Introduction: Many of you know that I teach part-time at a private school. This year, I took on a class called ELL Bible, and all of the students are Chinese international students. I’m teaching the Bible to them everyday. What an awesome opportunity to tell them about the most important person who’s ever lived! One day, I asked them to quote John 3:16. None of them could do it. So, I recited the verse for them to jog their memory but none of them was saying the verse. So, I asked if they have ever heard John 3:16 and amazingly all of them shook their heads! You can bet that I had a thrilling time explaining to them what it means. It summarizes the most essential Christian belief in one sentence. If you ever want to learn a simple way to tell someone how that person can become a Christian, then you can simply share John 3:16 with them….

If you will let me demonstrate…: John 3:16 God so loved the world that He gave His one and only Son that whoever believes in Him shall not perish but have eternal life. This means, God, who created you and me, loved, the people of the world, including you and me gave us a gift. When you love someone you give that person expensive gifts. But God so loved us that He gave us the most precious gift you can think of – He gave us His Son. And when someone gives you a priceless gift, how does that become yours? You receive. You don’t try to pay for it, but you simply thank him and receive. That is what it means to “believe” in Jesus. We receive Him by believing in Him – to trust Him and treasure Him – when we receive Him as our greatest treasure, which He is, then we shall never die (perish) and have eternal life – which is the life we always wanted but has always eluded us. That is the gospel in a nutshell. God, out of His love, not through our good works, has given us His Son even though we didn’t deserve Him, and saved us from our sins, so that we can live forever in happiness and joy! And all that is required is that we receive that gift as our treasure.

It is the most precious message – this gospel. And so, it must be guarded at all cost. And that is what Paul attempts to do in the book of Galatians. He is writing to a group of Christians in a city called Galatia, modern day Turkey, because he has heard that these Galatians were starting to believe something other than the gospel. So, Paul, painstakingly urges these Galatians not to abandon the gospel. And in so doing, we learn some crucial characteristics that are unique to the gospel we believe and accept.

So, for the next couple months, as we are starting the new school/church year, we are going to look at this book that tells us about how to become a Christian and then how to stay strong as a Christian which are all through the message of the good news – the gospel.

Today, three unique characteristics of the gospel. 1) The gospel message leads us to a person. 2) The gospel is unchangeable 3) It must continually be applied to our lives.

 

1. The gospel message leads us to a person.

Paul says in v. 6, “I am astonished that you are so quickly deserting him who called you in the grace of Christ and are turning to a different gospel – not that there is another one,”

It is strange how Paul puts it. He doesn’t say, “I am astonished that you are so quickly deserting him who called you in the grace of Christ and are turning to a different ‘god’ or a different ‘person.’” Since they are deserting, or abandoning God – a person – they should be turning to another person, but rather he says they are turning to a different ‘gospel.” In Paul’s mind, when we abandon God, we are turning to a different message. Or, if we could reverse it, when we turn to a different message, we are abandoning the person of God. So, what this tells us is that there is an inseparable connection between the gospel and the personhood of God. The gospel leads to a person – God.

This is different from every other religious teachings. All other teachings lead to a better way of life, or a more self-awareness, or a different way of thinking, but the gospel message leads us to a person – God.

ILL: I recently read a book called, “The Life-changing Magic of Tidying up: The Japanese Art of Decluttering and Organizing.” So, this Japanese lady, in the book, teaches us how to tidy up our house. And she claims that it can be life-changing. But how? She says if we use her method and tidy up our place, not only our place but our lives will be decluttered and we will spend our time doing what we truly love! So, following her teaching, our lives will improve. This is pretty typical of all self-help methods. They are teachings to improve our lives. None of them however leads us to be a person.

This is also true of world religions like Buddhism and Hinduism. If you follow their teachings, then you may have more peace or be at one with the world around you, but they do not lead to a person. Buddhism’s purpose is not to lead its followers to Buddha or Hinduism’s purpose is not to lead its followers to Krishna but rather to lessons. Christianity alone leads its follower to the person of Christ. That is what the gospel message does. The gospel is about a relationship with a person.

APP: If you are doing all the “Christian” stuff – like going to church, reading the Bible and praying before you eat, but you don’t have a relationship with God – that it’s not personal with you – such as you don’t go to Him when you are troubled, you don’t groan and tell him about how hard your day was, or you don’t praise Him when you are happy, or when you are deciding something important, you don’t ask Him first, then all Christianity is is just knowledge for you. But that is not the real gospel. The gospel must lead to a relationship with a person.

 

2. The gospel is unchangeable (because it’s perfect)  
3. 8 “But even if we or an angel from heaven should preach to you a gospel contrary to the one we preached to you, let him be accursed.”

Paul is saying in the strongest words possible that you cannot change the content of the gospel. In other words, if anyone tells you any other way to be saved than what Jesus said, then he will go to hell. You know, Paul was definitely not the type to say, “Whatever works for you. If it works for you, then that’s all that matters” or to say “All religions are basically the same. Just different names for the same God.” Paul would have gagged on those statements! He would’ve died first rather than accept those words!

The gospel is like a medicine for a fatal disease. It is formulated with very specific portions of medicinal ingredients. If you have one part too many of certain chemicals or one part too few of certain chemicals, then it might become a poison and become harmful. The gospel is the same way. You cannot add or subtract anything from it. It can no longer save if you add or subtract anything from it.

