The following sermon is by John MacArthur, pastor, author, and Bible teacher with Grace

to You.

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And now unleashing God's truth one verse at a time.

Here's Grace to You, Bible teacher John MacArthur.

We come now to hear from heaven through the pages of Scripture, and I want you to go back to Galatians chapter 5 for you that are visiting with us.

We go through the books of Scripture, particularly in the New Testament, verse by verse, and hear the word of God in its context as it has been revealed to us.

And we are in a book called Galatians written to Christians by the Apostle Paul who were in churches scattered around a province in the ancient Roman world called Galatia.

They had heard the gospel and believed the gospel, and they had come to salvation in Christ.

They had received the Holy Spirit, their lives were transformed, they were walking in the Spirit, they were enjoying the fullness of life in Christ.

And then some false teachers came, and false teachers came and wanted to undermine what they had believed, what had been taught to them by the Apostle of Jesus Christ by the name of Paul.

And the false teachers told them the idea that you can be saved from your sin forgiven and enter the kingdom of God through faith alone is a lie.

It requires also that you adhere to the law of Moses, namely the external laws of Moses, circumcision, rituals, festivals, feasts, ceremonies.

Without those you cannot be saved, it is as if you have to step into the formal external behaviors of ceremonial Judaism before you can be a believer.

Even though they had believed that salvation was by faith alone, they had believed the true gospel had been saved by the true gospel.

They began to be confused by the false gospel of the false teachers.

The false teachers also let them know that if they were going to live a holy life, if they were going to honor the Lord with their lives, they could not hope to be sanctified, they could not hope to be more like Christ, they could not hope to grow.

They could not hope to grow in grace, apart from observing those very same rituals and ceremonies and even circumcision from the mosaic economy.

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