April 27, 2025 • 26 mins
How do we spot a distorted gospel today? In a world eager to reshape truth, Paul’s fierce warning to the Galatians still rings out clearly.
Originally preached to Ekklesia Churches by Dan on February 9, 2025.
This message from Galatians 1:6–10 challenges listeners to recognize distortions to the authentic Gospel — whether through addition, attraction, or subtraction — and calls us to guard the purity of Christ’s message with wisdom and courage.
Teaching Highlights:
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Adding rules (legalism) distorts the Gospel of grace.
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Prioritizing charisma or entertainment over truth leads to confusion.
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Subtracting hard truths to seek cultural approval compromises the message.
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The authentic Gospel alone has the power to save and transform.
As we stand in a culture eager to soften or reshape biblical teaching, Paul’s urgent words call us back to clarity, faithfulness, and courage.
Learn more about us at EkklesiaChurches.org.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
[Music]
This message is from Galatians chapter 1 verses 6 through 10 and is entitled "The Authentic Message."
It was originally delivered to Ecclesia churches on Sunday, February 9th, 2025.
As we work through these opening verses together, we'll explore how Paul identifies and warns
(00:20):
against distortions to the gospel message. And these warnings are just as relevant for us today
as they were for the early church in Galatia. So let's begin by reading this passage.
"I am astonished that you are so quickly deserting him who called you in the grace of Christ and
are turning to a different gospel. Not that there is another one, but there are some who
(00:46):
trouble you and want to distort the gospel of Christ. But even if we or an angel from heaven
should preach to you, a gospel contrary to the one we preached to you, let him be accursed.
As we have said before, and so now I say again, if anyone is preaching to you a gospel contrary
to the one you received, let him be accursed. For am I now seeking the approval of man or of God,
(01:12):
or am I trying to please man? If I were still trying to please man, I would not be a servant of Christ."
So to recap last week's message, we talked about the first five verses of this letter
and determined what an authentic messenger of the gospel looks like based on how Paul qualified
(01:38):
himself. We talked about there being qualifications of character and fruit. Fruit of the Spirit and
the character of a person are far more concerned to God and should be of more concern to Christians
than a lot of other qualifications that the world seems to prioritize.
Second, we talked about whether they submitted to the authority of Scripture. We didn't want
(02:01):
somebody who put on the right appearances and appeared to have good character and yet did
not submit to the true authority of Scripture, meaning they were not teaching the truth.
Finally, we talked about whether they kept the gospel central to their message and purpose,
which Paul does in the last couple of verses of the first part of the passage here from verses
(02:23):
like 3 through 5. He presents the gospel in a nutshell because that is central to everything
else that he is going to say. So up to this point, Paul is introducing himself and has proclaimed the
good news, but he doesn't stop there. I think sometimes we're tempted to stop with the good news
with the encouragement with the out of boy, but we don't have that luxury when reading the whole
(02:49):
counsel of Scripture. You can read some really lovely Christian books that just leave you with
the warmest, fuzziest feeling, and I think that should not be confused with the work of the Holy
Spirit. God's Word has been likened to a sword for a reason, a double-edged sword, because God is at
work through it, sometimes through encouraging words, certainly, but sometimes through uncomfortable
(03:13):
correction. And so that's what Paul is going to be launching into here. Paul's blessing thus far,
which is very standard for him, takes a very unstandard turn in the first part of verse 6,
where he says, "I am astonished that you are so quickly deserting him who called you."
So we'll get further into details of the issue at hand later, because after all, we're only
(03:38):
10 verses in, but let's try to understand the Galatians a bit first. So this region of Galatia
is a somewhat undefined province in the Roman Empire. It's been a part of the Empire for a while,
so it was conquered 200 years prior to this being written, but it's only been a Roman province for
(03:59):
around 25 years at this point. They have some autonomy, but they're really a mixed group of
people. The Galatians were largely Apegan people who are surrounded by paganism and mysticism.
They get a lot of bizarre religious elements from the east, and yet we're not entirely sure where
(04:23):
the church in Galatia is located. So when we're referring to the Galatian church, there's basically
two camps over whether it was in the north of this area of Galatia or it was in the south of this area.
