Act 15 - Adding to the Gospel
Tom Shrader examines the Jerusalem Council in Acts 15 where early church leaders confronted the Judaizers who wanted to add circumcision to the gospel requirements. He emphasizes that salvation comes through Christ alone, not through additional religious practices, and warns against the dumb mistake of adding anything to the simple gospel message of Christ's death and resurrection for our sins.
“What makes you a Christian is what you believe, not how you behave - it's believing the gospel that Christ died for our sin and rose from the dead.”
— Tom Shrader
Series: Dumb Mistakes: How to Avoid Them (2017)
Recorded: November 16, 2017
Duration: 39 min
Themes: salvation, grace, legalism, gospel, freedom, works, faith, truth, new believer, struggling with legalism, pastor, church leader, confused about salvation, religious background, elder, navigating doctrine
Scripture: Acts 15:1-29, 1 Corinthians 15:1-8, Galatians 2:11-16, Titus 3:3-7, Mark 6:1, Acts 17, Romans, Ephesians 2, 1 Corinthians 6
Theological Themes: soteriology, salvation by grace, justification, righteousness by faith, gospel purity, biblical authority, church councils, apostolic teaching
Full Transcript
The Early Church's Jewish Roots
Today is the last week of the series, Dumb Mistakes, How to Avoid Them. If you have Bibles, open them to Acts chapter 15. The whole premise of this series is we're going to make mistakes, we want to minimize them. The best way to learn is from watching other people screw up and then not doing it.
Acts chapter 15 says this: some men came down from Judea to Antioch and were teaching the brothers. Now here's what they're teaching: "Unless you are circumcised according to the customs taught by Moses, you cannot be saved." This brought Paul and Barnabas into sharp dispute and debate with them.
Here's the background on this. What we're talking about, and it's an amazing story, wonderful story today, we're talking about the gospel. What we're going to talk about ultimately is the dumb mistake is to add anything to the gospel.
I'm going to guess that you either know this consciously or you realize it but maybe never put it together. The early church, those first Christians were almost all Jewish. So when the church began, it's this Christian church led by primarily Jewish men. The church begins to expand. As the church expands, Peter begins to reach to the Gentiles, Paul and Barnabas begin to push out, and now the gospel goes out to Gentiles.
Paul's Missionary Expansion
As Paul and Barnabas begin to preach, God's blessing them all over. We looked at it last week: Peter delivers a message, 3,000 people get saved. Now even in that context, most of those we assume were Jews in Jerusalem, making a pilgrimage for Passover.
As Paul begins now, and in the back of your Bibles, there's always those maps—probably at your church it doesn't happen, but I know a lot of people at my church seem to spend a lot of time looking at maps while I'm teaching. So if you go to the back, almost always in any really good study Bible, you'll have a map that says Paul's first missionary journey or second missionary journey, third missionary journey. And as you look at that, what you see is that Paul's pushing into Turkey, Asia, Asia Minor. He's bringing the gospel to a bunch of men, so think of Paul going into Greece, going into Athens.
Paul goes into Athens, he begins to walk around the city. When he typically comes to a city, he goes to the synagogue, he preaches there. So when he preaches there, he says, "Here's what Isaiah said, here's what the Old Testament said, here's the fulfillment of it."
Connecting with Culture
He gets to Athens and he walks in, here are all these guys gathered together talking about Isaiah, means nothing, but he says, and I love this—I think it's Acts 17. He goes, "I'm walking around the city today and it was amazing because I saw you're very religious people, remember?" He said, "I saw these statues to these gods and then I saw, by the way, this is why you need to understand culture and the world around you and how you connect." He said, "I saw this one statue to an unknown god."
So he had all these gods, but in case we missed them, here's a statue to the unknown god. And so Paul now connects, see how he does it? Paul now makes a connection and said, "I want to teach you about that unknown god." That's why, this is my view, that's why you need to understand the culture you're in.
So for example, when I'm at summer camp this summer, we'll take about 500, 600 junior high and high school kids to the coast. Everybody always assumes you have to take this and water it down for the kids. Well, I don't, I try to connect. I don't do a very good job. I don't have illustrations out of my 401k that don't work well with junior high kids. But I will go in and I start to talk to them.
