Well thank you Gary, thank you Joel for reading the passage. Thank you for giving the context
from the start. We're going to be looking at, so the whole passage was read and we're
going to be looking today at verses 6 to verse 9. So keep that open in front of you so that
you can follow along. Let me pray for us before we go further. Our Heavenly Father, we thank
you for your grace in the Gospel. We thank you that you've given it to us, that we have
our Bibles, that from start to finish speak of your Gospel of Jesus. We pray today that
you take it from the page and plant it in our heart and we ask this in Jesus' name,
Amen. I had the privilege for a short time to be a second officer in charge of a volunteer
fire and emergency services unit. And we, I did this when I lived in a small town, so
it was very small, we're all volunteers but we did everything. Like we were all there
was and so we did searches and we did road rescue and bushfires and we did structural
firefighting which is, you know, when buildings, when houses are burning down. And when you
turn up to that kind of a job, to a structural job, things are moving very fast, right? There's
a lot going on there, you've got, there's flames coming out of a building, there are
people screaming, there are people moving and if you're in charge of that fire, if you're
in charge of the job, then you need to communicate very clearly to the people that you're working
with so that they know exactly what they're doing. There's no time for mucking around,
there's no time for doubling up or for people doing the wrong thing. Things have to happen
really fast. And you need, when you communicate, you need each person's absolute full attention
for the time that you have. You only have a couple of seconds to communicate with them
but they have to hear you in that time. And they teach you in the training kind of a technique
for doing that, for how to get somebody's attention to communicate clearly. And what
they teach you is, one thing that, one way you can do it, is that you put your hand on
their shoulder. So you make physical contact, hand to shoulder, then you look them in the
eye, so it's eye contact, then you say their name and then you give a clear instruction.
Okay? So it's like, it's like hand on the shoulder, Jen, I want you to operate the pump.
This person will be Vaughan. I want you on line one, roll a 60, roll a 40, water on the
roof. Now, Alan, I want you to back up Vaughan, roll a 60, roll a 40, go. Peter, I want you
on the hose reel, get the water on that, protect that vehicle now. Right? And so it goes, you
go through all the people, each person as we go through and we give them instructions.
And the thing is, that was kind of in my past, but I've kind of maintained this in my life,
you know, this technique of communication. If I ever need to get something really clearly
through to somebody, then I can use that same thing. So when Margaret's going out shopping,
right, you'll see me, honey, don't forget the ice cream. Now, in this passage, Paul
cannot make eye contact with the Galatians and he can't reach them through the pages,
but in every way he does absolutely everything that he can to ensure that his message has
the maximum impact. Right? And look at that, look at the opening words. So he's moved from
an introduction that's kind of compulsory in the letter, in the ancient world, and he
moves on to these opening words. He says, I am astonished. Right? So those words, they
carry so much drama. It is incomprehensible to Paul that they would turn to another Gospel.
I am astonished that you are so quickly deserting. Right? The word deserting there has so much
impact. He could have said that, you know, he's surprised that they're listening to other
ideas or exploring other options, but he uses this word and he talks, the word has this
kind of idea of a soldier leaving their post, somebody transferring their allegiance from
their post, their army, their king, to the enemy. All right, there's no half way in what
he's saying. We believe the true Gospel or we believe an enemy Gospel. And notice what
or who they're deserting. He says, I'm astonished that you are so quickly deserting the one
who called you to live in the grace of Christ and are turning to a different Gospel. So
to believe a different message is to desert the one who spoke that message. And in this
case, they're talking about God. God is the one who's called them. So he's writing to
a church, he's writing, this is a Christian church and he's saying to them that what they're
doing is deserting God. And notice why this is so urgent, why he's using this language
to arrest them. He says that they are deserting. Right? So this is an action that is still
taking place. The house is burning down. So right now their entire lives are on fire and
Paul needs to act with urgency. In the next verse he says that those who teach a different
Gospel are trying to pervert the Gospel of Christ. Pervert, there is a deliberate action
there. Their desire is to pervert this Gospel. And the next verse after that makes it just
how clear, how serious this is. How serious it is to be perverting this Gospel. So at
this point the volume is pushed right up where on overdrive he says, he says even if he and
his co-workers brought a different Gospel. Right? So that's, he's using absolutely exaggerated
terms at this point. Obviously he's not going to do that but even if that was to happen,
even if the angels themselves came proclaiming a different Gospel, then and here Paul drops
the A-bomb. Right? He uses a word, the word anathema. We take the English word anathema
from that and that's the word meaning to be under God's curse. To have the weight of God's
wrath on you. And if you do not repent, if you're in that state and you do not repent
of it, it means that you are eternally condemned. There is nothing stronger that Paul can say
about people who are claiming to be Christians and preaching a different message. And just
to be clear, just say that we really, really have this. Alright? Just to make it even stronger,
just to make sure that nobody could kind of say, well you know, Paul's a passionate guy
and maybe he didn't really mean to use the A-word. Just in case he says it again in verse
9, as we have already said, now I say again, if anybody is preaching to you a Gospel other
than what you have accepted, let them be under God's curse. Right? There is nothing more
weighty. There is nothing more weighty that Paul could be saying to the Galatians and
no more weighty way to put it. And that goes for us too. There is nothing more weighty
that Paul could be saying to the Galatians and no more weighty way to put it. And that
goes for us too. There is nothing more important than what we're considering right here. There
is nothing more important that we could be doing this morning. Right? So let the house
burn down because this here, this is more important. And if we're really going to get
to what this is saying to us and how it applies to us today, then we need to do a few things.
