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Sermon Transcripts A Gospel Worth Defending Sunday, February 1, 2026 Galatians 1, Galatians 2 Mitchell Leach Lord's Day 12 Sunday, February 1, 2026 1 Peter 2 Mitchell Leach No Other Gospel Sunday, January 25, 2026 Galatians 1 Mitchell Leach Christ Sunday, January 18, 2026 Colossians 1 Mitchell Leach Sin Sunday, January 11, 2026 Psalm 51 Mitchell Leach God Sunday, January 4, 2026 Habakkuk 1 Mitchell Leach The Child Who Fulfills Every Promise Wednesday, December 24, 2025 Luke 2 Mitchell Leach The Blessing of Abraham Sunday, December 21, 2025 Genesis 12 Mitchell Leach Judgement and Mercy Sunday, December 14, 2025 Genesis 6, Genesis 7, Genesis 8 Mitchell Leach First Prev 1 Page 1 Next Last

A Gospel Worth Defending Christ Alone Mitchell Leach Sunday, February 1, 2026 Audio A Gospel Worth Defending Mitchell Leach 00:00 / 55:38 Sermon Transcript Introduction We're in a longer section of scripture today, but in order to get through this in eight weeks, we are going to have to cover some longer sections. This is all one cohesive thought. This is leading us one place in this passage. What we're going to see in this is one gospel, defended by faith and unified in Christ. There's a familiar story in scripture that parallels what we're talking about here. It might not seem like it at the beginning, but it's a story of Pilate. When Pilate washes his hands, it's this innocuous moment in the crucifixion narrative. Pilate knows that Jesus has not done anything wrong, and yet he fears the people. The people have become dangerous, and so he tries to compromise. He tries to keep his job. He tries to keep the peace and try to keep his conscience clean at the same time. So he calls for a bowl, dips his hands in it as if to say, This isn't This isn't my fault. This isn't my responsibility. I'm innocent of this, but there's the tragedy in it. He's trying to perform and to become clean without actually being clean. This isn't just a pilot problem. This isn't just a Roman governor's issue. This is an issue for all of us. This is a human heart problem. We feel dirty. We feel dirty when shame comes up. And yet we don't run to God. We often run to something that we can do ourselves. What makes you feel clean? I'm not talking about a shower. I'm talking about the things we do to make ourselves inside feel clean. Most of us have ways to feel clean. Sometimes it's out loud, but oftentimes it's quiet. It's in our head. For some of us, it's having a good week, doing the things that we said we were going to do and not doing the things that we know we're not supposed to do. For some of us, it's being needed or being right. For others, it's comparison or religious effort. And you can tell what it is by what you do when you fail. Do you run to God? Or do you wait to feel respectable again? Do you wait until, Well, I better get my life back together. I better try to clean myself before I go back to God. When you pray, do you feel like you need to bring receipts to God? When someone exposes you, does it crush you? Not because it hurts or they were wrong or you were wrong, but because you feel dirty again. Galatians isn't mainly a warning about open rebellion. It is a warning about religious drift, about Jesus plus something. In the moment your conscience needs something besides Jesus alone to feel clean, that's the sign that we've accepted a counterfeit gospel, one that isn't truly the gospel we find in scripture. So the question is, what makes you feel clean? And Fortunately, the Bible has answers for us, so keep your Bibles open to Galatians 1 and 2. We're going to see these three movements in this this letter, in this section of this letter. Divine origins of Paul's gospel Gospel unity without gospel addition Gospel truth confronted publicly What we see in this passage is Paul saying, If you want a clean conscience, you need a gospel with a clean source, one that comes from God and not from man. Divine origins of Paul's gospel Why does Paul go through the trouble of explaining who he is and essentially trying to tell the Galatian church, Hey, I'm an apostle. Why is he putting so much effort into this? It seems like a weird... I remember reading this for the first time as a kid and going, This feels like a boring section of this letter. Usually Paul's are filled with good information, and who cares that he's an apostle, right? Well, it's really important here. Paul says this for one reason. If the gospel comes from God, then churches in Galatia, you can't edit it. This is from God. It's not from you. If it's from man, you can pick and choose what you want. But if it's from God, you have to take the whole thing and you have to believe it. There were teachers pressuring the Gentile believer, these Gentile believers at this church, appealing to Jerusalem, to some authority coming from Jerusalem. Later on, we'll see that these were men coming from Jerusalem who said that they were coming from James. And you have to think how persuasive that must have been, right? These men in the Galatian churches going, Man, these are men coming from the brother of our savior, Jesus. These people must know what they're talking about. They were telling the Galatian churches that they needed to add on actions, adding on rituals on top of the gospel. Specifically, in order for a non-Jewish man to become a Christian, he must be circumcised. And this is why Paul is saying all of this. Paul is saying, I saw Jesus. I saw the truth. He revealed to me the gospel. Anyone who comes and tells you something different is telling you a lie. These men have distorted something. Paul says, I'm not here to say something that's going to make you happy. Look at Galatians 1:10 with me. Galatians 1:10 says this, For am I now seeking the approval of man or God? Or am I trying to please man? If I were still trying to please man, I would not be a servant of Christ. Paul is saying, I'm not here to make friends. I'm here to be a servant of Christ. I'm here to serve the church. I'm here not to make friends, but to make brothers and sisters. Paul is making it clear not only what the gospel is, but Galatians 1:11-12, For I would have you know brothers or brothers and sisters, that the gospel that was preached by me is not man's gospel, for I did not receive it from any man, nor was I taught it, but I received it through a revelation of Jesus Christ. Paul stacks three be claims on top of each other. This is not man's gospel, not received by man, and not taught by man. This is not a preference issue. This is a source issue. Paul then says, If you're wondering whether I made this up, if you're wondering whether or not this is true, look at my previous life. I used to be called Saul. That's who I was. I wasn't spiritually curious. I was violently oppressive of the church. I wasn't on some spiritual journey. I was on a mission to destroy the church, to persecute the church. I wasn't drifting from any tradition. I was exhaling in it. I was the best Galatians 1:13-14 say that he was persecuting the church. He was advancing in Judaism beyond his peers, more zealous for the traditions of his fathers than anyone else around him. In other words, if Christianity were just another version of the law, Paul would have loved this. But it's not. It's not law with gospel sprinkled on top of it. This is grace that radically transformed, and it radically transformed Saul into Paul. Paul wants to tell the churches in Galatia that he didn't make this up, that he didn't hear it from somebody else, that he's not a disciple of the Apostles. He's not like the men that came from James or said that they came from James. He's not someone who is discipled. He was not someone who was taught what to believe. He says, I heard this from Jesus himself. Jesus taught me this. What I know comes from God and God alone. And that's why he goes to great lengths saying, I didn't go to another person. I went to Arabia. I went to all these places. I spent 14 years before talking to anyone. No one taught me this. I was preaching this And what I was preaching, I heard directly from God. This is why Paul was so adamant in what we saw last week, that if anyone else comes to you to preach to you another gospel, whether it's an angel, or if I come back later and I teach you something that's contrary to what this is, let them be cursed, let them be anathema or condemned the gospel. It doesn't matter if they're from James or not. If they're preaching something contrary to what is true, they're preaching a different gospel. Paul's argument is simple. You cannot edit the gospel that you did not author. This message didn't come from a committee, didn't come from a tradition. It came from Jesus Christ. That's what makes us different from Catholic churches. Catholic churches hold scripture up the same with tradition. They believe that they're the ones who put the Bible together rather than what we would say is men recognize scripture. They recognize God's word, and we collected it, we bound it together. We didn't invent it. We cannot add scripture. We hold God's word to be the most authoritative thing here on Earth because it is God's word. This message isn't put together by man. The gospel wasn't authored by a committee or a smart group of people. It came from Christ alone. And the proof is Paul himself. The gospel didn't fit his old life. It demolished it. It radically transformed it. I mean, he had an incredible encounter with Christ on the Damascus Road in Acts 9:18. Here in Galatians 1:15, he says, But when he who had set me apart before I was born, in order that I might preach, and who called me by his grace, was pleased to reveal his son to me in order that I might preach him among the Gentiles. Notice what Paul doesn't say. He doesn't say, Well, I was in a really spiritually dark place, and I found God. I went out and found him. No, he says, God set me apart. God called me. God revealed his son to me. And that's not Paul trying to brag about some spiritual achievement. That's God bringing a dead Dead man, bed, pulse of life. That's what Paul is talking about. The point isn't one, how important I am. I'm really special. Paul is saying God is the way. Jeremiah, he did it, initiates salvation. He's the one who initiates calling He always has. He always will. He did it with me. And what he says here, he'll do it with you. In fact, his call and what he says here is so similar to what we see in Jeremiah 1:5. It says this, Before I formed you in the womb, I knew you. Before you were born, I consecrated you. Before I appointed you. And he knew profit to the nations. Paul's not waiting for a confirmation. This was that he was called. He was set apart Before his birth, he knew that he made him for, he was supposed to do. Looking back on his life, this is what God had meant. He went and... He didn't go and get confirmation from other people. He went and preached the gospel that Jesus had given him, and that this had been the plan from the beginning, that the gospel would go to the Gentiles, that the gospel would go to the nations. From Genesis 12, the covenant with Abraham was all about being a blessing to the nations. Paul's preaching then led to people glorifying God. That's what we see in Galatians 1:24, and they After he's talking about his former life, he said, You glorify God because of me. When you response that you get, share your testimony, when you talk about God, is that the response that you get, that people glorify God because of what you said. This is what our words about Jesus should do to other people. And this is why, as a pastor, it sometimes drives me crazy when I'll ask people to maybe share a testimony or to do some form of public speaking, and they say, I can't do it. I would be terrible at it. Well, in verse Galatians 1:24, the passage shows us something really important. It doesn't say here that they thought that Paul was so eloquent or that he had a neat story. Or Paul, they didn't marvel at cool in some way. They glorified God because of him. They didn't compliment Paul. They didn't marvel at how smart or how well-spoken he was. They glorified God because of the gospel he complained, because of what he was saying about God. When the gospel is real, it doesn't end in applause for the person speaking it. It ends in worship for the savior. That's what sermons are about. That's what makes a sermon different than a TED talk or a motivational speech. A motivational speech leaves a TED talk, might think to... With a set of to-do lists, maybe a worshiping. Feel inspired. A sermon leaves you worrying to you, inspiring to worship the God who's revealed this message to you. The question isn't whether you've had an experience and whether you've had a cool enough story to tell people. The question is, did communicate that gospel to people? People will want to worship that God. Gospel Unity Without Gospel Addition Paul goes to Jerusalem to defend the gospel and to guard unity. He's not checking his notes. He's not trying to compare what's What's going on here. He's confronting a threat. Let's look at verse one and two in chapter two. He said, I went up because of a revelation and set before them, though privately before those who seemed influential, the gospel that I proclaim among the Gentiles in order to make sure I was not running or had not run in vain. He then talks about he went on for 14 years. Paul wasn't looking for permission. He was protecting the church. He's not going to Jerusalem to see the Apostles, to see if he was right. He was going to ask, Will we be unified? I firmly believe that Paul, if he would have got there, and even the Apostles had been preaching something different, he would have confronted them saying, No, I got a revelation. This is what the gospel says. Fortunately, that wasn't the case. But Paul puts his gospel, the gospel that he has been preaching on the table, he says, It's Christ alone. The good news of the gospel is believing in Jesus, is that Christ came to be your substitute, that he died in your place. Not so that way you could add things onto the gospel, not so that you could have a pleasant life, not that you could be healthy, wealthy, and prosperous. He didn't do this so that way you wouldn't have to go to hell and that you could get into heaven. That's not the gospel. The gospel is that we get God. The gospel is that we get to have the savior. It is Christ alone. So that way we could be declared clean in his presence, not by our effort, but by his finished work. John Piper has this to say, The gospel is not a way to get people to heaven. It is a way to get people to God. The gospel is about getting God. Salvation is the cherry on top. God is the Sunday. It is the thing that we strive for. That is the price of belief of our salvation. Paul wanted to meet with the leaders to make sure that they were believing the truth, because even if the leaders