Brethren, let's turn to Galatians
chapter one. Let's ask the Lord's blessing. Our God and our Father, Lord,
we need you to give us the word, give us your
spirit, make us to hear Make us to see Christ as truly all. Make us to see ourselves as the
sinner saved entirely by Him alone. Lord, make Your people
cast all our care on Him. Forgive us our sins, Lord. We
need You to cleanse our feet, wash us daily, and keep us looking
only to You. We pray for your people everywhere.
Pray for your preachers wherever they are that you would send
the gospel forth in power by your spirit this morning. Bless
your people everywhere. In Christ's name we ask it, amen. Galatians 1. We're gonna hear
Paul declare that there is only one gospel. There's only one
gospel. He says in verse six, I marvel
that you are so soon removed from him that called you into
the grace of Christ unto another gospel, which is not another. But there be some that trouble
you and would pervert the gospel of Christ. But though we or an
angel from heaven preach any other gospel unto you than that
which we have preached unto you, accursed. As we said before,
so say I now again, if any man preach any other gospel unto
you that you have received, let him be accursed. For do I now
persuade men or God? Or do I seek to please men? For
if I yet pleased men, I should not be the servant of Christ. But I certify you, brethren,
that the gospel which was preached of me is not after man. For I
neither received it of man, neither was I taught it, but by the revelation
of Jesus Christ. I want to preach to you about
this subject of there's only one gospel. The gospel is Christ. Christ is the gospel. The gospel
means good news. And the Lord Jesus himself is
the good news. What he has accomplished for
his people is the good news. Salvation is entirely of the
Lord. That is the gospel. And we are
sinners. Every person that comes into
this world is a sinner, unable to save ourselves, and unable
to even contribute one thing to our salvation. We can't believe
of ourselves. We can't continue believing of
ourselves. We can do nothing of ourselves. We have to be saved entirely
by our triune God and our savior, the Lord Jesus. Go with me to
Isaiah 40. And I want you just to listen
to what the Lord tells his preacher to preach. Here's what he tells
his preacher to preach. Isaiah 40 verse one, he says,
comfort ye, comfort ye my people, saith your God. Speak ye comfortably
to Jerusalem, that's his people, that's his church, and cry unto
her that her warfare is accomplished, that her iniquity is pardoned. For she hath received of the
Lord's hand It's all of the Lord's hand. She's been given of the
Lord's hand double for all her sins. Look down here concerning
the sinner, verse six, the voice, this is Christ, the voice said,
cry. And he said, what shall I cry?
All flesh is grass and all the goodliness thereof. Now listen
to that, not just the sin thereof, the very goodliness of our flesh. Best we can muster is as the flower of the field.
The grass withereth, the flower fadeth, because the spirit of
the Lord bloweth upon it. Surely the people is grass. The grass withereth, the flower
fadeth, but the word of our God shall stand forever. Again in
Isaiah 52, he said, he speaks of the beautiful feet of those
that declare the good tidings, that publisheth peace, that bring
good tidings of good, that publisheth salvation, that saith unto Zion,
thy God reigneth. This is our message. This is
our message. Now go with me to Acts 15 and
let's see what was being preached to these Galatians. What was
these Galatians being told? You've got some believers there
in Galatia who Christ has made perfect, who He made them perfectly
righteous and He made them holy in the new birth. And the same
was true of their Gentile brethren. And it says in Acts 15.1, and
certain men which came down from Judea taught the brethren and
said, except ye be circumcised after the manner of Moses, you
cannot be saved. It was the except ye that revealed
the motive of their heart. It revealed that their message
was self-righteousness. When they said except ye be circumcised,
except you keep the law of Moses, you cannot be saved, that showed
Their message was the message of works. It was the message
that exalts the sinner, lifts him up, and that tries to steal
the glory that belongs to the Lord Jesus Christ. Look at verse
seven. You can read it again. Look here
in verse five. There rose up certain of the
sect of the Pharisees which believed, saying that it was needful to
circumcise them and to command them to keep the law of Moses.
Now look, drop down to verse seven. Peter said there'd been
much disputing, and he rose up and said to them, men and brethren,
you know how that a good while ago, God made choice among us
that the Gentiles by my mouth should hear the word of the gospel
and believe. And God which knoweth the hearts,
bear them witness, giving them the Holy Ghost, even as he did
unto us, and put no difference between us and them, purifying
their hearts by faith. He purified their hearts. He
did. Now therefore, why tempt ye God
to put a yoke upon the neck of the disciples, which neither
our fathers were we, nor we were able to bear? This is tempting
God for somebody to say there's yet something for the sinner
to do, who Christ has made perfect, to say there's something for
that sinner to do, who Christ has perfected in himself, made
righteous in himself, made holy in himself, by himself, to yet
say there's something for the sinner to do. That's tempting
God. And beside that, And Peter said, neither we nor our fathers
ever could keep that law. We couldn't bear that yoke. But
we believe, but we believe that through the grace of the Lord
Jesus Christ, we shall be saved even this day. Us Jews are gonna
have to be saved like these Gentiles who never had the law of God.
