Listen & grow

The Gospel Defined and Defended (Galatians 1:1-10)

Bryan Schneider

December 26, 2020

Listen

Speed

0:00Loading audio…

Your listening position is saved in this browser when storage is available.

Explore the Scriptures in this sermon: The church is a place where sinners receive good news, not a gathering of people who have made themselves righteous.

Print / save study sheet

The church is a place where sinners receive good news, not a gathering of people who have made themselves righteous.
God's law exposes universal guilt and closes every path to justification through human obedience.
The gospel announces that Christ gave himself for sins and that God freely justifies through faith in Christ alone.
Salvation magnifies God's grace and glory because sinners contribute no righteousness of their own.
Paul pronounces a curse on every altered gospel, even when it arrives through an impressive teacher or claimed angelic messenger.
Any addition to Christ as the ground of acceptance—ritual, faithfulness, self-improvement, possessions, or other works—perverts the gospel.
Believers must know Scripture, reject plausible counterfeits, and rest entirely in Jesus' finished work.

Galatians 1:1-10 defines the gospel before defending it. Jesus Christ gave himself for sins to deliver his people from the present evil age according to the Father's will and for God's glory. Romans 3 explains why this is necessary: the law exposes guilt but cannot justify, while God's righteousness comes through faith in Jesus Christ. Justification is free grace grounded in Christ's redemption and received by faith alone. Paul is therefore astonished that the Galatians are turning toward a message altered by the addition of law observance. He twice declares that any contrary gospel is accursed, regardless of the messenger. The sermon extends the warning to every system that locates final hope in human goodness, social arrangements, progress, self-help, experience, religious ritual, or faith plus works. The church must cling to the Christ proclaimed in Scripture as its complete righteousness.

Biblical Themes

Christ's self-giving for sins
The law's exposure of guilt
Justification by grace through faith
God's glory in salvation
The finality of the apostolic gospel
Discernment against counterfeit gospels

Scripture Connections

Romans 3:19-26 — The law silences boasting, and God justifies freely through the redemption and propitiation in Christ.
Ephesians 2:1-10 — Salvation is God's gift by grace through faith, not a product of works, and results in a life of good works.
Philippians 3:7-9 — Paul rejects his own law-based righteousness to be found in Christ with righteousness through faith.
2 Corinthians 11:3-4 — The church must resist a different Jesus, Spirit, or gospel even when deception appears spiritually attractive.
Jude 3 — Believers contend for the faith once for all delivered to the saints.

Practical Applications

Memorize a concise biblical definition of justification and use it to test religious teaching.
Identify the work, ritual, feeling, or achievement you are tempted to add to Christ as a ground of assurance.
Read attractive religious claims in context and compare their teaching about Christ and salvation with Scripture.
Welcome sinners into the church with the grace of Christ rather than a demand that they first make themselves respectable.
Perform good works as the fruit of salvation without allowing them to become its basis.

Historical Context

Teachers commonly called Judaizers were troubling the Galatian churches by adding circumcision and observance of the Mosaic law to faith in Christ. Paul's unusually urgent opening omits his customary thanksgiving and defends both his divine commission and the unalterable gospel the churches had received.

Westminster Standards

Westminster Confession of Faith 11.1
Those whom God effectually calleth, he also freely justifieth: not, by infusing righteousnesse into them, but by pardoning their sins, and by accounting and accepting their persons as righteous; not, for any thing wrought in them, or done by them, but for Christs sake alone; nor, by imputing faith it self, the act of beleeving, or any other evangelicall obedience, to them, as their righteousnesse, but, by imputing the obedience and satisfaction of Christ unto them, they receiving, and resting on him and his righteousnesse by faith; which faith, they have, not of themselves, it is the gift of God.
Connection to the sermon: This directly guards the gospel Paul defends: neither works, faith itself, nor later obedience becomes the believer's righteousness; Christ's obedience and satisfaction alone are imputed.
Westminster Larger Catechism 70
Justification is an act of Gods free grace unto sinners, in which he pardoneth all their sins, accepteth and accounteth their persons righteous in his sight, not for any thing wrought in them, or done by them, but only for the perfect obedience and full satisfaction of Christ, by God imputed to them, and received by Faith alone.
Connection to the sermon: The definition excludes every 'faith plus' counterfeit by making Christ's perfect obedience and full satisfaction the sole ground of acceptance.
Westminster Shorter Catechism 33
Justification is an act Gods free grace, wherein he pardoneth all our sins, and accepteth us as righteous in his sight, onely for the righteousnesse of Christ imputed to us, and received by Faith alone.
Connection to the sermon: The concise answer gives hearers a clear standard for testing any proposed gospel: pardon and righteous acceptance are free, in Christ alone, and received by faith alone.

