Sermon Transcript
In the landscape of churches across the nation, many of them fall in the category of either word churches or deed churches. And here’s what we mean by that. A deed church emphasizes making the world a better place, ministering to those who are hurting, caring for the sick, compassion for anyone who feels marginalized. That is deed churches. Word churches emphasize Bible teaching, doctrine, obedience to biblical standards, rightly thinking about God, very concerned with truth.
That is word churches. Less common, and by less common we don’t mean it never happens, but it certainly isn’t the majority of churches, less common are churches that are strongly both word and deed. In most churches, you will find either more of an emphasis on truth or more of an emphasis on working to make the world a better place. By the way, this is basically exclusively a Western problem. The global Eastern churches or the global Southern Hemisphere churches combine biblical truth and loving service to others without any complication.
I don’t want this to be complicated for us. Since this week and next week these sermons are largely intended to convey what I think a church should be, and then you get to decide if you agree. I’ll just tell you, I want us to be passionately all in both word and deed. I don’t want to underemphasize either. Now, the good news is Bridges has a phenomenal head start, and we’ll talk about a bunch of the deed stuff next week.
Because what Bridges commits to missions in the community, it’s more than commendable, it’s amazing. It reveals our heart, and I look forward to talking more about that next week. In terms of truth, Bridges strives for biblical accuracy, right? When we talk about God here, we want to get it right. Bible study means something.
At Bridges. Many of you are in Bible study fellowship thinking through what Scripture says and working to understand how one verse fits in with every other verse. That is important, living in line with what Scripture teaches, applying it to our lives. That is important for most of us. That is part of our culture at Bridges, and that is great.
As a congregation then, we can represent both word and deed very well. So, where I would first challenge us is really not at the congregation level, but it is at our personal levels, because likely our own hearts, and you can evaluate yourself here, if this isn’t true for you, that is fine, you can just say that doesn’t describe me, but often our hearts are inclined to lean more toward word or more toward deed. So, let’s just figure you out, if you didn’t already know. Let’s figure out if you are more word or more deed. Are you— this is a self-evaluating question— are you more excited to do or more excited to learn?
Would you, for instance, rather take someone a meal after they have a baby Or would you rather figure out if the Bible actually instructs you to take someone a meal after they have a baby? Which is more exciting to you? Which makes you feel more alive, word or deed? Now, for some of you, of course, you may get really charged up about both, and that is awesome, but it is interesting, isn’t it, how oftentimes people can kind of lean more toward one than the other. And this is why we love being part of a church, so we can be around people who are not like us and they can help us grow in the area that isn’t as natural to us.
So, my prayer for these 2 weeks is that we will develop more of an appreciation for what isn’t as natural to us. If you are more of a deeds person, I hope today makes you fall more in love with the Word. Next week, if you are more of a Word person, I hope you will develop more of a love for deeds.
So, let’s read our Scripture text for today and get started. Galatians 1:6-12. Galatians 1, starting in verse 6, Paul writes, I am astonished that you are so quickly deserting Him who called you in 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. But even if we or an angel from heaven should preach to you a gospel contrary to the one we preached to you, let him be accursed!
As we have said before, so now I say again, if anyone is preaching to you a gospel contrary to the one you received, let him be accursed! For am I now seeking the approval of man or of God? Or am I trying to please man? If I were still trying to please man, I would not be a servant of Christ. For I would have you know, brothers, that the gospel that was preached by me is not man’s gospel.
For I did not receive it from any man, nor was I taught it, but I received it through a revelation of Jesus Christ. As we look at our text for today, we will see the strongest basis for any argument, why people sometimes still resist it, and the one message that rules them all. So, first, the strongest basis for any argument.
Revelation, because God said so.
God made it so, and so it is, and then He tells us the way it is. Revelation. We see this in verses 11 and 12. Paul says he didn’t make up this message, no one else made up this message. His message is true, it is real because it came from God.
Paul understands what a person says is not the most authoritative. Even what a group of people says is not the most authoritative. But if God says it, then that is the way it is. Now, Paul is talking about a specific message from God, and we will talk about that specific message later, but we could apply Paul’s approach really to all truth claims. If people say it, it can carry some amount of weight, but if God says it, it is binding for everyone.
So, for instance, in 1963 when Martin Luther King Jr. wrote his letters from a Birmingham jail to white ministry leaders who were criticizing his movement, MLK, he anchored his argument in the law of God. Now, he included other approaches in his letter, like he described the difficulty the black community faced, but he says ultimately what makes a law just or unjust is whether or not it squares with God’s law. He took the discussion away from what people think and he put it into the realm of what God thinks. People were debating Right? That was a hot-button issue.
