We're going to continue in our series in Galatians and tonight we're going to be looking at the verses 6 to 9 in chapter 1. Chapter 1 verses 6 to 9 with the sermon title of No Other Gospel. I'll read the verses. I marvel that ye are so soon removed from him that called you into the grace of Christ, unto another gospel, which is not another. But there be some that trouble you and would pervert the gospel of Christ. But though we or an angel from heaven preach any other gospel unto you than that which we have preached unto you, let him be accursed. As we said before, so say I now again, if any man preach any other gospel unto you than that ye have received, let him be accursed. I don't know if you've ever had the experience of being astonished when a person who for all the world you thought was a Christian turns away. from the faith. Or perhaps more pertinent to the Galatians situation here, whether you've had a friend who once walked with you in the evangelical faith and turned away to Roman Catholicism or to Greek Orthodoxy, some completely different tradition, and you have this feeling of Astonishment, because you knew that person. You heard them pray. Sometimes you may have even heard them share the faith with others. And you think, after all that they heard and all that they were taught, how is it possible? Well, imagine the Apostle Paul, or imagine anyone who has planted a church. And from that church, many other churches have sprung up. And those people were faithful Christians, holding on to the truth of the gospel, preaching it and sharing it. And then some troublemakers, some troublesome people got in amongst them and turned the churches away. The churches that under God you had planted, turned them away. That's the situation the Apostle Paul was in, can you imagine? And can you imagine how he marvels, he's astonished. Verse six. I marvel, I marvel that ye are so soon removed from him that called you. And this is where our text begins tonight with an astonished Paul, an amazed Paul. He marvels at the situation which has arisen in these Galatian churches. He's astonished at the believers But he's furious with the false teachers, on whom he calls down the curse of God. I don't believe that he's given up on the believers, as is evident from the 10th verse of chapter 5, where it says, I have confidence in you through the Lord that ye will be none otherwise minded. But I believe that he's given up on the false teachers. I believe he has passed judgment on the false preachers. He says in that verse, he that troubleth you shall bear his judgment, whosoever he be. And in our verses tonight, he writes, if any man preach any other gospel unto you than that ye have received, let him be accursed. And so the main lesson, I think, of our text tonight is that there is only one gospel. Apostolic biblical Christianity rejects pluralistic religion, which means that there are many roads to God, that there are many roads to heaven, many paths all leading to the same destination. Paul teaches that there is only one way of salvation. namely the Gospel, which he so faithfully taught them. And the message of Galatians is so relevant to today's situation, I think. It's relevant to our contemporary evangelical world, certainly in the West. Because there is a dangerous cocktail of things which leave churches of our type and similar, leave us at great risk of falling into the Galatian error, the Galatian trap. Just think how one of the strongest social norms or values today is this scepticism in society of of any kind of universal truth, any kind of universal truth that explains history, society and human experience. People are very suspicious of any kind of grand narrative, any kind of overarching explanatory philosophy or thought or even statement, because we are a society which is dominated by this post-modernist idea, this post-modernist philosophy which rejects objective truth and thinks that truth is something which is not fixed and stable but is like water. It's fluid. It's constantly moving. You can never explain it or hold it. You have to adapt to its changing course. And this post-modernist idea influences everything. And there is an intense pressure to reject objective truth, that everything that we hold as knowledge or opinion is context-dependent Knowledge and truth are subjective and continually evolving. And you know that idea has entered into the church as well, which has led to many Christians to have little or no time for Christian doctrine. Christians are either told that doctrine doesn't matter as long as they're being good Christians or even that doctrine will be bad for them and make their Christian lives too theoretical and impractical. Perhaps at no stage since the Reformation, since perhaps the availability of the Bible in vulgar languages, perhaps at no time Has the Western Church been so biblically illiterate and ignorant as today? Which is ironic, given that the Bible is so widely available. Theology of every type is available instantly at the touch of a button on your iPhone or your computer. And you can access, often for free, the greatest works of Christian doctrine, and yet we are so illiterate biblically. In every kitchen probably, or most kitchens in this country, you'll find rows and rows of cookery books in the kitchen, won't you? And yet there's never been a time when people cook less and go to