Encounter the Truth

Jonathan Griffiths: If my standing before God rests on my own efforts, my own obedience, my own good works, my inner peace will come and go. It will rise and fall day by day depending on my own sense of achievement or more likely failure. And of course, without the intervention of God in Christ, we can never have objective peace with God.

Steve Hiller: You're listening to Encounter the Truth with Jonathan Griffiths and a message today that we began last time. It's called Only the Real Deal, taking a look at what is the true gospel. And Jonathan, sounds like you're saying if we want to have real peace with God, it begins with understanding the gospel and believing the gospel.

Jonathan Griffiths: Absolutely. That's Paul's great burden in this letter to the Galatians that salvation is found in Jesus and through what he did at the cross. And adding to that, taking away from it, well, that is a terrible thing to do and he has strong words for those who would modify the message because this message is so precious and so life-giving.

Steve Hiller: And so when we begin to understand the message of the gospel, how does that actually bring peace into our lives?

Jonathan Griffiths: Well, it gives us a real, a firm and objective foundation for understanding our standing before God. Understanding what Jesus did for us at the cross, paying the price of our sin, offering us forgiveness, paying our debt, removing the stain of the wrongdoing that we've done. These are objective realities that tell us that we can indeed be right with God, not on the basis of how well I'm performing my religious duty or how good my moral track record is this week, but it's on the basis of what Jesus has done. And that's a solid foundation.

Steve Hiller: We're going to continue to look at that foundation today from the Book of Galatians. We're in chapter one, looking at the first 10 verses. So if you can, grab a Bible and join us there as we continue Only the Real Deal. Here is Jonathan.

Jonathan Griffiths: 500 years ago, Martin Luther came to see and understand that there there was a line in the sand that had been crossed by the medieval church. Various practices and the public teaching of the church struck at the very heart of the gospel and undermined it. It struck at the very heart of the truth that we are justified by faith and not by works. And so Luther stuck his neck out and he wrote out his 95 theses and he stuck them to the door of All Saints Church in Wittenberg in the autumn of 1517. He sparked a theological reformation that would divide the Roman church, that would transform the landscape of Europe and bring saving faith to many millions of people.

There was a line in the sand. The gospel was at stake and Luther for one saw what needed to be done. I think we Canadians don't embrace conflict very readily or very quickly. We sort of culturally inclined toward a middle ground. We prize tolerance. We avoid extremes and all that is well and good. That is a commendable thing in many respects, but when it comes to the truth of the gospel, we need to be willing, perhaps against some of our cultural instincts, to stand up and be clear. When we encounter teaching that calls itself Christian, that calls itself orthodox, but that undermines the core of the gospel, we need to be willing to call it what it is and then to distance ourselves from it.

In some ways, it might feel as though Paul is tackling an issue here in Galatians that that isn't a problem for us that's very remote from us. After all, this church there's always been very clear about justification by faith alone. We teach that truth regularly and loudly and clearly. But the reality is that the default mode of the human heart is to believe that we can and we should save ourselves through our own good deeds, through our own good works. That's just the way we're hardwired in our sinfulness. And the doctrine of justification by works is deeply embedded in our thinking.

It's the theology at the heart really of every other major world religion and it will constantly creep into our thinking if we allow it to. And the way this work see kind of thinking will gain ground in a long-established Bible teaching gospel believing church like ours, I I think is in this kind of a way. We say and we believe that we are justified by faith through God's grace alone. But we then go on to say that genuine Christians will do X, Y and Z. Clearly, genuine Christians will not do A, B and C. Clearly, God requires us to use our money in such and such a way to run our homes or raise our children in such and such a way, to serve in the church's ministry in such and such a way.

And pretty soon, if we're not very careful about it, we can end up with a pretty long, unwritten, extra-biblical list of dos and don'ts that God requires of us if we're really going to be in right standing with him, if we're really going to be saved. And the danger is that we come to believe that our adherence to a list of extra-biblical dos and don'ts is necessary for salvation. And actually, the more ingrained that list, whatever it may be, becomes in a church culture, the more risk we run of losing sight of the gospel of grace.

The more risk we run of facing a Galatian-shaped crisis of our own. In response to this crisis at Galatia, Paul sets out to remind these believers that he is the Lord's genuine messenger who brought to them the Lord's genuine gospel. And I just want to think about each of those in turn. Going back to the beginning of the letter, Paul begins his letter with a reminder that he is the Lord's genuine messenger, verse one. Paul, an apostle, sent not from men nor by man, but by Jesus Christ and God the Father who raised him from the dead and all the brothers with me.

