Defection: It's Nature
Galatians 1:6-7 · Randy Peterman · Jan 17, 2010
Galatians (2010), No. 03
Holly Hills Bible Church
https://hollyhillsbiblechurch.org/teaching/messages/4926152323621

Transcribed from the recording by SermonAudio, so expect the occasional misheard word.

Well, good morning. We're going to take a look at Galatians 1, 6, and 7. This had to be a challenging two verses to study because of two things. The one is that it's part of a longer concept, and I don't want to step on the toes of the other teachers in their lessons, by which I don't mean in any way to be offensive, but to pre-teach their verses. And the second thing is that the verses really are well translated, so it's not like I have a bunch of awesome Greek things to pull out for you, so you'll be amazed by how the translators missed it in English. It really does mean what it says there.

But let's take a look at Galatians, if you have your Bibles, we're in Galatians 1 looking at verses 6 and 7. Paul writes, I am amazed that you are so quickly deserting him who called you by the grace of Christ for a different gospel, which is really not another, only there are some who are disturbing you and want to distort the gospel of Christ.

As I was thinking through this, I wanted to point out just a little bit of historical context that I thought kind of sheds some light on Galatians as we look at it. When Bob went over the introduction to Galatians, he talked about there being a little bit of argument over whether this is northern or southern Galatia. The general consensus, and I think there's some good argument for being that it's southern Galatia where the church was primarily at.

One of the reasons for that would be that there were already some Jewish transplants that were given by Rome some legal benefits. My understanding is they got 10 years tax-free. if they moved from Jerusalem or Israel into Galatia. And that's a pretty strong incentive. And so there were already in the southern regions of Galatia Jewish people, a Jewish population that would be there.

Now, anyone want to take a stab at what tradition comes in with Judaism when it comes to daily living? Legalism, the law. So I think it's important when we read the letter of Galatians that we take into context that influence that would have been there. They would have had these people coming in with legalism, with law. Many of them were probably from Judaism, became believers, and then as we take a look here, they started to have their understanding of the gospel and the Christian life influenced. Because of this legalism, they had a corrupted gospel. The question we need to ask ourselves then is, what is the gospel? Who wants to give us the definition of the gospel? Or present the gospel to the class? Bud?

Good news. The coming of Christ to the world for a purpose and he died on that cross. And we're rising and getting in front of the dead, which is the basic three steps of the human gospel. Okay, that Christ died, was buried, and rose again on the third day according to scriptures, as 1 Corinthians 15 tells us. If you have been in the main service where we're going over 1 Corinthians 15 last week and this week, there's going to be some overlap. So hopefully everyone after the last couple weeks at Ollie Hills will be well equipped with understanding and presenting the gospel.

But Paul came in and he wanted to correct them with this letter. He didn't come in. He wrote in with this letter and he wanted to correct them because there was a problem with the gospel and I want to make sure that we all have a good grasp of that. With this class, I'm not too worried. I know each one of you and I know that you know the gospel. Paul starts off here, he says, I'm amazed that you are so quickly deserting.

I think of this as a parent. When I read this, this morning I actually had an opportunity to have a similar sort of conversation where the seven-year-old was harassing the four-year-old. And I was amazed at how quickly they went from playing nicely to shearing off towards Let's see if I can get my sister agitated. It was a very fast transition.

But Paul, when he writes this, was shocked and not in any way happy about this. The word amazed could also be translated wonder, but I'm pretty sure that it's not the way that we take amazed and wonder in a good positive sense. Paul's frustration was definitely with them being quick to leave. One thing that's interesting there is he says, I'm amazed that you were so quickly deserting.

And while I said that there's not amazing Greek things, I will draw out from the Greek, that it's present middle indicative, which indicates that there were cooperative recipients of this different gospel. The different gospel came in and they didn't resist it. It wasn't brainwashed and forced on them. They went along with it. I'm amazed, I'm shocked that you so easily went along with this change.