the takeaway more. It's the same situation. We have stacks of knowledge available, but we take little care to delve into it. And into this dangerous cocktail of compromise and ignorance come false teachers who steal people away to other gospels which are not the good news, which are not the gospel. There's the gospel of prosperity teaching. There's the therapeutic gospel. There's the social gospel, the mystic gospel, the cultural gospel, the legalistic, moralistic gospel. You name it, we have it in the church today. But Paul, and of course, Paul warned, didn't he, that false teachers would arise even from within the churches. and how that has turned out to be true through the ages of Christian history. Acts 20 verse 30, also of your own selves shall men arise, speaking perverse things to draw away disciples after them. And this is what Paul is facing. In several places Paul in his epistles defines, in summary form at least, what the Gospel is. For example, in 1 Corinthians 15, verse 3 to 7, he explains that this is the Gospel. He says, for I delivered unto you First of all, that which I also received, how that Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures, and that he was buried, and that he rose again the third day according to the scriptures. Now you would think that that would be something the church could hold on to and preach through the generations, but it hasn't. that this is the good news of the gospel, nothing else. And Paul received it by revelation and he delivered to the Gentiles what he received. He uses these words received and delivered quite deliberately. You see, in the Christian gospel there can be no editing, There can be no alteration, no addition to, or subtraction. The Gospel clearly teaches that Christ died for our sins and therefore salvation depends solely on the saving work of Jesus Christ. That he died, that he was buried, and he rose to achieve salvation for his people. And it's exclusively his work, his achievement, Nothing needs to be added to it. Nothing must be taken away from it. Nothing must be added to it. Titus 3 verse 5, not by works of righteousness which we have done, but according to his mercy he saved us. The gospel is perfect and it has been received, Paul says, he received it and he delivered it unto these Galatian churches. And the work of the Christian church and the work of our little church here, ever since, has been to be delivery men, to be delivery girls, to be a delivery service. That's all we are. We're to deliver to the world, to the people that need the gospel, what we have received. Received in this word of God. Nothing complicated. And yet, how often or how seldom does the Church deliver what it has received? The preservation of the Gospel's purity and its faithful delivery or preaching is crucial to the life of the church and the eternal destiny of millions and millions of human souls. If we get the gospel wrong, then it's more than our church will be ruined. People's souls go to hell. That's what's at stake. And that is why Paul is so exercised in his heart and mind and in large handwriting. He takes up his pen to try and save the day here. And so let's look more closely at what Paul says in these verses six to nine under three very simple headings. Our first heading, our first point is why Paul marvels. Why Paul marvels. Well we see this. We see why Paul is astonished in verse 6. The first thing, the first reason why he marvels is at the speed by which they have fallen for this false teaching. I marvel that ye are so soon removed from him that called you. Paul marvels at the speed of it all. They deserted Christ so quickly. And it doesn't really matter whether you date the Galatians very early, which is the Southern Galatian theory, or later if you take the Northern Galatian view, the point remains that the speed at which this error came in after Paul had left them was remarkable. And Paul wondered at it. It seemed that no sooner had Paul left them than some began to question the truth of what he had taught them. And that's a stark reminder, dear friends, that error can spread quickly in a biblically illiterate and unprepared church. That's why we spend such a big part of our meetings not in singing, not in doing many other things, which perhaps are more common in some types of services. We spend most of the time, don't we, in the Bible. either reading the Bible or explaining the Bible, because we want everyone to be literate, biblically literate, and so that everyone has a kind of inoculation, spiritually speaking, against the disease of false teaching. It's amazing how quickly error can spread when false teachers, particularly if they're very charismatic and very able. Why is it that false teachers seem to have all the communication gifts? I've never understood that. They seem to be the best speakers. They can just get off the pulpit and go to the piano, and they can play the piano, and then they can reach for the guitar, and they can play that perfectly. And it's very annoying. But you see how a big personality can sway a congregation to error. False doctrine opposes fundamental truth that is necessary for salvation. And in the case of the Galatians, The pernicious false doctrine was adding human religious works to Christ's finished work on the cross and saying that that was necessary for salvation. These Judaizers, as we've already seen, were