No Other Gospel [Part 1]

Pastor, author, and Bible teacher, Alan Wright.

Because this is our Magna Carta. This is our proclamation of absolute liberty in Christ Jesus. That's Pastor Alan Wright. Welcome to another message of good news that will help you see your life in a whole new light. I'm Daniel Britt, excited for you to hear the teaching today in the series Galatians, presented at Rinaldo Church in North Carolina. If you're not able to stay with us throughout the entire program, I want to make sure you know how to get our special resource right now. It can be yours for your donation this month made to Alan Wright Ministries. So, as you listen to today's message, you can go deeper as we send you today's special offer.

Contact us at PastorAlan.org or call 877-544-4860. More on this later in the program. But now, let's get started with today's teaching.

Here is Alan Wright. We're going to be in Galatians chapter 1, and we're going to be in Galatians for a long time. We are not going to hurry. We are going to take our sweet time. And if we need to linger on a verse, we'll linger on a verse.

If we need to linger on a word, we'll linger on that word. Because this is our Magna Carta. This is our proclamation of absolute liberty in Christ Jesus. Galatians is what transformed Martin Luther's life and thus transformed the world as we know it by this Reformation that came about. And we're living in a day of a new, I think, move of God in which there is a fresh Reformation within the church. So many hearts that are becoming infused with a passion for the purity and the simplicity of the gospel. My heart is bursting with gospel for you.

My heart is exploding with good news that takes great delight in what God has done for us in Jesus Christ. In his famous Screwtape letters, C.S. Lewis has a senior devil writing to a junior devil.

Screwtape writing to Wormwood. And in chapter 25, he gives him this advice on how to try to lure his, quote, subject away from the pure gospel. What we want, if men become Christians at all, is to keep them in the state of mind I call Christianity and. You know, Christianity and the crisis. Christianity and the new psychology. Christianity and the new order. Christianity and faith healing. Christianity and psychical research.

Christianity and vegetarianism. Christianity and spelling reform. If they must be Christians, let them at least be Christians with a difference. Substitute for the faith itself some fashion with a Christian coloring. The temptation is not generally for us as Christians that we abandon the gospel. The temptation is that we modify the gospel. The temptation is not that we completely rid ourselves of belief in Christ.

The temptation is to believe that the answer is Christ plus something you do. Galatians chapter 1 verses 6 through 10. I am astonished, Paul writes, that you are so quickly deserting him who called you in the grace of Christ and are turning to a different gospel. Not that there is another one, but there are some who trouble you and want to distort the gospel of Christ. But even if we or an angel from heaven should preach to you a gospel contrary to the one we preached to you, let him be accursed. As we've said before, so now I say again, if anyone is preaching to you a gospel contrary to the one you received, let him be accursed. For am I now seeking the approval of man or of God or am I trying to please man? If I were still trying to please man, I would not be a servant of Christ.

I want to just talk about three things. Why could the Galatians or any of us be so easily misled, bewitched, and taken away from the purity of the gospel? Secondly, why is Paul so mad?

And thirdly, why is the gospel so magnificent after all? I had a good time preaching at Sojourn Church in Carrollton, Texas last week after leading, helping lead a conference at a theological round table that week, but I missed you. And I love being back home, but I got to meet, I'd met him before, but got to know Chris McCrae, the youth pastor at Sojourn Church in Carrollton.

Bob Roach and I were there. We had supper with Chris and also the young adult pastor, and they told me a story I'd never heard before. I couldn't believe I'd never heard this story, but it's legendary in that church.

It's part of the fabric of the story of those churches. You see, Chris was a young man still, young children, but eight years ago, he was on their staff. He was doing various janitorial work, and he aspired to be in ministries with students or maybe ministries with families, and so he was working there in the janitorial work, and he kept coming to Pastor Terry and saying, you know, when can I be promoted to this? Pastor Terry said, listen, you just keep working where you are, flourish where you are, your time will come. So this went on for several years. He kept coming. When?

