Radio Broadcast Monday 08/05/2024

Classic Christianity – Book of Galatians P4 (08-05-24)

Satan Has Perverted Everything Today, Even Our Understanding of Words

~ “I am amazed that so quickly you are deserting from the One having called you in the grace of Christ to another gospel, which is not another, except there are some who are troubling you and are desiring to pervert the gospel of Christ. But even if we or an angel out of heaven should preach a gospel to you contrary to what we proclaimed to you, let him be accursed! As we have said before, even now I say again: If anyone is preaching a gospel to you contrary to what you received, let him be accursed!” Galatians 1:7-9

As we continue on in our study of the book of Galatians, we are finding out how the gospel has been perverted in many many ways today. And it has been done subtly by Satan and his transformed agents of self righteousness. When the apostle Paul wrote this to the churches in Galatia, he was having to deal with a few issues. Today, we are having to deal with a huge number of issues going on in the church today. First off, you cannot trust the teaching of any man, for they could be lying out of their teeth to you, and you would never know it, unless you read the Word of God for yourself and are being taught by the Holy Spirit. For a man can tell you what something says, and he can even tell you what something means (to him), but unless you are taught by the Holy Spirit, you will be putting your faith in what Man says instead of God, and TRUTH.

Today, we have so many scrambled meanings in the word of God, spread through the lies that get passed on down the line, because people do not have the Truth in their hearts and our trusting in the teaching of man over that of God. Most are not saved, and that too is another big factor that Satan has convinced people they are saved, when in fact they are believing in his lies and are still without the Holy Spirit living in them. And Satan doesn’t want you to know TRUTH, because Truth does away with the lies and makes things crystal clear as to what is what today. For example, people are taught that they can get out of fellowship with God, which is a lie of Satan. The Truth is, a saved person is ALWAYS in fellowship with God, and a lost person is NOT in fellowship with God. So Satan comes along and muddies up the word “fellowship” to mean something perverted in the word of God. And because people are believing the lies of Satan, they think they can go in and out of fellowship with God. And this leads to the lies of ongoing forgiveness, and getting right with God, as though if you ask for forgiveness, God will be right with you, which is another lie.

So as you can see, there is indeed a gospel that is being taught today that is in direct opposition to the the Truth of the word of God. That God was in Christ Jesus, reconciling the world to Himself, and is Not counting peoples’ sins against them. And yet we give lip service to that Truth and listen to Satan’s agents teach on other matters, thinking that it is okay to listen to them, because they teach some Truth over on other matters. Yet their entire foundation is off, and they are teaching another gospel all together, which is no gospel at all.

And this false gospel teaching manifests itself in many many ways today. It’s like a train going down a track, that is headed dropping off a cliff, because the bridge is out. Or to put it another way, it is the Judas goats leading the sheep to the slaughter. And there are many Judas goats today. And Paul would not tolerate the teaching of lies back then, for he spoke out against it with every ounce of his being. Because Paul knew the importance of understanding the grace of God vs believing the lies of Satan. Likewise, we should pay attention also to the Holy Spirit’s teaching us today, telling us to pay attention to the details in the word of God. For the details matter in everything.

And be not surprised, “For such are false apostles, deceitful workers, transforming themselves into the apostles of Christ. And no marvel; for Satan himself is transformed into an angel of light. Therefore it is no great thing if his ministers also be transformed as the ministers of righteousness; whose end shall be according to their works.” 2 Corinthians 11:13-15


To the churches of Galatia:

Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ, the One having given Himself for our sins, so that He might deliver us out of the evil age having come presently, according to the will our God and Father, to whom be the glory to the ages of the ages. Amen.

I am amazed that so quickly you are deserting from the One having called you in the grace of Christ to another gospel, which is not another, except there are some who are troubling you and are desiring to pervert the gospel of Christ.

