as necessary. And Holy Spirit, we just ask that You would do your ministry so well to show us the scriptures and show us the Lord Jesus so that we may love and obey Him as we glorify the Father with him. Amen.

We’ll be in Galatians for some months, so – we usually do a book of the Old Testament and then we do a book of the New Testament, just bounce back and forth. We just finished Proverbs. We started that one more thematically because that’s the way it’s put together. Galatians we will be in for the spring and the summer, so you’re welcome to read ahead in Galatians if you wanna know where we’re going. I will just go word by word, verse by verse, right through it. We’ll start this week in Chapter 6, verse 11. I want to hit one verse, and then we’ll go back to the beginning and walk through the introduction to Galatians.

Kind of an odd verse here, but I think it kind of sets the tone for where we’re going to be. Galatians, Chapter 6, verse 11. The apostle Paul is writing here. He says, “See what large letters I use as I write to you with my own hand!” A couple things here. Usually, Paul will communicate his message to a scribe who will write down his message for him. He says this at the end of Romans and such. “So-and-so is writing this down for me.” Here, this matter is so urgent and imperative to Paul that he’s writing it with his own hand. It’s a very pressing matter for him. And he says that, if you can see, that his letters are becoming very large by the end of the letter. And to our modern ears this sounds weird because we type and – I don’t know about you, I haven’t sat down to write out anything the length of Galatians in quite some time. But if you think about it, if something is urgent and pressing and very, very important to you, and you sit down to write it, or, say for example it’s the letter to the Galatians, you start off quickly in the letter with good penmanship and small letters. But if you write for an hour or two at a brisk pace, what does your penmanship look like by the time you’re done? Right? It’s really sloppy and your letters are enormous because your hand’s locked into place and you’re just trying to get it done. That’s exactly what’s happening in Galatians.

This matter is so pressing, so urgent, the crisis is so catastrophic in this church, that Paul is sitting down, under the guidance of the Holy Spirit, writing this letter with great urgency with his own hand, not taking time to even rest his hands, he writes all of this out. That is because of a crisis that is in this church. He’s worried for these people. He’s concerned about the health of their church. Peter says in 2 Peter 3:15 and 16 that Paul’s letters are scripture, that they’re inspired of God, that they are perfect, and he’s speaking on God’s behalf. This is one of those letters.

So we’ll start in the beginning, go word for word just through Galatians, chapter 1 verse 1. We’ll look at this urgent, important letter that Paul penned with his own hand. Okay, you ready? Here we go.

“Paul”. Okay, we gotta stop right there. Right? Great. We made it a long way there. It’s gonna be like a 15-year-old kid learning to drive a stick at first. We’re gonna stop and start, stop and start, but we’ll get there. Was Paul’s name always Paul? Nope. Originally it was Saul. He was a Jew from the tribe of Benjamin, named after Israel’s King Saul. He was raised in a strict Jewish-speaking home. He was trained under the leading Rabbi Gamaliel. Gamaliel taught that Christians should not be persecuted. Paul – Saul, rather, deviated from that teaching and indeed taught that Christians should be persecuted. He was so zealous for his nation, and their customs, and his traditions, and culture, and people, and religion, that he did persecute the church of God. We see him, for example, in Acts, chapter 7, present and overseeing the stoning of the early church deacon Stephen. This is a man who is violently opposed to Christ and to Christians. He was born at about the same time as Jesus in the city of Tarsus, and he was familiar with Jesus’ ministry and teaching, as well as the early growth of the Christian church, and he despised all of it as heretical. He despised all of it as being blasphemy. And so he felt that these people should be put to death.

And Saul underwent a dramatic conversion from being that man to being a man who wrote 13, perhaps 14 books of your Bible, if you count Hebrews. And what happened to Saul was – later his name was changed to Paul – that he literally met Jesus. That he was on the road to Damascus and Jesus Christ, who had already been crucified, dead, buried, risen, and ascended into heaven, came back down just to take care of Saul. And you know you’re in serious trouble if the Lord Jesus, after his ascension, gets off His throne and comes to extend the right hand of fellowship to you, looking for you somewhere, you know you’re in serious trouble with God. He literally is knocked to the ground. He is blinded. Jesus goes Fight Club with Saul in Acts, chapter 9, and of course He wins. He says, “Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me?” Saul’s persecuting the church, and in persecuting the church he’s persecuting the Lord. He becomes converted, obviously, if Jesus shows up from heaven and pushes you around, you say, “Well, I’m gonna be nice to him and do whatever He says so that He doesn’t do this to me anymore.”

He becomes a Christian, devotes himself to Jesus’ ministry and work, and he becomes a pastor. And this was of great concern to the early church, if you can even imagine. The guy who murdered and slaughtered Christians now all of a sudden says he’s a pastor and wants to come visit our church. Yeah, right. Yeah, we want him to preach. Yeah, we all want to see that guy. There was great distrust among him, but it was recognized that he, indeed, had come to faith in Christ, that his life had been transformed. He was a different guy.

And you can imagine that he would be preaching to Christians who he had killed fathers, and uncles, and brothers, and sons, of the people sitting in the pew, and he was talking about God’s grace and God’s love, and how God changes people, and how God forgives them, and how God makes them new creations in Christ. He understood grace very, very practically. Very practically. So he changed his name. His name was changed, rather, to Paul, and he became a minister to the Gentiles. Peter went primarily to preach the good news of Christ to the Jews, and Paul focused in large part on the Gentiles. He would begin in synagogues by proclaiming the truth about Jesus to the Jews so that he could recruit them to come help him bring the message of Jesus to those who were not Jews and had not yet heard about Jesus.

And so that is Paul. Utterly transformed man by the power of the gospel. And he tells us that he is an apostle. I’m gonna stop again, not – typical nomenclature that we use, but an apostle is spoken of in at least three ways in the scriptures. One, there is the 12 apostles, the disciples, that were chosen by the Lord Jesus after a night of prayer. Judas Iscariot commits suicide, kills himself, and he is replaced by Matthias, who is chosen because he’s a good man who loves the Lord and serves the Lord, and also because he was an eyewitness to the resurrection of Christ, which was one of the requirements of being an apostle. We don’t have apostles in that way today. Ephesians 2:20 says that the apostles laid the foundation of the church with the prophets, so we don’t have apostles in that sense. And we don’t have eyewitnesses to Christ. The only guy I’ve ever met who’s said to be an apostle was really, really weird. He wore a mesh baseball cap with felt letters on it that said, “Apostle.” And, he didn’t use breath mints ‘cause they weren’t in the Bible. That’s the only apostle I’ve ever met.

Real apostles were men who were eyewitnesses to Christ, who preached the gospel and wrote books of the Bible, and spoke with authority given them from Jesus. In addition to the 12 apostles, there’s the gift of apostle in the New Testament as well. Paul says he gave some to be prophets, some to be apostles. The apostles, in that sense, are missionaries that go out and preach the gospel to people who don’t know Jesus and they start new churches. I would say that is one of my gifts. I love to start churches. We started Mars Hill. We have one in the U-District, one in the south end, one in Mount Vernon, two in Portland, one in Kirkland, we started 41 in six nations last year. Our goal is to start a thousand in ten years. I like planting churches. That’s the gift of the apostle.

In addition, there are also false apostles spoken of in the New Testament. True apostles are sent by God; false apostles are sent by Satan. True apostles preach the Bible; false apostles contort it. True apostles glorify God; false apostles glorify themselves. True apostles bring peace and harmony among God’s people; false apostles bring division. And what Paul is dealing with, he is a true apostle, fighting against false apostles. So he says, “Not from men, nor by man.” Here is his credentials. He has the right to speak because God has sent him. I don’t want to – I don’t want to be pejorative toward Bible college and seminary because they can be very helpful and good, but there is a myth, oftentimes among young men, that if they get a degree in some governing organization – a denomination, a tradition, an ordination council, a seminary, a Bible college or something – if we send them, they think, “Well, okay, we’re sent. God has sent us.” The only thing that organizations and schools and churches should do is wait to see if God has called someone into ministry, and then the church or the organization recognizes that. If God hasn’t called you, you shouldn’t go. And just because you have a degree doesn’t make any difference.

