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Thank you for showing up. Yes, sir. Well, I appreciate your encouragement. I will tell you, I won't be here next week, unfortunately.
Oh, yeah. I was just bragging on you, too.
Well, once a year at our church, we do a day camp. We have a youth karate program that I teach for kids. And once a year, we do a day camp where they come in in the morning and stay until the afternoon.
And we teach and play games and show movies and do all kinds of stuff for them. And it's a little community outreach that we do. So I'm going to be with a group of about 35 5 to 15-year-olds from 9 o 'clock until 3 o 'clock every day next week.
So pray for me, as I will need it. But I will miss being here. I really do enjoy being with you guys more than you probably know. Well, take out your Bibles and turn to the book of Galatians chapter 1.
We have been in Galatians now for three weeks, and we're going to continue on. We just go verse by verse. Today, our focus is going to be verses 6 -9 of chapter 1, but I'm going to read beginning at verse 1.
And I'm going to read down to verse 10, just to establish the context of what we're reading. Galatians chapter 1, verse 1. Paul, an 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 and 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 our God and Father, to whom be the glory forever and ever.
Amen. 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 we preach 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.
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. Let's pray. Father, as we look at what is the theme of this whole book, the subject of the one exclusive gospel, Father, I pray that you would keep me from error.
I pray that you would, Lord, use the words that are going to be preached to influence hearts. Lord, that it might bypass the ear, bypass even the brain, and go right to the soul of these men. Lord, again, that they would be, if they are believers, drawn closer to Christ, that they would be rescued from any type of false teaching, that they would be brought closer to the throne of grace.
And Lord, if they are not yet believers in Christ, that today would be to them a day of reckoning for the soul. That they would realize that there is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved than the name of the Lord Jesus Christ.
And at the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, every knee should bow, either now or at the end. Lord, may it be that we bow the knee now in humble submission to our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, and it's in His name we pray.
Amen. Alright, gentlemen. Last week, we looked at the subject of the gospel. And we gave an explanation of it. We said that Paul is making the claim in these passages that there is only one gospel, and therefore we need to make sure that we understand what it is when we say the gospel.
Last week, I gave you some thoughts about what the gospel means. I told you the etymology of the word gospel, which is good news or good message. And that the gospel or good message is only understood in the light of the bad news.
And the bad news is we are all sinners. We deserve the wrath of God. We deserve punishment in hell. That's bad news. But the good news is God sent His Son to take the penalty that we deserve upon Himself.
And if we would but place our faith and trust in Him alone, that we will have life in Him, and His righteousness will become ours, and our sin will be paid for in full by Him. That's the good news. That's the gospel.
It's very, very simple. In fact, I teach an acronym for children. And I realize you're not a group of children, but I've learned that sometimes things that help kids also can help adults. And so I want to tell you this acronym just to put it in your mind.
And just something to think about. The word gospel, G-O-S-P-E-L, is six letters. And each letter is a good reminder. The G, God created us in His image. That's the G. Our sin separates us from Him and deserves His punishment.
That's the O. Sin, the S, sin cannot be redeemed by anything we do. That's the S. Sin cannot be redeemed. You cannot work your own salvation. P, paying the price for your sin, Jesus died and rose again.
That's probably the best one. E, everyone who trusts in Him alone will have life forever. Notice the added word alone. Trusts in Him alone. Not in Jesus plus something else. Not in Jesus plus my good works.
Not in Jesus plus my adherence to the law. Not in Jesus plus Muhammad or Buddha or anyone else. It's Jesus alone. Anyone and everyone who trusts in Him alone will have life forever. And then the L is simply life forever is with Christ in heaven.
So that is a short acronym. I hope you don't feel like I'm talking down to you. I do teach that to children, but I teach it to adults as well. Because some people don't know how to share the gospel. They don't know what to say when they're talking to unbelievers.
And I said, well, just remember this. Each letter in the word gospel has a short statement. And you can remember it easily. God created us in His image. Our sin separates us from Him and deserves His punishment.
Sin cannot be repaid or redeemed by anything we do. Paying the price for sin, Jesus died and rose again. Everyone who trusts in Him alone will have life forever. And life forever is with Him in heaven.
