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Heirs of the Promise Prosper Christian Reformed Church Heirs of the Promise Christ Alone Mitchell Leach Sunday, February 22, 2026 Audio Heirs of the Promise Mitchell Leach 00:00 / 01:04 Sermon Transcript Introduction In 100 years, when we look back and look at what shaped our culture, what shaped our society, historians will look back and see one of the most powerful forces wasn't movies or music or books or TV shows, but it'll be advertising. Advertising has been one of the most formative things in our culture. It's shaped almost every facet of our society. It's totally remade and reformatted how we do social media, how we do the radio. All types of things are formatted by advertising because ads Ads don't just change what we buy or what we do. Ads aren't selling us simply products. They're selling us a new identity, a new person to become. A famous example of this is in 1920, Listerine ran a famous ad in newspapers around bad breath. Up until this point, most advertising, especially around things like Listerine, were about the medical benefits of it, the hygiene that you could get from Listerine. But this ad campaign was about the social implications that you get from using The stream. The message was basically this, you might be the person that people are avoiding. You might be the person that nobody chooses. You might not even know why, but it's your bad breath. I know in 1920, they were ruthless. They weren't just selling antiseptic, right? They were selling, don't be rejected. In the 1950s, the ads changed because we had televisions in almost every home. This was something that changed for us. We went from imagining a new life to being able to see it. And in the 1990s, that changed into not just identity branding or identity marketing. It went into lifestyle, right? Don't drink Pepsi because it's tasty, it's good, and you like it. Look at all these people who drink Pepsi. They're successful. They're cool. Don't you want to be like these people? It's why we have celebrities who endorse products, right? If my favorite athlete eats whatever cereal or some cereal, well, if he likes it, then I want to be like him, and therefore I'll buy what he is promoting. When you notice this, when you see this, you'll see it everywhere. The message isn't buy this, it's become this. It's not, here's what this does for you. Here are the features from it. Here's who you'll be after you buy it. The deeper effect on this is that it trains us to look at ourselves, whether we're in or out, mostly based on what we buy. But there is a validation system there, a sense of, am I okay? Am I in? Do I matter? That leads us to the big question beneath all of this. Big Question What defines you? What defines you? What are the things that set you apart? The things that make you, you? What is it about you that tells people who you truly are? Is it that you're affiliated with a political movement, whether you're progressive? Are you trying to be on the right side of history? Well, the drawback in that is that progressives today, or progressives 10 years ago, what they believed progressives today would call bigoted, and it's totally antiquated. Well, maybe you want to be conservative. You want to hold to good values. Well, Conservatives have moved farther left in the last 10 years than Liberals have. Conservatives are not further left today, but in terms of where they started and where they ended, Conservatives have moved the most in that time frame. Maybe your identity statement is you're self made. You've made it here by yourself. You're your own boss. The danger in believing that is there are circumstances outside of your control that can change that in the blink of an eye. We are not self made. There's no part of us that if we're honest with ourselves, we realize that, yeah, we might be hard workers, but there's been a lot of luck. There's been a lot of circumstances that have made us that way. Maybe our identity statement is that we're attractive. We want to be appealing to people. The truth is our looks will fade. We will get older. Things change on us. Maybe your identity statement is that you're a hard worker. But the truth is everyone needs rest. So either we'll lie about how much we work or we'll deny ourselves the rest that we need. And maybe you're one of those people that think that you're above all of this and you're like, you know what? I really don't care what people think. That might mean that you're the biggest liar of them all in this group. But the truth is, if you really get to that point where you don't care what people believe, you've done something really harmful to your own soul. To cut yourself out of community, to feel that loss of relationship is really a sad thing. But whatever it is, whatever it is we try to define ourselves with, that thing insists on us continuing to To prove ourselves by it. We have to keep earning the right for that thing to define us. And so our identity becomes a treadmill. No longer is it good enough just to be self made or your own boss. You have to earn more, conquer more. There is no end goal in your... If attractiveness is what you're going for. There's no end goal. You won't be able to get enough Botox, enough whatever in order to satisfy that. There are many things that we try to use to define ourselves, but I want to ask you this question, what is it about you that you say to yourself? Or what is it about you that you say to others? When you meet someone new, what do you hope people will ask you about yourself? What is it about you that you wish you could just share with them to show them that you are a valuable person? Or in other words, what defines you? Fortunately, the Bible has answers for us. So keep your Bibles open to Galatians 3. Paul is going to ask us some questions in here. He's going to dig into some things. Really, what came first? Law or rules? Law or promise, really. What really defines God's people? The answer is that promise comes first. Christ fulfills the law, and faith receives it, and that reality creates a whole new identity. We're We're going to see two major movements in this section. Outline Before the Rules: The Promise (3:15–22) After the Rules: The Heirs (3:23-29) Paul is doing something surgical here to our heart, to every heart in the room. If we're saved by promise, why the law? Underneath that is an identity question. If we're saved by faith, if we're saved this way, what does it mean about who we belong to? How do people become children of God? Paul is going to get these two things, show us that promise is came first and can't be rewritten and that the law is temporary until Christ. A sentence that summarizes this passage, the content of what's going on in this passage would be this, God's saving promise to Abraham is fulfilled in Christ and received by faith, rendering the law temporary and establishing a new unified identity for all who believe in Christ Jesus. Before the Rules: The Promise (3:15–22) Paul starts with a human example here in verse 15, because everyone understands contracts to some extent. We understand that once they're signed, once the ink has dried, you don't go back and change them. Once they've been agreed upon, you can't add new things that nullify it. And that's what he's saying in verse 15. To give a human example, brothers, even with a manmade covenant, no one annulls or adds to it once it's been ratified. Paul understands that our heart loves adding to things. We love the fine print. This idea of Jesus being our savior is great and wonderful unless we want to rank ourselves against each other, which is the desire of all of our hearts. If we're saved by grace, if we're saved by the full work of Christ, well, I can't say that I'm better than so and so or that so and so is worse than me or maybe I see so and so, and they're doing so good. And if I could just try to be like them. If we're all saved by Christ, by grace, we're on the same level. If this is true of our human contracts that we can't go back and change them, how much more true is it with God? Once the terms are set, we don't get to add to the fine print later. We don't get to say, Okay, yeah, it's saved by Jesus, but it's also performance. God gave Israel the law. He did. And that was confusing for the Galatian churches, but Paul wants to make it clear. The promise to Abraham, the promise of salvation came first. The law came after. 430 years later, that's what he says, meaning the law is not the foundation, but the promise is. He made the promise to Abraham, and then he gave a law to Moses on Mount Sinai. And this is how God works. This is what Paul is trying to tease out. Anytime salvation happens, it's salvation first, it's saving work first, and then a A requirement of obedience. Look at this. Even in these two covenants, there's a promise, there's salvation, and then there's obey. Look at even in the Ten Commandments, the first line of the Ten Commandments is this. I'm the Lord your God who brought you out of the land of Egypt. It doesn't start with, Here's the first commandment. It is, I'm the God who saved you. Now, obey. Almost every book in the New Testament starts out that way. Here's the first half is how you're saved, and the second half is about how we're supposed to live. So what is this promise that Paul is talking about? Let's look at verse 16. Now, the promise is, We're made to Abraham and to his offspring. It does not say, and to offsprings, referring to many, but referring to one, and your offspring, who is Christ. Paul is not trying to play a word game with us here. He's trying to make a point about the gospel. He's trying to say that the promise is not ultimately It's certainly about ethnicity. It's not about the offsprings, the people who share the same DNA with Abraham. It is about who comes from Abraham, the Christ, the promise. It's about Jesus, the promise has a center. The promise is a person. It's not a group of people. Jesus is the offspring that everyone was waiting for. He was the one who is going to crush the head of the serpent. He's the one who's going to fulfill every promise. That's what 2 Corinthians 1:20 says, For all the promises of God find their yes in him, in Christ. That is why it is through him we utter our Amen to God for his glory. God wants us to see. He wants the early church to see that it's not about ethnic boundaries. It's not about the people group. It's about Christ. That is the offspring that matter who come from Abraham. It doesn't matter who the literal people who descend from Abraham were. It matters that Jesus came from this line. The family of God is not defined by a bloodline, not defined by DNA, but they are defined by, are you a part of Abraham's Christ. So then what is the purpose of the law? What should we do with this? Well, it's a great question because Paul asks it next in Galatians 3:19, why Why then the law? Because Paul is anticipating that we would wrestle with this because this is the human heart. Anytime we are introduced to these two ideas of either justification through works or through faith, we tend to screw it up one way or the other. When we receive the law, when we receive rules, we naturally want to be people who say, well, I'm going to be justified by these rules. I'm going to make more rules to add on top of it so that way I define who is a good person, who is a bad person. I can make sure that I'm one of the good people. If we're defined and if we're saved by faith, we ask the question, What in the world are these laws then here for? Is this total anarchy? Do we not need to follow the law at all? Is the law even a good thing? I'm really fortunate that I didn't have to come up with that answer, but Paul does. In Galatians 3:21, he says this, Is the law then contrary to the promises of God? Certainly not. For if the law had been given that could give life, then righteousness would be indeed through the law. Do we need to follow the law? Is the law a good thing? Yes. And yes, the reality is you cannot love God and hate his law. I feel like as Protestant Christians, we do such a bad job of embodying that and talking about that, that God's law is a good thing. We As protestants, we've nailed justification by faith alone. We know that. But we really struggle what to do with the law. Should we love it? Should it be a good thing? It absolutely should be. I mean, Psalm 1 says, blessed is the man who delights in the law of God, who meditates on it day and night. The law is something that we should write on our heart that we should love. The law is not our foundation, but it is the fruit of our salvation. It works like this, promise first, salvation first, and obedience out of love coming from that. The law is a good thing. It's a great thing. It has many purposes. I'm going to mention three right now. The law allows us to keep us from evil. When we get things screwed up in our hearts, when things go wonky with our desires, the law is a great safeguard for us to go, You know I feel this in my heart. I want to do this in my heart. And yet I know God's law says something different. It restrains evil in us and in the world. It acts as a mirror. It shows us that we can't obey every Everything that the law commands and that we need a savior. And thirdly, I think we don't talk about this hardly at all. The law shows us who God is. If you look at the Ten Commandments, each and every one of those Ten Commandments is an identity statement about who God is. When God says, Do not commit adultery, what he's saying is, I am a faithful God. When he says, Do not murder, God is saying, I am the life. I am the life giver. Each and every one of those statements, we could go back and look that God is telling us something about who he is. God's rules can do many things, but one of the things that they cannot do is create life in a sinner. The law and faith, I think sometimes we think of as two ends of a spectrum, but they aren't. They're not opposed to each other. They're not two things that you could be on one side or the other of. The law and faith are both good, are both necessary, but they need to be in the right order. Galatians 3:22 says this, But the scriptures imprisoned everything under sin so that the promise by faith in Jesus might be given to those who believe. Paul gives us this picture of the law of a jail cell. The idea that Paul is setting out there is that this is supposed to imprison us. The law put us in a spot where we couldn't pick the lock, we couldn't get out, and it showed us that we only have one way for salvation, and that's by the promised faith in Jesus Christ. Every passage of scripture in the Old Testament leading up into this point was showing us, even with our own effort, that it only showed a deeper need for a savior. So the law was given to see our sin, and the law is not rival to the promise. It's a servant of the us. It hems us in until Christ comes and brings it out. And that's what we're going to see in this next section, After the Rules: The Heirs (3:23-29) Paul's picture is movement. It's moving from being a captive under the law into being guarded and then into