Good morning, welcome to first Presbyterian Church. For those of you particularly that are visitors and would all of you sign the Friendship Register that's on your pews, de-groups using the book Galatians for You by Tim Keller will be starting September 8 and go through November 25 and Tim will be telling you more details later today. The Inquires class for new members will also start next week September 8 so if you are interested call the church office for details. The church offices will be closed tomorrow in Observance of Labor Day. Beginning today we are providing a free lunch to any college student who attends first Presbyterian Church. The meal begins at 1215 downstairs in the Fellowship Hall. This lunch is for college students and the college ministry team volunteers. It is only for them and not open to others. It is our service and gift to the college students that we are welcoming to our church. So how many college students are there out there? It is for you and the ministry team. Alright Dean Draper has an announcement about testimony related to his work with Salvation Army. Good morning everyone. How are y'all doing? Good to see you. You know on my way to an early service this morning I was going to my typical Glen Draper Speed down Martin Luther King Boulevard about 80 miles an hour and I saw William. William is a man that we started helping at the Salvation Army about six years ago. Came back in from Nashville and I saw him Friday morning I said what are you doing here? He said well I had open heart surgery three months ago and I said where did you stay last night? He said well my usual place under the bridge. You know William is typical of the kind of person that we help with the Salvation Army. Just a wonderful, wonderful guy. He never asked for money but we love giving things to him and praying with him and encouraging him because he encourages each one of us. It was six years ago this summer that I was walking across Martin Luther King Boulevard and I saw Hugh Huffaker and he walks up to me and says hey thinking about getting together some guys and girls on Friday morning and doing some sort of a ministry not sure what it's going to be but would you be interested? When I said Hugh for about three years now God has been leading it on my heart to get involved in something in our community that's going to make a difference for Jesus Christ. This is just great timing so we started meeting on Friday mornings and started going to the Salvation Army. Over the past six years we've fed I believe over 30,000 sausage biscuits to the homeless in Chattanooga and believe it or not God uses those sausage biscuits to bring people to hear the gospel. We have the opportunity to pray with, encourage, to share the gospel, do a devotion and we have the opportunity to hear Kelly and Steve sing each morning what a blessing that is. When we get in there it's usually crowded, there's like 100 to 125 people there and it's noisy, you're trying to get people settled down and then as soon as Kelly and Steve start singing the place gets real quiet and you can just feel the Holy Spirit and you can see tears running down some faces where they're hearing the gospel and they're going through so much hurt and pain and that just short time with them is probably the most exciting, restful, peaceful time of their entire week. I want to share a quick story with you. About four months ago I was doing the devotion at the Salvation Army and when I was done a lady came up to me and she just didn't look like what I would think that a homeless person would look like and she said I've been here since 6.30 in the morning because someone had told me that y'all can possibly help me so I said well let's just go sit somewhere and we'll kind of talk about what's going on in your life. Well I came to discover that she lived on lookout mountain and had a whole lot of money at one time and through a divorce and through some bad decisions lost every single bit of it and I was able to pray with her and we were able to help her financially and when I helped her financially through the church's gift financially tears streamed down her face. She cried and she hugged me and held me and I was thinking this is why we do this because we're touching someone's life as the way Jesus Christ would touch someone's life. So I would encourage you. If God has been leading on your heart to get involved and you're not involved, please pray through this. We have several ministries within our church that you can get involved in. God really had led it on my heart and God gave me that opportunity as you came up and told me about this ministry to do something. It'll only cost you a little bit of time just a little bit of time but in exchange you're going to get something that I would describe as well as indescribable. It's an opportunity to represent our Savior in this hurt lonely suffering dying world to impact someone's lives with a gospel that's going to have eternal benefits for them.
