This transcript was generated by whisper.ai. Hi, this is Pastor Tom and I want to welcome you to Day 3 of our look through Galatians Chapter 5. We're going to be looking at verses 5-12 at the beginning of today and then verses 13-15 at the end of today. And really it's all about false teaching, the danger of false teaching and how to confront false teaching. Verses 5-12, Paul talks about the danger of false teaching. Let me read those verses for you. "But we who live in the Spirit eagerly wait to receive everything promised to us who are right with God through faith. For when we place our faith in Christ Jesus, it makes no difference to God whether we are circumcised or not circumcised. What is important is faith expressing itself in love. You were getting along so well. Who has interfered with you to hold you back from following the truth? It certainly isn't God, for he is the one who called you to freedom. But it takes only one wrong person among you to infect all the others. A little yeast frets quickly through the whole batch of dough. I am trusting the Lord to bring you back to believing as I do about these things. God will judge that person, whoever it is, who has been troubling and confusing you. Dear brothers and sisters, if I were still preaching that you must be circumcised as some say I do, why would the Jews persecute me? The fact that I am still being persecuted proves that I am still preaching salvation through the cross of Christ alone. I only wish that these troublemakers who want to mutilate you by circumcision would mutilate themselves. " Wow, it's obvious that Paul feels very strongly about this. He's talking in these verses about the danger of false teaching. And the seriousness of this danger is seen in five things that Paul tells us about these people, these false teachers. He says they hinder obedience, they persuade against your calling, they contaminate the whole, they face judgment, and they persecute teachers of the truth. First of all, he says, false teachers, why are they so dangerous? They hinder obedience. They keep you from obeying the truth. Usually by encouraging obedience to less than the truth. And usually by encouraging obedience to less than the truth in a way that promotes them, makes them look better, makes them look greater. Now sometimes that less than the truth can feel like it's even harder than the truth. Sometimes that less than the truth can feel like it's even easier than the truth. But however it feels, the truth is it focuses on the false teacher and not on Jesus Christ. That's why false teachers are so dangerous. They persuade against your calling. It certainly isn't God who's doing this, Paul says. He's the one who called you to freedom. And the false teacher's job, in essence, is to persuade you against the calling that God has put into your life. God's direction in your life is challenged by the false teacher. They get you off track. They get you off direction of what God wants to be doing. Paul says the reason they're so dangerous is they contaminate the whole. A little leaven, the picture he gives, leavens the whole batch of dough. If you ever made bread, you know, you just put a tiny bit of leaven in and all of a sudden the whole batch rises. It affects the whole. And false teaching, when it's accepted by one person in a church, it affects the whole of the church. We are tied together. And the way that we're tied together is that when one of us goes down a bad road, others of us are going to follow. That's the danger of false teaching. We live in relationship to one another. That's why Paul is so insistent against false teaching. Paul, as he talks about the danger of false teaching and the seriousness of it, says these false teachers are going to face judgment. I'm very aware of the fact that, not only here but in James, we're told that teachers will face a double judgment, that when you're teaching the truth, it's something to be very careful with. And God takes it extremely seriously. Because the truth, when taught correctly, here's what God said, now live it out. It can set you free. It can give you life. But the truth, when used for my purposes, selfishly, so that I can draw people to myself, I can make it work, but it's going to destroy people's lives. And there will be judgment for that. God takes it very seriously. Why does Paul take these false teachers so seriously? Another reason is they persecute true teachers of the truth. All attacks come from false teachers because they have to attack the ones who are telling the real truth. They can't attack the truth. The false teachers couldn't attack the truth that Paul was telling because it was obviously true. So they attacked Paul. You attack the person because the person isn't perfect. The truth is the person isn't. That's the common tactic of false teachers. And Paul, saying that he was being attacked, said, "If I'm teaching," as they are saying, their attack was, "If I'm teaching that you have to be circumcised, you have to keep the Jewish law in order to be saved, why would I still be being persecuted? " Paul is talking here about the offense of the cross. And what's so offensive about the cross? Why was he being persecuted just for telling people, "Jesus died for you. He loves you that much"? Here's what offends about the cross. It offends our pride. The cross says, "There's no work that I can do to get myself right with God. " And by saying that, it also says, "Any work that I have done to try to get myself right with God, even if it's been years of my life or the whole of my life doing good religious activities, but it's all on my shoulders, any work that I have done to get myself right with God, it's worthless. It's what Jesus did. " If you have freedom in Christ, you realize the great joy of that. But if you're depending on your works to get you right with God, that's very offensive. Because your pride says, "I've done all this work. I've put all this time into it, and now you're telling me that has been worthless? " That's what Paul went through. He spent all of his life trying to get right with God by keeping the law. And he realized, Philippians tells us, that one day he realized it was all worthless compared to the surpassing value of knowing Christ. So they persecute teachers of the truth. They face judgment. They contaminate the whole. They persuade against your calling. They hinder obedience to the