Today's message is called the
truth of the gospel. I had several names for it going
through my mind, but I could have called it justification
in Christ. The truth of the gospel, though.
What is the truth of the gospel? What is the truth of the gospel?
Well, the truth of the gospel is justification by faith alone
in Christ alone, and by Christ alone, and by his finished perfect
work. It's all by the grace of God. Our salvation is completely by
the grace of God. There's absolutely nothing that
we add to the finished work of Christ. Nothing. It's perfect.
It's complete. He's done it all. He's done it
all. And this was a great truth of
the Reformation, actually, is justification by faith alone.
You see, we as humans cannot obtain The forgiveness of our
sins, can we? By anything we do. By nothing
we do. Every one of us has broken the
law. Every single one of us has broken the law. There's absolutely
no way we can even keep one of the law of God. And we can't
produce a righteousness that makes us fit to be in the presence
of God. Because the scripture declares,
as we'll look at today, there's none righteous, no not one. That
means everyone. Everyone, and you know the whole
world, whether they believe it or not, is guilty before God. The whole world. Everyone who
comes into this world is dead in trespasses and sins with no
hope. Physically alive and yet spiritually dead because of our
father Adam. So none of us can produce a righteousness
before God by our own merits, by our own works, by anything
we do that will please God. But praise be to God. Christ
fulfilled the law in our place. Weave the perfect code of righteousness,
as Spurgeon used to say, when he lived and died upon this world. He wove that perfect code of
righteousness by obeying God's law perfectly as the great substitute. And then we know, of course,
he satisfied God's law and justice, didn't he? Two words, again,
out of my preaching, if you get anything out of any of the messages,
substitution and satisfaction. Christ is a great substitute
to sinners. And God is absolutely satisfied with the perfect work
of Christ. And therefore, anyone who's in
Him, God is satisfied with them. That's wonderful. That's good
news for sinners, isn't it? That's good news. And we cannot
be accepted by God except in the Beloved. Except in the Lord
Jesus Christ. Outside of Christ, there's no
acceptance before God. Absolutely none. But in Christ,
a sinner, finds the full forgiveness of all their sins, past, present,
and future, all of them. Now again, as you've heard me
say many times, that doesn't give us a license to go out and
do whatever we want, no. But the salvation in Christ is
absolutely complete. All of our sins, as God's elect,
all of our sins were bought and paid for 2,000 years ago at Calvary's
cost, every one of them. And think when someone says,
well, how can you say you're future sins? Because all of our sins
were future at Calvary's Cross. We weren't even around then.
Yet Christ paid the debt that we owe for our sins. Romans chapter four, verse five
says, but to him that worketh not, but believeth on him that
justifieth the ungodly, his faith is counted for righteousness.
So we must have faith in Christ. We must, but we know also that
that faith is a gift from God, isn't it? He gives it to us.
Also, which we're going to be looking at again later on in
Romans chapter 5, it says, therefore being justified by faith. What
kind of faith? God-given faith. For by grace
you are saved through faith and not of yourselves. It's a gift
of God, not of works, lest any man should boast. So that faith
spoken of in Romans 5, 1, is a gift from God. And then
what's a result of that? We have peace with God. Peace. Absolute peace with God. See,
we were enemies in our minds at one time, weren't we? Scripture
declares that. That we were enemies in our mind. We shook our fist
at God. Whether we verbally said we were enemies or not, our sinfulness
proved that we were enemies with God in our minds. We were wicked. But praise be to God, he saved
our souls. Now we still struggle with sin all the time. But praise
God, all our sins are forgiven. And then it says this, by whom
also we have access by faith, again, by God-given faith, into
this grace wherein we stand and rejoice in the hope of glory.
