About this sermon
1. The gospel reveals that God the Father effectually called elect sinners to salvation by means of the grace of Christ (v. 6).
2. Turning away from the biblical gospel for a different one is a turning away from God the Father (v. 6).
Sermon transcript
Well, dear friends. This morning, we are going to consider a passage from Paul’s letter to the Galatians as Reformation Day approaches. I thought it would be appropriate to preach a Reformation-themed sermon, reminding us of the glorious good news, the gospel of our justification by grace alone through faith alone in Christ alone, as that good news is defended by the Apostle Paul in Galatians. So this Lord’s Day and the following, we’re going to focus on Galatians 1. verses 6-9. And then we will finally return to the foundations series that I had begun. But right now, let’s turn our attention to Galatians 1. To fill out the context a bit, I’m going to read verses 1-10. But again, our focus will especially be today on verse 6 and on the section verses 6-9. So let us hear God’s holy word.
Galatians 1, verses 1-10. Paul, an apostle, not from men nor through man, but through Jesus Christ and God the Father, who raised Him from the dead, and all the brothers who are with me, to the churches of Galatia. Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ, who gave Himself for our sins to deliver us from the present evil age according to the will of our God and Father, to whom be the glory forever and ever. Amen. 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.” Dear friends, the grass withers and the flower fades, but the Word of our God endures forever. Let us pray. Almighty God, Heavenly Father, we pray that by Your Spirit, You would bring us light, that You would shine the light of Your Word into our souls. Bless the Word as it goes forth today, as it has been read and as it is proclaimed. We pray that Your Word would find a lodging place in our souls.
We pray that Your Word, like seed, would find a deep root in the soil of our hearts and bear much spiritual fruit. in our lives. And we ask that You would grant unto me, Your unworthy servant, the grace to declare and speak forth Your Word with clarity, with power, and with the fullness and assistance of Your Holy Spirit. For the glory of Your name, for the edification of Your people, and for the salvation of the lost. For we pray these things through Christ our Lord, and all of God’s people said, Amen. You may be seated. Dear friends, as you can see in your sermon outline, the title of my sermon today is A Different Gospel. And there’s quite a number of key words that the children can listen for. Just choose a couple to listen for and keep track of if you find that helpful in following along in the sermon.
My dear brothers and sisters in Christ, God’s Word teaches that there is only one true and living God. That’s a very basic doctrinal truth that is revealed in the Holy Scriptures. And friends, because there is only one God, there is only one truth. Namely, the truth that is revealed in God’s world and especially in God’s Word, the Bible. And because there is only one God and only one divinely revealed truth of God, there is only one moral law, namely the law of God revealed in the scriptures, the works of which are inscribed upon the human conscience, and which is summarized, that law of God which is summarized in the Ten Commandments. And therefore, friends, since all of this is so, does it not make sense to you that there is only one true faith, only one true religion, namely the true Christian faith that is revealed in God’s Word, the Bible?
And does it not also make sense that this one true religion, this one true faith, would reveal to mankind the one and only God-appointed Savior and Messiah, and therefore, the one and only way to be saved? To quote from the Holy Scriptures from John 14, verse 6, which should be a very familiar passage of Scripture, we read Jesus saying these words. It says in that verse, Jesus said to him, I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through Me. You notice Jesus didn’t just say, well, I’m one of many ways or I’m one of many truths. He said, no, I am the way, the truth, and the like, no one comes to the Father except through me. When the Christian church and when we Christians bear testimony to the fact that Jesus is the only way to the Father, we’re not being arrogant, although you can bear witness to that truth in an arrogant spirit, but the claim itself is not arrogant because Jesus himself taught that he is the only way to the Father.
And, of course, this was picked up by and proclaimed by Jesus’s apostles. For example, as the apostle Peter, the spokesman for the apostles, testified of Christ when he stood before the Jewish Sanhedrin, Peter said to the Sanhedrin in these words, recorded in Acts 4.12, Peter said, and there is salvation in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved. Peter says, there is no other name but the name of Jesus Christ by which we must be saved. And the Apostle Paul would agree with that. In Ephesians 4, verses 5 and 6, the Apostle Paul proclaims that there is one Lord. That’s Jesus. There is one Lord. One faith. One baptism. One God and Father of all who is over all and through all and in all.