But even if we or an angel out of heaven should preach a gospel to you contrary to what we proclaimed to you, let him be accursed! As we have said before, even now I say again: If anyone is preaching a gospel to you contrary to what you received, let him be accursed! ^{Galatians 1:1-9}

Pray to God:

Do you really want to know the WHOLE Truth of what is going on today?

“Ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and the door will be opened to you.” Matthew 7:7

Lord Jesus, teach me the truth of the world today and give me the wisdom to know the truth and identify the lies of the devil. Thank you God.”

~ “As we discussed last week, Paul was not tolerant of legalism. He was not tolerant of commingling law and grace. He said, You’re either under the law lost or you’re under the grace of God saved, and there’s no in between. And anybody that comes in and tries to pervert the gospel of grace by saying, It’s Grace plus the law, he was to the point of saying, I hope that they would be eternally condemned. Why? Because you’re leading people to hell. Because that’s not the gospel. It’s like a person coming in and adding to what Jesus did. And you see a lot of that that has taken place through the years, of adding baptism as an example to salvation, as if getting dunked in water could do anything to you except get you wet. The purpose of salvation was. The purpose of baptism was an outward identification of what happened at the time that you were born again. It doesn’t cause born again. It’s a physical example of what happened when you were born again. And then on top of that, you have some people that baptize you by sprinkling you or hosing you down, or whatever that might be, that is not a picture of what baptism was meant to proclaim. The picture of baptism is you and I dying, and you say, die to what? Die to what killed you. What killed you? The Law. Paul said, it’s through the law that I died to the law. So the law showed you what? That you’re dead. The law showed you you’re a sinner. That’s for the purpose of the law, and we have taken the purpose of the law and perverted it to try to obtain righteousness by it. The law was given to show you you are a sinner. And what is the result of being a sinner? What’s the consequence? Death. Not a paddling, not a woodshed, not being out of fellowship, but death. Now all these other things that I mentioned is what we’ve come up with. And to this day, you sin, but you’re just out of fellowship. No, if you were under the law, you’re dead. So there isn’t anything, if there’s nothing in the Scripture about being in and out of fellowship, except as it relates to you are in the fellowship saved, or you’re out of the fellowship lost. But there’s no bouncing in and out of fellowship, any more than there’s bouncing in and out of the woodshed. There is no woodshed. The wages of sin is death, and when you water that down, why you’ve watered it down, and when you take the punishment away from the law, you have nothing. The law means nothing unless there’s a consequence. So what we’ve done is come along and say in our religious circles, well, the consequence of sin is a paddling. Consequence of sin is out of fellowship. The consequence,… No, the consequence of sin has never been anything except death!” ~ Bob George

Bible Study Booklets

Join Bob George in this chapter by chapter exposition of the letter to the Galatians. Available for download the complete series on the Book of Galatians. The Letter to the Galatians is key to understanding Law and Grace, the new covenant, and being one in Christ Jesus.

Announcer 0:12
Welcome to Classic Christianity Radio with Bob George Bob’s clear, timeless teachings on the complete forgiveness and unconditional love of Jesus Christ will transform your life as you learn about God’s amazing grace. Let’s join Bob as he teaches us from God’s Word.

Bob George 0:29
As we discussed last week, as we picked up in the first part of chapter one, that Paul is saying that I am absolutely astonished that you have deserted this gospel. I’m astonished that you’re so quickly deserting the one who called you by the grace of Christ, and are turning to a different gospel, which is really no gospel at all. There were people there that were throwing them into confusion, and he deals with that. Evidently, some people are throwing you into confusion, and they’re trying to pervert the gospel of Christ, and then he makes an astonishing statement. But even if we or an angel from heaven should preach a gospel other than the one that we preached to you, let him be eternally condemned, iternally separated from Christ. As we have already said. So now I say again, if anyone is preaching to you a gospel other than the one you accepted, let him be eternally condemned.