Let us rejoice, as believers, in the hope of glory. What a
hope we have. There was a time when we didn't
have this hope. And who's our hope centered in? It's in Christ
and Him alone, isn't it? It's nowhere else, not in anything
we do. Nothing we do, even after we're saved. I can't find hope
in what I do. My hope is in Christ and Him
alone. He's my hope. Is He yours? Oh, He's wonderful. And we believe, as God's born-again,
blood-washed people, we believe that Christ died and suffered
for our sins, and that by his perfect work, our sins are atoned
for, completely, fully. And also remember that that faith,
which is counted for righteousness, spoken in Romans 4, 5, is God-given
faith. That faith that's spoken of in
Romans 5.1 is God-given faith. He gives it to us. We can't obtain
it in any way. It's a gift of God, not of works,
lest any man should boast. And it's given to us by God the
Holy Spirit. And you know we have the same faith as Abraham? God, there's only one faith.
There's only one faith. I was talking to someone this
week, and they were talking about the church. And they said, well,
the church started in the day of Pentecost. I said, no, it
didn't. All of God's elect from all the ages, Old Testament and
New, are the church. They're the church. They're the
redeemed ones of the Lord. They're the elect of God. And
our faith is the same faith that was given to Abraham, Moses,
Aaron, Joshua, James, Peter, John, and Paul. One faith. And who's the object of that
one faith? Christ. See, they looked to the Messiah. We look back to what Christ has
done. And now we look up, don't we? I like what Scott Richardson
said. We look outside ourselves and
up to the one who saved us, the Lord Jesus Christ. Oh, it's wonderful. So let's turn now to Galatians.
Let's turn now to Galatians chapter 2, or continue our study in Galatians
chapter 2. We'll be reading verses 1 to
5, but verse 5 will be today. Then 14 years after I went up
again to Jerusalem with Barnabas and took Titus with me also,
And I went up by revelation and communicated unto them that gospel,
which I preach among the Gentiles, but privately to them, which
were of reputation, lest by any means I should run or had run
in vain. But neither Titus, who was with
me, being a Greek, was compelled to be circumcised. Remember,
the false teachers were saying that Titus had to be circumcised
and all the Gentile converts had to be circumcised. They were
trying to bring him under the bondage of the law. But Christ
is the end of the law for righteousness, isn't he? That's what the scripture
declares. And Paul said, And not because
of false brethren unawares brought in, who came and privately inspired
our liberty, which we have in Christ Jesus, that they might
bring us into bondage. We looked at that verse last
week. They crept in. They crept in. To whom we give
place by subjection, no, not for an hour, that the truth of
the gospel might continue with you. So last week in a study
we saw the false brethren in Galatians 2, 4, they plotted.
They plotted to bring the believers under the law again by saying
you must be circumcised to be saved along with the work of
Christ. And I was talking to Sister Barb yesterday with Vicki
and Kevin, and she brought up a great point that we often don't
think about, is that these Jewish believers, they were raised in
a Jewish religion. So for them to leave the Mosaic
Law, for them to say, no, faith is in Christ alone, it was huge,
because they were raised in that environment the whole time. So
they would be leaving everything, their whole belief system would
change. Because Christ again is the end of the law for righteousness.
Now we love the law of God, it's holy law, it's wonderful, but
we know we can't fulfill it, can we? No one can. But Christ
did it in our place. It's wonderful. So they tried to get a foothold
in the church and then they tried to yoke the believers under bondage. No wonder Paul said, and I, brethren,
if I yet preach circumcision, why do I yet suffer persecution?
Then as the offense of the cross ceased, I would that they even
cut off which trouble you, Galatians 5, 11, and 12. So Paul said,
if I preach circumcision to be saved, there's no offense in
the gospel then. There's no offense. See, because
that's something man has to do, right? Man loves to do something,
don't they? Oh, those of us who came out of religion, we know
that. We love to do things. The hardest thing for us to do
is just rest in Christ. Just to go, Lord, I'm going to
put my soul in your hands, and see the world, things going crazy
in this world, but I know that you're sovereign. I know that
you're in absolute control, and I'm going to rest in you, my
sovereign king, my sovereign God. Paul's message was all about
Christ. He had a one-string fiddle. I was telling the folks out west,
I have a one-string fiddle. When I preach, I only preach
Christ. That's who I preach. Now we look at the text, we break
it down, but I have one subject in my preaching, and that's Christ
and Him crucified. That's what Paul preached, right?