And whether it's in the north or the south really doesn't matter a whole lot as we understand
Galatians. However, it is important for us to understand that Paul is likely not writing to
(04:49):
all of the churches in the entire province of Galatia, but rather he's writing to a small group
of house churches around one of the major cities in the province. That was the primary church as
it existed at that point in time in Galatia, a church of house churches, if you will. And so Paul
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has a lot of influence here, but it was kind of a hard one influence. Paul was forbidden from
initially preaching here, if you remember back to Acts in Acts 16, but then later gets to share
the gospel with them in Acts 18. And so this letter is written to them around two years after
Paul had been there between one and two years, so not a long time, which makes sense of why Paul
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says how quickly you have abandoned, right? Paul is in Corinth at the time that he is writing to
these people. And while we'll get into the issue that he is addressing at hand more later, the
basics of it is this. There's a group of Jewish Christians who are opposed to Paul's doctrine
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of grace, and they are demanding of the Christians in the church that they become more Jewish. They
are very legalistic. They're saying if these are the Jewish laws that we have had to adhere to,
and now we are Christians, you should also have to adhere to these laws and regulations,
things like circumcision, for example. Their other temptation, though, is that these people were
(06:21):
previously pagans. And so there's a temptation to return to those previous pagan roots, to go back
to the old life that they used to live, this life that was steeped in mysticism and Eastern
religion. And so essentially we have a church in Galatia that Paul is writing to that is caught
in the middle, in between their pagan and openly sinful past and these Jewish legalists who are
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calling them the other direction. So first we're going to start by talking about the first two
verses here, verses six and seven. Paul says, "I'm astonished that you are so quickly deserting him
who called you in the grace of Christ and are turning to a different gospel." Not that there is
another one, but there are some who trouble you and want to distort the gospel of Christ.
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So they have accepted a distortion of the gospel that is a distortion of
addition, people trying to add something to the gospel. So these are people who are adding
legalism as opposed to those who would add license or say, "No, you have freedom to do anything you
(07:31):
want." These people are saying, "Actually, we're going to impose more rules on you." They're adding
rules and requirement that scripture doesn't. That's what legalism does. I think there's some
really good modern examples of adding legalism that we can think through. For example, requiring a
specific dress code or appearance standards beyond a biblical ideal of modesty. So yeah,
(07:57):
we want to live in a way that's modest, that's respectful towards the other people that we're
with. This applies to men and women as well. However, we could go down a rabbit hole on modesty
that we're not going to do today. But modesty does not mean a suit and tie and a dress. We don't
have the specific dress code that's required. Instead, we have a larger concept of how do we
(08:22):
dress in a way that is respectful toward one another, that has the best of one another at heart.
I think another example would be some of the holiness traditions that may be well-intentioned,
but they have these requirements that go past biblical principles. So I listened to a pastor
once talk about how they were never allowed to have anything in a brown bottle, even something
(08:47):
like root beer, because it had the appearance of being alcohol. And even that was forbidden,
because in some of those traditions, alcohol is forbidden within the church. Things like dancing,
because dancing can lead to something else. And so we're going to forbid you from dancing, or
we're going to forbid you from going to the movies, because some movies are not something
(09:12):
that a Christian should be partaking in. I think those would be some examples in that kind of area.
Insisting on particular worship styles. And that could be whether traditional or modern,
if you want to use those kinds of labels for things. Trying to force people into a style that
maybe someone prefers personally, but that really has nothing to do with the gospel, that has nothing
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to do with the work of the Holy Spirit in the life of people, that has nothing to do with a
true heart of worship, which is a response to what God has done. That's not limited to a specific
style of music. I think another one might be attendance expectations, specifically around
all of the extra ministries and events and activities of the church. I read through a
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church calendar, two different churches actually that I saw via social media this last week.
And all of them had a packed schedule for February, but what was absent from those was the Sunday
gathering. Was any other regular part of the gathering. So while that was an expectation,
they had all of these parties and ministries and get-togethers and events and community-based
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things, so that their schedule was so full, and the expectation of the people of the Church is that
they're being a part of all of this is too much. And so they're exhausted by just the pure number
of things that they have on the calendar. I think we have to be careful of this, because we do believe
in the two-gathering model. We believe that the church, when it functions the way that it was
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designed to in the first century, is a two kind of settings. There's one setting where everybody
is all together. That's our Sunday assembly. And there's a setting that's a smaller group of people
meeting in a home during the week. And we think both of those are actually part of a healthy
rhythm. So one of the things that we are very careful about is scheduling a lot of extra
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events and calendar items, because we just don't want to add on where Scripture doesn't
add on when it comes to requirements of gathering.
