There is one gospel.

Church of Jesus Christ. This past week at the ICRC conference people from across this vast continent came together to share in the unity of faith.

And what is at the very heart of that which binds us together? The gospel of free grace. Justified by faith alone in Christ alone. A people set apart for the glory of God alone. It is not the style of worship, or the clothes we wear, or the songs we sing. It is sinners who have been redeemed by grace, reveling in rejoicing in the gospel This is what defines this body and also the ICRC – a submission to the gospel of the lord Jesus Christ.

There is one gospel.

1. The unity of the Gospel.

2. The preaching of the Gospel

 

The unity of the Gospel

6, “I am astonished… Paul is shocked. Astonished! Amazed. The word used here is often used at the people’s reaction to the miracles of Jesus. In other words – how is it humanly possible that you are deserting, abandoning, and deserting the one who called you. Who is it that called them? Not Paul – But God! As Paul made abundantly clear in verse 1, “Paul an apostle not from men, nor through man, but through Jesus Christ and God the Father.” They are abandoning God who called them by the grace of Christ.

that you are so quickly deserting the one who called you by the grace of Christ and are turning to a different gospel – not that there is another one but there are some who trouble you and want to distort the gospel of Christ.

And it’s not gradual but quick. It can happen quickly – as the church depends not on the grace of God but finds their identity in something else. Either their history, ethnicity, or worship style. When Christ is mixed with the idols of our heart. We can so quickly desert the gospel. We mix Christ and him crucified with local relations, with family, with ancestor worship, with tradition, with worship styles. And then all we see are differences. We compare who is better and who is closer to God. We contrast.

This is why the sins mentioned in Galatians are predominantly divisive. The finality of “It is finished” had been eroded away by the acids of self-justification. Insecurity, anxiety, fear and anger had entered in. How could it be otherwise? Self-justification cannot create anything but an unsatisfiable demandingness, for Christ is not its satisfying provision. No matter how well a person has been raised to be courteous, self-justification must generate finger pointing and accusing and slandering and dividing. Whatever the outcome, no one wins.

This was the case here with the Galatian churches. He had just finished his trip through Galatia and it had been a rousing success, here are some news clippings of the event: In Antioch “many Jews and devout convert to Judaism followed Paul and Barnabas… when the gentiles heard this, they began rejoicing and glorifying the word of the Lord; and … the word of the Lord was spreading throughout the whole region; At Iconium they “spoke in such a way that a great number of both Jews and Greeks believed.” In Lystra they were welcomed like gods. Then at Derbe “they had preached the gospel to that city and had made many disciples.” It was quite a trip… you could say one of the most successful missionary trips in the history of Christianity.

We are seeing the same kind of success in mission across this continent. The Spirit of God is at work. We felt it this week! And we can rejoice in God’s work – but wherever the Gospel seed is thrown the birds of Satan, and hard soil of the world, and the weeds of the sinful nature are quick to appear. And these false teachers had come in – and told them yes Christ is important, but you must also worship like us, and act like us. Then you will be saved. Before you know it the sheep couldn’t even hear the call of God over the clamor of these false teachers.

We start comparing churches. How we do things – and start looking at the outside, rather than the motive of the heart!  

And our continent is full of false teachers. False messiahs, false prophets! Much of their theology a mix of a prosperity Gospel imported from the west or a mix of local idolatry and superstition with the gospel.  But let us not think the reformed church is somehow exempt from self justification. I preached two other passages on galatians last week and it struck me how easy it is for two people to do all the same things in the church. Read the bible, pray, sing, go to Bible studies. But one does so so that god would love them, and the other because God loves them. One is filled with guilt and fear, the other out of love and joy for what Christ has done. We say we believe in Justification by faith, and sanctification is based on that justification, but don’t we often live as if our justification is based on sanctification.

IT is Christ plus! Christ Plus tradition. Christ plus works. Christ plus cultural relevancy. Christ plus! And Paul says NO! its all grace! It’s not you have to believe in Christ, and you have to be good. NO, YOU HAVE TO BELIEVE. Full stop. Anything that does not flow from faith is sin – no matter if it is the most righteous on the outside. All Paul’s outward righteousness was rubbish in comparison to Christ!

 Grace is another word for gift. They were called by the by free grace – not based on what they had thought, done, or felt. We can think God loves us because we think all the right things, or we do all the right things, or feel all the right things.

A church that thinks God loves them because they think all the right things, is a church that focuses on facts. It is very intellectual. It is all about theology. If you know all the right things you will be saved, without caring at all that God has revealed himself so that we might live changed lives, not just so that we might know right things. They tend to look down on others that don’t have the knowledge that they have. They think they own the truth rather than bear witness to the truth. It becomes an inward church, not a missional church. Knowing facts does not change your life, believing them does.

A church that thinks God loves them because they do all the right things turns into a social gospel organization. They say things like, it’s what your do that makes a difference, not what you believe. They tend to judge other churches who are not active as they are socially. They forget what Paul says that it all starts with the renewing of your mind. This church believes they are right before God based on what they do! A church that thinks God loves them because they feel the right emotions. They tend to try to create the spiritual experience, as if the Holy Spirit needs our help. They tend to judge churches that are more liturgical, and think of those people as cold-Christians. Justification is based on whether you have a feeling. These churches might get stuck in infancy as they always chase the emotional high and never grow into the maturity that comes when you grow older. They tend to be younger.

These types of churches tend to be prideful because they are better than others and bring division. Either they know more, do more, or feel more than the church down the road! This is a different gospel. Thinking we need to be a certain way to be Christian – and this is no gospel at all.

