created an error alert, but that alert was overridden. The mislabeled bottle was shipped to the patient, and the patient then opens it and notices that the pills look different, and the patient contacted the pharmacy. And that's how the error was discovered. The label said one thing, but what was inside the bottle was something different. And can we agree that when you're talking about medicine, getting the label almost right is not good enough? Do we agree with that? You see, what matters is what's inside. And that's Paul's precise concern with the Christians in the region of Galatia. The danger is not always some message that sounds completely different from the Christian faith. Sometimes the label looks right. And that's what happened in the churches of Galatia. False teachers had entered into leadership in the churches that Paul planted there after he went away and left town on his next missionary journey. These were Jewish religious teachers, and they all claimed to believe that Jesus was their Messiah. But they taught that faith in Jesus alone was not enough to save someone. They said people also needed religious works. They needed obedience to Old Testament ceremonies and the like if they wanted to be fully accepted by God. Bible scholars call these teachers the Judaizers. But that's too religious for me, and I don't want to fool with that. And so from this point forward, I'm just going to call them, in our study of Galatians, the law teachers. The law teachers, because that tells you exactly what they were doing in the church. And I want you to understand that the law teacher's message was not, hey, now that Paul's out of town, you can forget Jesus. It's not what they preached. Their message was much more subtle than that. They said, hey, Jesus is good. Jesus is necessary. But Jesus is not enough. And the Galatians were embracing this. They wanted to feel religious. They wanted to believe they were in some way contributing to their relationship with God. They wanted to play a role in it. And the Apostle Paul is horrified by this. Now last week, we established where this message came from and what Jesus came to do. That was verses 1 through 5. Now, the Apostle Paul in these next five verses will not calmly repeat himself. He moves on to something he's truly concerned about, and he sounds the alarm. So here's what we have today. We have five verses and four questions. Four questions that the Apostle Paul asked the Galatians and four questions that he's asking us. Are you ready? Everybody fired up? All right. I have good news for you. I am very hungry. What that might mean is I may rush through this. But knowing that I'm going to give an account for this sermon, probably not. All right, number one. Paul asks, who are you walking away from? This is verse 6. He writes, I marvel that you are turning away so soon from him who called you in the grace of Christ. Your English translation may have, I marvel. It may have something like, I'm astonished. It doesn't matter how you're translated in English. Paul can't believe how quickly this is happening. He says, you're turning away so soon. And that phrase, turning away, is even strong language. It's masked in the English. It's clear in the Greek. It's a military word. Turning away. It's used for desertion. It's military desertion. Picture a soldier abandoning his post. Friends, he's not just reconsidering his assignment. He's changing sides. He's cowarding out. And what does Paul say they're leaving? He doesn't say they're turning away from a doctrine, a teaching. He says, they're turning away, and I quote, from him who called you. Do you understand? The Galatians' departure was not simply from a system of theology. They're walking away from God himself because they're believing an infected version of the gospel. By the way, there's something behind those words, so soon. Everybody say, so soon. Your English translation may have, so quickly. So soon or so quickly. It is a reference back to your Old Testament into the book of Exodus. I want you to think about Israel, the nation of Israel, at Mount Sinai in Exodus. God had just brought them out of what country where they were enslaved? Egypt. And as he did so, hadn't they seen the ten plagues with their own eyes? So they'd seen supernatural wonders. And not only had they seen the plagues, didn't they walk through the Red Sea on dry ground with I don't know how many stories tall of pillars of water on either side? Can we agree that if the Red Sea splits and you walk not on mud but on dry ground, that's an amazing miracle? The prophets call it God's salvation. So they'd done that. They had watched Pharaoh's army disappear beneath the walls of water. Saw it. Didn't have to have any faith in it. And then Moses leaves them for a little while. And in the Bible, he goes on the longest quiet time in recorded Bible history, right? Moses goes up the mountain to meet with God and he's there like 40 days or something. A long time. And they grow impatient. And they say, we don't know about what's happened to this Moses guy. We don't know where he is. We don't know what he's coming back to. We need to worship something. Do you remember this? And Moses, before he could even get back down the mountain, what were they doing? They were fashioning a golden calf and worshiping this golden cow idol. And Aaron, Moses' brother, saying, Israel, behold, here's your God that brought you out of Egypt. And you're going, you're being very judgmental in your seat right now. And you're saying, how could they do that? Because if I was there, I wouldn't have. In Exodus 32.8, God's verdict, well, God's comment on this in Exodus 32.8, he says the people, and I quote, had turned aside quickly from the way he had commanded them. Turned aside quickly. Can you hear the echo? So soon, so quickly, turned