I think I'm ready now. Pastor Terry said, just flourish where you are, you know, grow where you've been planted, your time will come. So this went on for a few years, and one day the staff had a big staff outing, and they went hunting. They were deer hunting, and they also were hunting. They had seen a wild hog out there on this big range. They were hunting it, and it got dark, and Chris said that he was going back to the lodge, but he stopped on the way by this beautiful lake, and he just wanted to sit there and meditate. He was on this four-wheeler, and he just got out there to sit and meditate for a while. Well, the guys over 100 yards away in the little bit of light, and they couldn't see very well, and one of the guys said, hey, look across the lake.

There's that wild boar we've been after, that hog, and they all agreed, yeah, that's it. And so they pulled out the AK-47 and unloaded it. The bullet went through Chris's abdomen, all the way through, blew out the other side. They heard some bullets hit metal, and they knew something was wrong. They go over, and there he is lying there.

He starts telling them what he wants them to tell his wife. Takes an hour and a half for the helicopter to get there, and all the while, Senior Pastor Terry is just crying, and get him to the hospital. Bullet had missed his vital organs, and yet, and so he lived, obviously, and yet he had this horrible wound, severe pain, and he had to leave the wound open for a long time.

It was about a seven-month recovery. When he got home from the hospital, I thought this was interesting. One day he was feeling up under his arm, and it was his wife. He said, feel this. What is that?

She said, I don't know. You need to go check that out. It feels funny. You go back, and there was a bullet that was in his arm. Sent him home from the hospital with a bullet still unidentified in his arm, and seven months of recovery, and he got well from this. When he came back to the church, Pastor Terry said, you know, I've been thinking about it.

I think it's time to promote you, and put them over the young children. He said, oh, Pastor Terry, you're just doing that because one of your staff shot me. He said, no, no, really.

I think you're ready for this. He said, alright, and Chris is a funny guy. He's funny.

He's kind of a big guy. He'd bring it up, said I was not only shot, but I was mistaken for a wild hog by my own staff. He said, every now and then, if he needs to get something from the senior pastor, everybody remembers that open wound, and he'll just come back, and he said, Pastor, I feel like it's opening up. It's opening up.

It's a big one. I got freaked out hearing this story that now eight years later they can laugh about it. I just stood in front of his church, and I said, y'all, I don't know who does what around here. I said, but this man has got job security. You cannot fire a guy that you have shot with an AK-47.

You can't do it. I said, I turned to Chris. I said, you ought to be in charge of this place. You ought to have gotten more out of this than you have gotten.

You ought to own the place by now, brother, and everybody is just like, why? Why we think this way is that there's something within us that has this notion that big sacrifice somehow elicits big reward. Big sacrifice could pay for something, or big sacrifice could earn something, and so the brother takes a bullet for the team, and you ought to get promoted.

Something ought to happen. Instinctively, why are we so easily misled away from the purity of the Gospel? Because, instinctively, we know there must be some sacrifice great enough to get us forgiven and to earn us favor.

That's Alan Wright, and we'll have more teaching in a moment from today's important series. Maybe you're like many Christians in America today. You're stunned by how fast a nation's culture has turned away from God. The values of our country have changed. Suddenly, most people don't go to church or have a Biblical worldview.

It can make you feel like an alien in your own culture. There's a lot to learn from Daniel when he was exiled to the pagan land of Babylon. Through our special offer this month, you can learn to live under the favor of God in an alien culture the way Daniel did. When you give before the end of the month, we'll send you Pastor Alan's audio series, Daniel, A Favored Foreigner.

You may feel like a stranger in this world, but as God showed favor to Daniel in his foreign land, God's grace is upon you as well. Your donation will not only help you navigate through these troubling times, but it will also help someone else. Thanks for your partnership with Alan Wright Ministries. Now we are in our final days of offering this special product. Call us at 877-544-4860. That's 877-544-4860. Or come to our website, PastorAlan.org.