That's the gospel. Very simple. And it's a good little thing to remember. Maybe if I can remember, I'll print it out on some cards and give it to you. Because I'm sure none of you wrote it down that quickly.
Maybe a few of you did. And that's fine. I'd love for you to remember that. I was taught that years and years ago. And I've just found it to be very helpful. Especially if I get tongue-tied. Do you ever get tongue-tied?
When you're trying to share the gospel, you kind of lose your place? Or somebody asks you a question that throws you off, and you don't know what to say? Well, if you have at least a little outline in your brain, you have something that ties you to a post, you come back to it, and it's helpful.
Now, another place where you might want to consider if you're ever trying to explain the gospel to someone is in 2 Corinthians 5 .21. Memorize 2 Corinthians 5 .21. God made Him who knew no sin to become sin for us.
That we could become the righteousness of God in Him. That's a shorter version of everything I just said. That's the transaction that happened on the cross. God took our sin, and He gave it to Christ.
He took Christ's righteousness, and He gave it to us. That's a shorter version. And again, if you can only remember one thing, maybe you have a short memory, and that's fine. 2 Corinthians 5 .21. Is it?
Oh, look at there. Praise the Lord. Then it all works together. So with that in mind, and last week we spent a lot of time defining the gospel, this week we're going to examine Paul's astonishment with the Galatians because they have abandoned the gospel.
Now, I have this outline for you in four words. I don't always do this. I'm not one given to... Ooh, puppy. I don't want to step on him. But we're going to look first at the defection. That is verse 6.
We're going to look at the distortion. That is verse 7. And then we're going to look at the deception, which is verse 8. And then the last is the damnation of verse 9. Hey, he disappeared. He disappeared.
The damnation of verse 9. So there's our four-word outline for today's lesson. Let's look first at verse 6. This is the defection. Paul says, 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.
The word astonished is translated in different ways, in different texts. It basically means shocked or surprised or marveled or amazed. I don't know if you've ever had anyone do something to you that just totally took your breath away in a bad way.
Someone did something that you thought was so amazingly bad that you couldn't imagine why that would even come into their mind. Have you ever said to someone, What are you thinking? Are you crazy? Have you ever had somebody say that to you?
More than once. More than once. Okay. That is the idea that Paul is trying to get across. I am amazed. I am astonished. I am shocked. And I want you to contrast that with every other one of Paul's letters.
Well, almost every other one of Paul's letters. Because Paul almost always begins, Paul an apostle, and he mentions who he's with or where he's coming from, and he says, I give thanks for you. Even the Corinthians, who were a dastardly group of people.
Actually, I'm finishing now preaching through 1 Corinthians at my church. The title of the whole series, A Church with Problems. Because that's all Corinthians was. The Corinthian church was a church with problems from beginning to end.
They had a problem with leaders. They had a problem with the issue of sin in the church. They had a problem with idolatry. They had a problem with marriage and divorce. They had people who were having communion and they would take their food and keep it from the poor people.
1 Corinthians 11, it says that they would hold back their food or they would eat it quickly so that the poor people couldn't have it. It's in the church. There were some amazingly dastardly things that happened in Corinth.
And yet, at the beginning of the book, Paul says, I give thanks for you. Paul still loved them even though they were imperfect. That's a good thing. But the book of Galatians is different. No thanksgiving.
If you read it, read the first chapter. No, I give thanks for you. No, I thank God for you. None of that. I am astonished at you. That's it. This is Paul's fatherly rebuke. Many of you are fathers. Your child does something and you look at him and say, I'm amazed that you would even think to do that.
I have a son, 18 years old. I've mentioned him several times. He's in the Air Force now. When he was a teenager, he did some stuff and I lost my mind. If I'm lying, I'm dying. He did some stuff that made me just...
Boy, you grew up in my house. You eat my food. You live under the protection of my hands and you do me this way? What are you doing? Yeah, so you kind of get the idea. Paul is like a father. He has planted these churches in Galatia in his missionary journeys.
These are the churches, as we mentioned in the weeks previous, Lystra and Iconium and Derby. I believe Pisidian Antioch is also in there. Several churches that he planted all in the region of southern Galatia.
