WWUTT 1742 No Other Gospel, Part 1 (Galatians 1:6-8)

The Apostle Paul said to the Galatians, I am astonished that you are going after another gospel.

Not that there is another one. There are plenty of false religions in the world, but there's only one gospel when we understand the text.

This is When We Understand The Text, a daily Bible study in the word of Christ. For he is before all things, and in him all things hold together.

Tell your friends about our ministry at www .wutt .com. And once again, it's Pastor Gabe.

Thank you, Becky. In Galatians chapter 1 verses 6 through 9, we read the following.

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 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.

Here is a sermon I preached a few years ago on this particular passage out of Galatians 1, 6 through 9, part 1 of the sermon entitled,

No Other Gospel. Paul starts this section, Galatians 1, 6,

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.

We're done with greeting. Five verses greeting. It concluded with amen at the end of verse 5.

And now Paul gets right down to brass tacks. He gets immediately into rebuke because he has found out that the churches in Galatia are believing something different than what the apostles had first taught to them when the gospel came to that place.

And he says so quickly, you are deserting him who called you in the grace of Christ and are turning to a different gospel.

What is that different gospel that the Galatians believed? Well, it's mostly influenced by Judaism.

Legalists who came in and said, well, you also have to do this, this, and this. And maybe the way that it was presented to them sounded something like this.

Well, you believe in Jesus? That's great. But Jesus was a Jew. And so Jesus did all the things that the

Jewish people are supposed to do. So if you want to be a good Christian, what you actually have to do, and then here's the list.

Circumcision being one of them because that's one of the things that Paul will confront directly coming up in the churches, to the churches in Galatia.

In fact, when we get to it, the way that he puts this, you understand what circumcision is, right?

So when Paul gets to addressing this with them, he says, I wish those who trouble you would just go the whole way and castrate themselves.

That's how Paul confronts this problem. That's how serious this teaching is now that has come to the churches in Galatia with these false teachers saying to them, if you actually want to be saved, you have to do this work.

The Apostle Paul reiterates for them again the truth that is in Christ. This gospel, that we are saved by faith in Jesus and no other way.

And anything else that gets added to that is a different gospel. Christ plus something is a different gospel.

And as I said when we kind of came in on our introduction to this letter, if that is the gospel that you've created for yourself,

Christ plus something else, whatever is in the blank gets the emphasis. Jesus just might be your lip service religion, but he's not actually who you love with all of your heart, soul, mind, and strength because you're sharing that glory with something or someone else.

There is not Christ plus blank. There's only Jesus. And it is by faith in Jesus that we are saved.

This is the gospel. It's the gospel that we as a church here proclaim and it is the gospel that the church is built upon.

Paul says, I'm astonished that you're so quickly deserting him. And so you see right away the direct language that he uses with the

Galatians. There was somebody that Becky found online this past week who was summarizing the book of Galatians and he said,

I feel like Paul is writing to the Galatians in all caps. It's just this constant shouting letter.

What's wrong with you? You had the gospel. You were doing so well.

Who has bewitched you? And even when you get to the end of the letter, Paul says, look at what large letters

I am writing with. It's like this is his John Hancock at the end, right?

The largest signature in our nation's documents and Paul puts that at the end of his letter to the

Galatians. Big letters. In fact, we shouldn't call it the John Hancock anymore. When we talk about somebody's signature, we should just call it the

Apostle Paul. Big letters right at the end of the letter to emphasize just how passionate he is for the hearts of these

Christians. I'm astonished that you're so quickly deserting him who called you in the grace of Christ and are turning to a different gospel.

There's something I would like to correct before we keep going this morning and that is the way that I have defined grace for you.

Last week, we even talked about it. What is grace? I said two -word definition. Unmerited favor.

I don't know how God stirred in my heart this past week to investigate that again but there was just something.

It was on Monday. It was the day right after I had preached last week that I thought is unmerited favor really the best definition of grace that we can come up with?

