Galatians 1:10-2:10 | Testing Teachings | Alex Culpepper

And church. I'd invite you to open up your Bibles to Galatians, chapter one. We're going to be starting in verse 10.

I just. I'll ask you, or I'll start by asking you. First of all, if you don't know me, my name is Alex Culpepper. I'm the lead pastor here at Renovation Church. It's a gift for me every Sunday to be able to open up God's word with us.

And that's what we really value here. We believe that if there's anything for us to know or anything to kind of sink into spiritually, that it's in the Bible, it's in God's Word. And so we're inviting you to kind of join. Come along with us as we kind of walk verse by verse through the scripture this morning. Have you ever met a person who has a really quirky interest?

Well, first of all, you are one, so I just want to let you know, like, you are a person who has a quirky interest. But then, you know, there are some people who take that interest that they have and they make it a bit of an obsession. So here, I'll tell you about my quirky interest. My quirky interest is I love barbershop quartet music. That's great.

Thanks. Thanks, Gary. Thanks for your encouragement there. Now, for everyone in this room, everyone, I can guarantee you that I am the person in your life that is most obsessed with barbershop quartet music. Like, I am that person.

But because of my obsession, I know some people who. What you call an obsession, for me is actually like a passing, like, faint consideration for the them. And because these people that I know, they eat and breathe and live and die on barbershop music. In fact, my wife has very politely said that the most dramatic group of people that she has ever met in her life is a group of men who sing barbershop music. So today we're continuing our series in the book of Galatians called When the Gospel Advances.

And Paul, what he's doing is he is addressing a threat in the cities of Galatia. It's a region where him and Barnabas traveled together. They proclaimed the gospel there. There was a group called the Judaizers. And they had an obsession, right?

Like. And you know what their obsession was? Their life passion, the thing that got them up in the morning, the thing that caused them to travel long distances by land and sea so that they could go and tell people and convince them of their obsession. Their obsession was circumcision. That is the thing that they were obsessed with.

I mean, just imagine that for a second. That's what. That's the thing that they would spend their whole life chasing after. And Acts 15:1 tells us about these people. It says in verse one, but some men came down from Judea, and we're teaching the brothers, unless you are circumcised according to the custom of Moses, you cannot be saved.

These people in Judea had heard about Paul and about his ministry in the area of Galatia. They had heard that Gentiles or non Jews were coming to believe in the Gospel. And they became very concerned that there was this movement that these people who have no background in the Jewish faith, who were wholly unfamiliar with the God of the Bible up until the time when Paul showed up, that they could just somehow become a part of the faith of the one true God for free, right? That there was, like, no barrier to them being able to enter into this faith. It's just simply by the grace and the kindness of God through what Jesus accomplished, that they could do this.

And this group in Judea is very disturbed by what they found out. That they found out that all of these Gentiles are believing, and they think that they're real believers in the one true God. And so what they do is they organize a missionary force to go and issue correction in the churches of Galatia. And this group called Judaizers, we talked about them last week. They start traveling through Galatia.

They're teaching that faith in Jesus is not sufficient for salvation, that you need something more than simply faith in Jesus to enter into the kingdom, that men also needed to be circumcised. And many of the Judaizers also taught that all of the people needed to follow the Jewish feasts and festivals in order to be God's truly saved people. And so Paul's writing to the churches in Galatia because the disciples in these cities are listening to these teachers, and he's writing to protect them from abandoning what is real, genuine, true faith in Jesus. And so this is the gospel that he's writing to protect for them. The gospel is the good news.

It's a term used frequently in the New Testament. You see, the word gospel, it literally means good news. And it's the good news that faith in Jesus, and you could even just insert faith in Jesus alone, is powerful to save us from this evil age, which means that we do not contribute to our salvation. Our act of baptism does not accomplish anything for our salvation. A taking of communion does not contribute to.