We're gonna have to be saved by Christ, by the grace of our
Lord Jesus Christ, just like them. I try to expose darkness
by preaching Christ the light. But it does help occasionally
to just flat out tell you some of the things that are false.
And I'm gonna tell you a few things that are false. When you
hear the message, the test is, does it give God all the glory?
Does it give our Lord Jesus Christ all the glory? Does it declare
the sinner to be entirely helpless and needful of Christ to do all
the saving. The sinner has to be declared
as absolutely ruined and be saved by Christ alone. That's the test. And when you hear this message
of universal redemption, to the natural ear, it may sound sweet.
Christ loved everybody. He laid down his life for everybody
and gave everybody a blank slate Now, if you want to be justified,
it's up to you to accept Jesus and that will make his blood
effectual for you. But think about what that says.
Think about how dishonoring that message is to Christ. It declares
God's not holy. It declares God would pour out
justice on his son for everybody and justify him and then turn
around and pour out justice a second time on a person. That's double
jeopardy, that's not just. And it also exalts the sinner
because it puts the work in the sinner's hand and says that you,
by what you do, by your will and your work, you make his blood
effectual for you. That's a lie, brethren, that's
a lie. There's some religion that makes
regeneration to be by water baptism. They get that from where the
Lord Jesus said, except you be born of the water and of the
spirit, you can't enter the kingdom of God. And they take that to
mean baptism. The Lord Jesus was speaking about
the water of the word. He washes his people through
the washing of the water of the word, Ephesians said. Through
the gospel, through the preaching of his word, the spirit of God
enters and makes us to be born again. But men actually preach
that. Now get how illogical unbelief
really is. Think about this. A dead sinner
is gonna be regenerated by baptism. So a dead sinner believes he
can be regenerated, made spiritually alive if he'll be baptized, so
he decides to be baptized. A dead sinner can't do anything.
If that were true, something's gonna have to happen before he
gets in the water to make him get in the water. Well, the truth
is we're born again of the Spirit of God, regenerated by the Spirit
of God. We're washed from our sins by
the Lord Jesus Christ, by the Lord Jesus Christ. Some preach
denominationalism, you know, their denomination is the denomination. That's all of man. Denominations
are of men. And the fact is, I grew up in
the Bible Belt, and I went to some different churches when
I was a kid, and I got kicked out of the big Baptist church
in our community. I got kicked out of Vacation
Bible School. They had a, first time I'd ever seen a grand piano,
and while everybody was in the back eating lunch, I slipped
back in there and got on that grand piano and went to play,
and Jerry Lee Lewis and one of the men found me and kicked me
out of Vacation Bible School. But they all preached. just a
different version of works. And that's really all that made
them any different, just what brand of works they preached.
No different. But it's all false. None of it
gives Christ the glory. None of it gives God all the
glory. Some declare if God elected you
and Christ died for you, you never have to hear the gospel.
You never have to believe you'll still be saved. And all false
gospels are just like that. They're to protect a loved one
that doesn't believe, and put them in heaven. And really, it
comes down to what Christ declared, if a man loves father, mother,
brother, sister, son or daughter more than me, he's not worthy
of me. And that's really what that is. I love my people. relative so much, though they
never believe God, I'm gonna claim they're the elect and they're
saved, though they never believe. That's loving them more than
the truth of God. Scripture says, we're bound to
give thanks always to God for you, brethren, beloved of the
Lord, because God has from the beginning chosen you to salvation
through sanctification of the spirit and belief of the truth
were to he called you by our gospel to the obtaining of the
glory of the Lord Jesus Christ. Everybody God chose, that's who
Christ died for, and he justified them. So God's justice demands
they have to be called out, they have to be given faith. And he
predestinated each one of his elect unto the adoption of children
by Jesus Christ. By whom you believe, Peter said.