added one thing on top of the gospel. The mission to the nations would have been collapsed. It would have collapsed into confusion. The problem that was happening in the churches was one of ethnicity. It was about Jews and Gentiles. The good news of the gospel that Paul is proclaiming is that it is for all kinds of people. There's nothing more that you have to do. You do not have to become a Jew in order to be a Christian. The good news is for all kinds of people, Greeks, Romans, people from Africa, people from China, Democrats, Republicans, Michigan State fans, and those God-forsaken Michigan fans. Yeah, thank you. Paul is preaching. This is for all kinds of people. You don't have to be a Jew to be saved. So Paul brings a living test with him. He brings Titus. This is what we see in verses three through five, that Titus is a Greek. He's uncircumstised, and yet he's a real believer. What will happen? That's the question that Paul is bringing. He's bringing Titus along to answer. What will happen? Is Jesus good enough for him? So let's look at this, verses three through five, or three through four, and then we'll get to five in just a second. But even Titus, who is with me, was not forced to be circumcised, though he was a Greek, yet because of false brothers secretly brought in who slipped in to spy out our freedom that we have in Christ Jesus so that they might bring us into slavery. Notice the strategy here. They don't deny Jesus. They're trying to add to him. Christostom says this about this passage, Their object was not to teach good doctrine, but to subjugate and enslave them, enslave Paul and Timothy. They call it a deeper devotion. They call it more steps of obedience. Paul calls it something simple. He calls it slavery. That's what it is. This also paints one One of the strangest word pictures that we see in, I think, all of scripture, that Titus, in order to find out who he was, that he wasn't a Jew, somebody had to, they say, they spied on him, and I can only imagine what that took to do that. But I think that's just a crazy word picture that is going on here. Any gospel that needs your contribution is not a deeper gospel. It is a different gospel entirely. The Belgian Confession says something really clear about this, and I wanted to put this up here. "To say that Christ is not enough is a most enormous blasphemy, for it then would follow that Jesus Christ is only half a savior." We do not believe in half a savior. Christ Alone is what we proclaim. Christ alone is what Paul wants the Galatian churches and us to know. We are saved by grace alone through Christ alone. We were brought to him by faith alone. Galatians 1:5 says this, To them we did not yield in submission, even for a moment, so that the truth of the gospel might be preserved for you. Titus was not a Jew. He was Greek, and yet he is a Christian. Christians don't have extras that they have to add on top of the gospel in order to receive grace. This is why the Apostles accept Paul as an apostle, because Paul refuses not even for a moment. He refuses to waver on this gospel because one moment sets a precedent, and precedents become prisons. They enslave us. The gospel is good news that cannot be wavered on. Even in a situation where Paul could have tried to appeal, tried to seem more influential to seemingly a group of people who had some influence. Paul doesn't try to cut a compromise. He stands firm on the gospel. Paul is defending the faith, preserving the truth, and preserving correct doctrine. I think sometimes we talk about correct doctrine, and we feel like it's cold, it's stuffy, or it's boring altogether. But it isn't. Doctrine is what we're talking about here. Having correct doctrine is so important to our faith. Our faith is like a map, or I guess today it's really more like a GPS. I don't know how to read a map anymore. I think it's just a generation It's a professional thing. Anytime I go into a city, about every two years, I go to a conference down in Indianapolis. When I'm down there, I lose all sense of direction. I'm usually pretty directionally aware. I'm facing north right now. I feel like I am a walking compass sometimes. But when I get into Indianapolis, I am lost. I have no idea where I'm going. I absolutely live by my GPS. If I don't have my GPS in front of me, I could be going from the same hotel to the same Convention Center, and I'm lost. If I don't have that, I'm gone. I need it. A GPS or a map helps you get to where you're going. That's the point of it. But it would be silly for me to take my GPS out and put it on the ground or take a map and say, Okay, I'm back at the hotel now. It doesn't make any sense. The GPS is not the destination. The map isn't the destination. It helps us get to where we're going. It's a lot like doctrine. I think oftentimes we want a faith that is emotion-based. It is spirituality without doctrine. But good doctrine, it's like the phone. It isn't enough, right? I I can't stand on this and say, I'm there. I can't only believe in good doctrine and have a good faith. Doctrine points us. It gives us the directions to go to get to where we're supposed to be. It gives us the direction to get to an authentic faith. And yet, if we don't have good doctrine, if we don't have good directions, we will never arrive there. We will never arrive there without having good doctrine. Doctrine isn't a cage. It's a map that gets us to God. Augustine says this, The law was given in order that grace might be sought. Grace was given in order that the law might be fulfilled. Good doctrine shows us how we pursue grace. Truth without spirituality is just... Or Without truth, spirituality is just motion. It's no direction. It's just wandering aimlessly. We won't get to our destination. Bad doctrine doesn't just lead to bad worship. You'd think that that's what it would be. If we had bad doctrine, we'd get bad worship. Bad doctrine leads to a different God. It gives us directions to a different God altogether. Satan tries to use this against us. Satan tries to make us believe. That doctrine's boring, that it's cold and stuffy, and sometimes maybe that's on us for making it seem that way. Doctrine is not boring at all. Doctrine is what gets us to see the deepest glories of the The Creator of the universe, the God who saved us. Doctrine is not boring at all. It is more than information. It is a reality that allows us to see the infinite God of the universe, the infinite God of the Bible. It is beautiful. Bad doctrine leads to a different gospel all together. A different gospel that says either everyone's saved, that sin really isn't important and you can do whatever you want, or it leads a gospel that says, yeah, you need to be saved, but it's really based on what you do. It's really based on how you earn it. If the gospel includes your performance, then you will never know if you've done enough. But if the gospel is Christ alone, you'll finally be able to breathe. It'll give you rest. I think that's something that we need, something that we don't realize that the gospel can give us rest. And yet, no one is immune to drifting from the gospel, not even Peter. Gospel truth confronted publicly Paul could stand up to Peter, the man who walked on water with Jesus, the man who walked for three years following Jesus around, the man who saw our savior die, the man who saw the resurrected Christ. And he can confront him because Paul says he stood condemned in Galatians 2:11. This is pretty serious. Peter or as Paul calls him Cephas, because I think he was acting more like Cephas than Peter, he was distorting the gospel. And yet he wasn't demanding that people become Jewish in order to become Christians. All Peter was doing was saying there were certain Christians that couldn't sit with them. It seems like a middle school drama that you can't sit with me at lunch, and you can, but it's more than that. He's distorting the gospel because Peter drew back when he feared the circumcision party. He feared man. And that fear of man can even make someone like an apostle. Gospel, acts like Christ isn't good enough. Peter didn't verbally speak and preach a new gospel. He wasn't adding anything verbally to the gospel. He was practicing a new gospel. He didn't say that Gentiles aren't saved, he acted like they weren't clean. The problem was in eating, the reason that this is such a big problem is that Jews believed that Gentiles were unclean and that they couldn't eat together. And if they ate together, that they would make all the food unclean, they would make those Jewish people unclean. But if we're saved by Christ alone, if we are truly saved, This shouldn't be an issue. This is why this is such a critical issue. This is why Peter is not just making a bad choice. He stood condemned. He acted like they weren't clean enough to get close. This is Antioch, where Gentiles and Jews would eat together, one family united in Christ. And yet then pressure comes from these men, the circumcision party, which just branding-wise is a horrible name, but just doesn't seem like a party at all to me. These people weren't denying Jesus. Instead, they were just insisting that Gentiles needed an upgrade. Instead of standing up for the gospel, Peter blinks. In that culture, meals communicated belonging. Who was in, who was out, who was clean, who was unclean. The table drew the line. Peter, in doing this, had denied the gospel, essentially setting up two different kinds of churches. There's those who are really in, the Jews, and those who are just barely in, the Gentiles. Yeah, they're both saved, but we know who really God loves. In essence, Peter is saying, God is good, Christ is good, but not quite good enough to make you truly clean enough to eat with us. Peter's withdrawing wasn't just hurting people's feelings. It was rewriting the basis for belonging. It said that Christ, yeah, he can forgive you, but you must do other things in order to qualify for his love. Paul Paul says that there were more people that joined in in this hypocrisy. Even Barnabas got carried away. When leaders of the church falter, when they move away from sound teaching, whole churches crumble, whole churches move with them. So when Peter withdraw, he wasn't just avoiding tension. He was preaching a new gospel, but with his feet. That's what Galatians 2:14 says, But when I saw their conduct was not in step with the truth of the gospel. Essentially, that The word that says in step here was ortho padeo. Ortho means ortho, meaning straight, and padeo, like podiatrist, like a foot doctor. It means feet. Paul is saying these people were not just doing something. Their walk was wrong. In Greek culture, your walk, how you walked, it wasn't just a physical action. It was how you lived your life. It was living your life straight, living your life right. Paul says the conduct was not in step with the truth of the gospel. Their conduct, meaning being not in step with the gospel, literally meant that they weren't walking straight. Their behavior made the gospel look crooked. And so Paul confronts him publicly because what he was doing was public. Peter was such an important figure. He an apostle. People looked to him to do the right thing. Paul says that he opposed Peter in front of all of them because the whole church was watching the gospel being played out. When something happens and it's private, we absolutely should confront people privately. But if I come up here and start preaching a different gospel, if someone falls publicly, doing something public, public in making the gospel vain, in adding to the gospel, in making it a different gospel, it needs to be confronted publicly. Everyone needs to hear the truth that what was said wasn't true. When you add anything to Christ, you don't just burden consciences, you break fellowship. And that was what was happening in this church. When you do this, you rebuild the wall that Jesus died to tear down. So in denying this, Peter has stood condemned. So Paul defends the gospel because he was defending the church. Main Idea: One gospel, received from God and defended without compromise The gospel is worth defending because it's not a minor doctrine. It's how dead people get transformed from death to life. It's how people go from guilty sinners into being declared righteous. It's how outsiders become full members of the family. The danger in Galatians is not that they stopped talking about Jesus, it's that they started adding to him. Jesus plus circumcision, grace plus law, faith plus proof. The moment you add anything to Christ on the basis of your standing right with God is the moment you don't add an upgrade to Christianity, you replace it, you take away from it. Paul doesn't call it a replacement that leads to injury or unhealth. This isn't something minor. Paul says that this leads to slavery. It takes you captive. Martin Luther, in commenting on this passage, says that we should respect Paul. We should follow Paul in his teaching. We should honor our parents, honor our rulers, even our pastors. But if any authority asks you to do anything, to bend the gospel, Paul is telling us here, we absolutely will not obey them. We obey Christ. We have a higher authority because the gospel outranks every voice, including our own. This isn't just a controversy for theologians. This isn't just some niche theological passage that's interesting to Bible nerds like me. This is a daily temptation salvation for Christians because our hearts love a plus religion. It makes us feel like we're in control, that we can take control and we can say, God, aren't you so glad that I did the right thing this week? Aren't you happy with me? It feels good to be able to say that. Yet if that was the basis for our salvation, we would never be able to be saved. Anything that we lean on to feel secure before God becomes a counterfeit. And so before we talk about false Gospels, we need to ask what plus religion is sneaking into our own heart, and that leads us into our application. Application 1.Refusing respectable slavery The danger in the Galatian church isn't that people stop using Jesus-centered language. It's that they started using something besides Jesus to feel clean, to feel safe, to feel accepted. So we need to watch the plus that tends to feel normal for us, especially in a place like this. It's not usually loud. It's not rebellion. It's not overtly a denial of the Trinity or a denial of Christ's Deity, but it's respectable substitutes. Things like competence, saying, I'm good. I've got life handled. Finding confidence in our reliability. I do my part. I don't rock the boat. Or maybe we use theology like armor. I believe the right thing. I'm informed. I can spot theological error. Maybe it's our busyness. I'm okay because I'm involved. I'm serving, I'm helping, I'm producing. Or maybe it's being the strong one. I'm okay because I don't need help. I'm not messy like anyone else. Or maybe it's comparison. I'm okay because I'm not like those other people that I see. None of these things are automatically bad. But when they become our confidence, when they start functioning like our own righteousness, that's when they become deadly. So here's the test. When you fail this week, when you blow it this week, what will you do? Will you run to Christ like he's enough? Or Will you pull back? Will you pull back trying to be clean yourself? And then when you feel clean enough, then you can go to God. Respectable slavery sounds spiritual, but it's hiding. It's hiding like Adam and Eve did in the garden. Well, I'll pray when I'm doing better. I'll go to God once I've calmed down. I'll feel close again when I've proven that I'm not that person. That's Jesus plus. That's Jesus plus a cleaner week, plus control, plus proof. And yet the gospel says something opposite. You come to Christ to be cleansed, not because you already are. Jesus has cleansed you. You cannot clean yourself enough to go before him. He's the one who has to clean us. So we must refuse respectable slavery when we see it in our life. Repent quickly. Stop performing for God. Receive mercy as a verdict. And make it right when you can. Apologize. Ask for forgiveness and take the next steps of obedience not as a way to pay back God, but because it's in devotion to him. A church is protected not by pretending we're clean, but by being the people who know where our cleanliness comes from. That leads us into our next point. 