Would you please stand as we're going to sing our call to worship together. You have gathered us here in the power of Christ, we stand, we have no other. Our only hope is in you, Jesus, spirit and manifest the presence of the kingdom of God here this morning that we may worship the risen Christ who rules and one day will return for his people. Find us worshipping you, Lord Christ, you are worthy. We offer a morning prayer as a prayer of adoration to our great King Jesus and whose name we pray. Amen. It's wonderful to worship the Lord with you this morning. Thank you for making your way through the weather and coming to worship our great Jesus. I wouldn't want to miss this for anything. It's a common worship our great King. Our affirmation of faith this morning is taken from the Heidelberg catechism, as you ponder this answer, it's quite evident of our hope in God's sovereign care for our lives. I've been quite burdened with the situation in Egypt and Syria recently. I was thinking what this might mean to our brothers and sisters and their children if they were able to read this together, if they were able to huddle up behind their doors. You see in Egypt the Christians of the Old Testament marked their door so the angel of death would pass over when they saw the blood of the Lamb. Now the Muslim brotherhood is marking their door to come and bring them death and persecution. In Syria they're in great struggle and so we as a fellow members of the body of Christ I want us to have our brothers and sisters on our heart this morning, especially when we answer this question for ourselves and in some way because of our spiritual union in Christ for them as well. What is your only comfort in life and death? The Savior Jesus Christ, He has fully made for all my sins when we do this precious blood, and has sent me free from all the power of the devil. He has also preserved being in such a way that without the will of my heavenly Father, not a heir involved in my head, indeed all things must work together for my salvation. Therefore by His Holy Spirit He also assures me of eternal life and makes me hardly willing and ready for now long to live for good. Before we have our confession of sin, let's join our hearts together in prayer. Holy Spirit we know that even now you are comforting the saints around the world. We are particularly burdened for our brothers and sisters in Syria and Egypt. Throughout the Middle East there is persecution going on against Christians. Father we pray that you would sustain and preserve our brothers and sisters and their children. We pray that you would surround them with your angels, that your Holy Spirit would bring comfort and hope, not hope in this world but hope in you Lord. We pray that the little ones would find themselves underneath the loving care of a God who has a loving providence. Even your dark mercy, Lord, are good mercies. I do pray for the life and strength of your church in the Middle East that our brothers and sisters would be calm and they would be courageous and they would have the very God of peace on their side. We pray this in Jesus' name and all God's people said together. Amen. For our confession of sin we come to a place of recognizing that if God were to weigh us in the balances of justice we would be found wanting. And so we come humbly to confess our sin together, to honestly say these words to the Lord that quite often we would utter privately in our own homes possibly would never utter publicly. I ask that we would do so as the corporate body of Christ. Let's confess our sin together. You will God our love itself. Yet I have acted as if I hated you. I have contrived attempt you to the uttermost to wear out your patience. I have been evil in word and deed. Had I been a king I would have long ago crushed such a rebel. Had I been a father I would have long since disciplined my child. O father and king of my life cast me not into destruction. Drive me not from your presence. But wound my heart that it may be healed. Break it that your own hand may make it whole. Our time of silent confession is an opportunity for each and every one of us to humbly and honestly speak to the Lord. So I would ask that you would be seated and that you would pour out your heart to the Lord on this occasion. Let's pray, Heavenly Father, you pardon those who humbly repent and truly believe the gospel. Since Jesus died for us, we have peace with you. Thank you for being slow to anger and full of compassion. Thank you. There is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. Let us now pray as the Lord taught us. Our father who art in heaven, how would be the name? The kingdom come that will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread and forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors and lead us not into temptation but deliver us from evil. For thine is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever. Amen. Let us now greet one another while the young children are dismissed. Let us now go before the Lord again in prayer. Lord Jesus, we thank you that you are a God of mercy and comfort. We thank you. We may bring these requests to you today. We especially lift up Scott Brown, Claudette Griffin, Joyce Rich, Susie Weaver, and Jason and Allison Belcher. There are many others spoken and unspoken and we bring them before your throne. Some in our body have received difficult news of cancer, heart disease, other serious medical problems, and loss of loved ones. We ask your healing power in their lives and that they would be encouraged. Be with those, including our honorable who are unable to worship here this morning. May they know that you love and care for them dearly and we have not forgotten them. Comfort us who are saddened, depressed, or anxious. You tell us to cast all our cares upon you and not be anxious, however this is hard to do and we keep trying to wrestle back control of our lives. We pray for strong families, many of us are in relationships where there is hurting. Give us grace and wisdom we need in