My second message is on God as father, and what I've learned over the years, it is stunning to talk to junior high and high school kids about God being their father because most of them have a really lousy image of what a father is. And all of them, sometimes you don't realize this, all of them, even from the best families, have an imperfect father. Now to say God's father, they're going, "Really? He screws up too?" So we begin to unpack that.
The Judaizers' False Teaching
Well, Paul makes this connection. As he begins to preach and teach about Jesus, the death and the resurrection, God blesses and these Gentiles become Christians.
There's a group of guys called the Judaizers and they're coming around behind Paul. Here's what they're saying: "This Paul is super. He's great. We like him a lot, but you probably know about him. He was a Pharisee and everything. So here's what he's not telling you. Yeah, there is this gospel, but until you become a Jew, you can't become a Christian. You may put your faith and trust in Christ, but you're not all the way there." Now, and they go right for it on circumcision.
There's a bunch of things we don't know. Here's one thing we do know: when you introduce this concept, you have made evangelism to the adult Gentile male population tougher. And you come to him and say, "Boy, it costs to follow Jesus." "I know I'm willing." "Let me tell you what that means." "Maybe I'm not as willing as I thought I was going to be."
Modern Applications
So at this point, you should be saying, "Who cares about this? Why would I care?" And the idea is we're going to grab the principle and see how we do the same thing. May not be circumcision, but it may be baptism. It may be church membership. It may be do this or don't do this.
So there's this big angry battle over what is the gospel. If you keep your finger right there in the book of Acts, turn to the right, you're going to hit the book of Romans and then 1 Corinthians. When you get to 1 Corinthians 15, some of you just know when you hear that, after a while, it's so cool because you go "1 Corinthians 15, oh, resurrection." And that's where Paul talks a bunch about the resurrection. Resurrection is true. If Christ didn't rise from the dead, then this whole thing is a waste of time, but Christ did rise from the dead.
At the beginning of chapter 15 of 1 Corinthians, Paul delivers what
The Gospel in a Nutshell
My friend and hero, Larry Wright, used to call this the gospel in a nutshell. So we talk about what is the gospel. Well, here it is in its essence. Paul says, "I preach that," verse one, "the gospel which I preach to you." "The gospel," verse two, "by which you were saved." We want to talk about those two words.
Here's the gospel, verse three. "I deliver the first importance that," number one, "Christ died for our sin according to the scripture." Number two, "he was buried." Number three, "he was raised on the third day according to the scripture." Now, historically, I have periodically screwed this up, not out of ignorance, just out of I get there, I get excited, we get this out, and I forget to go or neglect to go to verse five, which then talks about how Jesus appeared to Peter, to the 12, to more than 500, and ultimately to Paul himself.
Why is that important? If we have just an empty tomb, the empty tomb doesn't prove that Jesus rose from the dead. All it proves is we have an empty tomb. What we then have is a risen, visible Christ.
So here's the gospel. The gospel is Christ died. Now, that has not stopped the press of stuff. Almost anyone, unless you believe Elvis is alive, almost the same percentage believe that Jesus was born and lived, and nobody believes there's a 2,000-year-old man walking around. So almost every person alive believes Jesus died.
Why Christ Died
What this passage tells us is why He died. He died for our sin. How would I know that? It's according to the scripture. See, we can talk and talk and talk, and honestly, until we get to the scripture, it's all speculation with one guy's guess as good as the other. But the Bible tells us that Christ died for our sin.
And then what'd they do with Him? Well, what do you do with a dead guy? You bury Him. And then on the third day, the scripture told us He rose from the dead. So I like this phrase: Jesus said it is finished and died. The resurrection is God raising Jesus from the dead. The resurrection is God's amen to Jesus' "it is finished." Now they see Him. So that's the gospel. That's what's at stake.
What Saves Us
Now we still have to decide, what do we do with that gospel? Here's what Paul tells us in 1 Corinthians 15, and what we learn in scripture is that that gospel has the ability to save. What does that mean? Deliver, rescue.