2.Practice table fellowship on purpose Practice hospitality. Now, what happens in the heart eventually shows up in our life. It shows up in our relationships, in the life of the church. In Galatians, Peter didn't preach a different gospel. He practiced one. He didn't make a doctrinal statement. He made a relational decision. He pulled back from the table and distanced himself. That was the preaching. It said, You're not quite clean enough. You're not quite one of us. And That's why table fellowship matters. It's because the table is where the gospel becomes visible. The question isn't only what do we confess, it's what do we practice. What does our life altogether communicate? What does the life of our church altogether communicate? There's a repeating danger in churches like ours. We can say everyone's welcome. We can put it on our website. We can put it in our bulletin, we can say it all the time. We can say everyone's welcome. But if we don't live that out, it doesn't really matter what we say. The patterns of our life communicate something something strong without maybe even intending to mean that. The issue is so subtle. The hidden social barriers, the relational things that make people feel like outsiders even before they get a chance to sit in the room with us. Belonging can quietly start feeling like you have to already know how things work here. You have to already know the right people. You have to know the names and the stories and the rhythms. You have to keep conversations light and pleasant. You can't bring your complicated, your messiness into a place like this. That's what it can feel like. No one writes up these rules, but When you're from the outside, you can feel it. You can feel it. It feels like maybe Christ welcomes me, but maybe I'm not sure as people do. There are people in our church, people in our community that desperately need to hear the gospel. There is something beautiful about this church. It's one of the reasons that we're here. There is a sense of family here that That is unlike any church that I've been a part of. And yet the danger is that we start to love the people so much here that we forget about the people out there. There are going to be people who visit our church. Being people who are radically transformed by the gospel makes it so that way we invite them in, that we don't make them feel like second-class Christians when they walk in. It means that we choose closeness over comfort, that we walk towards people that we might walk past normally, that we interrupt our default cycle. It doesn't mean that we can't talk to people that we love, that we've grown up with, that we've known forever, but we intentionally take a break from that sometimes to talk to people we've never seen before. I think that we should be a church that if you walk in here, that you've never been here before, that it's impossible to leave here without meeting people here. That it would be impossible to sit in here and walk out without knowing somebody. That we ask real questions more than, How are you doing? But how can I pray for you? And really waiting to hear truthful answers to that. If we're going to be a church that welcomes people, we have to live with messy. We can't pretend that we have it all together. None of our lives are together. People have messiness. That's part of church. That's part of the beauty of the church. We're a bunch of broken people that got redeemed by Christ, and we could live that faith out together. We don't have to pretend that we have it all together. We don't have to require that people come in already clean. Let the table preach what our mouths confess, that Christ is enough, enough to cleanse sinners, enough to unite strangers, enough to bring us together. We are a family here, united in one faith, united in Christ, not united in that we grew up here or whatever it is, that we were from the right family. We are united in one thing. This is one church made up of one family, not one church made up of multiple families, made up of multiple different groups of people. I want to push us on this because we have something so beautiful that ties us together. When the church practices that fellowship, it'll be impossible for us to not preach the truth of the gospel. Our actions will communicate it. When we preach the gospel verbally, it will be an exclamation point on how we've treated people. That's what I want for us. This brings us back to the question underlying everything. How do unclean people become clean? Because if we miss that, table fellowship just becomes being friendly. But if we get it, table fellowship is a living sermon, not only clean people, but cleansed people together. Landing The Bible gives us two pictures. The one we talked about before at the beginning was of Pilate, of trying to become clean yourself. Pilate washed his hands, trying to make him clean in the story of the crucifixion. But there's another story that we see in the Gospels of Being Clean. It's a little story that you could almost miss in all three of the synoptic Gospels, but it's in Matthew 9. It's so small. It's a story within a story. Jesus is going to to resurrect a little dead girl. And on the way in the middle of a crowd, a woman reaches out and touches his clothes. In Jewish culture, in Jewish law, a woman like that, touching anyone, touching anything would have instantly made it unclean, except with Christ. Instead of Jesus becoming unclean, he cleansed her. Do you see it? Jesus, when he makes us clean, he cleanses us so deeply that there is nothing we can do to dirty ourselves again. This is the good news of the gospel that we are cleansed wholly and totally, not by what we do, but what Christ has done for us. Christ takes our impurity. He took it to the cross. He became defiled for us. He became dirt. He became nothing for us on the cross so that way we could be cleansed, so that we could become exaltet. The gospel doesn't say, Come or become clean, and then you can come in. It says, Come to Jesus. He is your purity. He is your cleanliness. And that's exactly why the Book of Galatians matters. The moment that we add anything to Jesus on the basis of our cleanliness, whether it's circumcision, performance, respectability, we're not protecting wholeness anymore. We're denying the cleansing power of Christ. Prosper Church, we believe one gospel received from God, defended without compromise. Would you stand with me and pray as we prepare our hearts to respond in worship? Let's pray. Father God, we you and praise you for who you are, that you are a good God who has given us good things. You have cleansed us. You became dirty in our place so that we could be cleansed forever. That we don't have to come to church every Sunday questioning whether we've done enough good this week or whether or not we've done enough bad this week. We can come confessing, God, we haven't. We haven't lived to your standard, and yet we can still be accepted in. We can still be one with you. We can still have unity, not just with you, but with each other because of what you've done for us, because we were crucified with you and we've been resurrected with you. Let us sing your praises here and now as people cleansed, as people redeemed in your blood. It's your name we pray. Amen. Facebook X (Twitter) WhatsApp LinkedIn Pinterest Copy link

Lord's Day 12 In Life & In Death Mitchell Leach Sunday, February 1, 2026 Audio Lord's Day 12 Mitchell Leach 00:00 / 22:33 Sermon Transcript Our scripture reading today comes from 1 Peter 2: 4-10. So if you would open your Bibles with me to 1 Peter 2: 4-10. Verse 4. As you come to him, a living stone rejected by men, but in the sight of God, chosen and precious, you yourselves, like living stones, are being built up a spiritual house to be a holy priesthood, to offer spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ. For it It stands in scripture, Behold, I am laying in Zion a stone, a cornerstone chosen and precious, and whoever believes in him will not be put to shame. So the honor is for you who believe, but for those who do not believe, the stone that the builders rejected has become the cornerstone, and a stone of stumbling in a rock of offense. They stumble because they disobeyed the word as they were destined to do. But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his own possession, that you may proclaim the excellencies of him who has called you out of darkness, in into his marvelous light. Once you were not a people, but now you are God's people. Once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy. This is God's word. This passage answers a belonging question. Who are we? Where do we fit? And what makes us secure? And it does this by putting Jesus at the center, not as an accessory, but as the stone we build on. It leads us to our big question for tonight. How do you become someone who belongs without pretending? How do you become someone who belongs without pretending? Most of us answer by auditioning. We pick the room, we learn the lines, we hide the parts that don't fit in. In the world, belonging comes with conditions. We have to be impressive, be useful, be interesting, be unproblematic. So we curate a picture of ourselves. We achieve, we signal the right signals to the people around us. We live with a low-grade fear that if people really knew me, I'm out. But it's not just out there. The church has its own form of auditioning. You can start to think, I belong if I'm put together, if my marriage looks stable, if my kids behave, if my sins are vague, if I'm serving enough to be considered safe. So we keep things general. We say, I've been struggling or I've been busy, or I could use some prayer. We say anything except the truth. And here's the diagnostic for us. Where do you feel the pressure to edit yourself? Where do you make sure? What part of your life do you make sure that no one sees? What would it cost you to be honest, to be really honest? Because if belonging requires pretending, the truth is we never get rest. You either perform or you pull away or you judge those who seem to fit in. So the question remains, how do you become someone who belongs without pretending? Peter's answer is this. It's not by cleaning yourself up. It's to come to him. A rejected stone. A rejected stone who makes rejected people. Feel safe. So let's watch Peter answer our question in three movements. We'll see, first, he tells you who you are or who Jesus is. Then he tells you who you are. Then, he tells you how to live. So let's look at that first section, verses 4 through 8, the title, Come to the Anointed Stone. Jesus is not a helpful teacher here. Peter says, As you come to him, look at verse four. As you come to him, a living stone rejected by men, but in the sight of God, chosen and precious. As you come to him, this is not a one-time visit. This is a direction. Christianity is coming again and again to the same person, Jesus Christ. And look at how Peter describes him, rejected and at the same time, chosen and precious in the sight of God. The world makes a judgment, a vote against Jesus to say no. And yet look at the verdict that God renders on Jesus. You are mine, precious. That's the answer to the belonging question right there. Whose verdict gets to name you? Because if your life is built on human approval, you'll always be managing, always editing, always being afraid of being found out. But if your life is built on God's verdict, well, you can't hide. There's no sense in doing that. He sees everything. So we can stop pretending. We can finally find rest in a God who knows all things. Peter proves it from scripture, Whoever believes in him will not be put to shame. That's what verse 6 says. This This isn't a motivational slogan. This isn't something that we put on a bumper sticker or sew into a pillow. This is safety. Safety for the exposed, honor for the ashamed, in a solid place to stand. Peter also says that the same stone does two things. For those who believe, the cornerstone holds you up. And for those who refuse him, it becomes a stone of stumbling, something you keep colliding with because you keep colliding with him. No one gets to approach God and leave Jesus neutral. You either see him for who he is, and it totally transforms you. We have to walk away and say, I don't know if I really like that guy at all. But you can't walk away from him neutral. You either build on him or you trip over him. And don't miss what savior this is. Jesus knows rejection. Jesus was rejected. He walked straight into it on the cross. He was cast out. So people like you, people like me, people like us could be brought in. Not because we've cleaned ourselves up, but because he's been chosen. He's precious. And by faith, we belong to him. So Peter's first word to us isn't perform. It's come. Come to the living stone and watch what happens next. You don't stay alone. Verse 5 says, We get built in. And here's where Peter gets very specific. What do we get built into? Who do we get built in? That's what we see in this next section. Be built into an anointed people. 