Yesterday I had to explain to my 3 precious little princesses what an Irish story is. Not the kind focusing on Ireland’s myths, history, culture, etc. No, its a style of story-telling that comes from my Irish grandma. She was a fun kind of story-teller, as the Irish seem to be, but she was a story-teller where not everything she was recounting from the past was always …. True. Elements of imagination would be woven in, giving the story more “pep,” more animation, more color and certainly more entertainment. Those elements wouldn’t be called “untruths” – no, lets play nice here. But perhaps we could say they were “truth-adjacent.”
Last night at dinner after telling a story – in the spirit of my beloved but passed on Irish grandmother – one of the girls asked, “Is that true?” To which I responded, “Yes, of course! – well, I mixed in some things. But its an Irish story – that’s how they go.”
Irish stories may be good around the dinner table or recounting fun family memories – they are actually best for fishing. And there may have even been some Irish stories as sermon illustrations along the way over 16 years (*cough* Turkey Trot, Hamster Dance Song*cough).
But you know where Irish stories have no business? The Gospel. Period. In the book of Galatians, Paul says people were coming into Galatia and they were telling an Irish story – they were adding things that weren’t true to the message of Jesus Christ.
Review: There are 3 things to see in verses 6-9: 1) Quitting, 2) Confusion, and 3) Condemnation. We saw last week that the Galatians were quitting the Gospel Paul gave them, and being led to adopt another gospel that some false teachers had come in and taught after Paul’s departure from Galatia. Paul was astonished that they were turning away SO QUICKLY. We learned last week how important it is to be established in the faith, and to be established in “grace.” This week lets finish the other two points: Confused and Condemned.
CONFUSED (7)
The second point is CONFUSED. Look at verse 7 with me…READ….
The believers were getting confused about what the Gospel really was, and they were being confused by false teachers. Let’s look at both of these.
First, the believers were being confused about what the Gospel really is. Paul says what they were being led astray by was another gospel, which is really no gospel at all, actually it was a perverted version of the gospel.
Pervert here means to distort, to corrupt something, to turn something into another thing. Pervert means to change something away from what it is supposed to be into something else that it is not supposed to be. The same word is used in Acts 2:20 to describe how the sun will be “turned into darkness” at the coming of Jesus. The sun shines, but it will be changed from shining into darkness. It is used in James 4:9, “Grieve, mourn, wail. CHANGE your laughter into mourning, CHANGE your joy into gloom.” Same word. Distort, morph, pervert your happiness by changing it into gloom and grief.
That’s what they were doing with the Gospel – these agitators. They were distorting the pure message, thus corrupting it by changing it into something it is not supposed to be. They were turning its light into darkness by changing the message and adding to it. They were turning the true message into something else, something false. And by doing so they were creating confusion in the believers over what is the real gospel. They were making the believers unsure of what to believe. They were leading them to have confidence in a gospel that was not an actual gospel, and put their hope in a message that is not from God and cannot save them from God’s wrath.
APPLICATION: Right teaching brings understanding, and strengthens believers. False teaching brings confusion, and weakens believers.
This issue of forcing Gentiles to follow the Law of Moses was huge in the early days of the Church. It was so big, that a big meeting with the Apostles, and the elders of Jerusalem was convened. Turn with me to Acts 15 and follow along. ….READ….Trying to obligate Christians to follow the Law of Moses was something Paul battled in nearly every letter. Turn to Philippians 3:1-6 with me….Turn to Colossians 2:16-23 with me
Confusion is Satan’s game. Yes Satan is a liar and lying is his native tongue, but the results he aims for with his lies is 2-fold: one aim is for unbelievers and one is for believers. First, he wants to keep unbelievers believing lies so they never believe the truth and thus never get saved, and second, to confuse believers with lies so they are kept immature, sidelined, useless to God, and profane God’s holy name.
APPLICATION: Salvation is by GRACE and NOT by WORKS. Ephesians 2:8-9. Works of the Law of Moses don’t cut it. No amount of “sincere” turning your life around, no amount of church attendance, church service, baptism, religious devotion, charity, being better than the next guy, or better than you were in the past, being done sowing your oats…no good works that YOU DO will ever save you. The Gospel is God’s grace, God’s giving you salvation that you did not and never could earn. It is a gift that you receive, not a payment you are owed for a life well lived – because there is no one who can live well enough by God’s standards.
So they were being confused. That was the first sub-point. But that confusion came from certain influencers who inserted themselves into their churches. That’s the second sub-point. Paul mentions them all throughout the letter. Follow along with me and see how their profile fills out:
- 1:7, called “some people” and “confusers” (also 5:10)
- 1:8-9, they are “cursed” (similar to Jude 3-4)
- 2:4, they are false believers
- 3:1, they “bewitch” true Christians, which means to lead people away by wicked arts
- 4:17, “those people” who want to win the Galatian believers over to them and alienate them from Paul and his influence
- 5:7, “cutters,” who inserted themselves into the Galatian Christian’s lives in order to lead them away
- 5:9, “yeast,” meaning sinful element within the Galatian Christian fellowship that must be removed, a very OT reference that would have been readily understood from the Galatian Christians who had a lot of previous exposure to the Law of Moses
- 5:12, “agitators,” people who are working up the Galatian Christians, disrupting the peaceful harmony they had through all of them having the same faith in the Gospel Paul preached, but now they were getting stirred up and confused and unsettled and seduced by these agitators
- 6:12, “impressers,” people who only care about impressing others in the flesh, not impressing God. This is why Paul says in 1:10 he is not trying to please men, and why in 5:11 he says he is not preaching circumcision like those agitators are and thus he is being persecuted. They are trying to avoid persecution by urging circumcision.
So these people in Galatia cut in on the Galatian believers, were bringing a Judaizing influence where they said faith plus following the Law was required, thus causing confusion about what the true Gospel is and what the true freedom is that Christians have in Christ. These people were agitators who were condemned by God, and they were a defiling yeast in their midst that needed to be removed. Otherwise, like he said to the Corinthians, “A little bit of yeast will spread throughout the whole batch of dough.” A little bit of false teaching will end up spreading to the whole church.
APPLICATION: You must realize the absolute necessity for sound teaching. EVERYTHING depends on sound teaching. EVERYTHING. Your first priority in a church is NOT the music, the youth group or children’s ministry, the cool building or hi-tech stage, or is the pastoral staff “hip,” etc. Your first priority – if you are following Christ – is whether or not the Word of God is being faithfully, clearly, and powerfully proclaimed. Are you going to hear the word, are you going to learn and understand the word, are you going to get the meat and not just milk, are you going to be convicted by and shaped by the word, and is there “to the death” commitment to the word in the church you are looking for? That is your first priority.
APPLICATION: Keep up your love for true teachers. This is not meant to be self-serving. But it is meant to exhort you to this very NT attitude: keep up your love for sound teachers. Turn to Galatians 4:12-16….READ. Paul is fighting for their love. He did it with the Thessalonians (1 Thess. 2, 3 & 5), with the Corinthians (2 Corinthians 10-13), and other churches. The take away is that each of us needs to keep up our love of true teachers, and that will help keep up our hatred of false ones.
SIDENOTE: Loving true teachers is a sign you love the truth.