Is there another way that we can put it? And sure enough, there is actually a deeper definition to this word that we can use that's better than unmerited grace or unmerited favor rather.

It's not that that's a wrong definition. We can just do better than that. So remember unmerited favor meaning that you don't do anything.

God gives his grace to you without any works that you have done. You have received the grace and love of God through faith in Jesus Christ.

Unmerited favor. That is really the definition of grace that you would find in the dictionary but how about grace when it comes to the way

God gives it to us sinful man and the way that we define

God's grace actually goes a little bit deeper than that. A little bit deeper than just simply unmerited favor because when it comes down to it, there is not any such thing as unmerited.

Something is either merited or it's demerited and that's actually where we find a better definition of grace that it's demerited favor.

Jerry Bridges, once a longtime leader of the Christian ministry navigators explained it this way.

God's grace addresses itself not merely to the absence of merit but to the presence of demerit.

To understand divine grace, we must see it as more than unmerited favor.

The idea of demerit is an essential element in the biblical meaning of grace.

In our relationship with God, there is either merit for obedience or demerit for disobedience but there is no such thing as unmerit.

There is either merit or demerit but no unmerit. In our case, of course, there is no merit.

Even our best deeds are stained with sin and in a strict view of justice, we deserve to be punished rather than rewarded.

That is why the Apostle Paul wrote of us that in our condition before salvation,

Ephesians 2 .3, we were by nature children of wrath like the rest of mankind.

So a better definition of grace, going a little bit deeper than what

I've told you in the past, would not be unmerited favor but rather demerited favor.

It's because we know by our demerits what we deserve is judgment but by the grace of God, which we have not earned and in fact deserve the opposite of,

He has shown us His love through His Son, Jesus Christ. So bringing that to correction this morning as we continue in an understanding of the gospel of Christ, which we looked at last week, verses 3 -5,

Paul gives that brief gospel at the greeting of his letter. 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. And as we come to understand this being delivered from the present evil age does not merely mean that we would not walk in the evil of this age although that is certainly implied.

But it also means that we will not be judged with this present evil age.

The judgment of God is coming and it is only by faith in Christ that we will be standing with God on that day instead of being judged by God.

I'm astonished that you are so quickly deserting Him who called you in the grace of Christ and are turning to a different gospel.

And then Paul says in verse 7, clarifies this, not that there is another one because there isn't.

The gospel is good news and there is only one gospel that saves. So there is no other news that is proclaimed that would be to our salvation except the truth that Christ died for sinners and rose again from the grave so that everyone who believes in Him will not perish but will have everlasting life.

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 preached to you, let him be accursed.

As we have said before, so now I say again. You see the emphasis that Paul is putting on this here.

If anyone is preaching to you a gospel contrary to the one you received, let him be accursed.

We read this morning out of Psalm 5 where the psalmist says,

Make your enemies bear their guilt, O God. Let them fall by their own counsels. Because of the abundance of their transgressions, cast them out, for they have rebelled against you.

And you might read that out of Psalm 5 and think to yourself, is that really the Christian way? That we should go about saying that?

God, cast out your enemies because of their transgressions? What the Bible says is going to happen to the enemies of God.

But our hope and what we should be sharing with those who are, at the present, outcasts in the kingdom of God is that next part of Psalm 5 which says,

But let all who take refuge in you rejoice. Let them ever sing for joy and spread your protection over them.

So the person who does not know but is cast out by God, we must say to them,

Take refuge in Christ and you will be saved from the judgment that is to come.

Yes, it is necessary for us to know that there is a judgment by the great judge over all of creation,

Christ Jesus, who will sit on His glorious throne as He describes in Matthew 25.

And it is only by faith in Him that we will not perish in that judgment. Everyone will face judgment.

As it says at the end of the book of Revelation, all of those dead or alive will be brought before that throne and great books will be opened up, it says.