1 Peter 2: 5-10. Peter moves from the stone to stones, from Christ to the church. Notice the grammar here. You are being built up. You are not the builder. We are not the builder. God is. Christianity is not self improvement. It is making or it is God making a new people. It's plural. Living stones don't float. They fit. They belong. Peter says, We're being built into a spiritual house, a place where God God dwells into a holy priesthood offering spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ. These sacrifices, they're not a payment for sin. They are thank you offerings from people who understand what it means to be forgiven. Then Peter gives the church a name. He says that we are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, and a people for his own possession in verse 9. Those four titles are straight from Israel's story. This is Exodus language. This is covenantal language that we see here. Peter is saying something massive. God's people are now defined by union with Christ, not an ethnicity. In other words, God didn't scrap his promises. He kept them. He kept them by centering every Everything on the cornerstone, the rock of Christ. He gathered then Jew and Gentile into one people connected in unity around Jesus. When Peter says a chosen race, he's not talking about ethnicity. Diversity anymore. It doesn't matter what group of people you've come from. He's talking about a new people, a new family line defined by Jesus. Verse 10 is proof. He says, once you were a people, now you are God's people. That means your belonging with God did not start with you finding him. Started with God claiming you. And catch the purpose here. Verse nine, that you may proclaim the excellencies. It's that order. First, identity, then mission. You don't proclaim your way into belonging. You proclaim your way You proclaim because you belong. And verse 10 seals it. Verse 10 says this, once you were not a people, but now you are God's people. Once you had not received mercy, but now you've received mercy. Verse 10 is Peter's before and after picture. Verse 10 makes it clearer than ever. Peter is using Hoseia's words, not my people, my people, and applying them to the church. That means the church isn't a religious club that showed up later. It is a reformed people of God, built on Christ, made up of all who believe. That reality kills all boasting. It is not our effort. It is not what we do. It is God bringing us together in this beautiful thing he calls the church. Peter is saying something specific here. The church is the true Israel, not earned, but that we are bought with his mercy. If you understand verse 10, you can't be arrogant towards anyone. It eliminates any hierarchy that we can place on ourselves, Jew or Gentile, elite, any educational status, any socioeconomic status. We have We have been received by grace. We are here by grace. We are built into one spiritual building together by the builder. So when Peter calls you or Paul calls the church, royal and priesthood, and proclaiming. He's saying, In Christ, the calling of Israel becomes the calling of the church. Peter doesn't leave it with those words as poetry. He turns them into a vocation. To proclaim is what we see in becoming a prophet, priesthood, being the priests and royal and the king. And that's what we see in our third point, live out the shared anointing, prophet, priest, and king, from question and answer 31 and 32. Peter does not just give us new names here in verse 9. He gives us a new calling. Proclaim, priesthood, royal. The catechism isn't adding anything to what first Peter is saying. It is naming what first Peter has already said. The prophet isn't someone who needs to be right. When we think of a prophet, we think of someone who maybe who's a little bit brash. Prophet's not that. Prophet's not somebody who argues with people online. Prophet is the one who confesses Christ clearly. Verse nine says this, that you may proclaim the excellencies of him. Prophets We don't need to win arguments. Prophets make Christ clear. They proclaim who Jesus is. So the challenge for us is to do this in your home. Name God's mercies out loud. In your relationships, speak truth and grace, not vague spirituality. And in the church, encourage, admonish, disciple each other. The diagnostic for us as we look at what it means to be a prophet, If someone followed you for a month, would they know that you belong to Jesus, or would they think that you're just a good person? When was the last time you said the name of Jesus out loud with someone who doesn't already agree with you? If we never confess his name, we might be people who admire Christ, but we're not yet sharing the name of Christ. We're not proclaiming the name of That doesn't mean that every Christian needs to be bold. They don't need to be on the corner shouting apologetics to people passing by. But it means that silence can't be our settled posture. Because mercy makes Jesus speakable. Now, for some of you who are quiet, you're not quiet because you don't believe in Jesus, but it's because there's fear. It's scary sharing our faith. My challenge to you would be this. Bring that to Jesus. Bring that to God. Ask the King for courage. Start small. We don't need to speak to the masses. Think of one clear sentence you could use this week, someone you know. As we move on to what it means to be a priest, priests are ones who offer sacrifices. And yet when it looks When we look at what it means to do that in the New Testament, our sacrifices don't pay for sin. Christ did. Peter's phrase is everything here in verse 5, acceptable to God through Jesus Christ. That means your obedience It's never a stand-alone offering. It's always carried in by Christ. Your sacrifices are thank you offerings, not guilt offerings. So that means that we have to stop treating repentance like self-punishment. Repentance is agreeing with God and returning to God because the sacrifice has already been made. We need to be a people who practice repentance, prayer and worship, generosity, service that costs you, and reconciliation, one of the most easily recognizable Priestley acts. We don't offer sacrifices to get God to love us. We offer ourselves because Because the priest has already brought you here. Because Christ's sacrifice is once and for all, and his intercession is ongoing. You don't have to keep trying to make yourself seem acceptable. The Christ has already made you acceptable. Now your obedience comes as gratitude, not panic, not as a way to try to twist God's arm into doing what you want him to do or to accept you. We are already already firmly found in Christ. As we look to what it means to be a king and to act in that kingly office, some of you might confuse this idea of freedom with comfort, but the idea of kingly anointing, it goes beyond those categories. Kingly anointing means that we In some regard, we engage in warfare, not coasting, because with a free conscience, because we can do it with a free conscience, not a condemned one. This warfare is not to earn our place. It's not to fight our way in. We wage war against sin, against evil, the sin and evil that we see in ourselves, the oppression that we see in the world, not because we're trying to find a place, but because we already have one. Your struggle is not proof that you're losing. It's proof that we're alive. As Christ fought, he's calling us to fight, and Christ guards what he has already won. The comfort underneath the fight is the King does not just command, he keeps. Your grip on him is real, but his grip on you is even stronger. That leads us into our main idea. Our main idea for tonight is this, the spirit anointed Christ makes spirit anointed people. The spirit anointed Christ makes spirit anointed people. Jesus is called Christ because the Father appointed him and the spirit anointed him, Prophet, priest, and King. He doesn't just give us information. As prophet, he reveals God's will for our deliverance. He doesn't just give us an example. As priest, he offers himself and keeps us as he intercedes for us. He doesn't just give us inspiration. As king, he rules and guards the freedom he won. And Peter says, When you come to this living Stone, you don't just get forgiven. You get built in. You become a holy priesthood, a holy priesthood, a royal priesthood, a people for his own possession. That means Christian isn't just a label that we wear. It is an identity we have been given. If we are united to an anointed one by faith, we share in his anointing. So the question isn't, do you have the name Christian? The question is, is the anointed Christ producing an anointed life? Do we confess? Do we see sacrifice in ourselves? Mercy. God's mercy makes a people, and mercy gives that people a mission. So what does an anointed person do this week? The catechism gives three verbs: confess, offer, and strive. So our application for tonight starts off with this. The first point, Confess his name, Prophet, verse 9, that we should proclaim the excellencies. This week, make Jesus audible, not just vague, but explain his name. Pick one person and say one clear sentence. Something like, I'm a Christian. I belong to Jesus. I'm grateful for what he has done for me. Or, I'm trying to follow Jesus, and I need his mercy every day. That's a good one you can use if you've messed up in front of that person. That's all right. We don't have to laugh here. It's a night service. It's all good. Why does Peter give us this? Peter says this, that God has made you his people so that you would proclaim him, proclaim the one who has called you out of darkness and into his marvelous light. If you're thinking, I don't I don't know if I can do that. Don't start with a crowd. Start with a person. Start small. But we can't stay silent forever. The second point of application is this. Present yourself as a living sacrifice. Repentance without self-protection is what we're called to do. We're called to engage in generosity that costs us. We're called to serve, serve people when it's inconvenient, that we should be a people who initiate reconciliation, initiate peace with those in our life, and that we worship even when we don't feel like it. That leads us into our third point of application, strive with a free conscience against sin and the devil. Name one sin that you've been excusing this week and put it in front of the cross. Confess it to someone and resist the fear of man, which was Peter's temptation if you were here for the morning service. By remembering those... Or by remembering whose approval makes you clean. We are cleansed by Christ. As we strive for a free conscience against sin and the devil, remember, when you fail, don't run from Christ. Don't do what Adam and Eve did in the garden, trying to guard themselves and run and hide from God. Run to him. Kings, get back up because the King guards them. We've asked, how do you become someone who belongs without pretending? Peter's answer is not clean yourself up. It's come. Come to him. But why can we come? Because belong Our longing always has a cost. In our faith, we know Christ pays it. Our problem isn't only that we're wounded, it is that we are guilty. We have a record. And a Holy God does not just call evil no big deal. He has to judge it. So on the cross, Jesus does not suffer with us. He suffers for us. He takes the penalty that our sins deserve. The stone, the rejected stone, is rejected under judgment. So rejected people like us can be received in mercy. He gets your shame. You get his honor. He gets your condemnation, you get welcomed in. That's why Peter can say, whoever believes in him will not be put to shame. So we can drop the mask, we can drop the resume, and we can come empty-handed to the true and perfect King. Don't leave tonight as an applicant, Grace, but as one who has received mercy and belongs. Because you can belong without pretending, because Christ has taken your place. Remember this, the spirit anointed Christ makes spirit anointed people. Let's pray. Father God, we thank you for who you we are. We praise you that we get to share in your anointing because we take on the name of Christ. We are grafted in. We are yours. Father, I pray as we continue in this series that we would remember where our comfort comes from, that we can proclaim and know that we belong to you, body and soul, in life and in death. God, you are our comfort. You are our peace. God, I pray today on your Sabbath day that we would be able to find our rest in you. Father, help us to respond. Help us to respond in worship as we sing how How Great Thou Art. It's in your name we pray. Amen. Facebook X (Twitter) WhatsApp LinkedIn Pinterest Copy link

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Prosper Blog Drawing the Line of Legalism Mitchell Leach Heading 3 Drawing the Line of Legalism Mitchell Leach You’ve probably heard the term legalism, or legalist used — not just in the church — but in culture abroad. Legalism carries a clearly negative connotation (and for good reason). Yet legalism isn’t a word found in the English Bible, but that doesn’t mean the Bible doesn’t say anything about it. Paul uses the phrase “works of the law” eight times in his writings (Romans 2:15, 3:20, 3:28, Galatians 2:16, 3:2, 3:5, 3:10). Can we trust the Council of Nicaea? Mitchell Leach Why can the church feel this way? Because men cannot create new — correct theology — men can only discover it. Men can invent new heresy, but not orthodoxy. Men and women today and in antiquity can only recognize it. And this is what the modern church should find confidence in. As noted above, the implications of this inform nearly every subsequent theological position the church has taken since. The council of Nicaea was moved by the Holy Spirit to... How is Man Made Right With God? Mitchell Leach If you look at any human relationship – any meaningful one at that – you will find injustice from either party. It is inescapable, humanity defaults toward relational injustice, not towards relational justice. We inflict harm to those we love, and those who love us. Humanity has a strange propensity to cause brokenness in relationships. We do this not just in our horizontal relationships, but in our vertical relationship with God. How is man made right with God? Can unbelievers understand and interpret the Bible? Mitchell Leach "So anyone who thinks he has understood the divine scriptures or any part of them, but cannot by his understanding buildup this double love of God and neighbor, has not yet succeeded in understanding them”(Augustine, On Christian Teaching, 1.86). St. Augustine — accurately — describes that true comprehension of the Bible comes through a combination of prayer, faith, and an attitude of submission to God's will. It is by loving God and being compelled into action, If God Is Sovereign, Why Pray? Mitchell Leach Whether or not prayer is effective (and it is effective), we are called to be followers of Christ. The question shouldn’t be “Does prayer change things?” But rather “Is Jesus God?” Because if he is in fact God, then what he says goes. Questioning God on whether his commandments make sense to us is a grievously offensive practice. In doing so we (as finite creatures) are inferring that we — somehow — have a better perspective... First Prev 1 Page 1 Next Last

