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False Gospel & Resisting
FTGC-41
211125AM
Transcript
This is part of a bigger message. It’s something for you to think about. If you look at the news, like I read today that China is building a secret naval base in the Persian Gulf and that the United Arab Emirates is allowing them to have space because they’re spending all this money and it helps their economy. That’s fascinating to think about when we think about Satan’s End of Days plans. For us, we’re not trying to stop Satan’s invasion of this world with deceit, the Anti-Christ coming. We’re not trying to stop that. What we’re called to do is to be serving the Lord and leading men and women to Christ, discipling them and personally living through the deceptions and defilements. How do we do that? How do you prepare for Satan’s End of Days waves of deception?
Do you remember what Jesus warned about most in Matthew 24, His longest sermon on the End of Days in the coming Tribulation time and the Anti-Christ? All of those things he says in Matthew 24:4-5, 11, 24. Beware of deception. How do we, as the dark storm of the End of Days is upon us, and as Satan ramps up before his launching of the Anti-Christ, which I don’t believe we’ll be here for the launching of the Anti-Christ, but I do believe that we’re going to be here through the darkest, most troublesome times, the Church has ever known; how do you prepare for that? How do you get ready for this ramp up of Satan’s evil?
Number one, the Bible says learn the truth. That means we really need to know the book we can trust, the voice of God. How do we do that? Two ways. Do the 52 Greatest Chapter Study and understand the whole Bible. Number two, start understanding how to use a study Bible, how to look up the key words, and the key doctrines, and the key themes, and also to have a listing of all those doctrines that matter for eternity. Learn the truth.
Number two, meditate on the truth. Memorize and meditate on verses. I’ll talk about that, but I want to remind you that’s the preparation. It’s not getting a safe room or converting all of your assets to marketable during hard time. Use wisdom, but how do you prepare for dark days? Learn the truth, meditate on the truth, and share the truth. I say this every class, the Church, the gathering of the body of Christ is so vital. Church is not sitting in a massive group like in a football game watching the team down there. Church is the body ministering to one another. Most of us need a subset of the bigger body that we’re a part of, that we actually engage in the truth of the scripture on a personal level. If you were on the other side of this table, and if we were mutually encouraging one another, every one of my Bible studies I’ve been a part of all of my life since the early days when I first understood campus ministry and the Navigators discipled me, and before that my youth pastor at Lake Lansing Baptist Church discipled me, but all of the small groups I’ve been in have always deeply encouraged me.
In fact, the small groups that I’ve been a part of teaching the 52 Greatest Chapters, I tell my wonderful wife Bonnie, who’s sitting over there doing all the work so that you can see this, I tell her those were the greatest days of my life. Getting up every morning, because I had one every day of the week, meeting with all these different groups studying the very same passage together, and applying it, and then doing our application prayer in front of each other. You know what that does? It holds us accountable to someone that we see, that we know. Do you know what we used to do? We used to text each other. We had this signal system between each other. We would text, how are you doing? What that meant is, are you in the word? Are you obeying the word? Are you fleeing sin, and confessing, and forsaking sin? Are you actually working on learning the truth and meditating on the truth? Do you know what spurs us? When we share the truth in a small group. If nothing else, if you’re tuning out, if you’re part of those that YouTube says only stay for six minutes, or four minutes, or whatever and we’re right in the front end of this video, before you leave, I encourage you to become a part of a small group of believers.
You say, I don’t know how to do that. If you don’t know how to join one, then why don’t you start one? How do you do it? Do the study find anyone at work that is all interested in you and spiritual things. Say hey, I’m in a new Bible study, can you listen to what I’m learning? Just sit at lunch and show them what you found in the Bible. Show them your Bible that you’re marking. Then, grab your notebook and say, hey, these are the trues I found. Then, I’d like to pray my prayer to the Lord. If they’re a believer, instantly the Holy Spirit will stir their heart because believers are drawn to being around someone that is engaging with God and His word, and with truth. The Holy Spirit is energizing them. If they’re not a believer, you could be the one that shows them what Christianity is like. They might say, like last week I told you about that man at the coffee shop in Greece where we were last month, he said to me, why are you a Christian? I was able to share the Gospel. I was able to tell him the plan of salvation. Share the truth. Become a part of a small group. Start actively engaging in these truths.
Then what we’re going to learn combining chapter 1 & 2 is the justifying death, that’s chapter 1 of Galatians, death of Christ… opens for me the sanctifying life of Christ, that’s chapter 2. How I am not deceived is, I understand the doctrines of God’s gracious salvation. That’s what chapter 1 is about, to resist deception. How do I stay undefiled in this world? I understand the sanctifying life of Christ.
Then, the last thing. Do you read Bloomberg? Bloomberg, the huge business service for stock people and financial people, investors, and also for anybody that’s in business, they know about Bloomberg. They do all the quotes and everything. They have the little Bloomberg machine that gives you all the instant quotes. They’re also a tremendous source of news. I remember when I was in seminary the professor said, always listen to businessmen because their money is invested. They always are up on the latest trends and news. They said, just listen to them so you know the trends and global news because of the interconnectivity of business in our world. I looked at Bloomberg Today, you know what they said? We’re more distracted than we’ve ever been before. Do you know why? It said that 90% of people that have smartphones can’t live without constantly look at them. It showed every time they look at them, that they take them right into the restroom with them, and they take them right into the bed, and they can’t live without them. They’re just constantly distracted.
Here’s the final point before we jump into our table work, what’s the ultimate temptation? Anything that distracts our minds from seeking God. Remember Jesus said in Matthew 6:33? “Seek ye,” what? Say it out loud, “first the kingdom of God.” Anything that distracts us from seeking God first, His word, reading it, studying it, doing this 52 Chapter Study, finding time to be a memorizing truth and meditating on it, anything that keeps us from God. His word, His Gospel, believing it, knowing it, living it, sharing it, and living out His truth on a daily basis. Combating anxiety, combating our anger, and our fears, and our irritations that are not Christ like, living the Gospel.
There’s a summary of our whole class.
Let’s jump down to the slides and you can see where again, this is right out of my journal, we’re in week 41, we’re looking at Galatians 1 & 2. This is the title that I gave this, God’s only protection… this is how we can be protected from the coming End of Days deception. Remember, that’s chapter 1 knowing the Gospel. Defilements, that’s chapter 2, understanding the crucified life.
How do we prepare for the coming waves of Satan’s deceptions? Remember what Matthew 24 says. Grab your Bible and I want to read this to you. I like to look at that camera and think that you’re sitting right there. I’d say, it’s to the right, it’s to the left. I always have to help people in my Bible studies because most of them don’t know the books of the Bible. This is more valuable than your cryptocurrencies, or your 401k, or whatever investment accounts, than your checking account, or your ATM pin. This is more important, and you should be in a lifelong journey to knowing the books of the Bible, the content, the truth and all 1,189 chapters. I’m just, like I told you last week, I’m just trying to give you a starting, an example of a lifelong habit of learning the truth, and then grabbing parts of it and meditating on it, and then sharing it. This that’s the simplicity of the Christian life. That’s the power of what God wants to do.
Look at Matthew 24, now that you’ve found that in your Bible, look at verse 4. This is Jesus’ longest sermon on the End of the Days. He says, “And Jesus answered and said to them, ‘Take heed that no one deceives you.’ “ See my Bible? What I do is I circled that word deceive. Look at verse 5. “For many will come in My name, saying, ‘I am the Christ’ and will,” there it is again, do you see that word? “Deceive many.” Keep going down to verse 11. “Then many false prophets will rise up and deceive many.” Go all the way down to verse 24, “For false christs and false prophets will rise and show great signs and wonders to deceive, if possible, even the elect.” If possible, it’s not possible, but if it were possible their deceptions are so strong, they would. That’s strong deception. Deception, deception, deception, deception. Chapter 24, when Jesus talks about the end, more than any other element of the End of Days what He said characterizes the coming End of Days is Satan’s deceptions. What I did is, I circled all those and drew a line between them. Deception, line down to the next deception, line down to verse 11’s deception, line down to verses 24’s deception. Every time I look in my Bible I remember the day I found the four times Jesus said don’t be deceived and the connection between them. That’s what I would encourage you to do.
Back to the slides. How do we prepare for the coming waves of Satan’s deceptions? One way would be to mark your Bible with Matthew 24, all four of those occurrences, and then circle them, and put a daisy chain line between them, so that every time you look in your Bible, you’ll see that. What’s the plan? Learn the truth. How do we learn the truth? We study the 52 greatest chapters, get an overview of the whole Bible. You should take one year, spend one week on each of these key passages, go through the whole Bible. Then, in the process, learn how to use your study Bible, and learn how to look up all those charts that are spread throughout all of those footnotes. There are 25,000 footnotes. Then, how to use the tables in the back. Those tables in the back have a listing of doctrinal statements and of key theology points. It’s just tremendous. I told you, it’s like distilling a whole year of seminary into one book, you just need to read it all.
Number two, meditate on the truth. Begin an ongoing scripture memory habit. What I do is, I highlight key verses whenever I’m reading the Bible, that’s why my Bible is all marked up. I’m looking for treasures, key verses that are explaining doctrines I want to know and the way the Lord wants me to behave. The sanctifying verses, the sanctifying truths. Then, I love to share. Start a small group.
Remember and think about this for a second. Do you know why I’m doing this? Bonnie and I just got off, last Saturday we just got off the plane from two months over teaching in Europe, now we’re teaching three weeks in East Asia. We’re doing it from this beautiful ministry studio, but Bonnie and I are constantly going from one group of next generation believers to another. We travel from country to country, from studio to studio, from classroom to classroom. My days of being all week long with the same congregation, physically in that town where I see everybody at the gas station, and grocery store, and at church on Sundays and Wednesdays, those days are over for us, for right now. We’re on what our last local church we served, Calvary Bible Church, commissioned us to do. Bonnie and I, we stood at the front, they laid hands on us, the whole church gathered, it looked like a beehive, the whole church was surrounding us. Everyone put their hands on the shoulders of the people in front of them, all the way down. Right in the center was Bonnie and I circled by the elders, and then all of the deacons, and all the people of Calvary were there. Together they prayed and commissioned us. Our missions pastor led the whole thing. It was one of the most moving moments. In fact, I have a picture of it. Every time I get discouraged on the mission field, I look at my picture of all those hundreds of saints surrounding us like a beehive. They sent us off to train for 10 years, if the Lord tarries, the next generation. We’re now in our fourth year and it’s wonderful, but you know what? I miss you sitting on the other side of the table.
When I used to do these in coffee shops and Panera’s, I would be sitting with my Bible and my journal waiting for the next group to come in and I’d have it all out and I would be underlining, and marking, and just busily sipping my coffee and working on it. All of a sudden, I would sense someone was near and I’d look up. I can’t tell you how many dozens, I bet hundreds of times people have watched me reading the Bible and marking, and underlining, and being so busy that they come over and stand at the table. They go, excuse me, I don’t mean to interrupt, but can I ask you a question? It’s always the same. What are you doing? Or why are you doing that? They figure out it’s a Bible. It’s easy to figure out what a Bible looks like. It’s a different kind of paper than almost any other kind of book. It’s little columns and usually people don’t earnestly have such a fine print book in public unless it’s a Bible, or they’re cramming for their MCATs or LSATs, medical or legal. They figure out it’s a Bible and there’s a God given, Spirit prompted, curiosity in most people unless they’re totally mind blown by sin, or a cult, or something. For most normal people, the Holy Spirit is saying, hey that might be something you should look into. They stand there. I usually get 30 to 60 seconds, maybe 15 to say something which might make them stay for a while. All the stories come from moments like that.