insisting that Gentile converts should be circumcised like Jews and that they should have a diet like Jews. have a Jewish life, even though they weren't born Jews. It's not that the Judaizers were denying the need for the cross and faith in Christ. They didn't deny the resurrection and all those sorts of things. What they did was to add to the gospel. Of course, they said Christ is necessary, But they said also necessary is circumcision and other Jewish observances, things which none of the apostles had ever said the Gentiles had to do until now. We all quote this verse, but we need to hang on to it always. Ephesians 2, verse 8 and 9, for by grace are ye saved through faith. and that not of yourselves. It is the gift of God, not of works, lest any man should boast. And if we say that any ritual, even I would say baptism, is necessary for justification, we pervert the doctrine of justification by faith alone. Of course, we are to be baptized. But it is possible to be saved without being baptized. In some cases, it's impossible for someone to be baptized for health reasons or the fact that they die before they have had a chance to be baptized. They go to heaven the same as those who have been baptized. There are many other false gospels, of course, which Paul would have opposed in just the same way if they had arisen in his churches. There are many, I've gone through some already, but there's a gospel going around which erases hell and teaches universal salvation. Not to worry, everyone will be saved in the end. God will have mercy on everyone and everyone will end up in heaven, or the new heavens and the new earth. There's the many roads to God gospel, the easy believism gospel, which just says you just have to recite a prayer and then you're saved and it doesn't matter much how you live after that, as long as you've said the believer's prayer, you're in. There's a gospel which gives you a license to sin, which says a kind of false, once saved, always saved teaching, no matter, so long as you've believed, you're saved forever and it doesn't matter a bit how you've lived. Of course, they wouldn't put it in that terms, but there's a logic of what they say. And how quickly these false gospels can spread as the false doctrine of the Judaizers spread in the Galatian churches. Paul was amazed at the speed of it all. But then secondly I believe, we're still in verse six here, I believe he was amazed at the recklessness of it. The recklessness because he marvels that ye are so soon removed from him that called you. into the grace of Christ and to another gospel. How reckless to depart from God and from his call. To once believe in the gospel and then to turn away from it to another gospel is not just a rejection of apostolic doctrine. Paul is saying here, you're turning away from Christ. You're turning away from God. You're effectively calling God a liar. because Paul calls the gospel the gospel of God. It is his word, his message of mercy to the world, God's plan of redemption in Christ. And here they are, deserting all of that for salvation or justification by works of the law. This couldn't be more serious. Galatians 5, 3 and 4 says, For I testify again to every man that is circumcised, that he is a debtor to do the whole law. Christ is become of no effect unto you. Whosoever of you are justified by the law, ye are fallen from grace. A serious word, isn't it? You're fallen from grace. Now, I believe if these were real Christians who had been seduced into this era, I believe that they were not ultimately fallen from grace, as in that they had lost their salvation. I think it's more like this. I believe it's like a husband. It's like a husband buying his wife a beautiful ring for her birthday. And you go out for a meal, perhaps, and you hand the ring over and say, this is my gift to you, dear. It's a beautiful ring for you to thank you for all that you do. And then the wife looks up and says, I'll only accept it if I can help pay for it. she's fallen from grace. She's fallen from grace in the sense that she refuses to accept the grace of the one who loves her and wants to give to her. The husband is grieved because he has been denied the pleasure of freely giving to the one he loves. And her birthdays will be no pleasure to him if it carries on like that. Because if every time she has a birthday, his present turns into a negotiation about what her contribution will be, it's no longer of grace but of works. And in that sense, I believe these Galatians have fallen from grace. They were saying, thank you, Lord, but how much do you want? How much can I contribute? And the Lord is saying, no, this is a gift. This is the gift of salvation, which you cannot contribute to. It's a free gift. And you must accept it by faith, not of works, lest any man should boast to think it's something that you have earned or contributed to. It was astonishing to Paul that these Christians to whom he had delivered the best good news that there could ever be, are now turning to another gospel, which is devoid of its good news, devoid of the grace of Christ into which they had been called. He's amazed that they have so soon forgotten that it's only grace at the end of the day that can deal with their sin problem. It's only grace at the end of the day that can deal with your sin and my sin. Grace ultimately is the remedy, the only remedy to