Let's move on to the next two verses, verse eight. "But even if we or an angel from heaven
should preach to you a gospel contrary to the one we preach to you, let him be accursed."
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As we have said before, so now I say again, if anyone is preaching to you a gospel contrary to
the one you have received, let him be accursed. So something else that's going on is that these
people in Galatia are being fooled by flashy and impressive speakers. In the last message,
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we talked in those first couple of verses that about how Paul was not known as being an impressive
man. He was probably smaller. He was maybe less flashy in his presentation than some of the
charismatic Greek speakers. However, the message that he had was true, and he was very good at
presenting that message as it was. These people have been fooled by speakers who have garnered
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their attention in one way or another by either being super religious and very impressive in
their religious performance, or by being on the other end of the spectrum and being more toward
license and freedom. You can be a Christian and pretty much do everything that you used to do.
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I wonder if today we have a very similar issue where we fall for the attraction value of a
speaker without realizing it. I wonder if we have, you can pretty easily look at some of the biggest
churches, I'll say that with quotation marks, because I'm not sure that some of them actually
qualify as the church because of what they teach and preach. But if you look at some of these larger
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sides, we're talking tens of thousands of people that are members of this organization.
I wonder if they're not operating off of the value of attraction for a speaker. You look at
the things that they have going on. The pastor who is known internationally as a speaker, as a
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motivational speaker almost. You have the lights and the music that are all part of a performance
instead of catering to the experience of the church connecting with one another and connecting
with the Lord in a authentic way on a Sunday morning. I think that probably there is out
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there a tendency in us to want to listen to people who are very appealing in that way,
celebrities, people who have platforms over scripture. We tend to easily put those people
up on a pedestal. I think there's a tendency to put podcast hosts who are very entertaining and
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have interesting ideas. I love podcasts, but I think sometimes it's easy to put those types of
people over pastors who are preaching the Word of God.
I think sometimes there's a tendency in those churches where the pastor serves as more of a
motivational speaker to want to give good, encouraging news, but not give the whole
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counsel of scripture, which is something I touched on at the very beginning.
I think sometimes we like to make excuses for our limited attention to scripture, too. We've all
done it. We've all spent time thinking it's going to be easier for me to listen to something, to
watch something that it is for me to sit down with my Bible and read a couple of verses of
scripture. As I was thinking through that, some things to not substitute for scripture. I think
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one of the things for me that is tempting is to substitute Bible teaching for Bible reading.
Often it's easier for me to listen to a sermon or a podcast that's talking about a passage of
scripture, which is a good thing, but I think sometimes I would choose that over actually
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listening to scripture itself. I think in the same way, sometimes I would choose to read a
devotional based on scripture. If I look at my own library, I can see tens of devotional books
that are some of them very good, but to substitute that for actually reading scripture, I think,
is not altogether healthy. I think it's good to be aware of our own desire to be entertained
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and to be attracted by things that are exciting and interesting, but ultimately we don't want to
be captive to our need to be entertained or be fooled by those who will capitalize on our desire
for that entertainment and attraction, because that's what the Galatian Church was doing.
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We don't want to fall for the same trick.
Finally, we get into this final distortion that is a distortion by subtraction. We've looked at
distortion by addition, meaning legalism, rules being added on to scripture. We've looked at a
distortion by attraction where we're more interested in the way that things are presented and how
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exciting they seem rather than the actual truth value of them. Finally, we're going to look at a
distortion by subtraction. This is verse 10. "For am I now seeking the approval of man or of God,
or am I trying to please man? If I were still trying to please man, I would not be a servant
of Christ." These people that Paul is speaking to are seeking the approval of men instead of God,
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and ironically, they are actually accusing Paul of doing the same thing. They say that he's actually
changing his message in order to get the approval of men. Largely, they're talking about the
circumcision issue, but there's probably more to it than that. This distortion by subtraction,
or taking something away to make the message more palatable, we would call adding license. This is
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what Paul gets into in Romans, where he says, "If grace is abundant, then are we free to sin even
more?" Paul answers with a resounding, "By no means. No, we must not do that." I think there's a lot
of modern examples of adding license. An example would be around the redefinition of marriage and
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sexuality. Lots of stuff that gets stuck in our desire there to not offend people and to stay on
the good side of culture, and that leads us to soften or even speak against some of the things
that God's word has to say about marriage being between one man and one woman. Talking about the
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seriousness of divorce outside of biblical grounds, that this Christian marriage is to be between a
man and a woman for life, and God takes that very seriously. I think sometimes we've softened that
to our own ideas of what should be comfortable or what marriage should really be about.