Firstly, we need to understand what is the Gospel. Right? We need to understand it. Secondly,
we need to understand something about why Paul comes out so strongly about this other
Gospel. So what kind of a thing should we be warned about? And thirdly, we need to make
sure that we are not going to do what the Galatians are doing. That we're not in danger
of deserting the Gospel and to do that we need to become aware of false Gospels that
could, we could potentially hear or hear preach today. So firstly, what is the Gospel? And
even before we sort of say what is the Christian Gospel, we could ask the question of what
is a Gospel? What does the Word really mean? And you'd think that the answer to this of
what is the Gospel and what is a Gospel would be fairly easy because it's probably the most
used word in Christendom. It's the word that we bandy around all over the place. In fact,
it's the word of the moment. Everything today, if you notice that everything today has the
word Gospel attached to it. So that we used to do ministry, like people like me and people
like Michael and Eldon, people who are working in churches, we used to do ministry. But now
we do Gospel ministry. It's actually the same as when we were doing ministry before but
it sounds better because it's Gospel ministry. In fact, we do Gospel everything. We do Gospel
centered preaching. We used to preach, now we do Gospel centered preaching. We do Gospel
centered counselling, Gospel centered leadership. You can do Gospel centered parenting and you
can have a Gospel centered marriage. I'm thinking of marketing a range of Gospel centered candles.
They might be a top seller at a certain bookshop. In the ancient world, a Gospel was a monumental
announcement. It almost always has to do with the rise and fall of kingdoms or kings. For
example, an old king is defeated and your leader rises up to the position of king, that
is a Gospel. Or an enemy comes against your kingdom and your king defeats the enemy, that
is a Gospel. So we say that a Gospel is good news but that doesn't capture it entirely.
For example, it's good news that Margaret remembered the ice cream but it's not the
Gospel of the ice cream. A Gospel is good news in the sense that it means victory, like
your king has risen or your kingdom has been defended and so you're saved. But it's more
than that. It's more than good news. It is a monumental announcement of national significance.
If that's what a Gospel is generally, how does that apply to the Christian Gospel? That
should be fairly easy because people will say things like, do you know the Gospel? As
if we could repeat the Gospel in a simple formula. But again, it's not quite as easy
as that because when we look at the Bible, it seems that different parts of the Bible
express the Gospel in slightly different ways because they're talking about different aspects
of the same great message. At the centre of the Gospel is the announcement of God's reign,
that the kingdom of God has been established. But at the same time is that there are a number
of ideas that are attached to that, that unnecessary parts of it are necessary to understand it.
In Isaiah 52 and verse 7 it says, how beautiful on the mountains are the feet of those who
bring good news. So the good news there, that is the Gospel. So those who proclaim a Gospel,
who proclaim peace, who bring good tidings, who bring salvation, who say to Zion, this
is it, this is what they're saying, your God reigns. So there's the Gospel in a nutshell,
your God reigns. Mark summarises Jesus' teaching like this. This is at the start of Mark in
chapter 1, verses 14 and 15. It says, after John, so he's talking about John the Baptist,
after John was put in prison, Jesus went into Galilee proclaiming the good news. So he's
proclaiming the Gospel of God. So proclaiming the good news of God, the time has come, he
said, the kingdom of God has come near, repent and believe the good news, repent and believe
the Gospel. So again, we have the Gospel and another way to say your God reigns is to say,
the kingdom of God has come near. That's just another way of saying the same thing. Notice
that Jesus includes our response to the Gospel. So our response is that we need to repent
and believe. So that's kind of the central idea of the Gospel, this idea of God's reign,
of God's kingdom coming. But how does that kingdom get established? So you notice that
Jesus said there in the Mark passage that the kingdom has come near. But how does it
come near? And how does it come fully? Well, it comes through the King and the King is
Jesus. And in particular, it comes through his death and resurrection. So Jesus dies
to win a people for that kingdom, a people for himself as the King, and he rises to be
given authority over all things. So the centre of the Gospel is Jesus' reign or his kingdom,
but that Gospel, that reign or the kingdom cannot be separated from the identity of the
King of that kingdom. And it cannot be separated from the King's work to establish that kingdom.