The Bible teaches this: that we come into the world, and it's what we're going to unpack over the next five weeks, that we come into the world separated from God, identified by Paul as a child of disobedience, a child of wrath. So right now, I've got some pictures of Lucy here. So Lucy's 16 months. Lucy just doesn't stop smiling. Lucy does two things. Lucy smiles and Lucy eats. When the kids went and met the birth mom, they said she was a point guard, a little bitty girl, like five foot. So here's my speculation, don't know for sure. Lucy's going to be about five foot high and about five foot wide. So that's my speculation. My mom's a little bit cynical, but my mom would always say, "She'll be easier to walk over than around." That's what my mom would say.
Lucy is just like really cute. It doesn't matter. She's so darn cute that it's hard to remember sometimes that as soon as she learns to talk, she's going to say, "Screw you." Now she may not say it that way, but she's going to go, "No, mine," all of that. Every kid, so we have about 700 kids in children's ministry. Every one we've had, we've had to teach to tell the truth. We've never had to teach them to lie, not one. There's not one exception in this. Why? Because that's who we are.
The Consequences of Sin
So the Bible teaches that the wage of that sin is death, means separation from God. So when we say saved, saved from what? When I first came down here, 1975, a very different time. You know what we saw in 1975 you don't see anymore? Roadrunners. I was just telling somebody the other day, we used to see roadrunners everywhere. Now we don't see roadrunners ever. I said that, the next day I drove right in here and saw a roadrunner. So it's God going, "Really?" Bam, you stink.
So we would see this. I pull up, I can't remember where I was. It's an old Circle K. Think of the old Circle K, big old K. There's an old van out front with a bumper sticker that said, "I found it." So that was the big campaign then. So I'd seen this bumper sticker all over. I said to the guy, "I found it, you found what?" He goes, "I don't know, man, it's my brother's van." Well, it was a whole campaign from, I think it was Campus Crusade for Christ, saying, "I found Jesus." When I found out what it was, I said, "I didn't know He was lost."
What they're saying is, you don't instinctively know Him, you need to come into relationship with Him, and when you do, you're saved. Saved from the consequences of your sin, saved from eternal death. That's the whole issue here. So what saves me? And that becomes the discussion. Well, it's the gospel.
The Jerusalem Council
This thing unfolds, and to be honest now, it gets kind of ugly, because there's this big controversy. So Paul and Barnabas head down to Jerusalem for the first Jerusalem Council, and gathered together are the apostles, the leaders of the church. The presentation is made of both sides.
I think it's about verse seven. After much discussion, Peter gets up. He says, "Brother, you know, some time ago, God made the choice of me among you for me to go to the Gentiles." And he says in verse eight, "God, who knows the heart, showed that He accepted them by giving the Holy Spirit to them, just as He did us."
Now, we just read it and go, "Whatever, what's next?" This is a bombshell. Because what Peter's just said is those Gentiles are just like us. We're not better than them. He said it another way. We're just like them. So this whole discussion erupts. And the powerful point in here is that when the Holy Spirit comes into my life, that's an evidence of my being accepted by God. They are just like we are.
Verse 12, the whole assembly became quiet. Paul and Barnabas, they began to talk about the miraculous signs and wonders.
God had done among the Gentiles through them. The word gospel, by the way, appears about 85 times in the New Testament. Three times Peter uses it. In 1 Peter, it's used about 19 times in the gospels themselves—Matthew, Mark, Luke, John. The rest of the time, it's used almost exclusively by Paul.
When you look in the gospels, as Jesus was coming proclaiming the gospel, oftentimes the very next words are, and they're accompanied by signs, wonders, miracles. Here's what happens. This is another thing we do humanly. We begin to worship the sign rather than the sign giver. So the whole point of the miracles was not "come and get a miracle." The whole point of the miracles was to authenticate the word that Jesus was saying.
The Purpose of Miracles
Who made You God? Well, You tell me, what's easier? To say to this guy, "Your sins are forgiven," or "Get up and walk"? Well, it's obviously easier to say "your sins are forgiven"—can't prove that. Woody Allen said he was thrown out of college for cheating on a metaphysics test by looking into the soul of the boy next to him. Well, it's hard to prove this. I don't know how you give evidence to this. So they said, "Well, it's easier to say that." He said, "All right, get up and walk." Now they go, "Wow."