And of course, in the Epistle of Jude, we believers are exhorted to contend for the faith that was once for all delivered to the saints. That’s Jude 3. Notice, the faith. The faith that was once for all delivered to the saints. The holy Christian faith that was revealed by Christ and propagated by the apostles and canonized in the holy scriptures of the Old and New Testaments. This holy Christian faith is not something that can be reimagined or revised or tweaked or changed with every passing fad of culture. It is something that is once and for all delivered to the saints. And our job as a church is not to tweak the gospel, not to conform it to the popular opinions of popular culture, but instead to faithfully pass that faith on from generation to generation, to pass it on in its purity and integrity from generation to generation until Jesus returns in glory.
And so, my friends, There is only one God. There is only one Savior. There is only one moral law of God. And there is only one faith. And therefore, By implication, there is only one gospel message. Children, do you remember what the word gospel means? Gospel means good news. There’s only one gospel message, and that is the good news of full and free salvation for sinners. Salvation by sovereign grace alone, through faith alone, in the crucified, risen, and reigning Lord Jesus Christ alone. But this was a gospel message that sadly the first century churches of Galatia were losing their grip on. Sadly, the first century churches in Galatia to whom Paul wrote this epistle were being threatened by some Jewish Christian false teachers whom scholars label the Judaizers. And those false teachers were perverting this one true gospel by preaching what amounted to what the Apostle Paul describes in verse six as a different gospel.
The word in the Greek there for different is the word heteron. And that may sound familiar. I believe that that term heteron is the term from which we derive the word heterodoxy or heretical. They were preaching a different, a heretical gospel and not being faithful to the biblical apostolic gospel. With this background information in mind, let’s dive into our text for today. And as I said, this Lord’s Day and the next will be focusing on chapter one, verses six through nine in particular. Today, we’re especially going to be dwelling in verse six because there’s so much here in this passage. And let me read verse six again. Paul, after a very brief opening greetings and salutation to the churches of Galatia, he starts off with astonishment. He says, I am astonished that you are so quickly deserting him who called you in the grace of Christ and are turning to a different, a heteron gospel.
Now, what do we learn here in this verse? We learn many things, but one of the things we learn in this verse, and this is the first point in your sermon outline if you’re following along. My friends, we learn here that the Gospel reveals that God the Father effectually calls sinners to salvation by means of the grace of Christ. which means not by the works of the law, but by the grace of Christ. The Gospel reveals that God the Father effectually, savingly calls elect sinners to salvation by means of the grace of Christ. Again, Paul writes, I am astonished that you are so quickly deserting him who did what? Who called you in the grace of Christ. Contextually speaking, when Paul speaks here of this call, it seems in the context, he’s not speaking of what the theologians would call the external call of the gospel.
That is to say, when the gospel is preached, there is a gospel call, an appeal, a call to all who hear that message to repent of their sins and to trust Jesus Christ as their very own Lord and Savior. We believe in the external call. We believe that Christ is freely offered to all who hear that call. But hearing the call to repentance and faith is not enough to bring someone to salvation. There has to be a response to that call. And only those in whom the Holy Spirit effectually calls through that general call will come to faith in Christ. These Galatian believers, Paul is reminding these Galatian believers that they had been not only the recipients of the external call of the gospel, they’d actually answered that call because they were effectually, savingly called When God determines to save a sinner, He doesn’t just make it a possibility, He actually effectually brings it to pass.
So it’s the effectual call that is in view here, I believe, in the context of this passage. We learn here, beloved, in the words that Paul writes here in verse 6, we learn that God the Father takes the sovereign initiative in our salvation. I don’t know about you folks, but when I listen to fellow believers, evangelical and Bible believing Christians talk about salvation and talk about God, there seems to be this general idea that, you know, God is just kind of sitting back waiting for you to make the first move. God just wants you to come to him. He’s just so eager. But he’s held back until you take that first step towards him. But this passage makes it very clear. You and I did not first reach out to God. He took the initiative.
He first reached out to us. The reason that we reach up to Him in repentance and faith is because He first reached out to us. God the Father takes the sovereign initiative in our salvation. Dear ones, in this passage, the Apostle Paul reminds the Galatian believers that it was God the Father who called them to salvation. They did not call themselves. They did not take the initiative in their own salvation. They did not pick themselves up by their own bootstraps or exercise their so-called autonomous free wills in such a way as to get God’s attention and merit His favor so that He chose to save them. No. Rather, it was in or by the grace of Jesus the Christ that the Father had called them with a saving effectual call. A call that actually brings them into a state of salvation.