It cannot be separated from the King's work to establish that kingdom. Okay, so we have
God's reign, we have the King and his identity and his work, but we can take a step further
and ask, how do we personally become involved or become part of that kingdom? It's one thing
to say that the kingdom has been established or the kingdom has come, but if you think
about it, that announcement is almost cruel if the Gospel's not for us. If there's a
kingdom or if there's a party going on somewhere but we're not invited, that would not be a
good news or a Gospel for us if there's no way to enter it. But if the kingdom of God
is a holy kingdom, then how can I as a sinner come into it? And the answer to that is that
we can be forgiven for our sins as we repent and believe because the King took the punishment
on himself. So the question of how am I saved is kind of bolted onto the Gospel as well.
It's not just that there is a kingdom and God is reigning, but that God is standing
with open arms welcoming you into the kingdom. So the Gospel, what is the Gospel? The Gospel
then is the central teachings of Christianity, but it isn't a formula. It's a collection
of ideas. At the heart of the message is God's reign, but linked to that are a number of
other things that give that context and explain how it relates to us. So if that is what the
Gospel is that Paul is talking about, how is that contradicted by the false teachers
in Galatia and why should they be under God's curse? Well as Michael said last week, the
teaching people, so people who have become Christians, they're teaching them that they
also need to be circumcised and that they need to keep the Jewish law in order to be
saved. Now that contradicts the Gospel because firstly it would mean that the Gospel is not
gracious, that God is essentially not standing with open arms to welcome us into the kingdom
through faith, because it implies that there's still some work that we need to do. And secondly,
it undermines the Gospel because it undermines the work of the King. So the Gospel is not
just a work that we need to do. And secondly, it undermines the Gospel because it undermines
the work of the King. It suggests that there's still something lacking in his work, that
his death isn't quite enough to bring us forgiveness, that his resurrection doesn't quite indicate
that we're justified because we still need to add to it. And the thing is that if the
people believe these central truths of the Gospel, then we are not saved because it's
through the Gospel that we're saved. It is by believing the Gospel that brings us into
the kingdom. And if we're believing a different Gospel, then we do not have our salvation.
And this is why Paul can say that he is astonished that they've so easily deserted it, because
it means that they're throwing away their salvation by believing a different Gospel.
That's why he can talk so, so strongly about people who preach a different Gospel. It's
because they are robbing people of their salvation. And this brings us to the third point, because
although as a group, as a church culture, we might be persuaded to take on some aspects
of the Jewish law, I don't think that believing that our men need to be circumcised is the
most likely heresy that we're going to fall into. So what I want to do is to present three
false Gospels that we may come across and think about the way that they undermine the
Gospel and think about the way that we need to be warned not to fall into these things.
The first of these I'm actually going to cheat and I'm going to bundle a couple together,
right, so that I can say that they're one. And what I want to talk about is the various
cults that we have about. Now many of these groups, so I'm thinking of Jehovah's Witnesses,
Church of the Latter Day Saints, many of these are non-Trinitarian. But not all cults are
non-Trinitarian and actually not all non-Trinitarian groups are actually cults. So we need to kind
of split these two ideas up. And the attack on the Trinity, not to believe the Trinity,
is absolutely an attack on the Gospel because when you do that, when you undermine the Trinity,
you change the identity of the King. So when you change the identity of the King, you change
the Gospel. Also if you teach, as some of these groups do, that Jesus is not fully divine,
then that means that he cannot fully pay for all of our sins. He might be able to pay for
the sin of one person, but he cannot pay for all of our sins unless his sacrifice is of
enormous value, is of infinite value. So this kind of non-Trinitarian nature does undermine
the Gospel. But what I want to focus on about these groups is the way that they are cultish.