being adopted. The law did not save God's people. The law held them until Christ came. The law is temporary. The law was not is temporary. The law was temporary custody, and that it exposed our sin until God's people were able to see Christ. Then law became the guardian. Galatians 3:24 says this, So then the law was our guardian until Christ came in order that we might be justified by faith. That word guardian, it's a hard word for us to understand. We don't have a concept for what this word was in first century Judaism and first century Israel in that area. What would happen is wealthy people or people who could afford it would hire a slave to instruct and to essentially, in some ways, parent their children. This master, this tutor, this guardian was not a babysitter. It was someone who would discipline the children. It supervised their behavior, restrict their freedom, transport them, teach them. That's what Paul is saying happened with the law. It taught us. It restricted them. It restricted us. It disciplined them. It was their guardian, but it was never their father. It was never their inheritance. Galatians 3:25 goes on to say this, But now that faith has come, we are no longer under a guardian, for in Christ Jesus, you are all sons of God through faith. Meaning that we don't live under the supervision of a guardian anymore. We live in sonship. That we are no longer held captive by some tyrannical master. The law, as a guardian, can only say you're wrong, you're screwing up, you're not there yet, you're guilty, you need to do more, you need to try harder. But when Christ comes. It's that Christ came to say, You're right, you're enough, you belong, and you're right because I was good for you. We are not punished by our tutor, our guardian anymore. Christ was punished for us on the cross. Because of that, we can be welcomed into this new family. So who can come And that's the question that Paul goes to. Remember the tension so far in this book. Paul's writing this book. Paul's explaining this because there's this rift. The Galatian church believed that there were these two sections, these two kinds of Christians. There were those who were fully Jewish, who really followed all the rules, who became circumcised, who did all the right things in order to become Jewish. And then there were these lower Christians, these Gentiles who didn't really fully obey everything. His question is this, who can come in? And his answer is anyone. Let's look at Galatians 3:28. This is the crescendo of this movement in in this book. There's neither Jew nor Greek. There's neither slave nor free. There is no male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus. Paul's building this point up. Guys, you have separated yourself. You have made distinctions among you. You've tried to sit with other people. You've tried to exclude people from when you eat lunch together. Guys are acting like middle schoolers at lunchtime. When Paul brings up this list of people in verse 28, what he's saying is, and this would have been clear and obvious to anyone reading this book in the first century who is Jewish, these were the gates in the temple. If you were a Gentile, you could only go so far. There was a gate that they said, No, you can't come in. If you were a slave, you could only go so far. And then there was a gate that said, No, you can't come in. And if you were a woman, there was a gate that said, You can only go so far, you can't come in. These were levels. The temple was the place where God's dwelling place rested. How you accessed God. The beautiful part of what Paul is telling us in Galatians is that there is no distinctions. It does not matter who you are, what person you are, where you come from, what background you are, what your socioeconomic status is. We all have the same access to God by faith. It is not what we do. Ephesians says this, Paul also wrote the Book of Ephesians. He says this, For he himself, Jesus, is our peace who has made us both one and has broken down in his flesh the dividing wall of hostility. This is a direct reference to these walls that were built in the temple to say, You can't come in. In his flesh, he broke down these dividing walls. Jesus has torn them down. Paul is calling this church out to say, You cannot build them back up. In Christ, you belong. You can have full access to God, no matter who you are. So who is part of God's family? Who is part of God's covenant people? It's anyone who hears and anyone who believes. Because of that, you are an heir. Paul is saying you wanted to restrict access to people that they could be truly part of God's chosen people. He's saying, you don't even understand what it means. You don't understand. If you're trying to restrict people based on whether they were a Jew or not, you don't really actually understand what it meant to be a Jew. These people, This promise was not based on their obedience to the law by doing certain things. Their acceptance into God's covenant people was always by faith. The real offspring has always been those who believe, and it's still true today. So the gospel isn't just there to forgive you. It absolutely does that, but it's there to adopt you. It doesn't just get you out of trouble. It brings you into a new family. Main Idea Live as an heir of God's promise in Christ Live as an heir of God's promise in Christ. This means that you are no longer defined by a record. You are defined by a promise. It's not by what you achieve. You don't have to audition. You belong because of what Christ has done for you. Do you see what this means? It's not just that you belong, but you get an inheritance. You You have the legal right. You have the promise of something to come. By being an heir, you are promised. You are promised access to him. You are promised the wealth from the Father. This is why it says that you are sons of God, that you will get something. It's actually interesting here that it doesn't say sons and daughters, but it says sons. And Paul is using that language on purpose. And I want to clarify something in the language that we use here. Paul is not saying that to be sexist. The Bible isn't antiquated. What Paul was saying is that you become a son. Because in this time, who was it who got the inheritance? It was the son. Paul is actually saying something profoundly progressive for this time. He's saying, Anyone, whether you are a slave or you're free, whether you're a Jew or a Gentile, whether you're a man or woman, you are a son now. You are fully an heir. You have legal right to what the Father has to give you. The wealth that the Father has, you get to be a recipient of, which means that you get God. The wealth, the inheritance, isn't that we just get to be in heaven with God someday. I think too many of us think that that's the goal, as long as I get to heaven. But I think that if that's our only goal, we'll get to heaven and hate the God that we meet there. The whole inheritance is that we get God. Getting to heaven, the peace that we get from our salvation, those are fringe benefits. The whole thing is that we get God. Our great privilege of the gospel, the great privilege of the gospel, is our communion. That's what John Owen says, Communion with God is the great privilege of the gospel. Our Our inheritance is the promise that God is going to fulfill every desire of our heart, every true longing that we have. If you want true safety, God is your mighty fortress. Do you want to feel joy? He is our joy. Do you want to be loved? God is love. Do you need rest? God is our rest, our peace. Do you want to be enough? God declares you righteous. He says, Son or daughter, you are enough. So the question is, are you living like an heir? Or are you living like an orphan? Are you still praying like you have access, or are you still trying to earn an appointment with God. Application Stop living like sonship is an audition. If you're in Christ, you're not on trial. You haven't earned a spot in the family, you have been brought in. You already have been marked with the family name. You are in Christ. You are a Christian. When we audition for Christianity, it sounds like this. If I'm consistent, then God will be close. If I'm clean, then I can belong. If I do enough, then I'll be safe. But Paul's point is the opposite. You are sons through faith. You have put on Christ. You are heirs according to the promise. And so your obedience To God is not an audition. It is a response. You're not working for adoption. You are working from adoption. So here's a mini diagnostic for you this week. When you sin, Do you run to God or do you avoid him until you've cleaned yourself up, until you feel worthy again? That avoidance is orphan thinking. The gospel makes you a son, so stop trying to impress your heavenly Father who loves you. Start being honest with yourself and run to him. Heirs pray with access, not distance. A child does not schedule an appointment to ask for their father's help. Tim Keller has this quote. He says this, The only person who dares to wake up a king at 3: 00 AM for a glass of water is a child. We have that access to the Father. A child comes close. The law keeps us distant. When we try to use the law as a way to gain access to God, it keeps us separated from him. But in Christ, we are no longer under a guardian. We don't have to ask for permission to go to God anymore. In Christ, you have sonship. That's why I love praying. And then starting my prayer was saying, Let's pray to our heavenly Father who loves to hear our prayer. Your Father loves to hear when you go before him. So pray like you belong. When you believe this, your prayers will sound like, Father, I need mercy. I need wisdom. I need strength. Not, God, I'm sorry to bother you. I know that I've been a mess. I know that I've screwed this up. I know I'm not worthy. The truth is, we know that we're not worthy. But that's why it's called a promise. That's why it's called grace. Real practices for yourself this week is when you have an option to pray in a group, pray first, not last. Pray honest, not performatively. And pray in the moment that you're tempted, not afterwards, not after you've already lost. Heirs serve One of the easiest ways to tell whether we are living like an heir or not is how we treat the church. Whether we come as people who are spectators, whether we come as consumers, or whether we come as sons, as a family. A consumer will ask, did I like it? Was the worship good? Did I feel inspired? Did I feel motivated? Did I feel refreshed and rejuvenated like it's a spa? Did it meet my needs? Was it worth my time? But if it's a family, when you meet with a family, you ask things like this, where am I needed? Who can I help? How can I carry the load? If you're an heir and you see yourself, you see this as your family, you don't come here to earn a place. You already belong. So you don't have to need to be served. You don't have to look at church as some value statement. Was this a good return on my investment? Did I get out of it what I put in? No, you are free to serve. Orphan thinking says this, I'll help when it fits my schedule. I'll help when I feel appreciated. I'll help when it benefits me. When you see yourself as a son, when you see yourself as an heir, your thinking transforms to this. I received the promise, everything by the promise. So I can give without keeping score. This is what verse 28 does in a church. There's no VIPs, no spectators, no consumers, no second-class Christians. One body, one family. Family. If we are all one in Christ Jesus, then ministry is not just my job. It is a shared joy that we all participate in. So here's the concrete challenge for you guys. Here's the call for you guys. Pick one place in our church to serve in the next three months. There is a place to serve for every person, for every stage of life. Not because we're trying to prove something. Don't serve because you think it's just the right thing to do. Serve because you're already an heir, and this is a family. Serve where it's unseen. Serve with children in the sound booth or the slides or meals or visiting someone. The goal is not just filling holes. We don't have a crisis. We're not short on volunteers right now. This is good for our soul. This is good for us. So don't ask, do I have to? Heirs ask, how couldn't I do this? Landing As we come to a close, most of us don't like to think about death, not because we're afraid of death, but we're afraid of being alone. We're afraid of being unwanted. That's why we hate the idea of being in isolation. That's why in prison, being in isolation is one of the worst things. This is why inheritance matters, because inheritance means you have a name, you have a home, you have a father. The gospel says that inheritance is not primarily an object, primarily a thing that you can hoard, the thing that you can have. It is a person. You don't just get peace, you get God. Revelation 21 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 they will be his people. ' And God himself will be with them as their God, and he will wipe away every tear from their eye. And death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away. Verse 7 says this, The one who conquers will have his heritage, and I will be his God, and he will be my son. Heritage, sonship, not visitors, but children. That's what Galatians 3 tells you. It tells you how to get, not by performing, not by adding fine print, not by adding more requirements onto what Christ has already accomplished perfectly on the cross, but by faith in Christ. In Christ, Jesus, you are all sons through faith. So there's no second class Christians. There's no inner circle. If you have Christ, then you have the inheritance, and he will wipe away every tear from your eye. Hear this, live as heirs of God's promise in Christ. Prayer Let's stand and pray as we prepare our hearts for worship and to respond in worship. Let's pray to our heavenly Father, who loves to hear our prayer. Father, we love you. We thank you that we do not have to work harder to save ourselves, that there isn't one shred, there isn't one small piece of this that is on us. God, I praise you that we are your children, that you see us as your son. God, help us to live as heirs this week, free from the guilt, free from the temptation to try to prove ourselves, to try to rank ourselves. But help us to live in the freedom that you give us. Help us to believe that we are your sons and daughters who you are well-pleased with. It's in your name we pray. Amen. Facebook X (Twitter) WhatsApp LinkedIn Pinterest Copy link

No Other Gospel Prosper Christian Reformed Church No Other Gospel Christ Alone 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