aside quickly. See, now Paul looks at the Galatians and they had heard the gospel. He had preached it to them and planted their church. [00:48:00 - 00:56:00] received the grace of Christ. It had been legitimate. And Paul says to them, I marvel that you're turning away so soon. Do you understand that Israel turned aside quickly after seeing what God had done? And now the Galatians were doing the same thing. That's what makes a false gospel so serious. You see, you may think you're only adjusting what you believe about salvation, but Paul says, no, this issue is about your relationship with God. You cannot walk away from the gospel without walking away from the God of the gospel. Who are you walking away from? Question two. Paul also wonders, are you listening to the wrong voices? Here's verse seven. There are some who trouble you and want to pervert the gospel of Christ. Now Paul turns his attention to those law teachers that had weaseled their way into leadership in the Galatian churches and were damning the people by what they were teaching. And I got to tell you, if you and I had been there, we would have fallen for this because the apostle's gone and now these new teachers who seem to know their Bibles and who had charisma and who had the arguing skills of a fine attorney. And let me tell you, they sounded convincing. You want to know why? Because they had Bible verses and they had confidence and they could take the Galatian believers all the way back to Genesis 17 and they could show them where God had commanded if you want to be in a relationship with him, in a covenant with him, and you're a male, you had to be circumcised. And I joked with the first service today that if I announced that next weekend I was going to do a two-day conference on what the Bible talks about circumcision, there wouldn't be many men signing up to come see that. It would not fill the building. And yet here are people in these churches going, man, you guys are Gentiles, you're not like us, and you're missing what God commanded in Genesis 17. You haven't been circumcised. They weren't making that command up. It was right there in Scripture. They were pointing to it. But they were taking a command that God gave Abraham and making it a requirement for becoming a Christian. It was as if they were saying, yes, believe in Jesus, but you also must be circumcised and keep the law of Moses if you want to be accepted by God. They were taking something that God had said under the older covenant and using it to distort what God had now accomplished in Christ. It is still happening today. It's just not overtly Jewish. And he says, some of you want to pervert the gospel of Christ. The word pervert here is used elsewhere in your Bible to mean twist, to mean distort, and what I think is going on here, to reverse something into its opposite. If you add anything in the gospel, it becomes the anti-gospel. Martin Luther, the great reformer, understood this danger. Let me paraphrase how he taught about it. He warned his listeners in his churches that the devil doesn't always attack Christianity by openly opposing it. And I would go a step further to say to you, Satan himself would love to join this church and go to your small group and deceive you and masquerade and be here and even bring people because the best way to deceive is not to go, you should abandon all that. The best way to deceive is take what you have and add a little bit to it. So Martin Luther says, look, it's not like the devil's saying he's openly opposing our message. Sometimes he disguises his interference by offering something that sounds like an improved version of the Christian message. Friends, that's what the law teachers were offering the Galatian Christians. They were saying, Jesus starts your salvation. Moses helps you finish it. But can we talk? The moment you add something to Christ as the basis for the saving of your soul, you haven't improved the gospel. You've lost the gospel. And there are so many in the United States today who went to a house of worship where they taught a false gospel and they're deceived and they're convinced that they're right with God. The same error that was happening in the Galatian churches is happening in theirs. And they don't even know it. Paul says these teachers were troubling the churches, the word troubling. Let me tell you how he was doing it. They were doing it. Any gospel that turns salvation into Jesus plus some works that you do and human effort that you provide and hoops that you jump through, any message that does that will eventually destroy your assurance. People ask me privately, Pastor, I've been doubting my salvation. Do you doubt yours? I'm getting ready to answer this question and I don't want to sound like I feel like I'm above you. I don't. I don't want you to feel like, well, I have unlocked the key to super Christianity and one of these days you'll get there. But I want to tell you, no, I don't doubt my salvation. Let me tell you why. It's not mine to begin with. David prayed, restore unto me the joy of your salvation. And the reason I don't have these doubts is because it's a gift God gave to me and Jesus promised me. He promised me that if I would put my trust in him, if I would dethrone me and enthrone Christ, if I would turn away from my old life of sin and trust in him and live every day as if he's real and seek after, he promised me that he would give me eternal life and that no one would be able to snatch me out of his hand or his father's hand, John chapter 10. The reason I can't lose my salvation is it's not mine and the reason I don't doubt my salvation is it's also his and he promised me that he would give me eternal life and I believe Jesus doesn't break his promises. Just me? You also believe this? But if you find yourself and your family in a