Look down at your slide. That’s from sharing the truth, starting a small group, reading your Bible in public. I was encouraged by my youth pastor to take my Bible to High School. I started a Bible study group at lunch. We’re encouraging others to grow, and in the process you will grow.
Next slide. This is our 52 week journey. You see where we are, we’re in week 41. We’re in Galatians 1 & 2, justified by faith not law. Last week, if you remember, we were looking at the greatest verses in the whole Bible. Verse 21 and the Bema seat. The second, the greatest day of our life. Before that, we looked at the Gospel. Each week I already have started, as you know, on next week. Spiritual warfare and armor. I can’t wait to share that, but that’s coming in week 42.
Let’s look at Galatians. This is the chronological order of all of Paul’s 13 epistles. This is the date, so in AD 49 Paul wrote Galatians, probably from Antioch or we’re not sure, somewhere else, on his time between his first and second missionary journey. We’ve already covered all these. We’re looking at the first of Paul’s epistles.
It’s right here after his first missionary journey because AD 49 is when it ended. When was Galatians written? Right about here. It’s right between Acts 14 and Acts 15. A little bit later, I’m going to talk about this, but I want you to see it. Paul trained 14 years in order to serve for 10 years. Look, Paul right here starts his public ministry. We call them the missionary journeys. From AD 33 to AD 47 he trains. Think about that.
This is the 52 Greatest Chapter method. The Devotional Method. You make a title like I did, that’s what’s on the board that I’ve shown you. After reading the passage through you summarize it in one sentence. Then, you look for as many lessons as you can find. Then you write an application prayer asking God to change your life, I’ve told you, that’s the hardest part.
Back to our title, Galatians 1 & 2 is God’s only protection from the coming End of Days deceptions. Remember we saw that in Matthew 24, what Jesus said. That is understanding the Gospel as Galatians 1 tells us. It’s the only way to resist the evil age in which we live, that’s what chapter 2 is about, the crucified life, in Galatians 2:20.
This is my journal. I write in it at the top of every week, I’m on week 41, this is the passage, and then this is how I titled it. I told you one sentence. I did one sentence for each chapter. What is the true Gospel of grace, as opposed to, what is the religion of works? That’s what I saw as the message of chapter 1. Chapter 2’s sentence, to distill down the whole chapter 2 is, how does the justifying death of Christ… so look at justifying, that’s what we learn the true Gospel is about, the justifying death of Christ. How does that open for me… What do I mean by open? How does that let the life of Christ be unleashed into my life? That’s called sanctifying. The sanctifying life of Christ is unleashed once I’ve been justified freely by His grace, through the redemption in Christ Jesus.
What does sanctification mean? This is simple theology. Usefulness. God wants me to be useful to Him. Sanctification is about me increasing in usefulness to God. How am I useful? I listened to Him. I obey Him. I honor Him. All of those things are byproducts of sanctification. When I listen, I’m useful. When I’m obeying Him, I’m useful. When I honor Him by my life, I’m useful. That’s how he brings people up to talk when you’re sitting at a coffee shop or anywhere else.
Remember, Jesus most often warned His disciples about the coming global deception of the End of Days. That’s what Matthew 24 is all about. By the way, Matthew 24, Mark 13, Luke 21, and the whole book of Revelation are about this global deception of the End of Days. My question to you is, are you ready? Do you know how to get ready? Jesus explained how we get ready, as we must eat His word every day. We’ve already covered that, that’s Matthew 4. Jesus in Matthew 4:4 when He’s facing off with the Devil said, “Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word […] of God.” Think about this. Jesus was face to face with the Devil. I don’t think you and I will ever get that opportunity, praise the Lord. I don’t want that opportunity. Satan’s not omnipresent and there are 7+ billion people. He’s busily trying to do his plan all over the world. Jesus was so important that for 40 days and 40 nights, Satan and his demons were pestering and seeking to derail God’s plan. Jesus faced the most intense persecution and temptation that anybody can face. He hadn’t eaten and he was out in the wilderness, that’s all Matthew 4 describes of the whole thing. That’s face-to-face temptation.
What did Jesus say? When Satan is ramping it up and trying to tempt us and deceive us, what do we do? Look back to the slides. Jesus said, we must eat His word every day. I would look across the table at you right now and say, have you spent time in the word? That’s what I do. Do you see why it’s so important to share the truth and be a part of a small group? If you don’t have someone looking at you, it’s so easy humanly to push God off in the distance and think He’s out there and we’re glad He’s out there, but I’m struggling and nobody knows what I’m going through. Someone sitting across the table from you, or sitting, drinking a cup of coffee with you, or having lunch with you does know what you’re going through because “No temptation has overtaken you except such as is common to man.” That’s 1 Corinthians 10:13. “But God is faithful, who will not allow you to be tempted beyond what you are able, but with the temptation will also make the way of escape, that you may be able to bear it.” That’s why you need someone looking at you and saying, you’re feeling sorry for yourself. No, you’re not believing the truth.
In fact, you know how I call this technical director over here, sitting at that table, that console, I call her my wonderful wife Bonnie. Do you know what Bonnie’s, one of her greatest ministries to me is? Over these last 38 years of marriage she always says to me when I’m discouraged and when my world is collapsing around me, she says, Honey, you’re not thinking, and believing, and focusing on the truth. You’re letting Satan’s lies derail you, and diffuse all the Lord wants to do, and cause you to be discouraged. She says, believe the truth. Where did she get that? From the scriptures. She just reminds me. She shares the truth. You need a truth speaker in your life, and you need to be speaking truth to others. I look across the table and say to you, are you eating the word? That’s what a small group does. Are you reading, and studying, and eating the word of God? Are you memorizing and meditating on the word of God? Who are you sharing the word of God with? When you’re in a small group, then you start challenging each other to share the Gospel with your family, with your friends, with your coworkers, with fellow students, with your neighbors, you share the Gospel. We need to be stirred up. Hebrews 10:24-25 says we’re supposed to be stirring each other up. The Greek word is paroxysmos. We need to be jolting one another to say, are you in the word? Are you memorizing, meditating? Are you sharing the Gospel? Because that’s what Jesus said. When He returns, He wants to find us doing those things.
Back to the slides. Paul adds to what Jesus said about, we must eat the word of God. Paul adds something. We must guard healthier, sound doctrine. The guard is what you do when you think of pickpockets around, you hold your pocket, you clutch your bag. Hold closely sound doctrine truths about God. Why? Because Satan targets his deceptions against the doctrines of Christ deity, God’s inerrant word, and the Gospel of grace. The question is, are you ready for the dangerous storms of deception that are swirling around us?
This week we’re studying the truth of the Gospel. We’re studying how to resist Satan’s deception. In fact, next week, even more we’re getting into spiritual warfare. Then, while we live in this dark and evil world, we find that the truth of the justifying death of Jesus opens His sanctifying life. That I really can change, I really can be useful to God. How? I choose to live no longer just trying harder and failing often. I’ve been a pastor long enough, people tell me that all the time, I’m going to try a little harder. I said, if you try a little harder, you just failed a little bit more because it’s not trying harder, it’s now living by inviting Christ to live out His truth through me. That’s what we’re going to see in chapter 2, in Galatians 2:20. That’s Paul’s test. What an exciting week we’re in!
We’re living in an age of dangerous, biblical illiteracy among Christians. Here’s what Barna found out among those people taking all of the Barna polls and surveys. Less than half of all adults could name the four Gospels. Those who profess to be Christian’s struggle to identify more than two or three disciples. If you just know the books of the bible, you would know a lot about all of these, you’d know the Gospels and the disciples. 60% of Americans can’t even name half of the 10 commandments. I love the billboard that says which part of the shall not is unclear, but people just don’t know. 40% of Americans believed that Jesus committed sins, which is heresy, which is blasphemous. Half believe anyone who is generally good or does enough good things will earn a place in Heaven. By the way, that is religion. Man devising a way to get to God, that’s religion. That’s what this week’s all about. The grace, the Gospel of grace is God devised the way. Religion is man’s going to devise a way. Religion is false, and wrong, and damnable. 40% believe the Bible, the Koran, and the book of Mormon are all the same spiritual truth.
At the End of Days, Jesus said truth is under attack and lies will abound. That’s why Jesus said watch out for false teachers and counterfeit religion. This is fascinating, when faced with a similar situation at the turn of the 20th century evangelicals… What’s an evangelical? Someone that believes that you were born lost, and a sinner, and condemned for Hell, and you have to be born again through receiving Christ. That’s an Evangelical. Evangelicals, people that are born again, produced a work called The Fundamentals in 1909. By the way, some of you right away say, what’s that? There’s a link down in the video description below. It’s a set of books that were written in 1909 by the who’s who of Christianity of that day. Who were those?
R.A. Torrey, he was D.L. Moody’s assistant, a tremendous Bible teacher. He started BIOLA, the Bible Institute of Los Angeles.
Another one of the authors was B.B. Warfield. By the way, I have books by all of these men. You see these seven? They’re on this list. They’re all classics of Christianity. B.B. was from Westminster. He wrote so many good books. Some of his best are on inerrancy of the Bible.
J.C. Ryle. He was a pastor and a devotional writer.
- Campbell Morgan, he’s the inspiration for our modern day Bible expositors like John MacArthur, and W. A. Criswell, and Swindoll. All of those who are expounding the word of God were greatly challenged by G. Campbell Morgan. He’s the one that would not teach on a passage until he read it through 40 times, like John MacArthur says we all should do.
- I. Scofield. He did the first study Bible; it’s called the Scofield Study Bible.
James M. Gray, who was the famous president of Moody Bible Institute.
Then of course, A.T. Pierson who touched America coast to coast as a devotional writer.
These who’s who, these scholars distilled down what are called The Fundamentals, the foundational beliefs, to distinguish a true believer from a false or counterfeit one. They boiled down all biblical theology into seven essential doctrines. They present and explain these seven doctrines in a multi-volume set called The Fundamentals.
Look up for a second, that’s where the term fundamentalists comes from, which by the way is a negative term nowadays. They call Islamic terrorists fundamentalists, that they’re following the fundamentals of the Koran. By the way, if you do follow the fundamentals of the Koran, you do start operating the way the Koran says you should, which would cause you to have strong feelings against Christians and Jews. That’s the underlying message there, and so they call them fundamentalists. They call Christian’s fundamentalists. Usually, they pick people that are not Christians that are doing crazy things like bombing abortion clinics, or killing abortion providers, or whatever. Do you remember that time period in America where that was going on? They were fundamentalists. That’s not what the word means. The word means someone that follows the fundamentals of the scripture. By the way, what are those fundamentals? Look at the next slide.
Here’s the list of the seven essentials to guide us and help us to uncover when someone’s a false Christian. It’s a way to see who’s on course to deceive others. Here are the seven.
Number one, inspiration. All we know and believe about God is based on His word, so they affirmed the inspiration and reliable historicity of the Bible. In this multi-volume set, there’s a whole section on this, Warfield and the others wrote about inspiration.
Look at this, what they considered a fundamental. Creation. God has revealed from cover to cover in His word as the Creator of the universe just as described in the Bible. They exposed, in 1909, the grave errors of Evolutionism and Darwinism. Look up gender dysphoria that we’re going through right now. Right now in America, this whole CRT time, critical race theory and all the fighting that’s going on politically. If you’re paying any attention to the news, do you know what that’s all based on? Not understanding that Genesis explains the origin of everything, and that God created humans as male and female. There isn’t a blur that no one should know what their gender identity is, that is an attack from Satan. God’s word says, God created them male and female, man and woman he created them. Your gender identity is an imprimatur of the Creator of the universe. Why do you think that evolution wants to destroy the foundational book of the Bible? Because everybody needs to be in gender dysphoria for the Anti-Christ who is going to be a gender dysphoric person Himself, he’s going to be right in this whole confusion of gender identity while still allowing for gross immorality, but you can disregard God’s laws, His rules, His created plan. Back to the slides. Evolutionism and Darwinism, they talk about the dangers of which we need to listen to because most mainline churches, and denominations, and colleges, even Bible colleges don’t believe in creation anymore.