From This Day Prosper Christian Reformed Church From This Day Consider Your Ways Mitchell Leach Sunday, May 31, 2026 Audio From This Day Mitchell Leach 00:00 / 41:07 Sermon Transcript God's Blessing Comes Not From Our Hands but From His King Haggai 2:10–23 Introduction: Why Is It Easier to Ruin Than Restore? Why is it so much easier to ruin something than to restore it? A sandcastle may take hours to build but only seconds to destroy. A marriage can require years of trust, faithfulness, and commitment, yet one betrayal can undo so much of that work. Even creation itself seems to testify to this reality. Left alone, things tend toward disorder. Relationships drift. Bodies age. Homes become messy. Restoration requires intention. Haggai's final message addresses the same truth—not through physics, but through the human heart. In this passage, we discover: The Problem Beneath Our Work The Grace Beneath God's Blessing The King Beneath Our Hope The Problem Beneath Our Work Haggai 2:10–14 God begins by asking the priests two questions about ceremonial purity. The first question concerns holy meat. If a holy object touches something else indirectly, does holiness transfer? The answer is no. The second question concerns uncleanness. If someone who is ceremonially unclean touches something, does that uncleanness spread? The answer is yes. Sin Spreads More Easily Than Holiness The lesson is striking: Holiness is difficult to transmit, but impurity spreads easily. No one drifts into godliness. No one accidentally becomes holy. Yet every one of us naturally drifts toward self-rule and sin. Destruction is easier than construction. Corruption is easier than restoration. As Cornelius Plantinga writes: "Sin corrupts and then replicates, working its way through the whole system." The Real Problem Wasn't Their Work God then applies the lesson directly to Israel: "So it is with this people and with this nation before me." The problem was not their crops, sacrifices, or labor. The problem was the worshiper. Their hearts were unclean. This is what makes sin so dangerous. It is never isolated. It contaminates every area of life. The Danger of Ordinary Idolatry Haggai never identifies one spectacular sin. Instead, the people's problem was a thousand small priorities out of place. That is how idolatry usually works. Idols rarely appear obviously evil. More often they are good gifts—money, family, success, comfort—that become ultimate things. Israel's issue was not outright rebellion. It was gradual drift. The same danger confronts us today. Cheap Grace and Empty Religion The people's sacrifices continued, but their hearts remained distant from God. Dietrich Bonhoeffer famously warned against "cheap grace": Grace without discipleship. Grace without the cross. Grace without Jesus Christ. Religious activity cannot substitute for genuine repentance. This leaves us with a critical question: If everything they touched was unclean, how could they ever be restored? The Grace Beneath God's Blessing Haggai 2:15–19 God reminds His people of the years of frustration they experienced. Harvests failed. Crops underperformed. Blight, mildew, and hail struck their work. These were not random events. God Himself says: "I struck you." God's Discipline Is an Expression of Love God's discipline was not cruelty. It was mercy. Like a loving father willing to allow temporary pain to save his child from a greater danger, God was pursuing His people through hardship. The tragedy was not the discipline itself. The tragedy was that: "You did not return to me." Don't Mistake Comfort for God's Favor The absence of pain is not always evidence of God's blessing. Sometimes God's deepest love is expressed through His refusal to leave us alone. C.S. Lewis described believers as God's masterpiece. God refuses to abandon His work halfway finished. He loves us too much to leave us as rough drafts. Blessing Before Results Then comes one of the most surprising promises in the book: "From this day on I will bless you." Nothing had changed outwardly. The crops had not yet grown. The temple remained unfinished. The people had no visible evidence of blessing. Yet God promised blessing anyway. The foundation had been laid, and that was enough. God's promise precedes visible results. The King Beneath Our Hope Haggai 2:20–23 The final section turns to Zerubbabel. At first glance, Zerubbabel seems like an unlikely candidate for God's great promises. He was not a king. He was merely a governor serving under Persian rule. Yet God speaks astonishing words to him. The Signet Ring Promise God says: "I will make you like a signet ring." A signet ring symbolized royal authority. This language echoes God's covenant promises to David. Everything about the passage sounds like a royal coronation. Yet Zerubbabel never became king. So what is God doing? A Promise Bigger Than Zerubbabel Zerubbabel was never the destination. He was a signpost. God was preserving the Davidic line despite appearances. The throne looked empty. The kingdom looked dead. The promises looked forgotten. But God had not forgotten a single word. The Greater King When Matthew opens his Gospel, Zerubbabel appears in Jesus' genealogy. The promised King had come. Jesus is the true heir of David. Jesus is the faithful King. Jesus is the One who succeeds where Israel failed. Jesus bears the curse so His people can receive the blessing. The hope of Haggai is not a rebuilt temple. It is not a restored nation. It is not Zerubbabel. The hope of Haggai is Jesus Christ. Application 1. Obedience Often Comes Before Visible Results God promised blessing before the harvest appeared. We often want proof before obedience. God frequently works the opposite way. He calls us to trust Him before we see the outcome. Sometimes all God gives us is a foundation and a promise. The question is whether that is enough. 2. Don't Waste God's Discipline When hardship enters our lives, our first question is often: "How can I make this stop?" A better question is: "What is God teaching me through this?" Not every trial is direct punishment for sin. But Scripture teaches that God often uses suffering to refine us, awaken us, and draw us closer to Himself. When God exposes an idol, repent. When God reveals a misplaced priority, listen. When God loosens your grip on the world, don't cling tighter. The greatest tragedy is not suffering. The greatest tragedy is experiencing God's loving discipline and never turning back to Him. Conclusion Zerubbabel pointed forward to a greater King. Jesus arrived without worldly power, military strength, or political influence. He came as a carpenter from Nazareth. He died on a cross that looked like defeat. Yet that apparent defeat became the greatest victory in history. The cross brought salvation. The grave became the beginning. And today Christ reigns at the right hand of the Father. The people of Haggai's day were waiting for a king. Our King has already come. And because He has come, we know this truth: God's blessing comes not from our hands, but from His King. Facebook X (Twitter) WhatsApp LinkedIn Pinterest Copy link

Boast Only in the Cross Prosper Christian Reformed Church Boast Only in the Cross Christ Alone Mitchell Leach Sunday, March 15, 2026 Audio Boast Only in the Cross Mitchell Leach 00:00 / 34:04 Sermon Transcript To all who are weary and need rest, to all who fail and desire strength, to all who mourn and long for comfort, to all who sin and need a Savior, this church opens wide her doors with a welcome from Christ Jesus, a friend to sinners. Welcome to an online gathering of Prosper Christian Reformed Church. And I can say this now preemptively, man, the roads are terrible out there. Can you believe this weather? We're pre-recording this on Saturday so that way when we needed it, because if you're seeing this, we did, because we canceled church because we— the weather was just so bad. We wanted to include this last sermon in our Galatians series, Christ Alone, that really encompasses the totality of what we've been looking at in this series. And so we wanted to make sure that this was available for you because it goes along with the devotional series that we've been going through, the devotional plan that you've been going through, and we felt like this was a really good way to end this series. There will be some announcements that we'll send out in the email that comes along with this and some songs that you can sing at home that will go along with the service. But this is going to be an abbreviated message, abbreviated video service that will include the scripture reading and then the sermon. So let's jump into that scripture reading now. Scripture Reading Galatians 6:11-18 Hear the word of the Lord. See with what large letters I am writing to you with my own hand. It is those who want to make a good showing in the flesh who would force you to be circumcised, and only in order that they might not be persecuted for the cross of Christ. For even those who are circumcised do not themselves keep the law, but they desire to have you circumcised that they may boast in your flesh. But far be it for me to boast except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by which the world has been crucified to me and I to the world. For neither circumcision counts for anything, nor uncircumcision, but a new creation. And as for all who walk by this rule, peace and mercy be upon them and upon the Israel of God. From now on, let no one cause me trouble, for I bear on my body the marks of Jesus. The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you. Be with your spirit, brothers. Amen. In the past couple decades, baseball teams thought they knew exactly what made a good baseball team, what players made a good baseball team. They were certain of this. Things like batting average, pitching stats like ERA, RBIs, the look of a player, the sound that the bat made when it hit a ball. All of these things were key indicators that led a team to either choose or pass on a player, especially when replacing a player. And then came the Moneyball era. If you've seen the movie Moneyball, you'll know what I'm talking about. This, this idea of replacing players, not as a one-for-one, but replacing them with maybe a couple different players that, that kind of Frankenstein their way into making the replacement that a team lost. This happened with the Oakland Athletics. They were a team that could not afford to compete with the New York Yankees, the team that had tons of money. This team had hardly any. And so they figured out an algorithm, figured out an equation to make players, to make a team out of misfits, out of a team that really didn't seem to— that nobody wanted, players that nobody really wanted. And it worked. They were able to compete at a very high level and it changed the game of baseball. But it exposed something: old metrics were comforting but they were misleading. Things that teams were certain of were exposed. Even though they gave them a sense of control, even though those old metrics or a sense of control for these teams, they didn't actually produce results. They didn't actually produce wins. And once they saw that, they realized that you can be sure of something, but you can still be wrong. And that's not just true for baseball; that's true for us. You can be sure of things in your life and still be wrong. Because we all live based on a metric. We all have things that we try to trust in that tell us that we are okay. And that leads us into our big question for this morning: What are you sure of? What are you sure of? Big Question What are you sure of? We all live on something that we are sure of. Everyone has a righteousness. Everyone has a metric. Everyone has a boast. The question is whether or not you can hold onto those things, those things can hold you, while you suffer, when you suffer. If your certainty is built on performance, then your best day becomes your pride, will produce your pride, and your worst day will produce despair. Our culture offers dozens of different ways to produce these counterfeit certainties. Things like image: if I look put together, then I'm safe. Maybe it's morality. If I'm better than them, then I'm clean. It can be control. If I can plan it, then I can breathe. Maybe it's approval. If they like me, then I can feel secure. Maybe it's a religious marker. If I do the right things, if I obey the right laws, then God must accept me. But the reality is all of these things have the same flaw. They cannot carry suffering, they cannot carry guilt, and they cannot carry death. They never give peace; only more rules, only more things to check off our list, only more bars to jump over. And that's why Paul says false teachers want to show a good showing in the flesh. They want something visible, something measurable, a metric, a ruler, a proof that they can point to. That says, "Now I'm sure." So the question is unavoidable: What are you certain of? What are you sure of? The good news is that Christianity is not guesswork. God speaks to us. So keep your Bibles open to Galatians 6:11-18. We're going to see two major movements in this last sermon on Galatians. First, we're going to see false boasting exposed and then true boasting declared. This is the last all-encompassing kind of review of this sermon series that we've been going through in Galatians where we've been seeing Christ alone. That life in God starts in Christ Jesus, not in works. What we'll see in this passage is that the only legitimate boast for the Christian is the cross of Christ through which the world is crucified, a new creation has come, and peace belongs to those who walk by this gospel rule. Outline False Boasting Exposed: Confidence in the Flesh (Galatians 6:11-13) True Boasting Declared: Confidence in the Cross (Galatians 6:14-18) False Boasting Exposed: Confidence in the Flesh (Galatians 6:11-13) The Apostle Paul starts off by showing what false confidence looks like in real time—religious performance under social pressure. And that's what we see in this first section, this first section, Galatians 6:11-13. I'm titling this False Boasting Exposed. Confidence in the flesh. Let's look at Galatians 6:11. He says this: "See with what large letters I am writing to you with my own hand." Paul has been probably using a scribe to write most of this book and then he ends this last portion by writing it personally with his own hands. If you were to read the original letter from Paul, you would have seen larger letters. Scholars have speculated maybe it was the thorn in his flesh. Maybe it had something to do with his eyesight or maybe it had something to do with his hand-eye coordination. We don't know. But Paul is saying that he's writing this last portion himself. Paul wants the Galatians to feel, to see with their own hand, their own eyes, his handwriting and to know that this isn't a minor dispute. This isn't some secondary or tertiary church, you know, theology issue that we can brush under the rug. This is a gospel crisis and they must respond. It has to do with adding anything to the finished work of Jesus on the cross. And here's why people add to Jesus. Not because they're wicked always. But it's oftentimes because they're scared. And that's what Galatians 6:12 says, "It is those who want to make a good showing in the flesh who would force you to be circumcised and only in order that they might not be persecuted for the cross of Christ." The circumcision party wanted men who weren't Jewish, who weren't born Jewish by birth, to be marked by the old covenant sign. This sign, circumcision, was