Is segregation okay? The Supreme Court had overturned separate but equal, but how their ruling was going to get applied across all the states, that was still up in the air. And political candidates were campaigning either to end or extend segregation, and of course, everyone believed their truth was the real truth. But MLK said, in response to all that discussion, you know, I’m paraphrasing here, he said, That’s cute. All your different opinions?
Cute.
But what does God say? Has God spoken on this issue?
I will contend that MLK ultimately won because he showed, especially to the religious South, he showed God had spoken. So, they better conform to what God said regardless of what anyone else says. Now, this is important for us to think through, particularly if you are a secular person who doesn’t really believe in God. You know, if there is no God or if God hasn’t spoken, then there is no real right versus wrong. It is just one person’s truth versus another person’s truth.
Like, you might be really upset by certain social issues in our day. Okay, so you think something is wrong, but there are people who disagree with you, aren’t there? There are people arguing on the other side who say you shouldn’t have a problem with anything that is going on. So, you think one thing, another group thinks another thing. How do we figure out which one of you is actually right?
How do we know? You both have your own truth. You both have cable news outlets who agree with you. So, who is actually right, or is there even an actual right? You might say, well, it is a severe atrocity.
It is even a human rights violation, so of course it is wrong.
Well, in your mind, it is a human rights violation, but why does that even matter? There are other countries that have very different ideals when it comes to human rights. What makes your concept of human rights correct and their concept wrong? Like women’s rights in the Middle East, for instance, you say it is unjust. I do too.
For the record, but they say it is terrific. What gives us a right to judge their culture? What standard are we appealing to even to say that they are wrong, right? How are we going to decide between 2 cultures’ beliefs when they differ? I will press you, if God hasn’t spoken, there is no way to decide.
And in fact, that’s not just a Christian statement, that’s a logic statement. Now, there is a lot of stuff about where God hasn’t spoken at all, and then we just have different people vying for different positions. But if God— wherever God hasn’t spoken, then there is no way to decide between positions. Dr. William Provine, who passed away in 2015, he was an atheist and a biology professor at Cornell, he says, No ultimate foundations for ethics exist. It is only relative ethics.
Now, why would he say that?
Because unless there is a Creator to whom we are all accountable, it is just my truth versus your truth, and my truth is not binding on you. Now, people try to make their truth binding for others. They will often say when they see something that they believe is very wrong, they will say, everyone knows that is wrong, right? That is what we say. Everybody knows it is wrong to treat people that way.
And they think everyone knows it is wrong is enough of an argument to make their truth authoritative for everyone. But it’s not enough. Because really, when you say everyone knows it’s wrong, you’re actually claiming ethical standards are set by the majority. You’re claiming majority rules. And that doesn’t work.
Majority rules isn’t a strong enough position. For instance, majority rules would not have worked for MLK because the majority of people believed it was okay to treat people treat black people differently than how you treat white people, or at least they were okay with going along with black people being treated differently. So, MLK couldn’t have said, everyone knows this is wrong, because not everyone knew that. And actually, MLK had the minority opinion, yet he was still right. Why?
Why was he right even though he was in the minority? One reason, because God says so, revelation. That was his argument in his letters from a Birmingham jail. It is the same argument Paul uses here. Paul says his message is true because it comes from God.
So, at Bridges, when we are thinking through what we will teach, how we will structure the church, who can be an elder, even what deeds are we going to strive to do, like what does our compassion or benevolence ministry look like, we will ask, well, what does God say? Has God spoken on this? Because anywhere He has spoken, then that is the way that it is. He is our authority. Everything else is just relative truth.
It is just opinion. It is just preference, and it is not binding on others.
I wish, I wish I didn’t have to say that. I wish you could just assume that a pastor or a church or preaching would always be in line with Scripture, but that is not always the case. Not all pastors, not all churches, not all Christians even confess everything that is clearly taught in Scripture. Christians can sometimes distort what God says. And I am not talking about how we fall short of what God wants us to do.
Of course, we all fall short. That is all of us. That is not what I am talking about. We need to be corrected and brought in line with Scripture, not what I am talking about. I am talking about when God says, XYZ, and a Christian says, I don’t believe that.
That is not true. Now, there are any number of reasons why a Christian might look at something that God says and say, nope, not true. Maybe their past history, painful experiences. We get all that. We are sensitive to that.