Paul knew that he was called of God to go on this particular life course of ministry. I’ll tell the young men that. If you wanna serve Christ, make sure that he has called you into the work. If he hasn’t called you into the work, don’t go. If you can do anything other than be a pastor, do it. Okay? Do it. Because most of the people who are in ministry speaking on God’s behalf, Old Testament and New, they don’t like their job. They’re not like the kids at the youth retreat that all come forward because they all want to go into full time ministry. Okay? What’s Paul’s job description? He tells the Corinthians. What did he do? Beaten, homeless, shipwrecked, stoned, left for dead, hated, robbed, left in the open sea. That’s your job description. How was his pay? Nothing. Oftentimes he had to go work a job so that he could earn the right to be beaten up.

And here’s the issue. Paul, though, was, of all these things – he tells the Corinthians – what was he most burdened by? The health and condition of the church. He says, “They’re trying to kill me, they’re robbing me, they’re slandering me, they’re hating me, beating, stoning, shipwrecked.” He tells the church in Galatia, he says, “I bear the marks of Christ in my own body,” meaning “I am scarred, tattered and torn. They have ripped the flesh off of my back as they did Jesus, and I am still preaching.” The issue is when God calls you into his work, no matter what happens, you will be up all night concerned about God’s people, the health and condition of the church. It’ll burden you incessantly. That’s what motivates the work of Paul. That’s what motivates the writing of this letter.

You think about it. The guys who are called into ministry, they’re usually not really excited about it. Moses resists God’s call. He doesn’t want to go into Egypt to pick a fight with Pharoh. He’s a classic underachieving shepherd. He doesn’t want to go fight Egypt. That’s like an auto mechanic declaring war on Canada. What in the world? Like, “Really? I have to go to war with Canada? I’m an auto mechanic. It seems – okay. If I have to, but it’s not exactly what I was hoping for.” You think about it as well, Isaiah. Isaiah’s a young guy. Isaiah 6, he sees the Lord seated on a throne. John tells us it’s Jesus. He says, “You’re gonna be a prophet.” “Okay.” First question Isaiah asks is what? “How long? Is this like a two-week gig, three-week gig?” “No, you’re gonna preach forever.” Next question is what? “Who’s gonna listen?” What’s the answer? “Nobody.” “Oh. Okay. So I’m gonna preach forever to people who won’t listen. Isn’t that sort of a waste of my gifts?” “No, you’ll be fine.” “Okay. All right.”

How about Jeremiah? Excited about his call? You read Jeremiah lamentations – is he excited? “I get to serve the Lord. It’s great.” What is God’s call on Jeremiah’s life? “Jeremiah, I want you to feel about your life the way I feel about my people.” “Oh. Well, that’s not gonna be any good.” So Jeremiah is the what prophet? The weeping prophet. He’s the depressed prophet. He’s the chronically depressed prophet. I mean, you read Jeremiah, it’s like, it’s like a Stain album, it’s just totally depressing. It’s just awful. Right? God tells him, “Don’t get married, don’t go to parties because then it’ll look like you’re enjoying your life, and I don’t want people to get that impression.” Can you imagine? “Can you come to my birthday party?” “Mmm-mm.” “Well, how about a party favor?” “Mmm, no. I can’t do that. God said no. It’ll look like I’m having a good time. My job is to be depressed to show you how God feels.” Like, do you know any 16-year-old guys that are wanting that job, you know? “I want to be depressed for the Lord.” Okay? And he says – here’s the deal. Jeremiah says, “Why did I ever get out of my mother’s womb to see sorrow, and shame, and contempt, and scorn, all my days. Cursed be the day I was born. Cursed be the man who brought my Father the news of my birth.” That’s not a guy who was looking for the job.

Jonah. Jonah, a guy, who handed out resumes, “I want to go into full-time ministry.” Yeah, okay. How you gonna – “ooh, great. I’d love to get in the belly of a whale, get puked up on the beach of a nation I hate, go tell them about God and stink like a fish. That’s what I want.” And then he’s, he doesn’t even want to be in Nineveh. He doesn’t even like the Ninevites. Right? He’s like, “Oh, my gosh. They listen to country-western music, they wear NASCAR t-shirts, they think wrestling is real. Even if these people do love God, we don’t want ‘em. We don’t want them. It’s awful.” He walks into town, stinking like a fish, puked up on the beach. He was trying to get out of the deal, “Okay, God says repent or he’s gonna overturn the city.” Walks out, not very enthusiastic. God saves, like, half a million people and Jonah’s totally upset about it because he doesn’t want these people messing up his religion.

How about Paul? You see Paul, is he running around, looking to be a full-time Christian pastor? No, he’s murdering Christians and Jesus has to blind him and knock him to the ground to make him be a pastor. When the Bible says that God has called you – called not of men, not by men, but by God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ, which is basically like, “Okay, okay, I’ll go into ministry. I’ll go preach the gospel because the Father sent me, the Son has sent me, they’ve given me a message to proclaim. That’s what I’ll do, because I need to be obedient to the Lord. But this is not an easy life call.” And what this is, then, that an apostle literally means a sent one. God has sent him to speak on his behalf. Okay? It says, “God is King of Kings, Lord of Lords, and he has a message to all nations of the Earth about Jesus’ person and work and what that has accomplished on our behalf.” And Paul is sent out into the world with the objective of effectively communicating that to as many people as he possibly can. That’s his job.

Now what is happening is, Paul does not take the liberty to make any modifications, adjustments, or alternations to that message, but the false apostles, false teachers, do. They receive the message from God and they edit it. It’s like God gives a message to a messenger delivery guy who rides a bike around town, and that guy feels free to pull over and edit. That’s exactly what’s going on in Galatia. Paul doesn’t take that kind of liberty. He says, as well, that “God raised him” – that’s Jesus – “from the dead.” Here’s the issue. They were undercutting Paul and his authority and his teaching. And they were doing that because they knew that they couldn’t win the argument with him biblically, so they were attacking his character. They were being very ad hominem in their attacks. They were attacking Paul, saying terribly things about him, things that weren’t accurate or true.

And they would be asking, “Well, who is Paul? What right does he have to speak? Who’s he to tell us right and wrong and what the scriptures say, and to make judgments and render verdicts about things regarding God?” And Paul’s answer is given right here. “Jesus Christ rose from the dead.” That’s it. That’s Paul’s authority. What right do we have to say, “This is wrong. This is right. This is true. This is false. This is correct. This is incorrect.”? Our only authority is not from our degree or credentialing or our wisdom or our tradition. It comes from the fact that Jesus Christ has risen from death. That’s it. We’re – Jesus rose, he’s God, he sent us here with a message. That’s all we can say.

And Jesus said as much at the end of Matthew’s gospel, where He resurrected from the dead, and He said that “all authority has now been given unto me, therefore you go into all nations of the Earth and proclaim this good news of the gospel.” That the authority belongs to Christ and he has given it to us. And Jesus says in John’s gospel, “So has the Father sent me, so I send you.” We are sent. We are sent with a message into the world, as Paul was, in ministry to serve the Lord.

And he says, “And all the brothers with me.” This is what true Christianity results in. Loving community. Friendship. All of a sudden people that we’ve never met are brothers and sisters. I had a woman this morning, she gave me a big kiss, she calls me, “son.” This other woman says, “Oh, I didn’t know that’s your mother.” That’s not my mother. She’s just an older woman who loves me and kisses me on the cheek and calls me son and prays for me every single day. And she says, “I am so proud of you, son!” She thinks she’s my mom. Okay? I have about ten older women like that. I love them. Right? Give me 15 or 20 good mothers, that’s great. I’ll just eat cookies and open birthday presents and be well prayed for. That’s totally beautiful to me.

