We Must Never Abandon the Gospel

Good morning, Cities Church. Happy New Year and Merry Christmas! As Pastor Jonathan mentioned last week, Christmas is still going. Christmas goes for 12 days, December 25th was just the first day of Christmas. So, I’ve still got four more days to say it, and I’m going take advantage of that. So, Cities Church: Merry Christmas to you this morning.

Today, we are launching a new sermon series. We’ll be traveling through the book of Galatians, Lord willing, through the month of April. We are very excited!

The book of Galatians was written by the apostle Paul. It is a letter from Paul to a group a churches, not just one church, but a group of them, in the Roman province of Galatia.

There is some dispute amongst Biblical scholars as to precisely which group of churches in Galatia this letter was written to. For our purposes, it’s not really relevant. However, if you’re ever studying the book of Acts or studying the historicity of the New Testament or putting together a timeline of the events of the New Testament, then it’ll matter a lot, so it’s good for you to know that dispute exist, but for our purposes—when it comes to how we interpret this letter or apply it to our lives—the precise audience will not likely matter too much.

This morning we’re going to look at just the first few verses of chapter one, you just heard, Pastor Joe read them for us. In these opening verses we read Paul’s greeting to these churches in Galatia.

The Value of Greetings

It’s really easy to underestimate the value of greetings. But greetings are actually very important. Greetings can really set the tone for an interaction.

For example, if I walk into Target later today and I walk up to the customer service desk with a smile, and I say to the woman behind the counter, “Hello, How are you today?” If I start like that, well then, the interaction will likely be productive and pleasant, right?

But if I walk into Target, and I walk up to the counter, with no smile, and I abruptly say to the women behind the counter, “Can I speak to your manager?” That’s going to change the mood of the conversation, right?

A greeting also gives us insights into the type of relationships that may exist. How I greet someone tells you a lot about my relationship with that person.

For example: Many of you know that I teach at a small college in Bloomington. When I’m at work, in an academic setting, if I see one of my colleagues, I may say something like, “Good morning, Dr. Johnson, how are you today?” Or “Hello, Dr. Wilson, How has your morning been thus far?”

But, when I went back to Pennsylvania to visit my family for Thanksgiving, and I saw my brothers—I have two brothers, Tony and Raul—when I see my two brothers, I don’t greet them that way. When I see my brother Raul, I go up to him and say, “Yo yo yo, what up, bruh?” And then I throw him the “bro hug” (you know the “bro hug”, right?). That gives you insights into what I think of my brothers. Well, this greeting, from Paul to the Galatians, helps us understand Paul’s thoughts toward the Galatians and the events taking place in their region.

Not an Apostle By Man’s Choice

As we examine these opening verses, we pick-up on a level of intensity from the apostle Paul that we don’t really see from him anywhere else. So, let’s examine these together. If you have your Bible please open to Galatians 1.

Galatians chapter 1:1: “Paul, an apostle—not from men nor through man.”

Let’s pause there for a second. Now, it’s quite normal for Paul to start his letters by mentioning his apostleship.

In nine of his thirteen letters, Paul starts by immediately mentioning that he is an apostle. What he does here, in this opening verse of Galatians, is not unusual. But after this, he does something unique, he does something here in Galatians that he does not do elsewhere. Rather than starting by telling them who had appointed him to be an apostle, instead, he actually starts by telling them who did NOT appoint him to be an apostle. He says that he is an apostle, but not appointed by men!

Paul is making it clear, he’s like, “I was not made an apostle by any groups of humans!” Paul is emphasizing something here that he doesn’t emphasize in any of his other greetings. So, we ought to ask “why”… why does Paul feel the need to emphasize this?

Well, it’s because of what’s happening in the province of Galatia. Let’s consider the background. Paul had previously been there in the region of Galatia, and remember, this is a Gentile region, and Paul had preached the gospel, the true gospel, the good news of the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus. But after Paul and his team had left, a group of Jewish men came in after him, preaching a false gospel. These false teachers questioned the gospel Paul preached, the true gospel.