Today's teaching now continues. Here once again is Alan Wright. I was talking to Executive Director Mickey in the office the other day, and somehow the subject of Jephthah that I preached on not too long ago, the warrior who had been ostracized by his brothers because he was the son of a prostitute and made a harsh ungodly oath and said to the Lord, if you will give me victory over the Ammonites, whereby his own people would accept him again, he said if you'll give me victory, I'll do anything. I'll sacrifice anything that comes out of my house.

And he goes home, and it's his only daughter that comes out. And we were just reflecting about how that temptation, that tendency in the human heart is if we want to get something from God, we tend to think the way we think as people in the flesh, we tend to just immediately go, there's got to be some price. What is the price?

I'll lay it all down. I'd sacrifice my own child in order to get this from you, God. And the reason we feel that way is because there is a need for sin somehow to be atoned for, to be paid for. There is a sense in which none of this is free. And so what Jephthah didn't realize is that there is a price to be paid, but you can't pay it, Jephthah. See, the gospel of Jesus Christ doesn't say, oh, sin doesn't matter and it doesn't need to be paid for. And the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ doesn't say that, oh, God's favor is upon you because he just loves everybody and everything is just fine with him.

That's not what the gospel announces. The gospel says that there is a price that must be paid for sin and there is a price if we are going to be bought back into the family of God wherein we would receive favor upon favor, grace upon grace. But that price is too dear, too big, impossible for any human being to pay. And therefore God became a human being so that a human being could pay that price on behalf of all humanity. Our problem is that we actually think too small and too big of ourselves, for we have nothing valuable enough to offer God that would ever be able to buy his favor. We are like little children that are spilling our piggy banks open in hopes to buy a Ferrari.

It's not going to happen. You don't have anything valuable enough to win God's favor nor pay the debt of human sin. But we tend to think that way because a price was needed. So the Galatians are susceptible just like we are to agitators, false teachers. They come in and they begin to mislead the people essentially saying, okay, you got Christ but you also need to follow this Old Testament rite of inclusion, the circumcision.

If you're really going to inherit the promises that were given to Abraham, you have to not only accept Christ but you have to take on the Jewish custom as well. You have to add these things to what Christ has done because it feels almost wrong to us that it could be so free. And we are prone to think that therefore we must add something. We're easily misled. That's why we're easily misled. The other reason that we're easily misled, just as the Galatians were, is that we desperately want to belong.

It is ancient and modern. It is urgent in every heart. I want to belong. An increasingly orphaned generation will look for any potential means to know that you belong.

You're included. When I was in high school, I really wasn't into all the civic clubs and all that stuff. I was playing soccer and tennis and had a girlfriend. But I did, some of the guys, they were joining one of these high school civic clubs and so they had a little initiation rite. You had to do a little something and this was no big hazing going on at some fraternity. This was just a little initiation.

But I had a couple things to do. One of which, who came up with this, but in order to get into the club, I had to put on a black robe, go out in front of a shopping center. People were coming out of the stores and I had to sell enough coat hangers to, I think I had to make five bucks. I stood out in front of the drug store in a black robe selling coat hangers for a penny or two until I made five bucks.

I made the money and I just thought this is, this is, this is just the dumbest thing I've ever done in my life. It's amazing to me what people will do to be in a club. I mean people will do stuff to be in a club. People will brand themselves. I mean people will scar themselves. People will, people will, people will nearly die and some of them had, trying to get into a club.

Kids will join gangs. People do almost anything. People, people will lie. People will pretend.

People do, they want to belong. So here are the Galatians and someone comes along and says, you know in the Old Testament the sign of belonging, circumcision, and okay you're a Christian, you're a Christ, but how do you know that you really fully belong to God? If you'll do this ritual then you'll also, that'll be, what I'm saying is that we look for some outward sign, some physical, some tangible demonstration evidence that we're in. And see Christians, we tend to do this too.

You don't want to realize sometimes that we do this. I mean it's like I've been in churches where you, the thought, if you raised your hands, everybody in that whole church will look at you like you cannot, don't you dare raise your hands in this church. And I've been in other churches like if you don't raise your hands people will look at you like why aren't you raising your hand? Everybody else is raising their hand. I've been in meetings where it's like if you got prayed for and you fell down under the power of the Holy Spirit, everybody in that whole church, they'd be like calling an ambulance.