And everybody will be judged according to what they have done that's been written down in these books. And those who will have done the will of the

Father will enter into His kingdom that has been prepared for them from the foundation of the world. And those who did the will of Satan will be cast out with Satan and the demons into the hell of fire that has been prepared for them.

Know the gospel, believe in Christ, and we will be saved.

Adding to this gospel makes it a different gospel, and that is a gospel that does not save.

Subtracting from this gospel makes it a different gospel, and that is a gospel that will not save.

Hence why Paul says, not that there is another one, but some are presenting something to you that they call the gospel, and it's actually a lie.

Where I want to go from this morning is I want to look at the most common false teachings that we will encounter in the world.

And we're going to start from the macro and go to the micro. So macro, what do

I mean by that? The largest religions that are in the world, and then we're going to go smaller and smaller all the way down to even personal things that you might adopt upon yourself and think that this is the gospel, but you've created a distortion of the gospel.

So let's start big and go small. What would you say is the largest false religion in the world?

No. Although it's part of it. The largest false religion in the world is actually, if we go by the biblical definition, paganism.

Whatever is not Christianity is paganism. It is the worship of another god or gods.

Generally in paganism, it's a polytheist religion, so there's multiple gods, and since there are indeed beliefs in multiple gods out there in the world, anything that is contrary to Christianity is falling under the category of paganism.

So that would be, in a very broad sense, the largest false religion in the world.

Now, if we were to narrow that down a little bit more and we were to look at those non -category religions, these are these religions that are not organized religions, here are the basic beliefs that you would come into.

Gnosticism, unbelief, and folk religions. Okay? So now you're taking paganism and you're narrowing it down to gnosticism, unbelief, and folk religions.

Gnosticism is the idea that there is some knowledge that exists out there that is outside what

God has revealed. And in some way, shape, or form, every other false religion in the world falls under that category.

It's not exactly the kind of Gnosticism that we see that reared its ugly head at the end of the first century and started to try to corrupt the

Church, the Gnostic teachings, and the Gnostic Gospels, some of those writings that came about in the second and third century, but all other religions in some way, shape, or form become a sense of Gnosticism, for it's

God's words not enough. Instead, this has been revealed to me and here's the truth that you need to know.

Another non -category religion is just simply unbelief. But even when you encounter somebody who says they don't believe in anything, they don't have a religion, maybe they call themselves an atheist or an agnostic, you will actually find in their belief system a great deal of spiritualism.

It may not be organized, it may not fall into a particular category, but there's always something there.

In fact, a friend of mine who lives down in Florida, he lives on the beach, as a matter of fact, and it was just because he went down to Florida one day, loved the beach, and said,

I'm moving here, and so he did. Moved all of his family to the beach, he said, I'm going to get a job that pays me enough money that I can afford to live on the beach, and so that's what he does.

So I went down there and visited him once, and just lived for a week in jealousy over what it is that he lives in every single day.

And I asked him about what the churches were like in that area, and what some of the things were that he encountered, because he would do evangelism just on the boardwalk out there.

Just share Christ with people that he would encounter by the pier. And he said, you know, this is an area that they would say is largely atheist.

You would encounter somebody and they would say, oh, I don't believe in anything. I don't believe in God. I don't think God is real. But as you try to unfold that conversation, what you actually discover is what they believe is some form of like Buddhism or Hinduism.

They may not know that's what it is, but that's exactly what it sounds like. So a person can say that they have unbelief, but there's something there.

Some sort of spiritualistic nonsense that they believe that's really nothing but subjectivity.

It's what they in their mind just want to accept as true. And they let their lives be governed by it, unaware that they're actually following the devil.

The third in those non -category religions or not organized religions would be the folk religions.

And folk religions would be like popular cultural beliefs or the civic religion. It may not look exactly orthodox to the religion that is prominent in that area, but it's what people say they believe in just because everybody else believes it.

So that would be what's called a folk religion. So now let's look from the non -category religions to the largest category religions, the largest organized religions in the world.