So now, Paul knows that there’s probably people saying things like: “Hey, Paul gave us his teachings, and these other guys gave us their teachings, but what makes Paul so special. Why should we believe Paul over these other guys?”

Paul knows this is happening. So, Paul is making a point, it’s like he’s saying: “Listen, do you know what gives me credibility? Because it wasn’t human beings that appointed me.” And then, like he does in his other letters, Paul then reminds them who did appoint him, so first he’s telling them who did not appoint him, but now he’s going to tell them who did. Look at the second half of verse one, Paul says that he was made an apostle “through Jesus Christ and God the Father, who raised him from the dead.”

He was made an apostle by Jesus, and by the one who brought Jesus back from the dead, God the Father! “The one who has the ability to bring people back from the dead… the creator of everything, God himself, that’s the one who made me an apostle. That’s why my message is credible.” That’s what Paul is emphasizing here.

And then, later in verse 12, a key verse, Paul says this: “I did not receive [the gospel] from any man nor was I taught it, but I received it through a revelation of Jesus Christ.” Paul specifically states that the message he got was directly from Jesus. Paul didn’t just think this up on his own, this wasn’t concocted in his head, this wasn’t just his subjective interpretation of the Scripture, no! The gospel he preached to the Galatians is a message he got directly from Jesus Christ himself!

So, as the Galatians read this letter, it brings them to a fork in the road, of sorts, right? Paul is wanting them to realize that they’re not just picking between two different understandings of the Scriptures. They are not picking between a message that came from Paul and a message that came from this other group of men! No, they are picking between a message that came directly from Jesus, and a message that came from these other men.

The False Gospel of the Judaizers

So, what was this false gospel that these men were propagating?

Let’s examine that for moment.

This group of Jewish teachers that came in after Paul. They claimed that in order to be truly saved, to be forgiven of sin, and to enter into the family of God, these guys claimed that the Galatians would need to do more than just believe in Jesus, but that they would also need to obey the laws of the Old Testament.

Today, we typically refer to this group as the “Judaizers.” Now, you won’t find that exact word “Judaizer” anywhere in the book of Galatians in your contemporary English translation. But that’s the word we use to refer to this group. The word “Judaizer” actually comes from a particular Greek phrase that refers to people who emphasize the Jewish law. That’s what this group was doing, they were demanding that the Galatians live according to the Jewish customs.

These Judaizers were claiming that the Galatians would find eternal life by obeying the law of the Old Testament.

But that is a lie.

And that is what Paul is attacking in this letter. Eternal life cannot be achieved by obeying the law. Eternal life cannot be earned by behaving properly. Eternal life is a gift that comes to us only through faith in Jesus. And that’s what Paul is about to dive into.

Look at verses three and four with me: “Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ, who gave himself for our sins to deliver us from the present evil age, according to the will of our God and Father.”

We notice here, that even though these opening verses are a salutation, Paul wastes no time. He gives very few introductory remarks, and he gets right down to business. You can pick-up on the fact that there’s a sense of urgency, he does not have time for a bunch of pleasantries, he wants to get right to the gospel.

Paul then says, “Grace and peace” to you, because he genuinely wants them to experience the grace and peace of God, and then Paul immediately makes it clear how humans can experience the grace and peace of God, it’s through Jesus.

He jumps right to Jesus! He starts to proclaim what Jesus did! He says that Jesus died for our sins, and that Jesus is the one who will deliver us from this “present evil age.”

This Present Evil Age

Let’s double click on that phrase. What does it mean to be “delivered from the present evil age?” Well, it obviously doesn’t mean that he came to remove us from this present age, we’re all still here. In fact, Jesus clearly wanted us here, he prayed this prayer, in John 17:15, he says this to the Father: “I do not ask that you take them out of the world, but that you keep them from the evil one.”

The deliverance being alluded to is not a removal from the age but protection from the evil one… Satan!

