Galatians | Week 1 | Daniel Goulding | Full Service

So, hey, I am excited to start a brand new series with us this morning. We are gonna be walking through what I believe is one of the most important books for us as Christians to truly understand. Martin Luther, the famous reformer,

said that the book of Romans teaches us what the gospel message is, and then he said there's one other book in the Bible that teaches us something that's almost just as important in what the gospel message is not, and that is the book of Galatians.

Martin Luther famously said that if he could marry the book of Galatians, he would. He called it after his wife's name saying that he felt betrothed to it and that the message,

the theology, the understanding of who God is that we find inside of the book of Galatians is just so critical for us to see. So for the next five weeks, we as a church are gonna journey through this really important letter

called Galatians. So if you have a Bible, open up to Galatians chapter one. That's where we will be this morning as we kick off this series. Again, if you have a physical Bible, don't try to be a hero. It's a weird book to find. It's in the middle of the New Testament. It's a really small one. So use your table of contents, get the page number and turn there. As you do that, let me pray for us. Father,

God, ask Lord that over these next few moments we would have a powerful encounter with you. That we don't come here to just fulfill a religious duty or to get a history lesson from an old book called the Bible, but we come to have the living word of God speak to our hearts so that we would be encouraged, equipped,

challenged to walk out of this room different than we walked in here. God, we give you permission right now to speak. It is in the mighty name of Jesus that everybody said, amen. I was thinking about it this week.

Gave my life to the Lord when I was like 19 years old and I was raised Catholic. My mom hates when I say, but I wasn't raised in like a Christian household. We occasionally went to Catholic church and then after my grandfather passed away, we started going more consistently.

I did all of the Catholic stuff, like I was an altar boy, which that was weird because I was twice as tall as the priest and I'd have to hold a book for him to read. I'm like, here you go buddy.

It's like, mom, I'm not doing this anymore. This is weird. I'm in a robe, this isn't my thing. But I went through all the motions, but I had never in my life read the Bible. I didn't know what it was. There's not a thing that we did where we like had Bibles. So when I got saved in '19, it felt like I had lived my whole life in the darkness and somebody turned on a light.

And it became this perpetual search for truth that took me years and years and years and truthfully

part of what happened in my faith journey that was so critical for my spiritual development is something that I think all of us need to find at some point. I found a place where I could ask really dumb questions,

Where I could come in and ask questions where it was okay to not know and it was okay to ask questions that people might laugh at. And I somehow ended up in this Bible study of guides on Monday nights.

We'd come together on Monday nights and there's a group of guys, a lot of them further down the road than me, but in a similar season of life and we would open up the scriptures together and we would look at what it meant and I truly literally would show up with a list of questions that I had thought about that week and they would help me answer them and help me figure out what this meant. And then that would open up a whole another realm of questions of things that I'm like, well, what does that mean? And figuring out this faith thing and how to read the Bible, man, it's not an easy thing to do, right? Like it's difficult to do, but it's a worthy

task. And a lot of us guys in this Bible study, we all served in the high school ministry at our church in San Diego. And what ended up happening is a lot of the young guys that were in this Bible study

after graduating from the high school ministry, there wasn't like a young adults ministry for them to go to. So they would end up in our Monday night Bible study. And there was this one guy in particular that I was thinking about this week named Raheem. And Raheem was this really awesome kid, moved down to San Diego with his mom and he was into hip hop and he was getting into the Christian hip hop scene.

And Raheem joined the Bible study when he was 18 or 19 years old and he would show up and just do what I used to do. He would ask really dumb questions. And I was like, I like this guy. He reminds me of myself. And we started to watch God go through this process of radically transforming Rahim. And he started to really become

a new person and all the things that he was doing before. God started to remove some of those things and he started to encourage him to do new things. And every single week at the end of this Bible study, we would do prayer requests and we would all pray for each other. Well, there was one week when we were done, we were all walking to our cars,

Raheem grabs me and these two other guys that the three of us had kind of become like the de facto leaders of this Bible study at this point. And he grabs us and he says, hey, can you guys pray for me?

And I'm like, we just did prayer requests. Did you miss that part? Were you not paying attention? We do the same thing every week, right? But he's like, no, there's something that I've been seeing in scripture that I'm getting ready to do that I really need you guys to pray for, right? And so we're sitting here like, okay, this is an 18, 19 year old guy, this is gonna be the purity conversation where he's like, I've seen this whole thing about purity and I just need to know where's the line. Like how far can I go with my girlfriend? Like what's technically sin, what's not? I mean it's a pretty common question with guys this age, but that's not where Raheem goes.

