We just started out last week with this new series beginning in Galatians, obviously in verse 1. We're continuing that today, so you can turn there. We're still in chapter 1. We'll be continuing our way through.
Before we start that though, I'd like to pray. Would you bow your heads with me? Lord, our hearts are prone to wander, as we sang in that song. Our hearts, our minds are prone to drift, prone to drift away from You, prone to drift away from the gospel. But Lord, one of Your graces to us is Your Word, through which You speak in the power of Your Spirit. And so Lord, we ask right now that You would speak to us, that I pray that you would bind our hearts securely to you. The gracious ministry of your word, Lord, I pray that you would help me, protect me from error. Lord, I pray that you would help us, help us to incline our hearts to your testimonies. Holy Spirit, help us to open our eyes and our ears to see and hear God, we want to walk closely with you. We want to love Jesus more deeply. We want to understand the mystery of the gospel more fully, and we need your help for that, Lord. We also recognize that the Word is your Word, fully inspired by your Spirit, and that it can assist us in that. And so I pray right now, Lord, that you would work powerfully in these next minutes. God, minister to your people. Bind our hearts securely to Jesus. We pray that in your name. Amen.
Last night I was together with some folks in the church and we were watching one of the playoff games and we were watching Tim Tebow fail in Tebow Time and it was a pretty epic collapse. But it reminded me of a time I was watching a playoff game with my brother. We were both pretty young. It was back in 1992. And if you remember back that far, the Buffalo Bills were a pretty good team. And my brother, he's a couple years younger than me, so I was 10, he was 8 at the time. He was a die-hard Buffalo Bills fan. Remember those string hats they had for a while back in like the early '90s? Like there's actually like those shoelaces coming out the back of the hat that you would use to— he had a Buffalo Bills string hat and he had Buffalo Bills t-shirts and he loved the Buffalo Bills. I mean, Jim Kelly and Thurman Thomas and all these players, Don Beebe, he loved them. He was all about the Bills. Well, you know, I was a couple years older and I could remember what had happened the previous two Super Bowls against the Redskins and the Giants. And so I kind of had an inkling the Bills weren't gonna win. And so I was kind of needling him as big brothers are prone to do. And the game starts, you know, he's in all of his Bills regalia. He's wearing his colors. He's cheering for his team. You know, and then they just start to get pummeled by the Cowboys. And they are just getting the beatdown of all beatdowns in this game. I'm an older brother, and so part of my job as I'm watching this and I'm watching my younger brother's team just get destroyed is I need to point this out to him, right? And I need to make sure he realizes, 'You're a Bills fan, and the Bills are getting killed. Your team is terrible.' And so I'm just ribbing him, and I'm just mercilessly laying it on. Well, by halftime, my brother was no longer a Buffalo Bills fan. In fact, I laid it on so thick and my peer pressure was so intense that he actually became a Dallas Cowboys fan. And he ended up getting a Cowboys coat, and all of a sudden he was on the Cowboys bandwagon. He had gone totally bandwagon. His team is playing in the Super Bowl, and he abandoned them mid-Super Bowl. He jumped the bandwagon. Now, I've never let him live this down, and I'm convinced this clearly explains why he would then later become such an ardent New York Yankees fan. He just can't handle losing, and so he wants to cheer for a team with lots of money. We can all think of bandwagon fans, right? And we all know, even if we're not a bandwagon fan, that we have that temptation when our team is doing poorly. Oh, you know, it would be easy just to cheer for somebody else right now. We've all felt that pressure, that temptation. We know what that's like when the going gets tough. Sometimes our passion starts to wane. Maybe our passion starts to go somewhere else. At the very least, maybe we don't wear our team gear quite as much.
Well, this morning In our text, we're going to see a turn of passion. We're gonna see a turn of passion, but the turn of passion that's taking place, the jumping off of the bandwagon, is far more serious than just leaving your favorite NFL team behind.
