The Gospel

We are starting a series on the gospel, looking at the letter to the Galatians. And the series is called the gospel, how it changes everything. I've been praying and thinking a lot about what the next series that we can be looking at would be. And I believe that this is something that we as a church family need and will be useful to us. As a church, we've moved through our planning stages within the leadership team. We'll be introducing our vision and mission statement soon.

We'll be talking about the direction we feel we want to head in as a church. We'll be sharing hopes and dreams and hopefully we can all get excited about this. But at the end of the day, if we don't understand the foundations of this church and why we meet like this week in week out, it's pointless. A nice brochure and a good presentation is gonna mean nothing if the foundation that we stand on is not solid.

If you've been a part of this church for a while, and I mean, it's even been really prevalent this morning, if you've been a part of this church for a while, you know that we talk about the gospel a lot. You'll understand that it's an important theme for us. And hopefully, as we move into this series, we'll get a chance to really soak in it, not just to talk about it and to have a nifty definition of it, but to understand it in its broad implications for us as Christians, for us as humanity, as people. My prayer is that we will grow to a deeper understanding of the gospel of Jesus Christ and that people will be saved from an existence devoid of God's love.

My hope is that we will feel confident and called to bring this to other people and to bring other people to this church to hear the message of the gospel. Those who might need to hear it for the first time and those who might need to hear it for the fiftieth time. Please be praying that this will be a blessing to all of us as we get into this new series. So turning to Galatians. Starting with Galatians.

It might be handy just to understand a little bit of the context of this letter. Why it was written? To whom it was written? When it was written? The letter, the book is called the letter to the Galatians because it was written to the Galatians.

Wow. Amazing. That's why I spent six years at bible college. It was written by Paul. Galatia was a province, not a town or a city.

It was a province in Asia Minor, which is modern day Turkey, more or less. And it was written to a church that was deeply divided. Most scholars agree that it was written by Paul around about fifty AD, which was fifteen to twenty years after the death of Jesus. And they were, like I said, divisions in the church, particularly regarding the ceremonial laws of Moses, dietary laws on what to eat and what not to eat, and also issues like circumcision and so on. And so Paul writes to the Galatians to restate the original message that he preached in that area a few years before.

He writes back to them to remind them what he said to them that led them to accept the gospel of Jesus Christ. This morning, I'd like to ask you the question, have you ever had that experience of a weird mix of emotions when you've experienced or perhaps witnessed someone that you love come horrifyingly close to being seriously injured or even dying in an accident? I'm glad my parents and my family are here to attest to this fact. My youngest brother, Gerard, was one of the most absent minded young fellows around, especially when it came to being aware of cars.

Now that's not a good thing, right? But he would cross the road without looking. He came so close to serious accidents a few times. At one time, he actually got hit by a car, but it was travelling slow enough that there was no serious injury.

But I remember the feeling, the emotion of seeing something like that happen in slow motion. And it's a terrible feeling. It's on the one hand just huge fear that grips you. Like it's a shock running through your body. And then when you realise they're safe, they've been hit by the car but they can get up again, it's just a gut wrenching sort of anger at you, you stupid idiot.

Why'd you put me through that? Has anyone experienced something like that? Yeah. So it's this weird emotion. You've seen moms go through that.

On the one hand, they turn pale in the face from shock. You see tears start filling in their eyes from the relief. And then at the same time, they grip their kids with vice grips in anger, all in the space of about two seconds. Why? Because they feared losing a loved one.

We find some very similar emotions in the book of Galatians. Some very similar strong emotions from the apostle Paul. Paul is shocked. He is angry. He is fearful all at the same time.

His language is remarkably strong. Really, really strong. More than any of his other letters, in fact. But what has made Paul this emotional? What has made him so angry and so fearful at the same time?

Well, we're going to investigate that a little bit this morning. If you have your bibles with you, let's turn to Galatians one, and we're going to look at the first nine verses this morning. Galatians 1:1-9. Paul, an apostle sent not from men nor by man, but by Jesus Christ and God the father who raised Him from the dead, and all the brothers with me, to the churches in Galatia, grace and peace to you from God our father and the Lord Jesus Christ, who gave Himself for our sins to rescue us from the present evil age, according to the will of our God and father, to whom be glory forever and ever. Amen.

