Spoken Word no. 222
“Galatians chapter 5
“Perverted Gospel Perverted Nature”
Brian Kocourek, Pastor
January 26th, 2011
This evening we will speak from the book of Galatians beginning
at chapter 5. As we found Paul speaking of the spirit of adoption in chapter 4
early on and then letting us know that not everyone who is born is adopted, but
we must be the right kind of son, for from Abraham there were two sons, and two
covenants, one covenant for those born after the flesh and another covenant fro
those born after the spirit. Now, a covenant is a contract, agreement or that makes disposition. The
covenant calls for certain actions or obligations on the side of both parties.
We saw that one covenant established a works obligation, ie: if you do I will
do sort of wording. The other covenant, which was a covenant by promise, made
no reference to works, but emphasized an attitude of grace and mercy.
This evening we will further study this letter to the
Galatians which spoke of this adoption of sons, and look further into the two
covenants.
Galatians
5:1 Stand
fast therefore in the liberty wherewith Christ hath made us free, and be not
entangled again with the yoke of bondage.
Now, it is very clear here that the apostle Paul is
making a distinction between these two covenants, and thus the two different
kind of sons. And the Son by promise is to do one thing here, and that is to
stand fast in liberty. Now, why would the apostle Paul make this statement as
to standing fast in liberty. The reason is that when people are pressed upon
they begin to waiver if they are not certain. As we see today that people are
so willing to give up their liberty in favor of security. That is what has
happened to this country and many others. The people sit back passively while the
so called elites conspire to bring them under bondage in one way or another.
They all situations to come on that cast a shadow of fear over the people, and
then promise them security. But in order to grant them security the people must
be willing to give up their liberty.
Now,
this is not a ploy that is made just in politics, but if you look throughout
history you will find the church has done the same thing.
The Catholic church constrained the people to bow to
idols and pay homage to her leaders and thus stifled the peoples liberty,
promising them security in the church. And then when the people begin to flex
their freedom, the church became the enforcer using terrorism as a means to
control the people, juts as the political leaders have used in the past couple
decades to brig the people under a passivity that makes no allowances for
liberty.
Now, verse 22 Behold,
I Paul say unto you, that if ye be circumcised, Christ shall profit you
nothing. 3 For I testify again to every man that is
circumcised, that he is a debtor to do the whole law. 4 Christ
is become of no effect unto you, whosoever of you are justified by the law; ye
are fallen from grace.
Martin Luther in His
Preface to the Book of Romans said, "God judges
according to what is at the bottom of the heart, and for this reason, His law makes its demands on the inmost
heart and cannot be satisfied with works, but rather punishes works that
are done otherwise than from the bottom of the heart, as hypocrisy and lies.
The Apostle Paul taught us in Romans 7: 14 “For we know that the law is spiritual:”
And thus since "The law is
spiritual," it must be
satisfied by what is spiritual, namely the motives and objectives of our heart.
Martin Luther said, “If the law were made for the body, it could be satisfied
with works; but since it is spiritual,
no one can satisfy it, unless all that
you do is done from the bottom of the heart. But such a heart is given only by God's Spirit, who makes a man equal
to the law, so that he acquires a desire
for the law in his heart, and henceforth does nothing out of fear and
compulsion, but everything out of
a willing heart. And that is our key to adoption, and the
spirit of adoption. The condition of the heart.
Martin Luther continued
saying, “That
law then is spiritual which will be loved and fulfilled with such a spiritual heart, and requires such a spirit. Where that spirit is not in the heart,
there sin remains, and displeasure with the law, and enmity toward it, though
the law is good and jut and holy.
Now we see in the book of Ezekiel that God said, Ezekiel 36: 26 A new heart also
will I give you, and a new spirit will I put within you: and I will take away
the stony heart out of your flesh, and I will give you an heart of flesh.
Ezekiel 11: 19 And I will give them one heart, and I will
put a new spirit within you; and I will take the stony heart out of their
flesh, and will give them an heart of flesh:
Impersonation of Christianity 57-0120M P:43 They say, "Yes, sure I don't want to
go to hell. I want to accept Christ." That's all right. That's good.