As we discussed last week, Paul was not tolerant of legalism. He was not tolerant of commingling law and grace. He said, You’re either under the law lost or you’re under the grace of God saved, and there’s no in between. And anybody that comes in and tries to pervert the gospel of grace by saying, It’s Grace plus the law, he was to the point of saying, I hope that they would be eternally condemned. Why? Because you’re leading people to hell. Because that’s not the gospel. It’s like a person coming in and adding to what Jesus did. And you see a lot of that that has taken place through the years, of adding baptism as an example to salvation, as if getting dunked in water could do anything to you except get you wet. The purpose of salvation was. The purpose of baptism was an outward identification of what happened at the time that you were born again. It doesn’t cause born again. It’s a physical example of what happened when you were born again. And then on top of that, you have some people that baptize you by sprinkling you or hosing you down, or whatever that might be, that is not a picture of what baptism was meant to proclaim. The picture of baptism is you and I dying, and you say, die to what? Die to what killed you. What killed you? The Law. Paul said, it’s through the law that I died to the law. So the law showed you what? That you’re dead. The law showed you you’re a sinner. That’s for the purpose of the law, and we have taken the purpose of the law and perverted it to try to obtain righteousness by it. The law was given to show you you are a sinner. And what is the result of being a sinner? What’s the consequence? Death. Not a paddling, not a woodshed, not being out of fellowship, but death. Now all these other things that I mentioned is what we’ve come up with. And to this day, you sin, but you’re just out of fellowship. No, if you were under the law, you’re dead. So there isn’t anything, if there’s nothing in the Scripture about being in and out of fellowship, except as it relates to you are in the fellowship saved, or you’re out of the fellowship lost. But there’s no bouncing in and out of fellowship, any more than there’s bouncing in and out of the woodshed. There is no woodshed. The wages of sin is death, and when you water that down, why you’ve watered it down, and when you take the punishment away from the law, you have nothing. The law means nothing unless there’s a consequence. So what we’ve done is come along and say in our religious circles, well, the consequence of sin is a paddling. Consequence of sin is out of fellowship. The consequence,… No, the consequence of sin has never been anything except death!

And so you and I have entered into a relationship with a living God. So we died to what killed us. We don’t die. We’ve already we were born dead, and the law shows us our sinfulness and shows us our death. Paul said, I would not have known what coveting was, had the Bible not said, Don’t covet. But when I saw that, sin seizing the opportunity, stirred up every kind of covetous desire inside of me, and I what I died. I recognize my death. I recognize that I’ve been under the condemnation of sin, which is death. Now what’s the solution to death? Life! And that’s what salvation is, nothing more, nothing less. It is coming alive from the consequence of sin, which is death, through the gift of God, through Jesus Christ, which is what? Life. Now that’s the gospel. You don’t add baptism to that, you don’t add church membership to that, you don’t add tithing records to that, you don’t add any of those things to that. That’s the gospel that saves you.

There’s another thing that I would like to deal with in regard to that subject. We have been through, and you have been through years and years and years of evangelistic talk and jargon, and many times those statements become like saying, I’m going to go get a Coca Cola. And you hear people, and if you understand the gospel, I have no problem with this, but you hear people say, Oh, I received Christ years ago. I asked Jesus into my life. I asked Jesus into my life, and I asked Jesus into my life. Now, there’s nothing wrong with that. There’s only one problem with there’s no place in the Scripture where it says to ask Jesus into your life. You don’t come to Christ by asking Jesus to come into your life. You come to Christ by placing faith in the fact that he died for your sins and the fact that he was raised from the dead for you, not for me, for you. Salvation comes at a time when we say to Jesus, in essence, God, you died for me. It’s not just a historical fact. It’s not like Abraham Lincoln getting killed in the Ford theater. I know that that’s a historical fact. I can, I can state that as truth. I know that to be true, but it isn’t going to do anything for you. It’s the fact that you know that Jesus went to a cross to die for your sins. You must personalize the gospel. Anybody can say, Oh, hey, died for you. Died for no, he died for you personally, and because you are an individual, then you individually accept that by faith. That Lord Jesus, had I been the only person that was on this face of the earth, you would have gone to that cross and died for me to take away my sins. Now, if we stop there, we’ll never go any further. So that’s not where you stop. That’s where you begin. You begin at the cross. You follow him to where he went to the cross.