to hold Israel, to hold God's covenant people until the Savior came. Why would they want this? Maybe it was because they believed that God would not accept them, accept these new Christians, unless they held to everything in the Old Testament. Maybe it was a love for traditions; they loved the Jewish culture. They loved some of these things that were emblematic of the Jewish faith and they felt like they were losing them as new Gentiles came into the faith. But one reason, certainly, and what Paul says is that they were afraid of persecution, specifically Jewish persecution. These Christian Jews who came to saving faith in Christ, were probably influenced by friends and family. These relationships that had been ongoing that these friends, these people in their family, maybe neighbors, having conversations with these new Jewish Christians. I bet you they were called unclean; being associated with Gentiles, outsiders, people that they weren't supposed to eat with, Jewish people weren't supposed to eat with. And I bet that these conversations weren't some thoughtful theological conversation. It wasn't some debate between Christian pastors and Jewish rabbis. I'm certain that this was everyday conversations between everyday type of people. People, Jewish people, not Jewish Christians, but Jewish people who weren't certain. They were already kind of afraid of this new Jesus thing. But now that they hear about these Jewish Christians mixing with these Gentiles who weren't forced to follow all of the Jewish laws, I bet you these people were kicked out of their families or kicked out of these social circles that they were once in. I'll bet you Jewish people would say, "You know, I can't believe that you would do this." Maybe, maybe if you ask them to become Jewish and, you know, celebrate all of the purity laws and become fully Jewish, maybe then you, who are a Jewish Christian, could come back in and be accepted; that it would be okay. Paul isn't trying to slander anyone. But this decision on what to believe should not be based on social pressures. It should not be based on these external things, these relationships that even we have in our life. The flesh does not just want to be good. It wants to prove. It wants to be seen as good. Legalism isn't just trying hard. It is trying to get a verdict without the cross. It is trying to get external validation to see people say, "Yes, you are good." People-pleasing isn't just wearing religious clothing. It is when you make faith a badge. You turn sinners into trophies. And that's what Paul continues on in Galatians 6:13. "For even those who are circumcised do not themselves keep the law, but they desire to have you circumcised that they may boast in your flesh." Boasting in the flesh here means this: it's the equivalent of what happens when Christians celebrate over conversion. When we see a sinner come to saving faith, we rejoice. But these people, these Judaizers, these Jewish Christians, would not celebrate over someone becoming a Christian. They would celebrate when someone would become a Jew. They do this not because they actually want more obedience to the law. The sad part about this is that they fear the persecution. They just want to avoid persecution. And Paul says this because we cannot have confidence in what we bring to the table. We can't— Paul's telling them that they can't say, "God, I know that you've saved me but I'm more faithful than those other guys who don't get circumcised." And maybe we don't struggle with this today; we don't struggle with circumcision today. We've kind of handled that issue. We know what we believe on this today because Paul has given us something. And yet, we struggle with other things like the idea of baptism or being rebaptized. So many people today believe, well, I need to be rebaptized again as an adult because I didn't make the decision as a kid. I've heard this over and over as a pastor. My question to them is, do you think that you had a choice? If you feel like you don't have a choice in baptism, in being baptized, do you feel like you had a choice in being saved? Did God choose you or did you choose God? No, God chose you even in your infancy. Our baptism is a sign and seal of the covenant, just like circumcision was for the Old Testament. And the beautiful part of our covenantal theology, our covenantal baptism as people who baptize infants, is that it doesn't have to be us saying we made this decision. We get to live into this reality that God chose us even while we were sinners. Our confidence cannot be in ourselves, cannot be even in our own decisions, but they must be in Christ Jesus. And Paul doesn't just criticize their boast, he shows you what his is. He puts it on the table as the only safe metric for the thing we can boast in. That's what we see in the second section, true boasting declared, confidence in the cross, Galatians 6:14. True Boasting Declared: Confidence in the Cross (Galatians 6:14-18) As people, we so desperately want credit. We want to feel like we did something, especially when it comes to our faith. We want to feel like we didn't leave Jesus alone on the cross. We want to believe that if we would have been in the crowd, we wouldn't have shouted, "Persecute him," or, "Crucify him." We wouldn't have been, if we were a disciple, we wouldn't have scattered when Jesus was crucified. If we would have been Peter, we would have never denied him. And this comes from pride. But the reality is we are sinful. We don't have hope. We would have exactly done the same things as everyone else. This pride that we have that makes us believe that we would have been different is a faulty one. It leads us to want to add to our salvation. To try to prove to Jesus that we really mean it; that we are truly his. But we owe a debt. The Bible says that we owe a debt. And if you've ever been in debt, you know what that feels like, especially if it's been significant. If you've ever found out that all of a sudden you're in some serious financial hardship, some serious hole financially. The dread that comes from that is overwhelming. It can cause you to lose sleep. It can cause you to become depressed. It can cause a litany of emotions. But there is no greater feeling than discovering that you've missed something; discovering that there is hope or finding out that there might be someone who can rescue you from this financial hard spot. And the same is true with our faith. It is never fun to admit that we are in such a spiritual or financial debt that we can't get out of it ourselves. It's humiliating, in fact. And yet, that feeling is dwarfed when we realize the freedom, the relief that comes from being rescued. Paul says this in Galatians 6:14, he says, "Far be it from me to boast except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ." When the cross becomes your boast, the world's scoreboard dies. You stop needing old trophies. Why would Paul say this? That our only boast is in Christ? Why would he have to say this? Because boasting in the cross in the first century, in the first century world, would have been a crazy thing to do. It would have been so, so weird. The cross was a torture method. It was a way to crucify, to kill criminals. It was shameful and everyone saw it that way. Every other person who had been crucified had been guilty in some right. You look at the people who were on the cross, who would be crucified, they were criminals, thieves, murderers. They were bad guys. Yet, for Paul, this wasn't shameful. It was the only reason for his boast. We cannot boast in anything. As people who are Reformed, who believe that God is sovereign over everything, even our own salvation, we can't boast in anything other than the cross. I won't be able to get to heaven someday and look at fellow Christians and say, "Well, you know, I came to saving faith when I was 15 and you waited until you were 18. Therefore, I chose Jesus a little bit sooner than you did and therefore I get a chance to boast." No, no, no, no, no. That's how people fall. That's how people become corrupt, being overconfident and not watchful. Because God is sovereign over everything. He chose the time, the exact right time for me to follow him. He chose the exact right time for my wife who was 18 to follow him. There will be no boasting for either of us. What is my only boast? Or what is my only comfort? That I with body and soul, both in life and in death, am not my own but belong to my faithful Savior Jesus Christ. My only boast is in Jesus. My only comfort is in Jesus. My only hope is in Jesus. Let this be our prayer, Prosper. Let this be your prayer. Far be it from us to have anything pull us into confidence apart from Jesus. Life with God comes by faith in Christ, not by the law. And that's been our whole theme throughout this series in Galatians. Life with God comes by faith in Christ, not by the law. Far be it from anything to pull us into confidence other than the cross of Christ. Paul continues on in Galatians 6:14. He says, "By which the world has been crucified to me and I to it." Paul is saying, "I have a new allegiance." And that alludes back to Galatians 1:4. It says this, "He who gave himself," Jesus, "who gave himself for our sins to deliver us from the present evil age." That present evil age is the same idea that Paul's talking about that the world has been put to death. There is this age, this era, that is no longer. We are now under the reign and rule of Christ. Paul continues on, "For neither circumcision counts for anything, nor uncircumcision, but a new creation." The cross is the only place that pride and shame die together. The world says, "Prove yourself." The cross says it has been proven for you. The cross does not just forgive you, it frees you from needing credit. New creation means this: you don't need old markers to feel clean. You don't need old metrics to feel sure. Scars, for Christ, are not evidence that God has abandoned you. They are evidence that you belong to Jesus in a world that doesn't. And that new creation does not just change what you believe, it changes what you are willing to bear. It changes what will mark you. The only marker that counts is being sealed by the promised Holy Spirit. In fact, Paul continues in Galatians 6:17, "From now on, let no one cause me trouble, for I bear on my body the marks of Jesus." Paul is saying if you want a physical mark, if you want to mark your body physically, I'll show you one. Look at my scars. I am branded with the sufferings of Jesus. All of Galatians has been leading up to this point, has been leading up to this final paragraph, this final all-encompassing paragraph. Paul has been pleading with the churches that they cannot add anything to the gospel. They cannot require circumcision. They cannot require anything that would replace Jesus. Jesus. All, any of these things are things that people can do. All of these things that people could have pride in and use to rank themselves against other Christians, against other believers. If the way that we are saved is by any work of our own, then we have some reason to boast. I could have done more. I could be enough. For God to save me. You could get into heaven and say, "Yeah, we're all here in heaven, but, you know, I was the one who never missed church in 30 years," or, "I was the one who gave more than anyone else," or, you know, "I really, you know, I accepted Christ before you. You had waited until you're in your 20s, 30s, or whenever you did." No, that is not what we get to boast in. And this is our main idea. Paul says, "Boast only in the cross." That's our main idea. Boast only in the cross. Main Idea Boast only in the cross The gospel is not just how we start as Christians. It is a daily necessity. We are all sinful people, even after accepting Christ, even after being marked by the promise of the Holy Spirit. We need the gospel daily. We never graduate from the gospel. If you get tired of hearing messages or songs about the gospel, about the saving grace that comes from the gospel, then you don't understand the gospel. We are not saved by what we've done. We're saved and held to Christ by the cross. If we are saved by what Christ did for us, on our behalf while we were sinners, then what right do we have to claim that we are better than it or better or worse than any other Christian? How can I make rules for entrance into the kingdom if someone else has paid the price for me to get in? I can't. I get in. I get into the kingdom. I get in because he said so. He's the one who took my place. The cross is the only hope for every and any sinner. Application Stop letting the fear of people edit the gospel — Galatians 6:12 So what does boasting in the cross look like for us tomorrow? It looks like refusing people pleasing and it looks like reinterpreting our suffering. So let's look at our first point of application; it's this: Stop letting the fear of people edit the gospel. Just like in Galatians 6:12, Paul's saying that these Judaizers, they don't want you to get circumcised because they want you to be more obedient. They don't follow the law themselves. They want it because they don't want Jewish people to persecute them. They want to be able to be in relationship with their friends and families and neighbors who look down at them. When you feel the pressure to fit in, with your friends, with your coworkers, with your friends or your families. Ask yourself, "Am I avoiding offense of the cross to keep my approval?" This is the most dangerous way heresy creeps into our life. It's not through false teaching, mostly. It's through those everyday conversations we have with people that we don't really want to offend them. And maybe we know that what they're saying might not be biblical but it's easy for us to go along with them. We like the people that we're talking to. We want to stay in those same kind of relationships and so we subtly change what we believe in order to fit in. This is a dangerous, dangerous thing for us. And so the challenge for you is this: When you feel yourself going against what Scripture says? Well, stand up for the word. Stand up for what Christ did. Let your boast only be in the cross, not in your relationships with others. Jesus says that he comes not to bring peace but with a sword. He will divide us against the people we love because the world will naturally want to fight against truth. And we need to be people who believe in the Word. I've been in many conversations like this where people will say, "Well, you know, Paul said this and Jesus said this and they seem like they contradict. They seem like, you know, they don't get along. So we got to go with what Jesus says. We got to be red-letter Christians." And there hasn't been a bigger or maybe more subtle undermining belief system in the church. We are not red-letter Christians. Every word in God's Word, in Scripture, is spoken, is breathed out by God. The words of Paul are just as authoritative as the words of Christ. We have to be people who come back to his word and believe even if it offends the people around us. Reinterpret your suffering — Galatians 6:17 The second point of