the poison of sin. The law is important, but all the law does is diagnose the disease. It diagnoses the problem. It has no answer to the problem. There is no mercy in the law. Good luck with Moses. You'll find no mercy in Moses for your sin. All you'll find is the heavy hand of judgment coming down upon you. The condemnation of the law telling you that you are damned for your sin because you are a transgressor of the holy law of God. That's all you get from the law. And yet, these Christians are returning to Moses. A bit like the Hebrew Christians trying to go back, back to the old, back to Moses for mercy. You'll find no mercy there. Mercy is in Christ. Grace is in the gospel. And it's only grace that can deal with the sin in our lives. So that was the first point why Paul was amazed why Paul marvelled. But secondly, a second point, and there's only going to be three, the second point is in verse seven, what Paul defends. What Paul defends. Well, he defends the uniqueness of the gospel. He says, which is not another. which is not another but there be some that trouble you and would pervert the gospel of Christ. Paul defends the uniqueness of the gospel by saying there is no other gospel. It's crystal clear that there is no other gospel than the one he preached to them and which they had originally accepted. And you know, Paul the missionary, whether it was at his first missionary journey or the third missionary journey, it's one or the other, he had been careful to drum into their Galatian heads, as it were, in his preaching and teaching the true gospel. And he would have preached many times, no doubt, As his text, Galatians 2.16, knowing that a man is not justified by the works of the law, but by the faith of Jesus Christ. Even we have believed in Jesus Christ, that we might be justified by the faith of Christ and not by the works of the law. For by the works of the law shall no flesh be justified. Hour after hour of preaching and teaching, he would have drummed that into their heads. And now he finds out. that they think that they can contribute to salvation by becoming Jews and doing Jewish law works. These false teachers are preaching a different gospel, which is not a gospel. The gospel of faith plus law works is not the gospel, because the gospel has a copyright difference. It's patented. It cannot legally be reproduced anywhere. It's copyrighted. And Paul defends its uniqueness, as we must do, as we must do. And then he defends the purity of the gospel. He says, there be some, verse seven, there be some that trouble you and would pervert the gospel of Christ. these false teachers were perverting the Gospel. To pervert something, this is important to understand, that to pervert something doesn't necessarily mean totally getting rid of everything that was there before. It's distorting it, it's corrupting it. You see, the preaching of these false teachers would have sounded Christian. It would have sounded like a Christian sermon. It wouldn't have come across as something totally different. It wouldn't have come across like a message from a Buddhist monk. It would have been recognizably Christian. Satan is far more subtle than that. It's a perversion of the Gospel. And through the Christian centuries, right up to our time, there are those who have been preaching a perverted gospel. If Satan can subtly get the church to distort the true gospel, then Satan can rob Christianity of its power. Of course, as we read Christian history, either the historical side of Christianity, what's known as the Historia Salutis, the history of salvation, either that's being perverted, that is to say the person and work of Christ, Satan sometimes does that, or he'll try and pervert the application of redemption, the teaching of the application of redemption to individuals, the order, ordo salutis, the order of salvation. And here in Galatians, Satan is trying to pervert the application of salvation. Justification is a key aspect of the application of redemption along with assurance of salvation. And justification and assurance of salvation was a central issue in the Reformation. We don't have time to explain the Roman Catholic teaching on justification in its entirety. But in summary, the Roman Catholic Church perverts the gospel by teaching that justification depends on a person's sanctification. In other words, God does not declare a person righteous unless he is righteous. By contrast, the Bible and the Reformers teach that the only ground by which a person can be justified is through Christ's righteousness, which is reckoned to him when he believes. That's the difference. And that is received by faith alone. In the true gospel, the believer is justified In the Roman Catholic gospel, the believer is enabled to achieve his own justification. And that's a very different Christianity. In Roman Catholicism, works become the title deed to justification. In the true gospel, works are the fruits of the Christian life after justification. And even in evangelical circles you hear justification and sanctification getting completely mixed up. You hear the law and the gospel getting completely mixed up. Because Satan loves to pervert the gospel. To get the church and her ministers to perhaps take the doctrines of scripture in their wrong order. and not in their right balance. He'll settle for that. Mix up sanctification and say, you're