Paul brings up a different reason for why sometimes people resist what God says. Verse 10, it is to please others, do what is popular, avoid criticism.
Some people, Paul assumes, are more concerned with pleasing others than saying what is true. But Paul says, no. Paul says, I am willing to be unpopular for this message. And you should know I’m with Paul. In the documentation we released with the transition announcement, you may have noticed the first 2 words of my vision are biblically faithful.
I am not going to move from what Scripture teaches, even if I take heat for it, which you should know about me already, because maybe it was by providence or design or random chance, over the last 4 years I have preached on nearly every controversial topic under the sun. And sometimes people, you guys have even asked me, like, does somebody, somebody have it in for you, Dan? Like, is there a conspiracy to give Dan all the hard topics? And I’m like, I don’t think so. We really pick what weeks we preach independent from the Scripture that we’re teaching.
So if anybody has it in for me, it’s, it’s Jesus. That’s who has it in for me. So you should know by now where I stand on pretty much everything. And you should know I am never going to alter what the text says to please anyone. I am okay getting fired for saying what the text says.
I am okay if you don’t call me to be your pastor because of where I have stood for the past 4 years. I am comfortable with that. We can’t move from the text. If we start eliminating parts of Scripture, what formula do we use to determine what stays and what goes? Right?
How do we figure that out? And whatever that formula is, let’s be honest, that formula is really our true authority. We aren’t servants of Christ anymore like Paul says he is in verse 10. We are servants of whatever formula it was that we used to decide what stays and what goes from the text.
So, for instance, if we eliminate part of Scripture because it is out of step with society at large, then we are servants of society at large. Or if we eliminate parts of Scripture because it makes us uncomfortable, then we are servants of our comfort. Whatever formula we use to keep or eliminate Scripture, that is our true authority. Don’t kid yourself. You start pulling stuff out, ignoring stuff, you aren’t a servant of Scripture.
I aim, you should know, to use Scripture to interpret the world instead of using the world to interpret Scripture. I believe all Scripture fits together, even where one part says, don’t listen to this other part. I believe there is a reason it says that and there is a comprehensive understanding that accounts for everything. The text will explain itself how it all fits together without us needing to bring any other information to it, which brings us to the one message that rules them all, the gospel. Paul says, If anyone preaches anything to you that isn’t the gospel, let that person be cursed, verse 8.
And then Paul says, hey, I don’t know if you heard me, so I’m going to go ahead and say that again. If anyone tries to preach to you a gospel other than the gospel that I preached to you, let that person be cursed. Now, this is a bit curious because Paul preached a lot about a lot of stuff. If you read his letters, which Paul wrote many letters in the first century and we still have a bunch of them, if you read those, Paul covers all kinds kinds of topics other than the gospel. And we will define the gospel in a minute.
If you are like, what is the gospel? We will define it in a minute. But he talks about all other kinds of stuff, right? Yet here Paul says, if a preacher, even if he is an angel, if a preacher comes and tells you something other than the gospel, let that person be cursed. It is very similar.
It is very similar. What Paul wrote here in Galatians is very similar to what Paul wrote in 1 Corinthians 2:2. Paul said to Corinthians, I decided to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ and him crucified. I decided to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ and him crucified. Paul tells the Corinthians, it’s like, hey, the only thing I’ve ever told you is Jesus crucified.
But then you read the rest of his letter and to the Corinthians, and again, you’re like, you talk about all kinds of other stuff, Paul, like way more than just Jesus crucified. And you think, I thought all you were going to say was Jesus crucified. Like, Paul, I kind of made other plans because I thought we’d be done by now. You say Jesus crucified and then I get to go home. But you’ve gone on for 16 chapters.
And then he writes the Corinthians a second letter which has 13 chapters. Like, what’s the deal, Paul? How can you say you have decided to know nothing but Jesus Christ and Him crucified, and then you write 29 chapters?
Here is what is going on. Everything Paul would write everywhere, Galatians, Corinthians, anywhere else, all of his preaching was derived from the gospel. The classic example would be the book of Romans where Paul spends 11 chapters explaining what Christ did for you, And then in chapter 12, he starts explaining, therefore, how we should live. How we should live is derived from what Christ did for us. There is the gospel and then there are the effects of the gospel.