This transcript is provided to make the message easier to revisit. Minor transcription errors may remain.

Welcome to God's Word for You, a ministry of Sharon R.P. Church in Morning Sun, Iowa. Check us out online at www.sharonrpc.org. We pray that this message will be a blessing to you and that the Lord will use it to transform your faith and your life. Well, as we turn in our Bibles, this is a standoff sermon in Galatians chapter 1.

Galatians chapter 1. Galatians chapter 1. And this morning we'll be looking at verses 1 through 10. And normally I plan out sermons a few months in advance and give them titles then. I would have changed the title of the sermon to The Gospel Defined and Defended, but you have it in your bulletins with an okay title, but that's fine. Galatians chapter 1, we'll look at the first 10 verses. If you're using your Pew Bible, that's on page 1033. Galatians chapter 1, the first 10 verses.

Paul, an apostle, not from man nor through man, but through Jesus Christ and God the Father, who raised him from the dead, and all the brethren who are with me, to the churches of Galatia. Grace to you and peace from God the Father and our Lord Jesus Christ, who gave himself for our sins, that he might deliver us from this present age according to the will of our God and Father, to whom be glory forever and ever. Amen.

I marvel that you are turning away so soon from Him who called you to the grace of Christ to a different gospel, which is not another, but there are some who trouble you and want to pervert the gospel of Christ. But even if we or an angel from heaven preach any other gospel to you, then what we have preached to you, let him be accursed. As we have said before, so now I say again, if anyone preaches another gospel to you, then what you have received, let him be accursed.

Prayer for Illumination

For do I now persuade men or God? Or do I seek to please man? For if I still pleased men, I would not be a bondservant of Christ." Let's pray. Father, we thank you for your Word. We pray now that your Holy Spirit would apply these words to our hearts. Lord, we pray that you would get rid of the distractions in our lives and that we might fix our eyes upon this now. We pray that you would give me the words to speak and that you would do a heart work now. In Jesus' name, amen.

Sermon

Well, one of the first memories I have around Christmas time growing up was when I was four years old and we went to go see Home Alone in theaters. And this past week, we got to introduce our children to that beautiful Christmas movie, Home Alone. Now, there's a lot of things I didn't remember about that growing up that were quite revealing about my naivety as a young child. But either way, we shielded our children from some of those, had to talk about some of them.

But there was this interesting scene. that caught my attention when the two villains of the movie, Marv and his friend, are just starting to tail the kid Kevin. And they find out that, Kevin finds out that this guy who was pretending to be a cop is now in this plumber type van what's going on. He recognizes his golden tooth and he starts walking down the street and they start tailing him and he starts running and they say, oh no, I knew something's wrong. Why is he running? They follow him down the road and he gets into a full sprint and as he's sprinting he runs across the church grass and he goes somewhere and he disappears by the church.

And Marv looks at his buddy and he goes, I ain't going in there. His friend says, I ain't going in there either. And often times that's what people feel about the church. I ain't going in there. I mean, we even have colloquialism sayings for stuff like this, don't we? Sweating like a prostitute in church. People laugh about it and it's funny to say, but the reality is that when an adulteress was in front of Jesus, she wasn't sweating. But she found grace. She found hope. She found the gospel. And it's here.

It's here that not self-righteous people come, but it's here into the church that sinners come and find good news for their souls. It's here that the gospel, which in Greek is good news, is proclaimed, believed, and applied. And so as we end out 2021, I wanted to finish with one sermon. Next week we'll get into reading the Bible, but this week I wanted to spend just defining and defending the gospel. Defining and defending the good news. Look with me first at verse 1 as we define the gospel. Galatians chapter 1, the first five verses.