To our salvation. Attending church does not contribute to our salvation. Holding the door for people at the gym or at the grocery store does not contribute to our salvation. We receive a gift from God and bring nothing to the table. That's what the gospel is.

We receive salvation by faith. And that faith is like allegiance to Jesus. It's saying, okay, I'm going to turn from following my way, and Jesus is now my leader, right? And I'm going to. I'm going to follow him and I'm going to seek to see my life increasingly conformed to his image.

He's going to forgive my sin. And you know what? I'm probably going to sin again, and I'm going to need him to forgive my sin again. And then I'm going to sin again, probably, and I'm going to need him to forgive my sin again. And the beautiful thing about relationship with Jesus is that as we walk that path and then we bring our sin to him and we confess, you know what he does?

He says, I forgive you. And he shows us his love. And his love shapes the affections of our heart to love him more and more and more so that our lives begin to change and that we become increasingly conformed into the image of Christ. So the passage that we find ourselves today, Paul, what he's doing is he is presenting what is called an apologetic for his gospel. Now, you hear the word apology in the word apologetic, but an apologetic is a defense, right?

He's just establishing a defense for the gospel that he's preached to these Galatians. And as he does so, what he does is he demonstrates principles for how believers in Jesus can test the teachings that they hear in order to determine their truth. He gives us. He's issuing. He's telling his story as his defense.

But as he tells his story, the things that he makes important, that story help us to understand what it looks like for believers in Jesus to test the teachings that they hear and ultimately to validate. He does this so that the Galatians can validate his gospel as the true gospel. So Galatians 1:11 to 12 it says, For I would have. You know, brothers, 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.

In Acts chapter 9, Saul of Tarsus is pictured to us. And that's who this is the Apostle Paul. He used to be named Saul of Tarsus. That was his Jewish name. He was breathing threats and murder against Christians.

He was Persecuting Christians. He hated that Christians were abandoning kind of the Jewish way and were conforming to this belief in Christ. And so he was on his way to a city called Damascus to carry out an inquisition of sorts so that he could persecute the Christians in Damascus. And while he's on the road there, Jesus appears to Saul. A blinding light shows up, and Saul hears the words, saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me?

And so verse 5 of Acts chapter 9 says this. He said, who are you, Lord? He believes that his God has actually shown up to him, like something has happened, a higher power has confronted him on the road. He says, who are you, Lord? And the voice said, he said, I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting.

And then verse 6 says, but rise and enter the city, and you will be told what you are to do. And in that appearance of Jesus to Saul and in the subsequent miracles that take place after that event, like there's a bunch of miraculous activity that all is attached to this appearance of Jesus. In all of that, Saul came to understand Jesus to be the fulfillment of all of the hopes and promises that are written in the Old Testament scriptures. Right like that. In Jesus appearing, he received this actually understanding of the scriptures that he did not have before.

And on top of that, received a calling, a specific calling to take the gospel to non Jews who had never heard of Yahweh, the one true God. People who he once hated, and he was going to love them by giving them the gospel. So Saul later adopts the name Paul. And the reason he adopts the name Paul is because Paul is his Roman name. So he takes on that name to better relate to the Gentiles.

And Paul here is telling his story to make a case for his teaching of the gospel as the true gospel. And in the ancient world, in order to establish truth, there are crucial principles for how you establish something as being true. You need witnesses. You need multiple attesting witnesses that will agree about the same thing. And so Paul, what he's gonna do is he's actually gonna give the people in his telling of his story three different witnesses that will attest to the truth.

And these three witnesses kind of help us understand what the first test looks like. So the first of the three witnesses is this. It's independent divine revelation. This is the first witness that he's mentioning. He's saying, hey, Jesus showed up to me.

And this matters because Paul was specifically called by God to establish the proclamation and the teaching of the gospel to a people who were totally unfamiliar with any of the Scriptures who came before. And so Paul, it's important to him that he say, I did not get this gospel from another person. Jesus himself showed up to me, was revealed to me, and because of that, I was now given the gospel that I proclaim to you. So verse 15, he goes on, it says, but when he who had set me apart in order that I might preach among the Gentiles, I did not immediately consult with anyone. Verse 17.

