No Other Gospel

Gal 1:6-10

Starting today we are going to take a good look at the book of Galatians. Often I hear people ask if the Bible is really relevant to modern people like us. Hey, let’s face it, the Bible was written 2000 years ago. People were different, problems were different, cultures were different, the church was different. How could it relate to us?

Galatians has some teachings that apply very much to us today, including this text. For them it was the Jewish Christians demanding you had to be just like them to be a Christian. Today, it could be different religious groups demanding you be just like them to be a Christian. What both groups forget is that we need to be just like Christ to be a Christian and we need to focus on his desires, not man’s to be right.

PRAYER

I. Are You Listening to the Right Voice?

A. Paul begins he defense with a good offense

1. Paul starts out this book by setting the record straight on some things that the Galatians should have been fully aware of before.

2. “An apostle -- sent not from men nor by man, but by Jesus Christ and God the father.”

a) The Judaizers were a group of teachers that said to be a Christian, you had to be circumcised and do things the Jews did.

b) They also claimed they were sent from the elders at the Jerusalem church to teach the truth that Paul wasn’t teaching.

c) Paul begins here with his attack. Basically, he says you can claim to be from Jerusalem all you want. Who cares? The authority of the gospel doesn’t come from Jerusalem, it comes from God.

B. Restoration plea

1. That’s the same argument that we have been talking about on Sunday evenings.

2. The authority of the gospel doesn’t come from Rome or Nashville, it doesn’t come from a voting body or denominational headquarters, it comes from Jesus Christ and God the Father in the form of the Scripture divinely inspires by the Holy Spirit.

3. No other authority matters.

II. No Other Gospel

A. The dangers of other gospels

1. When I was in college, there were many sweet southern girls there trying to earn their MRS. degree. Academic ability wasn’t their strong point. We would have fun with some of these by telling them things that were obviously not real, but do it in such a convincing matter that we could persuade them to believe what we claimed.

2. Sweet Southern girls aren’t the only ones to fall to patently untrue statements.

a) How many young people today have come to believe that any lifestyle is okay because they hear it over and over on TV or read it in magazines?

b) How many people have come to accept evolution because so many others have claimed that it true?

c) Did you know that more and more scientists now agree there isn’t such a thing as cross species evolution?

d) Wouldn’t guess that from your text books would you?

e) How many people believe you can be saved just by being a good person.

f) It sounds so good and you hear it in a lot of pulpits, but the plain fact is, they are wrong. The Bible clearly teaches what we must do to be saved.

B. Adding or Subtracting from the gospel can be spiritually terminal

1. Paul says in vs 8 “if we or an angel from heaven should preach a gospel other than t he one we preached to you, let him be eternally condemned.”

2. If we add on requirements that God did not, we could be eternally condemned.

3. If we say you don’t have to do things God says you do, we could be eternally condemned.

4. Even if an angel comes and tells you something different that what the gospel teaches, don’t listen!

5. "Leslie Weatherhead speaks in his book A Christian Agnostic of a simple shepherd's pipe that belonged to Moses when he stood watch over his father-in- law's sheep, before God spoke to him out of the burning bush and got him involved in the plight of his countrymen down in Egypt. The pipe played a beautiful clear tone. "Then, years after Moses had become a great leader, the Jews wanted to install it in a museum, but it looked so simple and unprepossessing that someone suggested it be embellished a bit. Decorations of gold and silver were added. Again, years later, other enthusiasts added more decoration. The once-simple pipe became an elaborate work of art, but it no longer played its beautiful clear tone. "That is often what happens when the gospel gets mixed up with packaging." [Lectionary Homiletics, Jun 1993. Page 5.]

6. Our heritage is a pure simple call to go back to the Bible and find what God wants for man from the scriptures only. It is beautiful and right. However, we also need to be careful about adding more to being a Christian by putting our traditions as a mark of proper Christianity.

a) When my brother went to Africa a few years back, he talked about the fact that the Africans clapped throughout their singing. Everything was fine until a couple of American preachers told them that if they continued to clap while worshipping, that their worship would be unacceptable to God and sinful.

b) I challenge you to open the scripture and prove that.

c) if anyone should preach a gospel other than what we preached to you, let him be eternally condemned.

C. Why So Tough?

1. Why would Paul come across so hard and damning on these men? Why does it matter if they add some things here or there?

2. Simply put, God alone gave us salvation. It is his grace that makes salvation possible.

3. When we start adding or subtracting from that concept, WE say we know more than God.

4. We say WE are the ones who define who is saved and who isn’t.

5. Where do we get off doing that?

6. Paul realized that to leave this unchallenged could destroy the essence of grace and salvation. The very core of the gospel.

7. These men could cost people their souls through their false teaching and Paul wasn’t about to allow that.

III. Man Pleasers

A. After going through all of this Paul ends this thought with a very intriguing thought.

1. READ vs 10

2. the Judaizers were claiming he was just trying to please the gentiles.

a) Paul, I think, was almost laughing with exasperation as he wrote these words.

b) Being a minister is like putting a big kick me sign on your back.

c) If you really care about people your going to tell them things they need hear, not just what they want to hear.

d) You don’t get real popular that way. There is always someone mad at you.

e) One old preacher told me, “if everyone likes you, you’re not doing your job right.”

B. That goes for anyone who is a Christian.

1. You cannot be serious about your faith and have everyone like you.

2. Sometimes by the very way you live, people will dislike you because your good life is in direct conflict with their immoral life.

3. Don’t be ashamed of the Gospel.

4. preach it, live it, honestly.

C. Remember, your goal is to please God, not man