Paul an apostle, not from men nor through man, but through Jesus Christ and God the Father, who raised him from the dead. And all the brethren who are with me to the churches of Galatia, grace to you and peace from God the Father and our Lord Jesus Christ, who gave himself for our sins, that he might deliver us from this present evil age according to the will of our God and Father, to whom be the glory forever and ever. Amen. Interesting what it says. Grace to you and peace from God the Father and our Lord Jesus Christ, who gave himself for our sins. Who gave himself for our sins. That is the heart of the gospel in a few verses. Sinful people. Fallen people. People who have transgressed over God's law.

Romans 3.23, for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.

We looked at Ephesians chapter 2 at the beginning of the year, about we were dead in our trespasses and sins in which we once walked. We were those who were dead. And yet, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. While we were yet those in rebellion against him, he died for you. Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ, who gave himself for our sins.

The foundation of the gospel is recognizing that we are sinful. That there is a God who has set a standard and we have fallen short of that standard. There is a God who drew a line in the sand and he said, you shall not cross over it. And we didn't just tiptoe, we jumped over the line. We sin. The confessions state it so bluntly that it says, we sin daily in our thoughts, words, and deeds. We sin not even just in doing the things that we ought not to do, but we don't even do the good things that God commands us to do. God gives us good commands. He tells us to love our neighbors. And instead, how do you treat your spouse? God tells you to treat others as you would have them treat you, and yet how do you treat your siblings?

I mean, we sin, and the worst part of it is we don't even realize the depths of the ways in which we sin. In the Old Testament, there was even a sacrifice for unknown sins. Sins that you didn't even know you did. Because it's just so ingrained in us that this is what we do. We sin. We don't have a righteousness from our own. Actually, the book of Isaiah says that all of our righteous deeds, even the good things that we might think that we do, all of our good deeds are as of filthy rags. Detestable to God.

This is our natural state. who we were, but that's not where Romans chapter three leaves us, right? Romans chapter three, for all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God is couched within a whole argument that Paul is making in Romans chapter three. Do me a favor, keep your finger in Galatians, but turn over to Romans three with me. Romans chapter three, if you're in a pew Bible, page 1001. What does Romans chapter three say? Verse 11. There is none righteous, no, not one. There is not one who seeks, who understands. There is no one who seeks after God. They have all turned aside. They have together become unprofitable. There is none who does good, no, not one.

Their throat is an open tomb, and their tongues, and with their tongues they have practiced deceit. The poison of aphs is under their lips. whose mouth is full of cursing and bitterness, their feet are swift to shed blood. Destruction and misery are in their ways, and the way of peace they have not known. There is no fear of God before their eyes.

Now we know that whatever the law says, it says to those who are under the law that every mouth may be stopped, and all the world may be guilty before God. Paints a beautiful picture of humanity, doesn't it? Thank God he doesn't hide the truth from us. He says this is what we are naturally. But thank God he doesn't go, he doesn't stop there. What does he say in verse 20?

Therefore by the deeds of the law no flesh will be justified in his sight for by the law is the knowledge of sin. You cannot use the law to try to earn righteousness because when we look at the law we find that we're transgressors of the law. When you look at the law, you see, oh, hold on, it says that I'm a sinner, that I'm a thief, that I'm a adulterer, that I am a liar, that I'm a blasphemer. We look at the law and we see how we have fallen short of His glory. We can't look to our own righteousness to be able to keep the law. We're just not gonna be good enough. Verse 21.

But now the righteousness of God, apart from the law, is revealed, being witnessed by the law and the prophets, even the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ to all and on all who believe. For there is no difference. For all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. You see, what comes before 323 isn't just meant to condemn you, but verse 22 is meant to say, all of us are justified by grace in Jesus Christ through faith.

But that's a big theological word, isn't it? Justified. Justified is, I'll give you two different definitions you might wanna write down for the word justified or justification. A more technical term might be that you are declared righteous. You are declared legally, perfectly righteous. But still that might not click with you, that's okay. So a second definition, justified. God makes you just as you never sinned. Justified, God makes you just as if you had never sinned. How do we become righteous? It's not by ourselves.

It's by faith in Jesus Christ, verse 22. Verse 24 continues on in that vein and it says, being justified freely by His grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus. We are, just in case you didn't get it in verse 22, He's going to say it again in verse 24, you are justified by grace through the redemption of Jesus Christ. God bought you with the blood of his very own son.