Dear ones, we would do well to remember that it is the biblical and apostolic gospel message that reveals the saving truth about Jesus the Christ, the Son of the living God. No other gospel, no different or heterodox gospel reveals the truth about Jesus the Christ. Only the biblical, apostolic gospel. The gospel proclaimed by Jesus himself and the prophets and apostles. Only that gospel. reveals the saving truth about Jesus, the Son of God, the Christ. But in contrast to this biblical gospel, the Judaizers, whom Paul is contending against and and seeking to warn the Galatian churches against the Judaizers, these Jewish Christian false teachers were perverting the true biblical gospel, and therefore they were denying this biblical and apostolic gospel. By their false gospel, their different gospel, these false teachers were by implication denying God the Father’s sovereign initiative in the salvation of sinners.
They were putting the final say of the sinner’s salvation in the hands of sinners themselves instead of in the hands of God. You see, why are they called Judaizers? Well, we need to understand that the Gentile Christians in the Galatian churches, the Christians in the Galatian churches were mostly from a Gentile background. Most of these Christians had been converted to Christ from an unbelieving pagan Gentile background. And this, if you read the New Testament, this is a real issue in the early church. Remember that Jesus himself was Jewish. The earliest apostolic church was Jewish. I mean, the apostles were Jews and the gospel was first preached on the day of Pentecost in Jerusalem, preached to mostly Jews and Jewish proselytes, those gathered in Jerusalem. But then it started to spread beyond Jerusalem and Judea. And so Samaritans started to get converted and then.
Gentiles, first Gentile God fearers like Cornelius, but then the gospel started to go out to raw pagans, pagan Gentiles who were coming to believe not only in the God of Israel, the true and living God, but to embrace Jesus as the true Messiah, the son of the living God. And for many Jewish Christians in that early context, this was this was a crisis. They’re like, what do we do with this? What do we do with all these uncircumcised Gentiles who, you know, who don’t keep the law of Moses? Are they just as saved as we Jews are or are they fully initiated into the covenant community or not? Well, the Judaizers came along and the Judaizers probably held too many Orthodox teachings. It’s very likely that the Judaizers affirmed the need for faith in Christ.
They would say, yeah, sure. It’s great that you Gentiles have come to believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God. He is, that He died for your sins and rose from the dead. It’s great that you have faith in Jesus. And these Judaizers probably acknowledged the deity of Christ, His atonement, His resurrection. But the thing that they taught, apparently, was that if you’re a Gentile, It’s not enough to just believe in Jesus. You also have to get circumcised and keep the law of Moses, especially the ceremonial and ritual laws, like the food laws and so forth. In other words, bottom line, the Judaizers denied the truth of justification by grace alone through faith alone. They instead presented a system of salvation by faith plus works of the law. They said that if you were a Gentile, you basically had to become a Jew before you could be saved and become a fully initiated Christian.
And so, friends, these Judaizers apparently taught that justification, justification being a right legal standing before God as the divine judge who declares you righteous in his sight because of Christ’s righteousness. These Judaizers apparently taught that justification was not received by trusting in Jesus Christ alone, but by faith in Christ plus circumcision and keeping the works of the law of Moses, especially the ceremonial or ritual laws of the Old Testament. And therefore, as Paul in verse six launches into the main concerns of this epistle that has been described by scholars as Paul’s white hot epistle, As Paul begins to address these concerns, he reminds these Galatian Christians of the truth, that it is totally, he reminds them of a truth that is totally at odds with the legalistic message of works righteousness, which was being proclaimed to these Gentile Galatian Christians by these Judaizing heretics.
And that truth is the truth that God the Father had taken the sovereign initiative in calling these Galatian believers into a state of salvation. And this saving call came to them not by means of the works of the Mosaic law. This grace of God came to them not by circumcision or the keeping of the law. It came to them by means of the grace of Christ. Paul says, I am astonished that you are so quickly deserting Him who called you in or by the grace of Christ. Now let’s focus in on that phrase, the grace of Christ. We learn here that God the Father effectually calls His people to salvation through or by means of the grace of Christ. But what does Paul mean when he uses that phrase, the grace of Christ? What is grace?