difficult situations. Bless our pastors and their families. Protect them from discouragement and burnout. You have blessed our church abundantly. Now we ask you to bless these ties and offerings, both what we give and what we keep back in the precious name of Jesus we pray. Amen. His King come unfolds in his blood and hindered my court. The church upheld by we believe. We believe. Do you please stand for our scripture reading? Our scripture lesson today is found in the book of Galatians. If you're a new Christian it's toward the back. It's on page 972 if you're using a pew Bible like I am. I begin in verse 1. Paul and Apostle not from men nor through man but through Jesus Christ and God the Father who raised him from the dead and all the brothers who are with me to the churches of Galatia. Grace to you in peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ who gave himself or our sins to deliver us from the present evil age according to the will of our God and Father to whom be the glory forever and ever. Amen. I'm 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 but there are some who trouble you and want to distort the gospel of Christ. But even if we or an angel from heaven should preach to you a gospel contrary to the one we preach to you let him be a cursed as we have said before so now I say again if anyone is preaching to you a gospel contrary to the one you received let him be a cursed for am I now seeking the approval of man or of God. Or am I trying to please man if I were still trying to please man I would not be a servant of Christ this is the word of the Lord you may be seated. This summer we had an opportunity to spend time with our grandchildren and at one point I was making some bacon in the kitchen and had a skillet full of grease and kept. Doing batches of bacon and at some point to the grandkids ran through the kitchen just ran right through right behind me almost ran into me and I said Chloe Tyson stop you can't run to the kitchen when we're cooking. Because if you bump into me and this grease spills on you it it it could be horrible could change your life forever and I wasn't really mad at them but I was pretty urgent about it. And as a grandfather I probably went on a little longer than I needed to but you know I just it just freaked me out the thought of this grease spilling on the grandkids. And so I was urgent and I probably sounded angry to them and I said hey I'm not angry I'm just really concerned that you're going to get hurt so just don't run through the kitchen you know when we're cooking. I believe that's the tone of voice that the Apostle Paul brings the Galatians he is urgent and some people would say he's angry. He's angry with a righteous indignation and it is a godly anger and his tone of anger is is aimed at two groups of people one is his anger is aimed at those who are false teachers. People who are adding to the gospel of Jesus Christ and then he's he's angry he's frustrated he's sad he's concerned about the people who are following the false teachers. And so he he leans into them in a way that that sounds pretty passionate and I think it should sound passionate. We should be passionate about the gospel we should be passionate about the work of the Lord Jesus Christ and we should be protective of the gospel in the sense that we don't ever want anyone to hear a false gospel. John Piper when he started this series in Galatians he said this book of Galatians is alive with Christ. I mean that in Galatians Paul is at his most vigorous the contents of this book are in flammatory it's the prerogative of parents and of society to ban particular books. Piper says this Galatians is the book that every atheist or agnostic should seek to utterly destroy and remove any remembrances of this titanic text. The reason he's saying this is because something important is at stake and when my kids my grandkids ran through the kitchen something very important was at stake the lives and the well being of my grandchildren. And I feel that way about you your life and your well being is at stake as we study the book of Galatians this summer I mean this fall. I trust that God is going to work in us in deep and beautiful ways. The first point I would like to make about Galatians is this written by a man who's in a puzzle. He's in a puzzle and that is what gives him the authority to speak. In verse one he immediately identifies himself Paul and a puzzle. Not from men nor through man but through Jesus Christ and God the Father. Okay and in Galatia what's going on is people are doubting Paul and so they're not agreeing with him so what does a false teacher do when they disagree with somebody they discredit the man's credentials and that's what's going on in Galatia they've discredited Paul. And rather than avoiding it rather than taking kind of that maimsy Pamsy Christian approach of hiding one's head in a sand he starts his letter by saying Paul and a puzzle. Not from men nor through man but through Jesus Christ and God the Father who raised him from the dead Paul is not about to coward before men when he has received revelation from God. When you see the reality of God you have confidence and you have courage you're not afraid of men and women. You're not willing to submit yourself to the whimsy of men and women. There is a freedom in being authorized by God. Paul never preached in hopes that they would invite him back to preach again. He wasn't trying to make a career out of being a pastor. He had a mission. He had a high calling