And what I mean by cultish is that for many of these groups, your salvation is tied to
your membership, your membership to that church or to that organisation, so that you cannot
escape. And that links us a little bit with our passage because circumcision was the sign
of being part of the ethnic nation of Israel. Now salvation through membership of a particular
group is a straight contradiction of the Gospel. What a group like that has done is they have
taken the kingdom of God and they have replaced that with their own church. The Gospel is
the kingdom and we enter into the kingdom through allegiance to the king. If you belong
to the king, you belong to the kingdom. But if you make that, if you change that message
and you make it allegiance to your church, if you make that the criteria for entry, then you have
undermined the king and you are preaching a different Gospel and you are under God's
curse. Let's be clear about this guys. If this church is under God's curse, then you
are under God's curse. Let's be clear about this guys. If this church or any other ever
preaches that you need to be a member here to be saved, then please leave us and never
come back because your leaders would be shysters and peddlers of a different Gospel.
Membership is important here. We love people coming into membership but there is no sense
that it can save you. So when you have Jehovah's Witnesses come to your door, you need to
realise that they are part of a group that they cannot leave. Their salvation depends
on their membership. As they do that, as you go into a group like this, what happens is
that you become more and more cut off from people on the outside, from your friends and
your family and you become more and more isolated into this group. So when they are at your
front door, you can have the best arguments against the Trinity. I teach systematic theology.
I can lecture for an hour on John chapter 1, just verse 1 and break down every word in
that passage for you. It is completely useless when the Jehovah's are at the door because
they have already been trained in that. They have already been trained in the fact that
they are going to have good arguments. In fact, if you watch very carefully, what they
will do is they will stop exactly where they are, they will smile and nod while you speak
and then when you have finished, they will start at exactly where they were and they
will keep going because they are on script. So your arguments won't have impact because
what they need, they need to be attached to this group. So what we really should say to
these people, we should be able to promise people like that sincerely that if they leave
their church, then we can promise them that they will find family at this church. That's
the best thing that we can do. And then we need to be that church and I believe we are
that church. A church that is so transformed by the gospel that we can be brothers and
sisters to people who have been former cult members and then show them the grace and the
freedom of the gospel. And that's what we are all about and that is the gospel in action.
The second false gospel that I want to address is the prosperity gospel. And when I call
this a gospel, I mean what Paul means in verse 7 when he says that this is not a gospel at
all. This is the fastest spreading heresy today. It acts on a massive world scale. It
started in the US but is most prevalent today actually in Africa, Asia and Central and South
America. And as we talk about this, what I want you to do is to notice the link between
what a gospel sees as the problem or essentially what sin is in their mind and then how the
gospel then solves that problem. So according to the prosperity gospel, our problem is that
we are poor or that we are sick or that we are generally not being victorious in the
game of life. And Jesus in his death somehow wins us prosperity over these things. So the
prosperity gospel says that you are a child of the most high God. Why would the king want
you to drive around in a Mazda 3 with the paint peeling off when you could be driving
a Lamborghini? Does anyone drive a Lambo? I didn't mean to pick on Lambos. Yeah, okay.
Alright, I'll trade for my Mazda 3. Right, so in that gospel there is no eternal kingdom.
It is about your best life now. And the greatest cruelty of this gospel is where they find
a place for faith because we need to find a place for faith. It's written in the Bible.
It says that if you don't achieve your health and your wealth and your best life now, it is
because of your lack of faith. Alright, what a convenient teaching for pastors who are
achieving their best life now. How are they achieving their best life now? Well, because
they're telling people to express their faith by giving more and more money. Imagine taking
money from people who don't have it so that you can have more and then telling them that
if they believe hard enough, God will give it back to them. This is a gospel of shysters
who are under God's curse. And it undermines the gospel of a suffering king, a king who
invites us to join in his suffering for the kingdom. The last gospel I want to talk about
is a lot more subtle and it's less obviously wrong and so then a lot more likely to creep
into our lives and into our church. And I think that it is the gospel that is prevalent
in our city, even amongst evangelical churches. And it's a little like prosperity but it works
entirely differently. So it pictures the fundamental problem as being our brokenness, our weakness
or somehow our spiritual lacking. Now all that is true so it's picturing something that
is actually correct. Okay, we are those things. We are broken people. We are weak and we are
spiritually weak and need building up. All of these things are problems that exist in
our world today because of the fall of mankind. But they are not our fundamental problem.