Number three, the third section of this fundamentals has, God’s word teaches clear doctrine about Christ His Church. In this section, they name specifically the cults that presented false Gospels in their day. Over 100 years ago, they say the Jehovah’s false Witnesses. Mormonism is false. Christian Science was false. Spiritism and so on.
The fourth area is depravity, because the mainline Christian denominations were getting away from what God’s word declares, which is the reality of sin. They affirmed that man is not basically good. This is the WW I time when they thought that everyone was basically good and if you could just fan the little spark, it will get better and better. By the way, WW II kind of destroyed that view for a while. They were going against that view, and they said, we’re all born sinners.
Look at number five. God’s word only presents biblical salvation as received only by faith in the incarnate Christ Jesus, who became sin for sinners to save them. What is that? It’s the doctrine of substitution. It’s the reality that we cannot be saved unless we trust someone who perfectly substituted our place, taking the wrath of God against our sin.
There are the first five key doctrines. The essentials that help us uncover when someone’s a false teacher. A false teacher will not affirm inspiration, creation as defined in the Bible, the doctrines as defined in the Bible, depravity, and substitution as defined the Bible.
The last two. Imputation is number six in these seven essentials. Here’s what imputation is. God’s word teaches that salvation cannot be earned at any level, it’s dispensed. This is imputed by God and not by any chance. That’s why people think, if they join a church they can be saved. No. The church doesn’t save you, only God saves you. Then, you’re baptized by the Holy Spirit into the body of Christ, which is the Church, which has many local manifestations, which you got to find one that believes the Bible. Salvation is not dispensed by a church or a cleric. Thus, look at this, they clearly expose the errors of the biggest works religion in the world, Roman Catholicism, and every other religion of human achievement and works righteousness. What is that? Finding a method to get to God. Roman Catholicism has devised the most elaborate method to get to God rather than the method God devised, that God ordained, that God performed and did through Jesus Christ.
Then finally, number seven, Christology. They most fervently declared that all error starts in some way with an incorrect view of Christ. That’s how you know what a cult is. Look up who they believe Jesus was. They strongly affirmed the Deity, the work, and the personal visible Return of Jesus Christ.
Those were the fundamentals. By the way, some wealthy people of the day financed this, the production of thousands of copies of these. They sent them to every missionary. They sent them to every pastor in America. They said they would even provide them for the Sunday school teachers of America. That’s how in 1909 to 1915, how intensely interested they were in preserving the truth. A century after this warning sounded by the greatest teachers of God’s word alive in that generation, how are we? Sadly, we’re doing terribly.
Today, each of us is living in a very distracted world. All around us are distracted people with distracted minds, distracted families, which leads to a distracted life. What happens with distraction? It leads to aimlessness, uselessness, hopelessness, powerlessness. Even for us as believers. Each day we’re battling distraction sent by Satan because he wants to keep us off course. For believers, distraction often means we know so much more biblical truth than we take time to act upon. Look up, we’re supposed to be daily learning the truth, daily meditating on the truth, and daily sharing the truth. There should be someone that looks at you and says, are you seeking the Lord today? Or are you spending your time gaming or listening to the latest music and wanting to know all the lyrics, or can’t wait to get the next episode, or sports, or finances, or whatever? Anything Satan can do to distract us. By the way, remember this? Remember what I wrote up here? What’s the ultimate temptation. Anything that keeps us from God’s word, His truth, His Gospel. That’s what we’re battling.
Back to the slides. Distraction means we know so much more than we act on, that’s the ultimate temptation. Anything Satan can do, whether it’s our job, our finances, our relationships, our own pleasures, that will distract our minds from seeking God and His word, and His Gospel and living His truth.
That reminds us how we prepare for Satan ramping this up is, learn the truth, have a daily plan. Meditate on the truth, have a daily plan. Share the truth, have a daily plan.
Here’s the MacArthur Study Bible. Sometimes I talk about that and I don’t show you. This is actually the page on Galatians, it talks about the title. Every book of the Bible, he does the same outline. It’s the only one of Paul’s epistles specifically addressed to churches in more than one city. By the way, it’s also the only one where Paul doesn’t commend the churches. He talks about all these things, of the setting for the book. Then, he goes through all the key ideas in every verse.
This is for chapter 1, verse 6 of Galatians. This dark bolded writing, “turning away,” is the scripture. Then, these words, the next three lines are his comments. This is where we learn about Greek words. “Turning away” is better translated, deserting. The Greek word was used of military desertion, punishable by death. Paul says you are doing the ultimate disloyalty to Christ. You’re deserting like a soldier from his general. Paul was really troubled.
Then, this is Galatians 2:20, and we’re going to spend a long time on this. First, “I have been crucified with Christ.” It tells you to go back and look what is in the notes on Romans 6. You remember, we already studied Romans. Then, it talks about Christ living in me. Remember Ephesians 4:22? That we are to put off and be renewed, and put on. All of those truths, he reminds you about. That’s how this book is. This study Bible is so valuable.
Here’s my journal. Look up, this is my journal that I write in. I show it to you every week. I take my notes as I sit and work on this and I write them all down. For you, I type them. Let’s go into my typed notes. Here are the lessons I’ve found. See right here? I write in my journal lessons and look how many I’ve found, 11. I write out a simple phrase, and then I put an application for myself. You say, boy, that’s an awful lot of stuff on one slide. That’s why we’re going to go through them one at a time.
Take your Bible and look at Galatians 1. You can look up; I’m going to read it. Let me find it with you. Remember we’re sitting at the table, an important thing about this sharing time that I’m talking about right there is that we all bring our Bibles. We all bring our journals. We look up verses in the Bible. I remember how many times in the small group I would say, let’s look at verse 1 and everyone would just look at me. I’d say, pause. Bible. Galatians. You know what a lot of them would do? They’d go to the front, and they’d look up the index. They go, oh, it’s page what? Let me find it. Galatians 1. One of them would say it’s page 1,033. Whatever it takes. Find your Bible and look up verses 1 & 2.
“Paul, an apostle, (not from men or through man, but through Jesus Christ and God the Father who raised Him from the dead), and all the brethren who are with me, To the churches of…” what’s the last word of the verse? Say it out loud. “Galatia.” Look at the lessons. Galatians 1:1-2 Paul wrote to the churches. Notice in your Bible it’s plural, of a region, which is unique in Paul’s writing of the epistles. He usually writes to a local church or to a one of his sons in the faith, Timothy or Titus. This is unique. It’s also the only one where Paul doesn’t commend them. Look what I wrote.
Where’s Galatia? Why is this so important? I’m glad you asked. Here’s a map. By the way, this is water. There’s Crete, and Rhodes, and everything. This is just a map to show you Galatia. Look at it, right here. Where was Galatia? It’s right there. The reason I’m showing you that is, look what it’s right next to, Tarsus. Paul’s hometown. Look, Lystra, Iconium, Derbe, Pisidia, and Antioch. That’s Galatia. It’s in the heart of modern day Turkey.
See these lines here? See all those lines? Those are Paul’s first, second, and third missionary journeys. Paul traveled through this Galatian region on every missionary journey. It’s right by, as he passed through his hometown. It’s right where Timothy’s hometown is. It’s where Paul and Barnabas were mistaken and stoned. It’s where Timothy joins Paul and Silas. All of these huge beginning events and continuing events of Paul’s ministry are in this region. That’s important.
Second lesson, look in your Bible at verse 3, I’m going to read it. “Grace to you and peace from God the Father and our Lord Jesus Christ.” Look at verse 4, “who gave Himself for our sins.” That’s the substitutionary work of Christ. Verse 4 continuing, “that He might deliver us from this present evil age.” Do you understand? Jesus, His goal is not only to save us forever in Heaven and prepare a place for us and have a mansion for us that we talk about from John 14. Actually, it’s not a mansion, it’s a room. It meant one room in the Father’s house. We’re going to have rooms next to each other in our Father’s house forever, which is more of that sharing together. Do you understand, it’s not just to get us to Heaven? Do you see what it says in verse 4? To “deliver us from this present evil age.” God’s only protection from the End of Days deceptions, and defilements, and the End of the Days waves of deception. That’s the goal of salvation.
Back to the slides. Liberated from sin’s shackles: Christ’s death for our sins was to deliver us from this present evil age. His justifying death opens for me a sanctifying life. Are you seeing a decreasing frequency of sin in your life and an increasing frequency of responding to the Lord?
These two verses I just read and what’s coming, again is talking about the justifying death of Christ.
Let me show you the justifying death of Christ. I over and over show you this. I’ll use my notebook here. This is a picture of all of my sins, John Barnett’s sins. Here’s me. In 1962, this is what I look like. Me, all my sins. I was a sinner by nature, by choice, and God declared me to be one. My mother patiently introduced me, through the scriptures, to Jesus Christ and told me if I would call on Him. The reason she patiently introduced me was because I was scared to death. In 1962 Russia was moving atomic missiles into Cuba to bomb the U.S. In school all of us were watching videos of Alamogordo and all of the atomic and hydrogen bomb tests. They were showing us the devastation of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. We were scared. They scared the life out of all the students in the schools. It was to get everybody ready for facing off with Russia. I started talking to my mom. She, at Bible story time at night, would say if something happens with the atomic bomb or anything, mom and dad, and Karen and Sharon are going to Heaven, but you’re not. That’s one method of evangelism.
Did you know, it never bothered me until one day I came home from school after they had us crawl under our desk and crouch with our arms over our head, that was part of school. They would train you, when the siren went off to crouch under your desk in case an atomic bomb strikes near us. I was crouched there with my arms over my head, and I was reliving in my mind the picture of Nagasaki and Hiroshima. I thought there was nothing left of those buildings, but just little bits of them. The trees were charred and blown away. I thought, I’m not going to make it under my desk. When I got home from school that day, I said to my mom, why am I not going to Heaven? She smiled and opened the Bible. She explained the Gospel to me.
Then the instant that I knelt, in the only quiet place, in our bathroom. Our one, little, tiny bathroom, I knelt on the floor. My mom put the Bible on the toilet seat and showed me John 3:16. In that instant, when I prayed and asked Jesus, who I believed died for my sins and purchase my salvation, I asked Him to save me. Look what happened. This is justification. God put all of the record of my sins from 1956 to 1962, to 2021, till my last moment of life, all of them, which God knows, He took them off me and put them on Jesus Christ. That’s the justifying death. Jesus is my substitute. Jesus justified me by removing the record of my sins. That’s not all justification means. He also put His righteousness on me because that’s God’s plan. I can’t get to Heaven by being good. I can never be good enough. I have to have someone that’s perfect, and I’ll never be perfect. God put all my sins on Jesus and Jesus put His perfect life on my account with God. Back to the slides. That’s the justifying death of Christ. That allows me to overcome the power of sin.
Christians go through life, living in two worlds. The past work of Christ for me, that is His justifying death. The present work of Christ in me is sanctifying me. That’s the two worlds we constantly live in. Christ’s justifying, one-time death on the cross, starts a lifelong sanctifying, life-changing walk of faith. It changes me a little bit more every day to look more like Jesus, to act more like Jesus, to respond to situations and people more like Jesus would, and to live more and more moments in step with Christ. That’s what the Bible teaches.