I mean what is going on? I've been in other meetings where if you didn't fall down it's like you don't belong in this place. I mean we can turn anything into an outward external evidence of including and what Galatians is going to teach us, what Paul's going to say over and over and over and over again until you get it is that you were baptized into Christ alone, that you were immersed in Him by the power of the Gospel and the Holy Spirit is a deposit inside of you guaranteeing your inheritance in the saints. He bears witness to your spirit that you're a child of God.

You don't need anything else than the presence of the Holy Spirit bearing witness to the power of the Gospel in you. There is in Christ no Jew nor Greek. There's no slave nor free. There's no black or white.

There's no male or female. We are one in Him and we belong because of Christ and Christ alone. Hallelujah! So whoever or whatever rejects you cannot ultimately reject you because you already fundamentally belong in the family of God. What a message we have to tell this orphaned world. We have a message, come and belong. But we're not inviting you to a cult where you're going to come and do secret initiation rites.

We're inviting you into the freedom that is in Christ Jesus by the Holy Spirit. We're one family and you belong, sister. You belong, brother. You're my sister. You're my brother. And Jesus is our brother. Hallelujah!

We're easily misled for a lot of other reasons but I've got to move on. Now, why was Paul so mad? He's mad! I mean normally in his letters at this point he starts going into a traditional prayer of thanksgiving for you know how wonderful everybody is in the church and how I give my God thanks in every remembrance of you and so forth and you know lovey-dovey and all this but he doesn't do this here. He just goes, I am astonished at what has happened. Later he says, who has bewitched you foolish Galatians?

He's mad! Alan Wright, and I can't wait to hear the conclusion and more of this teaching. No other gospel is our teaching. It's from the series Galatians.

Alan is back in a moment with additional insight on this for your life and our final word today. Maybe you're like many Christians in America today. You're stunned by how fast a nation's culture has turned away from God. The values of our country have changed. Suddenly most people don't go to church or have a biblical worldview.

It can make you feel like an alien in your own culture. There's a lot to learn from Daniel when he was exiled to the pagan land of Babylon. Through our special offer this month, you can learn to live under the favor of God in an alien culture the way Daniel did. When you give before the end of the month, we'll send you Pastor Alan's audio series, Daniel, a favored foreigner.

You may feel like a stranger in this world but as God showed favor to Daniel in his foreign land, God's grace is upon you as well. Your donation will not only help you navigate through these troubling times, but it will also help someone else. Thanks for your partnership with Alan Wright Ministries. Now we are in our final days of offering this special product. Call us at 877-544-4860.

That's 877-544-4860. Or come to our website, PastorAlan.org. Unlock the power of blessing your life. Discover God's grace-filled vision for your life by signing up for Alan Wright's free daily blessing. If you want to fill your heart with grace and encouragement, get Alan Wright's daily blessing.

It's free and just a click away at PastorAlan.org. Alan, we come to you and we come to the good news of the gospel to be lifted up and now we know Paul is mad about something and we just got to put a bookmark here. So what is our, what can our takeaway be at a moment like this? Well, you learn a lot about somebody by what makes them mad.

Yeah, that's true. You learn something about their priorities and I think that what you see in the earliest part of the letter to Galatians, so what we're going to see throughout Daniel is that he is infuriated by those that have infiltrated the congregation and have spread little pieces of misinformation that have poisoned the gospel for any little bit of legalism starts robbing the gospel of its power. And Paul is hopping mad about that because he loves this church and he wants them to know the true and pure gospel and not some mixture of law and grace. If you only caught part of today's teaching, not only can you listen again online, but also get a daily email devotional that matches today's teaching delivered right to your email inbox free. Find out more about these and other resources at PastorAlan.org. That's PastorAlan.org. Today's good news message is a listener supported production of Alan Wright Ministries.