application is this: reinterpret your suffering. If you carry hardship, if you're going through a hard season, don't assume this is God punishing you. Sometimes the marks of Jesus are what faithfulness costs in a world that resists the cross of Christ. There are going to be times in your life where you're going through a trial, where you're going through hardship, but that doesn't necessarily mean that God is disappointed in you or something's wrong. Sometimes when we fix our eyes on the cross and we see the narrow road, the narrow path that lies before us that's marked with suffering, we have to choose it. We have to choose to walk through hardship knowing that the joy that is set before us in the cross of Christ is more beautiful, is more satisfying, than anything else. If your treasure, if your boast is only in Jesus, then the trials and sufferings along the way will be nothing, will be light, will be an easy affliction. Oftentimes, those trials are there as a filter to weed out people who are lukewarm in their faith. So persevere. Do not run away. Paul calls these marks the marks of Christ. The things that can refine us into the Christians, into the people that God is calling us to be. Why is it that we can boast only in the cross? Why is it that we can boast even in our suffering? It's because Jesus became a curse. He wasn't a boast; he wasn't something that people bragged about when he was hanging on the tree. In Matthew and in Mark, it says that we aren't supposed to look past people; it says that we're not supposed to call out, "Raca," against people. It was this word that meant You nobody. And as Jesus was hanging on the tree, that was what he was called. He was not a boast. He was not something that people had confidence in. He was something that people said, you no one. He took our place. We were supposed to be called no ones. We were the people who God was supposed to look at and say, depart from me, I never knew you. You are no one. Yet that's what Jesus heard while he was crucified. Jesus took our place. Jesus was treated like us so we could be treated like him. Therefore, we can boast only in the cross. Closing Prayer As you're sitting there at home, let's pray together knowing that we are bound more than just by being gathered together, but we can gather together in the spirit this morning as the weather prevents us from meeting in person. Let's pray. Father God, we thank you for who you are. We praise you for this series that, that taught us that life in you comes only through the cross of Christ, not in our works. God, thank you that we are able to have faith in you and that it is separated from works; that we do not need to earn our way to have a right relationship with you but you have made it possible by sending your Son. God, I pray that if there is anyone who does not believe this, that they would come to this saving faith. God, that they would believe this gospel because it transforms every single part of who we are. God, whether we've heard this for the first time today and are accepting Christ or we've believed our entire life, let us be transformed not by my words but by the words that you've given us in this letter. God, your gospel, your good news, is so satisfying. God, let our only boast be you. Be the cross of Christ. A thing that should be a shameful thing, but God, it is the most glorious reality in all of human history, all of the world, all of eternity. God, let us bear these marks. Let us boast in you alone. God, we love you and we love to do your will. So help us do that today. It's in your name we pray. Amen. Hear this blessing, this departing blessing that comes right from the end of this book. The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with your spirit, brothers and sisters. Amen. Facebook X (Twitter) WhatsApp LinkedIn Pinterest Copy link

A Gospel Worth Defending Prosper Christian Reformed Church 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

Blood on the Ground Prosper Christian Reformed Church Blood on the Ground Come Thou Long Expected Mitchell Leach Sunday, December 7, 2025 Audio Blood on the Ground Mitchell Leach 00:00 / 40:57 Sermon Transcript If you'd please join me and by opening your Bibles as we hear God's word from Genesis 4. It's on page four in your Bibles. We're going to read the whole chapter 1 26. Now Adam knew Eve his wife, and she conceived and bore Cain, saying, I have gotten a man with the help of the Lord. And again she bore his brother Abel. Now, Abel was a keeper of sheep and Cain a worker of the ground. In the course of time, Cain brought to the Lord an offering of the fruit of the ground. And Abel also brought of his firstborn, of his flock, and of their fat portions. And the Lord had regard for Abel and of his offering. But for Cain and his offering, he had no regard. So Cain was very angry, and his face fell. The Lord said to Cain, why are you angry? And why has your face fallen? If you do well, will you not be accepted? And if you do not do well, sin is crouching at the door. Its desire is contrary to you, but you must rule over it. Cain spoke to Abel, his brother. And when they were in the field, Cain rose up against his brother Abel and killed him. Then the Lord said to Cain, where is Abel, your brother? He said, I do not know. Am I my brother's keeper? And the Lord said, what have you done? The voice of your brother's blood is crying to me from the ground. And now you are cursed from the ground which has opened its mouth to receive your brother's blood from your hand. When you work the ground, it shall no longer yield to you its strength. You shall be a fugitive and a wanderer on the earth. Cain said to the Lord, my punishment is greater than I can bear. Behold, you have driven me today away from the ground, and from your face I shall be hidden. I shall be a fugitive and a wanderer on the earth. And whoever finds me will kill me. Then the Lord said to him, not so. If anyone kills Cain, vengeance shall be taken on him sevenfold. And the Lord put a mark on Cain lest any who found him should attack him. Then Cain went away from the presence of the Lord and settled in the land of Nod, east of Eden. Cain knew his wife, and she conceived and bore Enoch. When he built a city, he called the name of the city after the name of his son Enoch. To Enoch was born Irad. And Arad fathered Mehujael. And Mehujael fathered Methushael. And Methushael fathered Lamech. And Lamech took two wives. The name of the one was Adah, and the name of the other Zilhah, Adah bore Jabal. He was the father of those who dwell in tents and have livestock. His brother's name was Jubal. He was the father of all those who play the lyre and pipe. Zillah also bore Tubal Cain. He was the forger of all instruments of bronze and iron. The sister of Tubal Cain was Naamah. Lamech said to his wives Adah and Zillah, hear my voice, you wives of Lamech. Listen to what I say. I have killed a man for wounding me, a young man for striking me. If Cain's revenge is sevenfold, then Lamech's is 77fold. And Adam knew his wife again, and she bore a son and called him Seth. For she said, God has appointed for me another offspring instead of Abel, for Cain killed him. To Seth also, a son was born, and he called him his name, Enosh. At that time, people began to call upon the name of the Lord. This is the word of the Lord. Genesis4 is one of the most tragic chapters in the Bible. We move from the hope of new life to the horror of the first murder, from the joy of a child being born to the grief of a son being buried. But from the beginning, the question that Adam and Eve would have had in their minds is, is this the one? Is this the child who was promised in Genesis 3? Is this the one who will crush the head of the snake? When Cain was born, the hope must have been electric. This is the firstborn, the miracle child, the one whom God helped bring forth into the world. But Genesis 4 tells us something sobering and important. Not every child of Eve is a child of promise. Not every sacrifice is acceptable. And not every worshiper worship rightly, worships rightly. Genesis 4 is not just the story of two brothers. It's the story of two ways to live, two ways to worship, and two lineages that would stem from here in Genesis 4. All throughout Scripture, as the dust settles, we see sin move from the garden into a family and into culture. And eventually it threatens everything. Sin does not just disappear after the fall, it follows into our worship. Because the first story we see after the Garden of Eden doesn't focus on work. It doesn't focus on marriage or politics. It focuses on worship. And this is why we need Christmas. Genesis 4 shows us that sin does not just break Eden. It breaks families. It breaks communities, breaks culture. And Advent is the story of God stepping into the world, that world that Cain built, a world of blood on the ground, a world where anger is in Our hearts and worship has gone wrong. It forces us to ask a question and wrestle with a question we often ignore. Does God care how we worship? Because if we. I think because most people assume that worship is simple, that if we are sincere, then that's enough. If I show up, then God will be happy. If I give something, well, God will accept it. But Genesis 4 shows us the opposite. Two brothers come to worship. Two offerings are given, yet only one is accepted. And here's the uncomfortable truth. Both men believed that they were worshiping God, and yet only one actually was. Genesis 4 shows us something that we would never guess on our own. Sincerity is not the same thing as obedience. That brings us back to our main question, our big question. Does God care how we worship? Fortunately, the Bible has answers for us. So if you would keep your Bibles open to Genesis chapter four as we see these three movements in this passage. First we'll see worship and warning, the story of Cain and Abel. And then we'll see judgment and culture, Cain's legacy and a new beginning with Seth. And worship. Even after the first murder, Cain, God appoints a way to redeem his people. And that's what we'll see in this chapter. Let's look at this first section, though, as we see worship and warning through Cain and Abel, verses one through eight. So Adam and Eve are cast out of the garden. That's where we find. And that's where he starts this, this chapter. They have two children, Cain and Abel. And it's easy for us to look at this story through our lens of understanding the end of, you know, we see the whole context of the Bible. We even know the end of this chapter. But for a moment, I want you to think about what Adam and Eve must have been thinking when these two boys were born. Remember the prophecy that came from Genesis 3, that from the seed of the. From the woman an offspring would come to crush the head of the snake. They must have been thinking, it has to be one of these two boys. Cain was the farmer and Abel was the shepherd. Cain is the likely candidate here. He's the firstborn. In fact, look at how he is talked about in verse two or in verse one and two. For Cain says, I have gotten a man with the help of the Lord. And Abel, he's only mentioned really as Cain's brother that she bore his brother Abel. Imagine that being your epitaph on your, you know, so and so's brother. You know, that's. That's all you were remembered as. But Cain seems to be the Likely candidate here. They grow up together, and clearly they're instructed on how to worship, right? They're told how to bring offering to God, that this is something that God delights in. So they bring an offering to God, and one brings something good and the other brings the best of what he had. But only one was appreciated. We'll see later, the heart posture between the two. But before we move any further, I want us to look at verse seven. Verse seven is a confusing passage, or it's a confusing verse, not just in the English, but in the Hebrew. This is a grammatically weird verse. It reads weird in English and it reads even weirder in Hebrew. So let's camp out here because I think this unlocks a lot for us. Verse 7 says this. If you do well, will you not be accepted? And if you do not do well, sin is crouching at the door. Its desire is contrary to you, but you must rule over it. I think at first glance, when we read this, we read the if you do well, and it sounds like God is giving Cain a second chance. If you do well, if you bring another offering, then I will accept it if you do it in the right way. But that's not what this passage is saying. So what does God mean here? He's talking to Cain and he's saying, respond from this moment and act like the firstborn. In fact, that's what to do well means. The Hebrew word for to do well actually carries the connotation of act. Acting like the firstborn, acting in integrity, acting in a way that brings honor to your family. And at the same time, this word isn't about action, but it's about character. It wasn't about physical actions. This word to do well meant. To. Have the character that is honorable, to have a heart change. God isn't rejecting Cain's vegetables. He's exposing Cain's heart. Worship without obedience is not worship God. God gives Cain a choice here, an option to rule over sin, or it will rule over him. God's saying essentially to Cain, this is the moment to change your heart. Please change your heart, and I'll be right here. But Cain has that choice. And it says, sin is crouching like a vicious animal. And this is how sin works. It starts off small and it grows. It's actually what we see in James, chapter one. This is what the brother of Jesus says about sin. But each person is tempted when he is lured and enticed by his own desires. Then desire, when is conceived, gives birth to sin, and sin when it is fully grown. Brings forth death. This is how sin works. It starts off small, it starts off as a seed, and it grows if we don't stop it. Cain becomes or believes that he has become like a train on tracks, that he has no option except what's set before him. And God is saying, no, stop, turn around, come back. You can come back from this. And yet he continues on the path set before him. And he kills his only brother. He allowed Satan to plant an idea in his mind and let that mature and become full grown. And sure enough, it brought forth death. Some people have commented on this word that sin is crouching at the door, and that it really should be translated as the crouching one in reference to a demonic presence or in reference to a demon. I think that there's something interesting here with that, to read this passage in that way. And if you do not do well. Sin is the crouching one, waiting at the door. And its desire is contrary to you. God is almost coming to Cain and saying, do you remember the enemy who tempted your mom and dad? Do you remember what that did? Do you remember how that tore? Tore a rip in the fabric of the universe. Look at what he did to the world. Imagine what he will do to you. God is gently calling Cain and asking him to come back to him, asking him, where does this path lead you, Cain? This is the first time in scripture that sin is mentioned. And