The biggest one is Islam. Two billion adherents.

Now Islam falls into what is referred to as the Abrahamic monotheistic religions.

And the Abrahamic religions include Christianity, Islam, Mormonism, Judaism, and the

Jehovah's Witnesses. Those are kind of the big five. Although, for whatever reason,

Mormonism falls into that category of Abrahamic monotheistic religions. Mormonism is actually not a monotheistic religion.

It's polytheistic. As James White has said, of all of the religions on Earth that he has studied, he has never encountered a religion more polytheistic than Mormonism.

They not only believe in multiple gods, but some Mormon apologists would say that there is an infinite number of gods.

But as far as the Abrahamic monotheistic religions are concerned, those religions that in some way could trace their roots back to Abraham.

Indeed, Islam can. So Islam is considered to be the largest. Islam teaches that there is one god,

Allah, and that Muhammad is his prophet. It was invented in the 7th century

AD. Their primary text is the Quran. The word of God, verbatim.

Now that's different than the way that we define the Bible. They say that the

Quran is the word of God verbatim, meaning that every single word that's in the

Quran is exactly what God said, word for word.

Now in the Bible, we don't say that. Because when you go from Hebrew to Greek to English, using different words, different phrases to understand what was originally written, but we don't have those exact manuscripts that were first written down by the apostles.

We have copies upon copies. Now that does not mean that what we are reading did not come from God.

This has been preserved by the power of God. So what we have is indeed the word of God that the

Holy Spirit led his apostles and prophets to write, as Peter says in 2 Peter 1.

So don't think this isn't the word of God. But it's something else entirely to say that it's the word of God verbatim.

And this is why many Muslims will say you cannot read the Quran in any other language but the language that it was originally written in.

Because once you translate it to another language, it's no longer the word of God verbatim. They believe that God is one and God is single.

In other words, God is not triune. He is not Father, Son, and Holy Spirit in Islam.

They deny that Jesus is the Christ. In the Quran, chapter 4, verse 171, it says,

O people of the scripture, do not commit excess in your religion or say about Allah except the truth.

The Messiah, Jesus, the son of Mary, was but a messenger of Allah and his word which he directed to Mary and a soul created at a command from him.

So believe in Allah and his messengers. Do not say Trinity. Desist.

It is better for you. Indeed, Allah is but one God. Exalted is he above having a son.

Islam is the fastest growing religion on earth. Of course, it is common in the Middle East. The largest concentration of the population is in Southern Asia and there's also a great number of Muslim adherents in Northern Africa.

The second largest category of religion on earth is Hinduism. 1 .2 billion adherents among the

Indian Dharmic religions and Buddhism would be another one. So among those Indian religions, Hinduism and Buddhism are the largest two.

Hinduism is believed to be the oldest religion on earth but that's difficult to say because Hinduism does not have a founder and so the beliefs and teachings that have come about from Hinduism have just kind of evolved over time.

So it's difficult where to say Hinduism actually originated. Yoga is from Hinduism.

That's one of the things that we kind of accept as a common thing that we do in the United States. It's derived from Hinduism.

It can be broken down into what's called the Parashartha or the four aims of life.

They are ethics or duties, prosperity or work, desires or passions, and this leads to liberation or freedom.

By living a virtuous life, receiving material prosperity, and finding pleasure or emotional fulfillment, you will be liberated from life and death.

That's what it is that Hinduism teaches. In a sense, you will receive salvation if you do these things.

If you're a good person, if you prosper in your work, and if you find pleasure and emotional fulfillment.

That's how you have eternal life. You might find there's a lot of secular humanism that sounds a lot like that, right?

Hinduism contains hundreds of deities, but among the most notable include Shiva, Brahma, and Vishnu.

Deity worship is not required in Hinduism. You could actually be an atheist and be a

Hindu. So worship the multiple gods if you want to, but you don't have to just as long as you are pursuing those four aims of life.

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