I am astonished that you are so quickly deserting the one who called you by the grace of Christ and are turning to a different gospel, which is really no gospel at all. Evidently, some people are throwing you into confusion and are trying to pervert the gospel of Christ. But even if we or an angel from heaven should preach a gospel other than the one we preach to you, let him be eternally condemned. As we have already said, so now I say again. If anybody is preaching to you a gospel other than what you have accepted, let him be eternally condemned.

So far the reading this morning. It's pretty strong, isn't it? It's pretty strong. What made Paul so angry and so shocked is his astonishment, his absolute astonishment, and he uses the word there that these young Christians are taking hold of a new message.

A new gospel. And like my brother running in front of a car, they are in real danger. He's especially angry at those who are misleading these new converts. Verse seven says that these false teachers are throwing them into confusion and are perverting the gospel of Christ. In verse nine, he calls down condemnation on these people and accuses the Galatian Christians of deserting God Himself.

Of deserting God, the God who loves them, the God who calls them. So there are some very serious charges that Paul makes here. Some very serious claims that he makes about what's going on.

Who is Paul to be doing this? Who is Paul to write like this? Because isn't he just another teacher? Isn't he just another man who came about and was influential and who had some great things to say, some good ideas, and they sounded good then, but there's some other people that seem pretty enlightened themselves. Why should we be listening to Paul and not to some of these other guys who have some logical intelligent things to say as well?

We have to start from the start. Verse one. Paul introduces himself. He says that he is an apostle, a man sent with a divine command or divine authority.

The Greek apostolos means sent, a sent one. And so Paul says as an apostle he is sent not from men nor by men, but by Jesus Christ and God the father. Paul is claiming here that he didn't receive this apostolic authority, this command from any other people. He didn't look better than people, present better, wear nicer clothes.

He wasn't more intelligent or anything like that, and thereby was given the tick of approval from the Bible College. He says he was sent by God and Jesus Christ Himself. That is his authority. No other apostle, no other apostle commissioned him. No popular movement had put him in the spotlight.

No YouTube following had given him authority. He was commissioned and taught directly by the risen Christ Himself. So the testimony of Paul is that he was a man completely going down one way in his understanding of who God is. And on the road to Damascus in Acts 9, was radically gripped and placed on a different path. By who?

By Jesus Christ who came to him bodily, physically. And there were people to witness that. People were able to say this is what happened to him. And so Paul is a changed man. Everyone knew about the story of Paul.

Paul was the one that persecuted Christians and now he's the one preaching Christ. Paul now preached a new message than the one he was previously so passionate about. This is who Paul is. This is what authority he comes with, not the authority of any other person other than Jesus Christ Himself. This leads us to the next question.

What is this message that he came with? He may have been sent by God, but what is the message that he brought? The message is what Paul refers to as something called the gospel. The gospel, again, in Greek, if we go to the original, is euangelion, and it literally means good news. This is a specific word that they used in those times to talk about a happy, joyful announcement.

If an emperor or a king had a baby, a prince that was going to be the new king, it was a euangelion to the entire nation. Good news. Prince George has been born. If it was a political victory for a leader, if a new nation had been conquered for the Roman Empire, it was a euangelion. Good news.

The gospel. And so Paul says that what he preaches is a good news message. It is good news. And that is tied to the death and the resurrection of Jesus Christ. Good news about a man who died.

Interesting. But in his opening, Paul gives a quick yet comprehensive outline of this gospel message that he spent weeks and months proclaiming in Galatia. He gives a quick recap just to remind everyone where he's coming from. He makes four points about the aspects of the good news of the gospel. Firstly, he points out who we are, who these Galatians are, who we as humans are.

He says we are helpless and lost. We are helpless and lost. In verse four, Paul says or uses the word rescue when he refers to our situations. Have a look. Who gave Himself for our sins to rescue us from the present evil age.

Jesus came to rescue us from the present evil age. And the average person on the street believes that Christianity is about someone following Christ, Christ's teaching. Someone who follows Christ's example. But God's word and what Paul says here is that this is impossible. After all, you don't rescue people unless they are in a lost state, in a helpless situation that they cannot get out of.