He sits down with us and he just has this like weight on him. We're like whatever he's about to share with us is something that is like deep in his heart and he's like, man, I'm trying to go all in for God and I wanna do this thing and just give God my all. So we're like, okay, awesome, man. Like what's going on? Like how can we help? How can we be praying for you? And he goes, I've been meeting with my doctor because I've been seeing in scripture that I need to get circumcised and so in three days I'm gonna get circumcised.

And we're like, my reaction was very similar to your reaction right now. Like, wait, what? That's what he just said. All right. And we're like, Raheem, did you stop reading it that far? Like you should have kept reading, right?

If you kept reading, it would have clarified some of that stuff for you. And he was just so confused because again, in the Old Testament, there was a covenant where God with his people, part of the marking of his people to be set apart because again, as God's people, we've always been in this world but not of this world. And God always wants his people to be set apart. And in the Old Testament,

that setting apart was a physical thing, right? It's why the people of God had long beards, they didn't tattoo their bodies.

And they went through the tradition of circumcision because physically they were different than the people in this world. But the beautiful part for you and I living in the New Testament post Jesus is that the Bible says that Jesus fulfilled the law. And now what God is after is not circumcision of the flesh, but circumcision of the heart. And so literally in this parking lot with Rahim, we open up after laughing, being like, dude, what? How did you end up here? You should have said something earlier, right? But we're glad you said something today. We sat with him and we opened up the book of Galatians and we walked him through Paul's basic argument in the book of Galatia where he's going to essentially say that either Jesus fulfilled the law and you and I are no longer under the bounds of this law

or he didn't and the cross was wasted and you and I still have to try to figure out how to fulfill all these hundreds of commands.

Paul's basic argument to the church in Galatia, what we're going to see is it was these guys that were trying to add to the message of Jesus and Jesus alone. They were trying to add to the gospel message.

And Paul's basic argument that we're gonna see for the next five weeks is if you try to say that the message of Jesus is Jesus plus anything, you miss everything. The gospel message friends

is the only good news the world needs. If you're taking notes, the big idea I want to spend the next few moments looking at is this, the gospel is the only

good news. In the book of Galatians we're going to see very clearly what is the gospel? Why does it matter, how do we live with it, how do we understand it, how do we allow it to actually impact our life. So Galatians chapter one,

are we there? We have one person. All right. The rest of you will have to catch up. Galatians chapter one, here is what it says. This is from Paul, an apostle. I was not appointed by any group of people or any human authority,

but by Jesus Christ himself and by God the Father who rose Jesus from the dead. You will notice that this letter,

Paul starts off the letter the exact same way that he starts all of his letters to the churches. It's a basic introduction of who he is. Okay. Quick history lesson to catch you up to where we are. Paul was not always Paul. Paul used to be a guy named Saul. He was one of the most brilliant Jewish legal minds that we've ever seen. His name was originally Saul.

And when Jesus came proclaiming a message that said, you don't have to be a Jew to go to heaven, that the message of God is actually for all people and that the message is that Jesus paid the price for your sin on the cross, Paul thought that message was antithetical to what the Torah taught.

So Saul spent his life persecuting people trying to pro proclaim that message. He would literally go and kill people that were spreading this message. And one day on one of his journeys to go kill these Christians, Paul or Saul has a powerful encounter

with the resurrected Jesus. The Bible says that he's actually knocked off of his horse and he's made blind.

For three days this guy can't see and then a Christian comes to Saul, prays for him and the Bible says that these things like scales fell off of his eyes and God famously renames him from Saul to Paul. And Paul becomes the greatest missionary that the world has ever seen. You and I sitting here today have the gospel message here in America most likely because of the work

of Paul. He planted churches all over the Middle Eastern region where the book of Galatians is writing to is now in Northern Turkey. It's in modern day Turkey. Was a group of churches that Paul started and he started them and founded them on the message that is so central to Paul that he even puts it in his introduction.

He says, hey, let's remember as I'm writing this letter to you that all of our core message is that God brought Jesus back to life. This is the thing if it's true that it changes everything.

And Paul would start a church, he would get some leaders in place and then they were doing well and he would go start another church. And then he would go start another church. And then eventually

those churches, some things would happen and they would write letters to Paul telling him what was happening in the church. And most of our New Testament is Paul's writings back to those churches, correcting and edifying and helping them truly understand

how to live out this gospel message that is so contrary to their human understanding.

Paul is going to tell us that this message is not something that he got from people. He says in the very beginning, I was not elected by people. You got to remember, my authority doesn't come because a bunch of you voted me into power. My authority comes because Jesus Christ himself appointed me.

He's saying this is where I get my authority. This is why I'm an apostle because Jesus spoke to me. And he says the message that is paramount to our faith is this thing called the gospel. If you're here this morning and you go, hey, what is the gospel? Well, the gospel translated,

gospel literally means good news.