Here’s the third lesson in Galatians 1. Be aware of false doctrines. The Galatians were being taught a false Gospel of legalism. It says, let me read to you in verse 5. It says, “to whom be glory forever and ever. Amen. I marvel that you are turning away so soon from Him who called you.” Remember that’s the word desertion, like a military defector that had a death sentence. He says, in verse 7, “pervert the Gospel of Christ. But even if we, or an angel from Heaven, preach any other Gospel to you than what we have preached to you, let him be accursed.” That’s a strong anathema, damned forever. If I said before, “I say again, if anyone preaches any other Gospel, […] Let him be accursed.” Look back. Paul, in every way possible, is saying beware of false doctrine.
Here’s one false doctrine, probably the clearest one. This is the Roman Catholic pathway to eternity. Roman Catholics say that were born void of grace, destined for Hell. By the way, 99% of Roman Catholic doctrine is true. They use all the right words in doctrine, they just add one horrible thing to it. Works righteousness. Self-righteousness. They say that water baptism performed by the priest with your parents bringing you, takes away your original sin. They’ve devised a method to get you to Heaven. Every time you do a venial sin you get away, but then you do good works, and sacraments, and draw on the merits of the saints, and those are like good helps toward Heaven. If you commit a mortal sin, you go right back down to being void of grace and headed toward Hell. You have to go back to confessions, and do penance, and go to Mass. Then, you have another little problem. When you die, if you die right here in the middle, then you have to go to purgatory to get purged. If you haven’t cooperated with God in their program, then you go to Hell. If you’re a saint, you die with enough righteousness and go right to Heaven. You say what a strange system. Yep. That’s what 1.2 billion people, and many of them live around you, believe.
How do you share the Gospel with them? This is my favorite. This is a tract. You hear me talk about tracts for Roman Catholics. Roman Catholicism: Scripture Vs. Tradition. It’s my favorite tract on Roman Catholics, how to lead them to Christ. It’s by a wonderful student of the word, Mike Gendron. Down in the description, there’s a link right to his website, you can find out about that.
Basically, what Paul said is dangerous is, people who think they can, through religion, through some devised method, get merit with God. This is Catholicism. You’re born as sinner, that’s true. Baptism washes away gives a fresh start, that’s false. Venial sins can be removed by confession, penance, merit, and good works, that’s false. Only Christ can remove them. Mortal sins, there are venial and mortal, puts you back to the start and puts you longer in purgatory, that’s false. You can go to Hell for even one sin, doesn’t matter if it’s venial or mortal. At death only saints go to Heaven, that’s true. The rest go to purgatory, that’s false. Isn’t it something? Here’s one true thing they say, here’s another truth thing. Time to purge shorten by indulgences in Heaven, that’s false. Basically, Roman Catholicism adds this works religion of merit to the truth, the doctrine they teach that’s absolutely true about the deity of Christ, and the inerrancy of the word, and the substitutionary atonement of Christ. All the things that they say are true, that are, the 99%, are ruined by the 1% of works based righteousness. Only God devised the plan. Rome or any religion can’t devise the plan.
Look at this. Here’s a summary. All the world’s false religions have the same element, sinners inventing a way to get reconciled, to become God’s friend instead of His enemy. The Gospel is God explaining how He can be reconciled to sinners. As sinners we don’t have any power to satisfy His anger. We have no goodness to attract Him. We have no righteousness that can earn His forgiveness. We’re convicts. I like to tell people we’re offenders. The divine court of righteousness declares all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. We’ve been justly and eternally banished from His presence. The wages of sin is what? Death. That’s banished from His presence, suffering the vengeance of eternal fire. What does that mean? The Bible says each of us are hopeless, helpless, impotent, ignorant, blind, and doomed. Any hope for relationship to God has to come from Him, it can’t come from us. Religion is when it comes from us. When we try harder, do more, figure out a way.
Let me just show you a little doctrine. A Christian is justified once by faith because of justifications permanent declaration by God. However, to the man who does not work but trusts in God who justifies the wicked, his faith is credited as righteousness. That’s what God says. Look what religion says. A Catholic is justified repeatedly by sacraments and works because he loses the grace of justification each time a mortal sin is committed. Loses the grace of justification, that means it gets unloose from him and he loses it. The sacrament of Penance offers a new possibility to convert and recover the grace of justification. By the way, that’s a quote right from the Roman Catholic theology.
Look at salvation. This is what God says, a Christian is purified by the blood of Jesus. The blood of Jesus purifies us from all sin. What does religion say? We’re purified by the fires of purgatory. Jesus didn’t do enough on the cross. You undergo purification and purgatory so as to achieve holiness necessary to enter the joy of Heaven. That’s in the Catholic doctrines. It’s number 1030 and 1031.
What’s the real way of salvation? This is back to that nice tract by Mike Gendron. We’re all spiritually dead, destined for Hell. When Jesus saves us, it’s by faith in Christ alone. We received the righteousness of God credited through justification. See what these verses say? He saved us, not because of righteous things we’ve done but because of His mercy. Titus 3:5. Justification is a permanent verdict by God that declares a sinner righteous because of his faith, right here, in Christ. God continues to see the sinner as if he were righteous, even if he sins. Isn’t that comforting? Because the basis for justification is the righteousness of Christ.
What is sanctification after I’m saved? It’s just getting me more useful to God. Only justified people are glorified and go to Heaven. If you reject the only way to Heaven, which is the one God devised you won’t have salvation. If you reject religion and receive Christ, then you have salvation. If you reject Christ and His Gospel of substitution and justification, you’re condemned to Hell.
We’re supposed to guard the Gospel, that’s what it says in Galatians 1:11-12, Paul was taught the Gospel. Look what it says in verse 11, “But I make known to you, brethren, that the Gospel which is preached by me is not according to man. For I neither receive it from man, nor was I taught it,” it’s not religion, “it came through the revelation of Jesus Christ.”
Back to the slides. Guard the Gospel. What does that mean? What’s the simple message of the Gospel we’re supposed to guard? Paul captures it right here in Acts 16:31, “Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and you will be saved.” Believe that God the Son, Jesus Christ, came into the world. The Bible says he was born of a virgin, that He lived a perfect life, the only perfect life, that He died as a substitute as the Lamb of God on the cross, He rose from the grave, He ascended to the right hand of the Father because He finished the work, and He sat down at the right hand of the Father. That’s what we call the drive train of the Gospel. You must believe in the true Christ, the one described in the Bible, in the true Christ’s death and resurrection for you, but how do you get it? You just trust Christ. Not yourself, not your method. You put your faith in Him, the substitute, the Lamb of God that took your place. You affirm that your belief is in the Lord Jesus Christ, who lived and died for you and rose again. You believe that. You acknowledge Christ as your Lord and Savior, and you receive the forgiveness He offers. That’s the simple Gospel.
Back to Galatians. Remember we just covered guard the Gospel, look at the next section and we’ve run out of time. Often this happened at Panera and Starbucks, we overstayed our welcome. In verses 13-17 and 18-2:1 God’s training program. God called and saved Paul, and trained him in Arabia. He spent a lot of years in training preparation. I showed you that at the beginning. Look at this, Paul was shaped for ministry during those years of obscurity. He trained for 14 years in preparation for his 10 years of missions’ trips.
Here’s my summary of that I shared with you already in Acts, but I’m going to show you again. Here are six lessons that I emphasize in my small groups. Study all you can because preparation is vital. Paul spent three years in the desert with Christ. Wait for God’s timing because growth takes time. Paul spent seven years in Tarsus. Listen to a Barnabas because everybody needs discipleship. Three years in Antioch, that’s where Paul came down in his testimony, we see that he wrote in Galatians 2:20. Run the race because God can do so much in short order. Paul spent 10 years on his missions’ trip. Learn contentment because God can use this anywhere. Paul spent the next 10 years in prison. 14 years, right here, studying, and waiting, and listening. 10 years in missions’. 10 years in prison. That was Paul’s career. What’s the essence? Loved Jesus more than everything because no one is indispensable. We’re all going to get old, and wear out, and get weak. Think prison, loneliness, and death. Paul kept going, finished the race, trusted God. He was content even in prison. Those are the lessons.
Galatians 2:7. Do what God calls you to do. Many people are wanting to be someone else. Just let God use you as His ambassador right where you are. Galatians 2:10, stay tender. Galatians 2:11-15, integrity matters to God. Galatians 2:16, justification is only by faith. We have to read that. Look up for a second. Let me read you Galatians 2:16. It’s one of my memory verses that I review regularly. “Knowing that a man,” Galatians 2:16, “is not justified by the works of the law but by faith in Jesus Christ, even we have believed in Christ Jesus, that we might be justified by faith in Christ and not by the works of law; for by the works of the law no flesh shall no man be justified.” Back to the slides. Justification is only by faith. Be aware of religion, believe the Gospel.
Justification is when God punishes Jesus on the cross like He commits every sin we have ever sinned. Then God, erases the record of our sin and put it on Christ. That’s justification.
Finally, we come to Galatians 2:20. Crucified living. This is what it says. We have two parts of one life. The justifying death of Christ is the past. Notice what Paul says, “I have been crucified with Christ.” He loved me. He gave Himself for me. All those things are in the past. That’s the justifying death of Christ. That’s one half of Galatians 2:20. Here’s the other half, to present the sanctifying life of Christ. “It is no longer I who live,” right now. It’s present tense. “Lives in me; and the life which I now live in the,” present tense, “in the flesh.” Present tense, “I live by the faith in the Son of God.” I’m letting Christ sanctify me. I’m agreeing with Him. I’m surrendering to Him. I’m letting Him work out His truth in me here.
Here’s the summary. Christ’s justifying, one time death on the cross, starts a lifelong sanctifying, life-changing walk of faith that changes me a bit more each day to look more like Jesus, because I’m eating His word and it’s transforming me to act more like Jesus. I’m surrendering to His Spirit to respond more like Jesus, because I love Him. I keep His commandments and to live more and more in step with Christ, which is called being full of His Spirit.
Time to those three final challenges. Number one, find someone with whom you can share your findings. Get started today on a healthy diet. Learn some healthy verses. Down in the comment section I have the Navigator verses I recommend. Use a healthy study Bible. I recommend the MacArthur Study Bible. Reference a healthy theology book. I recommend Grudem. Pray for us.
It’s time to go. We’re going to have our closing prayer and I’m going to pray for you. This is what I’m praying for you, that you commit in order to prepare for the growing darkness to learning the truth, by being in a good Bible study, like our 52 Chapter Study and by systematically learning doctrine. Meditate on the truth. Memorize verses. Share the truth with others. Get a small group going. Live the truth of the Gospel, that the justifying death of Jesus Christ opens for me His sanctifying life. Let’s pray.
Father. I pray that we would guard the Gospel. That we would see that religion is our human invention of how to get to You, but the Gospel is Your devised plan. We’re helpless, hopeless, impotent, and condemned by Your righteous holiness, but You made a way. You are a loving, saving, savior God who offered Your one and only Son in our place. If we’ll just reach out to Him and cling to Christ as our substitute, our only hope by faith, we have endless life. Then, you start making us more useful. I pray for everyone that’s in this 52 Chapter Study, that they will cling by faith every day to the truth of the Gospel. That they will allow you’re justifying death to open that sanctifying life. That it’s no longer me trying harder, but Christ, as Paul said in Galatians 2:20, living in me. I pray you’d unleash that truth even more in my life this week, and even more in the lives of all these precious brothers and sisters in Christ in this study this week. I pray in Jesus’ name, Amen.
God bless you. Have a great week in Galatians 1 & 2. Lord willing next week, spiritual warfare in Ephesians 6. God bless you.