What would adding something to it look like? Paul is warning the Christians in Galatia about those who are trying to add something to the gospel – they are called Judaizers.  What they tried to get the non-Jewish believers to do was to receive Jesus but on top of that, keep all the rules in order to be saved. So, Yes, do receive Jesus as your Master and Rescuer, but also keep all the Jewish laws – such as being circumcised, or keep the Sabbath laws, or the dietary laws such as eating only Koshur – only then you truly become God’s children. It is very similar to what Catholics do. They believe in Jesus as the Son of God but they also say you must go to mass, go to the confession, and be baptized and be confirmed before you can be saved. They are adding something to the gospel – the gospel that says that you get saved by grace alone through faith alone in Christ alone.

What would subtracting something from it look like? Take Jesus’ death out of it, for example. Muslims don’t believe Jesus ever died on the cross. They believe Jesus to be a prophet and they don’t believe a prophet can die like a criminal and so they instead believe Jesus went straight to heaven and someone who looks like Jesus died on the cross. Well, the Bible clearly says, “If you confess with your mouth the Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you shall be saved” – which means you must believe that Jesus died in order for you to be saved! So, a message that does not have the cross in it, is not the gospel that can save.

The gospel message is unique in that it is the only message that is entirely god-centered. It is the only message in the world that affirms that man is utterly powerless and entirely evil and God is absolutely powerful and 100% responsible for our salvation. Every other message is man-centered whether religious or secular. In America which is becoming increasingly secular, this message is popular: “Believe in yourself.” “You can do anything you put your mind to.” “If you can dream it, you can achieve it.” Emphasizing the superiority of man! The towel of Babel was destroyed because people back then thought that way! But the Christian message – the gospel – is that we are completely and utterly helpless. We were dead in the water. God came and rescued us. Jesus did not come to make bad man good, but dead man live. How does a dead man make himself live? Impossible. Only possible for God.

APP:  How does a person become god-focused? From the time he was borned he was self-focused or man-focused. How does he all of sudden become god-focused, or become a Christian? It take a miracle from God. One day at age 17, I was only interested in girls and baseball. I didn’t want God to exist because I didn’t want my life to be dictated by another person. I wanted to be my own God. The next day, God comes into my life, gives me peace like I’ve never felt, letting me know that He can handle my life a lot better than I can. God can do it. He did it in my life. Ask God to do a miracle in your life. A miracle of a changed heart.

 

3. It must continually be applied to our lives.

The gospel is not only the message that saves us initially but it is also the message that helps us grow as Christians. Growing up in a typically moralistic church, I used to think that the gospel message, “We are saved by believing in Jesus” is only needed at the beginning to become a Christian. But once you become a Christian, you don’t need it any more. You go on to higher and more sophisticated truths like witnessing for Christ, tithing, being a body of Christ, and living for the kingdom, etc. But reading the Galatians and other passages carefully teach us that the gospel is the basis of all other teachings. In other words, all other teachings are an application of the gospel. For example, why do we witness for Christ? Because we have been freely saved by God’s grace even though unworthy we share it freely with others whether we think they are worthy or not. Why do we tithe? God gave us His Son, the most precious gift, we are so grateful that we give something in return, like the woman who was saved by Jesus and broke an expensive alabaster jar of perfume on Jesus’ feet. What about belonging to a body of Christ? God has sent His Son to die to buy our ransom so that we can become God’s children rather than devil’s children. Now, we have God as our Father and Jesus as our brother, which means those in the church are our brothers and sisters. The gospel reminds us of that.

Most Christians think of the gospel like a surgery. You had a tumor called sin and you had a surgery called the gospel to remove it and now you don’t have the tumor anymore. So the gospel, which was the surgery, is not necessary anymore since the tumor of sin is gone. But I think that’s the wrong picture. The gospel is more like a medicine you have to keep taking to prevent a disease from spreading through your body to eventually kill you. early. If you stop taking it, it will lead to death.

Going back to verse 6, Paul scolds the Galatians for deserting God by turning to a different gospel, which implies that they were expected to stay on the gospel. So, in order to stay connected to God, or I can even say, in order to stay saved, we are to keep applying the gospel to our lives.             So, to summarize, the gospel is not only the lifeboat that saves us, but it is also the cruise ship that keeps us afloat.

APP: This is how it works in real life. A couple of weeks ago, as the school was about to start again, I was quite stressed. It felt like everything was crashing down on me. I needed 3 bodies but only had one. Ministry, school, and family were the balls I was juggling and I couldn’t drop any one of them. So, it was Saturday night, which usually is the most stressful time for me, I decided to cool my head and go take a walk in my neighborhood. But Sennah asked, “Can I come?” I said “sure.” And we went for a walk. It was a cool clear night and we could see all the stars in the sky. And I pointed to Sennah the big dipper and taught her how to find the polaris from it and then the Cassiopeia. But as I was looking at the stars, I started thinking, these are the same stars that Jesus must’ve looked at 2000 years ago as He walked on earth. These stars were there back then 2000 years ago, long before I ever came into this world, and they will be there long after. And I could feel my smallness. I’m just a blip. But for someone as insignificant as me, Jesus, God’s son who created the stars have died for me. It was as if, just as I was pointing out these stars to my daughters, my Father in heaven was at the same time pointing out those stars to teach me just how grand He is! It’s really ok if I dropped all those balls. Only thing that mattered was that God was my Father. Why wouldn’t He take care of me when He did not spare His own son for me? I went to bed that night in peace knowing that He is mine and I am His. The gospel was internalized.