We do not find righteousness in ourselves. We can't come to God and boast. But we go to God through faith in Jesus Christ and are found perfect. And it is this Jesus Christ, in verse 25, whom God set forth as a propitiation by his blood, as an atonement to make us in a right relationship with the Lord. God has made you in a right relationship with him by covering you over in the blood of Jesus Christ. Not by our righteousness, but by Christ's righteousness, by Christ's sacrificed by His blood through faith.

Why? Verse 26, to demonstrate that at the present time, His righteousness, that He might be just and justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus. This is an interesting thing about translations. Just and justifier sound so different than righteous and justification, but they're all actually the same Greek word. That he might be righteous and the one who makes righteous. It is God who is righteous and who makes us righteous by grace through faith in Jesus Christ alone. The good news, brothers and sisters, the gospel is that we have fallen short, but that God has given us His only begotten Son, that we might have righteousness, that we might have everlasting life.

So we flip back over to Galatians chapter 1, and we understand what he's saying here when he says, Grace God's unmerited favor towards you. You're not God's favorite because you're good enough to be His favorite. You are God's favorite despite of your shortcomings. You are God's favored one despite your sin. You are God's anointed loved ones, not because of any righteousness that dwelt in you, but surely because He just wanted to love you.

God's grace is His unmerited favor. For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord. It's a gift. Your salvation, your eternal life, your relationship with God is not something that you have to maintain because you didn't earn it. Do you see how liberating that is for the Christian?

This is why Jesus says that there is therefore no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. Right, for you shall not come into judgment for you have passed out of judgment and into life. Why, because you have trusted in Christ Jesus. There's no condemnation for you because Jesus was condemned for you. We don't have to earn our salvation. We don't have to try to be righteous enough because Jesus Christ is righteous. And because Jesus is righteous, there is peace.

Again, Galatians 1.3, grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.

There is no enmity between you and God. If you have faith in Jesus Christ, There is no more warfare between you and God. If you have faith in Jesus Christ, there is no butting heads between you and God, but there is peace. If you have faith in Jesus Christ, there is no hostility between the Father and you, for he's given his Son to purchase that peace. Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. This is the gospel, brothers and sisters. But why has God done all this? Verse five, Galatians chapter one, verse five. To whom be glory forever and ever.

Have you ever asked yourself, why did God save me? Why did God save anyone? Why did God save Paul? Why did He rip Paul out of his pharisaical life where he was happy being a Hebrew? Why did He save your parents or your grandparents? Why did He save you? Why did He save anyone? For His own glory. Because it magnifies His love, because it shows His mercy, because it shows His wonderful kindness, His chesed. His generosity towards sinners.

The amazing thing isn't that nobody is saved. The amazing thing is that anybody is saved. See, brothers and sisters, we do not contribute to our own salvation. As one author has said, the only thing we actually contributed to our salvation was the sin that made it necessary. But it was God. in His infinite kindness and lovingness, His mercy and compassion, that He saved you for His own glory. By grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone, to His glory alone, with the Scriptures as the authority, has been the cry of the church. If we try to add anything of our good works into the mix When it comes to salvation, we muck up the waters and it ruins everything.

Let me say that again. I need to make sure that you are rooted and firmly fixed in Jesus Christ, that he's the cornerstone of the house of your salvation, that you understand that it is Jesus Christ who is the gospel. that it is Jesus who is your salvation, that it is Jesus who is your righteousness, that it is Jesus who buys you peace with God, that it is Jesus alone, His works, His life, His death, His resurrection, and that alone, because as soon as we wanna sprinkle our good works into the mix when it comes to salvation, who are you really beginning to trust? That's an honest question. Are you trusting in your own good works? Are you trusting in your own righteousness? Maybe you heard the gospel and you believe these things, but you've forgotten them and they've just kind of drifted away from you.

This is what happened to the Galatian church. Look with me at verses six through nine, what Paul says here. I marvel that you are turning away so soon from Him who called you in the grace of Christ to a different gospel, which is not another, but there are some who trouble you and want to pervert the gospel of Christ. But even if we or an angel from heaven preach any other gospel to you, then what we have preached to you, let him be accursed. And as we have said before, so now I say again, if anyone preaches another gospel to you, then what you have received, let him be accursed. If anyone preaches another gospel to you, what was going on in the context here where Paul is using such harsh language? Well, Paul had preached to them Jesus Christ. Paul had proclaimed Jesus Christ. Before their very eyes, he was crucified. And then people came into the church, a group of theologians called Judaizers.