That's just your first...?...Then He said after that, "Then I'll give you a new spirit." What's that? A new desire, "I want to do right." "Now, I know I'm
a Christian, …and then he said, But now, that's the
new spirit. Then notice the order of the Scripture. After you get a new heart and a new spirit, He said, "Then I'll put My Spirit..." See? Oh, what? That's what the Scripture says
here. That's the order, the numerical order of the Scripture: a new heart, a
new spirit, and then My Spirit.
You see, God is dealing with
our hearts and not our flesh. So it really matters not how well you seem to be
in your flesh, God discerns the Thoughts and intents of the heart.
“Therefore, sin, in the
scripture, means not only the outward works of the body, but all the activities
that move men to outward works, namely the inmost heart, with all its powers. Faith on
the other hand is a living, daring confidence in God's Grace, so sure and certain
that a man would stake his life on it a thousand times. Faith is not that human notion and dream
that some hold for faith. Faith, however, is a divine work in us. It changes us
and makes altogether different men, in heart and spirit and mind and powers,
and it brings with it the Holy Ghost”. Martin Luther
Brother Branham quoting the Hebrews 10:2 in his sermon, Show us the Father and it will satisfy 60-0731 P:56 he
said, The
worshiper once purged has no more desire of sin." The Bible says, "Conscious," which really means "desire." A worshiper once
put his hands upon the head of Jesus Christ by faith, and feel that quivering
flesh like the man did on the lamb, dying, crying, an innocent one, and with
all your heart, believing that Son of God died in your place, and when you make
that confession the Holy Spirit,
from that Blood cell that sanctified you, comes
into your life, and you are a new
creation in Christ Jesus. The Life
of God is in you, and He's adopted you, and you are a Son of God. Amen.
Don't get scared. "Amen" means "so be it." That won't hurt
you.
Expectation 51-0930 P:21 Now, David said in the Scriptures,
"When the deep calleth to the deep..." The deep calls to the deep, in
other words, when there's a desire in
here, there's something out there that's causing... In other... Here, before there is a desire in here there has
to be something create that desire. See? And if there's a creator to create
that desire of that creation. You get what I mean?
So what we are looking
at this covenant of Life is that it deals not with the flesh as the other
covenant dealt with, “You do this and I will do this”, but it deals with
motives and objectives which come from the heart.
Then Paul says in Galatians 5:5 For
we through the Spirit wait for the
hope of righteousness by faith. We
through the Spirit of God wait in anticipation, or wait with earnest
expectation for the right-wise-ness that comes by revelation. That is why the
Revelation of Jesus Christ is so important to us, because it brings with it an
understanding and a right-wise-ness in the soul, in the heart, in our spirit.
And that right-wise-ness then begins to move us in our bodies in the right
direction, or into the will of our Heavenly Father.
Notice what Paul means
in verse 6 For
in Jesus Christ neither circumcision availeth any thing, nor uncircumcision;
but faith which worketh by love. You
see, he is talking about an act of the flesh, so whether we have that act in
the flesh to confirm our stand with God or whether we do not have that act in
our flesh, it matters not, but what really matters is our faith. And that faith
which is revelation working by the right motive which is love.
Let’s read that again. 6 For in Jesus Christ neither circumcision
(you confirmation in your flesh) availeth any thing, nor uncircumcision;(whether
you do not have that confirmation in your flesh) but faith (the Revelation of Jesus
Christ) which
worketh by love. And we love from the heart, so Paul is talking
about that what motivates your heart, and that is love.
Then he says in verse 7 Ye
did run well; who did hinder you that ye should not obey the truth? (In other words, you were running in this race well,
but who did cut in on you to prevent you from obeying the truth.)