But I went away into Arabia and then returned again to Damascus. So again, he's telling his story here. And this aligns with what's reported to us in the Book of Acts and also another reporting in the book of second Corinthians. What happens is that the city of Damascus, the place where his conversion happened, he takes up residence there. So Saul kind of goes into hiding, away from his Jewish roots.

He stays in Damascus, and Damascus becomes like a hub where then he travels around Arabia and goes into synagogues proclaiming the gospel. Immediately, if you read the Book of Acts, it says, immediately he got up and he began proclaiming the gospel in the synagogues. So he was traveling in these areas, all around Damascus for about three years. And what he was doing is he was having these debates inside the synagogues with people, trying to convince them and prove to them that Jesus was indeed the Jewish Messiah. And that made a lot of people angry because he was doing this for three years.

And so the Jews began to get stirred up in that area. They made an arrangement with the king of Damascus, and then the king of Damascus arranged to. To kill Paul, right? There were people waiting at the gates of Damascus as Paul was on his way in. And then he had to go into hiding in the city and get let outside a back window in a basket.

And he had to go. He went into kind of this, like, secret hiding. But the point is, is that Paul was immediately proclaiming the gospel that he received from Jesus. And it says in verse 18, after three years, I went up to Jerusalem to visit Cephas, that is Peter. Peter the apostle of Jesus.

I went up to visit Cephas and remained with him 15 days. But I saw none of the other apostles except James, the Lord's brother. In what I am writing to you before God, I do not lie. The point that he is trying to make here is that he had proclaimed the gospel for three years before any apostle had ever had a single discussion with him about the gospel. So he had never met anybody else to teach him the gospel.

Jesus gave him the gospel and he started telling people about it, he had the full gospel when Jesus revealed himself. And so Paul's first witness is Jesus. He's saying, Jesus showed up and gave me the revelation of the truth of the gospel. So it goes on in chapter two, it says, After 14 years, I went up again to Jerusalem with Barnabas, taking Titus with me. I went up because of a revelation.

Paul here is speaking of what amounts to an active, continuous relationship with the Holy Spirit. So Paul has this relationship with the Holy Spirit where the Holy Spirit will show him where to go and where not to go and what to do. And the Holy Spirit apparently revealed something to Paul. It seems to be that the Holy Spirit is in a habit of revealing things to Paul about how he is to go about his ministry. And so we looked at this last time, but Paul and Barnabas, the other interesting part about this is that they walked around the villages and it says they were performing signs and wonders in the villages of Galatia, that people were getting healed in the villages of Galatia.

Right. And what Paul is subtly hinting at here is that there's a second witness. And the second witness is the supernatural activity of the Holy Spirit. There's another attestation of the truth of what he is saying.

Now, you need to know that these two things alone are not sufficient to establish the truth of Paul's gospel. Because up to this point, everything for the observers is anchored in things that only Paul has experienced. Right. Nobody else saw Jesus revealed to Paul. Only Paul had that experience.

Nobody heard Jesus speak. Only Paul heard Jesus speak. Paul was, you know, mysteriously blinded. Yes. And somebody else was called to come pray for Paul's healing.

And that healing did take place. Right. So there's a little bit of miraculous activity. But as it regards the gospel and all of the activity around it, you have nothing to verify the things that Paul is saying against with just these two witnesses, because nobody else saw the things that Paul did. And it's also interesting, Jesus says these things.

Even if you do have supernatural activity of the Holy Spirit. Jesus says this in Mark 13:22, for false Christs and false prophets will arise and perform signs and wonders to lead astray, if possible, the elect. Right. So even if Paul did have a supernatural experience, and even if there were miraculous things being done, it's not enough to attest to the truth of what Paul is saying, because Jesus says miracle workers are going to come along and they're going to prophesy and they're going to say things and you're going to believe that their miracles are real. And Their miracles probably are real in some cases, some cases are made up and they're fake and that kind of stuff.