Here's the gospel message that Paul is going to explicitly lay out here in just a second, but just so we're all on the same page of what is the gospel? When you go to church and you hear somebody say, hey, the gospel message is, the gospel message is that you and I have no ability to get to God on our own.

But God made a way for us. And two thousand years ago, Jesus stepped out of heaven, he lived a perfect life, the life that we could never live, he died the death that we deserve because the Bible says that the penalty for our sin is death.

And either you and I have to die or somebody had to die on our behalf. And the bible says that Jesus was the propitiation. He was the replacement for us.

And because of what Jesus did on the cross, the wrath of God in our sin has been satisfied and you and I can be made right with God by placing our faith in Jesus. That's the gospel message in its simplicity and its most basic form. And here's what we have to understand as the church. Friends, that is our only message.

You will notice if you come to Rock Point for more than one week, we basically repackage the same message in different ways every single week.

But it's always the same. The gospel can transform you. Jesus' invitation that is free, that will cost you nothing and everything at the same time. It's the greatest message the world has ever heard. Paul says that's the foundation. That's what the gospel is, it's good news. Here's how he continues.

He says in verse two, he says, All the brothers and sisters here join me in sending this letter to the churches of Galatia. He said, may God the Father and our Lord Jesus Christ give you grace

and peace. You'll notice Paul says this in all of his letters to the churches that he writes. He says, this message is one that you receive through grace and it leads to this thing that we're all after in our human experience, peace. The message of Jesus is the only way to actually experience true

peace. And then in verse four, he is going to explicitly

lay out what the Gospel is that the church in Galatia had all agreed upon. Verse four, here's what he says. This is the gospel friends, Jesus gave his life for what? Our sins, just as God our father had planned in order to rescue us from this evil world in which we live. Okay, here's what we have to have is the cornerstone, the foundation upon which the rest of our theological framework will be built. Our entire understanding of God has to be built on the cornerstone

of the gospel. And the gospel message is that Jesus died for what? For your sin, just as God the father had always planned. Jesus was not God's plan B. God did not put the humans on the earth and then look down and go, what are you doing? You fell into sin. God always knew and he always was going to need a redemptive

son. He was going to need somehow to redeem humanity. That plan was always Jesus. And he says that this is the only way for us to be rescued out of the evil world in which we live.

This is the part of the gospel message that we don't necessarily like today. The Bible says that you and I live in an evil world. Why is the world evil? Because you and I live in it. That's why it's evil. We are the evil that is in this world. Because we have in us this thing that's called sin.

And sin is something that you can't remedy on your own. It's something you can't fix on your own. You can't give enough money to the church. You can't build enough buildings. You can't do enough good deeds. Walk enough old ladies across the street. Feed enough homeless people to satisfy and fix the flawed core fundamental

problem that we have. Why the gospel message is still one of the most persecuted messages, why the Christian faith is still one of the most persecuted faiths in the entire world is because the Bible says that you and I, we're the problem. You are not a good person that God just wants to make a little bit better.

The Bible actually says that you are a dead person that he wants to make alive again. You are not somebody that God just wants to make a little bit better. The imitation of faith is one to death. And if you were to take a room full of caskets and you bring all of the religions in,

the only one that can bring dead things back to life again is the message of Jesus. Friends, that is the gospel.

The gospel is that we have no way to work to God. You will never be good enough. You could never do it. You could never achieve it. The entire Old Testament, the law, all of the rules that the nation of Israel were supposed to fulfill, its entire purpose, the New Testament tells us, was to prove

your inability to fulfill the law on your own, thus proving that you needed somebody to fulfill it for you. That is Jesus. That's the cornerstone. That's the foundation upon which all of us agreed. That's the foundation upon which the churches in Galatia were built. The understanding that everybody had agreed when Paul left is that the gospel was the only good news in the world. It wasn't one of a few different good news, it was the only good news.

And where the gospel really becomes good news is when you start to realize that Jesus didn't just die for people,

he didn't just die for some people's sin, he died for your sin. It was your sin that caused Jesus to go to the cross. It was my sin that caused Jesus to go to the cross. And to say that my sin can be remedied in any way other than Jesus on the cross, it begs the question, well then why did Jesus have to go to the cross?

If we could have been bought back in any other way besides the redemptive story of Jesus, why wouldn't Jesus in the Garden Of Gethsemane tell the father, hey, listen, we can buy back humanity

in a different way. I've seen the future. There's like these girl scouts and they make these incredible cookies. If you freeze them, they get even better. Let's just do a fundraiser, we'll raise enough money and that's how we'll buy back humans.