How have you often heard grace defined? I’m guessing that many of you have often heard grace defined as God’s unmerited favor. And that’s a that’s a basically correct definition. Dr. Richard Longnecker in his commentary on Galatians defines grace as God’s unmerited benevolence, especially God’s unmerited goodness or benevolence, which is displayed in the salvation of sinners who deserve the opposite of his favor and salvation. One of my favorite seminary professors back in the day, Dr. Meredith Klein, who’s now with the Lord in glory, Dr. Klein offered what I regard as a powerful and even more correct definition of grace. Grace is not just God’s unmerited favor. Dr. Klein reminded us that grace is actually God’s demerited favor. It is God’s favor given to those who deserve his wrath and disfavor. It is God’s kindness shown to those who deserve his judgment.
We deserve the opposite of grace. But God has given that grace to us. And how does that grace come to us? It comes to us in and through the Lord Jesus Christ. Again, Paul reminds these Galatian believers that they had been called to salvation in the grace, in or by the grace of Christ. Again, according to Dr. Longnecker, in the grace of Christ, that phrase in the grace of Christ should probably be taken as a dative of means with a possessive genitive. In other words, for those of you who are not linguistically inclined, basically what this means is the grace which belongs to and is made possible by Christ. How is it that the infinitely holy God could be gracious and merciful to those of us who have been guilty of committing cosmic treason, who have been guilty of turning our backs on God, suppressing the truth in unrighteousness, shaking our fists at our Creator and saying, no, I’ll do it my way.
I am the master of my faith. I am the captain of my soul. Get lost, God. I’ll do it my way. Thank you very much. How is it that those of us with that heart attitude, that fallen nature in Adam, How is it that God could be gracious to us? It is because of Jesus. This grace which comes to us and calls us and saves us belongs to and is made possible by the Lord Jesus Christ. My friends, the saving work of Christ, His obedient life, His atoning substitutionary death on the cross, His glorious bodily resurrection and ascension, His reign at the Father’s right hand where He intercedes for us. This saving work of Christ which is outside of us is the objective basis by which this grace is obtained for His people. But you know, as I believe, I think it was Luther who said that the work of Jesus Christ in saving us, that work is external to us.
It’s outside of us. As long as it stays outside of us, as long as it’s not personally applied to us, it’s useless to us. We need that saving work of Christ personally applied to and imputed to us. And that is done by the ministry of the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit applies this objective outside of us work of Christ to his people. The Holy Spirit applies it to us in regenerating and effectually calling and converting his people in the by that is the subjective means by which the objective work of the Lord Jesus Christ is applied to God’s people. Dear ones, it is precisely this glorious truth of the Gospel, this truth about God’s grace in Jesus Christ, that the Galatian Christians were in danger of abandoning in favor of a different Gospel, a false Gospel, a Gospel which was no good news at all.
I mean, friends, Gospel is good news. But if you know yourself to be a fallen sinner, dead in your trespasses and sins, in bondage to sin and Satan, if you know that you’re a guilty wretch in the sight of the infinitely holy God, it’s not good news when you hear a message like, well, yeah, I believe in Jesus, but you also need to jump through this hoop and that hoop and read the fine print here. That’s not good news. Do more. Try harder. Be better. Pull yourself up by your own bootstraps. That’s not good news to those of us who recognize ourselves to be lost and dead in trespasses and sins. The good news is about what God has done for us in Jesus Christ. The Galatian Christians were on the verge of losing their grip on this biblical gospel in favor of a different gospel, a heteron gospel.
Well, that’s interesting, Pastor, but that was the first century. That was the churches of Galatia. That’s not the church today, is it? Oh, dear ones, there are many false gospels, many false teachings and false teachers out there. Make sure that you understand clearly the basics of the biblical gospel. And make sure you wholeheartedly embrace that biblical gospel. And be alert so that you may stand against the temptation to fall for a false gospel. If even these first century Christians to whom Paul had preached, if even they were in danger living so close to the life of Jesus and living in the apostolic age, if even these Christians were in danger of losing their grip on the true biblical gospel of justification by faith alone, certainly we too are in danger of that if we are not alert.
May God in His grace grant us the grace to stay alert. But another truth that we learn from this passage, and there’s so much here in these three verses, that’s why we’re focusing just on verse six today. But the second point in your outline, an important truth we learn from this verse is that turning away from the biblical gospel for a different one is a turning away from God the Father. Paul says, I am astonished that you are so quickly deserting him or the one who called you in the grace of Christ and are turning to a different gospel. Turning away from the biblical gospel, this biblical and apostolic good news of full and free salvation and justification by grace alone, through faith alone in Christ alone. Turning away from that biblical gospel for a different one is a turning away from God himself.