We're gonna see this morning, and what Paul is describing with stern warnings and really a breaking heart, is how the churches in Galatia are abandoning the gospel. They're abandoning the thing Paul was sure they had a passion for. Fresh off of their new faith in Christ, they're doing something far more serious than just exchanging favorite teams. They're exchanging gospels.
So one of the points of Galatians that Paul makes is just this ongoing theme in the letter. And he's writing this to professing Christians, so it should hit close to home to us. You think you know the gospel, Galatians. You think you apply the gospel, and you don't. You think you understand the gospel, but in reality, as Paul will say later on, I don't think you fully understand it at all, and I don't think you sufficiently apply it, and I don't think you adequately love the gospel. And if you do those things, you prove that you've never grasped it to begin with.
6 · Oswald makes the theological claim that true knowledge of the gospel produces perseverance in the gospel, and therefore gospel desertion reveals a deficiency in gospel understanding
Now, Paul can say all of these devastating things because if the Galatians truly knew the gospel, they wouldn't be turning away from it. They wouldn't be leaving it. They wouldn't be embracing a different gospel. Now, the stakes are the same for us. As we read this letter, we should have the same concern, and we should recognize that Paul's pastoral heart that gets a little harsh in his letters at times should speak a warning to us.
7 · Oswald states the sermon's controlling thesis: gospel desertion is a fatal decision with devastating eternal consequences
He wants to make something patently clear in this passage. I think the truth that he's driving home to these churches and to us this morning is this: gospel desertion is a fatal decision. The truth in this passage that he's driving at and pushing for is that gospel desertion is a fatal decision. If you leave the gospel behind, it will have devastating consequences.
8 · Oswald reads Galatians 1:6-10 in full, providing the biblical text that will be exposited throughout the sermon
So look with me in our text. We seek to pull our minds around that truth this morning. Starting in verse 6, this is what 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!
9 · Oswald signals the sermon's structure: four movements through Galatians 1:6-10 demonstrating why gospel desertion is fatal
Gospel desertion, Paul is going to show us, is a fatal decision. And I want to take 4 points to walk us through this text and to see the way that Paul is driving home that truth for us this morning.
10 · Oswald introduces the first major point: deserting the gospel is deserting God Himself
Now the first point, the first thing that Paul is saying in this text is simply You turn to a different gospel and you're deserting God. You turn away from my gospel and you turn away from God. Galatians 1:6, he 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.
11 · Oswald exposes the shocking omission of thanksgiving in Galatians by contrasting it with Paul's standard epistolary pattern
Now, this is actually kind of surprising language. Typically, when Paul writes a letter to a church, He introduces himself. He addresses the people that he's writing the letter to. He'll have some sort of doxology in there where he worships God along with the church as he's writing the letter. And then typically, he praises God for them. He thanks God for them. There's a section of thanksgiving. And what's conspicuous by its absence in Galatians is there's no thank you. Paul, an apostle, right? Remember that from last week? Not according to man or through man, right? Then he goes on to lay out what the gospel is, and this is where, if you've ever read one of Paul's letters before, we should be expecting, 'I thank God for you, Galatians. I pray for you, Galatians. Thank you for your partnership in the gospel, Galatians.' Silence.
12 · Oswald intensifies the surprise of Paul's omission by comparing Galatia to Corinth
Now, this is especially surprising when we think, think of like a letter to the Corinthians. Think of the stuff that's going on in Corinth. You've got super apostles who are trying to pretend like Paul isn't really as important an apostle as they are. You've got spiritual gifts just completely out of whack. And you've got massive immorality. You've got a man sleeping with his stepmother in the church, and the church is apparently condoning it. And in Corinth, in that letter, Paul expresses thanksgiving. Why not here?
13 · Oswald unpacks Paul's astonishment as a rebuke: the doctrinal crisis in Galatia is the most serious in the New Testament
In fact, the difference is so startling, it's not just that Paul doesn't say, 'Thank you.' them. He opens with a remark of astonishment and shock. Now, why the intensity, Paul? Well, he explains in verse 6 here. Galatians is different. The doctrinal issues at stake, the things being attacked in Asia Minor, they are the most serious of any letter in the entire New Testament. I'm shocked, Paul says, because you're deserting the gospel. I'm astonished, which is really just a way of saying subtly I am appalled with you.