Paul says we should treat older women like what? Mothers. Older Christian lady? Love her like your mom. Older Christian man? Respect him like your Dad. Younger Christian ladies? Treat ‘em like your sisters. Young men, other men in Christ? Brothers. Family. God’s the Father, we’re a family. You men are brothers; you women are sisters; we are family in Christ. That’s what the gospel does. It takes away the sin barrier between us and God, and us and each other so we can be reconciled to God, reconciled to each other, and we can be like family to each other. We can love each other and serve each other and encourage each other, and in Paul’s words, “build one another up.” And that’s what the true gospel does.

The false gospel takes God’s people and it splits them. It divides them. It creates fights, and church splits, and wars and pain and anarchy and it’s terrible. The true gospel brings God’s people together in loving, intimate friendship as brothers and sisters in Christ.

So here’s the recipients of his letter to the church. It’s not just a church, but a number of churches in Galatia. It’d be like he wrote a letter to the Puget Sound, to a particular region and to all the churches in that particular region. The modern day equivalent: it’s basically in Turkey is where it would be today. Same region and locale.

Now, who planted these churches in Galatia? Paul did. If you read Acts 13 and Acts 14, what you will see is that there was a church at Antioch and they prayed, and the Holy Spirit set aside Paul and Barnabas to go preach the gospel in some areas where people had not heard about Jesus to start new churches there. And I love it, there where it says, “The Holy Spirit appointed them.” The Holy Spirit always selects the leaders for the church.

What happens then is Paul is sent out with Barnabas, which is a good fit because Barnabas’s gift is what? Encouragement. If you are Paul, do you need someone to encourage you? Yes. You do. You’re getting beaten, you’re gonna be murdered, they’re treating you mercilessly, and you have Barnabas with you who’s encouraging. You need Barnabas. So Barnabas is the encourager, good Godly man, and Paul is the wise, strong, gifted prophet, and they set out into these certain cities in the region of Galatia listed in Acts 13 and 14 to begin new churches.

What happens is they walk into an area, preach the gospel. They’d reach opposition of all different kinds. They’d sort all that out. By God’s grace the gospel would penetrate the hearts of the people. People would become Christians. They’d love Jesus. The church would get flourishing and going. And as soon as it was a bit established Paul would move on to the next area, and after a while he left Galatia all together. And as soon as he left, the works are going. God is working. Things are going good. The gospel is showing its power and authority. And all of a sudden false teachers come in. And they start to ruin all the good things that God had done. It’s terrible. It’s awful. But that’s exactly what was happening in that place.

And so Paul, now, is absent. He’s not there. He can’t defend himself. They’re saying terrible things about Paul. They’re saying terrible things about his doctrine. And Paul writes this letter as his polemic defense against the false teaching and against the liars and against the false prophets that are there. And they’re led by one man. And they have a number of other teachers under them as well. And this is always what happens. False movements, what they do is the same thing that this false movement did. They said, “Okay, well you can have the Bible and you can have Jesus, but in addition to that – that’s not sufficient – we need to add our movement.” They’re movement was called the Judaizers, but through the history of the church there’ve been lots of other movements. “And to be part of our movement you could keep Jesus in your Bible. All you need to do is just lay something over the top, sort of an interpretive grid or lens, the teaching of this teacher, and all of his great instructors that are with him.” Does this still happen? All the time.

So, you wanna be a Mormon? Well, you gotta follow the teachings of Joseph Smith. And you need to lay the Doctrine and Covenants and the Pearl of Great Price over your Bible. If you want to be a Jehovah’s Witness you gotta take the teachings of Charles Taze Russell and the Bible – Watchtower Bible and Tracts Society, and you gotta lay it over your Bible. You gotta read it, first. And read your Bible in light of it. You wanna be in Christian Science, you need to lay the Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures from Mary Baker Eddy over your Bible and read your Bible in light of that. Right? You wanna be a feminist Christian, you just lay feminism over it. You wanna be a Marxist Christian; lay Marxism over it. You want to be a prosperity Christian; lay capitalism over it. Whatever it is, just take your –ism, take your team, take your agenda, take your movement, get it’s primary teacher, get all of the supporting apologists, and just put them together and say, “No. It’s fine to have Jesus and your Bible, but before you talk about Jesus and your Bible, just put this in authority over them, and whatever you do, go to them and then go to your Bible.” Does this still happen? It happens all the time.

And you can see it ‘cause what starts happening is people stop quoting their Bible and they start quoting their teachers. “Well, so-and-so says and so-and-so says and so-and-so says,” yeah, but so-and-so and so-and-so and so-and-so aren’t in my concordance. And so they may be people who are trying to serve the Lord, or maybe they’re not, but whatever it is, if they’re not in my Bible, then, then if they want to teach, they’re in subjugation to the scriptures. They need to be under God’s Word, not over it. And God gives good teachers to the church to help illuminate the scriptures and to help us. But if at any point they are preaching themselves rather than Christ and they’re leading us to their movement rather than to the simplicity that is in Jesus, they are false apostles and false teachers.

Does it seem like such a big deal, that they are teaching that in addition to your Bible and Jesus that you should be circumcised and act like a Jew? Does that seem like such a big deal? It’s an enormous deal. Because it’s Jesus plus. And what it is, then, it’s Jesus as the means to something else. So the goal is not Jesus; the goal is something else. It might be left or right-wing politics. It might be a chauvinist or a feminist agenda. It might be a prosperity or a poverty theology. It might be one of any number of things, but whatever it is, the goal is you come to Jesus because he’ll obtain this other thing for you, and your goal is this movement, or goal, or cause, or whatever agenda you have, or team you’re on, or flag you wave, and the Bible says, “No. It’s Christ, and that’s the end. Jesus isn’t a means to anything. Jesus is the end.” We just come to Christ and we’re home. That’s where we need to be. And this is exactly what’s happening. And he says that. He says, “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’ll read the next verse and then we’ll go back to three. “I am astonished that you are so quickly deserting the one who called you by the grace of Christ and are turning to a different gospel, which is really no gospel at all.” You started out strong, and you just wandered away from the truth that is in Jesus. And now I need to bring you back to that. Back to the gospel.

He starts off in verse 3 – here’s how we get back. Grace and Peace. We’re saved by what? Grace. And if you want to sum up Christianity, what distinguishes us from everything else is the gospel of grace. We are not going to please God. We are not going to be acceptable in God’s sight. We are saved by grace, which is nothing that we have done. It’s just God. When someone comes up to you and they say, “Are you a Christian?” You say, “Yes.” They say, “how do you know?” What should your answer be? “I know I’m a Christian because Jesus. That’s how I know.” “What have you done?” “Nothing. Jesus. Jesus. It’s Jesus, Jesus, Jesus. That’s all I got. Not Jesus plus water baptism. Not Jesus plus speaking in tongues. Not Jesus plus my systematic theology. Not Jesus plus my denominational tradition. Not Jesus plus my liturgical format. Just Jesus. That’s it. Just Jesus. That’s all I got, that’s all I need.”

And what comes from Jesus? Grace. That’s how it gets done. God’s grace, from the Father, through the Son, to me so that I can live by the power of the Holy Spirit. That’s it. Grace.

And what happens as a result of Grace is peace. There’s peace with God and there could be peace between us because the sin that separates us from God, the sin that separates us from each other is dealt with by Jesus and his kind grace on our behalf. So grace and peace to you from God, our Father, and the Lord Jesus Christ. The issue here now is Jesus came, died, was buried, rose. The issue then becomes – that’s historical fact. What’s the interpretive meaning? What does it mean? He tells us what it means. For our sins. That’s why Jesus came and died. For our sins.