Office Administrator Jolene Sullivan Jolene serves as the Office Administrator at Prosper Christian Reformed Church, assisting the pastor and council with communication, organization, and day-to-day ministry support. Her responsibilities include preparing bulletins and email newsletters, coordinating volunteers and events, and creating various church communications and promotional materials. She also coordinates Prosper CRC’s Food Pantry and Food Distribution ministry, overseeing food ordering and supporting the volunteers who faithfully serve area families through this bi-weekly program. Jolene began serving in her current role in June 2025, having previously held a similar position at Prosper from 2005–2007. Jolene and her husband, Ben, have attended Prosper CRC since 2003. They have four children and one grandson, and are grateful to be part of the life and ministry of the congregation. Contact the Office Admin

The staff of Prosper CRC. Including Pastor Mitchell Leach. See the more information on the staff. Staff & Leadership Elders Gary Gladu Elder Dries Dodde Elder Lyle Pratt Elder Henry Diemer Elder Gary Gandolfi Elder Keith Dick Elder Deacons Josh Dick Deacon Gary Gladu Deacon Craig DeRuiter Deacon Tyler Gernaat Deacon Alex Utecht Deacon Staff Learn More Mitchell Leach Lead Pastor Learn More Jolene Sullivan Office Administrator Learn More Marjon Dodde Bookkeeper Learn More Gary Gandolfi IT Director Learn More John Baas Custodian Learn More Bonna Baas Custodian

Christ Gospel In Three Words Mitchell Leach Sunday, January 18, 2026 Audio Christ Mitchell Leach 00:00 / 44:33 Sermon Transcript Most people have heard the name Martin Luther before. We learn about him usually in world history at some point. He was a German monk and a Bible professor about 500 years ago who became a key figure during the Protestant Reformation. As a young man, Martin Luther really struggled with this idea, and he was terrified of God's judgment and how to deal with it. He didn't take it lightly. Growing up, this was something that he thought about day and night, especially as a monk, he took this on himself. He prayed for hours. He fasted, lived with discipline. He confessed every day to the point where those he was confessing his sins to told him, You need to stop. You're confessing too much. But the strange thing was, the more serious that he took this, the more guilt, the more he couldn't let this go, the more he felt crushed by it. Later, Martin Luther would talk about this in saying, If anyone could save themselves, by doing the right thing as a monk, it would have been him. And yet he had no peace because he was enveloped with this idea, answering this question, What does a Holy God require? As Martin Luther began to translate the Bible from Latin into English, he started to find passage after passage that convicted him and transformed him. He realized that the righteousness that God requires is the same righteousness that he gives as a gift through grace, through faith. Luther later said that it felt like the gates of paradise opened up before him when he realized this. This is not just Martin Luther's story, though. This is our story. Our story that almost every philosophy, every religion, every worldview looks at, trying to answer this question, our big question, how can we be saved? How can we be saved? Our culture will give us a couple of different answers to this question, and yet they all come back to one commonality. They put the weight on you. An atheistic worldview would say, there is no God, there is no final judge, there's no final judgment. And so you don't need to worry about being saved. Just try being a decent human being. And yet the question doesn't go away. We still have a standard. We still feel this guilt inside of us, and we know that there are things that we can't undo. Even in a world where we try to convince ourselves that a judge doesn't exist, it doesn't erase the feeling in our soul. Other religions will say, Yes, there is a God, there is a standard. And so here are the rules. Here's how you should live. Practice them. Live by them. Do them. Prove yourself. And if you try hard enough, maybe you'll be accepted by this God or this spirit or whatever. The problem is you never know where you stand. You never know what What is good enough. And deep down, I think if we're honest with ourselves, we know we don't meet that standard. And then there's a third approach, which is very common in the American church. We wouldn't ever say, we never confess that we are saved by works. And yet we often live by it. We view Jesus as this ticket, this entry ticket into heaven. And once we've we've punched that ticket. Once we've said that sinner's prayer, believe that it's our job to maintain that standard. We really don't believe that we need to go any higher, but we need to maintain it. We need to be good. We need to serve hard. We need to know the right answers, vote the right way, parent the right way, anything to feel secure. So whichever path we take, whether it's know God, works-based religion, or trying to play the church performance game, The question comes back to, how can we be saved? But fortunately, the Bible has answers for us. So keep your Bibles open to Colossians 1, as we will see three movements in this passage. Christ's supremacy in creation Christ's supremacy in redemption Christ's supremacy applied to believers. We are in week three of our series, Gospel in Three Words, where we're just focusing on Christ. So far, two weeks ago, we looked at the righteousness of God, how God's standard is so high that even our own righteousness could never meet it. Last week, we looked at our sin. Not only is God perfectly righteous, but we are desperately sinful. That leads us to this week, a need for salvation. In this passage, what we'll see is Jesus Christ is the Supreme and sufficient Lord of creation and redemption who reconciles all things to God through the cross. John Calvin has this quote to say, he says, "Nearly all the wisdom we possess, that is to say true and sound wisdom consists of two parts: the knowledge of God, the knowledge of ourselves." That's what we've been trying to do in this series so far, understand who God is, understand ourselves, because that drives us into the wisdom of knowing we need a savior. In other words, if you want to know whether or not you can be saved, Paul says, you have to look at the supremacy of Christ because only someone who is truly God can reconcile you to God. So let's look at that first section, Christ's Supremacy in Creation Paul is answering a question, why can Jesus save you? He does this by showing us that Jesus is God. He's not a mere resemblance of God, but that he is the image God. He is God revealed. He is God. That's why he says in Colossians 1:15, the first half, he says, He is the image of the invisible God. The point is that Jesus is not a copy. Jesus is not some form of God. The point is, if you want to know what God is like, look to Jesus. He doesn't resemble God. He is God manifested. He's not a manifestation of God. He is God made flesh. In Greek thought, the idea of an image is that they would share in the reality of what they reveal. That's what Paul is trying to communicate. Jesus is the image. He is the reality, not just a mere resemblance of it. Not only is God, not only is Jesus God in the flesh, but that he has all authority. That's what we see in the second half of that verse, that he is the first born of all creation. This doesn't mean that Jesus is created. That's why we did the Nicene Creed a little bit before this. I want us to understand that this passage, a warning, that this passage is clear that Jesus is not created. The first born means not a literal son. It means someone who has the inheritance, who has the right The first born in the Bible means the supreme heir, the one with the right and rule, not the first one made. Psalm 89 says this about Jesus, prophesying about him, and I will make him, the first born, the highest of the Kings of the Earth. The first born is the one who inherited. He was the one who would be next in line for the throne. If it wasn't royal It would be the next in line to inherit the business or the farm. It wasn't just an inheritance of money or an inheritance of land. It was an inheritance to continue on what your father had done, to make the same decisions. Jesus has the authority over all of creation. He is not the first created thing. He is God. And in fact, if Jesus were part of creation, Paul would not say what he says next in Colossians 1:16-17. He says this, For by him all things were created in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities, all things were created through him and for him. He is before all things, and in him all things hold together. Paul makes it perfectly clear and impossible for us to think that Jesus is created because Jesus is saying, Jesus created everything. You can't create everything if you were created yourself. Jesus cannot be inside the category of created things. He is the creator. He created all things. That word all, right? Sometimes we break down the Greek. This isn't a simple one for us. It's the Greek word 'pos', the meaning of it is all. You can't take it another way. It just It means all. That's it. Which is why John says this, All things were made through him, and without him was not anything made that was made. What Paul, what John are trying to show us the proof that Jesus is God. They're saying, Look, look at what Jesus does. He owns everything. He is the creator. He is the one who does it. All things were made through him and for him. ' He does the very things that God does. Not only was everything made by him, And through him, everything was made for him. I think that's important for us to understand. Jesus is able to receive glory. That's what we see in Jesus being or everything being made for him. Any other place in scripture, when someone tries to worship an angel or someone else, the angel will say, No, you cannot worship me. But Jesus is able to receive glory because everything was made for him. That means that the universe is ultimately not about us. It is about him. Everything exists in creation to glorify God, and that includes our life. There's a great quote by Ironías who says this, The glory Of God is a human being fully alive, and the life of a human consists in beholding God. What he's trying to say is, Our lives belong to God, fully alive, glorifying God. Paul is creating an argument here about how Jesus can save us, and it's crucial that we see and understand that Jesus is God. Verse 17 says this, And he is before all things, and in him all things hold together. That he has authority over all of creation. Paul is saying that Jesus isn't just the starter of the universe. That he is the sustainer of it. He is the one who holds all things together. He holds every atom of the universe together. Every breath that we have, every heartbeat is borrowed from God. So Paul starts by taking us all the way up. Jesus is the image of the invisible God, the creator of all things, the one who holds everything together. But Paul isn't giving us theology, fun facts. He's showing us something. He's building an argument. Only the creator has the authority to redeem creation. And that brings us into our second movement here. Christ's Supremacy in Creation, Colossians 1:18-20. Verse 18 says this, And he is the head of the body, the church. He is the beginning, the first born from the dead. That in everything he might be pre-eminent. He is not only the authority over creation, but he is the head of the church. He has authority over the church. And that The word head doesn't just mean authority. It means authority, but it also means the source of life. If Christ is the head of the church, then the church can only stay alive by staying connected to him, which means the church is not a book club. It's not a time where we can come together and passively observe God. This The church is the body. It is a living, breathing organism that gets its life from Christ himself. He also is the first born from the dead. It doesn't mean that he's the first resurrected person. In the Old Testament, there are people that were resurrected. In fact, Jesus resurrected Lazarus. It means that he is the first a new resurrection. He is the beginning of a new creation. The resurrection is this resurrection, his resurrection, is a guarantee that death will not have the final word for his people. It finishes by saying this verse, it finishes by saying, He is all of these things so that in everything he might be pre-eminent. That he's not one opinion among many. He's not a spiritual teacher that we can add on and hope that it improves our life. He's not a moral example that we can sit and view like we're at the movies. Paul says that Jesus is pre-eminent. He is first place. He is ultimate. He is supreme. He is unmatched. That's what pre-eminent means. He is first place in every category. If Christ is merely important to you, but not ultimate, you might not be seeing the Christ that Paul is proclaiming here, the Christ that we see in Scripture. Paul is trying to show us that Jesus is not just another person, that he's not like everyone else in the Old Testament that tried their best but ultimately failed. Paul wants us to see that he is God. He always will be God. He always has been God. It leads us into Colossians 1:19, For in him all the four God was pleased to dwell. This is Paul's way of cutting down every argument, every statement that would say Jesus was a good idea, or he was almost God, or he was a neat thing, he was a good teacher, he seemed moral. No. Jesus is not part of God. He can't be a fraction of God. He cannot be a slice or a manifestation or some other mode of God. Jesus is God. He's not a junior deity. All the fullness of God was pleased to dwell in him. The whole divine nature dwells in him. God has ensured that in Jesus is found all that makes God God. Colossians 1:20 says this, And through him to reconcile himself to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, making peace by the blood of his cross. When Paul says, To to reconcile all things. He does not mean that every person will be saved. This is not universalism, that everybody goes to heaven. What he means is that Christ's cross is the decisive act that will put the whole universe back together under the rightful rule, either through redemption or through final judgment. Through the cross, Jesus will make everything sad come untrue. Either way, Jesus will have the last word. This passage that we're going through is actually it's called the Christ hym. It might have been sung in early churches. But this Him reaches its apex, not in creation, but in reconciliation. That's