religious system that says trust in Jesus but you also need to do all these things to remain right with God, that's when your assurance will begin to disintegrate. And why is that, Pastor? Listen to me. Because in a system like that, you can never know if you've done enough. There's no finish line because there's always another failure to make up for. Isn't that true, sister? You came out of that false system of the UPC and they had all the rules and how many times did you get saved after that? Over and over, right? You always wondered. Look, it's not just Brooke. She's nodding her head and I go, I know her story. And I know that when you come into a church that preaches the real gospel and you've been in that system, you feel like [00:56:00 - 01:04:00] I've finally been set free. The weight of the law is not on my neck anymore. It was on Jesus and he died for it on the cross. If my acceptance with God rests on what Christ has done, then the question changes from, have I done enough? And the question becomes, has Jesus done enough? And what is the answer to that question? It's yes. This is where we must be careful about the voices we allow to shape what we believe. Man, I am convinced that some of you are being falsely discipled by the reels that you're watching on your phone. I've become convinced that some of you are being discipled by the music that you listen to all the time that you think you can't live without. I'm becoming more and more convinced that the voices that are saying the opposite of what faithful pastors are saying to you are going to overwhelm just by the sheer volume of them and drown out the truth. Somebody sends you a clip on your phone and the speaker sounds confident and there's a Bible open on the desk at his podcast and there's a verse that appears on the screen and before long, because of the charisma of the messenger, you're repeating something that you never examined in the light of the scriptures. Can I tell you, a confident voice is not the same thing as a true voice. So don't ask only, did they quote scripture? Ask, does what these teachers say agree with the gospel of Jesus Christ? Ask again, are you listening to the wrong voices? Question number three, and here's where it's going to get bumpy. How serious is a false gospel? Well, the apostle Paul writes in Galatians 1, 8 and 9, but even if we were an angel from heaven, preach any other gospel to you, let him be, and the word in the original language is anathema, anathema, let him be accursed. Let a curse be on him. Let him be damned to hell. That's what that word means. And Paul says accursed twice. And here's what he means. He says, look, if I come back from my next mission trip and come into your church and preach another gospel than the one I laid down when I was here first, you need to reject me. And he says, I'll go a step further. If an angel appears and preaches another gospel, you should reject him also. And that word angel, he's not being, he's not using hyperbole here. He's not exaggerating. It's not random. The New Testament connects angels, mysteriously to me, with the giving of the law of Moses somehow. Galatians 3, 19, when we get to chapter 3, says the law was appointed through angels by the hand of a mediator. Acts 7, verse 53, Israel received the law by the direction of angels. Hebrews 2, verse 2, speaks of the word spoken through angels. And God communicated in the Old Testament through what we call now the angel of the Lord, and they spoke to men. So they're able to communicate, and Paul says if one of them shows up, preaches anything that's not like what I laid down in the church, don't even believe the angel. He's emphatic. If an angel from heaven shows up and tells you something different, don't believe him. Let me summarize it this way. A supernatural experience does not replace the gospel. That's the Mormon error. A spectacular messenger does not outrank the gospel. That's the evangelical error. And here's where I want to bring just a word of correction on us and how we see the marketplace. Every so often, somebody famous announces that they become a Christian, and the church loses its mind. Kanye West did it. Russell Brand did it. Justin Bieber did it. Donnie Wahlberg did it. His girlfriend, now wife, did it. And Kim Kardashian did it. And the impulse from Christians is, oh my goodness, look. Famous people now believe what we believe. Now our message has more power and influence. No, it doesn't. We cannot have this worldview. Now look, we should rejoice when anyone truly comes to Christ. Do we agree? I mean, the angels in heaven rejoice. We want to be happy. We just want to wait. An athlete gets baptized. An actor talks about finding Jesus. A musician starts talking about, quote unquote, my faith. Christians get excited. But there's something underneath our excitement that as your pastor, I want to warn you about. We need to watch this. We start sharing the story of these supposed celebrity conversions almost as though we're saying, see, look who believes what we believe now. As if Christianity just became a little more credible. It did not. The gospel does not become more credible when a celebrity believes it. If a celebrity adds their name to the Christian faith, it does nothing in the grand scheme of things. You want to know why? We already have the most famous name. We have the name that's above every name. We have the name that everybody in heaven and on earth and under the earth will one day bow their knee and confess to that name, the name of Jesus of Nazareth, that he's Lord. We have the name that gives our message all the credibility it will ever need. Does that make sense? The gospel is the power. Romans 1 16, I'm not ashamed of the gospel of Christ for it is the power of God to salvation for everyone who believes, the famous and the non-famous. It's for all of us, yes? Okay. So the gospel doesn't need the added credibility of famous people. The power is not in who endorses the gospel. The power is in the good news. Why is that? Because the status of the messenger doesn't validate the message. In the Old Testament, God used a donkey to talk to a prophet. He used a serpent to talk to a man and a woman in a garden. The message validates the messenger. And here's why we have to be very careful. 