In your own lives, this is something I spent some time thinking about and I'm asking this maybe somebody will have something to share, maybe not. In your own lives, have you ever had somebody come to you and try to present a different doctrinal concept than, for example, let's pick an easy one. Have you had anybody come to you and present a different view on spiritual gifts than you hold? Now I went from not knowing anything about spiritual gifts as a young adolescent to going to a charismatic church where suddenly everybody was always talking about them but nobody was actually ever expositing about spiritual gifts. So I was in junior high and early in middle high school, actually all the way through high school, charismatic and my theological grounding wasn't scripture. It was what I'd been told over and over and over again.

And then one day, we'd left the church we were at because things were screwy. My dad said to me, I don't think that the apostolic gifts are active. And I'm not joking when I tell you I thought my dad might have lost his salvation. Coming from a charismatic background, that was possible. But I thought, he has abandoned this important teaching in the church.

And it was not presented to me in a mild way that I just gradually moved my way into changing my position. It was this big change. Now the thing that I'm presenting to you and going through that whole story is that when the Judaizers came in here to bring this gospel, it was a quick change. This false gospel came in, and there was a quick change.

And Paul was amazed that it was so quick. It was like, hey, you didn't put up a fight. You just went right along with it. He was amazed. Shocked that they would desert the gospel. Now, I should clarify. He doesn't say, desert the gospel. Who does he say they're deserting? It's the Father who called you by the grace of Christ. So they're deserting Him who called them.

Can I have a couple people read some verses here? One of the things I want to look at here is that it says, Him who called you. We have a couple passages that, and I've listed out actually most of the passages in the New Testament that reference us being called.

But if I could get someone to read Romans 1.6, that would be appreciated. Paul's being very forthright here, because if he's talking to the Jews, I can say he is what he probably is.

They probably had the issue with Christ, not necessarily with Yahweh. because Yahweh was part of their monotheistic religion. Sure. So Paul's hitting him right where it hurts. Oh, absolutely. And he's saying that it's Yahweh that they've deserted, not Christ. I mean, that's pretty... It's both, but it's right... Christ is the way, as he's clarifying through here, he's the way that they are given this grace. But that grace brings them to a deep relationship with the Father. And that's the part where, yeah, this is God. You have messed with him. Thank you for bringing that out. You have messed with your relationship with God the Father.

If I could get someone to read Romans 1.6 out loud, that would be appreciated.

All right. So they've been called. They've been called there. And we could read 1 Corinthians 7, 15, and 17, Galatians 1, 15 later on in this passage. He says, but when God, who had set me apart even from my mother's womb and called me through his grace, was pleased. There's a sense in Paul's writing that these are believers. They're called by God into this relationship with Christ.

And they're abandoning that. They're abandoning and deserting from this relationship with God. Now, the next thing we have here is that they're called by grace. What's our working definition of grace at Holly Hills? The one that Mike and Courtney and I think Jeremy also co-taught on with grace. What's our working definition of grace? All right, grace is the unmerited, unlimited blessing of God due to the totally adequate work of Christ on the cross. All right, so they've abandoned that definition of grace.

Now, what are the alternatives? And I've listed it out here, and I thought, as I was writing this out, it just felt almost, well, it wasn't almost, I was writing heresy. If you look at this definition of potential disgrace, It says, as stated in past lessons, grace is the unmerited blessing of God due to the totally adequate work of Christ on the cross. And then in the next paragraph, the consequence of a different gospel might involve a corrupted definition of grace that might look something that was merited, limited, man-made, with insufficient sacrifice and an insufficient Savior.

That's not grace. That's heresy and it's really, really scary. But if you're coming from legalism and you're looking at errors that are coming out, this is a big deal. This is ungrace. What are the consequences of this false grace? What is the life that shows up with a false grace? Legalism. That's the umbrella answer, yeah.

But what are the things that you see in the lives of people? People who may be believers but don't understand grace. Or people who are not believers. Works. You see works? They're not at rest. They're not at rest. There's guilt. There's a desire to repay God. God paid everything for me. I've got to pay Him back. Does anybody have change for a 10? How are you going to pay God back? You can't.