why Paul has been piling up language, piling up this argument to say, what sin has destroyed, God restored through Christ. Sin isn't something that God could ignore either. Sin is not something that he could have just turned a blind eye to, turn the other way and let happen, let go unpunished. Sin had to be dealt with. And it was dealt with by God himself coming and bleeding for us. Our sin was paid for. It was paid for by the blood of Jesus. Because if Jesus is truly God and all the fullness is pleased to dwell within him, then his death, his blood is not just tragic. It is sufficient for us. The cross has the weight to truly deal with sin and shame. Paul won't let this idea stay out there, cosmic far off in the distant. He turns and says in this next section, And you, because reconciliation isn't just a theory, it's personal. Christ's supremacy is what we'll see applied to believers iColossians 1:21-23 God's heart is to save, but he saves through real justice, not by ignoring it. You were made by God and for God. We were created to be in relationship with God. And yet humanity's problem, like we saw last week, is that we choose everything but God. Colossians 1:21 says, And you who were once alienated and hostile in mind doing evil deeds, our problem isn't just that we were alienated. Our problem is that we are hostile, actively running away from God. Not neutral, not having some blemishes or mostly good, but we got a few issues that we just need to iron out. No, Paul says that we were opposed to God in our minds, our instincts, every flinch of our body ran directly towards hell, directly away from God. To get us back, he could not simply ignore the evil we've committed. Because if God could just turn a blind eye, could just allow it to go, it would mean that God is unjust, that he is not good, and that he's corrupt. There are some things that we've done, causing this rift in our relationship. That cannot go under the rug. They can't be swept under the rug. They have to be dealt with. And Jesus, we see in this passage, came to deal with evil by becoming sin for us. In fact, 2 Corinthians 5:21 says this, For our sake, he made him to be sin, who knew no sin, that in him we might become the righteousness of God. Colossians 1:22 goes on to say, He has now reconciled in his body of flesh by his death in order to present you holy and blameless and above reproach before him. Jesus reconciled us the Father through the cross. This is why it says the word body, flesh, and death, because reconciliation isn't a metaphor. It's not an analogy. It's not some neat teaching that we can draw something from. It is real. Reconciliation required a real substitute, a real death. It required a real death for us to have real life. If you want a one paragraph explanation of what reconciled his death means. Romans 3 might be the best passage for this. It says, For there is no distinction, for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and are justified by his grace as a gift through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God put forward as a propitiation by his blood to be received by faith. Because God is a Holy God. And what we saw in week one is that God cannot even look at evil. His Holiness is so complete, so good. And the bad news for us is that we are nowhere near his Holiness. All have sinned. All have fallen short of the glory of God. Something has to happen. God cannot turn a blind eye to it. It might seem weird that God can't, that he can't just let this go, that he can't just snap his fingers and make everything go away. That's not what forgiveness is. If I came over to your house and I broke a window, which isn't unlike me, but if that happens, there's two ways you can go about that. You can say, Dude, you broke my window. You need to pay for it. And you'd be right to do that. I broke the window. That's justice. The second option is to say, Don't worry about it. I've got it. Maybe get out of my house so you don't break any other windows. And that's forgiveness. But regardless, forgiveness is not just letting it go. The window has to be fixed. The window cannot go unfixed. Someone has to pay the price. Forgiveness means that someone has to absorb the cost. Forgiveness means that the offended is the one that has to pay. This is what happens on the cross. The offended took the place of the offender. God himself provided the propitiation. It's a word we don't use. What it means is to satisfy the wrath of God. Jesus bore the wrath we deserve so that he could be both the just and the justifier. Jesus, who is fully God, satisfies his wrath so we wouldn't have to. Jesus loved us so much that instead of demanding justice, instead of demanding that we pay the price, that he would pay it. Why? He does this. This shows us in order to present you holy and blameless and above reproach before him. If you're someone who circles in your Bible or writes in your Bible, circle that in order to... Paul is showing us the reason why. The reason why Jesus must be pre-eminent so that we could be presented, holy and blameless. This is salvation in one sentence, not just forgiven, changed, not just spared, presented, holy before God. God does not reconcile us and then leave us in our filth. It's in order that we could be saved, in order that we can be his again, that he could wash us of our evil, our sin, and that we could be one with him. The goal of salvation isn't merely to escape hell. It is to be reconciled. It is to be unified with God. And that's what leads us to our main idea. The God who made you is the God who died to save you. The God who made you is the God who died to save you. Think about how staggering that is. The one who spoke creation into existence is not distant from our mess. The one who holds the universe together did not stand back here with his arms crossed, scolding you, hoping that you would pick yourself up by your boots, traps, clean yourself off. No. Colossians says that all things were created by him, through him, and for him. And then in the same breath says that he made peace by the blood of the cross. It means that the greatest power in the universe is not just the ability to create, it's the willingness to suffer. And that's why we talk about the cross so much. It's not because as Christians, we want to be morbid. It's not because we're stuck on guilt. It's because the cross is the place where God's Holiness and God's love meet perfectly together. At the cross, God doesn't pretend that sin is small. He proves that it is deadly, that it will kill us. Rather than allowing it to kill us, he chose to die in our place. At the cross, God does not tell you to fix yourself. He does not tell you to try harder, to be better. He comes and rescues you. The offended, the offended one pays the cost. The judge steps down and bears the judgment that he just pronounced. This is the most beautiful reality in all of the world. The God that you sinned against is the God who was moved in love, moved in compassion to come to you, not with denial, not with sentimental tolerance, not just blinking at your sin and writing it off, but with blood bought peace. Do you see what happens on the cross? Do you see it? Jesus goes and bears the wrath of God. He was punished for you. He was tormented for you. That is what hell is. It's God's wrath poured out against sin against evil. And Jesus willingly did that for you. Do you know what love that takes? I think most of us in here have people in our life that we would die for, people we love, people that we would take a bullet for. But who in here would be willing to trade places with someone, to bear the wrath of God for all of their sin? Jesus did. Jesus did before the foundation of the world. He said, I do, I will, I love you that much. And if this is true, if God made you, the God who made you is the one who came to save you, then Christianity is not, first and foremost, an invitation to improve yourself. It's not some moral betterment program. It is an invitation to be reconciled, to stop hiding, to stop negotiating, to stop performing, and to come home. This changes everything for us. If salvation is earned, or if salvation is not earned, it is received, if peace with God is not achieved by effort but purchased by Christ, then it has to reshape everything about us. That leads us into our points of application. First, believe the gospel. If you've come here today, and you don't, this is my earnest plea not to leave here without believing the gospel, not merely confessing something. Belief is not mere confession. We can't believe in the same way. We can't believe in Jesus the same way we believe it's going to snow. We live in Northern Michigan. It's going to snow, right? Those two things are categorically different. Belief in Christ demands our whole life. It means whole-hearted transformation. It means surrender to God. It means putting God, seeding God, where where he belongs, treating him as if he's God. I think too many of us are all too comfortable with treating God as if he's only our provider, only our protector, only our healer, only our savior, not wanting him to be Lord of our life. Belief in Jesus has to come with relinquishing that, putting him, seeding him as Lord of our life. We cannot not say to God, Jesus, I want you to save me for my sin, but I don't want you to tell me what to do. That cannot work. Jesus must have total authority of our life. Belief means we trust him for everything. Not just simply using him as a get-out-of-hell free card. It means trusting him totally because we can. It means trusting his work on the cross even more than trusting our own emotions. I think too often in the modern church, our salvation is tied to how we feel. We come to church because the music makes us feel good. We like the way that the sermon makes us feel. Even our own relationship with God is tied to how we feel towards him, that we feel saved when we feel saved. The danger in this is that our salvation is then It's tied to an emotion. It's still tied to a work, to how we feel, to making us feel a certain way. Historic Christianity has always said, You are saved, not by a philosophy, not by some step program, not by emotion. You are saved by a historical event. Jesus came and died for you and rose again three days later. We know that we're saved because God tells us that we're saved. He tells us in his word that we're saved. And if we ever get confused on that, he's actually given us two really great things. He's given us our baptism and the Lord's Supper. Two means of grace that can remind us what God did for us. We cannot shift back into self-salvation. That's what we see in our next point of application. Continue in the gospel. Don't shift back into self-salvation, trying to save our self. Paul goes on to say, Continue in the faith, stable and steadfast, not shifting from the hope of the gospel. The translation? Once you've been reconciled, you are going to feel tempted to try to measure yourself up by what you've done, by what you feel. Some of us will be tempted into pride, into saying, Yeah, you know what? I have done a good job. I've been to church every single week this month, and I've done the right things, and I've really avoided doing X, Y, and Z. I'm much better than that person out there. Or we'll be tempted into despair in recognizing the sinfulness in ourselves. No, I have failed this week. I haven't been around church. I haven't done these things. I am without hope. But both of these forms of shifting away from the gospel. It does this because it makes you the center. It makes you the auditor of whether you're good or not. Martin Luther has this to say. The law says, 'Do this, and it never does, and it's never done. Grace says, believe this, and everything is already done. We are saved by what Christ has done, not by working for it, not by trying harder. And we'll see that next week in Galatians. So practice this one simple thing this week. When you sin, don't hide, run to Christ, confess quickly, and receive forgiveness. Preach the same gospel that you would preach, preach the same gospel to yourself that you'd preach to any sinner. But you are saved not by what you've done, good or bad. You're saved by grace through faith. Believing the gospel is not moving from bad people to good people. It is moving from people who are proud, moving from people who are in despair, to moving to people who can rest in the work, in the finished work of Christ. That leads us into our last point of application, which has three subpoints. Live reconciled. These aren't ways to earn peace with God, but this is a way that our peace from God bears fruit in our life. We need to forgive. If Christ has absorbed the cost of our sin, then we need to, in our life, slowly, painfully, and truly absorb the cost of others' sin against us. I want to I'll ask you two questions. Who do you keep punishing in your mind? What have you refused to release? It's a great place to start in forgiveness. The next is to be generous. If everything that's been created is created for God, then what we have, possessions or money, it belongs to him anyways. It's ultimately not for us. And if Jesus gave himself for us, then generosity is not a negative on our balance sheet. It is an opportunity for us to worship. The last thing is to reconcile. Reconciliation is maybe one of the most clear pictures that we can give the world of the gospel. If Christ moved towards us while we were hostile, while we were enemies to him, then you don't get to stay distant, forever, and safe from people. Is there a text that you need to send? A conversation you need to start? A confession you need to make? Not to win, but to make peace. We don't forgive, give, and reconcile to get God to love us. He already does that. We do it because in Christ, he's shown us that he has. The beauty of reconciliation between us and God is that it is not not just for this life. Salvation isn't merely God's way of helping us cope with the here and now. It is him bringing us home forever. Because the end of the story isn't escaping a bad place. The end of the story is God dwelling with his people. Revelation 21: 3 says this, And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, 'Behold, the dwelling place of God is with man, and he will dwell with them, and he will be and they will be his people, and God himself will be with them as their God. That is reconciliation complete. Not a temporary peace, not a fragile assurance, not a relationship on probation. That is God with us forever. How do sinners get there? Not by measuring up, not by earning it, only through the blood of the Lamb, because peace with God had to be purchased. So if you hear anything this morning, hear this. The God who made you is the God who saved you. The gospel isn't our way to climb to God. It is his way of showing us that he came to us and that he will be the one who brings us all the way home. Would you stand with me as we prepare our hearts to respond in worship? Father God, we thank you for who you are, that you are a God who came to us, not just for this life, but to bring us home that you loved us even while we were still sinners, and you came to purchase us back. God, we cannot live and leave here as the same people. God, let us be transformed by your word. Let us go out and live with the peace that you've bought for us. Live as reconciled people. God, we love you. We love to do your will, so help us do that. It's in your name we pray. Amen. Facebook X (Twitter) WhatsApp LinkedIn Pinterest Copy link