And these are churches that he knew these people. He had preached the Gospel to them. He had seen them go from death to life. He'd seen them go from darkness to light. He'd seen them be saved. And now he says, I'm astonished that you are so quickly discerning him.
Notice the him. Him is a pronoun. A pronoun always has an antecedent. That means a word that it attaches back to. The pronoun here is reaching back to God. God is the antecedent of him. So who are they astonishingly and quickly deserting?
God. Well, you can say Christ, of course. In this context though, they are deserting Him who called you in the grace of Christ, which would be the Father. God is the One who calls us to salvation. And Christ is the One who saves.
Right? In the economy of God, God calls, Christ redeems, and the Spirit regenerates. So in this context, he's talking about God the Father. You have deserted God! Heaviness of that statement. I am astonished at how quickly you have deserted God.
You say, what do you mean how quickly? I actually gave that some thought because I don't know for certain what he means. I'll give you the two where I've come down. It's either he's saying so quickly after he preached, or so quickly after they believed.
But ultimately, he's saying it didn't take you very long. It didn't take you very long to go from professing faith to abandoning God. You ever seen somebody do that?
Yes, sir. Me. Okay. Amen for honesty. Christ redeems, Holy Spirit...
Regenerates or gives us new birth. Yeah. So, thinking of it like this, think of Jesus' parable of the soils. He said that some seed fell among the pathway and the birds came and ate it. Some seed fell among the rocky soil.
It sprung up for a little while and then it died. That's the picture here though. It didn't have a root. Jesus said, why did it die? It didn't have any root. They've abandoned God. Paul is being very forceful.
In fact, some people think Paul is being too mean. Amen. What's interesting about that, however, is the Reformers, Martin Luther, particularly in his comments on this passage, says he was too nice. So, it's funny how our culture sort of changes.
You know, we're so mealy-mouthed anymore, so soft, don't want to hurt anybody's feelings, can't have our feelings, we'll wear them right on our shoulder, easily knocked off. Yes, sir? Martin Luther. Who is Martin Luther?
Martin Luther was a German monk in the 1500s who was responsible for helping to break away from the Roman Catholic Church and start the Protestant Reformation. You've heard the word Protestant? Okay, that's fine.
You know, Baptist, Methodist, Episcopalian, all of these different types of denominations. Those are all called Protestant. That means that they were protesting against the false teaching of the Roman Catholic Church.
Right? So, the word Protestant simply means to protest. And so, Martin Luther was one of the first leaders of that group. People often confuse him with Martin Luther King. He was the 1960s... Well, you know who Martin Luther King was.
He was a civil rights leader. So, oftentimes, when I'm preaching to new churches who have never heard church history or anything, I'll often say, not Dr. Martin Luther King, but Martin Luther, the 16th century German monk.
And he was a tremendous man of God. I don't have time. I could give his biography because I love him. He's one of my heroes. Though he was imperfect, but just to simply say, he was a very important man in the Protestant Reformation.
Is he who influenced William Tyndale?
They were all contemporaries, but yes.
He wanted to be the first to print the Bible in English so people could actually have a copy of it. Tyndale was a translator. And, of course, like you just said,.
The Bible wanted to see it translated. They killed him for it. Absolutely. Burned him at the stake. His last words, Lord, open the King of England's eyes. Less than 100 years later, the King James Version of the Bible was printed.
His prayer was answered. He stole his work after that. That's what they did. But the blessing is that his prayer was answered in that he prayed that God would open the King's eyes, and he did. And so the Bible was translated for all to have.
And translated for public use. That was what made the King James so important was it was an authorized version.
People were allowed to have it. Who burned him at the church?
Well, the Catholic Church was responsible, but it was the civil authorities. Always remember this. The Roman Catholic Church will say they never burned anyone. It was always the civil authorities. Yeah, exactly.
It was the civil authorities that were... At that time, there was no such thing as a separation between church and state. The church and the state functioned together. So if the church condemned you, the state would carry out the sentence of condemnation.
And so we have to understand, historically, it was the civil government that did the deed in that regard. And so I got a little off track there, but yes, Reformation history is one of my favorite subjects.