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I think that by the same way we treat cohabitation before marriage, because that's an
acceptable and normal thing in our culture, we want Scripture to affirm that when in fact,
Scripture does not. Scripture is very specific about where sexual unity is supposed to happen,
and it's supposed to be in a very specific circumstance between a married man and a married
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woman. Outside of that, God says, "This is not what I have for you. This is not what's best for you."
This is a good example of us being deceived by the devil in believing this idea that God is
trying to keep something good from us when instead God is actually trying to keep what is best for us,
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which is obedience to him and his will. I think some other things that kind of sneak into this
license idea is minimizing the importance of regular gathering with the church. I'm not talking
obviously about attending all of the additional events on the church calendar,
which is one reason we want to keep our church calendar very minimal. I'm talking about someone
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who might say, "I can fulfill my requirements as a Christian by showing up on the major holidays
to a church gathering." I think that is probably something that falls into the category that the
author of Hebrews talks about being forsaking the gathering together. I think that's something we
don't want to do, and we probably want to take seriously, "Yeah, we want to be discipled as
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disciples of Jesus, and we want to do that together with others." Some other things that
sneak in there, materialism and consumerism, ideas that all of these things that we've been
given are just blessings and the kind of the prosperity gospel bent to it that if you're
obedient to God, he's going to give you more stuff. He's going to give you more physical
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blessings instead of talking about the idea of stewardship over the things that you have been
given and the idea of things having eternal value instead of just the things we value here today.
You cannot, at the end of the day, add either restrictions or additional freedoms to the gospel
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and still end up with the authentic gospel. These people in Galatia and these churches are kind of
a picture of disobedient and stubborn children. Where Scripture would give them standards,
they are demanding freedom to do as they wish, but where Scripture gives others liberty,
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they would demand restriction to place on others. I think this is particularly hard
when you are going against the grain of a culture, but no matter how much we want to,
we cannot adjust the Bible to be more palatable. We cannot take things that are hard pills to
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swallow and soften them in some way without completely changing the message or the importance
of it. One example that came to mind for me this week was of the Titanic. Actually,
in the days before the Titanic hit that iceberg, it received multiple ice warnings from other ships
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in the area that sent messages to the Titanic that said there is a large amount of
icebergs and ice flow in this area. Please be careful, but when these messages were delivered,
they were marked non-urgent. Some of them were not even delivered to the captain,
which could have played a part in them going full steam ahead into the iceberg that sank the Titanic.
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I think if we take these parts of the message that we feel like are harsh or are hard to swallow
or are hard to deal with and we try to change them to be more palatable, more easy to receive,
instead of delivering the full strength of the gospel and the full strength of the truth of
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Scripture, we are ultimately changing the message in a way that could stop it from
being life-saving to the people who would receive it. At the same time,
you may have heard it said that the gospel is offensive enough. Don't add to the offense, right?
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We're not trying to make the gospel any harder to receive by delivering it in a way that is
intentionally harsh, but at the same time, we can't soften the truth by rounding off the edges.
There's still room for delivering the message in a way that is understood and received by your
audience, but not if it's at the cost of clarity of the message. In other words, we don't want to
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distort the message by taking things out that God has intentionally placed there for our good.
So as we conclude this first couple of verses, we are looking at the authentic gospel, right?
The authentic message, which means the whole counsel of Scripture, not just Matthew, Mark,
Luke, and John. And we've said that first, the authentic gospel cannot be added to,
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whether by making rules, which we would call legalism, or altering it in any way. It makes it
a different gospel entirely if we try to do that. If we try to say, "You're saved by the grace of
Jesus Christ and also by works," then it's not just by grace anymore, and that's a distorted
gospel that is not true. Second, we have to be careful not to be drawn in or drawn away by
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impressive speakers or entertaining content that distracts from the message of Scripture itself.
The messenger's charisma should never overshadow the message's truth. And finally, it should be our
goal to please God rather than men, which means we cannot water down or adjust the gospel message
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just to make it more appealing to our culture. We have to give them the full strength, life-saving,
life-changing gospel of Jesus Christ as it is presented in Scripture. And that's going to
change the world. So in the next couple of verses here that we'll get into next week, we're actually
going to hear from Paul some of his own story and his own words. And we're going to get to see
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how the gospel completely changed his life. And we're going to get to see some of the work
that God has done in Paul. And I think it's actually going to allow the Word of God to do work
in us to continue changing us as well. So I look forward to that.