“Stop it!” says Paul. God loves you because of Christ! It’s a gift! A free gift. Today!

 This brings unity, why? Because it puts all of us on the same field. All sin and fall short of the glory of God. All are dead in their sins. Doesn’t matter where you are from. And all are saved by grace! No one deserves the love of God. And once we experience this love of God, we will want nothing more then to know this love, share this love, and revel in this love. To think about, act on, and experience this love.

The Galatians. They were called not because they were good, or reformed, or Jewish, or whatever! They were called because of what God did in and through Christ. That is the gospel. That is good news.

And what is news – it is true and accurate facts of something that has already happened. And what has happened!? Well, I am glad you asked! 2000 years ago, God sent his own Son into the world, as a man. He himself humbled himself by taking on the form of a servant – and he humbled himself to death - even death on a cross. He underwent the pain and anguish of hell as he was punished for our sins. For the sins of the children of this continent who would yet believe in him.  That whoever believes in him will not perish but have eternal life.

There is ONE GOSPEL that we preach throughout this vast continent! We call it reformed theology – I like to call it biblical.

What we need is to change our focus – and have a single-minded laser sharp focus on one thing – Jesus Christ and his work. It is not what unites us, but WHO!  Jesus Christ – the living and resurrected Lord of heaven and earth – and the good news that flows from his work here on earth 2000 years ago. We need to hold on to this, when we go back. Preach this. And tell people there is not Jew or Greek, slave or free, Asian, African, Europeans, or north american. There are no tribal barriers, cultural barriers which this gospel will not cross. Each of us needs it! To be set free from the guilt of sin, the power of sin, the shame of sin! To hear the call of Christ our Lord – to come to him. This gospel unites! And the Gospel calls through preaching!

The preaching of the Gospel

O dear brothers – we must not dare, or even think about preaching anything else at our own risk and peril! There is much that can be worked on in a church, much division that can be overcome – but a church which does not preach the gospel is in danger of not being a church.

Unlike every other book Paul wrote there was no time for prayers, or praise, or “thank you’s”. Even the Corinthian church had a long thank you, and that church had someone sleeping with their mother-in-law, people disrespecting the Lords table, their worship services were a mess!

But the Galatian church doesn’t deal primarily with these obvious sin problems. From the outside they looked orderly and reformed. If there was ever a conservative church it would have been this one! They went all the way back to the traditions of Moses – the Torah. The problem was that in their passion for traditions they were looking right past God’s fulfillment of all those traditions in Jesus Christ. Let’s not work on being conservative! Let’s work on being profoundly Christ centered! Everything flows from there. Everything.

You see in Corinth the gospel itself was not at stake. But in Galatia the very heart of the gospel was in danger.  They didn’t know what grace meant anymore. My brothers and sisters – we have to make sure we know what the gospel is, sot that we can preach it – and guard our pulpits zealously against anything that may put this message in jeopardy. This is what Paul does in these verses. This is what the Reformation was all about.

Verse 8, “But even if we or an angel from should preach a gospel other than the one we preached to you, let him be eternally condemned!” Before we get to the “eternally condemned” lets go back to the beginning of this verse. Do you see the importance and solemn obligation of preaching!. Paul preached the gospel to them! And if he had preached another gospel, if even an angel came to preach another gospel – he stood condemned. Preaching is an awesome and dangerous privilege!

You see it again in the next verse, “AS we have already said, so now I say again: if anybody is preaching to you a gospel other than what you accepted, let him be eternally condemned. This is directed at preachers! Because God uses the preached word to work faith in the power of the Spirit! O preachers and churches that are here! PREACH THE GOSPEL! Preach Christ and him crucified! Preach him as he is revealed in his word. Spend your time studying, thinking, meditating on Him. Make this your primary task. Do not dare to add anything to him, “Christ plus…” and do not dare water it down to fit your culture and make it more palatable. It is not for nothing that these verses were quoted more than any other in the reformation.

It would have been easy for Paul to agree with these false teachers who were saying that you just had to believe in Christ and become Jewish. He would save himself a lot of persecution, a lot of conflict. And would it really have been that bad? Well, if you think that just read this verse again.

A mass murder must be stopped, and that is what people are that preach a different gospel!  This echoes the language of revelation 22:18,”If anyone adds anything to the words written in this book, God will add to hi the plagues described in this book. And if anyone takes words away from this book of prophecy, God will take away from his share in the tree of life in the Holy city.”

Church of Jesus Christ, know what you believe. And keep your ears tuned to the gospel symphony so that the glorious music of that symphony will drown out whatever teacher comes along peddling a different gospel.

May we stand as one choir singing to the praise of his glorious grace! May the Spirit so work that we may be a witness to the rest of the world what a united church looks like! Do not let the voice of your culture, tradition, background or anything else drown out the voice of grace.  

There are many things that we can agree to disagree on – but the one thing not up for debate is the gospel of Grace alone through Christ alone.

If you are visiting here for the first time or have heard the gospel a thousand times our desire is the same! That you would exalt, and rest in the risen Christ alone for salvation. Turn and repent and seek your total and complete satisfaction, joy, rest, and glory in Christ alone.

For those who do not know Christ –, I hope the intensity of the passage or sermon does not scare you away, but rather that you will know that here we will love you enough to speak the truth. Here is a gospel. No more trying, striving, wondering if you are ever good enough. You aren’t. But He is. Lay your life down. Totally and completely. Lose it. It’s the only way to find it.

And for you brothers and sisters with whom we share an eternal bond of fellowship in Christ – let us hold each other accountable to the truth of the gospel. Let us preach it unashamedly! Let us bring the light of Christ to this continent in the power of the Spirit!

Amen