But there are many of these kind of people out there today. Like, this is not just a them thing. This is not maybe later thing. There's a lot of this kind of stuff happening today. And so Paul needs a third witness to come to the stand.

Galatians 2, 2. He says, I went up because of a revelation and set before them the gospel that I proclaim among the Gentiles in order to make sure that I was not running or had not run in vain. So the time frame this is now, this moment that he's describing is now 17 years after Jesus had first appeared to him. It's three years and then an additional 14 years. And in this 17th year, after Paul started proclaiming the gospel, the Holy Spirit revealed to Paul that it was very important that he make an appointment with the apostles to go and talk to them.

Whatever that revelation was that he received, it clarified to Paul that if he was not aligned with the apostles, then it would mean that he had been deceived by a false Jesus, that it would mean that the energy that he had spent for the last 17 years proclaiming the gospel and trying to follow Jesus and teaching people about who he was, that it would have all been wasted. And so he's pointing here to the important third witness, which is alignment with the other apostolic witnesses, the alignment with what the other apostles of Jesus have said about Jesus. And so while Paul did not get his teaching from the other apostles, if Paul's teaching ended up being at odds with what those apostles taught, it would have meant that Paul was deceived and that he would have been deemed a false apostle. And so verse six, from those who seem to be influential, what they were makes no difference to me. God shows no partiality.

Those I say who seemed influential added nothing to me. He says here, God doesn't play favorites, right? Like the gospel is the gospel independent of who bears it and who proclaims it. What matters is, is it the true Gospel? And Paul says here, when I gave them my gospel, they did not change the gospel that I gave them.

They added nothing to me. They didn't add anything to what I told them. My gospel didn't need to change after I met them. So verse 7, on the contrary, when they saw that I had been entrusted with the gospel to the uncircumcised, just as Peter had been entrusted with the gospel to the circumcised, verse 8. For he who worked through Peter worked also through me.

Peter saw Jesus face to face, walked with Jesus, saw the transfiguration of Jesus up on a high mountain, Paul encountered Jesus in his glory. And they both agreed on the same gospel. They had the same truth with them. They gave, it says they gave the right hand of fellowship. All of the people who walked with Jesus after they heard Paul's gospel said, yeah, you're with us.

We're working together here. And so it's not about who teaches the gospel. It's not about the authority of any particular apostles or preachers or leaders. It's not about whether or not, like everything at the end of the day is about whether or not the gospel is Jesus gospel. And so our first test here, the first test that gets applied, and this is the primary test.

There's one primary test, there's a handful of secondary tests, but there's one primary test that we go to absolutely to determine whether or not the truth of something that is being proclaimed can be relied on. And so the first test is all gospel teaching must align with what the apostles taught, the Scriptures. That's what we call the New Testament Scriptures. I love in the Book of Acts, there's this group of people, there's the city that Paul goes to. He takes the gospel to.

It's called Berea. And when he shows up to Berea and he begins teaching the people in the synagogues, what he finds is that the Bereans are listening to what he's saying and examining all of the scriptures to figure out if the things that Paul is saying are actually true. They test everything that Paul tells them by the word of God to determine the truth of what Paul is saying. And Paul says, this is beautiful. I love this.

This is fantastic that people would do this. That should tell us something. Like, we should be a people who are examining the Scriptures, who are committed to knowing what the Scripture says. So that when teachers come along and they proclaim a certain thing, we can test what they're saying by what the Scripture says. So there are two more tests that Paul brings along there.