We are no longer blinded by Satan! In 2 Corinthians 4:4, Satan is called the “god of this world” and it says that he has “blinded the minds of unbelievers.” But we are no longer blinded, and as a result, we know that this age is not all that there is!

So many people are convince that there’s nothing beyond this age, but we know that there is indeed an age to come—a glorious age! We look forward to that glorious age, when every tear is wiped from our eyes, when every wrong is righted, when we put on a glorified bodies, when we are face to face with Jesus, enjoying him forever.

In Hebrews 6 says that we, as Christians, we “have tasted the goodness… and the powers of the age to come.”

But of course, Jesus not only rescues us from the sin and power of this present age, but 1 Thess. 1:10 tells us that Jesus also “delivers us from the wrath to come.” Friends, there is a wrath to come, a wrath that we all deserve.

We are all sinners, by nature and by choice. We deserve eternal condemnation. We deserve wrath. God would not have been wrong to condemn all of us to hell. But God loved us so much that he made a way for us to be forgiven, he made a way for us to be rescued, not based on our obedience to the law, but based on our belief in Jesus.

The True Gospel

God became a man. Jesus entered the human story.

He lived a perfect life. And he died a brutal death… the death that we deserved. It should have been you on that cross, it should have been me. And God put on him the guilt and shame of us all. Jesus made it possible for us to be delivered from the powers of this age. His death made it possible for us to be rescued from the eternal condemnation that we otherwise would so richly deserve.

And of course, Jesus didn’t stay dead. God the Father vindicated him, and raised him from the dead on the third day. And now he makes us an offer. If we believe in Jesus, if we genuinely place our hope in Jesus Christ, then we will be rescued.

In Romans 10, the apostle Paul says this: “If you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.”

Friends, that is good news. That is the true gospel. That is the gospel that the Galatians had abandoned. They abandoned the true gospel for the false gospel of the Judaizers.

Church, this is happening in our day too. There are so many false gospels today.

The False Gospels of Our Age

Let’s example some of the false gospels of our modern age. There’s the “prosperity gospel” movement, focused on money. They say God wants you to be rich, and the only reason you’re poor or sick is because you don’t have enough faith in God.

There’s the “poverty gospel” movement, these guys say that the way to earn God’s approval is to be destitute or poor in everyway.

There’s the “word of faith” movement, which is often closely aligned with the prosperity gospel movement which is focused on the idea that you can create your own reality by you words.

There’s the “social gospel” which gained so much traction in our nation in the early part of the twentieth century. This ideology is focused on doing charity work and political activism, and it typically says that the only thing that really matters is helping the poor or helping people live a better life or implementing socialistic policies and initiatives, and that we shouldn’t care about heaven or hell, we shouldn’t care about getting people to convert or change their beliefs.

Now, should we care about the poor and doing works of justice and mercy? Of course, yes! But if that’s all we’ve got, if our gospel does not look forward to the age to come, then it’s a powerless gospel. We could feed every hungry person in the Twin Cities, but if we don’t give them the true gospel, well then, we’ll have a bunch of well-fed people on their way to hell.

Also, there’s the “works based of gospels.” The say, if you do enough good stuff, then you can earn your way to heaven. This ideology runs rampant in American minds, it seeps into our heads. American’s love effort and ingenuity. We say things like, “Pull yourself up by the bootstraps.”

Then, there’s these wacky extreme ideas of “Christian nationalism” that somehow God loves America more than other nations, that the promises of the Old Testament to ethnic Israel somehow apply America. Like somehow being a good Christian means you always vote Republican. This is a false gospel.

There’s this so-called “progressive” Christianity movement, which says that for centuries true Christianity has been misrepresented and that the Bible has long been misunderstood, that Christians throughout the ages have been oppressive, but that we modern folks, we finally figured out what Christianity is really all about.

There’s the “destructionist” movement or the “ex-vangelical” movement that is gaining steam, which says that I get to pick which parts of the Bible I embrace and which parts I reject, which is really rooted in post-modernism, and not really rooted in any genuine or quality understanding of the Bible.