As the gospel is expanding, miracles and signs are being done by the apostles to authenticate this. When all this is heard, here's what happens. James gets up and says, "This is what it's going to be." If there is a Pope who's running this thing, his name is James. James is the one who's running this show.
What makes James particularly interesting is that James is the half-brother of Jesus. Because I come from a Catholic background, and in our church we have a lot of Catholics, I'll get a lot of questions about Mary. I don't get into those arguments about Mary. I simply point out this: almost everything that's taught by the Catholic church—that might be too strong a phrase—much of what's taught by the Catholic church about Mary is outside the scripture. It isn't derived from the Bible.
A Side Note About Mary
December 8th, Holy Day, Immaculate Conception. The Immaculate Conception is not about Jesus—it's about Mary being born without sin, so she could be the perfect vessel for Jesus to be born. Here's the problem with that. The Bible tells us that Mary needed a savior too. The other thing the Bible teaches about Mary is perpetual virginity, meaning once Mary and Joseph were married, they never had relations.
I went to Holy Family grade school. We had, on the first floor, a big area. The school would come together, and that's where we'd do pep rallies or whatever. In that area, there was a little thing carved out, and in it were statues of Mary, Joseph, and baby Jesus. I assume you understand we don't have pictures of them, so this is somebody's conceptual, artistic expression of that.
What struck me as odd is Mary always looked moderately attractive to me. She had beautiful skin, and she was pretty. Jesus was like this little China doll kid, but Joseph always had this very kind of grumpy, frustrated look, which I didn't understand until I was taught the perpetual virginity of Mary, and it all came together for me.
If you go to Mark chapter six, verse one, they confront Jesus, and they say, "Jesus, who are you? In fact, aren't you the carpenter's son, and your mom Mary's out there," and then it names four brothers and two sisters. So there's no delicate way to say it, but I personally don't think this is offensive. Here's what we know from that passage: Mary and Joseph had relations at least six times, if Joseph is batting 1,000, which is highly unlikely, but if he is, they had relations at least six times. That's a side note to this, kind of a sub-side note to this.
James Takes Charge
James is the one running this thing, so when it's all done, here's what he says. He says the gospel is salvation by Christ and Christ alone. There are other issues to be sensitive to, but this is what we're going to do.
Now, here we go. That is a 27-minute introduction to get us to the Book of Romans, 1st, 2nd Corinthians, the Book of Galatians, and we're just going to hop around here and let me make some points. Some of you get all bent out of shape trying to fill out your outline, so the big dumb mistake was they added to the gospel. That's a bad thing. They added to the gospel.
Paul Confronts Peter
Galatians 2, verse 11, 12, 13. The result was, for Peter, he's publicly confronted. Let me just take you through the passage. "When Peter came to Antioch, I opposed him to his face because he was clearly in the wrong. Before certain men came from James, he used to eat with the Gentiles, but when they arrived, he began to draw back and separate himself from the Gentiles because he was afraid of those who belong to the circumcision group, and the other Jews joined him in his hypocrisy. This is so strong that even Barnabas was led astray."
The motive here is fear. These guys come down—they're the Judaizers—and they confront Peter. I've recommended this to you before, but let me just tell you, one of the great DVDs of all time for those of us who are Christians is one called "Peter and Paul." Paul's played by Anthony Hopkins. This is a wonderful DVD. You can get it anywhere for about 19 bucks. I first saw it on CBS. It's just really good. This scene here that Paul describes is depicted in that show.
So here's Peter—big, full beard, hair everywhere. He's eating, think of that kind of stereotypical drumstick he's eating, grease is pouring down. He's celebrating. The Judaizers
Come, pull him away, and then Paul comes and says, what are you doing? Now, hit the pause button. This'll come back again in summer camp, because it comes back every time. He's afraid.
When you and I are afraid, here's what we're doing. We're living pragmatically as an atheist. When I'm afraid that I'm not going to have enough, I'm saying to God, I don't believe you when you said, you're going to make sure I have enough. When I'm afraid, here's what I'm saying. I'm essentially doubting God.