8 This
persuasion cometh not of him that calleth you. Now, Paul is going back to his original argument that
he gave in Chapter
1: 6-9“I
marvel that ye are so soon removed from him (In other words, he is
saying, I am astonished that you have deserted the One) that called you
into the grace of Christ unto different gospel: (unto a Gospel which has a different nature) 7 And this Gospel they
preach to you is not totally a different Gospel as though there words are
totally not the same, yet the Gospel they are preaching to you has been
perverted, twisted, until they throw you a curve ball when they present it to
you. Using the same text, they trouble
you by perverting the gospel of Christ. 8 But though we,
or an angel from heaven, preach any other gospel unto you than that which we
have preached unto you, let him be accursed. 9 As we
said before, so say I now again, If any man preach any other gospel unto you
than that ye have received, let him be accursed. 10 For
do I now persuade men, or God? or do I seek to please men? for if I yet pleased
men, I should not be the servant of Christ. 11 But
I certify you, brethren, that the gospel which was preached of me is not after man. 12 For I neither received it of man, neither was
I taught it, but by the revelation of Jesus Christ.
Now, what happened in that church age Paul saw coming,
so it was not a blind thing to him. He saw the little twists here and the
little twists there, and he could see that the same word that he taught was
subtly being changed so that it took on a different meaning to what he had
received from Jesus Christ and given to the people.
Now, remember, in this Letter to the Galatians Paul is
mainly speaking on the Spirit of Adoption and the nature and Characteristics of
the right kind of son verses the other sons who are not worthy of being heir
and joint heirs with Jesus Christ.
So we see that the standard for adoption and receiving
inheritance is the first born son, and the path to that inheritance comes
through the Word which He preached, of which some had entered into the flock
and were twisting to the point that it was bringing into the people a twisted
nature, and not the nature of Christ. But it brought with it a wrong spirit, a
nature that would persecute the righteous as wee see later on in this letter in
chapter 4.
Brother Branham also told us that He only
said what Paul had said, and Paul said "We must rightly
divide the Word of Truth," and as we see in this letter to the
Galatians the people were already in that age beginning to deviate from the
true nature of what Paul was saying, an
by so deviating from that original seed, they were accepting the life of
another seed, another Covenant, and by the time the Second Church Age came
around there were so many isms in the Message, that Irenaeus wrote his books to
outright show how far they had deviated from the Message that Paul had brought.
In his writings, Irenaeus said; "there is an importance to the order and connection of the
scripture."
Therefore, we must keep the True meaning of Scripture,
and not render our own interpretations to it, hoping we have found some great
deep secret of scripture that is not really there. The Apostle Peter said
"the Word of
God is of no private interpretation". Why?, because God
interprets His Own Word by bringing it to pass.
Now, you must
always remember, according to William Branham vindicated prophet of God, he
said, "the Alpha
has become Omega," And what happened in the first church
age must repeat in the last. And what took place in the first church age is, they
left their first Love, and our first Love according to Deuteronomy
is to have only One God, and Him alone shall we love with all our heart and mind and
soul.
So if they went off in this understanding in the first
age, won't they do so again in the last age when God once again visits the
earth to declare Himself in the Revelation of Jesus Christ? After all, it
wasn't those who were God's Elect that went off, but the church who went off.
From his sermon, God who is Rich
in Mercy 65-0119 brother Branham said, “And now then, we find out that we have come to another Ephesians, another
In Revelations 2:1-5
we read, Unto the angel of the church of Ephesus write;
These things saith he that holdeth the seven stars in his right hand, who
walketh in the midst of the seven golden candlesticks; I know thy works, and
thy labour, and thy patience, and how thou canst not bear them which are evil:
and thou hast tried them which say they are apostles, and are not, and hast
found them liars: And hast borne, and hast patience, and for my name's sake
hast laboured, and hast not fainted. Nevertheless I have [somewhat] against
thee, because thou hast left thy first love. Remember therefore from whence
thou art fallen, and repent, and do the first works; or else I will come unto
thee quickly, and will remove thy candlestick out of his place, except thou
repent.”
Now, what I am trying to tell you is that
what happened in the first Church Age must repeat. And to find out how the
first church age ended we must actually look to the second church age to see
what condition the church was in. Let me begin then by reading to you what
Irenaeus said in his 1st book entitled, "Irenaeus
Against Heresies Book I", concerning those who were
propagating the same errors concerning the Godhead in the First church age.