That's what the apostles preached. Salvation's in Christ, in Christ
alone. We bring nothing to the table.
except our sin, right? But we bring nothing to the table
that would gain us merit or favor with God. It's all by the grace
of God that we're saved. That message is offensive to
natural man. It was offensive to me before
the Lord saved me. Now it's the most wonderful thing
in the world that Christ died for my sins. It's wonderful.
And remember, if you add works, just a pinprick of works, it's
no more grace. No, it's no more grace. Not at all. So our gospel, the true gospel,
is not man-centered, it's Christ-centered. It's all about Him. And men have a problem when you
tell them, when you tell them that there's no way they can
save themselves. No way they can save themselves at all. I
was talking to a guy this week, I told you guys, on Wednesday
night. I was talking to a fellow this week, or no, last week,
and he said, you have to ask Jesus into your heart, and then
you're born again. I said, no, you got the cart
before the horse, buddy. You must be born again. You must
be born again. Then you're going to run to Christ,
I guarantee you. If you're born again, like Rupert
Reichenbach used to say, a team of wild horses couldn't keep
you away from Christ. Oh, my. You're going to run to
him then. But you have to be born again. You have to be. You
must be born again. You can't be born again by praying
a prayer. And then I started to ask him,
can a dead man pray a prayer? He admitted, no. OK. Can a dead man walk an aisle?
No. Okay. I said, Scripture says we're
dead in trespasses and sins. How do you make yourself alive?
By supposedly letting Jesus in your heart. When you can't, you're
dead. Well, he didn't have, oh, boy, oh, boy. Just kept telling
them, you must be born again. And I don't argue anymore. I've
told you guys that. I just present the Scripture.
This is what the Scripture says. I used to argue and debate and
spend hours doing that. Now I just say what, there's
the truth. There you go. Let the Holy Spirit do the work,
right? Just back off. Let Him do the work. That's what
we're supposed to do. Oh my. But boy, men don't like to hear
that there's nothing they add or nothing that they bring to
the table to save themselves. I didn't like it when I heard
it. I didn't like it at all. Now again, I love it. But we
will not compromise the gospel. That's what Paul's bringing forth
in this verse 2, is that we will not compromise the gospel of
God's free and sovereign grace. We will not compromise it. We
know that as a group. We've stood for that, haven't
we? Salvation's in Christ alone. In Him alone. No one else. No
one else. Let's look at verse 5 again,
with that in our minds. That here's Paul saying, I will
not compromise. He says this, to whom we gave
place by subjection, no, not for an hour, that the truth of
the gospel might continue with you. So Paul here in this verse
sets forth the only manner, the only true manner of defense against
the false brethren. And this is simple in practice.
And this is simple, simple in manner. Look what he
tells us here. Easy for us to do. Don't give
subjection to them. Don't subject yourself to them.
Don't subject yourself to the false teaching. That's what Paul's
telling them here. Don't tolerate it. Do not tolerate. See, we're going to see later
that the apostles, that the elders of the Galatian churches, and
that Paul were all in agreement. not to subject themselves to
these false teachers who said you must be circumcised and believe
on Christ to be saved. And I'll tell you what, it comes
in a hundred different flavors now. There's people out there
who say you must be baptized to be saved, that's a false gospel.
People say you must speak in tongues to be saved, that's a
false gospel. Dave, you ran into some of them. People say you must go to this
certain church, Catholicism. You must belong to this church
or you're not saved, that's a false gospel. That's what it is. So we can
identify, and we don't have anything to do with it, right? Now, we
can witness to the people that are in there, and we should.
