WWUTT 1746 I Say Again: No Other Gospel, Part 1 (Galatians 1:9)

The Apostle Paul was emphatic with the Galatians that there is no other gospel. He was so emphatic that he said it twice. And if anyone preaches another gospel, let them be accursed when we understand the text.

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Here once again is Pastor Gabe.

Galatians 1:9 and the Warning Against Another Gospel

Thank you, Becky. And greetings, everyone. We have been in a sermon series through the book of Galatians, a series that I preached a few years ago. Last week, we were in Galatians 1, 6 through 8 in a sermon entitled No Other Gospel.

Today and tomorrow, we move on to verse 9, where Paul says, again, if anyone is preaching to you a gospel contrary to the one you received, let him be accursed. And so we start now with Galatians 1, verses 1 through 9.

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, 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 that we preached to you, let him be accursed. 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 accursed.

Let us pray. Our heavenly Father, as we come to your word today, I pray that it speaks to us loud and clear and that it serves to us a warning that we would not be led astray by many strange and false teachings, but we would continue to cling to the true and awesome gospel of Jesus Christ.

May we understand its distinctions. What makes the gospel of Christ different from everything else that would try to present itself as gospel or as a gospel, trying to say you need this in order to get by, or you need to do these things in order to be saved, or you must do this in order to attain some sort of level of perfection.

All of these things are marked by works, but it is the gospel of Jesus Christ that is grace for salvation. By faith in him, have we been extended the blessings of God by grace, through faith, and this is not our own doing.

It is the gift of God, not of works that no man may boast. Keep us steadfast in the truth and let us not be led astray by any plausible arguments. It's in the name of Jesus Christ we pray, and all God's people said, amen.

Thank you. You may be seated. I'm breaking from script for a moment just to make this particular observation, but any time that we have a weather of this kind that might keep people from coming to church, we have, you know, you can kind of see the whole empty section over here.

Nevertheless, the cold weather does not keep the islanders from coming to church. I always see many islanders even when we have ice and snow. That's a blessing and a testament to me. Thank you guys. So here once again in Galatians chapter 1, Paul gives a stern warning to the church that they have been led astray by another gospel.

This is not warning them that there are false gospels in the world, so you need to watch out for those things. They have already turned aside to a different word than that which was first preached to them by the apostles who came to Galatia.

I'm astonished, Paul says in verse 6, that you are so quickly deserting him to follow a different gospel, to believe something other than justification by grace through faith in Jesus Christ, is to desert Christ and go after another.

Remember that I've said to you as we've embarked upon Galatians that any time that we might fall into a belief of something like Christ plus blank, that it's more than Christ, well, I have Jesus but I also need this, whatever fills in the blank is where the emphasis is.

That's the thing that you worship. That's the thing that your heart yearns for and goes after. It may be an additional teaching, religion, philosophy. It could be a thing in this world that you want or think that you need to have in order to find satisfaction.

But whatever fills the blank gets the emphasis. That's where your heart is. That's where your focus and your yearning is for. You feel unsatisfied until that blank is filled. In the case of the Galatians, this was a works righteousness.

Perhaps the Galatians still did indeed believe in Jesus Christ. There was nothing here that seems to indicate to us that they had abandoned an understanding of Christ altogether. So it wasn't like we're no longer worshiping Jesus at all and now they've come into worship of these other gods.

It's not like that's what's happened to the Church of Galatia. But they've come to believe that they need something else other than Christ in order to be saved. Some sort of work that needed to be done.

So I need to do this. I need to be circumcised. I need to recognize the Sabbath. I need to keep all these laws of Moses. I need to keep the dietary laws. All these other things that the Galatians believed that they had to do in order to attain salvation had warped the gospel of Jesus Christ into another gospel.

And though they with their mouths may have continued to proclaim Christ, Paul says to them plainly, you've deserted him because Christ is not enough for you anymore. You have to have this. Did Christ die for nothing?

If his death was not enough for you to believe that you're forgiven of your sins and you've been given eternal life with God, that you have to have this other thing or accomplish this other task in order to truly know that you have salvation, all of the work has been completed in Christ.

So once you think you have to do something and your works lead you to salvation, you've deserted Christ and you've relied upon your own merit. And our merits do not save us. There is nothing that we can do that earns us favor with God.