Imagine seeing a drowning man and he's flapping around in the water and you're on a boat in the middle of the ocean. You don't take a fifty page document on how to swim and fling it out to him and say, I hope you learn how to swim. That is not what rescue is. You don't throw teaching out to someone. You throw them a rope, don't you?

Jesus is not so much a teacher, Paul says, as He is a rescuer. Why? Because that's what we need. We don't need a document. We don't need more teaching.

Nothing in who we are, nothing in who we are can save us. We don't need, we don't know how to swim. That's the problem. We don't need some teaching that's gonna teach us how to swim. We need a rope.

The second thing, however, that Paul states about this good news message is that although we are helpless and lost and in need of rescue, Jesus Christ is the one who rescued us. How? By giving Himself for our sins. Again, verse four says He gave Himself for our sins. He made a sacrifice that was substitutionary.

Again, the word he uses there, He gave Himself for us, it means on behalf of, instead of. It doesn't say He gave Himself as an example. He gave Himself as a good person to follow. And Tim Keller, the pastor, writes, substitution is why the gospel is so revolutionary.

Substitution is why the gospel is so revolutionary. Listen to this. Christ's death was not just a general sacrifice for an example or for the whole world to marvel at, but it was a substitutionary one. Christ did not merely buy us a second chance in order that we can have another opportunity to get our life right with God. He didn't buy us a second chance.

He did everything that was needed. He did everything that was needed. Everything that we couldn't do to stay afloat in that ocean, Jesus Christ did for us. Jesus did all we should have done to stay afloat spiritually and He did it in our place. And when we accept Him as saviour, when we accept Him as our king, as our life rope, we are absolutely free from the penalty or the condemnation of drowning in that ocean.

How is this possible? How did this work? Paul goes on. He makes a third point. It is possible because God the father made it possible.

He was involved in this. You see, it was done out of pure grace. It was done out of pure love. There was nothing in us that warranted us to be rescued. We didn't even ask for a rescue.

We were still floating trying to stay alive. We weren't yelling out for any life rope to be thrown. But God, in His radical love, planned ahead even when we didn't realise we needed it. And so Christ, by His grace, came to achieve a rescue which we never asked for. There's no reason for any other motivation for Christ's mission, Paul says.

There's no reason for Jesus Christ to have come down other than this one, that it was God's will. There is no other reason. There is nothing, absolutely nothing in us which convinced or persuaded God to save us. Salvation is absolute grace. It is purely His love.

Martin Lloyd Jones, the great preacher, once said that the gospel is open to all. The most respectable sinner and the worst sinner. The gospel is open to all. No one has more claim on it than anyone else because we're all in the water together. That leads us to the fourth point.

That's why in verse five, Paul says that it's God who gets the glory. All the glory. There's no there's no shred. There's no inkling that we can pat ourselves on the back for having done anything to contribute to our salvation. God gets the glory, full stop.

If we contributed to our own rescue, if we had splashed around adequately enough to be saved, or had yelled out, or impressed God enough with our efforts to stay afloat, then we could claim some of this glory. Then it could be eighty percent glory goes to God, twenty percent comes to us, forever and ever, amen. But the biblical gospel, Paul, the divinely appointed apostle's gospel makes it clear that salvation from the first to the last in human history is God's doing. It is God's doing.

Full stop. It is His call. It is His decision. It is His action, His plan, His work, and so He deserves all the glory. All of it.

He commands it. He deserves it for all time. But this isn't new. And this wasn't new to the Galatians. They've heard it all before.

The reason Paul is so astonished and so shocked and so angry and so emotional is because these Christians were deserting this gospel and taking up another gospel with a little g. Paul stresses just how precious and unique this gospel is. He stresses it. He wants to paint the picture again. But it's exactly this precious truth, he says, that is in danger of being perverted.

This matters because Paul says in verse seven that to change this gospel, this good news, is for it to become no good news at all. To change it means to lose it. Why? Well, as we go on to this level, we'll see more specifically, but these teachers, these intelligent people, these very persuasive communicators were able to convince these young Christians that you need to add something to this message. It's not complete.

They want to revise it. They want to update it. They want to package it differently. They want to contemporise it. Paul says that any teaching, however, that adds to keeping any other additional rules or regulations or laws rather than simply believing with faith in Christ as a life rope perverts the gospel.