And verse six, Paul expresses astonishment at the troubling spiritual direction in which the Galatian believers appear to be heading. If you read Paul’s works, the corpus of Paul’s letters, among his letters, Galatians is arguably the most emotional. I mean, Paul gets kind of emotional, too, in Second Corinthians and so forth. But Paul just wears his distress and his emotion on his sleeves as he’s addressing these Galatian believers. And the reason for that is that matters of salvation are at stake. When the purity and integrity and clarity of the gospel are muddied and are compromised, and when a false gospel is being propagated, that poses a grave spiritual danger. And so it must be confronted head on. And that’s why, again, as I mentioned before, the scholars often refer to Paul’s letter to the Galatians as his white hot epistle, because he is burning with zeal and pastoral concern for these believers to whom he’s writing.
Again, Paul expresses astonishment. He’s befuddled. He’s doing a double take. He’s pulling his hair out. What’s going on here? What is it that astonishes him? Notice, Paul states that he is astonished that these Galatian Christians were so quickly deserting Him who called you. Notice, Paul doesn’t just say that the Galatians were turning away from sound teaching, although they certainly were. They were in danger of doing that. But no, he says they were deserting a person A divine person, namely Him who called you, meaning God the Father. And by the way, to turn away from God the Father is to turn away from the Son and the Holy Spirit as well, since Father, Son, and Holy Spirit exist eternally in perfect unity and harmony. Dear ones, it isn’t just that these Galatian believers were in the process of reconsidering some merely minor or peripheral or non-essential or second or third tier points of theology, points of theology where true Christians can agree to disagree and not have the salvation in danger or what have you.
No, beloved. by turning away from the biblical gospel of justification by grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone, they were actually turning away from God himself. You see, the gospel, believing and embracing the gospel in a true biblical sense, is believing and embracing the biblical Christ. Because Jesus Christ is inextricably intertwined with the truth of the gospel. To reject the gospel in favor of another gospel, a different gospel, is to reject the Jesus that the gospel proclaims. To reject the God who revealed the gospel is to reject, or to reject the God’s gospel is to reject God himself. Let me just again put it plainly. to reject the biblical gospel, to willingly and knowingly reject the biblical gospel. I’m not just saying, you know, we all understand. I hope we understand that true Christians grow in their understanding of the gospel, in our depth of understanding of the gospel.
And you can be a true believer and have a very simple faith. Praise be to God that you don’t have to be a theological scholar to be saved. You can be a child with a childlike faith in the Lord Jesus, and that faith is sufficient to receive the gift of Christ. Faith is not a good work that we do, by the way. It’s simply the empty hand that receives the gift of King Jesus, the gift of salvation. And you can be a child and have a childlike faith. But if your faith is in the biblical Lord Jesus Christ, that’s enough to receive. His gift of salvation. But to willingly and knowingly turn away from the biblical Gospel is to reject God Himself. Period. To commit apostasy from the Gospel of justification by grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone, to knowingly turn your back on that biblical good news is to turn your back on God Himself.
To commit apostasy against God Himself. Because God is inextricably bound himself to the gospel. Like the Israelites in the wilderness who quickly turned their backs on Yahweh their God, the God who had graciously redeemed them, delivered them from slavery, and had brought them out of slavery into the wilderness. These Israelites had fashioned for themselves a golden calf. They had committed apostasy from the God who had been so gracious to them. Likewise, these Galatian Christians were in grave danger of committing a similar apostasy. No wonder Paul is so vehement in this epistle. No wonder Paul reveals such deep pastoral distress, such earnest concern for the Galatian Christians throughout this epistle. Well, dear ones, what’s the takeaway here? There’s many implications, many lessons that we can learn from this. But this essentially is a warning to us.
Dear ones, let us be warned. If we turn away from the gospel of grace in order to follow after a false gospel, such as the Judaizers gospel of works, righteousness and legalism, If we turn away from the true gospel to a false gospel, no matter how appealing and how biblically sounding such a so-called gospel might seem on the surface, and no matter how many celebrity preachers may be preaching it, if we turn away from the biblical gospel to a false gospel, then we are turning away from God the Father Himself. To commit apostasy from the biblical gospel is to spit in God’s face. It is to blaspheme the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ. It is committing outrage against the spirit of grace. Exchanging the one true biblical gospel, the good news of full and free justification and salvation by grace alone, through faith alone in Jesus Christ alone, apart from works, for a different gospel isn’t just a matter of exchanging one second or third tier doctrine from another.