14 · Oswald applies Paul's pastoral priorities to contemporary Christianity, convicting believers of inverted priorities: we are scandalized by moral failure but indifferent to gospel distortion
Now here's what I think is interesting. Think with me for a second. Isn't this really sort of the opposite of how we react? Aren't we often more rocked by moral failures and financial foibles and scandalous sins that will beset a church? Isn't that what gets the headlines? Countless churches corrupt and obscure and add to the gospel of Christ, and we hardly hear a whisper. But a pastor cheats on his taxes, well, that's front page headlines. Now I say that not to downplay the seriousness of moral and financial sin. Those are serious things. Paul doesn't hold back when he addresses those sorts of issues in other letters. But he's clear here. By not saying thank you and thanking the Galatians for their partnership in the gospel, he is making an obvious point. Those other moral issues, they're serious. Gospel desertion? That's deadly serious.
15 · Oswald traces the historical context from Acts 13-14 to establish the magnitude of Paul's astonishment
Paul is righteously angry. He gives this severe rebuke to the Galatians, and I can't imagine him saying it any more sternly. 'I'm astonished with you that you're so quickly deserting Him who called you.' These churches are deserting the gospel for forgeries. And what makes it so shocking is what we read about these churches in Acts. In Acts 13 and 14, there's this description of Paul's ministry here in Asia Minor, in Galatians. He's traveling through this area from city to city and all throughout the region, and one after another, wherever the gospel is preached, numerous people— Acts 13 and 14 say— are coming to know the Lord. From Pisidian Antioch to Iconium to Lystra to Derbe, multitudes of Gentiles and Jews are hearing the gospel and they're repenting. Acts describes Jews and Greeks, cities, an entire region becoming disciples of Christ. It's almost like a Gentile Pentecost that's taking place in this region.
16 · Oswald interprets Paul's astonishment as both rebuke and pastoral distress
So yes, Paul is stunned, and his astonishment is really a rebuke. I was just there with you. I was worshiping God with you. I can't believe you're doing this! It's an expression of pastoral distress. After such a short time, you're already deserting? How fickle are you?
17 · Oswald traces Paul's allusion to Exodus 32:8, establishing a typological parallel between Israel's golden calf idolatry and the Galatians' gospel desertion
Now, Paul's language here is actually alluding to Exodus 32. Exodus 32 Paul sees a parallel, and we see it in the way that he talks. The words 'so quickly,' that you're so quickly turning away from and deserting the gospel, echo Exodus 32:8. And what that is is the golden calf incident. Now, do you remember the story behind the golden calf? Israel has been saved and delivered from Egypt. They're brought into the wilderness, and there at Mount Sinai, God graciously covenants with them and promises to be their God and gives them the regulations of the law for how they should live with Him. Right? That's a story that's just etched into the consciousness of Jewish people. They know that story, and for generations they've been convicted by that story, and they've been dumbfounded by the sins of their ancestors. How could they turn to idolatry so quickly? I mean, up on the mountain, the glory of God Almighty is surrounding Moses. And while that's happening, at the base of the mountain, God's people are exchanging the true and living God for a golden cow. What in the world? Well, listen to the language that God uses when He speaks to Moses. He says in Exodus 32:8, They have turned aside quickly out of the way that I commanded them. Does that sound familiar to our text?
18 · Oswald makes the theological claim that deserting the gospel is equivalent to idolatry: turning to a different gospel is turning to a different god, just as Israel's golden calf was not merely a representation of Yahweh but a different deity altogether
Paul is drawing on that image that just like Israel at Sinai, these Galatian churches, fresh on the experience of the gospel of grace, have turned to distorted imposters. And drawing on God's words in Exodus here, Paul is making a point. If you turn to a different gospel Galatia, you turn to a different god. The same thing that the Israelites were doing at the base of Mount Sinai when they create this idol out of gold, this calf, they're turning to a man-made god. Well, what I'm communicating to you is when you turn away from this gospel to a different gospel, it's not just that you're choosing a different gospel. You're not just choosing a different option for salvation. You're choosing a different God.