When the Lord opens the door, we talk to them about the wonderful
things that Christ has done for us. But Paul refused to tolerate
or submit to this teaching. He says, to whom we gave place
by subjection, no, not for an hour. Not going to have anything
to do with him. I'll ask you this. If someone
was offering you poison, would you take it? If even they were offering you
a drop of poison, would you take it? They said, here's this water
and it's got a drop of poison in it, would you take it? You
know, false teaching is poison for the soul. Poison for the soul. No, I don't
want nothing to do with that. I don't want nothing to do with
that. And we see here that Paul, by inspiration of the Holy Spirit
of God, he encourages the churches at Galatia. Remember, he's not
writing to one church, he's writing to multiple churches in Galatia.
And notice he uses the word we. The little word, we. Look at
this. To whom we gave place by subjection, no, not for an hour.
I love how Paul includes himself with the brethren. I love this.
Here's one of the greatest apostles of all time, right? And he just
brings himself right down to our level. I love that. That's
how it should be. You see, the preacher's not on
the pedestal. I've told you guys. I'm in the
midst of you guys. I'm with you all. The preacher's
supposed to be the servant of the church, not Lord over it. My, and so he takes this little
word we, and he shows that all, here he's showing that all the
apostles, remember he's gone up to Jerusalem to talk to the
apostles. He's gone up there, and they're
in agreement with him, and the elders of the church has sent
him up there, and he's saying we, all of us, we're in agreement,
do not give subjection to these people. Do not even listen to
them. Listen to them at all. Do not
listen to them. Now there's only one true gospel, isn't there?
There's one gospel, one faith, one Christ, right? There's only
one Savior. And the gospel comes from God,
right? It's God's gospel, isn't it?
It's His gospel. And it doesn't include anything
that man does. It comes from the free grace of God. The Father
in eternity chose the people in Christ. That's called the
elect, the elect of God. That's what we are, as God's
people. We're the elect of God, chosen in Christ before the foundational
world. Do we have anything to do with
that? God didn't look down through time and say, well, I see that
Wayne's going to choose me, so I'm going to pick him. No, he's
looked down and said, oh, look at that guy. He's dead in trespasses
and sins. He's right beside me, right? All of us, I'm going to choose
them. I'm going to save them by my mercy and grace. I'm going
to forgive them for all their sins. And the Son pledged in the great
eternal covenant of grace, in the council halls of eternity,
the Son pledged, I'll go and die for them, Father. I'll go
shed my blood for them. I'll become a man and I'll live
the perfect life for them and I'll purchase them and the Holy
Spirit said I'll find them and I'll quicken them and I'll give
them life and Then I'll teach them the things of Christ And then when they die we're
gonna take them home to be with us forever Amen Take us home. Oh my but notice the word we
so they're all in agreement to this They're all in agreement
not to give us objection And in the Greek, that means to submit.
They're not submitting to the false gospel. Paul says, do not
submit yourself to that. Do not even entertain it. Do
not even entertain it. So how much this would help nowadays,
wouldn't it? When the truth of justification
by faith is under attack. Justification in Christ alone
is under attack. There's so many man-made religions
out there. And it's always been that. There's
always been false teachers among us. Always. But again, I like
what Henry said. How do you measure a man's preaching? Well, some people say, well,
by his delivery and all that. No. Who gets the glory? Does Christ get the glory, or
does man get the glory in the preaching? Right? That's how
you measure your preachers. Who gets the glory? It should
be all about Christ. All about what He's done. Now
this leads us to the primary part of this verse. Look what
the latter part of this verse says here. The first part says,
to whom we gave place by subjection, no, not for an hour. Then it
says that the truth of the gospel might continue with you. The
truth of the gospel. I'm going to run out of time.
The truth of the gospel here. Note these words, truth of the
gospel here. And embrace this wonderful truth. Later on in
the chapter, Paul is going to talk about justification by Christ
and faith in Christ alone. He's going to talk about that.