how we are introduced to it is that sin will take you captive by force. Sin will dominate you. Sin will take its desire. Its desire is to go contrary to you. It's not to be a contrarian. I almost think that that language is too weak. The desire of sin is to go against you. It's to work like a parasite. It's to come inside you and absolutely take you over, to eat you from the inside out. This is true for us as well. For Cain, sin is there to do us harm. Sin always wants mastery over us. Sin never stays small. You cannot pet what God calls a predator. What you refuse to kill will grow up and kill what you love. Cain's story reminds us that no human being, no child of Eve, can reverse the curse. The serpent wasn't going to be crushed by the next generation. We needed someone greater. We needed someone born of a woman. But unlike Cain, sin is something that we must rule over. We cannot play with. We cannot believe the lie of Western civilization, that as long as it's not hurting someone else, that it really doesn't matter. No, sin will destroy us. Sin destroys us. It destroys culture. It destroys our community. The serpent may have spoken to Adam and Eve in the garden's ruin, but here his voice grows stronger. Sin was born in Genesis 3. It matured here in Genesis 4. And next week we will see it grow and take over the entire world and consume it. In Genesis 6, that leads us into our second point, judgment and culture. Cain's legacy in verses 9 through 24, so God comes to Cain like he did to his parents before, gently, with a question. He comes to Cain and says, where's Cain? Or where's Abel? Where's your brother? And Cain retorts back almost, I imagine, almost cutting God off before he can get the question out. I'm not my brother's keeper. I don't know. I don't know where he is. What God had just told him in verse seven to act like the firstborn. Cain retorts back so fast, saying, I'm not in charge of him. I will not act like the firstborn. I will not act in a way that honors my family or honors you. Cain lies to God and God will have none of it. And so he rebukes him then and there and gives him a curse. Cain's curse is that the ground will not produce what it used to and that he will be a wanderer. And Cain's response, I think, is so ironic here to say to God, this curse is too great. And that's the reality of sin. The consequences of sin are always greater than what we think that they're going to be. And the promises that sin make never live up to what it says it will. This is the reality for Cain. It's the reality for us. And even so, God promises to make sure that Cain will not be killed in his. In his obstinance towards God. God still promises to take care of him. Yet in Cain's, Cain's response to God, God's anger or God's gentleness is anger. He says that he longs for God's presence, and yet he went away from the presence of the Lord so quickly. What follows in this section? In this chapter, in verses 9 through 24, we see the line of Cain. I think oftentimes we get to a section of scripture, like a genealogy here, and. And we gloss over it and we move past it, and I listen, I get the impulse to do it, right? Genealogies are not super fun to read, except they're incredibly important. And you might still be thinking, of course he's got to say that he's a pastor, right? Genealogies, right. But they are important. Especially in Genesis. Genesis. The genealogies serve to point to something. In fact, Genesis itself as a book, is a genealogy with stories listed in between them. And the point of listing this genealogy, the point of listing these people, is to show the line of the promise. Where would the Savior come from? It's to list that line, and it's also to list the line of the serpent. That's what happens here, listing the line of the seed, Cain. You look at the way that he was talked about at the beginning of this chapter. He was the Promised One. He looks like he was the one who was going to crush the head of the snake. Or at least he was going to be the one that the line of the promise would come from. Right? And now how do we end the chapter? He's furthering the curse. And now he becomes the surrogate for the line of the serpent. The first murderer produces a culture of murder. Sin is not stagnant. It grows. It multiplies. Look at the last descendant that is listed. Look at verse 23. Lamech says, Ada and Zyla, hear my voice, you wives of Lamech, listen to what I say. I've killed a man for wounding me, a young man for striking me. If Cain's revenge is sevenfold, then Lamech's is 77fold. Lamech talks to his. His. His relative, his. His ancestor, almost, you know, making fun of him, saying, you think that Cain was hard. No, no, my heart is even harder. Look at how harsh my revenge is. Cain's descendants, they don't make it out of the book of Genesis. In fact, they don't make it out of Genesis 7. They will die in our next sermon in the Flood. Cain's descendants are notable, right? They look like they've got some things going for them, right? They are the ones who forge instruments of bronze and iron. They build culture, they contribute, they build cities. But Genesis 4 tells us that you can be gifted, you can be productive, you can be culturally impressive, but if you worship wrongly, your descendants will inherit that worship. We think as people, that we can act as individuals, and that what we do will not affect anyone around us. Time and time again, story after story, not just in scripture, but in the world we see. What we do follows us in our children and our grandchildren and those around us. If Genesis 4 ended with Cain's descendants, the story of the promise would die in the very next chapters. But God refuses to let darkness have the last word. God raises up a new beginning. And that's what we see in our last section here, a new beginning. With Seth and worship. Verses 25 and 26. Here in the middle of this tragedy, God keeps the Christmas promise alive. The line of the snake crusher does not die. With Abel, God appoints another seed, Seth. A whisper that the promise is still moving forward, still alive, still moving towards Bethlehem. Notice how this chapter started. Notice how Cain is talked about as he's being born. I really look at how Eve talks about Cain. I have gotten a man with the help of the Lord, emphasizing that she's done this. Almost a clear and evident result of the fall, the first inclination of works righteousness. I have done this. God helped, but I did this. Now look how she talks about Seth. She says, God has appointed for me another offspring instead of Abel. She comes to this realization, seeing what sin has done in her two boys. And she realizes that any gift from God, any gift that she's been given is from God. This isn't just another child, that this is the seed, that this is the offspring from which the promise will come. God promises to make right what man made wrong. The Heidelberg Catechism, question 6 reminds us of what humanity was supposed to be, is supposed to be. God created man good and in his own image so that he might truly know God, his creator, love him with all his heart and live with him in eternal life, happiness. Genesis 4 shows us how far we've fallen. But Seth's line shows us that God is still restoring people to what they were supposed to be. Worshipers. Instead of following the line of Cain, the line of achievements, the line that the world would follow. The rich, the powerful, the educated, the artistic influencers, the people who build cities. God will use the most unlikely people. God will go through the line of Seth, the third born. God will work through the seed of a woman, through someone totally unlikely, through a baby. This is to contrast everything that Cain has done. Cain's line is a story of downward descent into sin and misery. And Seth will go on to worship the Lord. This goes back to the beginning of the chapter. God is seeking true worship, something that Cain could not do, could not give God. But now sess line will. It's interesting. Enosh, his son. The name Enosh means mere man. This line will not be people who are impressive. This line will be the nobodies. It will be the shepherd boys, the ones who slay Goliath, the ones that come from nowhere. It will be kings born in a manger. But the beauty of this is that God is made perfect in our weakness that leads us into our main idea. Sin seeks to master us But God provides a new beginning marked by true worship. Sin seeks to master us, but God provides a new beginning marked by true worship. God is making a way a new beginning by giving us someone who would master sin by defeating it itself. And that would result in us worshiping God the Father. That's what Genesis 4 points us towards. That's what this whole story is about, about worship. God wants us to worship him not with external signs, but with our heart. I think we can come to church week after week doing the right thing, singing the songs, kind of playing church, but miss the heart of God. God looked at Cain's offering and he saw something. He saw something that no one else would have seen to anyone else. If Cain were sitting here right now giving his offering, no one would have batted an eye. It would have passed the eye test. And yet it was not good enough for God. Cain exposes a frightening truth that you can be in the right place doing the right rituals with the wrong heart and believe that you're worshiping and yet you're not. You can be standing in church, singing the songs, placing something in the offering, serving in ministry, all the while quietly withholding the very thing that. That God wants your heart. Cain wasn't trying to please God. He was trying to manage God. He brought an offering, but he did not bring himself. He participated outwardly, but resisted inwardly. He performed all the right rituals without surrendering the rule of his life. This is about worship. This is about your heart. That's why when God talks to Cain before he sins, he doesn't say, give me a better offering, bring me better fruit, bring me better produce. He's saying, I want your heart. True devotion means wholehearted devotion. We cannot come to God and give 15, 16 of our heart. We can't let him have a majority of our of our life. He has to be the Lord over it. He cannot be a mere consultant. We need to let him rule and reign over every aspect of our. Of our heart. One aspect of this leads us into our application that we must worship how God wants to be worshiped. This is the regulative principle in worship. This is. That's the nerdy theological word for it, but really in essence, saying that God gets to tell us how he wants to be worshiped. Yes, absolutely. We need to do the right things with the right heart. That's what this passage is showing us, that it's not merely just doing the right actions, the right rituals, and it's not merely just having a sincere heart, but doing them both together. Some churches will Say things like, as long as you're genuine God, God will be happy. I've seen churches over and over kind of water down the gospel, say, well, if your heart's in the right place, then that's, that's good enough. It sounds nice and loving. Sounds like trying to throw off legalism. It sounds like an attempt at trying to be genuine or authentic, one of those buzzwords that we like to say. But the truth is it makes worship about us. God has told us how he wants to be worshiped. I think in worship, our natural reaction, our natural response is to say, well, this is the way I want to do it. This is what connects with me. These are the songs I want to sing. This is the kind of stuff that I want to do. These are the types of worship elements that I think should be included in a worship service. These are the ways in which I'm going to worship God. Even outside of church, we say, this is how I want to do it. But have we ever asked God, how do you want to be worshiped? We become like people who plan a birthday party for someone else and yet plan things that only we want to do. I don't know if you've ever been around one of those people, but it's awful. I had a birthday party like that once. It was terrible. What happens when worship becomes about something we like rather than what God likes? Well, it becomes self serving, it becomes about the individual, it becomes about, I don't know, it takes that saying of that Christianity isn't a religion, it's a relationship. It takes that to its furthest extra extent. It becomes something that says, well, you don't really need to come to church if you want to worship God by yourself in your deer stand or at home or you know, on the golf course, wherever it is. Right. You can do that. That's fine as long as you're sincere. We have a heart shift here. God has given us things that need to be a part of our worship. Specifically, what need to be part of our worship in church. I think sometimes these are things that we overlook. And so my challenge initially, more than just knowing exactly how God wants to be worshiped, I want to challenge you to these things in a worship service that God calls us to, maybe you're not doing these things and that's the first stepping stone, is to do some of these things. God calls us and commands us in scripture to sing, to give, to pray, to read scripture, to, to sit under teaching and to serve one another. If you're not doing these Things. This is not a suggestion. This is a command from God that these are the things that we must be doing. I don't want to be mean, but if your heart right now is saying man, that seems like too much for me. I just want to say I'm so glad that Jesus didn't say that when he was hanging on the cross. I'm so glad that he didn't say man, this is too much for me. When we see what God calls us to do in light of our salvation, it is nothing. It is light. It is easy. It is an easy burden that we bear. It should be a joy. In fact, true worship is not giving God what we prefer. It is giving God what He has prescribed. And that leads us into our second point of application, mistake turn into two. This is something that has become a life principle for me. I learned this phrase when I was playing football. And yet it has spiritual relevancy. Cain didn't bring his best to God. He wasn't given a second chance either. God was trying to correct him. God was trying to tell him, cain, don't let your mistake turn into another. We all will make mistakes. It's part of our nature. We'll probably make a mistake today. But. The call for us is to recognize it, unlike what Cain did, to recognize our sin and to not take it one step further. We always have the option when we are letting in sin. Let us not turn our back to the Holy Spirit who's convicting us and calling us to repent. Don't allow sin to become full grown. This is a call to kill sin while it is still in seed form. I think sometimes we read passages like Genesis 4 and we think, well, sin isn't, you know, that bad because I would never murder. I could never do something like that. I mean, that would be so far outside what I'm capable of. And yet to see that is to minimize the sin that is inside you. Murder is anger all grown up. Adultery is lust all grown