19 · Oswald exposits the phrase 'called you in the grace of Christ,' explaining that it refers not only to the means of calling (by grace) but also to the realm believers are called into (a life characterized by grace)
I'm astonished that you would so quickly desert Him, God, who called you in the grace of Christ. His point here isn't just that they're turning away from God, it's that you've been called in the grace of Christ. Now, he's alluding here not just to the fact that they've been called by grace, but that in the gospel and through the gospel, they've been called into the realm of grace. You've been called by Him in Jesus Christ into grace. You've been called out of what you were in into a life of liberty in Christ, into a gracious way to live. And now you're turning back.
20 · Oswald concludes the first major point and transitions to the second: because there is only one true gospel, turning to a different gospel is turning to a different god
And if you desert this realm, this life of grace, you desert God himself. You turn to a different gospel providence and you turn to a different God. And the reason is simple. Our second point: there's only one true gospel.
21 · Oswald begins expositing Galatians 1:6-7 by addressing a potential misunderstanding: Paul's reference to 'a different gospel' might seem to imply the existence of legitimate alternatives
There's only one true gospel. In verse 7, he goes on to say, end of verse 6, you're so quickly deserting him who called you in the grace of Christ, and you're turning to a different gospel. Now, that almost sounds like Paul is implying here that there are other gospel options, right?
22 · Oswald narrates a personal story from college where a professor taught that the New Testament contains multiple, different gospels
I distinctly remember in undergrad, I was taking a class on the book of Romans, and the professor legitimately asked the question. So one of the things we want to study this semester as we're working our way through Romans is just what are the different gospels that Romans is talking about? I just remember sitting there, you know, you're an impressionable young person. Different gospels? What does he mean? And he wasn't just asking it to push us to embrace the one true gospel. He was legitimately asking, like many so-called believers do, aren't there just different expressions of the gospels in the New Testament? Different ways that the different authors talk about God? Being saved. He was legitimately asking the question and challenging us. What, what different gospels are we going to see in this book of Romans? What is Paul's gospel? Is one of the ways he put it. Because, you know, Paul has his gospel and James has another. And if you read the gospels themselves, Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, they've got a different way of talking about Jesus. His entire point was that the New Testament was filled with different gospels.
23 · Oswald exposits Galatians 1:7, establishing Paul's corrective: a different gospel is no gospel at all
No, Paul makes clear in verse 7, a different gospel is essentially no gospel. How can you be turning to a different gospel? At the end of verse 6, he says, well, in verse 7, not that there is another one, but there are some who trouble you and want to distort the gospel of Christ. The reference to a different gospel doesn't imply we've got a bunch of options out there. Only one message is truly good news. Salvation is only by grace through faith in Jesus Christ.
24 · Oswald exposes the subtle danger of the false teachers: they are not denying core Christian doctrines but adding to the gospel
Now, here's the really scary thing about what we're reading in this letter. Paul's opponents, who are probably Judaizers, his opponents here are baptized Christians. They're not coming in and saying, these different gospels as, you know, how you really get right with God is you worship Buddha, or you gotta turn to Islam. Now that they're coming in with a similar message, they're still preaching Jesus as the Messiah. They're still proclaiming, as we'll see later in this letter, that you need to believe in Jesus in order to be forgiven of your sins. They're even proclaiming the cross, but They're not stopping there. Proclaiming all those things and then adding to it.
25 · Oswald explains the nature of distortion: minor additions to the gospel are not insignificant adjustments but complete inversions
These teachers and influential people in Galatia, possibly from Jerusalem itself, have convinced these churches that Paul's gospel is the distortion. The words translated distort isn't implying that it's just a few sort of insignificant tweaks. It's implying that these little tweaks they're making to the gospel, these little distortions, they're flipping it upside down. They're turning the entire message inside out. It makes the changes that alter the message significant, even if they seem minor at first blush.