He doesn't do that. He says let's do this because the sin in us is so dark and bleak that it took the punishment of Jesus to satisfy it. That's the gospel message. And where it really becomes something that transforms us is when we begin to realize that it was our sin

that Jesus is satisfied. It is our debt that has been paid. I was reading a story a few years ago about a commencement speaker at Morehouse College.

He gave an incredible commencement speech to the graduating class and at the very end of his speech, he told the entire graduating class, I wanna let you know that all of you today are graduating debt free.

He said I have paid off all of the student loan, have been working with the faculty at the school and I have paid off all of the student loan debt for the entire graduating class and the place erupted. They went wild.

You and I hear the same story and we like, okay, that's cool, I'm glad that stuff kind of happens. It's not as exciting for us though. Why? Because we still have student loan debt. I thought Joe Biden was going to do that but he has not yet.

I'm still making payments, bro. So it wasn't our debt that was paid off. When you realize that it's your spiritual debt that's been paid, it changes things, okay? This is why the gospel message is the most important cornerstone foundation upon all of this is built.

That's what Paul's basic introduction in the letter of Galatians is. Now here's where he's gonna go after how they're changing and manipulating that simple message. He says this in verse six. He says that I am absolutely shocked

that you guys have been turning away so soon from God who called you to himself through the loving mercy of Christ. He says you are following a different way that pretends to be the good news. But it's not the good news at all. You're being fooled by those who deliberately twist the truth concerning Christ.

What was happening in the church of Galatia is right behind Paul after Paul would leave and he would get the whole church to realize, okay, we all agree, this is what the gospel message is, Jesus and Jesus alone.

These guys would come in after Paul and they go, you know what, Paul doesn't really know what he's talking about. What Jesus really meant is that for you to be really a Christian, yeah, yeah, yeah, you can accept what Jesus did on the cross but then you also have to

that. To we're we're we're do that.

Will always be cultural pressure for the church's message to change. For the church of Galatia, the pressure that was coming from culture was basically become Jewish. Culture was telling them that you really need to be a Jew in order to be a Christian.

I don't necessarily think that's the cultural pressure that we're facing today. Like the church would not be growing if our message was like, hey, give your life to Jesus. And then after service, come down to the front all the men. We have flint knives. You can take those and go to the prayer room. Will We have circumcision happening after the service, right? All the guys will be like, I like the Jesus part, the rest of it I'm not in for, right? Like it's not the same thing, but the cultural pressure is still

the same. Here's the thing that we have to see. This is the part that makes the gospel message so easy and so difficult at the same time. Because it's something that you accept, it's something that you believe, it's something that you receive, you can't achieve it, you can't earn it.

But our hearts as humans, we just so easily fall into rebellion, right? Like sinning is easy for us. Like a natural disposition of our heart. But then the same heart that so easily settles for rebellion, we do really well and do really good with religion.

Just give us the seven things to do, give us the eight things to become a better version of ourselves and we'll do those things. And Jesus comes and says, no, no, no, you can't earn it, you have to receive it. I did it all. I paid the price. Your job now is to rest in the finished work of the cross.

Why it's so important for us to see this is because it's really easy for you and I to fall victim to fake news. It's really easy for us to fall prey to fake news. If you don't believe me, just look at politics, right? Try to find anything out there that is actually true and trustworthy when it comes to politics.

Part of why I've genuinely almost stopped caring completely is because I don't even know where to get actual truth from anymore. Everybody has an agenda. Everybody has a story they are trying to sell us. Everybody has a motive of what they're trying to do. What Paul is saying is that the people running the church,

their temptation will unintentionally to do and be the same thing. The church in Galatia, what they were losing by the message of the gospel, the reason that the Bible is still illegal in a lot of countries today is because when people really read it and understand the implications of it, it frees them.

And the people that are in positions of power, they lose the power and the control that they have over people. Why? Because you have the ability to truly see

the plan of God for your life on your own. You don't need to come up to a place like this and for me to tell you what God's plan for your life is. And what Paul is saying is that we have a responsibility as the church. You have a responsibility as the people of God to know and understand what you believe.

And the New Testament says you should be able to give an account for the hope that you have. You and I, when it comes to understanding spiritual truth, we don't have to wonder what is the singular source of truth? Where do we go to get our information? Because all of us, we've been given one source of truth.

Friends, the reason that understanding what these scriptures teach and say is not because it's how we become a better version of ourselves, but it's how we protect the greatest message the world has ever heard understanding

that the world and culture is always going to pressure us to change the content of the message of the gospel. But we have a responsibility to know this thing, to understand this thing and defend it. But the problem is we are living in a time where information and access to the Bible is at an all time high.