and this high calling came from a face to face encounter with Jesus Christ himself. You know one of the struggles of trying to please people is people change. Like what if you try to please somebody and then a couple weeks later they go oh by the way we changed we're not for that anymore. You see the danger of trying to please people. Paul had this confidence that came from a revelation from God. It's found in Acts chapter 9. Many of you know this story by heart. The road to Damascus. Acts chapter 9. I'll begin in the first verse. Let me read about six verses and it gets you in the stream of Paul's argument here. But Saul which was the unconverted Paul still breathing threats and murder against the disciples of the Lord went to the high priest and has him for letters to the synagogues at Damascus so that if he found anyone belonging to the way men or women he might bring them bound to Jerusalem. Now as he went on his way he approached Damascus and suddenly a light from heaven flashed around him. And falling to the ground he heard a voice saying to him, Saul, Saul why are you persecuting me? And he said who are you Lord? And he said, I am Jesus whom you are persecuting but rise and enter the city and you will be told what you are to do. And then hurry down to verse 15. The Lord is called somebody to speak to Paul and he says but the Lord said to him go for he and the reference of that pronoun is Paul. For Paul is a chosen instrument of mine to carry my name before the Gentiles and the kings and the children of Israel. And so Paul had this confidence and his apostolic authority came from the Lord himself. And second Corinthians 1310 Paul says, I write this while I am away from you in order that when I come I may not have to be severe in my use of the authority which the Lord gave me for building up and for not tearing down. So Paul had this authority his apostolic calling face to face by Jesus Christ gave him authority. He no longer have apostles in the church. In order to be an apostle you have to have seen the resurrect Jesus. And so any authority that any Christian leader has is found in God's word. The prophets of the Old Testament and the disciples or apostles if you will of the New Testament. The new man or woman has any authority apart from the authority of God's word. This is a critical argument because we must measure our lives according to God's word, not preferences or the whimsy of men and women. So the first point is Paul's authority was an apostolic authority given to him by Christ. The next point is this idea of the stories of rescue. Look if you will at verse 4, what is this gospel that Paul is so adamant about defending? Well the gospel is this. Grace to you in peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ who gave himself for our sins to deliver us from the present evil age according to the will of God of our God and Father. The gospel that God the Father gave his son Jesus Christ to remove our sins and to deliver us from this present evil age according to God's will. It's not our idea, it's God's idea, salvation. And so the work of Jesus Christ is indeed the gospel. God's grace flows down to us in Christ and glory flows up to God as we worship him as we follow the Lord as we listen to his voice. Now an interesting word in this text is the word deliver. It says who gave himself for our sins to deliver us. When in the Greek language you use the word deliver it presupposes two things. One, that the person is lost and two, that the person is helpless in finding their way. So when you hear this idea of gospel and you hear this idea of what is the one true gospel, we must recognize that humanity has a spiritual inability to find God. And this word deliver means that we are a lost people and we are a helpless people. And apart from the work of Jesus Christ on our behalf, we would remain lost and we would be under God's just wrath. Now one of the things that angered Paul so much in this letter is that the Galatians or the false teachers among the Galatians were adding the law of Moses to the gospel of Jesus. Anytime somebody adds something to the work of Jesus Christ it is a false teaching. It is a false gospel, Paul would say no gospel at all. So when you hear someone talk to you about placing your faith in Jesus and they add anything else to that, it's a false gospel. The clarity of the gospel is the work of Christ alone and there's two things I want you to recognize about the gospel. One, we are too sinful to contribute to our own rescue, to our own salvation. We're too sinful to contribute to our rescue. And secondly, we are saved by believing in Jesus' work, the grace of Christ plus nothing else. That is the gospel, that is the work of God the Father through God the Son and applied through the Holy Spirit to us as believers. You know, it's a rescue mission, it's an exciting time. I remember when I worked for youth for Christ in the Chicago land area, right when I graduated from Wheaton College, and there was a young man I was disciplining his name's Lance Thomas. He has his own realty company now in Chicago. And I told Lance, I'll make a deal with you. You invite any of your friends from school to dinner and I'll buy dinner and I'll present the gospel to him. You know, it's a two-fer, what a win-win deal. And so he goes, great, so the first guy he grabs is, and I'll just use the name Dave Morelle. And so we go to a steakhouse, we have a nice meal. I present the gospel to Dave and Dave says, I want to believe, I've never