You need to have the historical facts right about Jesus’ death, burial, resurrection, ascension, and their meaning. Why did he do that? For our sins. For our sins. Are we sinful? Yes. Can you have the true gospel without understanding sin? You can’t at all. Jesus came for our sins, which means obviously we’re sinful and we needed him. It means that we have offended a holy and righteous God, and that we have neglected to be obedient to his commandments. Not only are we sinful in our actions, we’re sinful in our essence and our life is just the showing forth of our heart, that we have a deep-seated problem of rebellion and autonomy and self-righteousness and pride. And it’s right down to the very core of who we are. The Bible calls it our flesh. It’s a very real and pernicious problem. And Jesus died for our sins, past, present, and future. The things that we have done and failed to do, our transgressions and offenses against God, which are most certainly real. Jesus died for our sins.

The false gospels, what they always do, they diminish our sinfulness and in so doing what they do is they diminish God. The false gospels say basically, “Well, God isn’t as holy as he really is and we’re not as sinful as we really are.” And so in diminishing God and elevating man they tend to reduce the distance between God and man so that all we need to do is join a movement, or a cause, or do a few good things, or a few good works, to sort of jump over that chasm and be in right relationship with God. The true gospel does this. It elevates God to this high place and it reduces us to this place of humble sinfulness, and confession and repentance. So God is good, and we are bad, and the distance between us is infinite. And the only hope is grace. That God would send the Son in utter humility to take upon human flesh, and to come and to redeem us, to seek and save those of us whom are lost, and like sheep, have gone astray. The only hope is God’s grace. That God would have mercy, and pity, and kindness, and compassion on us; that there is no potential of us seeking, knowing, finding, understanding, comprehending, or loving God, and so God loved us first. God sought us first. God came for us. It’s God’s grace, and he’s coming for one purpose: Our sins.

Secondarily, to deliver us, he says, from this “present evil age,” from this world. Is the world evil? It is, isn’t it? That’s why we lock our doors. That’s why we sign contracts. Say, “Don’t you trust people?” No. Of course not. I read my Bible and I watch the news. This is not a good place. This is a terrible place. And false gospels will always tell you that either there’s hope in here or there’s hope out there. They’ll say, “Oh, well you’re doing bad, you’re doing evil, that’s okay, ‘cause there’s goodness out there. Look for the goodness. Find the goodness. Find the teacher, the guru, the religion, the philosophy, the –ism, the process, the seven steps, it’s out there. Go find it out there. There’s goodness out there and that’ll fix the sin in you.” Or, they will say, false gospels do, that the world is evil, but goodness is in here. So tap your goodness, get all your friends together, pool all your goodness and go fix this terrible, darkened world.

Paul just eliminates those two options. He says that evil is where? Out there and in here. Uh-oh. Well, what’s the answer? Well, it has to be Jesus because out there is evil and in here is sin. We’re not going to fix the mess we’re in with evil and sin. That’s what got us into the problem. It’s like saying, “Hey, there’s a fire.” “That’s okay, I have buckets of kerosene. That will fix it.” Well, no it won’t, actually. That’s what got us into the mess and it’ll never get us out.

So, the false gospels that say hope is out there or hope is in here are wrong. Hope is in Christ, and Christ alone. It’s all Jesus. That’s the only place for our hope. And I love how Paul does this. He deconstructs us. And some will say, “Oh, well, the world is bad. You are good.” Well, who made the world? You and I made the world. The world is the showing forth of the human heart. If you don’t like the world it’s because it’s a reflection of you, and a reflection of me. We have built this world. We cannot therefore say, “Oh my goodness, this evil world is in contradiction and lack of harmony with my goodness.” No, it is in exact harmony. It is exact harmony.

Paul delineates between these false gospels. It is not in us or outside of us that there is any hope whatsoever. So he says, Jesus “gave himself for our sins to rescue us from the present, evil world.” Jesus dies for our sins and saves us from this world simultaneously, according to the will of God, our Father. Does the Father love you? He does. This was His plan. To Him be the glory.for ever and ever, amen. Amen simply means, “This is what I want with all of my heart.” “To God be the glory,” Paul says, “for ever and ever and ever and ever and ever and ever and ever.” And here’s our problem. False gospels always elevate man. Always elevate man. Pull yourself up by your bootstraps. The Bible says you have no boots. It’s just folly. Gospels that elevate man end up glorifying man and reducing the goodness of God. Is our world not filled with absolute idolatry and worship of the self? The God in the United States of America is me. I should be happy. I should be attractive. I should be successful. I should be wealthy. I should be healthy. I should get my way. I should feel good. I have the right to perpetual happiness as I define it. And we all do.

And we even have a philosophy that justifies this. Right? We have self-help, self-love, self-actualization, self-esteem. Is our help, or our dignity, or our hope, or our cure found in self? It’s found in Christ. Our hope is in Christ. Our cleansing is in Christ. Our forgiveness is in Christ. Our identity is Christ. Paul says that our life is hidden in Christ, and any attempt to elevate the self, to cure the self, is absolute folly. We even have a philosophy and an –ism that continually perpetuates this. How many of you were taught Maslow’s hierarchy of needs in a sociology class? Right? You have a number of needs and you work from base needs up to greatest needs. You’ll be amazed at how this just creeps into all of our thinking. What are your base needs? Food, shelter, water, cable TV? Basic human necessity, right? After you get base needs, maybe basic cable, then you work up to your higher needs. Now your highest need is what? Your greatest need is what? Self-actualization, which is, “I show forth all my glory,” which is idolatry and self-worship.

And so the whole point is, come to Jesus and he’ll be a means to the ends of another movement. The movement is you. You don’t exist to glorify God, God exists to glorify you. You don’t look good? That’s okay. He’ll clean you up so you could be more glorious. Really. So, I’m God and Jesus is coming along to push me onto my throne. It’s awful. It’s terrible. I’m the end; Jesus is the means. Glory to me, I’ve actualized my potential. I’ve shown the world how great I am. It’s the greatest and first lie: you can be your own God. You could rule over your own kingdom. You can make your own rules. It’s terrible, but it’s very popular. And it always works, for some reason. Maybe because the heart is deceitful and wicked and no one understands it.

Is our greatest need to show forth all of our potential? We do that, don’t we? Isn’t that how we get world war? Isn’t that how we get poverty? Isn’t that how we get abuse and neglect? Isn’t that how we get social catastrophe? I mean, don’t we do it all the time? Is our greatest need that we would show forth all of our glory, or is our greatest true need that God would receive His glory? That He would be the most weighty in all things? That people would love the Lord, and serve the Lord, and honor the Lord, and be humble before the Lord, and commit themselves to the ways and the things of the Lord? And see, to our modern ears this sounds very terrible, like, “Well, you’re just talking about God, God, God, God, God. What about me?” Let me ask you this. If God gets His glory, will you get your joy? If God gets his glory, will you be happy? You’ll be happy. Because that’s what you were made for. You were made to see God in all of His glory and splendor, and to love and adore him for His goodness. And when you see that, you’ll get your joy, because you’re finally in that place for which you were created. And it’s no longer about you; it’s about God. That’s when Jesus says, “If you lose your life, you’ll find it.” So many people are trying to get their life, or trying to get their joy, or trying to get their way, and if they would give it up and glorify God, he would give all things unto those who seek His kingdom first. So Paul says the end of the gospel has to be all things, all means, all ways, all glory, only to the Lord. It’s about God; it’s not about us.

With that in mind, I want to hit two other sections and we’ll come around back to Galatians 1. Go to 1 Corinthians 15. I wanna go to two well-worn common texts, and I wanna talk about the gospel. Here’s what I mean by the gospel. First, it is historical facts – Jesus dead, buried, raised, ascended – and their Biblical interpretation and meaning, which is, for our sins. Okay?