So that's basically what they were living in before the gospel was brought to them. Yes. It was just like an old habit that you revert back to. It takes a while to break that. You have to be forceful and focused. And if you get somebody saying, hey, you know, and then you question it, and then you go back to your old habits. Well, one of the things we're going to go into is actually discussing things exactly like you're talking about. What things would cause somebody to change, and change back to that position, and what would be involved. I've got two hands now. Go ahead, Roy. It's just a word here that's translated in our King James another. It's heteros, which means it's another of a different kind. Some of the other translations here differentiate it by putting it in one hand. Yeah. We're going to get into that because I think that's absolutely critical. No, that's okay. Don't be sorry at all. It just means that we're on the same page. That's a good thing. What were you going to say, Stan?

I was going to say that to the Jewish people, it's a little bit like if somebody gets into a cult today, and I don't know how familiar you are with trying to get somebody out of a cult, but you've got about a 99 to 1 chance of not doing it. Yeah. they become so mentally, physically and spiritually ingrained into that particular philosophy that they can't see beyond it. You know, you have to say that the Jewish people, I mean, this came all the way from Abraham and Moses. I mean, this has been the generational belief system that they've lived. It's not surprising that they would just get up and leave it because of a man named Paul.

The problem with getting people out of a cult scenario is that usually the cult, one of the first things they tell you is that other people don't understand what they teach and that you're probably a messenger of Satan. That pretty much disqualifies anyone else from ever presenting anything that's worth listening to. Of course, as Christians, we also understand that those who are not believers are sons of Satan. cause some people to qualify us as a cult, even though I definitely don't believe we are.

I think, too, that we intend to culminate. Of which? Of focusing on the things that we, by preconceived, false in nature viewpoints, think are so important that it's hard for the Holy Spirit to show us Christ and show us His glory. And I think as we learn Christ, we learn how wrong these things are that we have failed on to. Absolutely.

And so we're not immune to this, and this is less to you. Roy, you keep going ahead of my lesson. As a teacher, that's the best thing. I'm not complaining at all, because you know that you're not completely whacked out, because you went somewhere no one else went to. But it's true.

We get ourselves caught on things of the earth and not things that are above, and so we start filtering everything through our man-made, earthly-focused minds, and we're not renewing our minds, and the consequence of that is carnal thinking, which not surprisingly doesn't lead to the fruit of the Spirit and a number of other problems. The different gospel, and Roy brought this out, but because it's in my notes I want to make sure I annunciate it as well. The different gospel concept is critical as it leads to a people believing that they are saved but who are not known by God and not falling under the category of called by God. That's a big deal. If you think that you're saved because somebody gave you a false gospel and you're not saved, you're going to hell. The problem of people going to hell is one that really emotionally impacts me.

I don't know if you find yourself the same way emotionally impacted. Was it probably 15 years ago now that movie Titanic came out? I don't know if any of you saw it. I certainly don't recommend it. But at the end of the movie, They visually show hundreds of people out in the icy water of the Atlantic dying. And I just began weeping. And Jessica thought, man, this guy's... We were still dating. She thought, he's just such a... He's emotional. And I was just messed up because I was saying, these are people who may be going to hell. That's a big deal.

A false gospel leads people to think that they're saved when they're not. So Paul obviously is concerned with the Galatians because he doesn't want them promoting this false gospel. But he's concerned with all the people around the people in Galatia and wherever they may travel, because if they're promoting a false gospel, they could be going to hell. And they might get a misrepresentation of Christ. They might get a misrepresentation of God the Father. So it's a big deal for them to be teaching a false gospel with a false grace.

Leading to legalism. Leading to the problems that are there. Any other thoughts on this first verse six here? Gail? Yeah, because the word gospel means good news, I take this another gospel or no gospel to mean that really what they're getting is not good news at all. Yeah, absolutely. Right back where they were in bondage. And isn't that really what our sin nature is comfortable with and wants? Sure, I'm back in control. Yeah, absolutely.

Roy brought out the heteros, and that's the next point I wanted to go over. The Greek word heteros there, are you familiar with the biological term heterozygous? I can see a lot of nots in your faces. How about heterosexual? Everybody's familiar with that one.

