Sermon Tone Analysis

Introduction

A few weeks ago, a well-known Evangelical Christian pastor and author, Joshua Harris, announced to the world that he was renouncing his Christian faith.

Harris rose to prominence in 1997 with the publication of his book I Kissed Dating Goodbye, a book that sparked the “Purity Culture” movement of young people seeking to guard their sexual purity until marriage (a book that is in our church library here at Bethel).

Harris grew up in the Pacific Northwest, the oldest of seven children of Gregg and Sono Harris, pioneers in the Christian homeschooling movement that still thrives today (several families here at Bethel—including mine—homeschool our kids).

In 2004 he became the senior pastor of Covenant Life Church in Gaithersburg Maryland, the founding church of Sovereign Grace Ministries (some of our favorite worship songs here at Bethel come from Sovereign Grace.)

He was a prolific author and regular contributor and speaker with The Gospel Coalition, often partnering with some of the most reliable and trustworthy ministers of our day—D.A. Carson, Tim Keller, John Piper, Justin Taylor (men whose work I regularly consult in my study and research for preaching and teaching).

Joshua Harris grew up, lived and ministered at the epicenter of Evangelical, Bible-believing, God-glorifying, Christ-honoring, Gospel-savoring, grace-saturated Christianity.

And then it all started falling apart.

Last year Harris participated in a documentary called I Survived ‘I Kissed Dating Goodbye’, in which he repudiated everything he had written about Christian dating and courtship, and pulled the book from publication.

Earlier this year he went on to announce that he was divorcing Shannon, his wife of 21 years, with whom he had three children.

And then, in an Instagram post dated July 18th, Harris wrote:

I have undergone a massive shift in regard to my faith in Jesus.

The popular phrase for this is deconstruction,” the biblical phrase is “falling away.”

By all the measurements that I have for defining a Christian, I am not a Christian...”

How do we even process this?

This was a man who wrote a book a few years ago called Dug Down Deep: Building Your Life on Truths That Last, based on Jesus’ parable in Luke 6 about the wise man building his house on the rock.

In a promotional video for the book, Harris called people to commit themselves wholly to Jesus Christ so that “on the Day of Judgment, when the flood comes, you will be able to stand firm in Christ”.

And now he has publicly rejected Jesus Christ altogether.

This was a man who grew up homeschooled by loving Christian parents who trained him in the nurture and admonition of the LORD, a man who preached the Gospel soundly, biblically and faithfully to thousands as a pastor, conference speaker and author—and now he rejects that very same Gospel in his own life.

As a pastor and teacher, Harris knew exactly what he was doing—in his statement he even uses the biblical term “falling away”, which is the literal English translation of the New Testament Greek word apostasia, “apostasy”.

Apostasy is a denial of faith by those who once held it or professed to hold it.

And the heartbreaking reality is that Josh Harris is not alone.

Apostasy happens every day in this country.

According to one study,

“Around 2 out of 3 Christian students from conservative churches will leave Christianity by the time they reach adulthood.... Nearly 90% of those students who leave the church have already begun to doubt God’s Word by the time they graduate from high school.”

Lisle, J. (2009, August 11).

Surviving Secular College.

Retrieved from https://answersingenesis.org/college/surviving-secular-college/

We cannot look on Josh Harris’s story and confidently assure ourselves that “that will never happen to my kids!

They’re immune to apostasy!”

If you sit here this morning and tell yourself, “I could never fall away!”,

be careful.

Be careful.

Because the Apostle Peter said the same thing, loudly boasting that he would never deny Christ—and then only a few hours later swore up and down he “never knew that man!”

The Scriptures warn us, don’t they, beloved?

We are warned not to be over-confident in our ability to avoid falling away.

The apostle Paul writes in 1 Corinthians 10:12:

And so this morning I want us to turn to the Scriptures to understand the “astonishing tragedy of apostasy”.

Because apostasy is a tragedy—imagine what Josh Harris’s children are feeling today?

Not to mention his former church—how do you even process the news that the man who brought you to faith in Jesus Christ, who shepherded you faithfully and Biblically for years has now denied Christianity altogether?

So we need to understand what God’s Word says about apostasy this morning.

Here in Galatians 1:6-10 I want us to see three things about apostasy: I want us to see what apostasy is, I want us to understand where apostasy comes from, and finally I want us to learn how to fight it.

Look with me at verse 6:

First, we have to understand that

I. Apostasy is Deserting God (Gal.

1:6)

As we saw last week, Paul wrote this letter to the Galatian churches because they were listening to the false teachers who told them that they could only be followers of Jesus if they became Jews first.

