Off Track – Galatians 1:1-10

“There was a reason for Paul’s urgency. He was facing a crisis.” (Philip Ryken)

“Has God created millions of people over tens of thousands of years who are going to spend eternity in anguish? Can God do this, or even allow this, and still claim to be a loving God? Does God punish people for thousands of years with infinite, eternal torment for things they did in their few finite years of life?” (Rob Bell)

CHECKS FOR GOSPEL AUTHENTICITY

1. Where…

“Many of the stories in the Bible began as oral traditions, handed down from generation to generation until someone collected them, edited them, and actually wrote them down, sometimes hundreds of years later …There were countless stories floating around, tons of accounts being handed down, massive amounts of material to include. Or not include…The Bible did not drop out of the sky; it was written by people… it(’s) [The Bible] not God’s perspective, it’s their’s [man’s].” (Rob Bell)

“All scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness…” (2 Timothy 3:16)

“If the Bible is God’s inspired word, which Jesus surely seemed to believe, it has the authority to correct our thinking and behaviour – and not the other way around.” (Alisa Childers)

2. What’s…

“Beloved, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God, for many false prophets have gone out into the world.” (1 John 4:1)

“I believe that Jesus’ death on the cross is a revelation of the infinite and participatory love of God, not some bloody payment required by God’s offended justice to rectify the problem of sin.” (Richard Rohr)

3. Who…

“When the Galatians turned away from this gracious gospel, they were not just adopting a new philosophical position. They were not simply trading one set of ideas for another. No, Paul said to them, ‘You are so quickly deserting him who called you’ (Gal1:6), meaning God himself.” (Philip Ryken)

CONSEQUENCES

“The church’s greatest danger is not the anti-gospel outside the church; it is the counterfeit gospel inside the church. The Judaizers did not walk around Psidian-Antioch wearing t-shirts that said, ‘Hug me, I’m a false apostle.’ What made them so dangerous was that they knew how to talk the way Christians talk. They used all the right terminology. They talked about how they ‘Got saved.’ They told people how to ‘Trust in Christ.” They ‘presented the gospel…’ The most dangerous ones are the ones who preach a different Christ but still call him ‘Jesus.’” (Philip Ryken)

4. Who’s…

“They make much of you but for no good purpose. They want to shut you out that you may make much of them.” (Galatians 4:17)

“When Christ calls a man, he bids him come and die.” (Dietrich Bonhoeffer)

“You ought to say plainly that you do not believe the gospel of Christ. For to believe what you please, and not to believe what you please, is to believe yourselves, and not the Gospel.” (St Augustine)