1 Corinthians 15, the apostle Paul expounds upon this issue of the gospel as well. He says, “Now brothers,” – he’s writing to a church here – “I want to remind you of the gospel.” It is important to be reminded of the gospel? “You should always remind yourself of the gospel of Christ.” Always. Always. Always. I had someone recently say, “Every time I come you talk about our sin and Jesus. Do you ever talk about anything else?” The answer is –Response: No.

Nope, that’s it. That’s all we got. Right? That’s all we got. Christianity’s main – Christianity is a rhythm. You just gotta keep beat, right? And the beat is just our sin and Jesus’ death, burial and resurrection. Just keep time, just bang the drum. That’s all we got. People come in, they say, “I thought you were a cool church, a hip church, a trendy church. I thought you guys were cutting-edge,” – whatever that is. Cutting-edge is where you cut yourself and die, and so I don’t want to be there – “I thought you guys were cool. I just come and you yell at me for an hour from the Bible and tell me I’m sinful, and I need Jesus. That’s what they all say!” Right. That’s exactly right. We’re just gonna remind you over and over and over and over and over. You’re bad; Jesus is good. Right? If I gotta break it down to simplest terms, bad, good, you, Jesus. Just keep it straight, just beat the drum, okay? And he says, “I want to remind you,” – now, now, should you ever get tired of hearing the gospel? No. Every time I come home, what does my wife say? I love you, I missed you. Do I ever say, “You say that every time. I know that.” You know what? It sounds good every time. I like it every single time. She looks at me, “I missed you. I love you.” Oh. It sounds good, just like it did yesterday, just like it will tomorrow for the next 60 or 80 years.

Every time I hear that God loves me and sent the Son for my sin, and that I’m loved, I like to hear it, because that week I sinned, and I need to be reminded of it. Always, always, always, start with Jesus. Wherever you go, end up with Jesus. Begin where you end; end where you begin. Jesus, Jesus, Jesus, Jesus, Jesus. And you’ll have your joy.

“I want to remind you,” Paul says, “of the gospel that I preached to you, which you have received and on which you have taken your stand.” That’s where we stand. On the gospel. Jesus. What he’s done for us. “By this gospel you are saved if” – condition – “you hold firmly to the word I preached to you. Otherwise you believed in vain.” The problem at Galatia is they’re not holding to the gospel, they’re leaving it. Jesus plus something else. Jesus plus our movement and cause.

Here’s the gospel: “What I received I passed on to you as of first importance.” The main thing, the most important thing, is the gospel. Let me ask you this, does the gospel come from men or from God? God. Paul says that in Galatians, “This gospel isn’t something I made up. It’s something that God gave to me through revelation.” The gospel comes from God. Now, if it came from men we could edit it, manipulate it, change it, and contort it. But if it comes from God we cannot, because it is something holy, and sacred, and perfect, and good. And we have no right to edit the messages of the King when we are just bike delivery messengers dropping off His scrolls. We have no right to do that.

“What I received I passed on.” Okay, so the gospel is given from God to Paul and Paul gives that to us. Do we or does Paul have any right to make any alterations to the gospel in any degree or form? Not at all. Not at all. Is this happening in our day? It happens in every day. People say, “Well, it was handed to me, I’ll make a few modifications, and then hand it to someone else.” No. What we receive, we pass on. That’s it.

Here’s the gospel. Christ died for what? Our sins. I’ve had people leave Mars Hill, they say, “Every week you just always tell me I’m sinful.” That’s ‘cause every week you are. And you need to hear that. “Well, that makes me feel bad.” Well then listen to the part about Jesus. You’ll feel better. You’ll feel much better. “Oh, Jesus loved me, died for me, cleansed me, forgives me, saves me, oh, okay, okay, okay, okay.” Hear the sin, but also hear the Lord and what he’s done for you.

He has died for our sins according to the what? Scriptures. So we can’t just talk Jesus, we just can’t talk sin, we have to talk about those things as they are spoken of in the Bible. Paul continually – Romans 1, 1 Corinthians 15 – talks about “according to the Scriptures, according to the Scriptures, according to the Scriptures.” Jesus authenticates the Bible. He comes to fulfill every jot and tittle of the Scriptures, and he does. All the Old Testament prophecies, all the promises, all the foreshadowing, absolutely fulfilled in Christ. He died as the Scriptures promised that he would. He is God fulfilling hundreds and thousands of years of prophecy and promise. It is amazing. “According to the Scriptures.” So you can’t just have the name “Jesus,” and the concept, “sin,” and the word “salvation,” and the word “grace,” you need to also make sure they’re filled with Biblical meaning according to the Scriptures.

What the cults will do, and false teachers will do, they’ll take Biblical words and they’ll fill them with other meanings. It’s classic. I had a guy do this with a theological term at my house a few years ago. Knocked on my door and we were debating and dialoging and he said he was a Christian, but he kept getting funky on me, and I said, “Well, do you believe in the Trinity?” He said, “Oh yes, I believe in the Trinity just as you do.” I said, “I don’t trust you. What’s the Trinity?” He said, “Faith, hope, and love.” Oh. Okay. Now I know what’s going on. You’re a liar and you don’t want me to know that. And so what you’re doing is you’re using my language and filling it with completely different meaning. Completely different meaning. I asked him, I said, “What does it mean that you are saved?” He said, “What that means is that you have made yourself acceptable in God’s sight.” Oh. So when you say you’re saved you mean something totally different than me, because when you ask me how do I know that I am saved, I say, “Jesus,” and when I ask you how do you know you’re saved, you say, “me.” That’s different. That’s, in fact, the difference between heaven and hell. We have to load up our teaching with “according to the Scriptures.” According to the Scriptures. You stick close to the Scriptures, and you will end up talking a lot about Jesus.

In John 5 he says, “You study the Scriptures thinking that in them you have eternal life. You forget. These are the Scriptures that” – what? “Testify about Me.” Open your Bible, go to Jesus. That’s how you’re supposed to study the scriptures. Open your Bible, go to Jesus. And when you get to Jesus, you’re always gonna end up back at the gospel. Who is He? What has He done? What does that mean? That’s the whole point of your Bible. That He was buried, that H was raised on the third day, according to the Scriptures. Right back to the authority of the Scriptures, that He appeared to Peter, then to the twelve. After that He appeared to more than 500 of the brothers at the same time, most of whom are still living, basically saying, “Check it out, if you want.” They’re still alive as witnesses, though some have fallen asleep. Then He appeared to James, then to all the apostles, and last of all, Paul says, He appeared to me. Jesus not only rose from death, conquering death and sin and hell, just as He promised as He would, He also authenticated it and showed up to witnesses, some of whom were not easy to convince. Who was James? His brother. If you’re gonna get your brother to worship you as God incarnate, you’ll need a strong case, right?

And Paul, as well. Paul was not an easy convert to Christianity. Guys who murder Christians for a living are really hard evangelistic calls. Really tough. But it was the power of the resurrection and the demonstration of Jesus Christ as the one true God that transformed these people’s lives. It took Peter from a coward to a bold man; took James from Jesus’ brother to the pastor of the early church in Jerusalem; took the apostles and emboldened them with the gospel, to go die for the cause of Christ; and those who were witnesses became the heart and soul of the early church through which the Holy Spirit worked to bring the gospel to all nations of the Earth, including right here in Seattle, Washington. It’s all true and good.

Romans, chapter 1. I’ll hit one more thing on the gospel. Romans, chapter 1. That’s the content of the gospel. Jesus and what He has done. Romans, chapter 1, verse 16. Paul here talks as well about the gospel again Another well-worn text on the gospel, but I want to revisit these important, simple, basic truths. Paul says, “I’m not” what? “of the gospel”? I’m not ashamed. Part of the problem in Galatia is that they’ve wandered from the gospel; they have wandered from the Biblical meaning of the Scriptures. They have walked away from the simple truth that it is Jesus’ means and ends. It’s all about Jesus. In addition, they have the problem where they’re violating the Scripture. In Romans 1 they’re ashamed of the gospel. Is it easy, in our day and age, to be ashamed of the gospel? Absolutely. When you’re ashamed of the gospel, are you really ashamed of Jesus? You are. What you’re saying is, “I know this guy named Jesus Christ, and I won’t introduce you to Him because I’m ashamed of Him. He’s a friend of mine that I don’t want you to meet, because I don’t think He’s very presentable to you. And rather than lose your friendship, I would rather withhold Him from your presence.” Is that true? It’s being ashamed of Jesus, which is deplorable. It’s God, who died for your sins and has demonstrated His infinite love over and over and over again. And we’ve become ashamed of Him.