So let me get back to the text if we could. So Paul is saying, I'm astonished that you're so quickly deserting Him that it's God who called you in the grace of Christ. Now for time's sake, I'm not going to stop and explain grace.
I've explained it many times before. But in this sense, just remember that if you have been called by God, it is a gracious call. You didn't deserve it. If you're saved, you didn't get saved because you deserved it.
You got saved because God was gracious to you. You do not deserve the grace of God. In fact, if you did deserve it, it wouldn't be grace. Paul says if you deserve it, it's a wage, something you earn. But because you didn't earn it, it is a gift.
He called you in the grace of Christ, and he goes on to say, and you are turning to a different gospel. This is what has Paul so worked up. They have turned to a different gospel. Now we've already talked about what the true gospel is,.
But what is the different gospel that they have turned to? Yes sir? The Judaizers were trying to add works, the law, the Mosaic law.
Yes, and it was particularly and specifically the work of circumcision, and then later we'll see the keeping of what we would call ritualistic restrictions of the law. Things like dietary laws and other things.
Their view was basically.
That Jesus Christ didn't replace that law with grace,.
But instead he just added to it. Yes, ultimately they believed that before you could become a Christian, you must first become a Jew, because Christ came to save the Jews. And so conversion was for a Gentile, first a conversion to Judaism before it was a conversion to Christ.
You had to be circumcised. That was the mark of Judaism. You had to adopt the religious restrictions of diet and dress, both of those which were necessary in the Jewish life. You had to essentially Judaize, and that's the word for Judaizer.
He uses that in chapter 2. He says essentially the Judaizers were the problem. And that is still a problem today. There are people today who will tell you that unless you adopt the restrictions and the religious observances of the old covenant, that you cannot be saved.
Or at least if you're saved, you're not really pleasing God in your salvation. Some of those groups are known as the Hebrew Roots Movement. They'll say the New Testament is rooted in the Hebrew Old Testament, and that's where the name Hebrew Roots comes from.
And they'll say if you're not keeping the law, then you're not really... Well, they might not say you're not saved, but they'll say you're not truly pleasing God in your salvation. You're not being obedient.
And then they'll go and say, Jesus said if you love Me, you'll keep My commandments, and so if you're not keeping the religious ritualistic commandments, then you don't really love Jesus, then you're not really saved.
See how it becomes a distorted message? That is the Hebrew Roots Movement. There's also something called the Hebrew Israelites. That is a particularly unique group of African American people that believe that the black people are a descendant of Israel and that they have all of the rights and privileges of Israel, and thus I've heard them say white people aren't saved, nobody else is saved, they're the true Israel.
And so that is another distortion and false gospel. Of course, it's not true. Yes, sir? It's called Hebrew Israelites is what they call themselves. Sometimes it's called black Hebrew Israelites. It's just a distorted group, unfortunately.
Was that the way? Yeah, it happens. I mean, ultimately, it's a false understanding. I mean, we see it happens. Well, let's be careful when we get way off track. It don't matter. The point is this. There's different gospels today.
I mentioned this last week. What's another different gospel? The prosperity gospel. That gets us a little off. What's a prosperity gospel? If you believe in Jesus, money! Right, that's Kenneth Copeland.
Yeah, wacko indeed. So you've got the prosperity gospel. You have the word-faith gospel, which is similar to prosperity. Word-faith a little different though. Word-faith believes in what's called the positive affirmation.
Don't ever say you're sick or you'll get sick. You always have to say I'm well. I'm good. You have to say these things because your words create reality. It's hogwash. Now there is such a thing as the reality that your words can hurt.
Like if I go up to you and I say, hey, you're ugly. That doesn't feel good. If you come up to me and say, hey, you're chubby. I don't like that either. But you know, it might be true. It still doesn't feel good.
You know what I mean? Words can hurt and that's why the Bible says the power of life and death is in the tongue. Because we do have the power to build up or the power to bring down with our tongue. But you do not have the power to create out of nothing with your words.
And that's what the word-faith movement says. Basically, God spoke things into existence. You can speak things into existence. There's a Greek word for that. Baloney. It's baloney.