That means a partner of a different type in comparison to homosexual, which is clearly a partner of the same type, which is a problem. But we see the same Greek word is used here. Heteros means a different type. You have been given, or they've been given, a different gospel. That's the heteros.

And he says, which is really not another. Now the reason that he says, which is really not another, is because if you said it was another, then you would be comparing them as if they were equals. Here we have this gospel. Oh, and you've got your own version of the gospel. It's really not another. It's a different kind. It's apples and oranges, if you will, to use the common phrase.

Now let me ask you this. And I spent some time thinking about this. It's not in the notes, so we're going to have a little class discussion here. How do you deal with something like lordship salvation, which people who are proponents of present as the gospel, and they come to you with this idea of this lordship salvation. How do you deal with it? Do you just shrug your shoulders? Do you move on?

Is everybody familiar with Lordship Salvation, if I say Lordship Salvation? Well, just for the sake of the recording, let me quickly just say Lordship Salvation says that you need to not just believe that Jesus died on the cross and was buried again, but also you need to believe that He is Lord of your life. And often what comes along with that, they tack on a number of legalistic things that end up being requirements for walking out the Christian life. Someone else may have a better definition or some other thoughts on that.

Yeah. There's definitely that measurement. I've kind of jokingly said that Lordship Salvation kind of makes seven-point Calvinism. Most of the time they're related. How do you deal with that? You've got this other gospel. You have another thing. Let me draw a picture with this little stub of chalk here. you've got gospel here, and you've got gospel here, and I'm going to put an L in front of that for lordship, are those the same? You know, if we define this one as, you know, 1st Corinthians 15 1 through 3.

In Lordship Salvation, I don't know where they go for some of the extra stuff they add. But it's that plus. I've now mixed word pictures with mathematics by adding a plus there. But to continue on with the logic thing, they're not equal. They're not the same. They're not the same kind of type.

If you were to, and I'm sorry, I'm a software developer, so this kind of stuff makes me happy and smile a lot, but anytime you have something that they're calling a gospel, they're calling a good thing, but it's different, how do we deal with that as believers?

Has anybody had to deal with that or tried to deal with that? You'd like to be able to convince him of that, but it's very difficult. The best thing to do is to try to show him the scripture. Absolutely. You have to go back. That's the thing that I keep coming back to. It's not shocking, but it's one of those things that as an intellectual being, I'm always looking for the upper hand. I'm going to negotiate with you and twist your arm and you're going to have to say uncle and then you're going to come to my side. Which one? It seems to me that the one on the right, the Lordship Gospel, has inherent in it, at least for me, an aspect of fear. Absolutely. Because I'm always like, well, is he truly the Lord of my life?

And look what I did today. I don't think it leaves room for the growth, the time that it takes to grow spiritually. Yeah, well, and that's a real wrestling, because what I find is that people say, oh, you shouldn't be sinning, because then that means he's not the Lord of your life. But then when they do sin, then they get in an emotional state of hurt, and they come to you and say, will you pray for me, because I'm wrestling with this thing. I'm like, oh, this thing that you're not supposed to have anymore, because he's the Lord of your life? I don't say it that way because that's a little harsh, but it's rough.

Stan? So that goes along with the fact that the Holy Spirit convicts you of sin. So that's in the second one, that's part of the plus. So what she's saying is the fear of the Lord, part of that's because of the Holy Spirit's conviction of sin. Well, let me distinguish it like this. I would just word it differently maybe. I believe that the gospel would come along with it, the Holy Spirit teaching us, I'm going to put it outside the circle because it's not the gospel, is that we have conviction. So I'm going to abbreviate that with a C-O-N-V period, which could be a number of things, but we're going to call it conviction.

And on the side of Lordship Salvation, I'm going to put the word guilt. Conviction is when the Holy Spirit draws us back to relationship. Guilt is when we feel inadequate. The problem that I find most often is that people come to me feeling guilt, not conviction. Because conviction brings you back to relationship and you go, oh, I need to be back in fellowship. Guilt says, oh man, what do I have to do to be back in fellowship?