People who said, oh yes, you need Jesus, but you also still need to be circumcised. If you're going to truly be a good Jewish Christian, you need to be circumcised. But then that opened up a door for, well, you know, you also need to keep the feast days. Well, you know, you probably should just abstain from those unclean foods. It's just best for you, because then God will find you righteous. You don't want to be pulled away.

And these people who had come to Jesus Christ, been rooted and firmly planted in Jesus Christ, had now had their heart strings pulled away by these other good works. These other things. And Paul says, that's not a gospel at all. That's perverting the gospel. It's faith plus. It's faith plus, and brothers and sisters, faith plus anything is a false gospel, and you are surrounded by different gospels. You live it, you breathe it, it's part of the philosophy that we soak in every day. There are outright false gospels, and there are more subtle false gospels. I'm just going to warn you, it's not like the Judaizers came in and those Christians in Galatia were like, oh man, these people are heretics. We need to stay away from them. They don't believe the Bible at all. And they're just wrong.

No, often people who come in and pervert the gospel have platinum tongues, twist their words, wordsmiths, and are able to cloak themselves with the word. But in all reality, they're destroying households and ripping apart the church. Think about what Satan did. When Satan came to Jesus, does he come out, right, and say, all right, Jesus, it's go time, buddy. Time for temptation. Better eat that bread. You know you're hungry. No, what does he do? He quotes scripture to him. He tempts him that way. He tries to get in subtly.

In the Christian world, there are people who will do this. I have friends in California who got sucked into literally modern day Judaizer situation where they feel like they have to keep kosher, keep the feasts, keep all the laws, do everything. And if they don't do that, that God is going to condemn them. And my heart breaks for them. No, no, you have been set free from those things. Those were all meant to point to Jesus Christ. Hold on here.

But then there are others, even in the Reformed camp, who have silver tongues, who will cloak themselves with even Reformed language, but they'll say things like, well, you're not justified by faith, but you're justified by faithfulness to God. Well, hold on, you've just, once again, put it in my camp that I have to keep my justification, but my justification, your justification, is in the person and work of Jesus Christ. But these people are alive and well in many Reformed circles, and I warn you today, it is a false gospel. Faith plus anything is another gospel. There's a whole section here where I'm gonna take you to the classroom. It's gonna be a quick dive in, quick dive out. We need to go into some Western philosophy real fast. Okay, if you need to tape your eyes open, that's fine.

But this is important, okay, because you live in an atmosphere filled with different people, different schools of thought who are trying to tug at your heartstrings and trying to tell you that here's good news, here's a good life, here's how you'll find satisfaction for today.

And if we go through schools of philosophy, historically we're able to find that one of the first false gospels of modern Western philosophy is we're good. This is started with Jean-Jacques Rousseau with the Enlightenment in France, where he, even though Rousseau was born in Geneva, Switzerland, the home of John Calvin, wrote that man is naturally good, but it's society that corrupts him. Which makes you just scratch your head, who corrupted society? Kind of chasing after your own tail, aren't you, Rousseau?

But this is, literally, I heard it in a YouTube video today where a guy was saying, I just have to teach my kids. At the core of it, you know, people are, 99.91% of people are good. You know, well, what do you mean by good? Hold on here. But this is the bedrock of modern philosophy. Humans are necessarily good, and this flies in the face of scripture, and Rousseau knew it. So the first false gospel is just throwing off what the scriptures say. It's really hard to look people in the face today and say, know your sinner. Because they believe they've been taught their whole lives, I'm essentially good. Beware of that false gospel, it's a lie. Beware of the gospel of power and revolution. Beware of the gospel of power and revolution.

