This transcript was generated by whisper.ai.

I want to welcome you to day three of our look together through Galatians
chapter one. As we look at Galatians chapter one, we are focusing on the good
news that God has for our lives. You might remember those old good news and bad
news jokes.

Well today I don't have good news and bad news. I've got some good news and some
good news. Remember in our look at Galatians chapters one and two of Galatians
is all about the gospel, about the good news.

Chapters three and four are all about the law and how the law leads us, teaches
us towards the good news. And chapters five and six are all about the freedom in
Christ that you and I have because of the good news, how you live it out. The
good news is the gospel.

The words mean the same thing. Gospel defined means good news, but it means good
news with a capital G and a capital N. A capital G because it is the best news
ever told.

It is, it is good, it is good. And a capital N, it is news because this is the
event that changed our world more than any other. And it is the event that
changes my life, your life more than any other.

Because it's good news for you. Good news of the fact that Jesus Christ loves
you. He's given himself for you.

You need some good news in your life. Maybe your job's not going very well,
maybe struggles in your family, maybe just internal struggles. You're just
struggling with an internal sense of loss for some reason.

You need some good news. Listen, it's already been spoken. God has good news,
but you have to take care.

Let no one steal from you that good news, and people will try to. Satan doesn't
want you to hear the good news. He doesn't want you to live a good news life.

He wants you to live a bad news life. And so Galatians 1 and even into chapter 2
of Galatians is all about how you and I are to handle the good news. We've been
given this incredible gift of the good news.

And both for my life and the people's lives who are around me, I need to handle
that gift in the right way so that I can enjoy it in the right way. How do I
handle the good news? Well today we're going to take a look at a beginning point
on how to handle the good news.

We're going to begin where Paul began. The good news. How do you handle it?

How do you handle it with conviction? It is so good, you can't handle it by
saying, "Well, maybe it's good, maybe it's not. " No, you have to be convinced
because it is so good.

There is only one good news. Listen to the conviction with which Paul speaks
about the good news in verses 6 to 10. Remember the Galatians are beginning to
fall away from the good news, begin to follow a false teaching, and Paul says
this to them, "I am astonished that you are so quickly deserting the one who
called you by the grace of Christ and are turning to a different gospel, which
is really no gospel at all.

Evidently, some people are throwing you into confusion and are trying to pervert
the gospel of Christ. But even if we, or an angel from heaven, should preach a
gospel other than the one we preach to you, let him be eternally condemned. As
we have already said, so now I say it again, if anybody is preaching to you a
gospel other than the one you accepted, let him be eternally condemned.

" Am I now trying to win the approval of men or of God? Or am I trying to please
men? If I were still trying to please men, I would not be a servant of Christ.

Paul writes about the good news with great conviction, and he's saying here that
the capitalized good news can only have one headline, "Jesus Christ gave himself
for our sins," that phrase that we looked at yesterday. That's the headline.
That is good news for a world.

That is good news for you. That is the good news that came when Jesus came into
this world. The angels, remember, when Jesus was born said, "There is good news
of great joy for all the people, a Savior who is Christ the Lord.

" That's the good news. You want the good news in one word? The word is grace.

Grace means undeserved love. It means unearned, but given freely. Paul writes
here and he says, "You're turning to a different gospel.

You can't have a different headline to this good news. It's impossible. " And so
he says, "I'm astonished that you are so quickly deserting," and that phrase has
the idea of you haven't yet deserted, but you're headed the wrong way.

I see you headed toward a cliff, and I want to warn you before you get there.
What was this wrong way that they were headed when they were listening to the
false teaching of the Judaizers? And the Judaizers added works to the beginning
of the gospel and the end of the gospel.

At the beginning, they added circumcision saying, "You must be circumcised in
order to follow the gospel of Jesus Christ," and at the end, they added
ceremony. You have to follow all these Old Testament ceremonies in order to be a
follower of Jesus Christ. They built sort of like a gospel sandwich.

They put Jesus in the middle, but these two beliefs of theirs on either end. And
Paul says, "That's no gospel at all. The message has to stand alone.

You add to it or you take from it, and you have no good news at all. " What he's
saying is this. If you try to have more than grace or less than grace, it isn't
grace at all.