Now, there’s the consequence of sin. Did the cross take care of the consequence of sin? No, the cross took care of taking away sin. But even though your sins were taken away, are you still dead? Well, of course you are. Of course you are. The wages of sin is still in effect, the thing that caused your death was taken away at the cross, wasn’t it? But you’re still dead. Now God’s got another problem to deal with. What is that? Death. He dealt with, the cause of death at the cross. Do we understand that folks? Do you see why it’s like a person saying, I came to Christ and now I’m righteous. I’m sorry. Righteousness has to be imputed to you. And how do you get righteousness? Through the receiving of the Righteous One, when you become indwelt by the righteous one. So when we stop at the cross, we have the sins, the cause of death, taken away, but we don’t have the consequence of sin taken away. That’s just taking away the cause. I’ve taken away the cause of cancer. Never be cancer anymore, but I’m dead. I’m glad I’m taken away, but didn’t do it be any good yet, until I come alive. Now, that’s the purpose of the resurrection, and so it’s a time in our lives when we say, Lord Jesus, you were raised from the dead, for me! Had I again been the only person on the face of the earth, you would have been raised from the dead so that that life that raised you from the dead can be given to me and raise me from the dead. Now the cause of spiritual death has been dealt with, and spiritual death has been dealt with. Both of those things when we, by faith, are able to say, Lord Jesus, you did that for me. Thank you, Lord Jesus. I was dead, and you gave me life. Thank you.

And when that occurs, we’re born again. Now if you want to verbalize that which some of us have in our lives by saying, Lord Jesus come into my heart as my Lord and Savior. There’s nothing wrong with that, as long as you understand what I just said. But if you think just saying, Lord Jesus come into my heart is going to save you, when you don’t have a clue what you’re talking about, you don’t even have a clue for sure who that Jesus is, then you’ve got a different gospel, which is no gospel at all. Do we understand that folks?

And what I’m trying to do today is to explain the fullness of the gospel, because there are people walking around who are talking about Jesus coming into your heart that have no growth, that have no discernment, have have no life, that is obvious at all. But they say, Well, I yeah, I prayed, I prayed the sinners prayer. Well, whoopee. You may have prayed the sinners prayer, but did you exercise faith in the One who saved the sinner? There’s the issue, Lord Jesus, you did this for me. I am empty as a pork barrel inside, and I need your life. I’m in control of my life, and you’re on the outside of it, looking in, and I want you to come and take up residence as my King, as my Lord and my Savior. Now that’s the purpose of the gospel. That’s why God came to this earth. Was to take upon himself our humanity, enter into our spiritual death with us, raised from the dead so that we could enter into His spiritual life with him. And that’s salvation.

Now people were coming into just like today, coming into that arena and perverting the gospel of Christ, Jesus. Now, folks, you will also see people, and in this day and age, it talks about that in the end times, that you’re going to see people who don’t want to do anything except get their ears tickled. And we’ve got a lot of ear tickling going on in Christianity today. And you have people and they think that what the and you hear it. I just saw it on television last night. People talked about experience, experience, experience. Well, the Bible deals with that. It says there are people who are always learning and never able to come to truth that’s over here, and another group that have a zeal for God, but not in accordance with knowledge that’s over here, and that makes up the majority of the Christian world, of the so called Christian world.