26 · Oswald makes the theological claim that any adjustment to the gospel, no matter how minor, destroys its saving power by robbing it of grace
I love J.I. Packer, just such a pithy quote: 'A half-truth masquerading as a whole truth becomes a complete untruth.' That's what Paul is battling here in Galatia. It sounds so similar. It sounds so close. The so-called gospel of his opponents, Paul says, might sound close, but it's no gospel at all. It's actually twisting the truth of salvation in Christ. And his point is, any adjustment to the gospel robs it of grace. You either stand in the grace of the true gospel, or you replace it with these tweaked distortions that are devoid of the grace of Christ. And every tweak to the gospel, every little movement results in a loss of the gospel.
27 · Oswald applies the ancient danger to the contemporary church: the most dangerous false teachers are not obvious outsiders but insiders who speak Christian language while subtly changing the gospel
What makes the Judaizers so dangerous is that they aren't attacking the gospel outright. They're just promoting these really subtle counterfeit gospels from within the church. And the trick is they know all the right lingo. They're talking about Jesus, right? They're talking about salvation. They're talking about faith. We could probably even say they're in the care groups. They're sitting next to you. And the same thing happens in the church today. That professor I had in college, he would have called himself a Christian. John Stott says helpfully in his commentary on Galatians, 'The church's greatest troublemakers now, as then, are not those outside who oppose, ridicule, and persecute, but those inside who try to change the gospel.'
28 · Oswald signals a deliberate restraint: he will not unpack the specific content of the false teaching yet because Paul addresses it later in the letter
Now, later in the letter, Paul is going to start going into detail about what these distortions are. What are the little tweaks that are being made to the message? And I could go into it here, but let's hold off. Let's wait until Paul goes into that to unpack all those sorts of things. Let's instead spend the time looking at what he's looking at in this text. He'll deal later with what the adjustments are, what the different gospels are, but he's not concerned with that now. He's just pointing out there's different gospels going on, but I want to point you to what happens if you leave the true gospel.
29 · Oswald reads Galatians 1:8-9, expositing Paul's anathema against gospel distorters
Now, what he does tell us next is this is the consequence in verse 8. But even if an angel from heaven should preach to you a gospel contrary to the one that I 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 that you received Let him be accursed.
30 · Oswald summarizes the sermon's first two points and introduces the third: gospel distorters face divine condemnation
Brings us to our third point. You turn to a different gospel, you're turning from God, right? You're deserting God. That's point one. The second point is the reason for that is there's only one gospel. You move away from that gospel and you've moved away from God. The third point is those people who are distorting the gospel, well, they receive a curse.
31 · Oswald makes the theological claim that deserting the gospel is cutting oneself off from grace and therefore from God's power to save
Do you see the danger of what he's warning us about? There's only one gospel, and if you walk away from it, Paul says, you walk away from God. So you desert this gospel and you cut yourself off from grace, which is really Paul just saying in another way that if you walk away from this gospel, you're cutting yourself off from God's power.
32 · Oswald exposits the nature of God's call as effectual and powerful, not a benign invitation that can be declined
Listen again to how Paul describes the desertion. In 1:6, he says, I'm astonished that you are so quickly deserting him who called you in the grace of Christ, that you're turning to a different gospel. Now, the language of calling can kind of seem sort of benign to us, and when we think of calling, we think of, you know, a call happens and you either respond or you don't. But what Paul's talking about here is not the call you receive on your cell phone and you just decide to silence it. Oh, I'm not going to deal with that right now. I'll listen to it later. That's not the kind of calling that the Bible deals with. That's not how Paul speaks about calling. What he's saying is the authentic Gospel is seen in the power that the words contain. He talks about this explicitly in Romans 1. We're so familiar with the passage, but sometimes I think we miss what he's saying. So I am eager, he says to the Romans, to preach the gospel to you who are in Rome. Why, Paul? Why do you want to preach the gospel to them? Because I'm not ashamed of the gospel. Because it, the gospel, is the power of God for salvation. What he's saying is when the authentic gospel is preached, it conveys power. It accomplishes exactly what it intends to accomplish. And that's the calling that Paul is talking about here. The true gospel of grace comes, and it's not just words that come. When the true gospel of grace comes, there's power in those words because they are God's words. God's word is power. It creates, it accomplishes what it wants to.