So Christ sends the gospel to us, and Christ sends the Holy
Spirit to each one, and regenerates each one, and gives us faith
to believe him. The same God who's sovereign
to save, he declared the end from the beginning, and it shows
his sovereignty more that he declares, this is how I'm gonna
save, and then saves the very way he says he will, by bringing
us out of that gospel and causing us to believe. That shows he
is truly the sovereign God of glory. And then there's this
message that is so subtle. If it were possible, it would
deceive the very elect, Christ said. And they'll preach election
by grace. They'll preach a particular redemption
by the Lord Jesus Christ. They'll preach the necessity
of regeneration by the Spirit of God. But when it comes to
preaching, Sanctification, holiness, they make it to be at least partly
by the sinner. If anything's partly by you and
me, it takes the glory from the Lord Jesus and gives it to us. And God will not share his glory,
he will not. And that message is a message
that you partly are responsible, you partly contribute to your
sanctification. That message is saying, except
you keep the law of Moses, you can't be saved. That's what it's
saying. That's exactly what it's saying. Except you keep the Sabbath
day, you can't be saved. When Christ gives you faith,
he makes you know he's your Sabbath rest. He fulfilled all righteousness
for his people. He made us accepted of God by
his perfect obedience to God. He made us the righteousness
of God, and when he gives his elect faith to trust him, he
gives you rest in him. And you know, the rest is knowing
he's fulfilled the whole law for me. I'm just, I'm accepted
of God. That'll never be undone. It's
settled by the Lord Jesus. But this message that declares,
except ye, except ye, do whatever they put in the blank, or you
can't be saved, that makes it Salvation will be entirely up
to you. You have to do it all. You have
to do it all. Go to Galatians 5 and listen
to this. Galatians 5 and verse 2. And listen to what Paul said
here now. Galatians 5, 2, he says, Behold,
I, Paul, say unto you that if you be circumcised, Christ shall
profit you nothing. For I testify again to every
man that is circumcised that he's a debtor to do the whole
law. He's a debtor to do it all himself. Christ is become of
no effect unto you, whosoever of you are justified by the law,
you're fallen from grace. And in case you miss here, they'll
say, well, that means justification by the law. Listen, if you try
to be sanctified by the law, you're trying to be justified
by the law as well. Because justification and sanctification
is all of Christ. He did what, he justified us
having a holy heart, perfectly obeying God. He was our sanctifier
and our righteousness and our redeemer. He did it all. Now look what he says about the
believer. Verse five, we through the spirit wait for the hope
of righteousness by faith. For in Jesus Christ, neither
circumcision availeth anything nor uncircumcision, neither one
avails, but faith which worketh by love. He says, you did run
well. Who did hinder you that you should
not obey the truth? Do you see there? He's telling
us what it is to obey the truth. It's to believe Christ. He's
the truth. It's to follow Christ. He said,
I'm the way, the truth, and the life. It's to trust Him to do
the saving and to do what you do, constrained by His love,
and help one another to look to Christ. Forgive one another. Be merciful to one another. The
works that Christ works in the believer, those are not the works that
the self-righteous, self-sanctifying man considers good works, because
they will cut you off in a heartbeat. They'll say, stand over there,
I'm holier than thou, in a heartbeat. But the works Christ works in
his people remind us of what he did for us. He makes his child
lay down your life for your brethren when they're the ungodly, like
he did for us. He makes you be merciful to your
brethren and forgive without limit your brethren, like he
does for us. How can you do that? Only through
faith, knowing he is the righteousness of my brother, knowing he is
my brother's salvation, knowing he's my brother's master who
will make him stand, knowing I'm to go to him and ask Christ,
will he save my brother? I'm to wait on Christ to do the
saving in his time. and then give him all the glory
and praise for working it and saving my brother. Those are
the works Christ works in his people. But he said here, this persuasion,
Galatians 5, 8, this persuasion cometh not of him that calleth
you, a little leaven leaveneth the whole lump. Just like you
put leaven in the dough and overnight it just swells that dough up,
puffs it up. a little of this pharisaical
leaven of thinking something is of our hand. Just a little
of that leaven will puff a man up. Charity, God-given charity
edifies one another. It'll make you be humble and
trust Christ and help one another. But this leaven will puff up. And anybody that that man can
get the ear of and start speaking of this leaven, it'll puff them
up. And then when the next one hears it, it'll puff them up.
And it'll just go through an entire congregation and just
puff the whole congregation up in self-righteousness. Just a
little leaven, just a little bit. Brethren, the Lord Jesus
is the one thing needful. He's the one thing needful. We
need to hear this and be reminded of this. God enabling me, I will
remind you of this Every time I stand here, Christ is the one
thing needful. He is. When he says there in
Galatians 1, 6, I marvel that you're so soon removed from him
that called you. Listen, nobody that's been called
by Christ will leave Christ. We're kept by the power of God
through faith unto salvation that's ready, that Christ has
accomplished. And he said, whoever cometh to
me, I will in no wise cast him out. He will keep his people. He that hath begun a good work
in you will perform it till the day he carries you home. He will keep his child. If somebody
who professed to believe Christ can depart from Christ, they
never were called by Christ. They never were called by Christ.