This is the ideology of Karl Marx and later on developed by Foucault, who both got a whole bunch of their ideas from Rousseau. There's literally a genealogical train of thought that you can pin through these guys and who they were reading and what they thought. And Karl Marx thought the good life, the gospel, what can finally bring The utopia amongst men is that the working class needs to rise up against those who have capital. Those who are oppressed economically can rise up and take power. And when they revolt and finally take power, then the clock can be turned back and this dialectical materialism can finally set things right. But what you find out is what happened in the Russian Revolution with the USSR. Well, when the working class rise to power, there's a group of powerful in the working class who then take that power themselves and execute it with even more tyrannical reign than before. But this is the Marxist gospel. Just fix the economic inequality and everything will finally be okay. It's a false gospel. It will never finally be okay. This is what Jesus says, the poor are always going to be with you. The question is, how do you treat the poor? How do you love them? How do you care for them? How do you show them dignity as an image bearer of God himself?

There's a false gospel of false hope of revolution. I'm going to skip over Foucault even though I want to go there, but the next one is a false gospel of progress. This is just a whipping post for modern evangelicals and that's fine, but Charles Darwin in his book, The Descent of Man, says, Did you hear how he insulted your faith there? He goes on in that same paragraph in The Descent of Man to compare you to his dog. who's standing there, and the wind blows, and it hits an umbrella, and because nobody's standing next to the umbrella, the dog gets on his hind legs and barks at the wind. And he says, you're just barking at the wind. It's just your imagination. There is no God. God is dead. Again, just smacks in the face. But he's not going to come out and just say it outright, well, Christians, you all are stupid, and you're just lower primates who don't have enough reasoning. No, it's more subtle than that.

There's a gospel of progress that if we can just, as humans, get smarter and think better, we can progress even outside of religion. More close to home, there is a gospel of self-improvement. This is a gospel that finds its roots in modern psychology of self-help. Here's a good life. You can look inside yourself and you can get rid of your anger. You can look inside yourself and you can become a better person. You can look inside yourself and have a better life if you just do X, Y, or Z to your emotional state and to how you're feeling about things.

Brothers and sisters, I hate to tell you, your heart is fallen, your heart is deceitfully corrupt. It is going all sorts of ways and you will never fully tame your heart. If you think that you are going to just clamp down on your emotions, and somehow you're going to be like Tom Hanks in the Mr. Rogers movie, I hate to tell you, Tom Hanks' wife will even say he struggled with anger. But where did he have to go? He had to go to prayer. We don't go and fall for the false gospel of self-help. There's also a false gospel of the good life and stuff. Now, this is an old philosophy, materialism, hedonism, and experience.

I mean, that was all around us at Christmas, right? If you just buy the right type of toys for your kids, aren't they going to be happy? If you can just buy a big enough house that your wife is going to love, it's going to solve all your marriage problems, it's going to be good, isn't it?

Have you ever watched cologne commercials? These are the most ridiculous commercial and perfume commercials. It's like, oh, if you spritz on a little bit of cologne, it's going to be like, oh, you're like this most sexy person in the world, and everybody's going to love you.

It's like, what are you talking about? This is like $150 of overpriced spritz. What is this stuff? But it's consumerism. Here's a good life, and I'll portray it to you. All you have to do is buy, buy, buy, until you realize that it's shallow. There is still no happiness. And you end up with what Albert Camus says in his book, The Myth of Sisyphus. This man is no Christian. He says, our life has no value because one thing is inevitable, death. So what counts is not the best living, but the most living. A man's rule of conduct and his scale of values has no meaning except through the quantity and variety of experiences he has had in a position to accumulate.

Just go on the next vacation. What is life about? Just go on the next adventure. Just buy the next plane ticket. Get another stamp on your passport. Climb the next mountain. Accumulate as many experiences as you can. Because at the end of all of it, what are you but just your accumulation of experiences? And so as you try to just live the good and fun life, at least you'll be laughing at death in the face. What a sad philosophy. But yet, brothers and sisters, I'm telling you, this is what undergirds a whole lot of our society and culture. But it goes even more than that.

Paul says, even if an angel preaches to you another gospel, let him be accursed. He says this two times. Look with me at verse 8 and 9. Galatians 1, 8 and 9. But even if we or an angel from heaven preach another gospel to you, then what we have preached to you, let him be accursed. And as we have said before, so now I say again, if anyone preaches another gospel to you, then what you have received, let him be accursed.

I love doing evangelism. I love talking to people who are of different faiths, people who disagree with us. I love not just taking them for granted, but listening to them and hearing what do they actually think. I love going into their books and trying to figure out, okay, take them authentically and try to figure out what they say.