And Paul wasted no words in telling them what they were doing by going back to the Mosaic Law and demanding what they deserved from God instead of receiving His grace in Christ: They were deserting God who called them.

The word translated “deserting” here is used to describe a soldier who “goes over to the enemy” and fights on their side against his own people—this is no small thing!

No wonder Paul is “astonished”—the Galatians are doing the unthinkable—they are rejecting God Himself!

Notice here that there is no hint from Paul that their rejection is in any way about him, is it?

He’s not upset because they are walking away from him or rejecting his message.

He is astonished that they are rejecting God Himself!

And not only are they deserting God Himself, Paul goes on to say that they are

Deserting the grace of Christ

Apostasy means turning your back on everything Jesus did for you in salvation!

It means looking on His sacrifice, His agony on the Cross, the blood that He shed to wash away your guilt before God, and saying: “Thanks, but no thanks!

You did all that for me, but I don’t want it.

You loved me enough to die for me before I even knew you?

You willingly suffered the most agonizing death ever devised by the brutality of wicked men, and you did it for my sake?

Well, Jesus, you were wasting your time.”

No wonder Paul was astonished!

Paul tells the Galatians that they were deserting God who called them, they were deserting Christ’s grace for them, and they were

Deserting the only Gospel that saves

Now, to be sure, the Galatians probably didn’t see it that way.

Most often when people apostatize, they don’t believe they are abandoning the Gospel, they see it as enhancing the Gospel.

But what Paul will go to great pains in this letter to demonstrate is that it is impossible to “enhance” the Gospel by adding anything to it!

If you add anything to the Gospel, you are in fact rejecting the Gospel!

Think of it this way: In my day job I serve as a School Certifying Official for Veterans Affairs, managing GI Bill Educational Benefits for student veterans.

Under Chapter 33, Post 9/11 GI Bill, students have 100% of their tuition and fees paid by the VA, they have a $1000 per month housing allowance, and $500 per month book stipend.

Every last penny of their cost of attending Penn State DuBois is paid.

Imagine that one of those students were to come into my office and say, “Good news, Tharren!

I just added on to my GI Bill by taking out a hundred thousand dollar loan!

Look at how much money I have now for school!”

But by adding a loan to his benefits, he essentially lost his benefits, didn’t he?

Because now he has to pay where before he didn’t!

And this is what was so astonishing to the Apostle Paul—this is what broke his heart over the Galatian churches slide into apostasy—instead of the free gift of salvation by grace in Jesus Christ, they insisted on working to save themselves!

But

If you try to add anything to the Gospel, you are in fact losing the Gospel

Apostasy is desertion—desertion of God, desertion of the grace of Christ, desertion of the only Gospel that saves.

But where does apostasy come from?

Why would anyone in their right mind abandon the free and magnificent and glorious grace of God in Jesus Christ?

Look at what Paul said about the Galatians’ apostasy in verse 7:

What we see here is

II.

Apostasy Thrives in Trouble (Gal.

1:7)

Paul says here in verse 7 that the false teachers are “troubling” the Galatians.

The idea of the word here is to be badly shaken, to have trouble and distress that (in our modern parlance) “rocks your world”.

When things are going smoothly, Christian, it’s the most natural thing in the world to look to Christ, to love Him, to trust Him with your whole life.

But then comes the bombshell—that lump turns out to be Stage IV cancer, your wife runs off with your best friend, your only child is killed by a drunk driver—and suddenly you are tempted to wonder whether Jesus really is enough?

Why did He allow this to happen?

If this is what I get for following Jesus—if this is how He rewards people who serve Him—then maybe it’s time for me to look somewhere else!

The old Puritan preacher Thomas Watson once warned,

Thomas Watson: “The Devil loves to fish in the troubled waters of a discontented heart”.

When you experience that deep, shaken-to-the-core “soul-trouble”, that’s when the Devil grabs his spinning rod and his tackle box and heads right in your direction!

Now, if you’re a fisherman, I’ll bet you have your favorite lure that you use, don’t you?

The can’t-miss, gets-’em-every-time lure that you’ve been using for years?

Well, the Devil has one too—he’s been using it for centuries.

In fact, it’s the lure he used to land his most famous catch of all, when he caused Adam and Eve to fall away in the Garden of Eden.

And he casts that same shiny lure into the troubled waters of your anguished heart: “Did God really say…?”

A troubled heart can be lured into distorted truth