Paul spends the first three chapters of the book of Romans bringing all men into condemnation so that whether you are Jew or Greek, none of you have right standing before God. You have no inherent favor before the Lord.

It is only by faith in what Christ has done for us that we have then been clothed in his righteousness and we are received by God as he would receive his own son. Only by faith in Jesus. Once you think that you have to do something or it's dependent upon you to accomplish this, you've deserted Christ, you've exalted yourself, and you worship the created thing rather than the creator.

Two Religions: Creator Worship or Created Thing Worship

As I said last week, we can whittle down all the religions in the world basically to two things. You are either following God through Jesus Christ to eternal life or you're following Satan through your own works and merits or deceptions in this world ultimately to your own destruction.

Everyone follows either God or Satan. That's it. And it doesn't matter whether you think you've made a choice to follow God or Satan. You're following one or the other. You are either worshiping the created things or you are worshiping the creator.

And even here in this particular instance with the Galatians, though again, they may still acknowledge Christ with their mouths. They think they need to do this in order to have salvation. And the created must merit the salvation of God, which is therefore worshiping the created things rather than the creator.

Worshiping created things doesn't necessarily mean that there is an idol that has been formed by man sitting there in front of you and you're bowing down to it. That's not necessarily what we mean by worshiping the created things, although it may manifest itself that way.

And don't think in our culture that those things are not done. That's a primitive thing that they do in another part of the world that an uneducated people do, that they fashion idols with their hands and bow down to those things.

It's going on this morning in our own community with people bowing down or kissing statues of Mary or the saints and even relying upon apotropaics or holy relics that they believe gives them some sort of forgiveness or blessing or grace or asceticism of the body.

There are people that believe this as well, that they can afflict themselves with a punishment somehow and that will forgive their sins. There are people that believe that. And of course, there are also those who believe that they can be saved by their works.

Some believe that they are worshiping Jesus, but the version of Jesus that they worship is their own God. It is not the Christ that we see in the Bible. And so therefore, they likewise have deserted Him who called you in the grace of Christ and are turning to a different gospel.

And again, Paul states plainly in verse 7, not that there is another one, but there are some who trouble you and want to distort the gospel of Christ. So once again, they may still say that they believe the gospel.

They may still have some remnant of what had been taught to them by the apostles, but it's become distorted into something else. You 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 that we preach to you, let him be accursed.

My friends, the largest religion on earth came about exactly like this. A man believing that an angel spoke to him and gave him a new revelation. That man's name was Muhammad. And the book that resulted from that was the Qur 'an.

He claimed that the angel Gabriel gave it to him. And it's in the Qur 'an, as I quoted to you from it last week. Far be it from God to have a son. So you are cursed if you think that God has a son, Jesus Christ, whom we are to worship.

The Muslims believe that Jesus was just some prophet, just like Muhammad is a prophet. But he himself was not, as he claimed to be, the son of God. They do not believe that he was crucified on a cross and then rose again from the grave.

These things did not happen. And all of this came by, according to Muhammad, a revelation that was given to him by an angel. Largest religion on planet earth. Fastest growing religion on earth. And we find a stern warning against such things in Galatians 1 .8.

Even if we are an angel from heaven. Whether or not Muhammad actually saw an angel, some sort of being that appeared to him was actually a demonic presence, but claimed to be an angel, and Muhammad believed that presence.

Or Muhammad was just making that up to try to give validation or authority to this word that it was that he was saying. Whether or not he was lying or some spirit appeared to him, it doesn't matter. It's a different gospel.

And if anyone preaches to you a gospel contrary to the one we preached to you, let him be accursed. Now we consider today these words again, for Paul repeats it again in verse 9. 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 accursed.

Last week, I said to you that we were going to look at the macro and go to the micro. So we were going to consider the biggest religions and false teachings on earth first, and whittle it down into smaller and smaller things.

Maybe even things that are more direct to your life, or those specific things that you might put in a blank next to Jesus. You think that you need in addition to Christ, Christ plus blank. But again, whatever you put in the blank becomes your focus, becomes your passion, and it has distorted the gospel.

Even if you think you're giving 51 to Jesus and 49 to this other thing, let's stretch the percentages out even more. You're giving 99 of yourself to Christ and 1 to this other thing. It doesn't matter.

You feel incomplete without the other thing. And so it has become a distortion of the gospel of Christ. So last week, we started in the macro. We started getting smaller and smaller, but we never quite got to the micro.