But at the exact same time that information and access is at an all time high, our willingness to engage with it and believe it is at an all time low. I was doing some research for this message and they did a survey, Gallup did a survey of Americans in March 2022.

And they asked Americans, how many of you believe that the Bible is the actual literal word of God. You know how many people actually said as Americans that they believe this is the word of God? 20% of US adults believe that the Bible is the literal word of God.

They go, oh, you mean those stories about like the guy that lives in the belly of the whale and like the book that was written after the game of telephone where like one guy told one person a story and then that person told another person a story and then it got like 50 people down and the story completely changed and it was all made up. You mean the stories that are mostly allegorical and metaphorical and there's no way that those are real? We find these are countries getting to a place where we are being honest.

Because I always love the studies when they ask Americans how many of you are Christians and 85% raise their hand and say yes. I'm like, there is no way on the freeway I'm not interacting with those 85% of people. Way you fools are Christian.

But for one in five Americans to say that they believe that the Bible is the literal word of God, it begins to help us understand why culture is moving in the direction that it is. And I'm okay with the world and the country saying that they disagree that this is the actual literal word of God.

But where this becomes something that is highly alarming to me is what this study showed when they asked not just people in the country, but they actually asked professing Christians, how many of you who go to church every weekend,

how many of you who would raise your hand and say yes, I put my faith in Jesus, how many of you believe that the Bible is the literal word of God? Look at the statistics. Only 25% of Christian adults believe that the Bible is the word of God. Friends, if we're here this morning and we sit here and we wonder,

can this thing be trusted? I'm telling you right now that is where you stop in your faith journey, you do not proceed to step two until you answer step one. Because if this book is not to be trusted, then a lot of the things that we say and believe can be completely eroded.

Because if you believe that this book was just written based on a bunch of people who played a game of telephone and this thing can't be trusted, then you are making some of the most foolish arguments that have already been made and disproven. The book that we're reading right now, the letter to the church in Galatia,

not a single historian in the world disagrees that it was penned by the person of Paul, that Paul actually physically wrote this letter. We have multiple manuscripts that verify this invalidated. So what we're reading is a firsthand account.

And we also have to remember as people who sometimes, again we go, I don't know man, there are like the story of Jonah, Living in the belly of a whale, like that is a crazy story. But let me submit to you this morning something crazier, okay? Here's the reason that I believe the story of Jonah is true even though it doesn't really make sense to me completely logically.

The foundation of my faith, the foundation of my Christian experience is that I believe two thousand years ago a person named Jesus, he walked on this earth, he was born to two physical parents, and at 33 years old, he was crucified. And multiple people, historians agree,

this person lived and he died. Now what is debated is what happened to him after he died. But I believe through a series of evidence and through the Holy Spirit's revelation that I believe that Jesus came back to life, that he's not dead even though he was in a tomb for three days and today, right now,

after showing himself to thousands of people in the physical form, today, right now, he's alive and he's seated at the right hand of the father and he's actively speaking to you and I. Okay? That's the cornerstone of the faith that we claim.

And Jesus said that Jonah was true. He talked about it. And so if we have a faith that believes a dead guy can come back to life, then it's like, well, if the Bible says that a dude can live in the belly of a whale, I'll rock with that. Because the cornerstone of this whole thing is that a dead guy came back to life. If

you wanna sit here, if you wanna walk in the doors of church and say, I think Jesus was a complete nutcase. He was a lunatic. The guy was mad. I can hear that argument. I'll listen to that. If you wanna sit here and say that he was intentionally

manipulating people and he was lying to try to get some type of power and wealth that he never did and all he did in his lying attempts was get himself killed. I will hear that argument too that maybe he just was a liar.

But what you and I do not get to do is to say I believe that he is who he is, but I just don't believe the words of God.

Friends, this is how the church becomes relegated out of the conversations of society because we believe what culture is saying, that our message is one that is hate filled, ours is one that is repressive,

ours is one that stops people from really experiencing the true version of themselves. But what the gospel says is it has not come. Jesus didn't come to lock you into a box. He came to set you free.

He came to give you a life behind your wildest dreams. That's the gospel message, but culture will try to get you to change it. And will get you to believe that Jesus is just one of many paths to get to God. And that this is just one of many ways, but Jesus himself said, I am the only way to the father.

It is only through me that you will experience true life.

So if we are really truly going to be the church, we have to be a church that builds our life again on the word of God. That we answer questions and we're able to defend it. And I know that when we read scripture, we pick up the Bible, sometimes we're like, what the heck is this? This makes no sense to me.

But we don't get to claim ignorance because the stakes matter. There is fake news all around us and your family, your friends, your coworkers, your neighbors are going to challenge you when you say, I believe the God of the Bible.