There is the gospel and then there is how to apply the gospel to our lives. And Paul’s letters always have both. Frankly, if you are applying the gospel to different life situations, it can take 29 chapters. Multiple letters, lots of hours of preaching. But the point is Paul is consistent when he says, the only thing I have ever told you is Christ crucified.
The only thing I have ever preached is the gospel. So, what is this gospel that is so central? I am glad you asked. I am going to answer more than one way because Scripture answers more than one way. It’s the power of God unto salvation, Romans 1:16.
It’s Jesus’ death on the cross for our sins and his resurrection, 1 Corinthians 15. It’s Jesus defeating the powers of darkness, 1 John 3:8. It’s Jesus pays the debt that we owe, Mark 10:45, 1 Timothy 2:6. Jesus is forsaken, bearing our curse, Matthew 27:45, Galatians 3:13. Jesus reconciles us to God, Colossians 1:22, 2 Corinthians 5:19.
So, Jesus defeats evil, pays our debt, bears our curse, reconciles us to God, gives us power unto salvation, all through ultimately His death and resurrection. That might sound like a lot of different things, but they actually all have one thing in common. Jesus works instead of you. Jesus stands in for you. Jesus accomplishes what you failed to accomplish.
Jesus lived the life we should have lived. He was perfect and holy, and He defeated the powers of evil. That is who we should have been, but we failed to be. Then Jesus died the death we deserved to die. He was cursed and exiled from God at the time of His death, like we deserve to be.
But Jesus gives us credit for the life He lived, and He takes the blame for the life we lived. We are accepted by God. We are justified, which Paul talks about a lot in Galatians. We are redeemed. We are treasured, not because of what we have done, but because of what Christ has done.
That is the gospel.
Reportedly, Buddha’s last words were something like— now, this is translated into English, so nothing is exact, but something like, strive without ceasing, strive untiringly, work hard to gain your salvation. Buddha’s last words. Conversely, Jesus’ last words on the cross were, it is finished. Not strive without ceasing, but, it is finished.
The gospel, the good news about Jesus Christ, is not about what we must do. The gospel is what has been done for us. Paul says, anyone who tells you a message of do instead of done, let that person be cursed. Paul would say, let Buddha be cursed, because Buddha says strive without ceasing and Jesus says it is finished. It is not the same message.
Now, oftentimes, you might be one of these people, when people hear the message of the gospel is done instead of do, or it is finished instead of strive, people get all agitated and they say, but there is a lot of stuff you have to do. You can’t just do nothing. Holiness really matters. You have to work out your salvation, Philippians 2:12. Aren’t there a lot of rules in Christianity?
We can’t forget about those. Again, we would say those are derived from the gospel. They are the outcomes, the effects. We are going to talk a lot about deeds next week. In Christianity, you don’t work in order to get something.
You work because you already have something. Here is my best illustration of this principle, which I have said in some life groups, but not to all of you at once. So, imagine 2 different marriages. In both, the husband in the marriage confesses to his wife that he has failed somehow. It doesn’t matter what it is, but whatever it was, it was a big deal.
And the wife is justifiably very upset. So, wife number 1 reacts, and naturally she says, you’re going to need to work really hard to make that up to me. If you so much as sneeze when you shouldn’t for the next year, you’re out of here. I want flowers every day, and we’re only going to watch the shows I want to watch for forever. And you better not complain.
You are on thin ice. Right? That’s wife number 1. Wife number 2, on the other hand, reacts. Her husband did the same thing, whatever it was, and she looks at her husband with tears in her eyes, and even though she is utterly devastated, she says to her failure of a husband, she says, I love you, and I look at you the same as I did before.
We will figure this out. We will solve it together. I am with you. I forgive you. I love you.
Wife number 2. Now, both husbands, even though they received very different responses from their wives, both husbands might work really hard for their wife, right? Both wives might get flowers every day. From the outside, these husbands might seem pretty similar, right? But they are not similar at all.
One husband feels stressed and judged all the time, and the other husband feels free and loved. One husband is working to earn acceptance from his wife. The other is working because he already has acceptance from his wife.
With the gospel, you already have Christ’s acceptance through faith in His work on the cross. Christ bore the curse for you. Christ reconciled you to God. It is finished.
And Paul tells you, anyone who says anything else, let that person be anathema.
Cursed. So, will we talk about holiness, how we must live as Christians? Will we talk about that? Absolutely, but it is derived from the cross. It is a result of what Christ did for us.
It is our response to what Christ did. It is not to earn something.