The truth of the gospel. Embrace this. Embrace the gospel. Embrace the fact that in the
gospel we have the forgiveness of all our sins. Every single
one of them. Forgiven. Embrace that. It's a wonderful truth. Because
it's Christ who's justified us. That's one of the heart of the
gospels is justification in Christ. That he's the one who's justified
us. We can never justify ourselves. We can never save ourselves.
But Christ done it for us. And as I said, I like what one
old preacher said, when God looked down through time, he just saw
the whole mass of human race fall in sinfulness. He didn't
see someone who would choose him. He saw people who'd just
run away from him, shaking their fists at him. My, what mercy. What mercy God's
showing us in Christ Jesus our Lord. So justification in Christ
and justification by faith alone, in Christ alone, is an absolute
wonderful doctrine. I believe justification is the
heart of the gospel. Really. To be justified, to be able to
stand in the presence of God, in Him alone. This truth is what shook Europe
during the Reformation. Justification in Christ alone,
it shook it. Shook things up. And only by
keeping our eyes on Christ, how else can we combat false brethren
and false teachings? By keeping our eyes on Christ.
You know, I've been at churches before.
When the preacher's looking and checking out everybody in the
church, and the church is all checking out everybody to make
sure they're not doing something wrong, right? And nobody's got their eyes on
Christ. They all got their eyes on each other. We'll keep our eyes on Christ,
won't we? Set your mind, set your heart
on things above. That's Christ. That's Christ. My, oh my. Turn, if you would,
to John chapter 8. We will not submit ourselves
to be put under religious bondage again, will we? We who have been
made free in Christ. I love this little portion of
scripture here. This little portion of scripture here in John chapter
8. You know, we saw last week that
the false teachers come in to despise our liberty. And that's
freedom in the Greek, remember? And then to yoke us under bondage,
that's to put us into abject slavery in the Greek. Like, just
yoked up in bondage. Look at this in John chapter
8, verses 31 to 36. Then said Jesus to the Jews which
believed on him, if ye continue in my word, then are ye my disciples
indeed. And ye shall know the truth,
and the truth shall make you free. Who's the truth? Who's the way, the truth, and
the life? Oh, it's Christ, isn't it? It's Christ. And who guides us into all truth?
The Holy Spirit does, doesn't he? And he says he won't speak
of himself, but who's he gonna speak of? Who's he gonna teach
us about? Christ. I like this. This is wonderful.
Look at this. I used to be in religious bondage,
and so when I see this verse, I'm just, oh man, it makes you
almost want to just yell out praise in God, doesn't it? Look
at this. And ye shall know the truth.
We didn't know the truth before the Lord saved us. Before we
were born again, we didn't know the truth. Right? We didn't know who Christ really
was. And now, he's revealed himself to us. Look at this. And ye shall
know the truth, and the truth shall make you free. Free. Free. No more under the yoke of bondage.
Free in Christ. Free. This is the words of the
Master. This is not my words or John's
words. This is the word of the Master.
This is the word of God, the second person of the Trinity,
who's become a man. And his whole reason here is
to come to set us free from the bondage of sin. It says, then
they answered him, we be Abraham's seed. Well, we got Abraham. And we're never in bondage. You
see, they do not even know the depths of their own depravity.
They do not know the depths of their own sinfulness. And we
were all there. So we can't get on a high horse, can we? We were
all there. Right? We are never in bondage to any
man. How sayest thou, ye shall be made free? Look what they're doing. We're
not have this man rule over us. shaking their fists at God in
the flesh. Jesus answered them, verily,
verily, I say unto you, whosoever committeth sin is a servant of
sin. And the servant abideth not in the house forever, but
the Son abideth ever. Now here we go. He's going to
say it again. If the Son, therefore, shall
make you free, ye shall be free indeed. Hallelujah. What a Savior. What a Redeemer
is Jesus Christ our Lord. Now the false brethren of Paul's
day to which he speaks of differed in some ways than those of modern
times. These false brethren Paul's speaking
of in Galatia didn't deny the Godhead of Christ as the Mormons
in the Watchtower people do. I don't call them my God's witnesses, because they're
not my God's witnesses, they're just watchtower people. That's
all they are. But they did seem to call in
question the doctrine of the free and sovereign grace of God
in Christ alone. Because they were adding to the
finished work of Christ. Circumcision, something man had
to do. Again, how do we know that? Well,
Paul says that they came in privately. Remember last week we saw they
snuck in. They snuck in amongst. They snuck in. Despite the liberty
which is in Christ Jesus. The freedom that Christ just
spoke of that we have in Christ. We have such freedom in Christ. And I don't think we know the
freedom that we have. We don't know the bounds of our freedom.