And if you are not able to defend it, you are probably one or two challenges away from potentially walking away from your faith. I'm telling you right now, do you realize the Bible is the most historically defended piece of literature in the world? We have over 5,000 original manuscripts that all verify the same story.

The way that this book was written, who put it together, how it was organized from a purely historical standpoint, there's no way it was manufactured. So then that means

it changes things for us. What is the Bible? What is it supposed to be for you and I? Well, the Bible actually tells us what the Bible is supposed to be. Paul in another letter famously tells us in two Timothy, here's what scripture is supposed to be for you and I as the church. All scripture, it is inspired by God, it is spoken, it is his word, it's useful to teach us about what is wrong with the world. It's not what it does. It teaches us to know what is true and to make us realize what's wrong with us, what's wrong in our lives. It corrects us when we're wrong and it teaches us to do what is right. Where I believe scripture has lost some of the authority

is where the Bible is most famous as people standing on street corners holding up signs that have verses on them telling people that based on what you're doing, you're condemned to hell. And friends, that's not the purpose of the Bible. It was never meant to be a hammer that we beat people over the head with.

Scripture is supposed to be something that you and I as believers, we read and we allow it to be a mirror upon which we look and we go, God, what are the things in my life that I've settled for? What are the sins in my life that I've justified that you know I need to wage war with? How do I become more and more made into the image of God? That's what the gospel is. That's what the Bible is for.

But we've allowed people to take it and to whore it out, to tell a culture, you're a bad person. Friends, we're all bad people. But the beauty of the gospel is it doesn't matter what you did last night. It doesn't matter what your natural sexual orientation

is. It doesn't matter what family you grew up in or what socioeconomic class you come from or how you vote or what you did last weekend. God doesn't care. What he cares about is the condition of your heart and your soul.

And you better believe that after you give your life to him, he's going to radically transform you and it's the greatest process you will ever go through. I'm telling you right now, I look nothing like the 19 year old knucklehead that met Jesus. And that is the beauty of the gospel, but we have to remember

our message is to create the encounter between a broken world and the God that loves them, not to fix all their behavior. When we say it's Jesus plus anything, we lose the power of everything.

Here is what Paul says, where he really the theme of the book of Galatians is, Paul is going to sum up in these next two verses. He says here is what is going to come to anybody who tries to change this message. He says, let God's curse fall on anyone,

including us. He is talking about the people who run the church. Including us or even an angel from heaven who preaches a different kind of good news than the one that we preach to you. He said, I say again that we have said before, if anybody preaches any other good news than the one you welcome, let that

person be cursed. Paul's message, the basic theme of the book of Galatians is that the gospel message does not change. You don't have to sit here and go, we need a revelation from God. What is God saying? No, no, no. God has already spoken. What you and I have to do is read

and understand the revealed word of God and apply it to our lives because the gospel message never changes. And if anybody tries to change it, Paul says that person is cursed.

And in the Greek, which is the language that this book was actually originally written in, Paul uses a word for curse that would have offended and shocked the readers. It would have startled them and gotten their attention. That was the purpose of Paul using it. In the Greek, Paul uses the word anathema

when he says curse. He says, anybody who says this message is anything other than the gospel that we've all agreed upon, that person is damned to hell.

Anybody that would tell you that the gospel is anything other than the finished work of Jesus on the cross is damned to hell. And anybody that follows that message, they too eventually will be damned to hell.

And here's the part that alarms me as a pastor today is that more people are offended that I just said hell in church than there are churches all around us that are preaching false gospels.

Friends, we have to become awakened again to the pressure that culture is putting on us to change the message and how the church is slowly moving and saying, you know what, everybody is going to heaven. You're right, God does love everybody.

Loving God wouldn't send anybody to hell. So it means everybody must go to heaven. And I know that's how you feel and that's your natural inclinations and God wouldn't give you those feelings if you couldn't live them out. Therefore just live them out and then just learn to love God and it's all okay. And friends, it is a false gospel that is damning people to hell.

And we as the people of God need to begin to take hold the mantle of what we've been given to be the stewards of the gospel message for this generation. Because if not, our culture, our friends, our community, our kids are going to potentially be damned to hell.

And I think it's really interesting in this when Paul is talking, especially for us in our cultural language, Paul says if anybody comes and twists this gospel message and says it is anything other than what we've all agreed upon,

he says if a human or even an angel comes out of heaven and proclaims a gospel different than this one, that angel would be damned to hell.

The weird part for me moving from San Diego to Gilbert is all my neighbors went from a bunch of knuckleheads to a bunch of Mormons, right? Like we just, there's Mormons all around us. And I had to begin to understand as I engaged with my Mormon friends really what they believe.