Again, they're not primary tests, but they help support him as a true proclaimer of the gospel, and they help support his gospel as a true gospel. So Galatians 1. So now we're going back. We're looking at the second test that he gives. In chapter or verse 10, it says 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. So what Paul is saying here is that he is willing to suffer for the gospel that he proclaims. He's willing to endure suffering. Now, this has already been displayed with clarity in the cities of Galatia, because if you read in the Book of Acts, where he's traveled from city to city to city, the reason that he moves on from one city to the other is after he proclaims the gospel there, it creates a stir in the city. A lot of the Jews in the city get together and they find a way to kick Paul out of the city through some kind of persecution.

In fact, in one of the cities, he gets stoned. And I think we're to presume that he gets stoned to death in that city, and then he's raised from the dead as the disciples gather around him to pray for him. But the point is, everywhere he goes, he's not making friends as he goes there. Now people are getting saved, and he's showing love to people, and he's seeing people come into the kingdom, but he is creating a lot of enemies as he goes from place to place to place. And so verse 13, for you have heard of my former life in Judaism, how I persecuted the church of God violently and tried to destroy it.

And I was advancing in Judaism beyond many of my own age. He was like, I was like, at the top ranks of the top ranks among my own people. So extremely zealous was I for the traditions of my fathers. What Paul is saying here is that, I mean, I had earned a lot of status and a lot of favor. I had proven a lot for myself in the Jewish tradition.

And Paul, at this point, he's saying that he is fully accepted, that his calling comes with suffering, right? His gospel. He's trying to make the case here that his gospel adds zero material benefit to his life, right? Like, if you were to evaluate Paul from a worldly perspective, you would look at him and you would say he threw away everything for the sake of. Of holding on to Christ.

So Paul's motive here is pure. He is not preaching this gospel for any kind of gain. But then we also kind of need to look at the motive of his detractors. Because as Paul puts his motive in front of the people, he's kind of simultaneously contrasting himself with the Judaizers who are coming along and teaching them something else. So think about this for me.

Why would Jewish believers or people who claim to be believers in Jesus come from Judea and travel so far out to where Gentiles are to Convince them to believe a different Gospel. Why would they put all of that effort in? Paul intentionally, in this kind of. In the story that he tells, he intentionally speaks of his calling to non Jewish people, that five times he's calling to Gentile five times. In this story, he intentionally lists three non Jewish nations that he was preaching in.

Early on. In chapter two, he takes the time to mention to us Titus, who is a very personal disciple of Paul's, who Paul spent time to develop. And Titus was a non Jew, a Greek. He does all of this to make a point that the people who are coming down from Judea are motivated by prejudice.

We see this come through in verse three of chapter two. But even Titus, who was with me, was not forced to be circumcised, that is, by the apostles, though he was a Greek. So Paul here is referencing the meeting that he had with the apostles the 17 years after he started his ministry. He went to this meeting with the apostles and he mentions Titus because Titus is not a Jew, but is a believer in Jesus. And while they were at this meeting in Jerusalem, there begins to be this dispute, right?

Because there's the apostles there, but then there are also just other people in the Jerusalem church there. And everybody's kind of in this meeting and they're all talking together. And there's a bit of an argument about Titus that arises because there were some saying that Titus had to be circumcised in order to be saved and that he wasn't actually fully delivered from the evil age until he completed the process of circumcision. And Paul says here, you need to know that the apostles did not force Titus to do this, verse 4, yet because of false brothers secretly brought in. And he says in verse five to them, we did not yield in submission even for a moment, so that the truth of the Gospel might be preserved for you.

So what Paul is saying is, yeah, the apostles, they did not require this. But instead what was happening is that some people made arrangements. Some people in this church in Jerusalem kind of opened the back door to let some of these false brothers in, to kind of give their perspective on Titus in the middle of these meetings, because Titus wasn't Jewish enough for them. So Paul, on the one hand, like, he just displays incredible integrity in this meeting, right? But those false teachers, on the other hand, what are they motivated by?

Hatred of the Gentile way of life and tradition, Hatred of everything that is unclean, Right? Opposition to simply letting the Gentiles get into the kingdom for free. We've had to work as a people for millennia. In order to get to this point, they should have to work just as much as we have to work. And so while as Jews, like we've been spending all of this time, we've gone through all of these traditions, and it's not fair that they should be let in for free.