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Bob George 13:50
You have a zeal for God, but not in accordance with knowledge. All you want to do is to sit around and sing praise songs and lift your hands in the air. And you hear people talking about that. Oh, it was so great. We just sat and lifted our hands in the air and said, Well, I hope you reached him, because that’s how the Jews prayed. They were lifted their hands. Why? No Jew ever knelt to pray. They stand to pray with their arms lifted up to God. Why? Because they don’t know that God has lifted his arms down to us. I am not criticizing your body language. I just want your body language to be commensurate with what you know to be true. The reason that I personally do not reach up to God. Is because God has reached down to me, and I want my body language to exemplify that.

You have people who come along and say, well, you’re saved, but you need to speak in tongue. Tongues. And my answer to that is, what for? The people that I’m talking to every Sunday, hopefully understand English. So what would I need to talk to you in a language that you didn’t have a clue what I was saying? And besides that, I don’t even know what I’m saying, when you can speak English, so I have to say what for? The purpose of tongues was to communicate the gospel to people who didn’t understand what you were saying they spoke in a different language. And you somehow were able to speak a language that you had never learned, and they were able to understand that language because it was their own. A language is never something that is up to a private interpreter that only one person knows what you say. A language is connected with a country or a nation or a province. It’s not connected with one person who may know what you said. If one person understood what you said, hundreds of people could understand what you’ve said, because it belongs to a country. Paul said that, I suppose there’s hundreds of languages in the world, but none of them were without meaning. So you say, well, I use that to pray to God. I say, Well, that’s nice, but do you think that’s what language God speaks? Is gibberish? Or do you think that God listens to your words? Or do you think God listens to your heart? Which do you suppose it might be? My friends, you’re not even very wise to listen to what your wife tells you, because nine times out of 10 she doesn’t mean what she’s saying, and vice versa. So if you think God’s listening to our word, you’re nuts. God’s looking at our hearts. And as I’ve said, if that were not true, why in the world would you ever get into a congregation and say, let’s have a time of silent prayer? Why would you ever do that if God needs your language to hear you? And what gets me also, if there’s where God is is way up there. You better have a loud voice.

Now, folks, we’ve we’ve got to look at things. If you don’t look at things as the Bible teaches them, then you go off into every harebrained thing it can come down the pike. I do not need to babble in a language and I don’t know what I’m saying. God, for sure, doesn’t know what you’re saying. Nobody else knows what you’re saying in order to pray to God, I can pray silently. Is a matter of fact, that’s how God told us to pray, is silently. Now sometimes you can pray in a group, but the issue is that you’re talking to each other, because you can talk to God with your heart, not your words. God looks at our hearts, folks, now that’s what it talks about. Sometimes you are so distressed, you’re under such pressure. You have so many things going on in your life that you just do not know how to deal with that you don’t know what to pray. You’re just saying, God, whatever. Am I right or wrong? Just whatever. I don’t even know what to say to you. And it says, the Holy Spirit prays for us. Prays for us. What does that mean? The Holy Spirit says, Well, what language do you speak in? So I can turn the Holy Spirit. He knows what your heart’s going through, and he interprets that. So it’s never Jesus plus anything. And whenever you add something to Jesus, you subtracted from Jesus. And Paul’s dealing with those very issues. He deals with that. In other books, the others, Corinthians book, he dealt with the heresy of that. But in this thing, he’s covering the whole gamut. It’s not Jesus plus baptism, it’s not Jesus plus tongues. It’s not Jesus plus the interpretation of people come up with of being filled with the Spirit. Again. If you’re going to look at scripture, you’re going to have to look at it in context.