33 · Oswald makes the theological claim that gospel distortion strips the message of its divine power because it severs the message from God, its author
And so the gospel is the call of God by grace. So why are we talking about all that? Here's the rub. If the gospel is distorted, it's stripped of its power. If it no longer carries the power of God, that tweaked gospel is now stripped of grace. Stripped of grace because you've cut it off from the author. You've cut it off from God and His power to create and accomplish by His words. You see the danger? If you turn from the gospel, you turn from the power of God for salvation, which leads Paul to drop the hammer on his opponents.
34 · Oswald exposits the severity of Paul's anathema: 'accursed' means devoted to God for eternal destruction
These aren't nice words you just toss out to somebody at your Christmas party. Oh, good to see you again, John. Let you be accursed! What? He's barely into the letter and he claims he's praying and expecting that the prayer will be answered, that these individuals will be cursed by God. Well, they're reversing the gospel. They've turned it inside out. They've robbed the gospel of its power. They've removed it from its grace. And so by doing that, They're leading people from God. You mess with these things, Paul says, you mess with these things and you will be accursed, and I'll pray that you're accursed. And that's as bad as it sounds. What he's talking about there, the words that he's using, he's not saying, I hope you're cursed. I hope it's like when you break a mirror and you have bad luck, right? No. He's not talking about, 'I hope you're accursed and you have a bad week.' He's talking about eternal destruction. To say someone is accursed is literally— the word means to say that they've been devoted to God for destruction. You distort the gospel, Paul says, and you're going to hell.
35 · Oswald exposits Paul's hyperbolic insistence that the messenger's credentials are irrelevant—even Paul himself or an angel from heaven would be accursed for distorting the gospel
And this is what he says in addition. And not just if you distort it, you're going to hell. I don't care who you are. You mess with the message and eternal destruction is your lot. Even if it's me, Paul says, even if I'm the one messing with it, even if it's a messenger from heaven, even if an angel comes to you and says, this is God's message, this is an addendum to the gospel. Paul says, 'You're accursed!' Now, that should sound a little familiar if you think of something like Mormonism. The angel reveals the new gospel. Hmm, it's almost like Paul is prophetic here. I don't care who comes with the message. If the message changes, that messenger is accursed. Now, the bottom line is when you're dealing with the gospel, It's not the credentials of the messenger. Paul says it doesn't matter how much street cred the person coming and talking is. Even if Peter comes and tweaks this message, Peter will be accursed. Luther makes a great point in his commentary. He says if Paul or Peter or an angel tweaks the message, they'll be accursed. But if Judas or Pilate or the high priests come and they preach the right gospel, people will be saved by it. Now he's over-exaggerating things to make a point. It doesn't matter who's speaking it. What matters is the content. Are they proclaiming the message accurately?
36 · Oswald makes explicit the implicit warning: if gospel distorters face eternal destruction, so do those who believe the distorted gospel
Paul's not going to get into a fight over who should be more significant. He's just going to point us to the message. And if you mess with that, Paul says, even if I mess with it, hold me accountable to it, Galatians. You go to hell. Now, if the gospel distorters of the message are going to hell because they're stripping the gospel of its power to save, what does that say for the people who believe the perversions? I think that's an implication Paul is trying to help the Galatians to see. That we need to see. You get what this means, Galatia? The people who are peddling this garbage to you, they're going to hell. Because they've been cut off from God. But if you buy into this garbage they're selling, you'll end up in the same place.