only a Christian if you're sanctified, as in progressively sanctified. That'll do for Satan. And it's our continual duty, particularly those who preach the gospel, to preserve, defend, not only the uniqueness of the gospel, but the purity of it. Because it's the purity of the gospel which has the power to save a human soul. And then finally, in verses eight and nine, we have what Paul warns. What Paul warns. He warns, doesn't he? though we or an angel from heaven preach any other gospel unto you than that which we have preached unto you, let him be accursed. And he repeats it. If any man preach any other gospel unto you than that you have received, let him be accursed. What does he warn? He warns anathema. He's addressing here the false preachers. And he uses the word preach three times in verses 8 and 9. The apostle in the full authority of his office pronounces a divine curse upon these false teachers. Of course, you might think that's harsh. But reflect on what they're doing. They are calling the true gospel false and substituting the true gospel for a false one. That's a very serious thing to do. And by so doing they are putting people's eternal souls at risk of eternal hell. This word accursed in Greek, the word anathema, which we have borrowed from the Greek, it's mentioned in verse 8 and it's repeated in verse 9. And the Greek word anathema is the equivalent of the Old Testament word harem, the thing devoted to destruction. sometimes in the Old Testament translated as accursed. As in Joshua 6 verse 17 where instructions were given for the destruction of Jericho. And it says, And the city shall be harem, accursed, even it and all that are therein to the Lord. We know of course that Achan disobeyed and was handed over to destruction because he took of some of the forbidden, the devoted things from Jericho. And he was handed over. He was accursed, handed over to destruction. And Paul is saying these Judaizers must be handed over to destruction, meaning they must be expelled from the church. God has given the church the power of the keys, the keys of the kingdom, the power of binding. The church has three powers. There are four degrees of this power of binding or church discipline. There's admonition. There is suspension from the sacraments and ultimately excommunication for the most extreme cases. And they have to be very, very extreme cases. I don't believe that the church has the power to damn someone's soul to hell. That's God's work and his alone. But Paul certainly prays for this in the case of these false preachers. He says, let them be accursed. Paul, in a sense, is requesting something here that is going to happen anyway. Because unless these false teachers repent, they're going to go to hell. Because to reject the gospel, even if you once held to it, and preach it to others, leaves you under God's curse. 1 Corinthians 16 verse 22. If any man love not the Lord Jesus Christ, let him be anathema. Maranatha, he adds. These are very serious things I'm speaking of here, but this is the level of it. how serious it is to pervert the gospel of Christ, which is the only hope for the world. Mess about with that and you're risking your eternal soul. We have here in these verses eight and nine also the subjects of Paul's warning. The subjects of Paul's warning Or as follows, he says, but though we, that's the apostles, or an angel from heaven, preach any other gospel unto you than that which we have preached unto you, let him be accursed. And then in verse nine, if any man preach any other gospel unto you than that ye have received, let him be accursed. So the subjects of the warning are angels, apostles, and any preacher, any man. So this dire warning applies to Paul himself, to all the apostles, to heavenly beings, and to anyone who would dare to stand before men and preach a different gospel. And then the terms of the warning are spelt out. If any man preach any other gospel unto you than that ye have received, let him be. It's a repeat of his teaching earlier. There is only one gospel. The gospel as preached by Paul and the apostles. It's a fixed truth that cannot be tampered with. Jude in verse 21 exhorts us to earnestly contend for the faith which was once delivered unto the saints. It was once delivered, you see. It's locked for editing if you're on a computer. You can't touch it, you can't change it. It's not to be subject to interfaith dialogue. It's not to be subject to cultural readings, and so on. It is the once-delivered message of how Christ died for our sins, was buried, and rose again as Lord of all according to the scriptures, and how Christ is the only way to God. That's our gospel. It's the once-delivered gospel. It's the message of how by trusting in Jesus as Saviour and Lord, and repenting of our sins, we experience God's grace, his saving grace, his justifying grace. And that is the only hope for the world. And it is our job. It is our commission. to go into all the world and preach it for the glory of God. And so I pray that we will be faithful individually and as a church to preach this once delivered gospel, the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ. Amen. Feel free to contact us at Sovereign Grace Church in Tiverton. Email us at grace2seekers at gmail.com. That's grace2seekers at gmail.com. Alternatively, you can visit our website at www.sovereigngracereformedchurch.co.uk.