It isn’t just like, well, I used to be a post-millennialist and now I’m an amillennialist or, you know, I’ve changed my view on the creation days of Genesis 1 or what have you. Again, I’m not saying those aren’t important issues. Everything in the Bible is important. because it is revealed in God’s Word. But there are some truths that rise to the level of absolute essential importance when it comes to eternal salvation. It’s one thing to change your eschatological views. It’s another thing to, say, negotiate or change your views on the deity of Christ or His substitutionary atonement or His resurrection from the dead. We’re salvation by grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone. Now, you might be saying, well, Pastor, you know, you’re almost sounding like an Arminian here. You’re almost sounding like you believe that the true Christians can lose their salvation.
I mean, that we can fall away from grace in a final way, a final sense. Don’t we believe? Don’t we believe in the eternal security of the true believer? Don’t we believe in the perseverance of the saints? Brothers and sisters, of course we do. Of course we do. And of course, the Word of God indicates that our sovereign God will keep His chosen ones from committing such a grave and final apostasy. Christ has indeed secured the eternal salvation of His sheep. And as Jesus says in John 10, no one can snatch My sheep from My hands. The Father and the Son keep Christ’s true sheep secure. And they follow Him. And they cling to Him. The sheep of Christ instinctively cling to him in faith. Well, then why is Paul so upset? Why doesn’t he just say, well, you know, yeah, there’s these false teachers and they’re threatening to lead the Galatian Christians astray.
But, you know, God is sovereign and he’ll work it out. He’ll keep them in his care. Why does Paul react as if you really need to hear this and take warning? Well, friends, One of the ways that God preserves His people in Gospel faith is through the warnings of Holy Scripture. Read the letter to the Hebrews. It’s a wonderful epistle that speaks of the high priesthood of Christ and Christ’s eternal redemption of His people and our security in Him. And yet, Hebrews is also filled with warnings not to abandon your confidence in Christ. The Holy Spirit uses those warnings to cause the true believer to take heed so that we might continue to cling to Christ all the more strongly. So friends, let us take these warnings to heart. And by the grace of God, let us continue to cling in faith to our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ and to Him alone.
Let us continue to cling to the biblical gospel. And you may say, well, Pastor, I don’t know if I understand this. How do I do that? You know the gospel. You can spend your whole life studying the gospel and never plummets deaths. It is so deep. It’s so rich. But it’s also simple enough that even a child can understand it. We are sinners deserving of God’s judgment and wrath. But the good news is that God so loved the world that he gave his one and only son that whoever believes in him might not perish but have everlasting life. You may not be able to articulate fully or clearly or in depth the doctrine of justification. You may have a very simple understanding of that. But the issue is this. Are you trusting in Jesus, the Son of God and Son of Man?
Are you trusting in Jesus alone to save you from your sins? Or are you trusting in Jesus plus something else? If you’re trusting in Jesus plus your works, Jesus plus circumcision, Jesus plus the law, Jesus plus anything, then you’re not really trusting in Jesus at all. Trust in Jesus. Believe that in Him you have a merciful, forgiving God. Trust Him to cleanse you from your sins. Jesus in the Gospel offers you the gift of salvation. You know, if someone comes to you with a gift, there’s two things you can do. You can either reach out your hands and receive it, or you can reject it. Faith is simply the empty hand that receives the gift of Christ. And we’re told in Scripture that faith by which we receive Christ is itself a gift of God, because God changes our hearts and makes us willing to open our hearts to Christ, to receive and rest upon Him.
So, dear listener, have you received and are you resting upon Christ alone for your salvation? Or are you looking to Christ and something else? Look to Jesus alone. Believe upon him, repent and believe. And the Bible says you will be saved and continue to cling to Christ and Christ alone. Don’t be led astray by a different gospel. Build your life upon the rock, Jesus Christ and his gospel alone. Amen. Let us pray. Heavenly Father, we thank you for the good news of Jesus, our Savior. We pray that You would give us grace to take heed, to take warning, not to fall for a false gospel, but to continue to cling to Christ and Christ alone. We pray these things in Jesus’ name and all of God’s people said, Amen. Christ is our mighty fortress. Let’s rise as we close our time in worship this morning.
Let’s rise and we’ll sing together. 244. A mighty fortress is our God. 244. you
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