It's garbage. Yes sir. There are some who trouble you and would revert the gospel of Christ. Is He kind of like saying, I understand because there are people.
Who are trying to teach you adding on to the gospel. Yeah, and that's where I'm headed. Because that's the distortion. We've looked at the defection, right? He's upset that they've turned to another gospel.
And then in verse 7, He says, not that there is another one. There is no other gospel. But there are some, the Judaizers, who trouble you. And in fact, I think the New Living Translation says they fool you.
They come in to trick you. Distort the gospel. See, nobody ever comes in to a church and says, I'm going to teach you something that rejects the gospel. Because they know they'd be run out. They always come in and add something to the gospel.
Or take something away. See, they distort it. They don't deny it. They massage it. That's right. They massage it. Well, you know, Luther, again, Martin Luther, he said the Scripture becomes to some people like a wax nose.
Imagine you had a person whose nose was made of wax. You could twist it and turn it and make them look... You'd have a different face every day. One day your nose would be big. Another day your nose would be small.
Another day your nose would be crooked. He said some people treat the Bible that way. They distort it. They twist it. They contort it any way they want to make it say what they want. I mean, and honestly, and I've said this before, you can make the Bible say anything you want if you're willing to rip verses out of it.
God has feathers. The Bible says He girds you under His wings. Wings are made of feathers. See how stupid that is? But how easy it is to contort and distort things? And that's what the passage here is saying.
He says there is not another Gospel. There is only one Gospel. And by the way, that is an exclusive claim. There is only one Christ and there is only one message. And if anyone comes to trouble you, they are distorting the Gospel, He says.
And that's the distortion, verse 7. And then in verse 8, we have the deception. He says, but even if we... And this is the key passage. I actually think this whole section is the key theme of the whole book.
But this verse, verse 8, even if we, that is Paul or any other apostle, 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 accursed. So let's break this down.
He says even if we or an angel from heaven... Now I want you to think about this for a minute. There are cults that have been created on the basis of men who believed that they were given a message from angels.
Mormons is one. We have the angel Moroni who was supposed to have met with Joseph Smith and given him the golden plates which had the book of Mormon written on them. That's a cult that was given a different Gospel by a man who claims to have met an angel.
People ask me, do I believe he really met an angel? Could have been a demon. The Bible talks about the devil and his angels, meaning demons. And I'm actually teaching on angels and demons on Wednesday night right now.
We're going to keep going. I don't care. So it's possible. But it's also possible that Joseph Smith was out of his mind. It's also possible that he was a really good storyteller and a liar. But he claims to have gotten his message from an angel.
And his Gospel is different than the Gospel of the Apostle Paul and the other apostles. I mean, there's no doubt. If you come from Mormonism, if you have a background in Mormonism, I'd love to talk to you.
If you still believe in the Gospel of Mormonism, I would love to show you how it is false. I always say this. Mormonism is everything the devil would make a religion to be if the devil were to create a religion.
Because everybody thinks the devil's religion would be something like Satanism where they're all wearing black and all this crazy stuff. No. The devil's religion would be clean-cut, traditional, very appealing, but without Christ.
Clean-cut, traditional, appealing, but without Jesus. And that's what Mormonism is. They have a false Jesus. And they have a religion that's very clean-cut. Think about it. Mormons don't even drink coffee.
They don't even drink tea. They have very strict rules for how to behave. And they're really nice people. But they're lost. And they say if you die, there's three places you get to go. Again, they have an entirely different Gospel.
Mormons... Well, I don't want to start arguing. The Mormon belief is further from biblical Christianity than Islam. And I can show you that on paper. The beliefs of Mormonism are so far removed from Scripture that they're even further away than Islam.
Now, having said that, where did Islam come from? An angel. Yep. What did Muhammad say? He was visited by the angel Jabril, which is the Arabic for Gabriel. So he says he got his message from an angel.
What's Paul tell us? Even if that's true, don't believe it. Even if you receive a message from an angel, if God opened the heavens and an angel came down and said, this is the Gospel and it's not what Paul has preached, it ain't the Gospel.