So test two, and this is the supporting test. Test number two. Does the life of the teacher display integrity with the teaching? What Paul does in this moment, as these Jews come forward to accuse Titus and to try to force something on him, Paul shepherds Titus and he protects them from these liars, right? He stands guard over Titus.

Saul of Tarsus, at one time would have been the most devout hater of Gentiles, a racist of all racists. And now Paul is risking his life to love the Gentiles and disciple them and give them the message of redemption. And in this case, with Titus being very personal and protective in caring for him. So let's look at the final test. The final test.

So again, going back, we're going to now look. In verse 21 of chapter one, it says, Then I went to the regions of Syria and Cilicia, and I was still unknown in person to the churches of Judea that are in Christ. So this is after he gets out of Damascus, in this period of 14 years, he goes into these regions that he mentions. And so he's here and he says, they didn't know who I was. They had never met me down in Judea.

But they were only hearing it said, he who used to persecute us is now preaching the faith. What he's saying is that is that years before, he traveled with Barnabas to Galatia, the churches in Judea, which is the churches where the Judaizers come from. They had heard testimony of a changed life in Paul. Like Paul was actively bearing the fruit of a person who had been transformed from the inside out. And not only that, but verse 23 goes on, and it says, they only were hearing it said, he who used to persecute us is now preaching the faith he once tried to destroy.

And they glorified God because of me. These churches in Judea, what they were doing is that they were giving glory to God. Because of Paul's radical transformation, they glorify God their Father. Faith was encouraged and strengthened because of what God had accomplished in and through me and what he was accomplishing. So what you have is you have two things.

You have Paul's life, the fruit of a life transformed by Jesus. But then you also have the Fruit of lives impacted beyond his life. Later in this letter, Paul's going to mention something called the fruit of the Spirit and what the life of a person who follows Jesus should increasingly look like. And the reason he does that in part is he does that as an instruction to the Galatians for how they are to live. But the other reason is he's giving them a tool to evaluate the fruit of the detractors who are coming into the churches, look at the fruit that they bear in their lives to determine whether or not they're really reliable witnesses in what they say.

And as he closes out, he mentions one more fruit as he closes out his story. This is the very end of the story that he tells to defend his proclamation of the Gospel. He says, when James and Cephas and John, these are all apostles, people who knew Jesus personally and walked with Jesus in his ministry, who seemed to be pillars, perceived the grace that was given to me, right? That God had extended kindness to me in the Gospel. They gave me the right hand of fellowship to Barnabas and me, and that we should go to the Gentiles and they to the circumcised, that there's independent callings.

Here. Verse 10, it says in verse 10 only they asked us to remember the poor, the very thing I was eager to do. This is crucial, and this is like the final piece of Paul's defense. Paul knew that one of the most significant implications of the Gospel is that it moves us from the place of pride into the place of humility. So test number three, and this is again a supporting test.

Does the teaching change lives and produce eager humility? Do you see that as people increasingly are shaped by the Gospel, that they're willing to spend time with children, that they're willing to spend time listening to widows, that they're willing to spend time serving people who can give nothing back to them, that they're willing to spend money to give to the poor, not out of compulsion, but out of a heart that wants to draw near to those people in love. These attitudes are produced by the Gospel working itself out in the lives of people.

Okay, so what? So what? Number one, the Scriptures are a reliable witness. I realize that you heard me say a lot of stuff about how we can trust what the apostles say and how we can trust the Scriptures and how we can trust the Bible. And you're like, okay, you said all that, but I don't really know that I can trust the Bible.

I don't really know that the Scriptures are reliable. And so I just. I Want to give you a few things. Number one, that there's. There's more evidence that the New Testament Scriptures came from the.