In our day and age, when we want to check out someone's professional background and credentials, we're used to being able to look up their profile on LinkedIn or their personal website. We don't need anyone to begin a letter with a little summary of their resume, their CV. But Paul felt it was necessary to introduce himself here, to reintroduce himself here. And actually, to do so to a group of people who already knew who he was full well, who were familiar with his ministry, even who had come to Christ through his preaching and his teaching. Paul made a point of doing this not because he has an annoying habit as some do of talking about himself all the time or brandishing his own credentials.

No, he does it because his identity and his authenticity are matters of central importance to the Galatian church. Evidently, Paul senses and Paul understands that the Galatians are doubting whether he is the real deal, whether he is a genuine messenger of the genuine messenger of Jesus Christ. The fraudsters had evidently come in and said that Paul didn't quite know what he was talking about and they needed to take his teaching and his message with a grain of salt. I wonder if you've ever had that experience. You something wrong with your car or worse, you something wrong with your health and you get advice from your mechanic or your doctor as the case may be and they give you an explanation of what's wrong and they chart a path forward for you.

But you're not quite so sure and you want a second opinion. So you go and seek that second opinion. And the second opinion, the second expert you consult tells you that the first person had it all wrong. They didn't know what they were talking about. And now you're in a conundrum. Who should you trust? Whose word is reliable? Who is the true authority here? Well, that's precisely where the Galatians are as Paul sends them his letter. They thought they trusted Paul. They loved Paul. He brought them the gospel in the first place after all. But now these others have come in and they've said, you know, you just got to be a bit careful about Paul and about his teaching.

Slightly shifty character, nice guy, but a bit unstable, a bit overzealous, likes to call himself an apostle, but he wasn't even there during Jesus's earthly ministry. He wasn't even one of the original 12. Got to be careful here. Well, Paul's going to have plenty to say about all that later on in Galatians. But here he fires his opening shot. He reminds the believers, verse one, that he is an apostle, an authoritative teacher sent and commissioned by Jesus Christ himself, the risen Jesus and God the Father who raised him from the dead. And of course, Paul is going to remind us later on in the letter that he encountered the risen Jesus on that Damascus Road and was commissioned by him to preach and to teach the good news.

I understand that leading up to that great solar eclipse last month, the number of unscrupulous people were trying to make a quick buck selling cheap imitation solar glasses that failed to meet industry standards. Anyone using these knockoff glasses to stare straight at the sun during the eclipse, they they would suffer damage to their eye if not blindness. And experts of course warn the general public to ensure that the glasses they relied upon came from a reputable source that met industry standards. The gospel is a matter of life and death and the test of authenticity for the message is that it comes from an apostle who was commissioned by the risen Jesus himself.

Now for the Galatians, the application of this point was very very simple indeed. Listen to Paul, listen to his gospel, stick with Paul, stick with his gospel and beware anyone who contradicts it, anyone who seeks to modify it. Now for us today, we don't have the apostles with us anymore. We don't have Paul stopping by to check in on us. We don't have him writing to us to correct anything we're getting wrong. But here's what we do have. We have the apostolic word. We have the Bible. We have the apostles' teaching in the New Testament.

We have the teaching of Jesus recorded in the gospel. We have the apostolic teaching in our hands and written down. So now in our day, the test of authenticity for any message is this. Does it conform to the apostolic teaching as recorded in scripture?

Steve Hiller: You're listening to Encounter the Truth with Jonathan Griffiths as we continue a message today entitled Only the Real Deal, really looking at the first 10 verses of the Book of Galatians. If you just joined us, hope you'll grab a Bible and open it and join us there. As we continue to look at the crisis in Galatia and how the apostle Paul reminds the church there, what is the genuine gospel? By the way, if you ever miss a broadcast or you want to go back and listen to it again, you can always do that by coming to our website.

It's encounterthetruth.org. That's encounterthetruth.org. All right, let's go back to the message. Once again, here's Jonathan.

Jonathan Griffiths: In the face of this crisis at Galatia, Paul reminds these believers and he reminds us that he is a genuine messenger of Jesus, that the apostolic word is the authoritative word. But having put that stake in the ground, he now reminds us of the genuine gospel he proclaims, verse three. Grace and peace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ who gave himself for our sins to rescue us from the present evil age according to the will of our God and Father, to whom be glory forever. Paul begins his greeting by sending God's grace and peace to the Galatians.

Grace and peace are two very familiar Bible words as a pair. They're familiar greetings in the Christian world. Sometimes folks sign their emails grace and peace. Maybe you do that. They're familiar words, but they're no empty greeting. This isn't a throwaway line. It is packed full of significance here. If there is one single word that really sums up Paul's gospel, it is actually this word grace. We're hardwired as we've said already in our sinfulness to imagine that we can somehow earn our salvation, that we can somehow secure our right standing before God through our own good works.