But those he calls, he calls affectionately and he keeps.
And it's God who does the calling. He, of God the Father, we've
seen Christ said, no man can come to me except the Father
which has sent me drawing. He said, it's written in the
scripture, they shall all be taught of God. Everyone that
has heard by God speaking to them and been taught by God speaking
to them, they come to Christ. And Christ never casts them out.
It's attributed to the Holy Spirit. Christ said, how be it when he,
the Spirit of truth has come, He will guide you into all truth. Because he won't speak of himself,
he'll glorify me, Christ said. And in Christ himself, thy people
shall be willing in the day of thy power. He causes people.
We worship one God in three person. Blessed is the man whom thou
choosest and causes to approach unto thee. So when he calls,
his child's not gonna remove from him. You believe on Christ
today, Trust Him and you will be saved. You trust Christ and
you will be saved. Call upon Him while He's near.
He will save you and if you can and you do, I guarantee you this,
by the Spirit of the Lord teaching you, you're gonna give Him the
glory for doing it. You're gonna give Him the glory
for giving you the heart to call Him and trust Him. but to require
work of our hands is to remove from the grace of Christ. Look
at there. I marvel that you're so soon
removed from him that called you into the grace of Christ
unto another gospel which is not another. We're called by
the grace of Christ into the grace of Christ. And we're kept
standing in that grace by Christ. It's all of grace. His fullness
is so perfect when he calls you and gives you eyes to see and
ears to hear and a heart to believe, his fullness is so perfect, you
ashamed you ever looked anywhere else that you didn't believe
before you did. He said, I will establish my
covenant with thee and thou shalt know that I am the Lord, that
thou mayest remember and be confounded and never open thy mouth anymore
because of thy shame. when I'm pacified toward thee
for all that thou hast done, saith the Lord God. He makes
your mouth be closed from boasting in anything you did. David Brainerd
said, I wonder that I should ever think of any other way of
salvation. If I could have been saved by
my own duties, my whole soul would now have refused it. That's
how he makes you feel. God's people are saved by the
grace of Christ. God the Father chose a people
by grace. Grace is the sweetest word. Grace,
I named my daughter Grace because it's so sweet. Grace, by grace
are you saved through faith. That's not of yourself, it's
God's gift. He chose his people by grace. Christ came and laid
down his life. You know the grace of our Lord
Jesus Christ that though he was rich, Yet for his people, he
came down and became poor. Look at that cross. He bore all
the sin of his people. He bore the wrath of God for
his people. He was made the very least for
his people, that through his poverty we might be made rich.
That's the grace of our Lord Jesus. It was grace for him to
call us, God who's rich in mercy for his great love wherewith
he loved us. Even when we're dead in sin,
quicken us together with Christ by grace, are you saying? By
grace. Everything we have is by grace.
We're kept by his grace. all is of grace from beginning
to end. Paul said, I was made a minister
according to the gift of the grace of God given to me by the
effectual working of his power. That's how we're made children,
made to believe him, all by grace. We believe, Peter said, that
through the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, Us Jews have always
had the law. We're gonna be saved like these
Gentiles that never were under the law. We're gonna be saved
by the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ. All is of grace, brethren,
everything. Faith, repentance, free justification,
peace, pardon, atonement for our sin, every good work. Faith
to continue believing, perseverance, Resurrection from the dead, glorification. When we get to glory, we're gonna
declare we were saved entirely by grace. Entirely by grace. And listen, grace is without
our works. Now, believers rejoice in good
works. He makes his people do good works,
as I just said before. But we don't trust our good works.
We're not saved by our good works. And when we get to glory, we're
gonna declare it was all of grace. It was not of our works. That's
what we declare right now. But you take a man when he turns
to self, when he turns to his law keeping, when he turns to
his good works, and like I said last week, it's the motive of
the heart. It's the motive of the heart.
And the way a man manifests that his motive is legal is when he
starts saying, except you keep the law, you can't be saved.
But as long as he doesn't say that, long as he's, he may be
a weak brother. You know, when the Lord called
Lazarus out of the grave, he had a lot of grave clothes on.
And when he calls us, we still have some grave clothes. Some of his children, it's various
sins that he's teaching you to repent and to depart from. Some, with some, they still don't
see how free they are from the law, and they want to try to
live according to the law. but as long as they're not making
it to be necessity for salvation and they're not trying to compel
others to do it, you receive them and you don't doubt them.