And I saw the other night the same thing, filled with the Spirit. Everybody with you, spirit filled Christian. And you’ll hear people call in and say, I’m a spirit filled Christian. Well, that’s nice. You ever getting a wife? You know, do you ever get an argument with your wife? Oh, yeah. Were you spirit filled while that was going on? I mean, do you think you can be spirit filled? But if you don’t know what that means, well, I guess so. And then you got some people knocking them down, slaying people in the Spirit say, Where does that come from? You got me it’s not in the Scripture, but it’s being done all over in Christendom. Why? Just what Jesus said. We’re going to come to a point where all we want is a showbiz deal. We just want our ears tickled. We want a program. We want a place where I could go and get some spiritual goosebumps. And that’s all we’re looking for, just some goosebumps, just up time, and I can go in and goosebump it all over, and go home and goosebump a little more and forget it all. And that’s what, that’s what we’ve that’s what we’ve reduced this, this marvelous message of grace, down to. So you have people who want to get into the wild, get into the wild and wooly where the scripture says what it means to be filled with the Spirit in Ephesians five was explained in Ephesians three. And that is that you and I might have the power, together with all the saints, to grasp how wide and high and long and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge consequence, so that what? You might be filled to the measure with all the fullness of God. What does that mean? It means to be filled with the Spirit.

Well, then what does it mean to be filled with the Spirit? It means to be filled with love and to act in love, because that’s the only thing that God is dealing with. The only thing that counts is faith expressing itself through what love. So how many can say, I’m spirit filled Christian, I’m just the most loving thing in the world. And you just go back to First Corinthians 13, and go through the definition of love and see how we’re doing. I am always patient. Do we need to go on? I’m always kind. I never, ever, ever keep records of wrongs. How are we doing in this spirit filled life? Person say, I’m spirit filled. That means, in your life, you never keep records of wrongs, you’re never easily angered. You’re always patient, you’re always kind, you’re always a liar.

So folks being spirit controlled, which is what it means to be filled. To be controlled by is a moment by moment function. It is not something that all of a sudden I start babbling in tongues and I’m spirit filled. It means that every day I every moment of the day, I have a choice. Do you have a choice of keeping records of your neighbor’s wrongs or your wife or your husband’s wrong? Do you have a choice on that? Do any of you have a pretty good filing cabinet? We can pull it up anytime we want, too, can’t we? And we do, but when we do, are we functioning in love? We say, Oh Lord, please let me forget this. You’re not going to forget it. You’re not going to forget he ain’t going to take your memory away from you, unless you want to be a nut. But he says, You don’t have to bring it up. Your mate’s made a mistake, but you don’t have to bring it up. Your kids have made a mistake, but you don’t have to bring it up. Tim and I were talking about yes, they just quit thinking about it. What do you want to do, if to keep from getting depressed over things that have hurt you in the past? Quit thinking about it. Now, isn’t that tough? Quit thinking about it, when it comes in, quit thinking about it. Because the minute you start thinking about it, what’s going to happen? Everything starts building. Then you start thinking about other things, and then you think about what’s going to happen tomorrow, and you’re an emotional basket case living today as an emotional basket case.

So folks, when you’re talking about the gospel, it’s far more than just a historical fact. It’s even far more than the day that you’ve been born again, as big of a miracle as that is. The gospel is now continue in that relationship of that trust, relationship of thanking God every day of your life for the forgiveness that is yours through Christ Jesus, rejoicing in the fact that he has given you new life, and you accepted that by faith. You didn’t earn it. You didn’t deserve it. You just have it by faith and now walk in it. Now, are there dangers out there? Well, of course there are. What are the dangers? People coming around preaching gospel different than what Paul said I gave to you, and you have to be careful at those things are happening. And all of these things we’ve talked about are being taught under the name of Christianity, are they not? And you’ve got to have the discernment and be as wise as a serpent. You’ve got to have the discernment of a serpent to catch when someone’s trying to con you, because it’s always out there. If the religious world isn’t trying to con you with something different than what Jesus said, then you got Satan out there trying to drag you into sin. So we’re in a spiritual warfare, are we not? And Paul says you must put on the armor of God to protect yourself against the attacks from the enemy that are out there to throw you into error, because the opposite of truth is error, and truth sets you free and error keeps you in bondage. So if we want to get free, we’ve got to get free with truth. And the only place that we’re going to go to find truth is where? In the Scripture as it reveals Christ, because he said, I am truth. And when the Son has set you free, you’re free, indeed.

Announcer 27:11
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