Now, the reason I bring this up is because we see Paul
make the warning in Galatians chapter 1 and then in Chapter 2 he speaks of the
false brethren who crept into the Alpha Message unawares and brought with them
damnable heresies.
Galatians
2:1 Then
fourteen years after I went up again to
Now, to avoid spending too long a time right now in
this chapter, because after all, if we were to take this entire letter to the Galatians
as we did the book on Romans where we spoke 142 sermons and spent two
years on it. But right now I am just covering the
Now, in getting back to
what Irenaeus encountered among the people, he saw how far they had already
slipped from the nature of the original seed that Paul planted, because he
could see the nature of those who were claiming to believe the Message, and yet
how far from the original messenger they had become in their own spirit.
So we see Irenaeus continuing by saying, “In as much as
certain men have set the truth aside, and bring in lying words and vain
genealogies, which, as the apostle says, (he means Paul) "minister questions
rather than godly edifying which is in faith,"
and by means of their craftily-constructed plausibility's they draw away the
minds of the inexperienced and take them captive, Therefore, I have felt
constrained, my dear friend, to compose the following treatise in order to
expose and counteract their machinations. (Paul did not use this
word machination, but he used the definition of the word machination when he
said the
words, “cunning craftiness whereby they would lie in
wait to deceive”.
Now, Irenaeus continues, “These
men falsify the Word of God, and prove themselves evil interpreters of the good
word of revelation. They also overthrow the faith of many, by drawing them away, under a pretense of superior knowledge, from
Him who rounded and adorned the universe; as if, in truth, they had something
more excellent and sublime to reveal, than that God who created the heaven and
the earth, and all things that are therein.
Now, Paul aid the same thing in 2 Corinthians 11 when he calls them
super duper apostles.
3:
But I am afraid that just as Eve was deceived by the serpent’s cunning, your
minds may somehow be led astray from your sincere
and pure devotion to Christ. 4
For if someone comes to you and preaches a Jesus other than the Jesus we
preached, or if you receive a different spirit from the Spirit you received, or
a different gospel from the one you accepted, you put up with it easily enough.
5 I do not think I am in the least inferior to those “super-apostles. 6
I may indeed be untrained as a speaker, but I do have knowledge. We have made
this perfectly clear to you in every way.”
So you see someone crept in and began to change the
meaning of the Message to the people, and Paul saw it coming, and Irenaeus saw
the manifestation of that seed change because he saw the display of the nature
in the people and it was not the same as the original seed.
So in getting back to Irenaeus we hear him continue
saying, “Therefore,
by means of specious and plausible words, they cunningly allure the
simple-minded to inquire into their system; but they nevertheless clumsily
destroy them, while they initiate them into their blasphemous and impious opinions
respecting the Creation; and these simple ones are unable, even in such a
matter, to distinguish falsehood from truth.”
2. Error,
indeed, is never set forth in its naked deformity, lest, being thus exposed, it
should at once be detected. But it is craftily decked out in an attractive
dress, so as, by its outward form, to make it appear to the inexperienced
(ridiculous, as the expression may seem) more true than the truth itself.
"A clever imitation in glass casts contempt, as it were, on that precious
jewel the emerald (which is most highly esteemed by some), unless it come under
the eye of one able to test and expose the counterfeit. Or, again, what inexperienced
person can with ease detect the presence of brass when it has been mixed up
with silver?" Lest, therefore, through my neglect, some should be carried
off, even as sheep are by wolves, while they perceive not the true character of
these men, because they outwardly are covered with sheep's clothing (against
whom the Lord has warned us to be on our guard), and because their language
resembles ours, while their sentiments are very different, --I have deemed it
my duty (after reading some of the Commentaries, as they call them, of the
disciples of Valentinus, and after making myself acquainted with their tenets
through personal intercourse with some of them) to unfold to thee, my friend,
these portentous and profound mysteries, which do not fall within the range of
every intellect, because all have not sufficiently purged(6) their brains. I do
this, in order that thou, obtaining an acquaintance with these things, mayest
in turn explain them to all those with whom thou art connected, and exhort them
to avoid such an abyss of madness and of blasphemy against Christ. I intend,
then, to the best of my ability, with brevity and clearness to set forth the
opinions of those who are now promulgating heresy. I refer especially to the
disciples of Ptolemaeus, whose school may be described as a bud from that of
Valentinus. I shall also endeavour, according to my moderate ability, to
furnish the means of overthrowing them, by showing how absurd and inconsistent
with the truth are their statements. Not that I am practiced either in
composition or eloquence; but my feeling of affection prompts me to make known
to thee and all thy companions those doctrines which have been kept in
concealment until now, but which are at last, through the goodness of God,
brought to light. "For there is nothing hidden which shall not be
revealed, nor secret that shall not be made known."(1)
From Chapter VIII.