really understood that about God. I've believed in God but I didn't know about the work of Jesus Christ. And so I said, well, would you like to say a prayer and just recognize what Jesus has done for you and thank him for what he's done for you? He goes, sure, and I said, well, would you like me to lead you in the prayer? He goes, oh no, I've got it. So I was like, well, we're great. And so he kind of bows his head there over the table and says, hey God, this is Morelle. He ain't talked in a while but he went on and prayed and thank God for the work of Jesus Christ on his behalf. The gospel is about a rescue mission. The gospel is about redemption and restoration of a fallen people through the work of Jesus Christ. Thirdly, I want to talk a little bit more about this idea of the false gospel. Paul says here in verse 6, I am astonished that you are so quickly deserting him who called you. You know what's interesting, if you go down to this text, he uses the phrase, let him be accursed, let him be accursed twice. Now that is an excellent English translation. It could be stronger. Basically what he's saying is, may they be damned to hell forever.
And he says it twice, back to back. It's not like he lost his temper and said it once and went, he said, let me say it one more time. He's like, I'm not seeking to gain men's approval. I'm here to please God. And if I'm going to please God, I must speak the truth. And I must speak the truth that God revealed to me through Jesus Christ and he is astonished. So as the Holy Spirit working in Paul, he's addressing these people. And I want to say that every generation must address the false teachers of their culture, every generation. Paul did it here in Galatia. I believe he wrote this letter around 48 AD right before the Jerusalem Council. More than likely, Paul was about 45 years old when he wrote this letter. He's living because he's taken a stand for Jesus Christ in his gospel. And I believe that we as Christians and every generation of Christians must take a clear stand in their culture as to what the Bible teaches is the gospel. It's very destructive when we do not step forward and lead our people to recognize only through Christ are we saved. And I'm going to be quoting from three particular men throughout this series. One is Tim Keller, as Dr. Dalin referred to earlier in his book Galatians for you. We'll be using that for our discipleship study. A second book I really enjoy as a book written by Phil Reich and Phil's the President of Wheaton and a friend of mine. And I really like he's a good thinker, he's orthodox. So if you want to read Reich and his book on Galatians, please grab that. The last person I enjoy and probably have enjoyed the most is one of my dead friends named Martin Luther. Martin Luther wrote a little book on Galatians, little meaning inch and a half. It's a paperback. You can pick it up for less than ten bucks. And it is one of the most remarkable books ever written. In fact, if you do a study of the most influential Christian people over the last century, one of the common books they've read is Luther's work on Galatians. It's so powerful as it unpacks the gospel. Well, what is the false gospel? Well, I said earlier, the false gospel of Galatia is that the people there were adding Moses's law to the gospel of Christ. In other words, they were saying you have to do these things. And yeah, sure Jesus does this part, but you have to do that part. False teaching, false adamant about it. In fact, we're going to talk about it for the rest of the fall together. I'm reading Keller's book on this and Keller says, well, what about our generation? How have we lost the gospel today? Says, when Paul battled in his day and Luther fought against in his, we must witness in hours. What are the three of the examples that Tim gives in his book here about false teaching of a false gospel? And I would say that this permeates the evangelical church of America, by the way, one. It is implicitly or explicitly taught that you are saved through your surrender to Christ, plus right beliefs and behavior. This is a fairly typical mistake in evangelical churches. People are challenged to give your life to Jesus or to ask him into your heart or Tim says into your life. This sounds very biblical, but it can still reject the grace first principle. Remember, if we're incapable of adding anything to our salvation only the work of Christ, then that's the grace first principle. In other words, God must do the work for us. Let me continue back with Tim what he's saying here. So functionally or actually in the church, the church is teaching the idea that we are saved because of the level of our faith. The gospel says we are saved through faith. Here's the way I would break it down. You either place your confidence in your performance or you place your confidence in Christ performance. A combination of the two is destructive to both. So the gospel is that our faith is in the performance of Jesus Christ. That's the gospel. And if we add anything to that, like I must say a prayer in order to enact that, we're adding a work to the gospel. We must hold on to the grace of God in the gospel. Tim's second point on this, he says in other churches, it's taught that it doesn't really matter what you believe as long as you're a loving and good person. I hear that constantly. As long as you're a sincere and a good person, this is completely in the face of grace. Tim says it this way. First, it teaches that good works are good enough