37 · Oswald steps outside the exposition to address the congregation directly, explaining Paul's pastoral intensity: his anger is born of grief over people he loves who are walking toward hell
You want to know why Paul is so angry in this letter? Because he sees churches filled with people that are on the brink of destruction. They're literally in the process of turning away from God.
38 · Oswald signals a structural shift: after the anathema, Paul abruptly turns to defending himself against accusations of people-pleasing
And then suddenly at the end, Paul concludes with something that just seems almost out of place, right? You're reading along and he drops this anathema on his opponents in Galatia. And then in verse 10, he says, 'For am I now seeking the approval of man or of God? Am I trying to please man? If I were still trying to please man, I would not be a servant of Christ.'
39 · Oswald introduces the fourth major point: gospel desertion is driven by fear of man
Here's our final point this morning: Gospel desertion. Feeds on the fear of man. I think Paul is saying that by way of stating the opposite. In Paul, what he says, in my life, fear of man has been totally broken. Now, fear of man, some of you are sitting here thinking, fear of man, what in the world is fear of man? I'm not afraid of man. I'm afraid of cancer, I'm not afraid of man. When he says fear of man, when I talk about fear of man, we're talking about Things like peer pressure. We're talking about caring more about what people think about you than what God thinks about you. And then acting in accordance with those fears.
40 · Oswald exposits Galatians 1:10 by demonstrating that Paul's harsh rhetoric proves he does not fear man
Well, Paul says, 'I don't care anything about trying to please people. My express goal, my only goal, is to please God.' Now, if Paul is seeking to garner favor with people, this point here, if I'm trying to win a popularity contest, I'm not going to write a letter where I'm yelling at you, Galatians. That's not how you get popularity. I'd come and woo you. Oh, I love you so much. Please come back to my message so we can be friends again. If Paul really cares about what people think, is he going to walk in and start cursing people and saying, 'You're cursed and you're going to hell and you're going to hell and all of you people, if you follow them, you're going to hell too.' How to Win Friends and Influence People, right? You yell at them, and the people they like, you curse and condemn to hell. No, not at all. Paul's whole point is, if that was my goal, I wouldn't be doing any of this. I am emphatically saying I have preached the gospel from A to Z. I have left nothing out. And contra the accusations of my opponents, you know the whole gospel. Fear of man has been broken in me.
41 · Oswald makes the theological claim that fear of man enables gospel desertion because the gospel glorifies God, not man
But here's his point, I think, that he's making. All I care about, Paul says, is pleasing God. And part of your problem, Galatians, is that you still care about pleasing men. Part of the reason you're being tempted right now is to turn away from the gospel is because you care more about what people think and about what people say than about what God says. The implication is that where fear of man is not broken, gospel drift can settle in. And here's why. The gospel It glorifies God, not man, right? The gospel doesn't make people sound real good. The only way you get to sound good in the gospel equation is if you admit, 'You know what? I'm bankrupt without Jesus. My sins are terrible and I need to be saved.' It makes God seem incredible. It makes God seem glorious. It makes God seem worthy of praise. And that's not what our flesh longs for.
42 · Oswald recalls the opening Buffalo Bills illustration to demonstrate the mechanism of fear of man
Now, remember that opening illustration of my brother with the Buffalo Bills? He's 8 years old, we'll give him a break. But why does he care? Why does he switch allegiance to the Cowboys? Why does he desert Bruce Smith and the Bills? Because he cared about what I thought. Because what I thought mattered more to him than his commitment to his team. There was massive amounts of peer pressure going on in our living room during that Super Bowl. A little manipulative 10-year-old is making fun of his 8-year-old brother, and the 8-year-old boy succumbs to the peer pressure. Okay, I'll be a Cowboys fan. Worked really well for a few years. It's not working so well now. Sorry, Woody.