--[How the Valentinians pervert the Scriptures to support their own pious
opinions.]
1. Such, then, is their system, which neither the prophets
announced, nor the Lord taught, nor the apostles delivered, but of which they boast
that beyond all others they have a perfect knowledge. They gather their views
from other sources than the Scriptures; and, to use a common proverb, they
strive to weave ropes of sand, while they endeavour to adapt with an air of
probability to their own peculiar assertions the parables of the Lord, the
sayings of the prophets, and the words of the apostles, in order that their
scheme may not seem altogether without support.
In
doing so, however, they disregard the order and the connection of the Scriptures,
and so far as in them lies, dismember and destroy the truth. By transferring
passages, and dressing them up anew, and making one thing out of another, they
succeed in deluding many through their wicked art in adapting the oracles of
the Lord to their opinions. Their manner of acting is just as if one, when a
beautiful image of a king has been constructed by some skillful artist out of
precious jewels, should then take this likeness of the man all to pieces,
should rearrange the gems, and so fit them together as to make them into the
form of a dog or of a fox, and even that but poorly executed; and should then
maintain and declare that this was the beautiful image of the king which the
skillful artist constructed, pointing to the jewels which had been admirably
fitted together by the first artist to form the image of the king, but have
been with bad effect transferred by the latter one to the shape of a dog, and
by thus exhibiting the jewels, should deceive the ignorant who had no
conception what a king's form was like, and persuade them that that miserable
likeness of the fox was, in fact, the beautiful image of the king. In like
manner do these persons patch together old wives' fables, and then endeavor, by
violently drawing away from their proper connection, words, expressions, and
parables whenever found, to adapt the oracles of God to their baseless
fictions. We have already stated how far they proceed in this way with respect
to the interior of the Fullness.
Now having read
Irenaeus' description of their practice and their teaching techniques, we
should be able first of all to see how it is that they are able to draw away
people's minds from the Truth into error. Because the ignorant, as Irenaeus
calls them, do not know the Truth, they therefore open themselves to error.
Which reminds me of one sister years ago who said, "Since I don't
understand, I can not be held responsible," but she was rebuffed by my
good friend br. Vayle who told her, "on the contrary my sister, you are
responsible, therefore you had better understand."
How many
foolish people will try and twist brother Branham's words. The Oneness believed
he was a Trinitarian, while the Trinitarian believed he was oneness. Others tried
to make him say things he never said, and some claim he taught that you do not
need to understand, you only need to believe. He explicitly taught that only
the Elect will understand. For how can you believe without knowing what you believe?
Now, I hope you
understand how important it is to know the Truth, for "the Truth shall set
you free." Not only should you know the Truth, but also you
should love it, for if you do not love it, it is right there that you are
placing yourself in a position to be deceived.
2
Thess 2: 10-12 And with all deceivableness of unrighteousness
in them that perish; because they received not the love of the truth, that they
might be saved. And for this cause God shall send them strong delusion, that
they should believe a lie: That they all might be damned who believed not the
truth, but had pleasure in unrighteousness.
And so we see
here because they have not a love for the Truth, God Himself will send them the
strong delusion that will cause them to leave the Truth. Now if you think for
one minute that you are more than able to resist what God sends, you had better
not fool yourself.
God is ever watchful of your attitudes. Remember, He
knows the very inner-most thoughts that you have. And you've got to love it with all your heart, with all your mind, and with all
your soul, or you will open yourself up for deception.