But the authentic gospel of Jesus Christ is a gospel of grace through and through. It's a message centered on God's undeserved kindness to a rebellious people. It's a message all about what God has done for us through the person of his son. It's a message and a story of extraordinary kindness, of breathtaking generosity, of abundant love. In the buildup to Irma a couple of days ago, international media grabbed hold of a human interest story. Perhaps you saw it in a rush to buy backup power generators in Orlando. A woman descended into tears in a Lowe's store because she missed out on that final unit after a long line.

A member of her family was on an oxygen supply and needed a guaranteed power supply to keep it going and she was just desperate to get hold of that generator. A stranger in the crowd who had just managed to get one of the final units and was about to take it home, saw that this woman's need was greater than his and he gave it to her. Multiple international news outlets picked up on the story and ran it and it was heartwarming. It was very kind. It was a picture of generosity to a stranger in need, a picture of grace, a picture of kindness.

Now that gesture was enough to earn international media attention. It captured the attention of millions of people all around the world. But it's nothing, isn't it, compared to the grace of God in Christ. He, verse four, gave himself for our sins to rescue us from this present evil age. Jesus gave himself to pay the price of our sin, our wrongdoing before God. He took our place. He died the death that we deserve that we might be justified, that we might be reconciled to God, that our debt of sin, of wrongdoing might be wiped away and we might be put in right standing before our maker.

And what he rescued us from, says Paul, is this present evil age. Now that 's an intriguing statement and one that's packed full of significance. Paul means that Jesus has rescued us from the empty and evil way of life that marks this present age. He means that he has rescued us from the judgment that is awaiting this world. And I think quite particularly and quite specifically, he means that Jesus has rescued us from this world's futile religious systems. It's futile and it's empty attempts to seek salvation by human means. Now that that suggestion probably takes a moment of of explanation.

So let me just try and clarify the point. Paul takes it for granted throughout Galatians that the world's way of salvation is always salvation by works. That's the natural human instinct. We've been talking about that. That is the message of every world religion. It's an empty message and ultimately it's an evil one because it's so misleading. None of us could ever earn our way into God's good books. Our sin is too great and our God is too holy. But when Paul talks about this present evil world, this present world in Galatians and how we need to escape this world's ways and this world's principles, he seems to refer quite specifically to work-based worldly religion and its systems.

And he rejoices again and again that Jesus has set us free from those systems. Just notice this pattern with me. It actually gives us a window into the heart of the letter. Chapter four and verse three, have a look with me. Paul here's talking about the time before Jesus came to the world. Chapter four and verse three, he says this. So also when we were children, we were in slavery under the basic principles of the world, basic principles of the world. But when the time had fully come, God sent his son born of a woman born under law to redeem those under law that we might receive the full right of sons.

Down to verse eight. Formerly when you did not know God, you were slave to those who by nature are not gods. But now that you know God or rather are known by God, how is it that you are turning back to those weak and miserable principles, the same basic principles of the world he mentioned back in verse three? Do you wish to be enslaved by those principles all over again? And here's what it looks like. You are observing special days and months and seasons and years. You're focusing on religious rights and rituals, thinking that those are going to save you.

The basic principles of the world in Paul's thinking are works-focused, works-based religion. But Christ has set us free from all that, says Paul. Just one more place to notice this end of the letter in chapter six and verse 13. Paul says right there at the end, verse 13, not even those who are circumcised obey the law, yet they want you to be circumcised that they may boast in your flesh. May I never boast except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ through which the world has been crucified to me and I to the world.

Neither circumcision nor uncircumcision means anything, those religious rights and rituals. What counts is a new creation, a new world into which God brings us by salvation. Christ has saved us from the world. He has rescued us from its systems, from all attempts of work-based religions to secure salvation. And by his grace, he has given us a share in the new creation yet to come. And it's no surprise that Paul pairs this reminder of grace in verse three in chapter one back at the beginning. He pairs it with with peace. The religion systems of the world can never bring us true peace and lasting peace.

If my standing before God rests on my own efforts, my own obedience, my own good works, my inner peace will come and go. It will rise and fall day by day depending on my own sense of achievement or more likely failure. And of course, without the intervention of God in Christ, we can never have objective peace with God. But the apostolic gospel, the genuine gospel offers us true peace. It offers us peace with God achieved by God himself through the gift of his son and it offers us lasting peace within, a peace that comes from knowing that our sin has been dealt with fully and finally and we are right with God.