Grace stands alone. God has unmerited favor towards you. How can you say, "God
has unmerited favor towards you, and here's how you earn it"?

That doesn't make any sense. God's grace is all-powerful. So how can you say,
"God's grace is all-powerful," except in this case?

That doesn't make any sense. Paul's saying grace stands alone. All you need is
grace.

I said we were going to turn to Luther's commentary a few times as we walked
through this book, and I love what Luther says at this point. He says, "The
world bears the gospel a grudge because the gospel condemns the religious wisdom
of the world. " Why do people not accept this good news?

Because the religious wisdom of the world is, "I can make it to God on my own.
That appeals to my pride. " And if somebody tells me, "You can't make it to God
on your own.

You need a gift. You need a gift that only God can give. " That's why sometimes
people bear the gospel a grudge.

They don't accept it. They miss out. And this is why Paul speaks so strongly
here about the good news.

He says if someone preaches to you a different gospel, he's very powerful. He
says, "Let him be accursed. " That is a word that indicates the danger of
playing with the gospel and the importance of keeping the central message
central.

Let him be, he says, eternally condemned. Why was Paul so harsh here? Because
the stakes are so high.

These were people who were being taught false truths, but they were being taught
these false truths not out of ignorance, but these false teachers were teaching
in order to gain power over others. And Paul says if someone's doing that, let
them be accursed. Let me give you a picture of why Paul has such deep emotion
here.

If someone were to hurt one of your children intentionally, you would want them
to be prosecuted to the full extent of the law because they hurt your child. And
judgment should come because of the harm they brought to your child. Paul is
speaking here about false teachers who are stealing from spiritual children that
he has brought up.

They're trying to steal from them eternity and to lead them astray from this
truth. And the only reason they were teaching these false truths was so that
they could feel a little more powerful, so that they could satisfy their
feelings of jealousy against Paul. And so Paul says very powerfully, "Let them
be accursed if they do that.

" That's how important this is. Remember, Paul is very protective in these
verses, and the reason he's so protective is because what he's talking about is
so important. In essence, Paul is focusing on the good news as the only headline
in the story, and he's saying this, "If any other news is good news, then Christ
died needlessly.

There would be no reason for him to do what he did. " I talked to many people
today who struggle at this point. They know they have a relationship with Jesus
Christ, and they know the good news has come into their lives.

But as they talk to other people, they feel like, "Oh, it would be judgmental
for me to say to them, 'You need this good news, too. ' Maybe they can get to
God some other way, and it would be judgmental for me to say Jesus is the only
way. " Well, first of all, it's not judgmental because you're not the one who
said Jesus is the only way.

Jesus said that himself. So you're just passing along what Jesus said, and it's
never judgmental to pass along what somebody else said, especially Jesus Christ.
But even more than that, think about what you're saying.

When you say, "Well, the good news is good news for me, and maybe other people
can get to God another way," what you're saying is this. You're saying Jesus
didn't have to die. You're saying there are other ways to God.

And if there are other ways to God, besides through Jesus Christ and what he did
on that cruel cross, then what happened on that cross didn't have to happen. I
could have chosen one of the other paths. And if what happened on that cross did
not have to happen, then God is a cruel God.

Why would he allow Jesus to go through that suffering? Why would Jesus choose to
go through that suffering except that it was absolutely necessary? Jesus did not
die needlessly.

He died because we all need him. And the good news is he died for all, not for
one certain race or one certain people. Remember, Jesus died in a Middle Eastern
country.

That's where he gave his life. Remember, Jesus is a Jewish man in his human
flesh. So Jesus gave himself for all, and all need him.

The good news, do not let anyone steal from you. The fact that the good news is
good because it's given to all. And the good news is good because we all need it
in our lives.

Don't let anybody rob you of the good news. Don't let anybody rob you of what
Jesus Christ wants to do in your life and my life through the good news. Jesus,
thank you for dying for us.

It was not needless. There are not many ways to salvation, or why would you have
given yourself like that? You came because that was the only way.

And you gave yourself. You suffered because you love me. You love us.

And we thank you for that love. We thank you that you went through that evil day
in order that the good news, the good news can happen in my life. Thank you,
Jesus.

In your name. Amen.