Ecclesia is a church of house churches gathering weekly in Council Bloss Iowa and in homes throughout
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the week. We are a Bible-centered church focused on preaching from Scripture and making disciples
of Jesus. You can learn more about our statement of faith and contact the pastor by visiting
EcclesiaChurches.org.
[Music]
This message is from Galatians chapter 1 verses 6 through 10 and is entitled "The Authentic Message."
It was originally delivered to Ecclesia churches on Sunday, February 9th, 2025.
As we work through these opening verses together, we'll explore how Paul identifies and warns
(00:20):
against distortions to the gospel message. And these warnings are just as relevant for us today
as they were for the early church in Galatia. So let's begin by reading this passage.
"I am astonished that you are so quickly deserting him who called you in the grace of Christ and
are turning to a different gospel. Not that there is another one, but there are some who
(00:46):
trouble you and want to distort the gospel of Christ. But even if we or an angel from heaven
should preach to you, a gospel contrary to the one we preached to you, let him be accursed.
As we have said before, and so now I say again, if anyone is preaching to you a gospel contrary
to the one you received, let him be accursed. For am I now seeking the approval of man or of God,
(01:12):
or am I trying to please man? If I were still trying to please man, I would not be a servant of Christ."
So to recap last week's message, we talked about the first five verses of this letter
and determined what an authentic messenger of the gospel looks like based on how Paul qualified
(01:38):
himself. We talked about there being qualifications of character and fruit. Fruit of the Spirit and
the character of a person are far more concerned to God and should be of more concern to Christians
than a lot of other qualifications that the world seems to prioritize.
Second, we talked about whether they submitted to the authority of Scripture. We didn't want
(02:01):
somebody who put on the right appearances and appeared to have good character and yet did
not submit to the true authority of Scripture, meaning they were not teaching the truth.
Finally, we talked about whether they kept the gospel central to their message and purpose,
which Paul does in the last couple of verses of the first part of the passage here from verses
(02:23):
like 3 through 5. He presents the gospel in a nutshell because that is central to everything
else that he is going to say. So up to this point, Paul is introducing himself and has proclaimed the
good news, but he doesn't stop there. I think sometimes we're tempted to stop with the good news
with the encouragement with the out of boy, but we don't have that luxury when reading the whole
(02:49):
counsel of Scripture. You can read some really lovely Christian books that just leave you with
the warmest, fuzziest feeling, and I think that should not be confused with the work of the Holy
Spirit. God's Word has been likened to a sword for a reason, a double-edged sword, because God is at
work through it, sometimes through encouraging words, certainly, but sometimes through uncomfortable
(03:13):
correction. And so that's what Paul is going to be launching into here. Paul's blessing thus far,
which is very standard for him, takes a very unstandard turn in the first part of verse 6,
where he says, "I am astonished that you are so quickly deserting him who called you."
So we'll get further into details of the issue at hand later, because after all, we're only
(03:38):
10 verses in, but let's try to understand the Galatians a bit first. So this region of Galatia
is a somewhat undefined province in the Roman Empire. It's been a part of the Empire for a while,
so it was conquered 200 years prior to this being written, but it's only been a Roman province for
(03:59):
around 25 years at this point. They have some autonomy, but they're really a mixed group of
people. The Galatians were largely Apegan people who are surrounded by paganism and mysticism.
They get a lot of bizarre religious elements from the east, and yet we're not entirely sure where
(04:23):
the church in Galatia is located. So when we're referring to the Galatian church, there's basically
two camps over whether it was in the north of this area of Galatia or it was in the south of this area.