Transcript
This is part of a bigger message. It’s something for you to think about. If you look at the news, like I read today that China is building a secret naval base in the Persian Gulf and that the United Arab Emirates is allowing them to have space because they’re spending all this money and it helps their economy. That’s fascinating to think about when we think about Satan’s End of Days plans. For us, we’re not trying to stop Satan’s invasion of this world with deceit, the Anti-Christ coming. We’re not trying to stop that. What we’re called to do is to be serving the Lord and leading men and women to Christ, discipling them and personally living through the deceptions and defilements. How do we do that? How do you prepare for Satan’s End of Days waves of deception?
Do you remember what Jesus warned about most in Matthew 24, His longest sermon on the End of Days in the coming Tribulation time and the Anti-Christ? All of those things he says in Matthew 24:4-5, 11, 24. Beware of deception. How do we, as the dark storm of the End of Days is upon us, and as Satan ramps up before his launching of the Anti-Christ, which I don’t believe we’ll be here for the launching of the Anti-Christ, but I do believe that we’re going to be here through the darkest, most troublesome times, the Church has ever known; how do you prepare for that? How do you get ready for this ramp up of Satan’s evil?
Number one, the Bible says learn the truth. That means we really need to know the book we can trust, the voice of God. How do we do that? Two ways. Do the 52 Greatest Chapter Study and understand the whole Bible. Number two, start understanding how to use a study Bible, how to look up the key words, and the key doctrines, and the key themes, and also to have a listing of all those doctrines that matter for eternity. Learn the truth.
Number two, meditate on the truth. Memorize and meditate on verses. I’ll talk about that, but I want to remind you that’s the preparation. It’s not getting a safe room or converting all of your assets to marketable during hard time. Use wisdom, but how do you prepare for dark days? Learn the truth, meditate on the truth, and share the truth. I say this every class, the Church, the gathering of the body of Christ is so vital. Church is not sitting in a massive group like in a football game watching the team down there. Church is the body ministering to one another. Most of us need a subset of the bigger body that we’re a part of, that we actually engage in the truth of the scripture on a personal level. If you were on the other side of this table, and if we were mutually encouraging one another, every one of my Bible studies I’ve been a part of all of my life since the early days when I first understood campus ministry and the Navigators discipled me, and before that my youth pastor at Lake Lansing Baptist Church discipled me, but all of the small groups I’ve been in have always deeply encouraged me.
In fact, the small groups that I’ve been a part of teaching the 52 Greatest Chapters, I tell my wonderful wife Bonnie, who’s sitting over there doing all the work so that you can see this, I tell her those were the greatest days of my life. Getting up every morning, because I had one every day of the week, meeting with all these different groups studying the very same passage together, and applying it, and then doing our application prayer in front of each other. You know what that does? It holds us accountable to someone that we see, that we know. Do you know what we used to do? We used to text each other. We had this signal system between each other. We would text, how are you doing? What that meant is, are you in the word? Are you obeying the word? Are you fleeing sin, and confessing, and forsaking sin? Are you actually working on learning the truth and meditating on the truth? Do you know what spurs us? When we share the truth in a small group. If nothing else, if you’re tuning out, if you’re part of those that YouTube says only stay for six minutes, or four minutes, or whatever and we’re right in the front end of this video, before you leave, I encourage you to become a part of a small group of believers.
You say, I don’t know how to do that. If you don’t know how to join one, then why don’t you start one? How do you do it? Do the study find anyone at work that is all interested in you and spiritual things. Say hey, I’m in a new Bible study, can you listen to what I’m learning? Just sit at lunch and show them what you found in the Bible. Show them your Bible that you’re marking. Then, grab your notebook and say, hey, these are the trues I found. Then, I’d like to pray my prayer to the Lord. If they’re a believer, instantly the Holy Spirit will stir their heart because believers are drawn to being around someone that is engaging with God and His word, and with truth. The Holy Spirit is energizing them. If they’re not a believer, you could be the one that shows them what Christianity is like. They might say, like last week I told you about that man at the coffee shop in Greece where we were last month, he said to me, why are you a Christian? I was able to share the Gospel. I was able to tell him the plan of salvation. Share the truth. Become a part of a small group. Start actively engaging in these truths.
Then what we’re going to learn combining chapter 1 & 2 is the justifying death, that’s chapter 1 of Galatians, death of Christ… opens for me the sanctifying life of Christ, that’s chapter 2. How I am not deceived is, I understand the doctrines of God’s gracious salvation. That’s what chapter 1 is about, to resist deception. How do I stay undefiled in this world? I understand the sanctifying life of Christ.
Then, the last thing. Do you read Bloomberg? Bloomberg, the huge business service for stock people and financial people, investors, and also for anybody that’s in business, they know about Bloomberg. They do all the quotes and everything. They have the little Bloomberg machine that gives you all the instant quotes. They’re also a tremendous source of news. I remember when I was in seminary the professor said, always listen to businessmen because their money is invested. They always are up on the latest trends and news. They said, just listen to them so you know the trends and global news because of the interconnectivity of business in our world. I looked at Bloomberg Today, you know what they said? We’re more distracted than we’ve ever been before. Do you know why? It said that 90% of people that have smartphones can’t live without constantly look at them. It showed every time they look at them, that they take them right into the restroom with them, and they take them right into the bed, and they can’t live without them. They’re just constantly distracted.
Here’s the final point before we jump into our table work, what’s the ultimate temptation? Anything that distracts our minds from seeking God. Remember Jesus said in Matthew 6:33? “Seek ye,” what? Say it out loud, “first the kingdom of God.” Anything that distracts us from seeking God first, His word, reading it, studying it, doing this 52 Chapter Study, finding time to be a memorizing truth and meditating on it, anything that keeps us from God. His word, His Gospel, believing it, knowing it, living it, sharing it, and living out His truth on a daily basis. Combating anxiety, combating our anger, and our fears, and our irritations that are not Christ like, living the Gospel.
There’s a summary of our whole class.
Let’s jump down to the slides and you can see where again, this is right out of my journal, we’re in week 41, we’re looking at Galatians 1 & 2. This is the title that I gave this, God’s only protection… this is how we can be protected from the coming End of Days deception. Remember, that’s chapter 1 knowing the Gospel. Defilements, that’s chapter 2, understanding the crucified life.
How do we prepare for the coming waves of Satan’s deceptions? Remember what Matthew 24 says. Grab your Bible and I want to read this to you. I like to look at that camera and think that you’re sitting right there. I’d say, it’s to the right, it’s to the left. I always have to help people in my Bible studies because most of them don’t know the books of the Bible. This is more valuable than your cryptocurrencies, or your 401k, or whatever investment accounts, than your checking account, or your ATM pin. This is more important, and you should be in a lifelong journey to knowing the books of the Bible, the content, the truth and all 1,189 chapters. I’m just, like I told you last week, I’m just trying to give you a starting, an example of a lifelong habit of learning the truth, and then grabbing parts of it and meditating on it, and then sharing it. This that’s the simplicity of the Christian life. That’s the power of what God wants to do.
Look at Matthew 24, now that you’ve found that in your Bible, look at verse 4. This is Jesus’ longest sermon on the End of the Days. He says, “And Jesus answered and said to them, ‘Take heed that no one deceives you.’ “ See my Bible? What I do is I circled that word deceive. Look at verse 5. “For many will come in My name, saying, ‘I am the Christ’ and will,” there it is again, do you see that word? “Deceive many.” Keep going down to verse 11. “Then many false prophets will rise up and deceive many.” Go all the way down to verse 24, “For false christs and false prophets will rise and show great signs and wonders to deceive, if possible, even the elect.” If possible, it’s not possible, but if it were possible their deceptions are so strong, they would. That’s strong deception. Deception, deception, deception, deception. Chapter 24, when Jesus talks about the end, more than any other element of the End of Days what He said characterizes the coming End of Days is Satan’s deceptions. What I did is, I circled all those and drew a line between them. Deception, line down to the next deception, line down to verse 11’s deception, line down to verses 24’s deception. Every time I look in my Bible I remember the day I found the four times Jesus said don’t be deceived and the connection between them. That’s what I would encourage you to do.
Back to the slides. How do we prepare for the coming waves of Satan’s deceptions? One way would be to mark your Bible with Matthew 24, all four of those occurrences, and then circle them, and put a daisy chain line between them, so that every time you look in your Bible, you’ll see that. What’s the plan? Learn the truth. How do we learn the truth? We study the 52 greatest chapters, get an overview of the whole Bible. You should take one year, spend one week on each of these key passages, go through the whole Bible. Then, in the process, learn how to use your study Bible, and learn how to look up all those charts that are spread throughout all of those footnotes. There are 25,000 footnotes. Then, how to use the tables in the back. Those tables in the back have a listing of doctrinal statements and of key theology points. It’s just tremendous. I told you, it’s like distilling a whole year of seminary into one book, you just need to read it all.
Number two, meditate on the truth. Begin an ongoing scripture memory habit. What I do is, I highlight key verses whenever I’m reading the Bible, that’s why my Bible is all marked up. I’m looking for treasures, key verses that are explaining doctrines I want to know and the way the Lord wants me to behave. The sanctifying verses, the sanctifying truths. Then, I love to share. Start a small group.
Remember and think about this for a second. Do you know why I’m doing this? Bonnie and I just got off, last Saturday we just got off the plane from two months over teaching in Europe, now we’re teaching three weeks in East Asia. We’re doing it from this beautiful ministry studio, but Bonnie and I are constantly going from one group of next generation believers to another. We travel from country to country, from studio to studio, from classroom to classroom. My days of being all week long with the same congregation, physically in that town where I see everybody at the gas station, and grocery store, and at church on Sundays and Wednesdays, those days are over for us, for right now. We’re on what our last local church we served, Calvary Bible Church, commissioned us to do. Bonnie and I, we stood at the front, they laid hands on us, the whole church gathered, it looked like a beehive, the whole church was surrounding us. Everyone put their hands on the shoulders of the people in front of them, all the way down. Right in the center was Bonnie and I circled by the elders, and then all of the deacons, and all the people of Calvary were there. Together they prayed and commissioned us. Our missions pastor led the whole thing. It was one of the most moving moments. In fact, I have a picture of it. Every time I get discouraged on the mission field, I look at my picture of all those hundreds of saints surrounding us like a beehive. They sent us off to train for 10 years, if the Lord tarries, the next generation. We’re now in our fourth year and it’s wonderful, but you know what? I miss you sitting on the other side of the table.
When I used to do these in coffee shops and Panera’s, I would be sitting with my Bible and my journal waiting for the next group to come in and I’d have it all out and I would be underlining, and marking, and just busily sipping my coffee and working on it. All of a sudden, I would sense someone was near and I’d look up. I can’t tell you how many dozens, I bet hundreds of times people have watched me reading the Bible and marking, and underlining, and being so busy that they come over and stand at the table. They go, excuse me, I don’t mean to interrupt, but can I ask you a question? It’s always the same. What are you doing? Or why are you doing that? They figure out it’s a Bible. It’s easy to figure out what a Bible looks like. It’s a different kind of paper than almost any other kind of book. It’s little columns and usually people don’t earnestly have such a fine print book in public unless it’s a Bible, or they’re cramming for their MCATs or LSATs, medical or legal. They figure out it’s a Bible and there’s a God given, Spirit prompted, curiosity in most people unless they’re totally mind blown by sin, or a cult, or something. For most normal people, the Holy Spirit is saying, hey that might be something you should look into. They stand there. I usually get 30 to 60 seconds, maybe 15 to say something which might make them stay for a while. All the stories come from moments like that.