They are the results of our fundamental problem. If God has established a holy kingdom,
then the problem is not that I am broken or that I am not reaching my potential. The problem
is that I am sinful and God is angry with me. And then in this gospel, the solution to
our brokenness is that God is making us whole again through the gospel and so that we can
reach our potential in Christ. And so for example, if you look at, you see this a lot
in websites for youth ministries. We could do this by looking at websites for churches
or preaching or in a number of other ways but we see this, one way we see this is through
youth ministries. So this is the splash text. You can look this up on the Youth Alive website.
This is the first piece of text that you get when you look that up. It says, not a week
goes by without the media reporting appalling statistics regarding the youth crisis within
Australia today. It is statistics like this that drive the heart of every member of Youth
Alive. So what is the problem that we are dealing with? The problem is that we look
at the youth today and we see that there are bad youth statistics. So we need to do something
about that. Youth are broken. The youth are weak and we need to do that. Now I am not
disagreeing with that. That is not a particularly new problem, is it? I grew up in the 80s and
the 90s and I am sure people were looking at us when I was that age and they were saying
the problem is the youth today. Those people grew up in the 60s and the 70s and I am sure
there are people looking at them and saying the problem is the youth today. So this is
the problem that is identified. Our young people are the future of our nation and we
believe this is a future worth living. So what are we building here? We are building
the nation of Australia through helping our youth. Therefore it is our purpose to bring
a message of hope and encouragement to those in need and then go beyond this by providing
genuine support through local youth groups in helping teenagers realise their potential.
There it is. There is the Gospel of Potential. What are we doing? How do we counteract the
problem of the brokenness of youth? Well we give them a message of hope and encouragement
so that they can reach their potential. This is not the prosperity gospel, is it? It falls
short of promising people the world. It is falling short of promising that they can have
this if only they believe hard enough. But it does undermine the gospel. Firstly it undermines
the grace of the gospel. If our problem really is that we are weak and that we are broken,
if that is our fundamental problem, then why wouldn't God fix that? Surely we would fix
that problem. There is no grace in fixing that. But God is truly gracious in the gospel when
we realise that we are enemies, that the problem is our sin and God is angry at our sin and
we are enemies of God and yet we are not going to be able to fix that problem. We are going
to be angry at our sin and we are enemies of God and yet, and yet while we were still
enemies, God has made it possible to enter into his kingdom. Secondly it changes the
work of Christ. The cross becomes bearing our weakness, not bearing the wrath of God.
If that is the case, then there is no longer an atonement, there is no longer a sacrifice
that is taking place where the King himself offers himself to take the punishment in our
place. Thirdly it is a problem because if the focus is saving us from bad youth statistics
rather than from God's punishment, then there is no real sense of hell. We are not being
saved out of a kingdom of darkness and into the kingdom of light. We are just being saved
out of a bad situation. Popular YouTube channel, The Bible Project, they are the first YouTube
channel. Popular YouTube channel, The Bible Project, promotes this view, this gospel of
potential. Interestingly one of its two co-founders, a guy called Tim Mackey, no longer believes
in a traditional view of hell. For Mackey, hell is not a destination for sinners who
rebel against God. Hell is our lives that are created through our brokenness. Hell itself
is the brokenness of life. In the end this gospel of brokenness and potential becomes
all about us, all about me and my journey that I'm on. God's glory becomes the tagline
to our shallow existence. This is not a gospel that is worth dying for and it's an affront
to a gospel of grace and justice. So bringing all this together, Paul uses strong and provocative
language to get the church to realise the danger they're in. It's so strong because
they are deserting. They're in the process of doing it. If we recognise that in ourselves,
if we recognise that in our church, then we are in the process of doing it. We are in
the process of doing it. If we recognise that in ourselves, if we recognise that in our
church, then we need to take extreme measures to pull ourselves back. We need to be brutal.
We need to be honest about it. Churches can teach different things on minor points and
that is fine. That is fine on those points. There is no way that we would say that people
are under God's curse for having differences in minor areas. But when it comes to the gospel,
salvation is at stake. So church, hand on the shoulder, looking you in the eyes. Do
not settle for a false gospel. Hold true to the gospel of Christ. Be willing to fight
for it. Fight for it because it is true. Fight for it because it is something eternally true,
something eternally pure and good and gracious and it's worth fighting for. Let me pray.
Heavenly Father, it is your gospel. It is not ours. It is the gospel of Christ. It is
the gospel of your Son. The gospel of God. We pray that you protect us. We do not think
that we are so foolish that we couldn't believe false teaching. Please correct us and rebuke
us. Please never let this church fall into a false gospel. Please preserve us for your
sake. Amen.