I Timothy 4:1-2 Now the Spirit speaketh expressly, that in the latter times
some shall depart from The Faith, giving heed to seducing spirits, and doctrines
of devils; Speaking lies in hypocrisy; having their conscience seared with a
hot iron; These are hypocritical lies,
because they know better but refuse to teach the truth.
The scriptures does not tell us, "some shall depart
from faith", but from "The Faith,"
and we know that faith is a Revelation.
Ephesians 4 tells us, There is only One
Lord and One Faith or Revelation, and we know by scripture that this one Revelation is the Revelation of
Jesus Christ. Therefore, the deception will have to be concerning this One
True Revelation. Also it will come via doctrines of devils. So the doctrine
will be error concerning the Godhead and this will produce error in the people.
In other words, as it was in the days of Elijah, the false ministry of that day
were successful in getting the people of Israel to worship God in a wrong way
and thus to worship God outside of Truth is to actually worship other God's.
That is why they worshipped Baal, which actually means Lord. So when they speak
of worshipping the Lord, if their worship is based on wrong understanding, they
are in fact worshipping a wrong Lord, and the sad part is they don't even know
it. But will they open their heart to listen? Never. For Jesus said, the reason
they will not receive the Truth is that they have no place for the Truth in
them.
Irenaeus
pointed out that the wrong connection of the scriptures will give a wrong
presentation of the Only True God and therefore will present a perverted Lord.
In John 4: 22 Jesus said, "the gentiles worship what they know
not," and He said, "But we know what we worship," and that
is the Key, you’ve got to know Him who you are worshipping or you will be lost
in your unbelief. He further stated "They that worship
God must worship Him in Spirit and in Truth." And so apart
from the truth your worship is in vain. You must worship God in Spirit and in
Truth. Worship apart from a True Revelation is satanic, and God will not reveal
anything without it coming via His Prophet. So, any revelation that comes
outside of the vindicated channel of God is a part of the great deception.
In 1 John 3:12 We see that Cain slew His Brother because
his own works were evil. It did not say that the slaying itself
was what was evil, but the reason he slew his brother is because his own works
were evil. And what were those works? His offering to God apart from a
Vindicated Revelation. He offered a first fruit offering which was perfectly
scriptural and in fact it was a resurrection offering, but it was out of
season. And it is not that he did not know better. He named His first-born
Enoch, which is the name of the first raptured saint.
But Cain's revelation, and therefore his offering was
actually considered evil because it was not the Revelation for the hour, and in
fact the Revelation that the Lord Himself descended with. If you will recall,
The Lord descended with a shout in the Garden of Eden. And what did He reveal
to Adam through this Shout (or Message)? That Because the serpent's blood was
mingled with Eves blood, then blood must be required for an atonement, and Cain
refused God's vindicated message and Revelation for that hour.
In Genesis 4:7
After we see that God rejected Cain's offering, He said to Cain, "If thou do what is
right, shalt thou not be accepted?” The Septuagint reads this way, "If thou doest
well, shalt thou not be accepted? Thou hast rightly offered, but thou hast not
rightly divided." Notice how much importance God places on
having the right division of His Word. Cain's Revelation was rejected and
considered evil because he did not rightly divide the Word of Truth.
This is why we
find Paul in Galatians
1 and 2 Corinthians 11 speaking so vehemently about the people just
putting up with any old thing. He said it results in the preaching of a
different Jesus altogether, and the scriptures being presented are presented in
such a perverted way that they take on a different nature, thus bringing forth
a different spirit altogether. And that is what Irenaeus has shown in his
illustrations of men who would make an image of a dog or fox and try to pass it
off to the ignorant people as the image of a King. Talk about ignorance. How
can you mistake a dog for "The King of Glory"?
Yet that is what has happened.
Now, lets go back and pick up
in Galatians
chapter 5 and
verse 9 where we will close tonight on this: A little leaven leaveneth the
whole lump.
Now, since this could take an entire sermon to preach
we will leave off until Sunday.
Let us bow our hearts and our heads in a word of
prayer.