The actual apostles of Jesus than there is the evidence that, like, Homer wrote the Iliad. Right? There's. There are things that we assume even about, like Roman historians. There's more evidence that the apostle was.

The apostles wrote the New Testament Scriptures than there is that Roman historians wrote the history of Rome. Okay, so, so, so we have just the archaeological evidence that indicates this. We have manuscript evidence that indicates this. Like the period of time of our first manuscripts. Some of them are within 30 or 40 years of the people who claim to have written them.

Right? And this is significant. There's no other document that that's that old, that we have that, like, manuscript evidence in that close of time. Right? And so there's that piece.

But then, so you're like, okay, well, big deal. They were from the apostles. Well, who cares? Why should I believe the apostles?

The apostles were willing to die for what they claimed to see and experience in Jesus.

They were held at the point of the sword. And the only thing that they had to say is, yeah, we made it all up. And if they said we made it all up, they would not have died. But they could not say that because they had actually seen Jesus with their own eyes and heard his words with their own ears. They were willing to die to stay committed to the truth that he had died and risen from the dead.

Paul was willing to change his life and throw everything that he had away because Jesus appeared to him on a road and called him to preach this gospel and completely changed the trajectory of his life. Paul died for that faith. Caesar had Paul killed for that faith that he proclaimed. So that's so what, number one. So what?

Number two? So then, because the Scriptures are reliable, we as God's people have the responsibility to test every teaching. So first Timothy, chapter four, verses one and two. Now the Spirit expressly says, so Paul's like, I've said a lot of things to you. I've communicated a lot.

The Holy Spirit has given me so much for you. But you need to know this especially I know that the Spirit is saying this. Be convinced of this in later times. Some will depart from the faith by devoting themselves to deceitful spirits and teachings of demons through the insincerity of liars whose consciences are seared. As Paul devotes his life to proclaiming the gospel, he's aware of something unique.

Before Christ came. He knows that false gods ruled over the nations that People worshiped false gods. And now that Christ has come with a message about liberating people out of kind of the ownership of those false gods and into ownership of Jesus as a result, the dark spiritual powers are very upset about that. And they are employing a new means of attempting to recapture people who are hearing the message of Jesus. And so they do that now by developing new teachings and false teachings in order to lead people astray and imprison them once again into a false gospel.

And there are many who have placed false hope in a false good news that does not come from the scriptures but has been manufactured by devils to lead people away from the truth. That's what Paul. And so what does that mean for us? That means that we need to be equipped to test teaching because we live in the later times. We are in the later times right now.

And a lot of people have a lot of stuff to say about Jesus. And as people who God has called not only to hear and receive the gospel, but we put on the wall out there that we are called here to bless, which means that we're also called to bless our spheres of influence with the gospel. It's going to require us to be ready to sift through the lies that people have heard about Jesus so that we can help them hold on to the truth of the true gospel. Okay, so, church, would you pray with me, please?

Jesus, I thank you for what you have accomplished for us in your death and your burial and your resurrection and the life that you lived. God, you showed us the beauty of who you are. I thank you for fully revealing yourself to your apostles who walked with you. God, I thank you for leading and directing them to make sure that they wrote down the things that they saw and heard.

God, I thank you for appearing to Paul who was willing to write down for us the things that he saw and heard in you, God, that through these apostles and their writings and the things that they wrote down, we can have certainty as to who you were and what you are extending to us in the hope of the gospel. God, I thank you for all of these things.

And so, Holy Spirit, now I ask especially that you would press on our hearts that we would not be lackadaisical with the Scriptures, that we would not neglect the Scriptures, that we would not be given over more to seeking after some kind of experience or seeking after some kind of sign or some kind of wonder or some kind of feeling, feeling that we would not be given more over to that than we would be given over to grounding everything in the testimony of the apostles and the testimony of all those who have written things for us for our benefit. God, would you help us to trust you and would you lead us to finding ourselves consistently grounded in the true gospel? We ask this in Jesus, mighty name. Amen.