43 · Oswald applies the illustration's lesson: believers face the same temptation to abandon the gospel under peer pressure
And we can look at that and think, 'Oh yeah, so silly.' But we're tempted in bigger ways to act and operate the same way. That's the potential that fear of man has due to us. Ultimately, Luther says this in his commentary on Galatians: This preaching the gospel is not preaching that gains favor from men and from the world, for the world finds nothing more irritating and intolerable than hearing its wisdom, righteousness, religion, and power condemned. For if we denounce men and all their efforts, it is inevitable, it is inevitable, it will happen that we will quickly encounter bitter hatred, persecution, excommunications, condemnation, and execution. You embrace this gospel that shows the world all of its failings, and the world will not be pleased with you.
44 · Oswald returns to the college professor illustration, adding devastating detail: the professor was once an elder at a gospel-centered church, trained by leading scholars, and helped write influential theological works
The striking thing about the class I was taking in college from that professor was that that professor used to be an elder at one of the most faithful gospel-loving churches in the world. He was an elder at Bethlehem Baptist. For some of you, that means something. He was an elder and the right-hand man in some ways of John Piper early in his career. He loved the gospel. Some of the best New Testament scholars of our day and age, D.A. Carson and men like him— this man studied under them and helped D.A. Carson write some of his most influential books. He actually in some of the earliest editions, is honored in the introduction, in the acknowledgment section of one of those books. This man at one point understood the gospel. He knew the gospel, and he claimed to love the gospel.
45 · Oswald makes the theological claim that every believer's heart is prone to gospel desertion
But that's Paul's whole point, right? Not just that gospel desertion is fatal, but lest we be deceived, there's a little part of every one of our hearts that's prone to desert. We sang the song this morning, 'Prone to wander.' Lord, I feel it. Prone to leave the God— I feel it in my heart, in my soul. The proneness of my flesh to wander away from Christ, to wander away from this gospel.
46 · Oswald applies the sermon's thesis to the congregation: gospel desertion is not a historical problem but a perennial danger requiring continual vigilance
Galatians reminds us every generation, every generation must recommit itself to standing for the gospel in the midst of the perennial danger of compromise and potential loss of the same gospel. And it reminds us Gospel desertion is fatal. If you leave the gospel, you leave God. And it reminds us, bringing it close to home, it's a temptation we all face.
47 · Oswald applies the fear-of-man diagnosis to contemporary culture: standing for the gospel requires dying to the desire for human approval and accepting labels like 'intolerant
If we will stand for the gospel, then we have to die to fear of man. That's Paul's point in verse 10. If you want to stand for God's glory alone, like I want to do, Paul says, if you want to be a servant of Christ like I want to be, by God's grace I've got to learn to love what God says and what God thinks about me more than what man says and what man thinks about me. We've got to die to the desire for man's praise. In fact, We've got to content ourselves to look foolish, Luther says. You've got to prepare yourself to be despised, to get that nasty label of intolerant, because the gospel is intolerant. And in an age that worships tolerance, if you care what man says, you will be assaulted with temptations to turn to a different, more tolerant gospel. And if we wander into that different, more tolerant gospel, then we wander away from the exclusive power of the gospel of Christ crucified to save us.
48 · Oswald closes in prayer, confessing the congregation's proneness to wander and asking for God's sustaining grace to keep them standing in the gospel
Would you pray with me? God, we are prone to wander. We sang that in the song earlier today, and we've all felt that in our hearts. We've all felt that temptation to walk away. To allow our passion for you, our passion for Christ and him crucified, our passion for the gospel to dim. That temptation to allow our passions for worldly things like sports and money and reputation and health and family to become greater and to eclipse our passion for the gospel, which is ultimately our passion for you, God. So Lord, we ask humbly for your help. Lord, by your grace, help us to remain standing in the gospel. By your grace, Fill us with the sustaining power of your gospel. Lord, by your grace, help us to put to death fear of man and the craving to win the approval of men. God, I pray that you would make us here at Providence, make me, make these people, give us Paul's heart to be consumed consumed with your glory and your honor and your praise over everything else, to the exclusion of everything else. Jesus, would you do that? Lord, we thank you for your promise that you who began a good work in us will see it to completion. We pray this in your name, Jesus. Amen.