I need to find the checklist. That's what I need. Pray for me to find the checklist. Roy. When you recognize that in dealing with people, we have to deal with it ourselves. Sure. If we recognize that in others, That's what the law is designed to do. To lead us to Christ. And if we could point that out and just say, hey, look at Christ. Look at the goodness here. It's so simple. Change your mind about that. I don't know if that's an answer to you.

That's where we need to be. That's where we need to be going. And we do it graciously. In that way, we're looking at it from heaven, aren't we? Sure. We're looking at it from our position in Christ. Correct me here. I think I got lost on the road here. I don't know if it was the circles or the plaza. Or the guild room.

In verse 6 it says, I am amazed that you are so quickly deserting God, even though it says Him, who called you by the grace of Christ, God's Son obviously, for a different gospel, which is really not another. So isn't he saying that the gospel that they followed originally, which was law, Mosaic law, is basically the same gospel except Christ fulfilled the law. And so it's grown and it's become a different dispensation, so to speak. Isn't he saying, because it is heteros, so he's saying it's not different gospel, right? Or is he saying that it's of a different kind? It's a different kind. Heteros has to do with the type or quality of the description. That still makes sense.

Because Paul can't be saying that they were worshiping in error because that's where he was. He is saying they're worshipping in error because of the dispensation, because of the new revelation of Christ. That's what it is. But previously they were okay until Christ fulfilled the law. Until it became a sacrifice. So what he's saying is that they're of different types. It's apples and oranges. I don't even want to call it the same kind. I can't even say it's another gospel because that says that there's two ways.

It is good news. If you're outside the law, the law is good news. and before Christ it was the good times. Yes, absolutely. And Israel was supposed to be spreading the good news of God through the law. It was there to separate them and keep them righteous. You can't just do that. Yeah, absolutely.

I think one thing, this book is written to believers and to try to correct them that they've gone astray. So you start out with the fact that believers, maybe they came from a Jewish background and they came from a non-jewish background but they were believers but then what happened was I don't think the focus is so much on salvation it's more on that they how to live the Christian life I mean that's what relations is all how you know to live by the law or to live by grace so I think the question really is focused on you folks came to Christ simply by faith but now you want to add all this other stuff in here and don't go there don't go there that's only going to lead you back to what you were saved out of you were saved out of Judaism, but for the Jews, if they weren't Jews, it was saved out of their own law system. Could it be said then that this is a book on grace versus the law? Certainly, that's a large part of it, showing that grace is superior to the law.

But I think the focus is, he's writing to believers, he's writing saying, hey, you've traded in the true gospel for a different gospel. Don't go there. So he's speaking to and kindred spirits. They're believers, just like we would in this body. We'd say, hey, don't. Like Randy, I've been down that path with the church I went to. Don't go there. It wasn't good. It wasn't scriptural. So I think, I don't know, that helps me in understanding that the different gospel are not, he's trying to encourage them to stay away from a different gospel, one that brings the law back in.

Because we're going to see that more and more. We're going to see the law being brought back in. And when it gets down to 8 and 9, which I teach next week, I've been looking at it already. I mean, it is pretty strong. I mean, he says some things that, you know, it's that different gospel. It's really bad news.

But like you said it's a way to live and it's not saying that the law is bad because the law came from God. The law is righteous and holy and just. Exactly. God put it out, but the people didn't live it correctly and so actually they ended up in exile in Babylon and everything else because they didn't understand the faith aspect of how to live within that particular thing that God was guiding them to or through. Like Roy said, the law is from God. It is. It's true. It was originally from God. But the law is not, you know, it is not God's desire that we live the Christian life by the law, even though it came from Him. And I don't argue that. Yeah.

Just to clarify the difference between heteros and alos, which are the two different We get them translated as though they're similar. He says, for a different gospel, which is really not another, the difference is Heteros is not the same. When he says not another, it's saying that they're the same. So he uses one word to distinguish they're not the same of even the type, because they're not the same.

I don't know if that is any clearer to draw that way. But he double emphasizes, basically, that listen, we're not talking the same stuff. Anything else is different. And the thing is that Roger gets to teach next week, and I didn't want to step on his toes, but his verses are really good at clarifying this.