to get the God. If all good people can know God, then Jesus's death was not necessary. Another thing it does is it says good people can go to heaven, what about bad people? We're going to do a bad person. It says in the parable in Matthew 22 that God invites both good and bad to God's feast. It also encourages people to think that if they're tolerant and they are open, that they are actually pleasing God. Now, as I was working on this, I actually got myself worked up into just an angry state of mind because I thought this. For someone to say that there are many ways to heaven is to say that Jesus's life, death, and resurrection were in vain. It is to say that Jesus was a lunatic, a deluded nut, a fool. It is the greatest human centered atrocities to say that there is another way to heaven apart from Jesus Christ. It is the greatest of insults and blasphemies to God to say that there is more than one way to gain access to heaven. It is absolutely unbiblical to utter the words that there is any other way to heaven apart from the gracious Savior's life, death, and resurrection. I don't think I've ever been more offended for my Savior than in studying this passage and thinking of the hundreds of times. I've heard people in the church of Jesus Christ and throughout cities say, if you are just a good enough person, you will make it to heaven. That is the most blasphemous offense to the gospel. And I want you as a member of our church to stand against those lies. Why? For Jesus Christ. How dishonoring to Him. But secondly, for your friend, for the people you love, for the people who think that if they are just good enough, they will make it to heaven. They will not. They will be accursed. And so, in a way, this anger really isn't an anger. It's a compassion. It's a love. It's being compelled by the love of Christ to tell people the truth. The last idea that Tim had in terms of the errors we're making in our generation of the false gospel. He says, is that found in churches there is an extreme intolerance of small differences of dress or custom. In some churches, we've added this idea that you have to dress a certain way in order to be accepted at that church. It's completely erroneous. If you ask me, what's the dress code of first praise? I would prefer you would be modest women and men if you could find something that's clean, I'd appreciate it. If that's what I'm looking for, modesty in our women and cleanliness in our men and a contrite heart to come and worship our great King Jesus. But when somebody comes in here and they don't dress and they don't look and they don't smell like us, it is a false gospel to not accept them with the grace of God. I cannot tolerate that in our church. We cannot allow the gospel to be thwarted by our personal preferences that are unbiblical. Secondly, there are no reserved pews in this church. If you want to reserve a pew, you come see me and we'll get the deacons and we'll set a price and you had better have a lot of money. Because anytime someone sits down on a pew, that's where they're sitting. And you have no right to say that's my pew. Would you move? Which is unacceptable. Is this grace centered? And you might say, oh, I used to always sit there and the person will probably say, oh, come on, get in here with me. So we have to be very careful in a church like ours, very traditional, very historic, excellent, wonderful church, orthodox church. But it's about Jesus Christ and about his grace and our need for his grace. I want to say a couple more things in closing. The doctrinal maturity in the gospel is not a luxury but a necessity for first Presbyterian church of Chenniga. I want to say it again, doctrinal maturity in the gospel is not a luxury but a necessity within first Presbyterian church of Chenniga. There's a huge lack of Biblical Christian leadership in the world today. We have not done a good job of establishing people in their faith. I asked someone in a church, would you be willing to lead a small group? And I said, pastor, I don't think I could do that. And I said, why? And they said, well, I don't feel qualified. I said, how long have you come to our church? And they gave me a number. And it was in the decades. And I said, something's broken. If you can sit in a church for decades and not feel qualified to understand the gospel well enough to facilitate a small group, something is horribly broken. And so we are going to get qualified in our faith. And the word doctrine is not a dirty word. The word doctrine means what we believe. And some people say, well, just give me Jesus. Great. Which Jesus? Well, son of God, that's doctrine. Died for sinners, that's doctrine. Loves his people, that's doctrine. Existed in all time equal to the Father in the Spirit, that's doctrine. Doctrine is not a bad word. Biblical doctrine is a really good term. And so as your pastor, I've taken on an extra responsibility. I know some of you think that's crazy. Others are thinking, well, great. Finally, he'll work. He only works half day or week anyway. I want to take on the role of being the discipleship lead pastor in this church because I'm convinced that the church of Jesus Christ in America is an inch deep and a mile wide. And we can't do it anymore. It's dishonoring. It's dishonoring to Jesus Christ to not know what you believe and to not represent the true gospel to your generation. That is our responsibility in the sense of the calling. What did God tell Paul go represent me to the Gentiles? We're here to represent the