So that's why we're coming back again to this today. Repeating again last week, these major huge religions that we have on earth. There are by some estimates 10 ,000 distinct religions on planet earth.

Now, I would be willing to postulate it's not quite that high, because I think some are probably the same religion, but it's slightly different, turned into something else. Then, of course, there are religions that are practiced by very small primitive tribes.

And there are such tribes around. We even heard of one recently in the news in the last couple of months with a young man that had attempted to visit a very isolated tribe near to India on an island. And in trying to witness to that tribe, they killed him on the spot.

Once he made the beach and was trying to share the gospel with them, they killed him. And that tribe is very isolated from the rest of the world, and because of their hostility, have ensured that they will not be visited by anyone else.

Any other missionaries who would come preaching to them the gospel. Though we would certainly hope the Holy Spirit would soften their hearts to receive another missionary should one come to them. But this is an example of a primitive tribe, separated and isolated from everyone else.

So they probably have some form of religion that may not be practiced by any other tribe or any other people on earth. When you think of those small isolated groups, then that number 10 ,000 doesn't seem so unreasonable.

But most of what people are calling their religion or their belief is really just a morphing of some other belief that exists. 85 of planet earth follows one of the major five religions, and that would be Islam, Christianity, Buddhism, Hinduism, or any one of the folk religions.

By folk religions, I mean that it would be the popular religion of that particular area, but they may not necessarily be orthodox in that belief. So they may claim to be a Christian, Muslim, Buddhist, or Hindu, but it's not exactly what it is that's being taught in those respective religions.

That's what we would refer to as a folk religion. So 85 of the world would fall into those respective categories. But whether or not we're looking at 10 ,000 religions, or 2 ,000 religions, or just the five major religions, all of the religions on earth could be whittled down again into two categories, worshiping the created or worshiping the creator.

Justification by Works Versus Justification by Faith

Now, I would say to you that we can narrow it down even further than that. Because as Jesus said in Matthew 7, verse 21, that not everyone who says to me, Lord, Lord, will enter the kingdom of heaven.

So even those who claim to worship the creator might not actually be worshiping the creator. They may be worshiping the created things, though they claim to have some form of Christianity. It may not actually be Christianity, but exactly as Paul was rebuking the Galatians of here in Galatians 1, it is instead a distortion of the truth.

So how do we get more specific than worshiping the created things or worshiping the creator? Here's the thing that separates out Christianity, true Christianity, from every other belief on earth. Every other religion on the planet, even non-religion, like giving the benefit of the doubt to an atheist or an agnostic who says that they aren't religious.

Okay? They are, but they claim they have no religion. But giving them the benefit of the doubt. So whether or not we're talking about a religion or a non-religion, every other belief on earth falls into this category.

Justification by works. Everyone who is not a follower of Christ believes that they can be justified by their own merit. To put it more specifically, they think they can be good without God. They can be good on their own.

Remember I mentioned to you last week that Hinduism actually does not require you to worship any kind of deity. So you could actually be an atheist, even though there are deities. It's a polytheist religion.

Even though there are deities in Hinduism, you could still not worship those deities and still follow all of the things that you're supposed to do as a good Hindu. Nevertheless, it's a religion of works.

All other beliefs other than Christianity on earth. It's about justification by works. I can be a good person just by doing what I do. And all of that, when you get down to the nitty-gritty of it, when you start evaluating it and getting into the micro details, it's all subjective morality.

There is not a standard set of rules that this is the morality that applies to every single person. But it's doing these things, doing these things, just being nice to people and considering others, and so on and so forth.

And so it might be whatever you think is doing nice for another person. And as long as you do that, well, then you're going to be honored by the gods or by the spiritual realm or whatever it is, and achieve the thing that it is that you're hoping to achieve.

So let's put it in this kind of exercise. This is something that I heard Paul Washer do when he was talking about there being only two religions on earth. So let's put it into this exercise. Let's say that you were a reporter and you were asking people how to get to heaven, people from different beliefs and different religions.

And that's where we'll pick up with this Paul Washer example tomorrow.

Thank you for listening to When We Understand the Text with Pastor Gabe Hughes. If you'd like to support this ministry, visit our website www .wutt .com and click on the Give tab in the top right corner of the page.

Join us again tomorrow as we continue our Bible study when we understand the text.