And one thing I have found for certain, two major religions that say that an angel delivered to them another gospel are faith plus. Faith plus. When Joseph Smith received his revelation from the angel Moroni, this is one of the things that he says in 2 Nephi 25-23. You don't need to worry about the reference. I'm just going to read what it says to you. This is what Mormons believe.

For we labor diligently to write, to persuade our children and also our brethren to believe in Christ. Hey, that sounds pretty good, right? Believe in Christ. Okay, yeah, they're sounding pretty good. Sounding like us, right? And to be reconciled to God. Hey, yeah, pretty good. For we know that it is by grace that we are saved. Man, it's like this guy has read Ephesians chapter two. This is wonderful.

Comma, after all we can do. You do everything humanly possible to be righteous and God will make up the rest. You do everything humanly possible to get right with God, and Jesus will make up the rest. Brothers and sisters, if Jesus has to make up the rest, He has to make up all of it.

Because even my deeds are as filthy rags. Every inch and part of our thinking has been corrupted. There is no part of us that has been abstracted away. No, it is not our works we trust in, but it is in the finished work of Jesus Christ upon that cross. It is not after all we can do, but it's because of everything He has done.

Do you see this? It is faith plus. The Judaizers have faith in Jesus plus. Keep these rituals. Here's the law, just keep these laws and keep believing in Jesus Christ and you'll be righteous. Preach, teach your children. Show them the faith of Jesus Christ. Tell them that they're saved by grace, but after all they can do. No, no, no, the heart of the Christian gospel is not that second part. But it's not just that.

But I also need to warn you against Islam. One of the fastest growing religions in America today. These are two amazingly growing fast religions in America today. The second is Islam. And in the Quran, it also teaches faith plus works. In their second chapter of the Quran, it says, Again, hey, yeah, yeah. You're not righteous, depending on which way you pray.

Sounds good. Wonderful. Righteousness is he who believes in God. If there was a period there, it'd be great. But there's always a comma. and the last day, and the angels, and the scriptures, and the prophets, he who gives money, though dear, to near relatives, and orphans, and the needy, and the homeless, and the beggars, and for freeing slaves, those who perform the prayers, and pay obligatory charity, and fulfill their promises when they promise, and patiently preserve in the face of persecution, hardship, and in the times of conflict. These are the sincere. These are the pious. Man, it was like that first part of that paragraph was like, yeah, yeah, you're so close, but it's light years away. Brothers and sisters, next week we're gonna talk about why we need to be in the scriptures. This week I wanna remind you that if anybody comes to you and preaches a gospel different than what you have received in the scriptures of faith in Jesus Christ and him alone being your righteousness, turn and run away.

Don't be duped. And that's what it will be, it will be duped. I promise you, you pick up the Book of Mormon and it will say nice things about Jesus. And then you realize it's a plagiarized book. If you pick up the Quran, the first three chapters will say nice things about Mary and about Jesus. And then you will be steeped into the depths of a false religion. You read the Watchtower from the Jehovah's Witnesses and it will again be nice sounding words. The first three chapters will be very welcoming to you. And then you get into their fourth chapter about who is Jesus and you find out they don't actually believe in the same Jesus.

Brothers and sisters, my heart cry to you this morning how this has been weighing heavy on my heart, why I put this on the schedule months ago. was to plead with you this simple, plead with you this simple truth. Have faith in Jesus Christ alone. Have your soul set free from the lie of legalism. Have your heart filled with the love of God that he could show you such mercy and grace. Fix your eyes on Jesus, brothers and sisters.

Closing Prayer

It's faith alone, faith alone by grace in Christ alone that we have hope. Let's pray. Father, you've given us a hard message this morning, full of, I'm sure, void words. Father, I pray that you might, by your Holy Spirit, melt out the dross and leave the gold of your word and of your gospel. Father, please, please let us cling to Jesus Christ as he's presented to us in the gospels and hope in him alone. In his name we pray, amen.

And thanks for listening to this week's message from God's Word for You, a ministry of Sharon R.P. Church in rural southeast Iowa. We pray that the message would be used by God to transform your faith in your life this week. If you'd like to get more information about us, feel free to go to the website, SharonRPC.org. We'd love to invite you to worship with us. Our worship time is 10 a.m. every Sunday at 25204 160th Avenue, Morning Sun, Iowa, 52640. May God richly bless you this week.