Look down at your slide. That’s from sharing the truth, starting a small group, reading your Bible in public. I was encouraged by my youth pastor to take my Bible to High School. I started a Bible study group at lunch. We’re encouraging others to grow, and in the process you will grow.
Next slide. This is our 52 week journey. You see where we are, we’re in week 41. We’re in Galatians 1 & 2, justified by faith not law. Last week, if you remember, we were looking at the greatest verses in the whole Bible. Verse 21 and the Bema seat. The second, the greatest day of our life. Before that, we looked at the Gospel. Each week I already have started, as you know, on next week. Spiritual warfare and armor. I can’t wait to share that, but that’s coming in week 42.
Let’s look at Galatians. This is the chronological order of all of Paul’s 13 epistles. This is the date, so in AD 49 Paul wrote Galatians, probably from Antioch or we’re not sure, somewhere else, on his time between his first and second missionary journey. We’ve already covered all these. We’re looking at the first of Paul’s epistles.
It’s right here after his first missionary journey because AD 49 is when it ended. When was Galatians written? Right about here. It’s right between Acts 14 and Acts 15. A little bit later, I’m going to talk about this, but I want you to see it. Paul trained 14 years in order to serve for 10 years. Look, Paul right here starts his public ministry. We call them the missionary journeys. From AD 33 to AD 47 he trains. Think about that.
This is the 52 Greatest Chapter method. The Devotional Method. You make a title like I did, that’s what’s on the board that I’ve shown you. After reading the passage through you summarize it in one sentence. Then, you look for as many lessons as you can find. Then you write an application prayer asking God to change your life, I’ve told you, that’s the hardest part.
Back to our title, Galatians 1 & 2 is God’s only protection from the coming End of Days deceptions. Remember we saw that in Matthew 24, what Jesus said. That is understanding the Gospel as Galatians 1 tells us. It’s the only way to resist the evil age in which we live, that’s what chapter 2 is about, the crucified life, in Galatians 2:20.
This is my journal. I write in it at the top of every week, I’m on week 41, this is the passage, and then this is how I titled it. I told you one sentence. I did one sentence for each chapter. What is the true Gospel of grace, as opposed to, what is the religion of works? That’s what I saw as the message of chapter 1. Chapter 2’s sentence, to distill down the whole chapter 2 is, how does the justifying death of Christ… so look at justifying, that’s what we learn the true Gospel is about, the justifying death of Christ. How does that open for me… What do I mean by open? How does that let the life of Christ be unleashed into my life? That’s called sanctifying. The sanctifying life of Christ is unleashed once I’ve been justified freely by His grace, through the redemption in Christ Jesus.
What does sanctification mean? This is simple theology. Usefulness. God wants me to be useful to Him. Sanctification is about me increasing in usefulness to God. How am I useful? I listened to Him. I obey Him. I honor Him. All of those things are byproducts of sanctification. When I listen, I’m useful. When I’m obeying Him, I’m useful. When I honor Him by my life, I’m useful. That’s how he brings people up to talk when you’re sitting at a coffee shop or anywhere else.
Remember, Jesus most often warned His disciples about the coming global deception of the End of Days. That’s what Matthew 24 is all about. By the way, Matthew 24, Mark 13, Luke 21, and the whole book of Revelation are about this global deception of the End of Days. My question to you is, are you ready? Do you know how to get ready? Jesus explained how we get ready, as we must eat His word every day. We’ve already covered that, that’s Matthew 4. Jesus in Matthew 4:4 when He’s facing off with the Devil said, “Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word […] of God.” Think about this. Jesus was face to face with the Devil. I don’t think you and I will ever get that opportunity, praise the Lord. I don’t want that opportunity. Satan’s not omnipresent and there are 7+ billion people. He’s busily trying to do his plan all over the world. Jesus was so important that for 40 days and 40 nights, Satan and his demons were pestering and seeking to derail God’s plan. Jesus faced the most intense persecution and temptation that anybody can face. He hadn’t eaten and he was out in the wilderness, that’s all Matthew 4 describes of the whole thing. That’s face-to-face temptation.
What did Jesus say? When Satan is ramping it up and trying to tempt us and deceive us, what do we do? Look back to the slides. Jesus said, we must eat His word every day. I would look across the table at you right now and say, have you spent time in the word? That’s what I do. Do you see why it’s so important to share the truth and be a part of a small group? If you don’t have someone looking at you, it’s so easy humanly to push God off in the distance and think He’s out there and we’re glad He’s out there, but I’m struggling and nobody knows what I’m going through. Someone sitting across the table from you, or sitting, drinking a cup of coffee with you, or having lunch with you does know what you’re going through because “No temptation has overtaken you except such as is common to man.” That’s 1 Corinthians 10:13. “But God is faithful, who will not allow you to be tempted beyond what you are able, but with the temptation will also make the way of escape, that you may be able to bear it.” That’s why you need someone looking at you and saying, you’re feeling sorry for yourself. No, you’re not believing the truth.
In fact, you know how I call this technical director over here, sitting at that table, that console, I call her my wonderful wife Bonnie. Do you know what Bonnie’s, one of her greatest ministries to me is? Over these last 38 years of marriage she always says to me when I’m discouraged and when my world is collapsing around me, she says, Honey, you’re not thinking, and believing, and focusing on the truth. You’re letting Satan’s lies derail you, and diffuse all the Lord wants to do, and cause you to be discouraged. She says, believe the truth. Where did she get that? From the scriptures. She just reminds me. She shares the truth. You need a truth speaker in your life, and you need to be speaking truth to others. I look across the table and say to you, are you eating the word? That’s what a small group does. Are you reading, and studying, and eating the word of God? Are you memorizing and meditating on the word of God? Who are you sharing the word of God with? When you’re in a small group, then you start challenging each other to share the Gospel with your family, with your friends, with your coworkers, with fellow students, with your neighbors, you share the Gospel. We need to be stirred up. Hebrews 10:24-25 says we’re supposed to be stirring each other up. The Greek word is paroxysmos. We need to be jolting one another to say, are you in the word? Are you memorizing, meditating? Are you sharing the Gospel? Because that’s what Jesus said. When He returns, He wants to find us doing those things.
Back to the slides. Paul adds to what Jesus said about, we must eat the word of God. Paul adds something. We must guard healthier, sound doctrine. The guard is what you do when you think of pickpockets around, you hold your pocket, you clutch your bag. Hold closely sound doctrine truths about God. Why? Because Satan targets his deceptions against the doctrines of Christ deity, God’s inerrant word, and the Gospel of grace. The question is, are you ready for the dangerous storms of deception that are swirling around us?
This week we’re studying the truth of the Gospel. We’re studying how to resist Satan’s deception. In fact, next week, even more we’re getting into spiritual warfare. Then, while we live in this dark and evil world, we find that the truth of the justifying death of Jesus opens His sanctifying life. That I really can change, I really can be useful to God. How? I choose to live no longer just trying harder and failing often. I’ve been a pastor long enough, people tell me that all the time, I’m going to try a little harder. I said, if you try a little harder, you just failed a little bit more because it’s not trying harder, it’s now living by inviting Christ to live out His truth through me. That’s what we’re going to see in chapter 2, in Galatians 2:20. That’s Paul’s test. What an exciting week we’re in!
We’re living in an age of dangerous, biblical illiteracy among Christians. Here’s what Barna found out among those people taking all of the Barna polls and surveys. Less than half of all adults could name the four Gospels. Those who profess to be Christian’s struggle to identify more than two or three disciples. If you just know the books of the bible, you would know a lot about all of these, you’d know the Gospels and the disciples. 60% of Americans can’t even name half of the 10 commandments. I love the billboard that says which part of the shall not is unclear, but people just don’t know. 40% of Americans believed that Jesus committed sins, which is heresy, which is blasphemous. Half believe anyone who is generally good or does enough good things will earn a place in Heaven. By the way, that is religion. Man devising a way to get to God, that’s religion. That’s what this week’s all about. The grace, the Gospel of grace is God devised the way. Religion is man’s going to devise a way. Religion is false, and wrong, and damnable. 40% believe the Bible, the Koran, and the book of Mormon are all the same spiritual truth.
At the End of Days, Jesus said truth is under attack and lies will abound. That’s why Jesus said watch out for false teachers and counterfeit religion. This is fascinating, when faced with a similar situation at the turn of the 20th century evangelicals… What’s an evangelical? Someone that believes that you were born lost, and a sinner, and condemned for Hell, and you have to be born again through receiving Christ. That’s an Evangelical. Evangelicals, people that are born again, produced a work called The Fundamentals in 1909. By the way, some of you right away say, what’s that? There’s a link down in the video description below. It’s a set of books that were written in 1909 by the who’s who of Christianity of that day. Who were those?
R.A. Torrey, he was D.L. Moody’s assistant, a tremendous Bible teacher. He started BIOLA, the Bible Institute of Los Angeles.
Another one of the authors was B.B. Warfield. By the way, I have books by all of these men. You see these seven? They’re on this list. They’re all classics of Christianity. B.B. was from Westminster. He wrote so many good books. Some of his best are on inerrancy of the Bible.
J.C. Ryle. He was a pastor and a devotional writer.
- Campbell Morgan, he’s the inspiration for our modern day Bible expositors like John MacArthur, and W. A. Criswell, and Swindoll. All of those who are expounding the word of God were greatly challenged by G. Campbell Morgan. He’s the one that would not teach on a passage until he read it through 40 times, like John MacArthur says we all should do.
- I. Scofield. He did the first study Bible; it’s called the Scofield Study Bible.
James M. Gray, who was the famous president of Moody Bible Institute.
Then of course, A.T. Pierson who touched America coast to coast as a devotional writer.
These who’s who, these scholars distilled down what are called The Fundamentals, the foundational beliefs, to distinguish a true believer from a false or counterfeit one. They boiled down all biblical theology into seven essential doctrines. They present and explain these seven doctrines in a multi-volume set called The Fundamentals.
Look up for a second, that’s where the term fundamentalists comes from, which by the way is a negative term nowadays. They call Islamic terrorists fundamentalists, that they’re following the fundamentals of the Koran. By the way, if you do follow the fundamentals of the Koran, you do start operating the way the Koran says you should, which would cause you to have strong feelings against Christians and Jews. That’s the underlying message there, and so they call them fundamentalists. They call Christian’s fundamentalists. Usually, they pick people that are not Christians that are doing crazy things like bombing abortion clinics, or killing abortion providers, or whatever. Do you remember that time period in America where that was going on? They were fundamentalists. That’s not what the word means. The word means someone that follows the fundamentals of the scripture. By the way, what are those fundamentals? Look at the next slide.
Here’s the list of the seven essentials to guide us and help us to uncover when someone’s a false Christian. It’s a way to see who’s on course to deceive others. Here are the seven.
Number one, inspiration. All we know and believe about God is based on His word, so they affirmed the inspiration and reliable historicity of the Bible. In this multi-volume set, there’s a whole section on this, Warfield and the others wrote about inspiration.
Look at this, what they considered a fundamental. Creation. God has revealed from cover to cover in His word as the Creator of the universe just as described in the Bible. They exposed, in 1909, the grave errors of Evolutionism and Darwinism. Look up gender dysphoria that we’re going through right now. Right now in America, this whole CRT time, critical race theory and all the fighting that’s going on politically. If you’re paying any attention to the news, do you know what that’s all based on? Not understanding that Genesis explains the origin of everything, and that God created humans as male and female. There isn’t a blur that no one should know what their gender identity is, that is an attack from Satan. God’s word says, God created them male and female, man and woman he created them. Your gender identity is an imprimatur of the Creator of the universe. Why do you think that evolution wants to destroy the foundational book of the Bible? Because everybody needs to be in gender dysphoria for the Anti-Christ who is going to be a gender dysphoric person Himself, he’s going to be right in this whole confusion of gender identity while still allowing for gross immorality, but you can disregard God’s laws, His rules, His created plan. Back to the slides. Evolutionism and Darwinism, they talk about the dangers of which we need to listen to because most mainline churches, and denominations, and colleges, even Bible colleges don’t believe in creation anymore.