up. Stealing, embezzling is greed and envy all grown up. It's a seed form of the later thing. What is easier if you have to kill an oak tree? What is easier to kill it as an acorn or to try to chop it down when it's full grown? We have the ability to walk away from our sin when they're small, but it becomes much harder when they are ruling over us. Cain's story ends in wandering, but the story of the Gospel ends in worship. Genesis 4 shows us how deeply our sin has mastered us. But Advent shows Us how Christ has come master sin. And this is where the Christmas story becomes personal. The baby in a manger didn't come merely to inspire us. If that's all that we get away from Christmas this season, we have totally missed it. He has come to rescue us from the sin that mastered Cain and the sin that threatens to master us. In this story, we see that the ground drops drank Abel's blood. The world learned the cost really how costly sin really is. But centuries later, another son would bleed, not in a field this time, but on a hill. Not as a victim of jealousy, but as a willing sacrifice. Abel's blood marked the beginning of human ruin. Jesus blood marked the beginning of human redemption. Abel's blood cried out for justice. Jesus blood cried out to satisfy that justice. Abel's blood announced the spread of sin and death. Jesus blood announced the end of it. This is the wonder of Advent. The long promised offspring has come. The one whose heel would be bruised so the serpent's head would be crushed. Sin seeks to master us, but God provides a new beginning marked by true worship. Let us worship this morning. Let us stand and would you pray with me as we sing our closing song? Let's stand and pray. Father. God, we thank you for who you are. God, we thank you that you have given us a way to resist our sin, to run from it, to flee from it, to not let it rule over us. Father, I pray that you would convict us of our sin through your Holy Spirit, that we wouldn't feel condemnation because we know that your son was condemned for us. God, help us. Help us to stand and sing in worship longing for your second coming. God, help us to sing this next song. O come, oh come, Emmanuel. It's in your name we pray. Amen. Facebook X (Twitter) WhatsApp LinkedIn Pinterest Copy link

Judgement and Mercy Prosper Christian Reformed Church Judgement and Mercy Come Thou Long Expected Mitchell Leach Sunday, December 14, 2025 Audio Judgement and Mercy Mitchell Leach 00:00 / 56:58 Sermon Transcript While they're being seated, would you please take your Bible and turn with me this morning to Genesis 6. It's right in the beginning of your of your Bible. Genesis 6. We're going to read a few verses, and I'll try to direct you because we're not going to read consistently. We're going to read, skip a few verses, then read and skip a few and go again. So I'll try to help you understand where we're going. Genesis 6, beginning with just verses 5 through 8. Passage of scripture we don't read all that often in scripture, but listen carefully to what God has to say to us this morning. The Lord saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every intention of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually. And the Lord regreted that he had made man on the earth, and it grieved him to his heart. I want to pause there. Does that surprise you at all? So the Lord said, I will blot out man whom I have created from the face of the land, man and animals and creeping things and birds of the heavens, for I'm sorry that I've made them. But Noah found favor in the eyes of the Lord. Now, if you will, go with me to verses 13 and 14. And God said to Noah, I have determined to make an end of all flesh, for the earth is filled with violence through them. Behold, I will destroy them with the earth. Make yourself an ark of gopher wood. Make rooms in the ark, and cover it inside and out with pitch. Then drop down with me to verse 16 of chapter seven. And those that entered, male and female of all flesh, went in as God had commanded, and the Lord shut him in. Would you pray with me for just a moment? Father God, we give you thanks for your word. Lord, it hurts that you looked at us, human beings, and said, I'm sorry I made them. Father, help us to understand you want a love relationship with us. And then Lord, help us to open our hearts and to literally love you with all of our heart, mind, soul, and strength the way you want. Introduction Some stories stay with us because they say something true about us. This morning, one of the stories comes from an unlikely place. It comes from the movie Groundhog Day. I bet you didn't think I was going to say that this morning. Groundhog Day, for the four of you who haven't seen the movie, is a movie starring Bill Murray. He plays a character named Phil Conners, a man trapped in an endless loop. Every morning, he wakes up. It's the same day over and over again. The same mistakes, the same temptation, the same patterns. Nothing he tries can break the cycle. No indulgence, no escape, no effort. It's funny on the surface, but the reality is it's haunting. It teaches us a haunting truth that we can relive the same day thousands of times and still be the same people. We are all like Phil. We need more than just a new day. We need a new heart. And that's exactly the problem that Genesis 6 shows us. Humanity didn't need another opportunity. It didn't need another reset. It didn't need another try better next time. The world had been given a second chance after Eden. And sin simply went with it. And that's the big question that this passage asks us this morning. Big Question Do we just need a second chance? Isn't this what we believe in as Americans in the West? Isn't this what we believe in in second chance? Is the power of second chances? We tell each other that people are basically good, that we're shaped mostly by our environment, and that deep down we're capable of becoming our best selves if we just get a fresh start. If we We have a new year, a new habit, a new relationship, a new school, a new career, a new resolution, we tell ourselves, if I could just start over, I can fix myself. And it sounds hopeful. It even sounds compassionate. And we want to believe that this is true. We see this language all over in our culture saying everyone deserves a second chance. We all just need a clean slate. People change. Give them a chance. Give it time. And it feels It feels right because we want this to be the solution. A second chance is simple. A second chance is manageable. A second chance keeps the problem out there in our circumstances, in the environment in which we're in rather than in here in our hearts. But then real life happens. We get a second chance, a third, a fourth, a fifth, and we keep finding ourselves in the same loop in the same situation. We can resolve to be different people, yet slip back into the same sins. Tim Keller has this quote. It says, If our problem was only our environment, God would have sent a teacher. If our problem was only ignorance, God would have sent a philosopher. But our problem is sin, so God sent a savior. You can change your environment, but temptations still come with you. You can turn the page with the same heart writes the next chapter. Human history had second chance after Eden, and it didn't get better. It got worse. Which brings us to the tension that Genesis 6 confronts head-on. Do we just need a second chance, or do we need something greater? Fortunately, the Bible has answers for us, so keep your Bibles open to Genesis. We're actually going to cover Genesis 6 through 9. We're not going to read the whole thing, but this is the whole story of Noah. And so we're going to see three movements in this story. Outline: We're going to a second chance a second Eden a second fall Let's remember where we're at in this story so far. In Genesis 3, sin entered the world. In Genesis 4, sin spread to a family. Cain murdered his brother Abel. By Genesis 5, sin had taken root in a genealogy in generations of people. And by Genesis 6, sin has infected the entire world. What began with a whisper now roars across the earth. Instead of the seed of the woman crushing the serpent, the seed of the serpent fills the earth with violence, corruption, and pride. This is no longer a broken couple or a broken family or a broken community. This is a broken world, and God sees it. What we will see in this story is as human wickedness multiplies and creation is corrupted, God grieves and brings judgment through flood, yet he preserves his redemptive promise through Noah, the righteous man who walks with God. A Second Chance And that's what we'll see in this first section, a second chance, Judgment and the Ark, chapters 6 and 7. Chapter 5 showed us a genealogy from Cain and a genealogy from Seth leading up into Noah. When we arrived to Noah, the trajectory set by Cain has become full-fold It has fully blossomed and corrupted the world. Look at Genesis 6:5 with me. Genesis 6:5 says this, The Lord saw the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every intention of the thought of his heart was only evil continually. Humanity had become totally evil, totally wicked. They had become tyrants. That's what the word nephilum means. These people were tyrants, ruling over people in an There were men using women to satisfy their lust instead of seeing them as image bearers. The Earth was filled with wickedness, with selfishness, with pridefulness. That's what we see in Genesis 6:6-7, if you look at that with me. "And the Lord regreted that he had made man on the earth, and it grieved him to his heart. So the Lord said, I will blot out man whom I've created from the face of the land, man and animals and creeping things and birds of the heavens, for I am sorry that I have made them." God's heart is pined by the evil the world has come to love. This is not the fury of an irritated deity. This is the grief of a father whose children chose to love violence than him. Cornelius Planteca has this quote that says, "Sin is not just the breaking of rules. It is vandalism of Shalom." This is why advent begins in the shadows, because the savior we wait for comes into the world that God himself judged for its violence. The peace that was once in the Garden of Eden is perverted. And because of this, God declares that he will cleanse the Earth. But notice this, that God is not abandoning his promise that he made in Genesis 3. He is purifying the stage on which that promise will unfold. God does not start over completely. He has every right to, he has every right to wipe everyone off the face of the Earth and start over again. But he doesn't. God had promised to bring salvation into mankind through the seed of the woman. And God is a faithful God. That's actually the first time we see this in scripture. God God's faithfulness coming out in a clear and direct way, at least. God's faithfulness to his promise here because he won't go back on his promise. Genesis 6:8-9, it says, "But Noah found favor in the eyes of the Lord. These are the generations of Noah. Noah was a righteous man, blameless in his generation. Noah walked with God, and Noah had three sons: Shem, Ham, and Japhoth." Grace appears before obedience. Favor precedes faithfulness. And that's the pattern that we see in scripture. That's why we see this pattern here. Anytime God commands obedience, he saves first. He shows grace first. You look at the Ten Commandments, that's the way that it happens. God saves He saved Israel from the Red Sea, from the Egyptians. He delivered them and then calls them into obedience. So he chooses a family. God chooses a family here. God looked at all the people of the Earth, and he chose Noah. The word in this passage that says found favor is really a word that means that God's heart was moved. Noah didn't earn this. This wasn't something that he did enough good in order to earn God's favor. This is actually the same word that we use throughout the Old Testament and New Testament for grace. This is the first mention of grace. And it's interesting because it's in the context of judgment. Before God saves through a manger, he saves through an ark. I think some of us still think that God loves us because we're better than most or that we're better than these other people. I think it's easy for us, and maybe we don't say that confessionally or we don't say that outwardly. But deep down, I think in everyone's heart, we believe that we're better than them. We're better than those people who don't follow God, or we're better than those people who do this thing. At least I don't do that. Noah reminds us that grace is never earned. It is only received. If you're tired this advent season of trying to clean yourself up for God, this passage invites us to rest in God's grace. This verse doesn't mean that Noah was without sin. When it says that he is righteous or blameless, what that means is that Noah's righteousness was given from God to him because he believed in the promise, that his blamelessness was based on his worship because he walked with God. God had every right to wipe the whole world clean. Sin had pervaded every inch of the world, the perfect world that he had created, and that included Noah. Noah's righteousness is imputed to him. Not a righteousness of his own, but a righteousness of faith, God's righteousness. And so God makes a covenant with Noah. Look at Genesis 6:18 with me. He says, "But I will establish my covenant with you, and you shall come into the ark, you, your sons, your wife, and your sons' wives with you." This is the first time the word covenant appears. And there is a huge sensation for me to stop and do 15 minutes of talking about a covenant right here because covenant is such a huge part of our faith. But we're going to talk about that in 2026 a lot more. So I'm going to limit myself to this brief explanation. A covenant is more than a legal contract. A covenant is even more It's not even just a promise. It is a promise against your own life. It is a promise marked by blood. It is like a promise, but you have to put a deposit down. And imagine that deposit being your own life. That is what is happening here. God is promising Noah and his family against his life that they will be saved while everyone else dies. What we see here in this story is that the Ark is a type of Christ. It's the only place of safety when judgment comes. We must be found in Christ just as Noah was found in the Ark. But even after the waters recede, we are left asking, Will Will this cleansed world cleanse the human heart? And that's what we see in this next section. The second Eden, a new world, a new covenant in Genesis 8, the whole chapter of 8, and then Genesis 9:1-17. God brings all the animals to Noah, and the flood begins. Everyone boards, and God shuts the door. When he closed the door to the Ark, he sealed the coffin on humanity. And this might offend our modern sensibilities, but we have to remember what's happening. This was justice. This wasn't God punitively punishing people. But this was justice. This was creation had gone so arrived, so wrong, that this was justified. In the