No Other Gospel Mitchell Leach Sunday, January 25, 2026 Audio No Other Gospel Mitchell Leach 00:00 / 46:17 Sermon Transcript In the early 1900s, a Dutch painter named Hans van Maeger pulled off one of the most famous art fraud schemes in the history of the world. He would paint lost paintings in the style of a famous painter named Johannes Vermeer. They were so convincing that these paintings that he painted, hung in museums, hung in galleries. They were authenticated. They were displayed in wealthy people's homes. People paid a fortune for these. They praised them. They defended them. They built reputations on these paintings. But after World War II, van Merger was accused of selling these paintings to the Nazis. And to prove that he wasn't a traitor, he made a startling confession that they weren't authentic paintings, that they were his, that he was the one forging these paintings in this famous Johannes Vermeer's name. To prove this, he painted them under supervision, and they realized that this was all a fraud. The startling part of this is that this isn't just about art, but this is about who we are. This goes to our hearts. The counterfeit didn't succeed because people hated the originals. The counterfeit succeeded because it looked close enough and people wanted it to be true. That's something that we can relate to. Part of what we believe, if we're honest, is what we want to believe about this or that. It's what we want to be true. And that's what's so dangerous about a counterfeit gospel, because it uses Christian vocabulary. It feels It feels spiritual. It feels maybe even more obedient. But it suddenly shifts the foundation away from Christ into your performance. It asks, that's what Galatians will ask us this big question today and throughout the entire eight-week series that we're in. How do you know you're not trusting a counterfeit gospel? A counterfeit gospel is anything that makes your standing with God depend not on Christ, but Christ plus something. Jesus saves, but you're the one who finishes. Grace gets you in the door, but your performance, your works, they are what allow you to stay in the room. It's subtle because you can say all the right words about Jesus, but then quietly believe or start putting your trust in Jesus plus. So what is your Jesus Jesus plus? Is it Jesus plus being a good parent, being morally consistent, being well respected, being theologically correct, having your life under control? Here's how you can tell whether or not that's true for you. When you pray, do you find yourself silently listing reasons why God should answer? When you sin, do you avoid God until you've cleaned yourself up enough and then you can go back to him? If someone criticizes you, it's not their words that hurt. It hurts because your reputation might be tied with your righteousness. When you're having a good week, when you feel like you've been obedient to God, do you feel more confident that God will be pleased in you? This feels spiritual, but it's not maturity. It's actually Jesus plus something. And that's what Paul says in this passage. This is not growth. This is abandoning the gospel, which is why Galatians begins the way it does, with not a list of demands, but with an announcement, grace and peace, because the gospel is not Jesus plus something. It is in Christ alone. In this series, we are going to see... It's an eight-week series starting today through Galatians. And why this series? Why now? Why go through this? Because counterfeit Gospels are prevalent, and they confuse us. They don't just make us question things. They slowly change what Christian we are. Galatians is an emergency letter written by Paul to these churches. It's written to Christians who have started to believe, Yeah, Jesus saves, but there's something else that I've got to do. Paul says, That's not growing, that's not maturity, it's desertion, because the gospel is in grace alone. What Galatians will show us is this, God justifies and forms his people by grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone, creating a church that lives free without drifting back into performance. What we'll see in this passage is two main movements. The first is verses 1-5, the truth from an apostle. And then we'll see in verses 6-9, a call to believe in no other gospel. Let's look at this first section, Truth from an apostle, verses 1-5. Before Paul confronts the counterfeit gospel, he reminds them what the real one is. He starts with three anchors. Who sent Paul? What has Christ done? And who gets the glory? When we start a new Book of the Bible, it's always good to step back and try to look at it from maybe a 10,000-foot view. So we're going to ask ourselves some questions that apply to this whole letter that we'll see here. First, one of the questions that we should ask is, who is the author? Changes a lot. Who's writing this? The nice thing about a letter is it says it right at the beginning. Look with me at verse one. It says this, Paul, an apostle, not from men, nor through man, but through Jesus Christ and God the Father who raised him from the dead. The author is Paul. Paul, who is an apostle. An apostle is someone who is sent by God, who is taught by God. What Paul wants us to see is this is not my authority. This is not second-hand. An apostle is a man commissioned by the risen Jesus, authorized to speak in Christ's message with Christ's authority. Apostles are the only people who are allowed to write scripture. So Paul isn't giving us his take on what's happening in these churches. He's not giving his opinion on what's happening. This is Christ's truth being claimed through the apostle Paul. If the message is from heaven, then we don't get to edit it. Paul is saying this message did not come from human, from human opinion, and so it cannot be edited by human opinion. No committee, no crowd, no culture wrote this, revised this, or approved this. We don't get to inject our feelings into our faith. We don't get to inject how we feel about Christ as if it's truth. We have to come back to the source itself. That's what we'll talk about next week a lot. But let's move into another question. What book is this? This is a book of the Bible. What book is this? We said it earlier. It's a letter. A letter has some different unique parts to it. And one of those unique parts is the introduction to it. This follows a typical start to a Greek letter. There is an author, who it's from, and then there's some qualifications, that he's an apostle, and then it says who it's to. I think it's good just to pause there and realize that there is a recipient to this letter. There was an original audience for this letter. As we read this, as we interpret this, as we understand this, how we understand this has to be the same way that Galatian churches understood this. It can't mean something else to us today that it couldn't have meant to them. These are churches in Galatia, in this region of the Middle East, in modern day Turkey or back then in Asia Minor. This is actually a unique letter because it's not to one particular church. Like Ephesians was to the church in emphasis, one church, or to the Corinthians, there was a church in Corinthians. This is to the churches or a collection of churches in this region. Galatia is a Roman providence, not a city. What else makes this a letter is that there is a purpose to it. There is an intended response that is invoked by this passage. Anytime you write a letter, I know that we don't really write letters anymore. So anytime you write an email or a text, there's a purpose to it. There's something that you're trying to communicate. There is an intent on what you're trying to get across. And that's what we'll see in this passage. The intent is actually written right in the greeting. That's what we'll see in verses 3 through 5. Verses 3 through 5 show us the gospel in just a short couple of verses. So let's look at verse 3 and 4 right now. Grace to you in peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ, who gave himself our sins to deliver us from the present evil age according to the will of our God and Father. Notice how Paul starts here. He starts with grace, peace. He doesn't start with a list. He doesn't start by, Here's a list of things you need to do to try harder to be better. Not works, but grace. It begins with an announcement that the center of Christianity is not what you do for God, But what Jesus has done for you. That Jesus did not come to improve you. This is not a moral betterment program. He came to rescue you. Grace is not God helping good people. Grace is God rescuing helpless people. Paul doesn't say that Jesus came here to give you 10 tips on how to live a better life. Jesus came to bring you back to life. He came to resuscitate you, to bring you out of cold death, not by removing you from the world, but by breaking the world's claim on you. Paul wants the Galatian churches to understand from the start that this is about not your works, but the work of Christ Jesus, and that there is no other way. That we have sin, we have an issue, we needed to be rescued. But Paul clearly tells us that Christ is the one who gave himself up for us to deliver us from that sin. We cannot continue in this series until we understand that. Paul cannot continue in this letter until the Galatian churches understand what the gospel is because he's going to spend a great deal of time, the rest of this book, confronting false beliefs. Paul ends this greeting with a focus on the glory of God. Look at verse 5 with me. To whom be glory forever and ever. Amen. Legalism always looks religious, but it steals God's glory. Because performance If performance is the difference maker, if our effort is really what brings us over the edge to be able to be saved, then we get some of the glory. Paul starts with worship because the gospel ends with worshiping Jesus because he is alone the one who did it all. This letter is written in an important time. This is actually the first New Testament book in the Bible. This is the first writing in the New Testament. The church is in a really early stage. It's really young, and it's being assailed by Satan with counterfeit versions of the gospel. If this is the gospel that Jesus gave himself and that God gets the glory, then you can see in this next section why Paul gets so shocked, he gets so angry, because the moment we add anything to the gospel, it's not an upgrade to Christianity. It's an attempt to try to replace it. That's what we see in this next section. Believe no other gospel, verses 6-9. In every other letter that Paul writes, it starts off with Thanksgiving. I I thank God, my God and Father, for you. I remember you always in my prayers. I'm so thankful for the way that you've done this or that. But not this letter. This letter starts off a little different. It's an alarm because it's an emergency. Look at verse 6 with me. I am astonished that you are so quickly deserting him who called you into 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. Paul is saying, Galatian church, you've abandoned the gospel, the one and only gospel. There isn't another one. It happened so quickly that I love the word that Paul used here. I'm astonished. It's almost surprising. It's like when your kids are naughty and they do something so naughty that's almost like beyond their capabilities that you're almost impressed how naughty they were rather than being mad. I don't know if you've ever been there as a parent, but I have. Paul is almost saying, I'm astonished at how fast you went from believing the gospel to something else. It's almost impressive. Not only are they deserting the gospel, but Paul says they are deserting the one who called them into grace. To change the gospel is not a preference issue. It's not what we want. It is a relationship issue. You don't just leave doctrine when you abandon the gospel, you leave a person. To To tweak the gospel is to walk away from the one who rescued you. That word called in this verse, or to call, is a pretty broad word. It really could be translated just really the way that we talk about calling people, to call to someone, the way that you call to your kids. It's time for dinner, or it's time to leave, or it's time to do some chores, and your kids will say, I'm coming. They never They never are. And then you say, Okay, for real now, come on downstairs. And they say, I'm on my way, but they're not on their way. And eventually, what has to happen, you have to go up to your kids and say, Come on, it's time to go. I mean, come on, wear your socks. That's a big deal in our house at I don't know about you guys, but socks seem to just disappear. But it's different. The call that we see in this passage is different than the call that we use in our household. When God calls It's not passive like when we do it. It is active. When God calls, creation responds. When God said, Let there be light, he didn't have to try to convince the light to shine. It happened. When Jesus calmed the storm, he didn't have to say, Wind, would you mind calming down? Waves, could you just even out a little bit? No, it immediately calmed. There is power in the call we see from Christ, the power that the Galatian churches have abandoned. The Galatian churches have been plagued with false teaching. The main issue in the Galatian churches was legalism or adding to scripture, taking God's word and saying, Let's put more on top of it. And on the surface, it seems like a neat idea. God's word is so important. What God commands is so good. Let's not even get close to But what we're saying is God's word isn't sufficient. I need to put more on top of it. When God said, Thou shalt not commit murder, what he meant was that we shouldn't have any weapons. I know that wouldn't go over in this church at all, but I like guns, so I thought that was good, but whatever. The message that these false teachers are proclaiming is Jesus is important, but really, he's not enough. You You need to be able to do something to really make God happy. Believe in Jesus, yes, absolutely. But then you need to do these other things. You need to take on these Jewish identity markers, primarily circumcision, but also these food laws and the