This is the message of the entire Bible. From beginning to end, God is telling this story. Jesus, after His resurrection, He is walking along the road to Emmaus with 2 of His disciples and He shows them, this is Luke 24:27, Jesus shows them in the writings of Moses, the prophets, and all the Scriptures. Jesus goes through all the Scriptures and explains everything that concerns Him. Jesus tells these 2 guides on the road to Emmaus, He says, the Old Testament is really about Me.
It was the same thing we have already said Paul said. Paul said, I only preach the crucifixion. Well, what was Paul preaching from when he was preaching the crucifixion? He wasn’t preaching from Matthew, Mark, Luke, John because they didn’t exist when Paul started preaching. What is Paul preaching the crucifixion from?
The Old Testament, right? Acts 18:28, Paul debates with religious leaders and proves to them from the Scriptures, that’s the Old Testament, that Jesus is the Christ. All the while, when he is preaching, what is he preaching? He is only preaching the gospel, and he is only using the Old Testament to do it. So, for instance, you know, I don’t know everything that Paul preached.
I don’t know everything Jesus showed His disciples on the road to Emmaus. But for instance, maybe the story of Abraham when he lied to protect himself And it all blows up in his face later. And then he did it again, right? Sometimes when that Scripture is taught, the teacher will ask, okay, boys and girls, what is the moral of the story? And the kids will say, always tell the truth, because, you know, they see lying blows up in your face when you do it, so you have got to tell the truth.
That is fine. That is not wrong, right? I mean, we should tell the truth, but there is a bigger narrative than that. It’s like, you remember the children’s story The Little Engine That Could? Remember that story?
Some toys get stranded on one side of the mountain and the toys need to get to the other side of the mountain to where the children are so the children can have the toys, and they need a train to take them there, and some train engines come along but none of them can or none of them want to help take the toys over the mountain to the children who live over here on the other side. And the toys are getting all upset, but then comes the little engine. She’s not sure if she can make it, but she tries and tries and tries and she gets them over the mountain to the children, right? That’s the big narrative of the story. Now, let’s just imagine for some reason people started gathering and reading sections out of that children’s book every week, right?
And one week they’re on the page about the proud engine who came along and stranded the toys Right? He said, I am much too important to take you to the other side of the mountain, and he chugged off without helping the toys, and the toys are all upset. And the teacher closes the book and says, What is the moral of the story, children? And the kids say, You should be humble, or, You should help others, you know, or, You shouldn’t be so focused on yourself. Okay, that is fine.
Right? But that is not really what the story is about. It is a point, but it is not the point. If you only read that one page where the proud engine chugs off and the toys are still stranded, I mean, the kids would ask the teacher, like she just closed the book, the kids would ask the teacher, did the toys ever make it to the other side of the mountain? Is anyone ever going to come help them?
Like, surely this can’t be the end of the story, teacher. Right? I mean, you would want to know. You would want to know how it ends. Does anybody help the toys?
Right? If you don’t tie the account of that proud engine into the larger narrative, you have missed it. And in that scenario, you are going to have some angry children on your hands wondering whatever happened. To the stranded toys. So, we read the account of Abraham lying to save himself, right?
If we read that and we don’t ache over Abraham’s failure as a man, his cowardice, right? And if it doesn’t make us long for someone who is true, right? Will there ever be someone who instead of lying to save himself, he keeps his integrity and maybe even sacrifices himself? Will there ever be a hero?
If we don’t fill out the story, we have missed it. The Bible is about Jesus. The Bible is about the crucifixion. The Bible is about the gospel. So, in any of our teaching, it has to be about that.
It has to be.
Now, it would take several lifetimes, I’m sure, to unpack all the ways that Scripture from beginning to end is about Jesus.
But that’s what I hope to do with you for the next 20 years, point to Jesus, point us to the gospel, point us to the crucifixion, which meets all of our needs. Let’s pray together. Father, thank You for the gospel, and thank You for Scripture and the many people who wrote Scripture over so many thousands of years who didn’t even know one another, Lord, who didn’t know the complete story, but they knew their one part of the story and they contributed it. And now that we have the whole story altogether, we can see that it is in fact one story, a story of how You saved humanity that was running away from You in rebellion, how You came to rescue us, Lord. We pray that we would fall in love with Your Word.
For those of us who could kind of take it or leave it when it comes to Bible study, Lord, I pray You would captivate us with Your Scriptures.
And we could come to know you. We could come to know Jesus, who you sent to save us, Lord. May you increase our trust in him as we follow and worship him. We pray all those things in his name. Amen.