truth. You want to know how Paul really feels about these false teachers? You see it in verse 12. "I wish that those who want you to mutilate yourselves by circumcision would mutilate themselves. " That's pretty strong words. And I think it causes a lot of us to think, "Wait a minute. Paul has just said a few verses before. The only thing that counts is faith expressing itself in love. " These don't sound like very loving words for him to say this about the false teachers. The truth is, Paul is loving the Galatians with these words. He's loving the people who are being hurt with these words. By telling them how serious the false teaching really is. The idea that love means you always have to use vanilla words with sickly sweet tones. That is just not in the Bible. That's not the way that Paul talks. That's not the way that Jesus talked. What does love mean? Love means that you tell the truth with the other person's best interest. False teachers and Galatians both with their best interest at heart instead of your best interest at heart. That's what real love is. And Paul here is talking about that real love. He would have loved for those false teachers to turn their hearts, and I believe some of them did, to the grace of God in Jesus Christ. The question that's behind this for me is, how do you protect yourself? How do you protect yourself against false teachings? With three words, faith, hope, and love. If you try to battle a false teacher with anger or with pride, they've already won. If they've already got you to a place of anger or pride, they've already won the battle. Even if you think you're winning the argument, you're acting just like the false teacher. You're acting in a Satan-inspired way. So they've already won the battle. Our weapons are faith, hope, and love. Paul says in verses 5 and 6, "But we who live in the Spirit eagerly wait to receive everything promised to us, who are right with God through faith. For when we place our faith in Christ Jesus, it makes no difference to God whether we're circumcised or not circumcised. What is important is faith expressing itself in love. " Do you see the hope in those verses? He says, "We eagerly wait to receive everything that was promised to us. " False teachers love to play on the fact that we're not yet in heaven, and they make false promises that you can have on earth what will be ours in heaven. You can have all the material abundance and blessings, and you can have no pain, no problems ever in your life. All these promises. Obviously, if you read the lives of people of faith in the Bible, they didn't experience those things. So why should I think I would experience those things? Jesus had problems while He walked this earth. Jesus was persecuted while He walked this earth. Jesus had needs. He was hungry sometimes while He walked this earth. I'm going to face those needs on this earth. But false teachers, they'll promise you a perfect life on earth. You can't have that. We get that in heaven. So the weapon that you use against a false teacher is hope. We are waiting for a better hope. Oh, they're promising you this now. They cannot deliver on that promise, but God will deliver. He will deliver on His promise. He has proven it again and again and again in the lives of His saints. We have the weapon of hope. We also have the weapons of faith and love. Faith expressing itself through love. A faith in Jesus Christ that expresses itself in the way that I love other people. And Paul talks in verses 13 to 15 about how that works. How does faith express itself through love? Listen to these verses. "For you have been called to live in freedom, not freedom to satisfy your sinful nature, but freedom to serve one another in love. For the whole law can be summed up in this one command, love your neighbor as yourself. But instead of showing love among yourselves, you're always biting and devouring each other. Watch out. Beware of destroying one another. " Paul is saying here that the freedom that you have in Christ, it can be used in several ways. Your freedom can be wasted. That's what the Galatians were doing as they tried to return to the law. They were going to waste the freedom that Jesus Christ had given them by returning to the old ways. Your freedom, Paul says, it can be taken advantage of. This is where Satan gets really devious. You become convinced that a life of works is not the way to freedom. So then he tries to convince you that a life of living any way that you want is where real freedom is found. Oh, Jesus will forgive you of any of your sins so you can just live any way you want. Go back to the old sinful ways before you were a Christian. Well, there wasn't freedom there then. There's not freedom there now. Paul's phrase here is you turn freedom into an opportunity for the flesh. The word flesh here doesn't mean body. It means your sinful nature, your sinful way of doing things. If I'm free from the law, I'll do whatever I want, you say. And then you get into this prison, oh, this trap, this miserable place in your life. Freedom can be taken advantage of. Satan wants you to do that. It can be wasted. Or your freedom can be used. It can be used for God's glory. How do you do that? God says you do that by serving other people in love. How do you use your freedom? You are free to serve, not out of obligation, but out of love. Now, love is not an emotion as talked about here. It can create emotions, but it's not an emotion. It is an unselfish commitment to another person. And here that commitment is expressed in serving. You want to be free, faith, hope, and love. You want to be free, serve other people in love. That's how you decide. That's how you live out this life of freedom. And that's how you protect yourself from the danger of false teaching. Jesus, as we take some time to talk to you today, teach us, show us, that the way to protect ourselves from false teachers is not just by reading truths, but also by living the truth. As we live out hope, as we live out faith, as we live out love, drawing upon your power, your strength. We are making a decision for truth. Help us to see the truth and believe it, but help us also to live the truth and do it. And in so doing, to show the world, Jesus, something of what you're like. We pray this in your name, amen. And we'll see you back tomorrow. We're going to talk about the way to live out this freedom that Christ has given us.