And now let's just assume for a second that Joseph Smith really was visited by an angel and an angel really actually did give him a revelation. The moment that that revelation changed the fundamental message of the gospel, the Bible says that that's a message and that's an angel that should have been damned to hell.

You and I have to understand that one of the most dangerous false gospels in our community is one that feels and sounds and appears to be kind of the same as ours. They use a lot of same language. They say that they are the church of Jesus Christ.

They use the same words. But the problem is they read an entirely different book that preaches a different gospel. It says that Jesus wasn't creator. It says that Jesus was created, that God made him. He is actually the brother of Satan.

And that the way that you get to heaven as a Mormon is you have to do everything you can on your own. You have to be a Mormon in good standing. You have to tithe. You have serve. You have to give. You know what's crazy? The Mormon church doesn't employ a single person. They're all volunteers.

Because they have to. It's part of how they prove to God their worthiness. And what the Mormon church will tell you, what their Bible teaches, the Book of Mormon says, is that grace covers the 10 that you're not able to do on your own.

That you can through discipline and hard work, you can do about 90% of the work to get back to God. And what grace will do is it will cover that last 10%. And what Paul says is that message, it's damned to hell. That is a gospel and a Jesus to friends that cannot save you.

Here's the hardest part for me is I live life with my Mormon neighbors and my daughter's friends who are Mormon. I love them to death. Truly, they're better people than most of us in this room. They are better citizens and better neighbors than most of you. When COVID hit, you know who had all the toilet paper? My Mormon neighbors. They are like, man, we got stockpiles. I am like, my man, let's go. Right? Like it was awesome.

But here is the truth. I'll sit with them, have dinner with them, walk out of their house after looking at the pictures of Brigham Young and Joseph Smith on the wall and I'll walk out and I'll look at my wife and I go, isn't it crazy that that whole time we're talking about dinner,

they think that if I die tomorrow, I'm going to hell. Because again, their foundation is that any other religion besides the Mormon church is an abomination. And I believe if they die tomorrow,

they're going to hell because they're being sold a different gospel. But we just are like, hey, passed the peanut butter, like let's just keep the surface level, right?

Why do I say any of this? How does this practically impact us? I'm not saying that you and I should go and be the ones to witness to all of our Mormon neighbors. That could be part of it, but there's some serious indoctrination that the Holy Spirit has to be involved in to help Mormon people get out of that.

But what you and I have to be really aware of is that if this is what's in our schools, if these are the friends our kids are interacting with, we better be sure that we're teaching them what the true gospel is and that they're not walking out of our house wondering what is the source of truth.

Friends, we have to be the people who take this thing and we take the word of God and we say this thing matters and upon it I will build my life. And I know it's difficult and I know it's hard, but I'm gonna figure it out because it's the only singular source of truth. Here is how Paul concludes this section of scripture

in verse 10, this is where this message gets a little bit throw punchy for us, so just fair warning. Paul says in verse 10, he says, obviously I'm not trying to win the approval of people but of God. He said, if pleasing people were my goal, I would not be Christ's

servant. The basic argument that Paul will make for the rest of chapter one that I don't have time to go over completely. Paul saying is that the message of the gospel will never change, but it better change you. The gospel message better transform you.

He says, if you think I'm doing this and saying these things because this is popular and this is the way to get a big following and have people like me. He's like, that's the craziest idea I've ever heard.

He said, but at some point I had to stop living for the approval of people and I had to start living for an audience of one and understanding that it's only the approval of God that I'm actually after. Just for a moment, if you're a skeptic, I would submit before you, what would take a man of prominence,

a man that had standing in his community, do you realize Saul was wealthy? He preached at the biggest universities. He had a following of people. He was a Roman citizen. He had clout, he had power, he had influence, he had wealth, he came from a wealthy family. And in one moment with Jesus, in an encounter with Jesus,

over the course of the rest of his life, he will lose his life, he will lose his status, He will lose all of his money. He will be stoned almost to death by the same colleagues that sang his praises just months before. And eventually, Paul will be crucified, will actually be beheaded by the Roman government

that he once was a citizen of. What would cause Paul to lose all of that stuff? He understood that this gospel message is real. And if it's real and Jesus didn't just die for somebody, but he died for you, he died for me. This changes everything.

Friends, if I sat here this morning and said, man, the craziest thing happened on my way to church. I was walking out of my house and a bus came out of nowhere and it just ran me over. It was wild. You guys would be like, what? Like what are you talking about? There's no way you got hit by a bus, right? Why? Because I'm not flat, right? There's no evidence that I was hit by a bus.