And there are a multitude of reasons why we’ve become ashamed of Him. Paul tells the Corinthians that one is that the message of the cross is what to those whom are perishing? Foolishness. Yeah. For some it’s the stench of death; for others it’s the stench of life. But it is foolishness. If you talk a lot about Jesus, will a lot of the people in your life just think you’re a nut job? You’re just dumb. People come to me and they say, “We’re having a marital problem.” You’re not having a marital problem, you’re having a-what- problem? A gospel problem. You’re having a Jesus problem. You’re sinning, she’s sinning. You’re bitter, and you don’t know what to do with your sin. The problem is you have sin between you and not Jesus. If Jesus were there He would take care of the sin and reconcile you. But the fact that you’re divided indicates that there’s a Jesus problem. What’s Jesus got to do with this? Everything. Everything. I can’t fix your marriage. I can’t fix your friendships. I can’t make you encouraged. I can’t give you hope, and joy, and life, and a future unless I talk about Jesus. So if you come to me with something, we’re gonna end up talking about the Jesus of the Bible, ‘cause that’s the answer for everything.

Response: Amen.

Be ashamed of Christ? You say, “Well, I love those people.” Well, if you love ‘em, tell ‘em about Jesus. That’s what they need. We all need Christ. Our greatest need is Jesus. We all need Jesus. I had a guy once say, “Well, it’s a crutch.” Hey, a guy with two broken legs loves a crutch. We need Jesus.

As well, Paul says in Galatians that the gospel is – or the message of the cross is what? Offensive. Some people will get ticked. If you tell people that they’re sinful, do they take that well? Some people come up, they say, “I feel bad.” You should. You’re bad. Well, that’s offensive, but not nearly as offensive as you are to the holy and righteous God. And then duck, ‘cause they’re coming at you, right? “I feel sad. I feel depressed.” You should, look at you. I feel sad and depressed just seeing you. “I’m awful.” Oh, it’s much worse than you think. It can be offensive. It can be offensive.

Now, in 1 Corinthians 13, Paul says love is not rude. We don’t want to be mean jerks about it. I’m not saying I’m always particularly skilled at this. But I’m saying that’s our hope, right? Our issue is some people are gonna be offended. “I’m a good person.” No, you’re not. “I’m sincere about my religious beliefs.” Well, you’re sincerely wrong. “Well, I’m zealous.” Yeah, but you’re running the wrong direction. That’s offensive. But it’s true.

And the issue is this, guys. When it comes to issues of the gospel, where people get astray with the gospel is they’re trying to be innovative. They’re trying to find a way to talk about Jesus that doesn’t seem foolish and doesn’t seem offensive. Has God called us to be innovative, or truthful? Truthful. The people that have always been innovative, they were simply truthful. The people who were trying to be innovative usually were heretics, and that’s a problem. Because they’re ashamed of Jesus. They’re trying to change – keep the name, Jesus, and load him up with meaning that is not Biblical.

I was reading a book recently on what did Jesus accomplish on the cross—the theology of the atonement. It basically said that nowhere in the Bible is God ever angry or mad; His anger is only metaphorical. What? No, God is angry. Ask the people that are going to hell. It doesn’t feel metaphorical. “I’m metaphorically burning.” No, it’s real. They say this because modern ears get offended, or think it’s foolish, to talk about judgment, or punishment, or consequence for sin. No. Look, don’t be ashamed of Jesus. Who talked about hell more than anybody? Jesus. Jesus did. You can’t be ashamed of Jesus, and I’ll tell you why. Some people say, “Well, the circumstance is so great, those people are so lost, things are so bleak, that I just can’t bring myself to talk about Jesus.” And what you’re saying then is that person or these circumstances are bigger than Jesus. And bringing Jesus in would not fix it; it would only make it worse. And if you believe that something is bigger than Jesus, then you must admit that that is your god. Right? That that god is bigger than your God and you won’t allow your god to go to war because you don’t want your god to lose. What kind of god is that? A god who can’t handle a few of us? A god who can’t handle a difficult circumstance?

Paul tells us that we cannot be ashamed of the gospel because it is the power of God. That with the gospel goes the power of God. It unleashes the power of God. What people in dire circumstances need, is not silent Christians who are ashamed of Jesus. They need the power of the gospel unleashed to transform whatever they find themselves in. They desperately need Christ in all of His glory, right in the midst of that time and place. And if at any point we’re ashamed of Christ what we’re saying is, “I don’t think Jesus can get this done.” Now is that a problem with the gospel, or a problem with us? That is a problem with us.

But he has called us to bring that message of the gospel. And sometimes we don’t because we don’t want to be offensive. We don’t want to be foolish. We’re ashamed of Jesus. We’re intimidated by people, or circumstances, whatever it might be. Is this still a problem for God’s people? Every one of us, myself included, is a fellow hypocrite. There are people who we need to just tell about Jesus because he’s the answer to everything, and we know they’re not gonna like that, but that really is the answer. And out of love we should tell them about Jesus because we trust that God is powerful enough to absolutely transform them, and to change things for them. It is the power of God.

Here’s this – three and a half thousand churches close in the U.S. every year. The United States of America is the fourth largest mission field in the world. We’re in the least churched city in the United States of America. I get to fly around the country and talk to thousands of pastors every single year, and they always ask, “What’s the secret? What’s the secret? What’s the secret? How do you get a church to grow? How do you get young people to come? How do you make it succeed? How do you, how do you, how do you?” And what’s the answer?

Response: Jesus.

Jesus. Jesus works every single time. Every time, Jesus works. “We don’t have enough money.” Well, preach the gospel. “We don’t have a big enough building.” Preach the gospel. “People are fighting.” Preach the gospel. Whatever – just preach the gospel, and that’s the answer to all the questions and Jesus says if He’s lifted up, He’ll what? He’ll draw people unto himself. Our goal is not to worry about being innovative or successful, but truthful and faithful to Jesus and His good news, and He’ll get the job done. He’s the chief shepherd, overseer of the church. He is the apostle – Hebrews 3 – who plants the church. Hebuilds the church. The gates of hell cannot prevail against the church. He has given us His promises; we must take them at face value.

Response: Praise God.

Jesus, right? And guys, you gotta see this. It just kills me, every week I get up here and I’m screaming and yelling ‘cause I’m worried. I’m truly worried. When Paul’s yelling at the Galatians, does he hate them? He’s worried.

Jesus, Jesus, Jesus. And get excited about that, and love Jesus and stay there and don’t be ashamed because the power of God is there, and it brings salvation to everyone who believes. All we need to do is just live as Habakkuk 2:4 says and Romans 1 says, Keep the faith. Just trust Jesus. Just trust Jesus. Trust him, keep trusting in him; glorify him, keep glorifying him; love him, keep loving him; follow him, keep following him. Jesus, Jesus, Jesus. This is just the drum we gotta keep beating, and we can’t allow anyone else to come in this church and elevate their agenda, or their movement, or their flag, or whatever it might be. You guys have gotta stand with me on this.

How big do you think we’re gonna be in five or ten years?

Response: As big as the Lord wants us to be.

As big as the Lord wants us to be. And if he gives us this building, it’ll be bigger than this. God is not gonna give us 1200 seats unless he plans on saving 1200 people.

Response: Amen.