That's a powerful statement. He said, even if you get it from an angel, if it's not aligned with what we have already told you, then it's not the truth.
Yes, sir. Satan was an angel. Yes. And he came down. He was sent down.
Absolutely. And the Bible says he now masquerades as an angel of light. That's an important thing. Yes, but he pretends to be an angel of light so as to lead away, even if possible, the elect of God. His goal is to deceive.
He is called the deceiver. He is called the adversary because that's what he is. And so, Paul says here very clearly, if we, or even an angel, were to preach a Gospel contrary to the one we preached to you, let him be accursed.
Now, I want to talk about that word accursed because in Greek, the word is anathema. Now, you may be familiar with the word anathema, but it's not a normal word that we would normally use. It's not a common word.
First of all, it's the opposite of blessed. You know, let him be accursed. What's the opposite of cursing? Blessing. So it's not blessed, of course, but it has a far more powerful meaning than just that.
The word anathema means to be devoted to destruction. Devoted to destruction. You say, well, Pastor, I don't quite get that. Okay, let me paint a picture for you. In the Old Covenant, you remember when God would send the people of Israel into a land and He would say, kill everyone and everything.
Do not leave alive man or beast. Remember this? Go and take all of the Canaanites and devote them to destruction. Everything. Scorched earth. Oh yeah, Judas was accursed. Absolutely. But the point I'm making is this.
The weightiness of this word. If anyone is preaching a Gospel contrary to the one that you have been given, let him be essentially damned. Let him be damned. Again, people say that's too harsh. That's too hard of a phrase.
But let me ask you this. If you knew there was a surgeon and that surgeon was intentionally operating on people in a way that was not healthy for them. Let's say he was refusing to wash his hands between patients.
Let's say he was refusing to sterilize his equipment between operations. Let's say that he was going to work on the heart and while he was in there he thought he would fool around with the liver and the pancreas and the lungs just to see what he could learn.
What would you say about such a person? Don't go to him. Well, that's the first thing. But you'd also say that such a man was evil. Well, we're going to get there in a minute. My point is this. A person who has the responsibility of surgery is also given a very important trust.
I've had several surgeries. I've had my gallbladder removed. I've had a kidney stone, seven millimeter kidney stone, like a rifle round inside my body. They had to go in, break it up, take it out. I was preaching when it happened.
I was preaching on the pulpit and I started feeling bad. By the time I came down from the chancel my wife had to basically carry me to the car and we went on to the hospital. I was in the hospital for two days.
I had to have surgery. But when I go in for surgery and they put the needle in my arm I'm giving up my whole body to that person. When that medicine hits, that Dilaudid hits my heart, I felt it. Because I was trying to share Jesus with the lady.
The medicine hit and I'm talking to the lady. I said, hey! I'm trying to share Christ and then I'm out. I'm trusting her and I'm trusting that surgeon. I'm trusting everybody because I'm asleep. I'm dead.
I'm done. If they go in and fool around with me and my body and they kill me, I've given my whole life to them. How much more important... I use that as an example. How much more important is the Word of God preached to the people of God when it's dealing with the souls of men?
Your soul is so much more valuable than your body. Jesus said that. He said, don't fear the one who can destroy your body, but fear the one who can throw both your body and your soul into hell. And so you've got a person or persons in Galatia who have come preaching a false gospel.
That's more dangerous than a surgeon who's going crazy with a scalpel. That's more dangerous than the person who operates on your car and messes with your brakes. This person is fooling around with your soul.
And so Paul says, if you've got a man who's distorting the gospel, let him be damned. Let him be cut off. This is strong language. I want to give you another verse to think about. In fact, this is the verse I'm preaching on Sunday.
It's funny how God interwove these. 1 Corinthians 16 .22 If anyone does not love Christ, let him be accursed. If anyone does not love Christ, let him be accursed. Same word, anathema. So what do we see here?
These people who are preaching a false gospel prove they don't love Christ. They're in the same boat as someone who doesn't love Christ because they're preaching a false gospel. So we see the deception.
Now we're going to look finally at the damnation because he repeats his statement. Verse 9. As we have said before, the we there I believe is Paul and the apostles. 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.