There’s all these ideologies in our present evil age, and Satan is using these false gospels to blind people. There are so many people focused on these ideas, or they are infatuated with this world, with this age.

In Paul’s letter to Timothy we learn about a man named Demas, who walked away from the faith. He had been a part of Paul’s ministry team, he traveled with Paul, did ministry with Paul, but he deserted Paul because, as Paul says, Demas “loved” this world.

When we love this world, when we love this age so much that it blinds our ability to look ahead to the future age, we become like Demas.

So many people love this age, they are informed by this age, by what this age demands. And some people have wholesale fully embraced these ideologies, but many of us have potentially embraced pieces of these false gospels. It’s often an accident, we often unintentionally allow pieces or components of those false gospels to creep into our heads and hearts, and we need to be very careful, we must diligent.

Church, I exhort you, be on guard. Regularly take inventory of your own heart and mind and life. Do not allow these modern false gospels to blind you. Do not allow these ideas to cause you care more about this evil age than the age to come.

We must be careful that we are truly being informed by the gospel and its implications, we must make decisions everyday like we truly believe the true gospel, we must be informed by the true gospel. Friends, there is a true gospel, and there are many false gospels, we must fight to ensure we are not governed by these false gospels.

There is such a pull in our contemporary society to get Christians to abandon the death and resurrection of Jesus. That’s kind of a key element to all these false gospels.

Recently, I was scrolling Facebook and I saw a post from a friend of mine, let’s call him Bob. Bob had posted a quote from a relatively well-known religious leader. And several people thought it was interesting because my friend Bob is relatively hostile toward Christianity (let’s says, he’s got a very secular progressive ideology). I didn’t comment, but I did read through the comments (there were a few dozen), and it was interesting that someone did ask him about his willingness to use a quote from a religious leader.

And my friend Bob said, “Well, the reason why I like this particular religious leader is because he’s not one of those types of Christians that think Christianity is the only way.” Bob touted all the good work that this particular religious leader had done, this religious leader had been involved in political activism, fundraising for various charities, various social campaigns in Africa, he had been a part of various educational initiatives.

And my friend Bob was excited about the fact that this particular religious leader didn’t “talk about all that Jesus stuff” (that’s an exact quote).

This religious leader claimed that all that really mattered was that we all serve our fellow man, he said that what we believe wasn’t really important.

Well, that’s not the true gospel! Church, this variation of Christianity is actually not Christianity. It’s something altogether different. The true gospel is centered, focused, on the death and resurrection of Jesus. That’s what Paul focuses on here in this greeting, the fact that Jesus died to deliver us, that’s we ought to focus on too!

What we believe matters—in fact, it’s what matters most, and everything flows out from that. What we believe about the death of Jesus matters a lot. A version of Christianity that does not focus on the atoning death of Jesus is not Christianity.

No Prayer of Thanksgiving

There’s one other important thing I want to point out from this letter. As we examine the opening section of this letter, there’s actually something missing here, something that we would ordinarily expect in a letter from Paul, and the fact that this thing is missing helps us pick up on the sense of urgency and the righteous anger that Paul is feeling.

Typically, a first-century letter like this one, after the greeting, would typically then include a prayer of thanksgiving or blessing of some sort, immediately after the greeting. Well, here in Galatians, there is no prayer of thanksgiving of any kind after the greeting.

The fact that the prayer of thanksgiving is missing is very striking because this is a normal characteristic of the rest of Paul’s letters.

Here’s a few examples:

To the Ephesians he says: “I have heard of your faith in the Lord Jesus and your love toward all the saints [for this reason] I do not cease to give thanks for you, remembering you in my prayers.”

To the Romans he says: “First, I thank my God through Jesus Christ for all of you, because your faith is proclaimed in all the world.”

In his letter to the Colossians, he says: “We always thank God, when we pray for you, since we heard of your faith in Christ Jesus.”