But do we have to keep the gospel straight? Do we have to not be ashamed of the gospel and just stick Jesus, Jesus, Jesus? You could be charismatic, my non-charismatic brother. You could be my reformed, or my Arminian brother. But Jesus, Jesus, Jesus, right?

Galatians 1. Here’s where Paul goes. Verse 6. We’ll conclude with this. It’s gonna take a while. “I am astonished that you are so quickly deserting the one who called you by the grace of Christ and are turning to a different gospel, which is no gospel at all.” What happens is, people become Christians and false teachers come in and say, “Great. Now that you got started, we’re gonna fix you.” Right? How many people look at Mars Hill and say, “A thousand young people. Great! We could fix ‘em. We will come in and fly our flag. Here’s our cause. Here’s our agenda. Here’s our movement. Here’s our tradition – here’s our systematic theology. Here’s our political cause. Here’s our spiritual whatever. Here’s our deal.” Jesus plus this movement, this other gospel, this other thing. Jesus as the means to an end. Jesus not exclusively as the end in and of itself. Do we get this all the time? I am exhausted. I am so worn out. This happens all the time. And it is exhausting. It is exhausting. People coming in, say, “We wanna be part of your church.” Why? Tell me the agenda. “Because we wanna see this, or that, or the other thing, and we can’t get anybody to listen to us and you’ve got a thousand people, so if you’ll listen to us, then we can get you thousand people.” All the time.

I had a group of people I met with not too long ago. They came in. They said, “We really wanna be members of your church, this group of us, and we want to merge in your church and help you out.” Great. What’s your agenda. “Well, you got all these new Christians and somebody needs to fix them.” Fix them from what? They’re reading the Bible and loving Jesus. “Yeah, but they don’t look like Christians.” I don’t have any pictures in my Bible, I don’t know what we’re supposed to look like. They love Jesus, and they read their Bible. “Yeah, but in addition to that they need to do this, and this, and this, and this.” No, they don’t. They need to read their Bible and love Jesus. That’s it. That’s it. I believe that the Spirit of God is in them, and he’ll lead and guide and convict them, and the Holy Spirit will do a better job than you. And I don’t want them to grow up and look like you, anyway! I’m not very impressed. I don’t like the outcome. You know? If we’re gonna clone you – no. No. Not at all.

Now, if somebody comes in and I say, “Why are you here?” and they say, “We love Jesus, we wanna beat the drum.” You welcome here? Man, we love you. Welcome. Welcome. If you’re here and you say, “Well, I’ve been beating a drum, but I think I’m beating the wrong drum. Can I talk about Jesus? Can I learn about the gospel?” Come on in. But if you’re coming in saying “I gotta different cause, different flag, different drum, I’m playing something else and I wanna be part of this band.” Nope. We play one thing. We are a band with one hit, right? Gospel of Christ. We play it every time. You like it? We’ll play it again. That’s all we got for you.

He says, “Evidently some people are throwing you into confusion” – where Satan is there’s always confusion – “and they’re trying to pervert the gospel of Christ.” They’re taking the Jesus revealed in the Bible and adding human works and other stuff, and agendas, and movements, and causes to it, and it ends up perverting it. The word here is strong. It totally changes the meaning. It totally changes the meaning. Now it’s not about Jesus, it’s about you and what you must do to be acceptable to God.

Let me ask you this. Are you acceptable to God? Is Jesus acceptable to the Father? So, we don’t need to be acceptable to the Father. We need Jesus, who was acceptable to the Father. It’s not about you; it’s not about me; it’s about Jesus. And His kindness to us does what? Leads us to repent. It just changes us. And He puts in His Holy Spirit and He transforms us. And it’s God’s love, and God’s mercy, and God’s grace, and God’s Son, that melts our hearts and transforms us. And so if you want people to change, you gotta talk a lot about Jesus, and Jesus will change ‘em. Jesus says, “If you love me, you’ll” what? Obey my commands. And we love Jesus because what? He first loved us. Jesus loves us, and we love Him back, and that changes us, by God’s grace. There’s no confusion in that. This other stuff gets really confusing. “Well, what do I need to do? What’s the formula? What’s the thing?” Look. Jesus of the Bible, that’s what you need.

He goes on real strong and emphatic,“But even if we or an angel from heaven” – he’s talking about a demon – “should preach a gospel other than the one we preached to you, let him be eternally condemned.” He’s going to hell. Now, are there demons in the world inspiring false teachers to proclaim false gospels? Yes. So even if an angel shows up, should you say, “Well, it was a big angel, so I gotta do what he says.” If you see an angel, ask him about Jesus. And if you don’t get a good answer, that’s a demon going to hell. Don’t pay any attention. Mormonism got founded out of what? An angel shows up and says, “I have a different gospel for you.” Joseph Smith says, “Oh, okay. Well, you’re an angel.” No, you’re a demon. Demons should not be doing theology in the church of God, okay? They hate God. Do they know God’s word? Does Satan know the Scriptures? Oh my word, Satan is a great Bible prof. He’s on faculty at more than one seminary. Satan does know the Bible. When he shows up to tempt Adam and Eve, he twists God’s Word. When he shows up to tempt Jesus, he twists God’s Word. He knows that the Word of God is sharp and it’s a double-edged sword. And he knows that if God’s people don’t know how to handle that weapon, he’ll pick it up and cut them with their own sword. You better be good with your sword. You better know your Bible. Jesus responds to Satan by quoting the Word of God over, and over, and over.

He says even if an angel shows up, even if he’s got verses, Satan’s done that before. It must be the Jesus of the Scriptures glorifying the Father. Otherwise, it’s hell-bound, literally.

Does Paul put himself under that same test? He does. He says if me, or we, or an angel preaches another gospel, we’re going to hell. Why in the world should you ever listen to me or anyone else teach the Bible? There’s only one reason: because it is consistent with what God says. That’s it. I’m not saying I’m perfect; I’m not. But what I am saying is that I am begging you, as a church, to test all things, hold fast to that which is good, reject that which is evil. The Bereans did that in Acts through studying the Scriptures. The only way you know if this is from God or a demon is to make sure that it is according to the Scriptures, about Jesus, to the Father’s glory. That’s how you test everything.

If I start preaching a different gospel someday, Jesus plus a movement or a cause, or all of a sudden we become more excited about some thing other than Jesus, should you fire me? Fire me. Fire me, fire me, fire me! If I foolishly decide that I want to go to hell, don’t follow me there. Now, do I have any intention of going there? I don’t. But if I start to get astray, will you be doing me a great service if you open the scriptures and say, “Mark, that’s starting to sound like another gospel, and we’re beating a drum other than Jesus, here. This is a great problem.”? Would you be doing me a great service? Will you be doing this church a great service? Will you be doing yourself a great service? Absolutely. We have great elders. I am very serious about the Scriptures, but I tell you what, you guys must always commit yourselves to the Jesus Christ of the Bible, and teachers are secondary to the Jesus Christ of the Bible. Don’t quote me. Quote your Bible. Please quote your Bible. Because if all of a sudden it’s about me, or your favorite theologian, or your favorite author, or your favorite teacher, then all of a sudden you, too, are adding things onto the gospel of Christ and you’re not just serving Jesus. You’re trying to be pleasing in the eyes of others, and that’s not good. Not good for any of us.

He says it again in verse 9, just in case you went to public school and we missed the big point. I’ll make it real clean and clear. “As we have already said, so now I say it again: if anybody is preaching to you a gospel other than what you accepted, let him be eternally condemned.” He goes to hell. Okay? Does your gospel determine your eternity? Absolutely. If you don’t have the Jesus of the Bible, it doesn’t matter. You are an enemy of God destined for hell, right? People today say, “Well, I don’t think hell exists.” Well, you will. Okay? You will. Hell is real. Hell exists. Eternal condemnation and separation from God and torment is real. It is real. It is clearly taught throughout the pages of Scripture. And here’s the simple thing. Is God eternal, without beginning or end? Okay. When we sin against an eternal God, what kind of sin do we commit? Eternal sin. So what kind of punishment is necessary to make up for that eternal sin? Eternal punishment. So Jesus, who is eternal, is punished in our place, or we are punished eternally. That’s hell. That’s hell. There are eternal consequences for sin, and it is either paid by Jesus, the eternal God, or us eternally. But there are consequences. Where he says that the gospels that the demons and false teachers teach are all eternally condemned, what that means is, without end. That’s hell.