Notice it says the one you received, they had received the true gospel. Therefore, anything else must be compared to it. It was clear. It was compelling. It was converting. It was the true gospel. And he says, if you're getting anything other than that, let that person who's giving it to you be accursed.
Notice here that the person is preaching. Often times the most dangerous person is the person who is preaching. James tells us, do not all assume to be teachers because teachers will be held to a higher standard.
Actually, what the Word actually says in James 3 .1 is they will be judged more strictly. They will be judged more strictly. This is why I'm always hesitant when a man comes to me and he says, I think God's called me to preach the gospel.
My immediate response, and I have said this to people, I can point you to people who've said it to me. I believe God's called me to preach the gospel. My response is very simple. If you can do anything else and be happy, do it.
If you can do anything else and be happy, do it. And they say, why would you say such a thing? Because if you're truly called to preach the gospel, you can't do anything else and be happy. Jeremiah said it like this.
He said, it will be as if a fire were in your bones, consuming you. Preaching is a consuming thing that God puts in the hearts of men. Some men are not called to preach and yet they still do it. They do it contrary to the call of God on their life.
And they become dangerous men. They become dangerous men because they do it for prideful reasons. They do it for popularity. They do it for financial gain. And such men are dangerous men. I tell you this, men, I know a lot of you guys go through this program and by the end of the program you want to teach because you've learned so much and praise God for that.
But be careful when you assume to be a teacher because what you teach will be judged and you will stand and give an account for what you teach the people of God. The Shepherd of God will give an account for the sheep that He shepherds.
Keep that in mind. Paul says, if anyone is preaching to you a false gospel, let him be damned. Years ago I had a group of young people at my house. We were having a youth Bible study. And at that point I had satellite television where you could get like 50 religious stations.
You know, they have them all over the United States and with the satellite you can get just about all of them. And I said to the kids, I said, do you know how prolific false teaching is in our world? I said, it is so common that I can turn on my television at any moment and find someone who is preaching a false gospel.
The kids said, nah. I took out my little satellite remote, turned on the television, flipped right to the first religious station and there was Frederick K. Price preaching his false prosperity gospel.
And I said, see, it didn't even take searching. It was the first one we found. Freddie Price. Him and Creflo Dollar have the perfect names. Dollar and Price. They are both about the gospel of prosperity.
Sorry.
They don't own the radio station anymore, but back then they owned a radio station which actually got sold to a Catholic church, ironically. Out of the Queen of Peace. Frying pan into the fire, yeah.
Well, again, my point, and that's amazing and true, and my point is this. We are inundated with false teaching. We are inundated with false gospels. They are all around us. And Paul says, these men who preach these things, and women, are going to be accursed.
They are going to be damned. I want to say this. There is no excuse for preaching what will damn the souls of men. I'll say it again. There is no excuse for preaching what will damn the souls of men. And that's what Paul is saying here.
He is saying those who preach a false gospel will be damned. Yes, sir. I like how you say that. How you paint the picture.
In 22, 19, it says, suppose someone take away any word from this book, and God will take away from that person the bliss I'm told about in this book. God will take away their shell and the tree of life.
God will also take away their place in the Holy City. Jesus is the witness about being damned. He said, yes, I am coming soon. Amen. Come, Lord Jesus. That's right. What's that Exodus? 22. Revelation.
22. What was the verse? 19 through 11. Okay.
Alright, I'm not sure. The time got away from... What time is it? It's after 10 .30. Is it after 10 .30? I'm sorry. I kept you all a little long. Let me finish with just this. There is an exclusive claim to the Christian Gospel in this passage, meaning there is only one Gospel.
There are not many Gospels. There are not individual Gospels. You don't have a Gospel that's for you that's different from the guy next to you. There is one Gospel. It is the Gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ.
If anyone preaches a Gospel contrary to that true and only Gospel, let him be damned. Let's pray. Father, thank You for Your Word. Thank You for Your truth. Thank You for the difficult things to hear.
For oftentimes it is through these difficult things, Lord, that we are drawn closer to You because our consciences are laid bare before You. May it be, O God, that we never, ever tolerate a false Gospel.
In Christ's name we pray, Amen.