Bible, judgment and salvation always travel together in the same waters that destroyed the wicked, the same waters lifted the boat, the Ark, to safety. The same act that shut the doors brought Noah and his family in. That's what we see in Genesis 8:21, Genesis 7:21-23, it says, "And all flesh died that moved on the earth, birds, livestock, bees, and all swarming creatures that sworn on the earth, and all mankind." Everything on dry land in whose nostrils was the breath of life died. He blotted out every living thing that was on the face of the ground, man and animals and creeping things and the birds of the heaven. Sin had become so violent, so corrosive, so dehumanizing, that God would no longer allow his creation to rot unchecked. This is why in chapter 6, he says, My spirit shall not abide in man forever, for he is flesh. His days shall be 120 years. This word abide, that God's spirit would not abide in man forever, really means to strive or contend. Really, what God is saying is, I will not try to negotiate with mankind anymore to try to follow me. They are a lost cause. It is futile. They are flesh. They only want what they want, and what they want is not a relationship with me. And so the water subsides. Noah and all the animals get off the boat. And for a second time in humanity, there's a chance to obey God, to follow him, to follow what he says, and to live by how he defines right and wrong. Moses wants you to hear. Moses is the writer of Genesis. Moses wants you to hear the echoes of Genesis 1 in this. Look with me at this. A world covered by water, wind sent by God, dry land appearing, animals multiplying, man standing as the head of humanity. This is a second Eden, a fresh start, a new creation. Many of us, we love this time of year because It's a chance for us to think about something new. New Year's is right around the corner. There's a lot of new things happening. Kids, we're about to get a lot of new toys. It feels like a great way to start over. In fact, this is probably a time where we even think back about our year. If you have Spotify, you get a Spotify wrapped, you get a chance to look back at your year and think about what your year was. And many of us maybe feel like we have things to run from. The story of Noah shows us that a new start is not enough. We can try to run away, but sin and guilt and shame will always follow. What we need is a redeemer. And that's what this advent season is It's not about a fresh start, but salvation coming in the form of an infant. A washed world is not a new world. Water can cleanse creation, but it cannot cleanse the human hearts. C. S. Lewis says this, "No clever arrangement of bad eggs ever makes a good omelet." And I think that's true here. No matter how hard we try, no matter how many fresh starts we have, we cannot change who we are. So God makes a covenant with Noah as he steps off the boat. In chapter 9, verse 11, he says, I establish my covenant with you that never again shall all flesh be cut off by waters of the flood, and never again shall I Why shall there be a flood to destroy the earth? So God gives Noah another covenant. And why a covenant here? Because the second Eden will fail for the same reason the first one did. Unless God binds himself to all humanity with grace, humanity will walk away. The truth is Noah is not holding on to God. This covenant shows us that God is holding on to Noah. God is holding on to all humanity. The rainbow that we see here is not a sign of human progress. It's a symbol of divine restraint. God's showing that he will no longer judge the world in this way. For a moment, it feels like Eden is restored. A righteous man, a renewed world, a fresh covenant, a new start. If anyone can crush the head of the serpent, if anyone can get it right, Noah surely has to be the one. But unfortunately, that's not what we see in this next section. A Second Fall The sin that returns. Genesis 9:18-29. Genesis 9:20 says this, Noah began to be a man 'Man' of the soil. He planted a vineyard. He drank of the wine and became drunk and lay uncovered in his tent. 'And Ham, the father of Canaan, saw the nakedness of his father and told his two brothers outside. ' This, admittedly, is a confusing passage, and it is not clear what happens. But it is clear that both Noah and Ham sinned. Moses wants us to see the big point, not the details here. The man who walked with God stumbles. The righteous one falls into shame. The new Adam lies naked in a garden-like setting, just as the first Adam did. Noah goes from the righteous one to the drunk and shameful one, allowing something clearly evil to happen. Just like Adam and Eve, Noah brings sin back into the picture. Do you hear the echoes of the fall? Adam eats the forbidden fruit, Noah abuses the fruit of the vine, Adam's nakedness is exposed. Noah's nakedness is exposed. Adam's son rebels. Noah's son rebels. Martin Luther says this, The sin underneath all our sins is to trust the lie of the serpent, that we cannot trust the love and grace of Christ. This message is unmistakable. You can restart the world, but you cannot restart the human heart. Noah Noah looks like he would be the one to crush the head of the snake, but he isn't the one to do it. A clean world with the same old heart is still a broken world. And that's where advent becomes necessary. If all it was was an environment, God could fix the environment. If all it was was our circumstances, God could fix the circumstances. But the problem is us. It's our hearts. It's what we love deep down. So salvation cannot come from inside the ark. Salvation cannot come from inside of us. It has to come from inside of heaven. And that leads us to our Main Idea Judgment can cleanse the Earth, but it cannot change the human heart Only the one who bears judgment for us can bring lasting salvation. We need more. We need something more than a fresh start, more than a do-over, more than a try better next time. And subconsciously, unfortunately, we believe this, that we just need a do-over, even in our relationship with God, even in our salvation. As a former youth pastor, I can say this without a shadow of a doubt. There is an epidemic of people rededicating their lives to Christ. And I don't want to throw shade on people whose hearts are convicted by sin and that there's a desire to get right with God. I think that there is a lot of good in that. The danger in rededicating our hearts to Christ is it puts people in this spiritual limbo of, are they saved? Aren't they saved? I've seen countless times where people feel the conviction at a conference or during a sermon or at a retreat. People understand that their sin is evil, but they maybe grew up in the church, and they don't want to confess that maybe they weren't a Christian or that they had been walking in this way and feeling like They have to admit that maybe they really had something wrong when it came to their salvation. Unfortunately, this is a way... The rededication can be a way to ease our conscience about how we've been living, that we can do this and continue to live the life that we've been living and still keep a Bible verse in our Instagram bio. This might last for a couple of years, but nothing changes. We use rededication or dedicating our lives to Christ as a way to have a fresh start, a do-over. This Christmas story, the Christmas story, isn't one to make you feel better about your sin. The reality is that it's here to judge. It's here to judge you. It's here to judge me. We should feel judged by it. We cannot fix ourselves, even with unlimited do-overs, even if we had a Groundhog Day experience, if we relive the same day over and over. If we don't feel the weight of this in this passage, we've missed the point. Jesus came to fix the Earth, to fix what we couldn't fix, to fix our hearts. I think there are churches, there are pastors, there are Christians who would revolt against what we just talked about. They love to say things like people in the Gospels never felt judged around Jesus. Jesus was so accepting. Jesus was so open to people that he never made people feel judged. And unfortunately, that's just a lack of biblical literacy. That's a lack of seeing what happens in the Gospels. I mean, goodness me, if you were one of the Pharisees, I hope you felt judged by Jesus. If you've read the Gospels, you would have seen that. A few other places in the Gospels where Jesus makes people feel judged around him is: in Peter's confession after the miraculous catch the rich young ruler the disciples after the storm John in Revelation Dietrich Bonhoffer says this, "The coming Becoming of God is not only glad tidings, but first of all, frightening news for everyone who has a conscience." We feel judged by God because of his righteousness, because of who he is. He's perfect. Just being around him would make us feel judged. But the good news is for us that we don't have to stand in that judgment. We do not have to be the people who live in that judgment. The one who was born in the manger came to be condemned in our place. All of God's The wrath fell on the head that Mary held. And because the wrath fell on his head, he could crush the head of the serpent. That leads us into our application. Application Identify one place where you keep giving yourself second chances and replace it with accountability The first point of application is this. Identify one place where you keep giving yourself second chances and replace it with accountability. Instead of saying to yourself, I'll do better next time, pick one area in your life and tell someone, I need help with this. Some practical steps would be telling a spouse, Telling a friend where you're failing. Ask them to check in on you this week and choose a specific time when to talk about it. We can't go through life continuing to walk in the same sin over and over. We have to be willing to say we need more than a second chance. Our second point of application is this. Practice one act of generosity that stretches you this week The world before the flood was filled with people who wanted to exploit it, exploit other people for their own gain. Advent shows us the infinite nature of God's gratitude, of God's generosity, that God himself gave us himself something we needed desperately, but we could have never earned, never deserved. So this week, do this. Give someone something or give to someone who can't repay you back. Buy groceries for a struggling family, leave a gift card anonymously, Tip generously. Fill a need in the church without being asked. Generosity loosens the grip that sin strengthens in our heart. Of sin, and it strengthens our heart towards worship. One thing that we didn't talk about in this story so far is the rainbow. It was a sign that was given to Adam and Eve, is the sign that was given to all of humanity. It points directly towards the manger. When we see a rainbow, we associate it with positive feelings that it's happy, it's a good thing. And yet we forget that the rainbow is a sign of a weapon. That God chose to hang up his bow, to hang up his weapon. The next time that God would judge the world, the judgment wouldn't come down. It wouldn't be facing down. Look at the shape of a rainbow. This time, the next time that God would judge the world, the bow would take aim directly at the heart of heaven. And that's what we see on the cross. God's wrath, God's judgment coming down directly towards his son. Judgment can cleanse the earth, but it cannot change the human heart. Only the one who bears judgment for us can bring lasting salvation. Would you stand with me as we pray and prepare our hearts to respond in worship? Let's stand and pray. Father God, we thank you for who you are. God, you are so good and good to us. God, I pray that as we prepare our hearts for communion, for worship, God, that you would ready us for more than a way just to remember you, but to commune with you to enter into your presence, to identify you so deeply inside of us that we want to consume you. God, because we know that we can only be saved by entering into you, by entering into the Ark like Christ. It's the only place safe from wrath. God, thank you for sparing us. Thank you for saving us. Help us to respond in worship. It's in your name we pray. Amen. Facebook X (Twitter) WhatsApp LinkedIn Pinterest Copy link

Heidelberg Catechism Introduction The Heidelberg Catechism (1563) is one of the most beloved and widely used confessions of faith in the Reformed tradition. Commissioned by Elector Frederick III of the Palatinate, it was written in Heidelberg, Germany, to provide a clear, biblical, and pastoral guide for teaching the Christian faith. Traditionally attributed to Zacharias Ursinus as the primary writer, with Caspar Olevianus playing a smaller role, the catechism was designed for young people, church preaching, and confessional unity among Protestants. Organized into 52 Lord’s Days for weekly study, it follows three key themes: guilt (our sin and need for salvation), grace (God’s redemption through Christ), and gratitude (our response to His grace). This simple yet profound structure makes it a valuable tool for both new and mature believers. The Synod of Dort (1619) formally approved the catechism, and it has since been translated worldwide, shaping the faith of countless Christians. With its warm, pastoral tone, the Heidelberg Catechism remains a trusted resource for understanding the comfort and assurance found in Jesus Christ. Lord’s Day 1 Q & A 1 Q. What is your only comfort in life and in death? A. That I am not my own,1 but belong— body and soul, in life and in death—2 to my faithful Savior, Jesus Christ.3 He has fully paid for all my sins with his precious blood,4 and has set me free from the tyranny of the devil.5 He also watches over me in such a way6 that not a hair can fall from my head without the will of my Father in heaven;7 in fact, all things must work together for my salvation.8 Because I belong to him, Christ, by his Holy Spirit, assures me of eternal life9 and makes me wholeheartedly willing and ready from now on to live for him.10 1 1 Cor. 6:19-20 2 Rom. 14:7-9 3 1 Cor. 3:23; Titus 2:14 4 1 Pet. 1:18-19; 1 John 1:7-9; 2:2 5 John 8:34-36; Heb. 2:14-15; 1 John 3:1-11 6 John 6:39-40; 10:27-30; 2 Thess. 3:3; 1 Pet. 1:5 7 Matt. 10:29-31; Luke 21:16-18 8 Rom. 8:28 9 Rom. 8:15-16; 2 Cor. 1:21-22; 5:5; Eph. 1:13-14 10 Rom. 8:1-17 Q & A 2 Q. What must you know to live and die in the joy of this comfort? A. Three things: first, how great my sin and misery are;1 second, how I am set free from all my sins and misery;2 third, how I am to thank God for such deliverance.3 1 Rom. 3:9-10; 1 John 1:10 2 John 17:3; Acts 4:12; 10:43 3 Matt. 5:16; Rom. 6:13; Eph. 5:8-10; 2 Tim. 2:15; 1 Pet. 2:9-10

Thankfullness Sermon Series Description This one week sermon on thanksgiving day of 2025 was Pastor Mitchell's first thanksgiving service at Prosper. He preached on Psalm 100. Enter into God’s presence with thanksgiving Thanksgiving Psalm 100 Watch

Heading 3 Whitney Scholten Winning At Home

Heading 3 Sherilyn Schaeffer The Journey Christian Counseling

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