We're studying right now, just started a series last week in the redemption churches, of studying the life of Joseph, life of Daniel. We see time after time after time here, Joseph in prison, everything's taken from him, but he's never afraid. Why? The Lord's with him, and he seems to intuitively know it.
Here's what I'm not saying to you. I'm not saying the world isn't a scary place—it's a scary place out there. I don't believe it's far-fetched to think that everything's going to fall apart, and your dollars aren't going to be worth anything. Yeah, I can believe that.
Living Comfortable vs. Living Secure in God
The only reason I say that is because that makes me feel a little bit insecure. I just got done doing my will and going through a bunch of estate planning, and I'm feeling very comfortable where things are, and that makes me uncomfortable that I'm comfortable, because I don't think God wants me comfortable. So I'm saying, okay, God, I'm not really comfortable with this anymore. But I'm trying to fool Him. I'm just trying to make Him think I'm not, but I really am, because God may want you comfortable and secure, but He wants you comfortable and secure in Him, not comfortable and secure in your stuff.
Along come these Judaizers, and they scare Peter, and they scare Barnabas even. Think about Barnabas, because he's been traveling. Paul, he's seen all this. Verse 14, when I saw that they were not acting in line with the truth of the gospel, I said to Peter—here's the key phrase. There's two key phrases here. One's the truth of the gospel. The other is in front of them all. He said, you're a Jew, yet you live like a Gentile, not like a Jew. How is it that you force the Gentiles to follow the Jewish custom? Here's what he's saying. You're a Jew, and you can't follow the law. Why are you putting these guys under this?
Paul Confronts Peter Face to Face
The things we want to focus on for me is he confronts them all in front—he confronts them all, meaning Peter, Barnabas, in front of everybody. Here's what we know abstractly, and we think about Paul. He's short, though an inch taller than me. He has a receding hairline. He has a hawkish nose. He's bow-legged. He has a thorn in the flesh.
I have a friend who's written about the fact he thinks that was depression. I don't know that I agree with that, but most scholars believe it was probably a pus-leaking eye. Peter's the big old fisherman. So here's this bow-legged, hook-nosed, little Jewish guy in Peter's face like this. I confronted him, and in that movie, it's terrific, because Anthony Hopkins just brings this to light.
Now, let's stop for a second. Oftentimes, when I go to a wedding, there'll be a point in the wedding where there's someone who's either important to the bride or the groom, but not important enough to put them in the wedding party, usually a family member. They're trying to figure out how to get them involved, so they have them read Scripture. And it will go something like this. The person will saunter up, take the gum out, tap on the mic, is this on? Boy, there's so many of you. Read it, you dope. And then they go, okay, love is patient, love is kind.
Now, Paul, who's in Peter's face, is the one who wrote that. He's the one who said, we're all one, can't we get along? Is he a hypocrite? I don't think so.
Choosing Which Hills to Die On
There aren't many hills to die on. I think when I was younger, I had more hills. I'd die on them. And then I realized, I just spent a lot of time dying on hills. So unless it's some big thing, I'm not going to die on it.
This will really anger some of you. Like, basically, the first and last book of the Bible—the first two chapters—is a day a day, it's a day 100,000 years. I kind of lean toward day, but I don't know that it matters. Now, you don't need to give me all the literature, because I know all the literature that says it matters. I remember sitting with Dr. Grudem and going, hey, I'm grappling with this. And he said, I just spent two weeks studying this in the Hebrew, and I can't draw a conclusion. And I'm saying, if you can't draw a conclusion, I got a problem with a conclusion, and I honestly don't know that it matters, unless you're saying it undermines all of scripture, and I don't think that's a very strong argument.
The book of Revelation, while I know is true, it just doesn't hold a lot of interest for me. For some of you, you'll love it. I'm not saying don't study it, I'm just saying, I don't die on those hills. I have friends who die on those hills. I don't die on those hills.
The Gospel: The One Hill Worth Dying On
Here's what I do know. This is a hill to die on. This is the gospel. Now we're at the guts of this whole thing. This is the one thing that holds us all together. This is what makes us Christians.
So we use that term really loosely. He's a Christian. Bob is a strong Christian, right? Don't you hear something like that all the time? Bob's a strong Christian. I go, why, like bench presses 400? No, no, no, no, no. Bob's a strong Christian. What does that mean? He's a good father? He's a good husband? I guess Paul didn't make it, because he wasn't either.