Let me ask you this. Is the greatest threat to the health and the future of this church outside or inside this church? Right here. Right here. Christians always say, “Oh, the Buddhists, the Mormons, the Muslims, the Jehovah’s Witnesses, the atheists, the abortionists, the homosexuals.” You know what? The greatest threat to the church is always from within. Where was Jesus’ greatest threat? At His dinner table. Judas Iscariot. Jesus’ greatest threat was a man who was close. The greatest threat to the work of the gospel is always those that are close.

Paul says as much in Acts chapter 20. He says to the Ephesian elders as he departs that there are three kinds of people in the church. There are sheep – people who love the Lord; there are shepherds – pastors who oversee them; and there are wolves that are trying to eat the sheep. Those are false teachers. And he says, “Men will arise from your own number, distort the truth, and lead many astray. So be on guard.” He says, “Our remedy is to preach the whole counsel of God’s Word.” To just preach the Bible, preach the Bible, preach the Bible and that will equip the people to understand the errors of the false teachers. And he says, “I have warned you day and night with tears.” This is of great sobriety and concern to Paul.

So let me ask you this: Is it possible that, if God opens a new building, and we have thousands of people come, that we’ll have many people come to Christ; do you think there will be wolves who will look at this as an opportunity to prey on sheep? Absolutely. Do you have a great responsibility, before Christ, to keep your gospel straight and to keep your eyes open, and to make sure that the issue is just Jesus, Jesus, Jesus, Jesus, Jesus, and that’s what we’re about? I’m begging you. Pray about this. Continue to read your Bible. Love Jesus. Stick close to him, and do not depart from that. My big fear with this church is that we’re like the church at Galatia. Things start going good, and then all of a sudden we want to have Jesus be a means to something else, and we get tired of Jesus. And so then everybody comes in with their flag, and their agenda, and their movement, and their goal, and all of a sudden people come in, and they’re not hearing much about Jesus anymore. That would just be devastating. But that’s exactly what the enemy wants.

And the reason I’m preaching Galatians now, is for preventative maintenance. This is preventative work. We’re gonna talk a lot in Galatians about love Jesus, love your brother, and stick together, close.

Paul concludes with this. “Am I now trying to win the approval of men, or of God?” That’s the issue, right? Is it a real difficult dilemma when someone that you love, or someone that you respect, or someone that you admire, wants you to please them, but to please them you’d be sinning against the Lord, so you’re forced to decide between that person that you love, and Jesus? Is that a really hard place? Your mother, your father, your aunt, your uncle, your roommate, your friend? That’s a hard place. If people love Christ, you can please them and Jesus, because they and Jesus want the same thing, so it’s not that hard. But if someone isn’t being obedient to Christ, then they have a desire, and Jesus has a desire, and you are caught in the middle and you must decide. “Am I going to please this person, and displease Jesus, or will I please Jesus and displease them?” Okay?

I’ll tell you what. For me – and you can pray for me on this, I’m not gonna lie to you. This is hard. I really don’t like to be hated as much as I’m hated. I mean, I’d like to be hated just a little less. I get flipped off probably three to four times a Sunday, as I’m preaching. Eight to ten people a week get up and leave while I’m preaching, right? Usually I think, “Oh, maybe they gotta small bladder.” Then I see the finger and I realize, “That’s not the only issue that they have.” People that I love, people that I know over the years that have been here, they’ll say, “Well, okay. I _______ _____ [audio interrupted] this, but here’s my agenda.” I’ll say, “No. We have one agenda. It’s Jesus.” “Well, I thought we were friends?” “We are friends, but I’m also Jesus’ friend. So I can’t do whatever you tell me to do if it’s different than what He tells me to do.” And I’ve got the elders to run this by, so I’m in submission to them. But in a church of a thousand plus people, is everybody always going to be pleased? Can I make everybody happy? I can’t make – if you have two people, you have four opinions. I mean, you can’t make everybody happy, right? Everyone is going to have their agenda; everyone is going to leverage relationships, trying to use their affections between people to be able to raise their flag and carry their agenda. The issue is this: What’s our agenda? Jesus. What’s our flag? Jesus. We’re just Jesus. Jesus, Jesus, Jesus, Jesus. Secondary matters, we can agree to disagree agreeably, but on the gospel of Christ, man. We are unwavering and we must walk together in love.

He says, “Am I trying to please men? If I were still trying to please men, I would not be” what? “I wouldn’t be a servant of Christ.” If your goal in life is to be liked, you’re not going to be very faithful to Jesus. You’re not gonna be very faithful to Jesus.

I told my wife this this week. I said, “Honey, you know, I get flipped off, I get yelled at, I get nasty emails, I get crazy things said about me.” I said, “You know? It doesn’t bother me anymore.” You know what my wife said? “Yes, it does.” You know what? It really does. It really does. I pretend like I’m Superman and it doesn’t bother me; it really bothers me. Like Paul, I’m burdened for the church. Okay? Do I love you as much as Paul loved the church at Galatia? Absolutely. Am I up all night, just like he’s up all night, greatly concerned about you guys? I am. Truly, I am. And when Paul is yelling and screaming, is that because he’s angry, or because he’s like a dad who sees his kids running into traffic and he is just terrified? “Stop! You’re gonna die! Stop!” And the kids turn around, “Dad, don’t raise your voice. I don’t like your tone.” Well, but there’s traffic! “Dad, don’t tell me what to do.” Okay. I love you. Please don’t run out into traffic. That’s exactly what’s going on in Galatia. A pastor who started that church, as I started this church; a pastor who loves his people, as I love you; a pastor whom God has blessed his work, as God has blessed this work; a pastor who was loved by Jesus and forgiven of his sin, as I’ve been loved by Jesus and forgiven of my sin. I am not Paul. Right? I can’t, I can’t even fathom being up to his abilities. But we’re trying to just walk in his steps and be faithful to his teaching that was given us through the Spirit, and I am just imploring you as your pastor: read your Bible, love Jesus, stick close to him, and keep that as our only agenda. And make sure that everyone who comes in and all the new Christians and all the visitors, that the issue is always Jesus, Jesus, Jesus. Jesus died for our sins, and we’re glorifying the Father with him. Will you do that with me? Thank you.

At this point we always respond. We’ll take an offering. If you’re a first-time visitor, not a Christian, don’t give. Seriously. It’s good to have you, you’re our guest. Here’s what we want you to have. We don’t want you to give anything, we want you just to love Jesus. That’s all we want. Okay? If you haven’t got the big E on the eye chart, that’s what we’re trying to do.

In addition, we take communion, which is remembering what? Jesus. Okay? On the night He was betrayed, Jesus took a loaf of bread, He broke it, He said, “This is my body, broken for you. When you eat it, remember me.” Is it easy to forget Jesus? Sometimes we do, so we need to remember Him all the time. He took the cup, He said, “This is the blood of the new covenant shed for your sins. When you drink of it, remember Me.” So here’s what we do. We take communion to remember Jesus’ body and blood given for our sins. If you’re a Christian you’re welcome to come. Okay? All who belong to Jesus are welcome at our communion table. You’re welcome to come.

I’ll pray, and we’ll sing.

Father God, we love you because you loved us first. Lord Jesus, we are so glad that you are such a great God, that you have been so humble as to come to us, that you have been so loving as to be patient with us, that you have been so faithful as to die for us.