And whether it's in the north or the south really doesn't matter a whole lot as we understand
Galatians. However, it is important for us to understand that Paul is likely not writing to
(04:49):
all of the churches in the entire province of Galatia, but rather he's writing to a small group
of house churches around one of the major cities in the province. That was the primary church as
it existed at that point in time in Galatia, a church of house churches, if you will. And so Paul
(05:09):
has a lot of influence here, but it was kind of a hard one influence. Paul was forbidden from
initially preaching here, if you remember back to Acts in Acts 16, but then later gets to share
the gospel with them in Acts 18. And so this letter is written to them around two years after
Paul had been there between one and two years, so not a long time, which makes sense of why Paul
(05:34):
says how quickly you have abandoned, right? Paul is in Corinth at the time that he is writing to
these people. And while we'll get into the issue that he is addressing at hand more later, the
basics of it is this. There's a group of Jewish Christians who are opposed to Paul's doctrine
(05:56):
of grace, and they are demanding of the Christians in the church that they become more Jewish. They
are very legalistic. They're saying if these are the Jewish laws that we have had to adhere to,
and now we are Christians, you should also have to adhere to these laws and regulations,
things like circumcision, for example. Their other temptation, though, is that these people were
(06:21):
previously pagans. And so there's a temptation to return to those previous pagan roots, to go back
to the old life that they used to live, this life that was steeped in mysticism and Eastern
religion. And so essentially we have a church in Galatia that Paul is writing to that is caught
in the middle, in between their pagan and openly sinful past and these Jewish legalists who are
(06:46):
calling them the other direction. So first we're going to start by talking about the first two
verses here, verses six and seven. Paul says, "I'm astonished that you are so quickly deserting him
who called you in the grace of Christ and are turning to a different gospel." Not that there is
another one, but there are some who trouble you and want to distort the gospel of Christ.
(07:11):
So they have accepted a distortion of the gospel that is a distortion of
addition, people trying to add something to the gospel. So these are people who are adding
legalism as opposed to those who would add license or say, "No, you have freedom to do anything you
(07:31):
want." These people are saying, "Actually, we're going to impose more rules on you." They're adding
rules and requirement that scripture doesn't. That's what legalism does. I think there's some
really good modern examples of adding legalism that we can think through. For example, requiring a
specific dress code or appearance standards beyond a biblical ideal of modesty. So yeah,
(07:57):
we want to live in a way that's modest, that's respectful towards the other people that we're
with. This applies to men and women as well. However, we could go down a rabbit hole on modesty
that we're not going to do today. But modesty does not mean a suit and tie and a dress. We don't
have the specific dress code that's required. Instead, we have a larger concept of how do we
(08:22):
dress in a way that is respectful toward one another, that has the best of one another at heart.
I think another example would be some of the holiness traditions that may be well-intentioned,
but they have these requirements that go past biblical principles. So I listened to a pastor
once talk about how they were never allowed to have anything in a brown bottle, even something
(08:47):
like root beer, because it had the appearance of being alcohol. And even that was forbidden,
because in some of those traditions, alcohol is forbidden within the church. Things like dancing,
because dancing can lead to something else. And so we're going to forbid you from dancing, or
we're going to forbid you from going to the movies, because some movies are not something
(09:12):
that a Christian should be partaking in. I think those would be some examples in that kind of area.
Insisting on particular worship styles. And that could be whether traditional or modern,
if you want to use those kinds of labels for things. Trying to force people into a style that
maybe someone prefers personally, but that really has nothing to do with the gospel, that has nothing
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to do with the work of the Holy Spirit in the life of people, that has nothing to do with a
true heart of worship, which is a response to what God has done. That's not limited to a specific
style of music. I think another one might be attendance expectations, specifically around
all of the extra ministries and events and activities of the church. I read through a
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church calendar, two different churches actually that I saw via social media this last week.
And all of them had a packed schedule for February, but what was absent from those was the Sunday
gathering. Was any other regular part of the gathering. So while that was an expectation,
they had all of these parties and ministries and get-togethers and events and community-based
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things, so that their schedule was so full, and the expectation of the people of the Church is that
they're being a part of all of this is too much. And so they're exhausted by just the pure number
of things that they have on the calendar. I think we have to be careful of this, because we do believe
in the two-gathering model. We believe that the church, when it functions the way that it was
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designed to in the first century, is a two kind of settings. There's one setting where everybody
is all together. That's our Sunday assembly. And there's a setting that's a smaller group of people
meeting in a home during the week. And we think both of those are actually part of a healthy
rhythm. So one of the things that we are very careful about is scheduling a lot of extra
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events and calendar items, because we just don't want to add on where Scripture doesn't
add on when it comes to requirements of gathering.
Let's move on to the next two verses, verse eight. "But even if we or an angel from heaven
should preach to you a gospel contrary to the one we preach to you, let him be accursed."