2 Corinthians 11 14, Paul writes, For Satan himself transforms himself into an angel of light. He won't come to you in a red suit and pitchfork and horns. That's laughable and easy to dismiss. But an angel of light is appealing and deceiving and we have to watch and pray. Here's my comment from that. Not everything spiritual is true and not everything impressive is from God. The gospel simply does not need an impressive messenger. The gospel has us, just regular old people. [01:04:00 - 01:12:00] Struggling forward and falling headlong into grace, and there's nothing special about us. The specialty is in the Lord Jesus, and he loves us, and if he loves us, he can love you back. Isn't that true? So, why such strong language here? Because after this, Paul pronounces a curse. He says, let him be anathema who would preach a different gospel. Let him be accursed. It means let him be under the judgment of God if he does this, and let those who embrace this be under the judgment of God. Why such strong language? Because the law teachers were attacking the sufficiency of the cross itself. Because if there's a list of rules that you have to do that are necessary for salvation in addition to Jesus, then the crucifixion of Jesus was not sufficient. It wasn't enough. And I seem to remember that Jesus said on the cross in John 19.30, it is finished. It's a word that means it's over, it's done, it's paid in full. Jesus paid it all, and I don't owe him a thing. He paid it. That's why we have these entire religious systems that become spiritually dangerous when they say the name of Jesus in affectionate tones and then add a list of human effort to go with him for the people to say, this is how I know I'm a Christian. And here's where it gets very sensitive. For some of you, this isn't an argument about someone else's religion. This is your story. You've been living this. You're sorting through the things that you were taught and have believed for years. For example, maybe you grew up Roman Catholic. Roman Catholics are not my enemy. They're my mission field. Roman Catholicism talks about Jesus and grace and faith and scripture and salvation, and they even say Jesus is deity, he's God, and they get a lot of things right. But it also teaches that salvation begins with grace, but it doesn't teach that you're justified in God's courtroom by faith alone. And let me just quote a verse from that. It is by grace that you have been saved through faith, not by works. It is the gift of God, lest any man should boast. The Roman Catholic teaching joins justification, being declared not guilty in God's courtroom, with the sacramental system and with our cooperation with grace and with the all-powerful papacy and with the error of exalting Mary with Jesus and saying things about Mary that only belong to Jesus. But it doesn't teach the gospel of faith alone and Christ alone by grace alone to the glory of God alone, scripture alone. So it's got the right label, but what's on the inside will kill you. Same thing is true with Mormonism, except Mormonism is not even that close. Some of you came out of the Mormon faith, perhaps. Mormonism uses familiar language about a different Jesus and a corrupted grace and a different Godhead, but its understanding of Jesus and salvation is fundamentally false. And some of you didn't know this. Mormonism is not even monotheistic. In the pantheon of Mormonism, there are billions of God, one for every planet. There are three different versions of heaven and a Jesus who's not eternal. And they will say to you, we're Christians just like you. And I would say even your founder didn't think that we're Christians or that you were. Too much? Mormonism adds additional revelation, ordinances, covenants, and required obedience. What about the Jehovah's Witnesses? They'll come to your door. They are better at evangelism than you are. They're more willing to do for a lie than what we're willing to do for the truth. And the Jehovah's Witnesses use the Bible and they talk about Jesus, but they openly deny his full deity and they place salvation within the teachings and requirements of their religious system, which is called the Watchtower Bible and Tract Society of Brooklyn, New York. Even if we or an angel from heaven preach another gospel, let them be accursed. God had Paul write this in the first century to combat the things I'm talking about. That's why Paul doesn't tell us to judge the gospel by the name on the building. And that's why Paul doesn't tell us to judge the gospel by the sincerity of the people. And that's why God doesn't tell us to judge the gospel by how religious everything looks and feels. The gospel itself is a test. I'm going to read to us Romans 4, 4, and 5 in the New Living Translation. Very clear English translation here for this. When people work, their wages are not a gift, but something they have earned. Isn't that true? On payday at your job, your boss doesn't come to say to you, thank you for working 40 hours last week. Here's a gift I have for you. Now you go, I earned that, yes? It's mine. Furthermore, but people are counted righteous not because of their work or their effort, but because of their faith in God who forgives sinners. You see, a false gospel doesn't just confuse people. It leaves people trusting something that cannot save them. Let me ask you again, how serious is a false