You know Christ is able to teach his children. When you're truly
free, I was gonna try not to get into this today because I
wanna preach on it another time from Galatians right here, but
you know, one time Paul said, it's not circumcision or uncircumcision. And Paul said, when they tried
to compel Titus to be circumcised, Titus was a Greek. When they
tried to compel him to be circumcised, Paul said, we withstood them
and said, no. And then when Paul's taken Timothy
to preach where he knew some Jews were going to be because
Timothy's father was a Greek, Paul circumcised Timothy. That's
a man that knows circumcision doesn't avail no uncircumcision.
Why did he do that for Timothy? He did it because he didn't want
anything to distract from hearing Christ glorified in the preaching
of the gospel. And he knew that if they could
find that out, they wouldn't receive them because of that.
And that's nothing. It's nothing. And he did it from
the motive of faith in Christ and love for Christ and his brethren. And he wanted to see Christ glorified
in the gospel. But when it came to a man saying,
now except you be circumcised, you can't be saved, he said,
no, no. You get that? You understand
that? That's a man that knows he's free. That's a man that
knows Christ is truly all our righteousness. It's not circumcision
or uncircumcision. It's not your law keeping or
your being free from the law that avails. It is Christ making
us an entirely new creation. making us righteous, making us
holy, making us all wise, making us to be set at liberty, and
it's all by the Lord Jesus Christ himself. That's what avails. Christ is all, and he's in all
his people. And when you know that, you know,
another time, Paul said, whatever sold in the, you know, they used
this meat to worship idols, and they sold the meat in the market.
Paul said, I'll buy it. I'll go home and have me a pork
chop from meat that was offered to an idol. Why? Because an idol's
nothing. He said, but not all my brethren
have that knowledge. And he said, and if it's going
to offend my weak brother to see me eat meat that was offered
to an idol, I just won't eat it in front of him. He said to
the Jew that thought he was still yet under the law, he said, I
became as a Jew. I circumcised Timothy. To those
that are free from the law, I live free from the law, under the
law of Christ, trusting him as my all. Why did he do that? That the gospel would have free
course, that Christ would be magnified, that all lives would
be on Christ Jesus and him crucified, that non-issues would stay non-issues. That's when a man knows he's
free. That's when a man knows Christ is all in and of. And
when we start doubting somebody because they've sinned, or we
start doubting somebody because they still won't observe a day,
and these different things that we start doubting folks because
of them, that's that pharisaical nature in us. When we know Christ
is all, Christ's gonna keep his people, he's gonna teach his
people. You know how he'll use you to
teach them? Every chance you have, you can tell that weak
brother that still thinks he's under the law, you can speak
of how free we are by the finished work of Christ, how that Christ
is the end of the law for righteousness to everyone that believe it. That's how you be used, but you
won't be used breaking out the whip of the law and trying to
condemn them with the law. You know what we're doing when
you do that? You take somebody who thinks he's still under the
law and he has to observe certain days or whatever, and you start
berating him, even using the gospel to do it, and trying to
compel him to live without the law by your power. That's legalism meeting legalism. That's all that is. That's all
that is. We just set forth the truth of
Christ, our living Redeemer, and exalt him as high as you
can, and preach the sinner as low as he'll enable you to, and
pray to him to bless it, and wait on him to bless it, and
then he'll get all the glory when he blesses it. All right, I'm gonna stop, brethren.
I got a whole lot more here, but I'm trying to learn to keep
it to a minimum. All right, let's go to the Lord.
Our Father, we thank you. Thank you for salvation, full
and free and accomplished entirely by your grace. Lord, thank you
for revealing Christ to us. What an amazing grace that you
have revealed the gospel to sinners like us, made us to know this
eternal, everlasting truth. It made us to know something
that was so before you ever created time. In the midst of a people, Lord,
that going their own way and that
there we were right in the midst and you just plucked us out.
Lord, we don't have anything, anything to boast in. It is all
your grace and we thank you so much for grace in our Redeemer. Lord, help us to realize more
and more that Christ is all. Help us to see and know this
and be persuaded in our hearts that we might truly be used to
you to help one another. Lord, help us to see, help us
to believe, and Lord, forgive our unbelief. Oh, we're so full
of unbelief. We're full of legalism and our
nature, sin, rebellion. Lord, mortify our old man and
renew us inwardly. Keep us looking only to Christ.
We ask it in his name. And Lord, we ask you, be with
Brother Ian when he stands to preach. Help him to declare these
unsearchable mysteries of Christ boldly and clearly. For your
honor and glory, in Christ's name we ask it, amen.