true gospel of Jesus Christ to his people. The Scottish minister, P. T. 4th, said it this way, the secret of the Lord is with those who have been broken by his cross and healed by his spirit. Galatians exalts these two things. The cross of Christ as the only way a person can get right with God and the spirit of Christ as the only way a person can obey God is the work of God in our hearts. I'm going to ask you to do something. If you're not currently involved in a meaningful discipleship relationship, I would like you to get in a meaningful discipleship relationship. Hundreds of you already are. That makes me so happy to know that hundreds of you are actively involved in discipleship groups and small groups throughout our church. I am going to try to bring a more ordered system to lifelong learning. In other words, if you're 20 years old, I want to help you develop a lifelong ordered system of studying the truths of Jesus. And if you're 80 years old, I'd like to help you establish a lifelong ordered system of learning the truths about Jesus. Learning them in such a way that you are able to transfer them to someone else. So I'm asking each member of our church, I'm actually going to be asking each Christian citizen of Chattanooga to be established in their faith. I've worked with numerous pastors around the city in the past, particularly in the past 18 months, and multiple pastors in the inner city have said, Pastor, we're going to get our people established in their faith because it's one of the glaring weaknesses of Chattanooga and the church of Christ in Chattanooga. So we're going to do it together. And so I want to encourage you, you may have to rearrange your schedule, it might take you six months, it might take you 12 months, but I want you to rearrange your schedule in such a way that you are involved in a meaningful community that is about the business of ordered learning related to the gospel of Jesus Christ. I'm going to lead us in that direction. I pray that you'll come along with us. I believe to do anything less is not honoring to the Lord. Now I know some are unable to do that. You're physically incapable of doing that. We have some ideas on how we can help you with an ordered system. Now I'm going to close with a story about the wonder dog biscuit. A lot of you know biscuit. You've met biscuit. You've taken care of biscuit. A little while ago, two in the morning, biscuits downstairs barking at the back door. And you know, I'm like biscuit, really. You're barking at the back doors two in the morning. I get out of bed and go down. There he is. And he looks and there's a raccoon eating his food. You know. And so I think the raccoon sees me come up. And so it scurries off and all biscuits like just going ballistic, right. And in my brain, I'm like, you stupid dog. It's two in the morning and I am so sleepy. You know, I've got to get up and I've got to go to work anyway. And somewhere in the middle of that, I thought, you know what, if biscuit could kind of tell me what he's thinking, he's probably thinking this, man, you must be so proud of me. You know, you mom, they're sleeping. I'm on the job. Right. I'm in charge of ranch security, buddy. He just barked and looked at him, barking and looking in the middle of that kind of hit me. So I kind of pet him. I said, biscuit, let's go on back. You know, good job, buddy. Nice work. There's going to be a little barking as we go through Galatians. It's going to be a bark that's a loving protective look out. We live in a current evil age where the evangelical church of America is not teaching the gospel of Jesus Christ with God's help. And the help of the Holy Spirit in particular and these friends that I've been reading and studying and your own discipleship groups, we're going to tackle the idea of understanding the gospel of Jesus Christ clearly in our lives so that we may be established in our faith. If you are not currently in a discipleship group and you would like to be, I want you to email me and say, Pastor, help me get in a group. Now we have about 40 qualified leaders and so we, you know, we're in good shape. We can divide people up. You might be thinking, oh, we'll inundate you with emails. I hope you do. I hope you do. Because discipleship that doesn't have a clear ordered learning is hodgepodge. It doesn't produce Christians who are confident in the gospel. God's help for our church and for our city and for our world. I want us to be established in our faith. So study Galatians with us and see the beauty of Christ for Christ alone is the gospel. Let's pray. Thank you and I praise you for this morning. It's so beautiful to look out on this rainy Labor Day weekend and see so many people who want to worship you, Jesus. You are the only person worthy of our worship and you are the only one who deserves glory. And for anyone to say there's another way to heaven, Lord, they will be accursed. They will be damned eternally and Lord give us the loving understanding of our own spiritual inability, our own dependence on your grace and the call that you have on our lives to be agents of rescue as we tell the true gospel. Do this for your glory and for our good. We make our prayer in Jesus name and all God's people said together. Amen. Would you please stand for the benediction? And now may the Lord bless you and keep you. May the Lord cause his face to shine upon you and be gracious to you. May the Lord lift up his countenance upon you and give you peace both now and in the life everlasting. Amen.