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As we have said before, so now I say again, if anyone is preaching to you a gospel contrary to
the one you have received, let him be accursed. So something else that's going on is that these
people in Galatia are being fooled by flashy and impressive speakers. In the last message,
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we talked in those first couple of verses that about how Paul was not known as being an impressive
man. He was probably smaller. He was maybe less flashy in his presentation than some of the
charismatic Greek speakers. However, the message that he had was true, and he was very good at
presenting that message as it was. These people have been fooled by speakers who have garnered
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their attention in one way or another by either being super religious and very impressive in
their religious performance, or by being on the other end of the spectrum and being more toward
license and freedom. You can be a Christian and pretty much do everything that you used to do.
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I wonder if today we have a very similar issue where we fall for the attraction value of a
speaker without realizing it. I wonder if we have, you can pretty easily look at some of the biggest
churches, I'll say that with quotation marks, because I'm not sure that some of them actually
qualify as the church because of what they teach and preach. But if you look at some of these larger
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sides, we're talking tens of thousands of people that are members of this organization.
I wonder if they're not operating off of the value of attraction for a speaker. You look at
the things that they have going on. The pastor who is known internationally as a speaker, as a
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motivational speaker almost. You have the lights and the music that are all part of a performance
instead of catering to the experience of the church connecting with one another and connecting
with the Lord in a authentic way on a Sunday morning. I think that probably there is out
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there a tendency in us to want to listen to people who are very appealing in that way,
celebrities, people who have platforms over scripture. We tend to easily put those people
up on a pedestal. I think there's a tendency to put podcast hosts who are very entertaining and
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have interesting ideas. I love podcasts, but I think sometimes it's easy to put those types of
people over pastors who are preaching the Word of God.
I think sometimes there's a tendency in those churches where the pastor serves as more of a
motivational speaker to want to give good, encouraging news, but not give the whole
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counsel of scripture, which is something I touched on at the very beginning.
I think sometimes we like to make excuses for our limited attention to scripture, too. We've all
done it. We've all spent time thinking it's going to be easier for me to listen to something, to
watch something that it is for me to sit down with my Bible and read a couple of verses of
scripture. As I was thinking through that, some things to not substitute for scripture. I think
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one of the things for me that is tempting is to substitute Bible teaching for Bible reading.
Often it's easier for me to listen to a sermon or a podcast that's talking about a passage of
scripture, which is a good thing, but I think sometimes I would choose that over actually
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listening to scripture itself. I think in the same way, sometimes I would choose to read a
devotional based on scripture. If I look at my own library, I can see tens of devotional books
that are some of them very good, but to substitute that for actually reading scripture, I think,
is not altogether healthy. I think it's good to be aware of our own desire to be entertained
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and to be attracted by things that are exciting and interesting, but ultimately we don't want to
be captive to our need to be entertained or be fooled by those who will capitalize on our desire
for that entertainment and attraction, because that's what the Galatian Church was doing.
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We don't want to fall for the same trick.
Finally, we get into this final distortion that is a distortion by subtraction. We've looked at
distortion by addition, meaning legalism, rules being added on to scripture. We've looked at a
distortion by attraction where we're more interested in the way that things are presented and how
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exciting they seem rather than the actual truth value of them. Finally, we're going to look at a
distortion by subtraction. This is verse 10. "For am I now seeking the approval of man or of God,
or am I trying to please man? If I were still trying to please man, I would not be a servant
of Christ." These people that Paul is speaking to are seeking the approval of men instead of God,
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and ironically, they are actually accusing Paul of doing the same thing. They say that he's actually
changing his message in order to get the approval of men. Largely, they're talking about the
circumcision issue, but there's probably more to it than that. This distortion by subtraction,
or taking something away to make the message more palatable, we would call adding license. This is
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what Paul gets into in Romans, where he says, "If grace is abundant, then are we free to sin even
more?" Paul answers with a resounding, "By no means. No, we must not do that." I think there's a lot
of modern examples of adding license. An example would be around the redefinition of marriage and
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sexuality. Lots of stuff that gets stuck in our desire there to not offend people and to stay on
the good side of culture, and that leads us to soften or even speak against some of the things
that God's word has to say about marriage being between one man and one woman. Talking about the
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seriousness of divorce outside of biblical grounds, that this Christian marriage is to be between a
man and a woman for life, and God takes that very seriously. I think sometimes we've softened that
to our own ideas of what should be comfortable or what marriage should really be about.
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I think that by the same way we treat cohabitation before marriage, because that's an
acceptable and normal thing in our culture, we want Scripture to affirm that when in fact,
Scripture does not. Scripture is very specific about where sexual unity is supposed to happen,
and it's supposed to be in a very specific circumstance between a married man and a married
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woman. Outside of that, God says, "This is not what I have for you. This is not what's best for you."