calendar laws and other things that go along with it. In other words, grace gets you in, but really it's your obedience. It's the law that keeps you there. They weren't just rejecting Jesus. These false teachers were redefining him, saying, Yeah, he's important, but he's really not sufficient for you. I think we hear this and we say, This sounds obviously wrong. Come on, Galatian church, what were you thinking? But why this is dangerous is that it sneaks up on us. It feels like seriousness. It feels like Holiness. It feels like maturity. But it's not. It's not growth. It's subtraction. It takes away from the gospel. Because every time we say Jesus plus something, Jesus is actually not enough. This was a threat to the church. This has remained a threat to the church, adding something to Jesus. But the truth is that this came from within the church. This wasn't outside persecution coming in. This was people within the church saying that. And I promise you that if were there hearing this for the first time, it wouldn't have seemed obvious to you. It wouldn't have been alarming. It wouldn't have been like, you wouldn't have stood up and said, No, that's false teaching. You can't say that. It would have been absolutely incredibly subtle because the danger of false teaching, and in this case, heresy or a belief that puts you outside of saving faith. The danger of false teaching is that is never a blatant denial of the Trinity or or God, or the Deity of Christ, or the Virgin birth, any of those core tenets. It is much more subtle than that. False doctrine would have looked like obedience. People would have said, We're just protecting Holiness. We're really just trying to make sure that people really are committed that they're really belonging to what they're covenanting to belong to. I'm sure that there would have been those who would have said, We're just trying to follow what we've always believe, what we've always said That is true. Martin Luther says this about these false teachers. The false teacher pettles his deadly poison as the doctrine of grace, the word of God, and the gospel of Christ. That's the strategy. Dress up slavery, which is really what it is, as maturity. False Gospels don't look like rebellion. They feel like taking your obedience to another level. They feel like leveling up in Christianity. Satan disguises as false teaching as something that looks godly. That's the danger of this, is that this is a false gospel. The gospel means good news. It looks on the surface like it's good news. But this good news isn't outright denied. It's distorted. You cannot add Christian language to an alternative message and repackage it as good news as the gospel. If this happened today, if this heresy wouldn't have popped up when it did in church history and it made it all the way to 2026, I guarantee you that we would be hearing people in this saying, This is a secondary matter. We shouldn't divide on this. We shouldn't make this a big deal. And yet Paul is emphatic that this is a big deal. He calls it desertion. It's a big deal because it undermined the good news of the gospel. It goes back to our salvation. That's the reason that this is so important. It's not because we're just redefining Jesus in a different way. We need to make sure we're theologically correct. No. If we believe this false gospel, our salvation is not based in what Christ has done. It is back to Morganism. It is Islam. It is based on what you do, not what has been done for you. It's a belief that says, believe in Jesus. But really, you got to do these other things. Let's keep more rules on top of the finished work of Christ. It makes Christ a liar when he hung on the cross and said, It is finished. If we add into our faith Jesus plus, what we're saying is, he didn't really mean that. Adding rules to grace nullifies grace. Grace is given as a gift. It's fundamentally, it's not earned. Paul would have rather divided the church than allow it to be damned. And that's what we see in this next section, in this next passage of scripture here in verses 8 and 9. But even if we or an angel from heaven should preach to you a gospel contrary to the one we preach to you, let him be accursed. As we have said before, I say now, or so now I say again, if anyone is preaching to you a gospel, contrary to the one you received, let him be accursed. This is strong language. That word accursed means to be cursed. It means to be placed under God's judgment, not in a surface-level way, not like, Oh, I'm going through a trial. No, this means to be damned. It means to be cut off. It means anathema. Paul wants to be clear here that you must believe this gospel so clearly that I could come and visit you again. And if I am preaching something different, you would tell me to get out of town, to go away, and that you are actually cut off from Christ. That you are anathema, that you are cursed. Paul says not just him, but he says an angel. He doesn't even appeal to the other apostels. He doesn't even mention James or John. He says, going right to an angel. If an angel, seemingly a revelation from heaven, were to come to you and preach something different, usher them out of your sight. No messenger outranks the message itself. This is serious. Paul is cursing people here. He's cursing those who are pointing people, directing people away from the curse remover. Paul has a right to be mad, not because he's trying to protect his reputation, because there are souls on the line. The people who are doing this are the people inside the church. Paul has a right to be furious at these people. People inside the church, in the name of Jesus, are pointing people away from the grace, the freedom that comes from Christ alone. The gospel is so important that it cannot be added to. We are saying that it has to be Christ alone. We are saved by Christ who gave himself for our sins to deliver us from the present evil age, according to the will of our God and Father. No rule, no authority, no tradition, no leader, no Pope, nothing. No one can add to the gospel. Nothing is allowed to. Nothing is able to make the gospel better than it actually is, than it already is. We were saved. So here's the diagnostic for you. To feel at peace. It needs something besides Christ to feel at peace. You've been handed a counterfeit. You've been handed counterfeit gospel. And that leads us to our main idea. This is life with God comes by faith in Christ, not by the law. Epistle, the main idea, this is the melodic line that will weave itself through this entire by the law. Entire letter. Life with God comes by faith in Christ, not by how we actually read. The gospel is received, not achieved. It's a moment that we have. It's not by some feelings, some spiritual moment that we have. It is because we stop trying to save ourself and being our own savior. The gospel doesn't just comfort you. It replaces what you're trusting in. If Christ is enough for your standing before God, then you can finally stop adding to it, proving yourself and trying to earn it. John Stott has this quote that says, The gospel is not good advice. It is good news. That good news does not come with a list of upgrades. You You don't improve it. You receive it. There's a story that I like to tell about the idea of a farmer and a carpenter who are good friends, two friends. The farmer understands this alone is the faith through, or being justified by faith that Christ elites. It feels like he has to earn a way to be saved. And yet his friend, the Carpenter, really struggles with the Carpenter to build them. So one day, the farmer asks his friend, the Carpenter, to build him a for one of his fences. The thing about a fence or a gate is that it has to be perfect. It cannot be too long, otherwise it'll hit the post and it won't latch. If it's too short, it won't hit the latch at all. So the Carpenter finishes it and the farmer goes out to inspect it with him and it's perfect. It works great. And as he's thanking the Carpenter for building this gate, he goes over to one of the hinges and starts unscrewing it and starting to add a four by four to it. The Carpenter says, No, No, you can't do that. That will ruin it. You can't add anything to it. If you add to add to it, it'll actually break it. The farmer says, Exactly. Actually anything to it actually takes away from it. To add anything to the gospel on what takes away from it. Justification is the main hinge. Another gospel is not in which religion turns. This is what John Calvin says. Another gospel is not a small tweak. It doesn't give it an upgrade. It breaks the hinge. So the question isn't whether you believe in Jesus. The false teachers here believe in Jesus. They said, Yes, absolutely believe in Jesus. We're not saying don't believe in Jesus. The question is, Whether Jesus is the whole reason you believe you're accepted by God. And that leads us into our points of application. First point of application is this. Sorry, it's hard to read. We'll fix the slides for next week. The The first point of application is this. We'll always know the gospel by spotting Jesus plus. A counterfeit gospel, for your faith, sound like this. Jesus started it. He's important. He's the most crucial thing. But here's how you finish it. Here's the list of to-dos. If your answer is anything yourself, what do I treat as proof that God accepts me? If your answer is anything but Christ, then you've started to add to it. And maybe your plus might be Jesus plus being a good parent, being morally consistent, being theologically correct, being productive, being respected. Sometimes the plus isn't rules. It's just vibes. It's Jesus plus my sincerity. It's Jesus plus my spiritual intensity, plus my prayer life, plus my church involvement, plus my devotional life. Legalism isn't always rules. It's any attempt to make Christ insufficient. Too many Christians are pulled away by false doctrine, by false teachers, by false Gospels. Employees who have family members, coworkers, friends, who are children, parents, even yourselves, being exposed to different Gospels every single day, being exposed to different Gospels which are distorted, which in actuality are Gospels of no worth at all. Every day, Satan will try to pull us away from something ultimate to something that seems good, something that seems like obedience, something that seems like another level in our Christian faith. He pulls us from the pre-eminence of Christ, from the ultimate salvation, which is found in Christ alone, to something good. And that's the difficulty that we have to watch out for. We have to know the gospel and be pulled away from it into something that says, Here's Jesus, Jesus plus my slavery on top of it. If your gospel is circumstances, performance, then is that leads us into our next point, then even in a dark age, it won't own you. That leads us into our next point of application. It says this, The world not scare us, and then in parentheses, or as much as it does. We are rescued from the evil or the present evil age. That's what Paul says. It doesn't say that we will be sucked up, beamed up into another reality. It says that it won't have its hold on you. It won't have rule over you. There's this lie that we believe believe as humans, and it's as old as humans have been around. It's this lie that we believe that the world is just getting worse and worse and worse, and that we have to solely, we have to be the ones who stop it. I feel this. We talk about things in culture. We talk about the things that we see, and we go, Man, it's never been this bad. We forget that at one point in Genesis, that one-third of the population were murders. It's never been that bad. But We think it's bad. And we do. We see the world doing evil things. I don't want to minimize that. There are things in this world that are evil. There are public figures acting in ways that they shouldn't. Wars starting. Everything that's happened in Minneapolis in the last couple of weeks. There is brokenness all around us. I don't want to deny that. But what the gospel gives us is the ability to stop living like the headlines are sovereign. Stop acting like cultural darkness means that somehow Christ is losing. The world is still broken, yes, but it's not ultimate. It doesn't mean that we need to isolate ourselves and withdraw from everything. We still actively need to be a part of making God's kingdom come, his will be done on Earth as it is in heaven. What it means is that terrible things can happen in this world, and we can know that we've already been redeemed, we've already been rescued from it, that we've already been delivered from it. What the gospel shows us is that Jesus, he took the curse that Paul pronounces so that way we could receive the grace Paul announces. The warning in Galatians is real because the gospel is real, because the cross was real. Jesus could have been the one on the cross, even in the garden of Gethsenevi, to turn He could have been the one who deserted us. Maybe there's an argument that said that he should have, but he doesn't. He remained on the cross. Jesus became forsaken. He he became the one who was deserted. Jesus took everything that we should have received, the desertion from the Father, and took it in our place. He became forsaken. So that way we could remain. So as we leave, don't add to the gospel. Don't try to improve it. Remain in it. The gospel is not something we graduate from. Life with God comes by faith in Christ, not by the law. Let's stand and pray together as we prepare our hearts to respond in worship. Let's stand and pray. Father God, we praise you for who you are, that you are a God worth worshiping, that we can rest knowing that our salvation is secure because we don't hold ourselves to you, that you hold ourselves to you. You hold us to yourself. God, that life with you, freedom in you cannot come from our own worship, our own righteousness, our own devotion, but it comes by faith in you. God, help us to find that freedom from the law and a freedom that we can find only in you. It's in your name we pray. Amen. Facebook X (Twitter) WhatsApp LinkedIn Pinterest Copy link

Bookkeeper Marjon Dodde Marjon serves as the bookkeeper of Prosper Christian Reformed Church, working closely with the deacons and finance committee to steward the church’s financial resources with care and integrity. She has been a member of Prosper CRC for over four decades and has been involved in various ministries throughout that time. Marjon previously served as the church’s Office Administrator for many years and continues in her role as bookkeeper following her retirement from that position in June. Marjon is married to her husband, Carl, and together they have four daughters and six grandchildren. Their family has been deeply rooted in the life of Prosper CRC for generations. Contact the Office Admin

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