Jesus has given himself for our sins, says Paul, to rescue us from this present evil age, the age where human beings in their pride and their arrogance imagine that they can save themselves through ritual and through rule keeping. And he's done this not at human initiative, but according he says to the will of our God and Father, to whom be glory forever and ever. The authentic gospel is a profoundly God-centered gospel. God planned our salvation. He achieved it by his son and he did so all for his glory. Now what a contrast this genuine gospel is to the worldly human-centered work-based gospel that the Galatians had been hearing from these pseudo missionaries.

And what a contrast this genuine apostolic biblical gospel is to the religious systems we encounter all around us every day. For some here this morning, perhaps you've never really heard before of this gospel of grace. Perhaps you sense in your heart that you do need to be right with God. You know that. That's weighing on you. But everything you've ever heard and ever assumed has told you that getting rights with God is all down to you. It's all on your shoulders. It's all about your efforts. And if that's the case, if that's the way you've thought, if that's what you've perhaps been taught, well, today you need to hear Paul's message of grace and peace at the start of this great letter.

The message that Jesus Christ has given himself for you, for your sins, to rescue you from all worldly attempts to save yourself. He's rescued you from this present evil age and it's coming judgment. And you need to make your own response to Jesus Christ. You need to turn from rebellion, as we'll see later in the letter. You need to abandon attempts to save yourself and recognize their futility. And you need to trust in what Christ has done for you, the full and final work of Christ at the cross of Calvary. For those of us who have heard this gospel of grace many times before, we've heard it for as long as we can remember and we have made a personal response to it.

That's most of us here. The challenge for us may simply be to believe it and to keep believing it with all our hearts. The instinct to rely on our own good works, to rely on religious rights and rituals, on keeping that unwritten list of rules and regulations, it's a strong instinct in the human heart. And our constant challenge is to continue to believe that the grace of God in Jesus Christ is sufficient. It's Jesus plus nothing for our salvation. It's so easy for us to fall back to revert to that worldly way of thinking, to believe that ultimately our right standing with God depends on trusting in Jesus and doing certain things.

It rests upon our own works, our own obedience, our own goodness. And perhaps this morning some of us just need to hear a fresh, this reminder of the genuine gospel of grace. We need to hear it just as the Galatians needed to hear it in their day. We need to hear it because we're in danger of believing that the cross of Christ is not sufficient for our salvation and something else is needed. We suddenly come to believe that salvation depends not on Jesus plus nothing, but Jesus plus something, Jesus plus energetic Christian service, Jesus plus upright Christian living, Jesus plus a good devotional life so that I'm more secure in my salvation on a day when I've read my Bible and less secure in my salvation on a day when I haven't.

Jesus plus outstanding Christian parenting, Jesus plus generous giving, Jesus plus Jesus plus Jesus plus. And Paul sets out with urgency to remind us that salvation depends on Jesus plus nothing.

Steve Hiller: Jonathan Griffiths wrapping up our message Only the Real Deal, part of our series Jesus plus nothing. I'm glad you've tuned in today. If you've missed any part of today's broadcast or any previous broadcast in our series, you can always come and you can listen online. Our website is encounterthetruth.org. Well, Encounter the Truth is able to bring you Jonathan's teaching because of your generosity, whether you listen to us online, on the radio or through the app. It is your financial support that makes it possible. And as you give a gift of any amount this month, we want to say thank you by sending you a book that you've picked out Jonathan called How Christmas can change your life.

And why did you pick this book?

Jonathan Griffiths: Well, I think it's an intriguing title and it's got an intriguing series of questions that it addresses head-on within it. And you know, I I think we can all assume that we know what Christmas is all about and and why we celebrate it and what's happening this time of year. But I actually think we're often not very reflective about the true meaning and the true significance of Christmas. And I want to get beneath the surface and ask what Christmas is really about. And Joshua's book helps us to do that. I think it's helpful for the believer who's familiar with the Christmas story.

And I think it's helpful for the one who's not yet a committed follower of Jesus who might have some real questions. And I think within this book there will be some real answers.

Steve Hiller: Well, we'd love to send you a copy of How Christmas Can Change Your Life as our way of saying thank you for your financial support this month. You can give at our website encounterthetruth.org or when you call 1 833 998 7884. It might be easier to remember is 833 99 Truth. Or again the website is encounterthetruth.org. You can also write us at Encounter the Truth, PO Box 5513, Ottawa, Ontario K2C 3M1 or in the US at Encounter the Truth, 215 North Arlington Heights Road, Suite 102, Arlington Heights, Illinois 60004. For Jonathan Griffiths and our producer Mark Bretta, I'm Steve Hiller.

Thanks for listening and I hope you'll join us next time.