This idea of a prayer of thanksgiving is a staple in Paul’s letters, but when it comes to the Galatians, there’s none of this.

Now, here’s something that is really striking, even the Corinthians get a prayer of thanksgiving from Paul.

If you know anything about the church in Corinth, you know they were incredibly dysfunctional.

In Corinth there were all sorts of in-fighting, and arguing, and quarreling. There were people in the church that had filed lawsuits against each other. There was sexual sin running rampant that Paul says, “Not even the pagans would put up with that.” There were people abusing the gifts of the spirit, there’s people shouting in the middle of the church service, making a ruckus, and there’s even people getting drunk at the communion table. It’s chaos. The church in Corinth is a hot mess!

And yet, here’s how the apostle Paul greets them:

“I give thanks to my God always for you because of the grace of God that was given you in Christ Jesus, that in every way you were enriched.”

Even the Corinthians get a prayer of thanksgiving. Remarkable.

But, the Galatians?

Crickets!

Nothing.

Why? Because they abandoned the gospel. And that overshadows everything! You sort of get the sense that Paul didn’t have any reason to be thankful when he thought about the Galatian church.

When it comes to the gospel, the stakes are too high. Paul does not have time for a long warn greeting with blessings and thanksgivings. Why? Because they got main thing wrong, and nothing else matter. Paul has no time for warm flowery encouraging language, he needs to get right down the business.

Cities Church, we must NEVER abandon the gospel.

If we get the gospel wrong, nothing else matters.

We are not in the business of just doing a bunch of good stuff. No, we must be more than that.

We are truth-telling outpost. We are in the business of telling people the truth. And the greatest—and most important truth—is the truth that Jesus died for our sins and he made it possible for us to be delivered from this evil present age. No matter how much good we do as a church, if we lose the gospel, nothing else matters.

My exhortation to you this morning is simple: Believe the true gospel, trust in Christ, allow him to deliver you from this ideologies of this present evil age, and do not ever let the gospel go!

Do not ever abandon the true gospel—the good news that Christ died for our sins and rose from the dead.

Jesus Christ died for our sins, he rose from the dead, and through him we can be delivered from this present evil age; through Jesus we can be rescued from the wrath to come, the wrath that we deserve. And because of Jesus, we can look forward to the age to come—that glorious age to come.

And church, that ought to lead us to worship!

Doxology

When you understand this rescue, it leads you to worship God.

That’s what happens here in verse 5, that’s the last verse we’ll look at this morning. Look at verse 5 with me. Paul is speaking about God and he says, “to whom be the glory forever and ever. Amen.”

Paul was just talking about Jesus did for us, and he then breaks into a doxology, he breaks into worship because, when you are reminded of what Jesus did, when you are reminded that Jesus died for your sins, when you come face to face with the reality that you deserved the wrath of God but Jesus saved you, then you can’t help but praise God! You cannot help but break into song and declare his goodness!

Whenever you hear that Jesus died for your sins, whenever you hear that Jesus delivered you, the best response is to say, “to him”… to God… “to him, be the glory forever and ever, Amen!”

The Table

And now we come to the table. We do this every single week to remember what Jesus did! He died for sins, he rose from the dead, and he delivered us!

In just a moment the pastors are going to come and we’ll serve you. This meal is open to anyone here who is a follower of Jesus. If you have genuinely placed your trust in Christ, then we invite you to participate with us.

However, if you are here this morning, and you are not a follower of Jesus Christ, then we would ask for you not to participate in this meal, when the bread and the wine come by, just let it pass. But don’t let the moment pass by you. If you are not a follower of Jesus, instead of taking part in this meal with us this morning, I implore, take Christ instead.

If you want to talk to anyone about what that means or what it looks like to follow Jesus, we would love to talk to you about that, just come on up after the service, we’d love to have a conversation with you about that.

Cities Church, his body is the true bread. His blood is the true drink. Let us serve you.