Number three, the third section of this fundamentals has, God’s word teaches clear doctrine about Christ His Church. In this section, they name specifically the cults that presented false Gospels in their day. Over 100 years ago, they say the Jehovah’s false Witnesses. Mormonism is false. Christian Science was false. Spiritism and so on.
The fourth area is depravity, because the mainline Christian denominations were getting away from what God’s word declares, which is the reality of sin. They affirmed that man is not basically good. This is the WW I time when they thought that everyone was basically good and if you could just fan the little spark, it will get better and better. By the way, WW II kind of destroyed that view for a while. They were going against that view, and they said, we’re all born sinners.
Look at number five. God’s word only presents biblical salvation as received only by faith in the incarnate Christ Jesus, who became sin for sinners to save them. What is that? It’s the doctrine of substitution. It’s the reality that we cannot be saved unless we trust someone who perfectly substituted our place, taking the wrath of God against our sin.
There are the first five key doctrines. The essentials that help us uncover when someone’s a false teacher. A false teacher will not affirm inspiration, creation as defined in the Bible, the doctrines as defined in the Bible, depravity, and substitution as defined the Bible.
The last two. Imputation is number six in these seven essentials. Here’s what imputation is. God’s word teaches that salvation cannot be earned at any level, it’s dispensed. This is imputed by God and not by any chance. That’s why people think, if they join a church they can be saved. No. The church doesn’t save you, only God saves you. Then, you’re baptized by the Holy Spirit into the body of Christ, which is the Church, which has many local manifestations, which you got to find one that believes the Bible. Salvation is not dispensed by a church or a cleric. Thus, look at this, they clearly expose the errors of the biggest works religion in the world, Roman Catholicism, and every other religion of human achievement and works righteousness. What is that? Finding a method to get to God. Roman Catholicism has devised the most elaborate method to get to God rather than the method God devised, that God ordained, that God performed and did through Jesus Christ.
Then finally, number seven, Christology. They most fervently declared that all error starts in some way with an incorrect view of Christ. That’s how you know what a cult is. Look up who they believe Jesus was. They strongly affirmed the Deity, the work, and the personal visible Return of Jesus Christ.
Those were the fundamentals. By the way, some wealthy people of the day financed this, the production of thousands of copies of these. They sent them to every missionary. They sent them to every pastor in America. They said they would even provide them for the Sunday school teachers of America. That’s how in 1909 to 1915, how intensely interested they were in preserving the truth. A century after this warning sounded by the greatest teachers of God’s word alive in that generation, how are we? Sadly, we’re doing terribly.
Today, each of us is living in a very distracted world. All around us are distracted people with distracted minds, distracted families, which leads to a distracted life. What happens with distraction? It leads to aimlessness, uselessness, hopelessness, powerlessness. Even for us as believers. Each day we’re battling distraction sent by Satan because he wants to keep us off course. For believers, distraction often means we know so much more biblical truth than we take time to act upon. Look up, we’re supposed to be daily learning the truth, daily meditating on the truth, and daily sharing the truth. There should be someone that looks at you and says, are you seeking the Lord today? Or are you spending your time gaming or listening to the latest music and wanting to know all the lyrics, or can’t wait to get the next episode, or sports, or finances, or whatever? Anything Satan can do to distract us. By the way, remember this? Remember what I wrote up here? What’s the ultimate temptation. Anything that keeps us from God’s word, His truth, His Gospel. That’s what we’re battling.
Back to the slides. Distraction means we know so much more than we act on, that’s the ultimate temptation. Anything Satan can do, whether it’s our job, our finances, our relationships, our own pleasures, that will distract our minds from seeking God and His word, and His Gospel and living His truth.
That reminds us how we prepare for Satan ramping this up is, learn the truth, have a daily plan. Meditate on the truth, have a daily plan. Share the truth, have a daily plan.
Here’s the MacArthur Study Bible. Sometimes I talk about that and I don’t show you. This is actually the page on Galatians, it talks about the title. Every book of the Bible, he does the same outline. It’s the only one of Paul’s epistles specifically addressed to churches in more than one city. By the way, it’s also the only one where Paul doesn’t commend the churches. He talks about all these things, of the setting for the book. Then, he goes through all the key ideas in every verse.
This is for chapter 1, verse 6 of Galatians. This dark bolded writing, “turning away,” is the scripture. Then, these words, the next three lines are his comments. This is where we learn about Greek words. “Turning away” is better translated, deserting. The Greek word was used of military desertion, punishable by death. Paul says you are doing the ultimate disloyalty to Christ. You’re deserting like a soldier from his general. Paul was really troubled.
Then, this is Galatians 2:20, and we’re going to spend a long time on this. First, “I have been crucified with Christ.” It tells you to go back and look what is in the notes on Romans 6. You remember, we already studied Romans. Then, it talks about Christ living in me. Remember Ephesians 4:22? That we are to put off and be renewed, and put on. All of those truths, he reminds you about. That’s how this book is. This study Bible is so valuable.
Here’s my journal. Look up, this is my journal that I write in. I show it to you every week. I take my notes as I sit and work on this and I write them all down. For you, I type them. Let’s go into my typed notes. Here are the lessons I’ve found. See right here? I write in my journal lessons and look how many I’ve found, 11. I write out a simple phrase, and then I put an application for myself. You say, boy, that’s an awful lot of stuff on one slide. That’s why we’re going to go through them one at a time.
Take your Bible and look at Galatians 1. You can look up; I’m going to read it. Let me find it with you. Remember we’re sitting at the table, an important thing about this sharing time that I’m talking about right there is that we all bring our Bibles. We all bring our journals. We look up verses in the Bible. I remember how many times in the small group I would say, let’s look at verse 1 and everyone would just look at me. I’d say, pause. Bible. Galatians. You know what a lot of them would do? They’d go to the front, and they’d look up the index. They go, oh, it’s page what? Let me find it. Galatians 1. One of them would say it’s page 1,033. Whatever it takes. Find your Bible and look up verses 1 & 2.
“Paul, an apostle, (not from men or through man, but through Jesus Christ and God the Father who raised Him from the dead), and all the brethren who are with me, To the churches of…” what’s the last word of the verse? Say it out loud. “Galatia.” Look at the lessons. Galatians 1:1-2 Paul wrote to the churches. Notice in your Bible it’s plural, of a region, which is unique in Paul’s writing of the epistles. He usually writes to a local church or to a one of his sons in the faith, Timothy or Titus. This is unique. It’s also the only one where Paul doesn’t commend them. Look what I wrote.
Where’s Galatia? Why is this so important? I’m glad you asked. Here’s a map. By the way, this is water. There’s Crete, and Rhodes, and everything. This is just a map to show you Galatia. Look at it, right here. Where was Galatia? It’s right there. The reason I’m showing you that is, look what it’s right next to, Tarsus. Paul’s hometown. Look, Lystra, Iconium, Derbe, Pisidia, and Antioch. That’s Galatia. It’s in the heart of modern day Turkey.
See these lines here? See all those lines? Those are Paul’s first, second, and third missionary journeys. Paul traveled through this Galatian region on every missionary journey. It’s right by, as he passed through his hometown. It’s right where Timothy’s hometown is. It’s where Paul and Barnabas were mistaken and stoned. It’s where Timothy joins Paul and Silas. All of these huge beginning events and continuing events of Paul’s ministry are in this region. That’s important.
Second lesson, look in your Bible at verse 3, I’m going to read it. “Grace to you and peace from God the Father and our Lord Jesus Christ.” Look at verse 4, “who gave Himself for our sins.” That’s the substitutionary work of Christ. Verse 4 continuing, “that He might deliver us from this present evil age.” Do you understand? Jesus, His goal is not only to save us forever in Heaven and prepare a place for us and have a mansion for us that we talk about from John 14. Actually, it’s not a mansion, it’s a room. It meant one room in the Father’s house. We’re going to have rooms next to each other in our Father’s house forever, which is more of that sharing together. Do you understand, it’s not just to get us to Heaven? Do you see what it says in verse 4? To “deliver us from this present evil age.” God’s only protection from the End of Days deceptions, and defilements, and the End of the Days waves of deception. That’s the goal of salvation.
Back to the slides. Liberated from sin’s shackles: Christ’s death for our sins was to deliver us from this present evil age. His justifying death opens for me a sanctifying life. Are you seeing a decreasing frequency of sin in your life and an increasing frequency of responding to the Lord?
These two verses I just read and what’s coming, again is talking about the justifying death of Christ.
Let me show you the justifying death of Christ. I over and over show you this. I’ll use my notebook here. This is a picture of all of my sins, John Barnett’s sins. Here’s me. In 1962, this is what I look like. Me, all my sins. I was a sinner by nature, by choice, and God declared me to be one. My mother patiently introduced me, through the scriptures, to Jesus Christ and told me if I would call on Him. The reason she patiently introduced me was because I was scared to death. In 1962 Russia was moving atomic missiles into Cuba to bomb the U.S. In school all of us were watching videos of Alamogordo and all of the atomic and hydrogen bomb tests. They were showing us the devastation of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. We were scared. They scared the life out of all the students in the schools. It was to get everybody ready for facing off with Russia. I started talking to my mom. She, at Bible story time at night, would say if something happens with the atomic bomb or anything, mom and dad, and Karen and Sharon are going to Heaven, but you’re not. That’s one method of evangelism.
Did you know, it never bothered me until one day I came home from school after they had us crawl under our desk and crouch with our arms over our head, that was part of school. They would train you, when the siren went off to crouch under your desk in case an atomic bomb strikes near us. I was crouched there with my arms over my head, and I was reliving in my mind the picture of Nagasaki and Hiroshima. I thought there was nothing left of those buildings, but just little bits of them. The trees were charred and blown away. I thought, I’m not going to make it under my desk. When I got home from school that day, I said to my mom, why am I not going to Heaven? She smiled and opened the Bible. She explained the Gospel to me.
Then the instant that I knelt, in the only quiet place, in our bathroom. Our one, little, tiny bathroom, I knelt on the floor. My mom put the Bible on the toilet seat and showed me John 3:16. In that instant, when I prayed and asked Jesus, who I believed died for my sins and purchase my salvation, I asked Him to save me. Look what happened. This is justification. God put all of the record of my sins from 1956 to 1962, to 2021, till my last moment of life, all of them, which God knows, He took them off me and put them on Jesus Christ. That’s the justifying death. Jesus is my substitute. Jesus justified me by removing the record of my sins. That’s not all justification means. He also put His righteousness on me because that’s God’s plan. I can’t get to Heaven by being good. I can never be good enough. I have to have someone that’s perfect, and I’ll never be perfect. God put all my sins on Jesus and Jesus put His perfect life on my account with God. Back to the slides. That’s the justifying death of Christ. That allows me to overcome the power of sin.
Christians go through life, living in two worlds. The past work of Christ for me, that is His justifying death. The present work of Christ in me is sanctifying me. That’s the two worlds we constantly live in. Christ’s justifying, one-time death on the cross, starts a lifelong sanctifying, life-changing walk of faith. It changes me a little bit more every day to look more like Jesus, to act more like Jesus, to respond to situations and people more like Jesus would, and to live more and more moments in step with Christ. That’s what the Bible teaches.