So we want to make sure that we understand that when he says, which is really not another, that he's talking about their quality is not of the same type. Donna? With the heteros, isn't that, I think of it heavenly, versus earthly. Absolutely. So it's of a totally different kind. Sure. Religion to religion would be alas. Yeah. But the gospel message of Christ was a heavenly concept. Absolutely. That's a good way to describe that.

And that really is when you come down to it when we're talking about the way that they're being asked to live when they take on the legalism. A heavenly mindset, a positional mindset, if we bring in position and condition, a positional mindset doesn't lead to legalism. It doesn't lead to even worrying about the law or thinking about the law. The law is not even on your mind.

Roy? Looking at the verse itself, you've removed yourselves from him that called you into what he calls into the grace of Christ unto another God. Another of a different kind, not grace. Something other than grace. It's not in Christ, and it's not in grace. I mean, the verse itself explains it. Yeah. It's cool. Yeah. Well, that's what I said as a teacher. It says what it means very clearly. So we can explore the nuances, but it's a very direct verse. If you were a Galatian and you're receiving this letter, you're not going to wonder what Paul really meant. It's going to be pretty clear.

Alright, so we have our kinds and types worked out there. He says, there are some who are disturbing you. Paul begins the prosecution. As we go through this letter to Galatia, he is prosecuting these false teachers. If Romans is the book that has been described on several occasions to me as the perfect legal defense of Christianity and the condemnation of man, and then the legal defense of believers, Galatians comes along as a really good companion document for prosecution. Paul begins in here and he says they're disturbing. If you think about it, Paul had come, he had visited these believers, and others had come into Galatia and presented the letter, and they come in and they begin planting the seeds of this false teaching, this false thing that's there. In all of Paul's epistles is this not a theme?

That he comes in and he says, hey, how about some correction? This one's a little bit more strongly worded than other letters. But he comes in. If we were to take a look at Ephesians chapters 3 and 4, Paul says, hey, you guys have been distracted and you guys have forgotten that you're in Christ, that you're in the Father, that you're one together. And here he starts off Galatians. He doesn't wait until chapter 3 or 4. He comes in right to the point. You guys have abandoned this thing. You're called to be in Christ.

If you look at Philippians 1.27, and I'm going to turn there just so we can read it. It's easier to read one verse than it is to read two chapters.

Philippians 1.27, he says, Only conduct yourselves in a manner worthy of the gospel of Christ, so that whether I come and see you or remain absent, I will hear of you, you are standing firm in one spirit with one mind striving together for the faith of the gospel." Again, this message gets repeated over and over and over.

What is his commendation and his commands to both Timothy and Titus when they're out there setting up churches? What is one of his strong repeated directions for them? that they would be passing on the scriptures to men who will faithfully pass on the scriptures, because there is a singular nature to truth and a singular nature to how the body should operate. If somebody comes in and starts teaching false things at Holly Hills, even if they're not doing it from a lesson scenario, what has to happen? Sadly, to a certain degree sadly, but good for us as sheep What do the elders have to do?

Roger knows. Unfortunately, he's had to do it, I think. There's protection. There's correction first, an attempt at correction, and then if that correction doesn't stick, if the person rejects it, then they often have to be asked to move along. And the sheep are protected. I'm thankful for the elders protecting me as a sheep. genuinely humbled that that happens. I'm sad that it happens for those who may come and teach things that are erroneous. But I'm grateful for the elders doing that. This disturbing was coming in there. They were coming in to the body from the outside. And that's a big deal. That they were letting them in. And the thing is, believers were gracious.

If somebody new shows up, how do we respond? Do we poke at them with sticks? What's the quality test? What do you do if someone new shows up in your life, whether it's here at church or down the street? You welcome them. You find out about them. You explore their understanding of things. And then you have to figure out, what are we dealing with here? Do they understand the gospel? Do they not understand the gospel?

But they were coming in and they were disturbing him. They were people that were not doing qualitative analysis, if you will. Whoever was left in charge of the church in Galatia was not able to discern the problem and get it dealt with and move on. So Paul was unfortunately having to come in with this letter and correct this disturbance.