Here's what makes you a Christian. What makes you a Christian, really important now, is what you believe. We're not even into behavior, it's what you believe. Because you've got a whole bunch of people who act like what we associate with Christians, who aren't Christians at all. So you've got agnostics, atheists, Buddhists,
who go down and feed hungry people. So feeding a hungry person doesn't make you a Christian. What makes you a Christian is that you believe what we talked about at the beginning—the gospel. That's what makes you a Christian. Now, because you're a Christian, you'll behave this way.
We better figure out the gospel. So if somebody comes along to you and says you need to believe this, we have to take that gospel—and trust me, we're going to fill in all these gaps and drill deep, deep, deep in the next four weeks on that. What makes you a Christian is when you take that gospel and believe it. "For God so loved the world, He gave His only begotten Son, whoever trusts in Him, believes in Him."
Here's what that verse tells me. It tells me a lot about God—that He loves people. It tells me a lot about Jesus—that He came to die. And then it tells me that if I believe, I have eternal life. That's what that verse tells me. And there's a bunch of those verses that say believe: "Believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, you will be saved." What does it mean to believe? To put my faith and trust in that, to act on that. It's far beyond intellectual familiarity.
Knowing About Jesus vs. Knowing Jesus
I probably have a man crush on Kirk Ferentz, the Iowa football coach. I love Kirk Ferentz. I said, and I think I mean this, I'd rather be seven and five with Kirk Ferentz than 12 and 0 with those other guys. There are certain guys you just know—like if you go down to Tucson, you just know they're cheating. But if you go to Tucson, not even the NCAA wants to go down there to investigate, so you're safe.
I love Kirk Ferentz. I know a lot about Kirk Ferentz. I don't really know Kirk Ferentz. If I walk into the room, the last time I saw him, he said, "Hi, Tom," and my little heart was beating. I was all excited. But I think somebody cued him up that was me. I don't think he knows me.
Here's my point: I can know a lot about someone without really knowing them. We see this all the time. I'll bet there's people like that in this room. You know a lot about Jesus, but you don't know Jesus. We get that all the time. We get people that come to our church who have been elders and deacons and around this stuff all their life, and once we start to teach, we discover they knew a lot about Jesus but they don't really know Jesus.
If I know Him, it means to believe. The Bible uses words like know, believe, trust—they're all the same. The idea is to be in Christ. You're in Galatians—just look at chapter 2. Look at verse 15 down. You'll see in verse 15: in Christ Jesus, in Christ, in Christ. That's all in verse 16. That's what it means to be a Christian, to be in Christ.
Who We Were vs. Who We Are Now
Turn to the book of Titus—when you hit 1st and 2nd Timothy, slow down. The next book is Titus. Titus begins with Paul the bondservant. Paul's writing in verse 4 to Titus, "my true child in common faith." In verse 3, here's what Paul writes: "For we also once were foolish ourselves, disobedient, deceived, enslaved to various lusts and pleasures, spending our life in malice and envy, hateful, hating one another."
Paul talks about this a lot, and we'll look at it like 1 Corinthians 6—he'll say we were that, but now we're not. Ephesians 2: we were sons of disobedience, children of wrath—not now. So that's who we were. We lived just like dogs driven by our own pleasures. We may mask them some.
I met a guy the other day, really a cool guy and his wife. Here's what I've learned: there's almost always a story. This guy used to be a male stripper, and I looked at him and thought, "Geez, maybe I could do this because he doesn't look so hot." But he tells a story and you just go, "Wow," because you didn't know.
We've got a gal in our church—she's the cutest, sweetest, she's like everybody's little kindergarten teacher—and she slept with like half of Maricopa County. She was strung out on drugs. God saved her. That's who she was.
Here's the problem: I get a little concerned sometimes when people go, "You know, I am an addict." No, you were an addict. Now, you may still have struggles—I'm not saying don't be careful, I'm not saying go use this stuff—I'm just saying your identity is now who you are in Christ, not who you were. That's who you were. You were a liar and a thief—that's who you were, but you're not that anymore.