It perverts it. Literally the word he uses here is to reverse it. To reverse the message that was so good. In other words, if anyone was to say, in order for us to be saved, we need the grace of Christ, fair enough, plus something else, if we say that, you completely reverse the power of the gospel.

It becomes null and void. It becomes useless. Gospel reversion means gospel revision. The gospel by its very nature cannot be changed even slightly without it being lost. The gospel cannot be changed without it being completely lost.

It's like a vacuum. Our engineers will be able to confirm this with us. A vacuum can't be ninety percent vacuum and ten percent air. Can it? It cannot be an air rated vacuum.

A vacuum is a vacuum when there is no air available. It's the same as you can't be half pregnant. You're either pregnant or you're not. Equally, the good news of the gospel is that you are saved by complete grace, not by any actions that you've done. As soon as you add anything to it, you've lost it entirely.

You've lost the plot. The moment you revise it, you reverse it. This is why Paul in the strongest possible language says, don't fall into the trap of giving up on this truth. Do not forsake it for any reason at all. If anyone else, he says, even an angel, even an angel came down and miraculously, low and behold, came to you and preached a different message.

Paul says, let them be damned to hell. Strong. Even he says, if we, me Paul, Timothy, Barnabas, if we came and preached a different gospel to what we had already preached to you, let us be eternally damned to hell. Even if I, KJ, was to preach a completely different gospel. No. Not even a completely different gospel, a slightly changed gospel.

Let me be damned to eternal hell. That is strong, isn't it? That's how strong, however, the implications of these words are. If you revise it, you reverse it. And this is so important for us to sit up and take notice as Christians, friends, because we live in a world that has completely skewed the gospel.

We live in a city here on the coast with churches that preach a different gospel. It's unfortunate, but it's true. And I don't like being divisive. I don't like sounding fundamentalist, but the urgency is too great. The urgency is too great.

On the one hand, we have churches that teach that you are saved if you surrender yourself to Christ, plus have right beliefs and right behaviour. People are told to give your life to Jesus, to ask Him into your life. And while this sounds biblical on the one hand, it is in danger of rejecting the grace first principle of the gospel. These churches may think that we are saved by a strong belief and love for God, but there must be some sort of visible sorrow or some emotional hunger in order to get Christ's presence. There must be some spiritual high.

There must be some outward spiritual gifts perhaps. And these are not stated in these sort of very explicit ways. But in reality, these places are teaching the idea that we are saved because of a level of our faith. But the gospel says that we are saved through faith. The first approach makes our performance the saviour.

The first approach makes our performance the saviour. The gospel makes Christ's performance the saviour. It is not the level, but the object of our faith that saves us. That is a very real and dangerous threat for us. And although this is the biggest threat to our churches on the Gold Coast, it is something we must lovingly and persistently reject, correct, and preach and teach.

The second one is another one, but that's been along for a long, long ride. And that's the gospel that good people regardless of religion will find God. Good people regardless of religion will find God. It teaches that good works, being nice to old ladies, helping them across the street, are good enough to get to God. But if good people could get to God, then the death of Jesus was so pointless.

It was so unnecessary. It was a pitiful waste of a life instead of a glorious victory and triumph. God doesn't get the glory then. God doesn't get the glory. We do.

We get the pat on the back for being good people. And even though it might sound open minded, it might sound inclusive, it basically says, only good people are saved. The bad ones are out. The bad husbands, the cheats, the lousy parents, the dumb teenagers are out because they've messed up. That's it for them.

They're gone. But the gospel, like A.W. Tozer says, the gospel is glorious because of its freedom, because of its freedom. No one, no one is excluded from the gospel. Not even the dropkick teenagers.

The gospel should always be the centre of what we do and what we stand for. And that is what Paul wants to emphasise. As individuals and as a church, it is what we stand for. The gospel is the love of Christ. The mission of our church is to grow in this love and to share it with others.

That is our mission. If we stand for anything else, we stand for nothing. If we stand for anything else, we stand for nothing. The gospel is both comforting and confronting to anyone who hears it. Because it tells us that we are more sinful and broken than we ever dared to imagine to be true.

And yet we are so loved and more valued than we ever dared to dream. Never settle. Never settle for a message that is less than this or a message that is more than this because we're robbing it of its glory, we're robbing God of the glory that He deserves for it.