Continuing on in the verse he says, these people who are disturbing you and want to distort the gospel of Christ. Who has a King James Version? Would you mind reading verse 7 out loud? Yeah, Galatians 1.7. Which is not another, but there are some that trouble you. and would pervert the gospel of Christ. So New American Standard says distort and the King James says pervert.

The idea is that they're changing the direction. The Greek word there has to do to turn around to reverse the direction. What I was thinking about that is I thought The best word picture I could think of was if you were in your car driving down the highway and you hit a patch of ice. And suddenly you change your direction and suddenly you're facing oncoming traffic. That's the problem. That's how severe this disturbance and this perversion is, is that it changes the direction of the gospel. It changes the direction that the believers would be going and it leads to catastrophe. I don't think they had quite the same analogy because I don't know that Roman chariots hit ice patches and turn directions like that. But you get the idea is that this redirection of things is a critical problem. What I wanted to spend a few minutes doing, and we're almost out of time, was to ask, let's just all put on our pretend Galatian hats and let's pretend we're Galatians thinking about this problem after the fact. How would we deal with this problem?

How would you prevent this if you were to be in the Galatian Church 2,000 years ago? What would have been the appropriate way to deal with this before Paul had to write the letter? Somebody comes in, they've got this really cool idea of how we're all going to get everything right. You just have to get your works on. How do we deal with this? How should have they dealt with this?

It's not too tricky, because we've kind of been over some of it. The contrast being the grace of Christ versus the grace of man. The grace of Christ is to walk by faith and think, oh, this works out. The grace of man is, well, that looks attractive. I can do that. It's not very gracious at all.

But the way that you deal with it is the structure of the church, which you talked about earlier. And you get the people that have the best understanding and the solidest understanding, and you put them in a position of authority, which is what Paul tried to say, or what he did say, with Titus and Timothy, and how you're supposed to structure the church. There's a purpose for that. And you get the people in those positions so that when error comes in, you can approach it. And, you know, like you said earlier, you try to show them their error, and if they refuse, then, you know, you have a procedural problem. Yeah.

The biggest problem that I, because I was asking this question myself, what's the biggest problem that they faced that we don't face 2,000 years later, as far as correction is concerned? Yeah, we have all 66 books of the Bible. So it's easy for us to say, well, silly, go to Galatians. Legalism is wrong. They were the Galatians. In part, I am grateful that the Lord allowed them to stray enough that Paul would write them a letter and we would still have that copy of the letter, even though I'm sure it was a burden and it was difficult for Paul and the Galatians. They didn't have the New Testament canon. They might have had, this was not Paul's first epistle, so they might not have had other epistles, but they could have.

But the Holy Spirit, we talked about spiritual gifts briefly, the Holy Spirit was actively moving in them to give them correct teaching and correct doctrine. There are some things that I think as believers it's good for us to know, even though we're not directly in that scenario where we don't have the New Testament. It's always good to have a good working definition of things. Do you know your definition of grace? Do you know your definition of the gospel, and can you give the gospel?

When the Jehovah's Witnesses come to your door, they're hoping that you don't have those. When the Mormons come to your door, they're hoping you don't have those because guess what? They're going to use those exact same words. They're going to use grace. They're going to talk about Jesus. They're going to talk about the gospel. They're going to have what they call a Bible. even though I think they're perversions of the Bible, for sure. But the thing is that you need to know those words. You need to know those concepts and those doctrines. And as believers, we need to constantly be encouraging and sharpening one another on those topics and those things.

Because when the world comes at us, we need to be able to go, whoa, that's not the same type of gospel. The types are not the same. It's not even another gospel. You're using that word in an incorrect way. That's man's path to salvation and it's false. That's not the gospel. But you need to know those things. But as believers, we do have the structure of the church that God has put in place. It's not like a corporate hierarchy, so there's no CEO of God's business here.

We have co-elders, and they work together, and they keep one another growing. I know from conversations that all three elders have grown based on their time together when they have elders' meetings, and they study God's Word together, and they're constantly helping sharpen one another in their knowledge and understanding. And then guess what? They pass that on to us. And they're constantly sharpening us. And we come alongside like little children. And we get to rub some of those rough edges off, too. And they got to go, oh, let me correct you, child. My sheep.