The Power of "But"
Here's the most powerful word, at least one of them in Scripture: chapter 3, verse 4. "But"—that's what it was, but it's not that anymore. What changed it all was when the kindness of God our Savior and His love for mankind appeared. Who's that? Jesus. He saved us.
Now, for those of you who are from a background that says it's the gospel plus something, it seems to me this is like a dagger in your heart.
not on the basis of deeds which we've done but according to the mercies by which the washing, regeneration and renewing of the Holy Spirit He poured out on us. It's got nothing to do with you. God saved you in spite of you, not because of you.
So if you're in here today going, "Okay, this is one of those deals and I'm just going to get my act together and then God's going to like me," He isn't. He already does. There is nothing, and I love these words, there's nothing you can do to make God love you more. There's nothing you can do to make God love you less. So don't kill yourself trying to make God happy or to make Him love you. He already loves you, that's the evidence of it.
Now, because He loves you, there may be times when He disciplines you. There'll never be a time when He'll throw you under the bus and disown you, and this is based on the Holy Spirit's work in your life. It's not based on you doing anything.
A Catholic Funeral Story
So I'll give you this story and then we'll close with it. My father died. We're very Catholic, so my brothers and I were meeting with the Catholic priest who says, "Here's what we're going to do. It's not unusual to have a family member speak at the memorial service. Would one of you like to speak?"
I determined on the plane, I'm not getting in the middle of this. So my brothers, who are always up for a little something, said, "Let's have Tom talk." And so I said, "Hey," and he said, "No, no, no, that'll be good. If you could hang around afterwards, that'd be helpful."
So I met with him. He said, "Let me give you a little advice on speaking. I would write this out and read it, because people get up there, they get nervous, and they tend to forget where they are." I said, "Okay, that's helpful."
So I figured out what I wanted to say, and I wanted to be sensitive in the environment I'm in. There was a big altar and then a lot of space to the people, but I'm more of a people guy, so I was supposed to go to a podium, but I said, "I can't do that." So I came out and I talked, and I talked about my dad, who's a wonderful guy. I talked about if he's in heaven today, it's not because he joined this church, but because he believed in Jesus, and I was trying to be respectful.
My brother, who's always up for something, I'm watching him. He's not watching me, he's looking over my shoulder, and he's just going like this. So I don't know what's going on behind me, but something, and I learned the guys were not happy, but I thought I was very respectful.
What I wanted to say is, there's a whole bunch of you that are about to burn some cash by buying a mass for my dad. That mass ain't helping him. It's only helping the guy who's getting the cash. I don't mean that disrespectfully, I'm just saying, my dad is either in heaven or hell right now. You can't get him out of one or the other. There's nothing I can do. If my dad's in purgatory, working out the little things, if that's true, then there's works involved. He's either in heaven or hell at that moment.
The Truth About Life After Death
47% of the American people believe in reincarnation. Did you know that? That number goes up. If you don't know what reincarnation means, it means, if at first you don't succeed, die, die again.
Here's reincarnation: You live this life, and then somehow, that life is judged. If you led a good life, you come back a little higher up the food chain. A bad life? You get born in Tucson, raised there, go to the U of A. It almost always happens.
Well, the Bible doesn't teach that. The Bible says it's appointed a man once to die, and then judgment. Either heaven or hell, that's it. And that heaven or hell is based on, do you believe the gospel?
The Final Warning
If anybody comes to you and says, "Yeah, it's this, believe in Jesus, but join this church, but be baptized, but do this," whatever they're telling you is, these are really strong words, but it's at least an untrue gospel. We could say false gospel.
Dumb mistake number eight is adding to that gospel. Anywhere from circumcision to baptism, anything in there.
Starting next week, we're going to take four weeks, and we're going to look at really that gospel, and it's going to be basic, but it's going to be rich. I myself go through this at least two or three times a year to fall deeper and deeper and deeper in love with the gospel, which is God's expression of love toward us. So that's what we're going to look at starting next week.
Think about that. There's people in your sphere of influence, and next week's a great time to introduce them to what we're doing.
Father, thank You for this awesome and amazing truth. You are a great God, we love You because You first loved us, we worship You, in Christ's name, Amen.