Right? Because remember, we're always
to keep a weaker brother in mind, too. If we feel like we have
the freedom to do something, but we have a weaker brother
who we know that'll make him stumble, then don't do it. Don't
do it when you're with him. And there's things we know we
can do, and there's things we know we absolutely shouldn't
do, isn't there? But what constrains us from sin? The love of Christ.
See, that's scriptural. The love of Christ constrains
us from sin. Because I'll tell you what, you tell a man not
to do something, what are they going to do? They're going to
go and do it, aren't they? But if you tell a believer that
it's the love of Christ that constrains us, that's because of what Christ
has done for us. That constrains us. You're going to be a different
person. You're born again in the Holy
Spirit of God, a new creature in Christ. They're not going
to want to do the things they once did before. So it's very evident that the
false teachers disliked, possibly even hated, the doctrine of justification
in Christ alone. Because they added something
that you had to do. And again, this is what shook
Europe during the times of the Reformation, is justification
in Christ alone, salvation by grace alone, by the word of God
alone. These are the things that shook
those countries. And this truth, you know, I find
the missing note in today's preaching is about the righteousness of
Christ. That Christ established the perfect
righteousness for us. Most places are telling people
what they got to do and what they don't have to do. And I'll
tell you what, you don't have to tell a true believer what
to do and what not to do. I get convicted, do you? When
I do something I know I'm not supposed to do, I get really
convicted. And I end up in my face before God, confessing my
sin. Even though I know it's all forgiven,
I'm still on my face, confessing my sin to Him. Even though I
know I'm forgiven. Scripture says it's the blood
of Christ that cleanses us from all unrighteousness, isn't it?
You know, and if you preach the Gospel, and you preach about
Christ's righteousness, Men won't trust, men and women who are
truly born again, they'll stop trusting in themselves. Those
old, those old grave clothes of religion will start falling
off. And they're just looking to Christ alone. That's by the
power of God. I got a whole bunch more, but
I'm out of time. We got a fellowship meal this
afternoon. So, it's been wonderful though. But there's a lot more.
Next week we'll continue this. There's a lot more on justification
in Christ alone. And we'll look through the book
of Romans. When Paul wrote the book of Romans, again, never
forget that as we're reading the scripture that the true author
of the scriptures is God the Holy Spirit. He's the true author
of the scriptures. And next week we'll look into
Romans chapter, basically all different parts of Romans. And
we'll go verse by verse and we can turn to each verse and you
can open it up and look at it. And we will see how Paul brings
forth that we have no righteousness, nothing. Again, our righteousness
as believers comes from Christ, doesn't it? We're clothed in
His perfect spotless righteousness. That wedding garment that we
will have on at the great marriage feast is the righteousness of
Christ. That's what that is. And it's the Father who puts
it upon us. Remember the Father when the prodigal son, I love
this, I'll never forget when I first saw this, I was jumping
up and down like a kid in a candy store. Here comes the prodigal
coming home. He's weeping, the father's probably
weeping too, right? And the father turns to his servant
and says, bring forth the best robe. The best one. What's the best robe for us to
be robed in, in the presence of God? The righteousness of
Christ. Oh, what a Savior. What a Redeemer
is Jesus Christ, our Lord.