I've been corrected by the elders, and I'm grateful for it. I'm grateful that they've corrected me because that has taken that erroneous thing, fortunately it was not the gospel, but whatever the erroneous thing that I understood, I've been corrected and straightened out. And it stayed in Holly Hills. God didn't have to shut Holly Hills down and do weird things. He's been able to preserve those things. Bud? Yes, we had an interesting experience. I'm not trying to take the blame. That's all right.

We went to visit somebody from our old church down in Kansas. And the man down there, well he was down in this person we're talking about, he had to endure a heart transplant down there. And he come back to the church after he had a successful operation, come back to the church. And one of the little Sunday school kids come up to him and said, Mr. X, Since you had the heart transplant, did Jesus come into your heart? Yeah, the new one. Yeah, he lost his salvation with the heart transplant.

But no, little kids saw it in that way, and so many churches saw it. Jesus come into your heart, you know. Yeah, well it's not the gospel. No, it's the gospel. Yeah, that's true. That's a good story. It's not the gospel, he's talking about children. Yeah. They wake you up a little. Yeah.

Paul is going to continue on in the next couple of verses and really hash this out and flesh this out. I'm excited about hearing the next lesson that Roger has the opportunity to teach us. It's good stuff. I hope I did a decent enough job on not stepping on too much on what you were going to cover.

But in conclusion, I think if we walk away with anything from this, it's that we need to be reminded to encourage one another to be abiding, to encourage one another to be beholding, to encourage one another that we would have a heavenly mindset. Paul wrote in Colossians 3, and I'll close with this, even though it's not in the book that we're teaching. Colossians 3, 1-3, he says, Therefore, if ye have been raised up with Christ, keep seeking the things above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God. Set your mind on the things above, not on the things that are on earth, for you have died and your life is hidden with Christ and God.

And I could keep going because it's a pretty awesome chapter, but the thing is that as we have a heavenly mindset, as we're setting our minds on things above, it becomes really obvious Does anybody know how you can find scorpions most easily in the desert? I grew up in the northern Nevada desert, so I have some experience with these critters.

Scorpions. Anybody know how you most easily can find a scorpion? With a blacklight. If you've got a blacklight, it makes those things glow in the dark. They shine out. And it's like, wow, there's scorpions right there. I didn't know that. I would just go look for them with my eyes. The thing is that if you have a heavenly mindset, it's like a black light on this false teaching. It shines out. It's like, wow, that is absolute garbage, and you can identify it. But you need to have that heavenly mindset.

As believers, we need to encourage one another to that. And as new believers come into Holly Hills, I want to encourage all of you as my brothers and sisters, and I will hopefully do the same, that we come alongside And make sure that they understand position and condition. Make sure that they understand abiding. And make sure that those things are things that they live by. I know when I first moved to Holly Hills, there was a lot of stuff I didn't understand about the daily Christian life. I went to seminary hoping that they would teach me something about it. They didn't. I moved to Colorado.

I was like, oh, this is way better than seminary. Because I got to understand what the practical Christian life looked like. Because other believers came alongside. But it's helped me understand, oh, that's how I stop sinning. I don't do it because I'm good enough. I just need to do more spiritual push-ups. I do it because I'm abiding.

But I had to have somebody tell me that. So my encouragement to you would be that if the opportunity arises, please be involved in those who come into Holly Hills and lives. And make sure that they know that. It might save them weeks, months, or years of real frustration.

All right, let's close in prayer. And I don't know if I've heard the bell, but if that clock is remotely correct, we're due. Heavenly Father, we just come before you. We just thank you for your word. We thank you that you have given us truth. We thank you that we do have the canon and we do thank you that you have allowed us to see where the disturbances do exist and disturbances do come. I just pray that you would draw our hearts and minds to the things above this week and throughout the remaining months or possibly seconds that you've given us here on this earth. We pray for your return. We just thank you for this time in Jesus name. Amen.