Yet so many of us, we walk into church and we raise our hands and we tell our families, man, I've been hit by the bus that is the son of God. I've had this powerful encounter with Jesus. But the truth is when we look at our lives, nothing has actually changed. And if we're honest,

we're living for the approval of people. And I'm telling you what the world needs right now is for the church to be what the church was always supposed to be. To be the group of people that goes, we have one message and it's the greatest message the world has ever heard. But it's not just something that we can say, it's something that we have to live. We have to allow it to transform us first. We have to start living forward, not the approval of people, but for the approval of God and God alone.

Friends, this is how we change the world. It's not through voting. It's not through politics. It's by beginning to really believe this gospel enough to live it out. My hope, my prayer is that we as the people of Rock Point would

begin to really allow God to grab hold of our heart, that we would truly understand the implications of the gospel message and that we would be the people who believe it enough that are willing to actually live it out because this is the world's only shot. This is the only good news, friends. It's all we have.

So here's what I wanna do is I wrap this whole thing up. I have a couple of challenges for us. For the next five weeks, we're gonna walk through again the book that Martin Luther said if he could marry, he would marry it. It was that important to his understanding of the reformation.

We're gonna spend the next five weeks looking at it. My challenge to all of you in this room is would you spend the next five weeks reading it as we go through it? We're gonna go chapter by chapter, but we won't go verse by verse. So there's some verses we won't cover. My ask is that you would read it in your own time. You would sit and allow God to speak. You would go to YouTube, go to the Bible project and read and watch the videos about the book of Galatians and study and allow God to speak to you during this series.

And then I'm gonna go one step further and I'm gonna ask you to actually commit what I believe is one of the most important verses for us to truly understand and live out. We'll see it next week in Galatians chapter two.

In Galatians two, Paul sums up what is our human experience on this side of heaven when we truly understand the gospel message. Galatians two twenty, this is my ask for us to commit this verse to memory over the next five weeks. Paul says, Friends, this is our faith summed up right here. We have been crucified with Christ.

It is no longer us. It's no longer I who live, but it's Christ who lives in me. The life that I now live in the body, live by faith in the Son of God who loved me and He gave Himself for me. Paul's argument is that Jesus dying on the cross, it wasn't just him that was crucified, but it's all of us

who put our faith in him. Our human experience on this side of heaven will be our flesh, our fleshly,

worldly, earthly desires being crucified with Jesus, being made into the image of God. And that our lives are no longer our own the moment we surrender them to Jesus. But we stand here willing saying, God, if there's nobody willing to go, send me. And the life that we now live, we live inspired, empowered by the spirit

of Jesus. I would be a fool this morning to talk about the gospel message, the greatest message the world has ever heard and not give you who are sitting here this morning who've never put your faith in Jesus an opportunity to do just that. The book of Romans tells us

that to put your faith in Jesus, all you have to do is confess with your mouth and believe in your heart that Jesus is Lord and you are saved. It's in a moment of belief. It's an act of faith. It's empowered by grace. I wanna ask everybody in the auditorium to close your eyes and bow your heads. Don't peak or God will strike you with lightning.

Mostly joking. But with everybody's eyes closed and heads bowed, I believe there's people that are here this morning, all weekend, who've been surrendering their lives to Jesus, understanding that this gospel message changes things not for people, but for them.

And if you're here this morning, you go, I wanna accept the free gift that is the invitation of faith. The Bible again tells you all you have to do is believe. And if you're here this morning, you go, I don't wanna live this life that I've been living anymore. I want to give my life to Jesus.

I'm gonna ask you right now, even though it's uncomfortable, even though you're wondering, hey, is this me? This is God speaking to you. The Bible says you have the spirit of God in you and this is God awakening you to the truth of who he is. If that's you this morning right now, just throw your hand in the air. There's been hands going up all over the room. There's hands going up right now. Don't be ashamed, put your hand up. This is a moment between you and God that nobody else is looking or they'll get struck by lightning.

Throw your hands up, do not be ashamed. There are hands going up all over this auditorium. If that is you, put your hand down right now and pray this prayer right now in the quietness of your heart. Make it your own words. It's not about the words, but it's the posture of your heart. Say, Jesus,

I believe that you are who you say that you are. I believe that you are the son of God, that you stepped out of heaven, you lived the perfect life, you died the death that I deserve. And that God all my attempts to be a good person have fallen short. I believe that you were the penalty for my sin.

I ask right now for you to come into my heart and set me free. It is in the mighty name of Jesus that everybody said, amen and amen. Hey, can we just give it up for all the people this whole weekend? I'm telling you there's hands all over this room.

Thanks for joining us online this weekend. Let us know if we can help you in any way. Make sure to follow us on social media and connect with us on rockpointe.io for prayer and everything happening here at Rock Point.