This is a good example of us being deceived by the devil in believing this idea that God is
trying to keep something good from us when instead God is actually trying to keep what is best for us,
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which is obedience to him and his will. I think some other things that kind of sneak into this
license idea is minimizing the importance of regular gathering with the church. I'm not talking
obviously about attending all of the additional events on the church calendar,
which is one reason we want to keep our church calendar very minimal. I'm talking about someone
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who might say, "I can fulfill my requirements as a Christian by showing up on the major holidays
to a church gathering." I think that is probably something that falls into the category that the
author of Hebrews talks about being forsaking the gathering together. I think that's something we
don't want to do, and we probably want to take seriously, "Yeah, we want to be discipled as
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disciples of Jesus, and we want to do that together with others." Some other things that
sneak in there, materialism and consumerism, ideas that all of these things that we've been
given are just blessings and the kind of the prosperity gospel bent to it that if you're
obedient to God, he's going to give you more stuff. He's going to give you more physical
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blessings instead of talking about the idea of stewardship over the things that you have been
given and the idea of things having eternal value instead of just the things we value here today.
You cannot, at the end of the day, add either restrictions or additional freedoms to the gospel
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and still end up with the authentic gospel. These people in Galatia and these churches are kind of
a picture of disobedient and stubborn children. Where Scripture would give them standards,
they are demanding freedom to do as they wish, but where Scripture gives others liberty,
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they would demand restriction to place on others. I think this is particularly hard
when you are going against the grain of a culture, but no matter how much we want to,
we cannot adjust the Bible to be more palatable. We cannot take things that are hard pills to
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swallow and soften them in some way without completely changing the message or the importance
of it. One example that came to mind for me this week was of the Titanic. Actually,
in the days before the Titanic hit that iceberg, it received multiple ice warnings from other ships
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in the area that sent messages to the Titanic that said there is a large amount of
icebergs and ice flow in this area. Please be careful, but when these messages were delivered,
they were marked non-urgent. Some of them were not even delivered to the captain,
which could have played a part in them going full steam ahead into the iceberg that sank the Titanic.
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I think if we take these parts of the message that we feel like are harsh or are hard to swallow
or are hard to deal with and we try to change them to be more palatable, more easy to receive,
instead of delivering the full strength of the gospel and the full strength of the truth of
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Scripture, we are ultimately changing the message in a way that could stop it from
being life-saving to the people who would receive it. At the same time,
you may have heard it said that the gospel is offensive enough. Don't add to the offense, right?
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We're not trying to make the gospel any harder to receive by delivering it in a way that is
intentionally harsh, but at the same time, we can't soften the truth by rounding off the edges.
There's still room for delivering the message in a way that is understood and received by your
audience, but not if it's at the cost of clarity of the message. In other words, we don't want to
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distort the message by taking things out that God has intentionally placed there for our good.
So as we conclude this first couple of verses, we are looking at the authentic gospel, right?
The authentic message, which means the whole counsel of Scripture, not just Matthew, Mark,
Luke, and John. And we've said that first, the authentic gospel cannot be added to,
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whether by making rules, which we would call legalism, or altering it in any way. It makes it
a different gospel entirely if we try to do that. If we try to say, "You're saved by the grace of
Jesus Christ and also by works," then it's not just by grace anymore, and that's a distorted
gospel that is not true. Second, we have to be careful not to be drawn in or drawn away by
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impressive speakers or entertaining content that distracts from the message of Scripture itself.
The messenger's charisma should never overshadow the message's truth. And finally, it should be our
goal to please God rather than men, which means we cannot water down or adjust the gospel message
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just to make it more appealing to our culture. We have to give them the full strength, life-saving,
life-changing gospel of Jesus Christ as it is presented in Scripture. And that's going to
change the world. So in the next couple of verses here that we'll get into next week, we're actually
going to hear from Paul some of his own story and his own words. And we're going to get to see
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how the gospel completely changed his life. And we're going to get to see some of the work
that God has done in Paul. And I think it's actually going to allow the Word of God to do work
in us to continue changing us as well. So I look forward to that.
Ecclesia is a church of house churches gathering weekly in Council Bloss Iowa and in homes throughout
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the week. We are a Bible-centered church focused on preaching from Scripture and making disciples
of Jesus. You can learn more about our statement of faith and contact the pastor by visiting
EcclesiaChurches.org.
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