Here’s the third lesson in Galatians 1. Be aware of false doctrines. The Galatians were being taught a false Gospel of legalism. It says, let me read to you in verse 5. It says, “to whom be glory forever and ever. Amen. I marvel that you are turning away so soon from Him who called you.” Remember that’s the word desertion, like a military defector that had a death sentence. He says, in verse 7, “pervert the Gospel of Christ. But even if we, or an angel from Heaven, preach any other Gospel to you than what we have preached to you, let him be accursed.” That’s a strong anathema, damned forever. If I said before, “I say again, if anyone preaches any other Gospel, […] Let him be accursed.” Look back. Paul, in every way possible, is saying beware of false doctrine.
Here’s one false doctrine, probably the clearest one. This is the Roman Catholic pathway to eternity. Roman Catholics say that were born void of grace, destined for Hell. By the way, 99% of Roman Catholic doctrine is true. They use all the right words in doctrine, they just add one horrible thing to it. Works righteousness. Self-righteousness. They say that water baptism performed by the priest with your parents bringing you, takes away your original sin. They’ve devised a method to get you to Heaven. Every time you do a venial sin you get away, but then you do good works, and sacraments, and draw on the merits of the saints, and those are like good helps toward Heaven. If you commit a mortal sin, you go right back down to being void of grace and headed toward Hell. You have to go back to confessions, and do penance, and go to Mass. Then, you have another little problem. When you die, if you die right here in the middle, then you have to go to purgatory to get purged. If you haven’t cooperated with God in their program, then you go to Hell. If you’re a saint, you die with enough righteousness and go right to Heaven. You say what a strange system. Yep. That’s what 1.2 billion people, and many of them live around you, believe.
How do you share the Gospel with them? This is my favorite. This is a tract. You hear me talk about tracts for Roman Catholics. Roman Catholicism: Scripture Vs. Tradition. It’s my favorite tract on Roman Catholics, how to lead them to Christ. It’s by a wonderful student of the word, Mike Gendron. Down in the description, there’s a link right to his website, you can find out about that.
Basically, what Paul said is dangerous is, people who think they can, through religion, through some devised method, get merit with God. This is Catholicism. You’re born as sinner, that’s true. Baptism washes away gives a fresh start, that’s false. Venial sins can be removed by confession, penance, merit, and good works, that’s false. Only Christ can remove them. Mortal sins, there are venial and mortal, puts you back to the start and puts you longer in purgatory, that’s false. You can go to Hell for even one sin, doesn’t matter if it’s venial or mortal. At death only saints go to Heaven, that’s true. The rest go to purgatory, that’s false. Isn’t it something? Here’s one true thing they say, here’s another truth thing. Time to purge shorten by indulgences in Heaven, that’s false. Basically, Roman Catholicism adds this works religion of merit to the truth, the doctrine they teach that’s absolutely true about the deity of Christ, and the inerrancy of the word, and the substitutionary atonement of Christ. All the things that they say are true, that are, the 99%, are ruined by the 1% of works based righteousness. Only God devised the plan. Rome or any religion can’t devise the plan.
Look at this. Here’s a summary. All the world’s false religions have the same element, sinners inventing a way to get reconciled, to become God’s friend instead of His enemy. The Gospel is God explaining how He can be reconciled to sinners. As sinners we don’t have any power to satisfy His anger. We have no goodness to attract Him. We have no righteousness that can earn His forgiveness. We’re convicts. I like to tell people we’re offenders. The divine court of righteousness declares all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. We’ve been justly and eternally banished from His presence. The wages of sin is what? Death. That’s banished from His presence, suffering the vengeance of eternal fire. What does that mean? The Bible says each of us are hopeless, helpless, impotent, ignorant, blind, and doomed. Any hope for relationship to God has to come from Him, it can’t come from us. Religion is when it comes from us. When we try harder, do more, figure out a way.
Let me just show you a little doctrine. A Christian is justified once by faith because of justifications permanent declaration by God. However, to the man who does not work but trusts in God who justifies the wicked, his faith is credited as righteousness. That’s what God says. Look what religion says. A Catholic is justified repeatedly by sacraments and works because he loses the grace of justification each time a mortal sin is committed. Loses the grace of justification, that means it gets unloose from him and he loses it. The sacrament of Penance offers a new possibility to convert and recover the grace of justification. By the way, that’s a quote right from the Roman Catholic theology.
Look at salvation. This is what God says, a Christian is purified by the blood of Jesus. The blood of Jesus purifies us from all sin. What does religion say? We’re purified by the fires of purgatory. Jesus didn’t do enough on the cross. You undergo purification and purgatory so as to achieve holiness necessary to enter the joy of Heaven. That’s in the Catholic doctrines. It’s number 1030 and 1031.
What’s the real way of salvation? This is back to that nice tract by Mike Gendron. We’re all spiritually dead, destined for Hell. When Jesus saves us, it’s by faith in Christ alone. We received the righteousness of God credited through justification. See what these verses say? He saved us, not because of righteous things we’ve done but because of His mercy. Titus 3:5. Justification is a permanent verdict by God that declares a sinner righteous because of his faith, right here, in Christ. God continues to see the sinner as if he were righteous, even if he sins. Isn’t that comforting? Because the basis for justification is the righteousness of Christ.
What is sanctification after I’m saved? It’s just getting me more useful to God. Only justified people are glorified and go to Heaven. If you reject the only way to Heaven, which is the one God devised you won’t have salvation. If you reject religion and receive Christ, then you have salvation. If you reject Christ and His Gospel of substitution and justification, you’re condemned to Hell.
We’re supposed to guard the Gospel, that’s what it says in Galatians 1:11-12, Paul was taught the Gospel. Look what it says in verse 11, “But I make known to you, brethren, that the Gospel which is preached by me is not according to man. For I neither receive it from man, nor was I taught it,” it’s not religion, “it came through the revelation of Jesus Christ.”
Back to the slides. Guard the Gospel. What does that mean? What’s the simple message of the Gospel we’re supposed to guard? Paul captures it right here in Acts 16:31, “Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and you will be saved.” Believe that God the Son, Jesus Christ, came into the world. The Bible says he was born of a virgin, that He lived a perfect life, the only perfect life, that He died as a substitute as the Lamb of God on the cross, He rose from the grave, He ascended to the right hand of the Father because He finished the work, and He sat down at the right hand of the Father. That’s what we call the drive train of the Gospel. You must believe in the true Christ, the one described in the Bible, in the true Christ’s death and resurrection for you, but how do you get it? You just trust Christ. Not yourself, not your method. You put your faith in Him, the substitute, the Lamb of God that took your place. You affirm that your belief is in the Lord Jesus Christ, who lived and died for you and rose again. You believe that. You acknowledge Christ as your Lord and Savior, and you receive the forgiveness He offers. That’s the simple Gospel.
Back to Galatians. Remember we just covered guard the Gospel, look at the next section and we’ve run out of time. Often this happened at Panera and Starbucks, we overstayed our welcome. In verses 13-17 and 18-2:1 God’s training program. God called and saved Paul, and trained him in Arabia. He spent a lot of years in training preparation. I showed you that at the beginning. Look at this, Paul was shaped for ministry during those years of obscurity. He trained for 14 years in preparation for his 10 years of missions’ trips.
Here’s my summary of that I shared with you already in Acts, but I’m going to show you again. Here are six lessons that I emphasize in my small groups. Study all you can because preparation is vital. Paul spent three years in the desert with Christ. Wait for God’s timing because growth takes time. Paul spent seven years in Tarsus. Listen to a Barnabas because everybody needs discipleship. Three years in Antioch, that’s where Paul came down in his testimony, we see that he wrote in Galatians 2:20. Run the race because God can do so much in short order. Paul spent 10 years on his missions’ trip. Learn contentment because God can use this anywhere. Paul spent the next 10 years in prison. 14 years, right here, studying, and waiting, and listening. 10 years in missions’. 10 years in prison. That was Paul’s career. What’s the essence? Loved Jesus more than everything because no one is indispensable. We’re all going to get old, and wear out, and get weak. Think prison, loneliness, and death. Paul kept going, finished the race, trusted God. He was content even in prison. Those are the lessons.
Galatians 2:7. Do what God calls you to do. Many people are wanting to be someone else. Just let God use you as His ambassador right where you are. Galatians 2:10, stay tender. Galatians 2:11-15, integrity matters to God. Galatians 2:16, justification is only by faith. We have to read that. Look up for a second. Let me read you Galatians 2:16. It’s one of my memory verses that I review regularly. “Knowing that a man,” Galatians 2:16, “is not justified by the works of the law but by faith in Jesus Christ, even we have believed in Christ Jesus, that we might be justified by faith in Christ and not by the works of law; for by the works of the law no flesh shall no man be justified.” Back to the slides. Justification is only by faith. Be aware of religion, believe the Gospel.
Justification is when God punishes Jesus on the cross like He commits every sin we have ever sinned. Then God, erases the record of our sin and put it on Christ. That’s justification.
Finally, we come to Galatians 2:20. Crucified living. This is what it says. We have two parts of one life. The justifying death of Christ is the past. Notice what Paul says, “I have been crucified with Christ.” He loved me. He gave Himself for me. All those things are in the past. That’s the justifying death of Christ. That’s one half of Galatians 2:20. Here’s the other half, to present the sanctifying life of Christ. “It is no longer I who live,” right now. It’s present tense. “Lives in me; and the life which I now live in the,” present tense, “in the flesh.” Present tense, “I live by the faith in the Son of God.” I’m letting Christ sanctify me. I’m agreeing with Him. I’m surrendering to Him. I’m letting Him work out His truth in me here.
Here’s the summary. Christ’s justifying, one time death on the cross, starts a lifelong sanctifying, life-changing walk of faith that changes me a bit more each day to look more like Jesus, because I’m eating His word and it’s transforming me to act more like Jesus. I’m surrendering to His Spirit to respond more like Jesus, because I love Him. I keep His commandments and to live more and more in step with Christ, which is called being full of His Spirit.
Time to those three final challenges. Number one, find someone with whom you can share your findings. Get started today on a healthy diet. Learn some healthy verses. Down in the comment section I have the Navigator verses I recommend. Use a healthy study Bible. I recommend the MacArthur Study Bible. Reference a healthy theology book. I recommend Grudem. Pray for us.
It’s time to go. We’re going to have our closing prayer and I’m going to pray for you. This is what I’m praying for you, that you commit in order to prepare for the growing darkness to learning the truth, by being in a good Bible study, like our 52 Chapter Study and by systematically learning doctrine. Meditate on the truth. Memorize verses. Share the truth with others. Get a small group going. Live the truth of the Gospel, that the justifying death of Jesus Christ opens for me His sanctifying life. Let’s pray.
Father. I pray that we would guard the Gospel. That we would see that religion is our human invention of how to get to You, but the Gospel is Your devised plan. We’re helpless, hopeless, impotent, and condemned by Your righteous holiness, but You made a way. You are a loving, saving, savior God who offered Your one and only Son in our place. If we’ll just reach out to Him and cling to Christ as our substitute, our only hope by faith, we have endless life. Then, you start making us more useful. I pray for everyone that’s in this 52 Chapter Study, that they will cling by faith every day to the truth of the Gospel. That they will allow you’re justifying death to open that sanctifying life. That it’s no longer me trying harder, but Christ, as Paul said in Galatians 2:20, living in me. I pray you’d unleash that truth even more in my life this week, and even more in the lives of all these precious brothers and sisters in Christ in this study this week. I pray in Jesus’ name, Amen.
God bless you. Have a great week in Galatians 1 & 2. Lord willing next week, spiritual warfare in Ephesians 6. God bless you.
Slides
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