gospel and have you believed one? Question number four today, who are you trying to please? This is verse 10. For do I now persuade men or God? Or do I seek to please men? For if I still pleased men, I would not be a bondservant of Christ. Now Paul turns to another danger. It's the pressure to make the message more acceptable to people. And Paul's response to them was, look into my eyes and tell me whether you think I look like I'm trying to please others. I just announced a curse on anyone who would preach anything other than what I preach. He goes, I'm not a man pleaser, I'm a God pleaser. Man pleasers don't hurl anathemas against those who proclaim false gospels. But let me tell you this, the true gospel always, always, always offends human pride. That means that none of us who are true Christians in the room came to Jesus without being offended by his message. Because what it does is it holds up a mirror and shows us what we're like on the inside and then we hear God say, that is not acceptable to me. And that if you want to be made right with me and you want peace with God, then it's going to have to come from outside of you and it's going to have to come from the virtue of someone else. And that someone else is the Lord Jesus. You know, our Bible tells us that our hearts are deceitful and desperately wicked and who can know them? Our Bibles tell us there is no one righteous, not even one. Our Bibles tell us that all have sinned and fall short of God's glory. And then our Bibles tell us that the gift of God is eternal life in Jesus Christ our Lord. The true gospel offends human pride so there's always this pressure to make that message a little easier for people to stomach. And it's like, hey pastor, leave this part out, soften this over here, and don't tell them about this until later. And I want you to know there's nothing about the message of Jesus that I would hold back from you or that I'm ashamed of. You must trust in Christ, you must repent of your sin, [01:12:00 - 01:20:00] After that, you must be baptized. If you want the scriptures to call you a Christian, they call the baptized Christians. It comes after you believe. I don't mind telling you all of what Jesus said obey and do. And I won't soften it because that'll only damn you if I do. If you keep reshaping the gospel until nobody objects to it, eventually you won't have a gospel anymore. Let me give you a scenario in your life. Maybe it happens next week. Maybe you're at work or at school or in the marketplace or with your friends and you're sitting at lunch and the conversation turns towards something that's moral and it's in the culture and you know isn't right and everybody around the table is supporting this and you go, man, that is unbiblical, that is anti-Jesus and I disagree. And nobody asks you to deny Jesus. You just realize that saying what you believe might change the mood at the table. And suddenly you're doing the calculation in your head. What are they going to think of me if I disagree? Let me tell you the three big ones in our culture right now. Trump, trans, and women who kill their children. People are talking about those things. What does the gospel say to all three of them? What does the gospel say to Trump? It says your policies are nice and your kindness to other people is good, but it won't add one ounce of grace to your account. You need to repent and believe in Jesus. That's what it said to him. What does the gospel say to trans? You suppress the truth and unrighteousness and if you don't repent, God's going to give you over to that and you won't have the opportunity to repent again. But the gospel can change you. What does it say to mothers who kill their children? Hey, look, you've got to be punished and you may even get the death penalty, but you can believe before that, like the thief on the cross, you can come to Jesus and still die a death. See, the worst thing in life here is not that you die. The worst thing in life here is you die without Jesus. Does that make sense? The gospel speaks to all of it. We have to know what it is. You don't have to deny Jesus out loud to let the fear of people control you. Sometimes you only have to stay quiet. Do I still seek to please men, Paul asks. That's why Galatians 1.10 hits close to home. Listen, you cannot live for everyone's approval and remain a servant of Christ. My last comment on that is this. The fear of losing people has caused many to lose the gospel. In conclusion today, let's go back to that prescription bottle we started with. Everything on the outside looked right. The label said five milligrams, but what mattered was what was inside the bottle. Some of you have spent years believing something that carried a Christian label. Maybe you inherited it from your family. Maybe you learned it in church, poorly taught. Maybe you're just now beginning to ask what you've been trusting in. Can I tell you, don't be afraid to ask because the truth can stand up to scrutiny. Paul cared enough about these people to sound the alarm. And as your pastor, I want to sound an alarm in your life today. You see, the question is not whether the label says Christian. The question is whether the message underneath the label is the gospel of Jesus Christ. And if you spent years trying to add to your goodness or trying to add your goodness to what Jesus has done or trying to add your religion to what Jesus has done or trying to add your effort to what Jesus has done, I have good news for you. You may stop that today because Jesus Christ gave himself for our sins. He died on the cross, a violent death for our sins. He rose again three days later. And if you put your trust in him, you get to become a child of God. Only one gospel saves. Do you believe that? I'm done preaching now.

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