No Other Gospel
Galatian’s Series CCCAG 4-7-24
-Scripture- Galatians 1:1-10
Introduction
Today we are going to begin a new series focusing on the book of Galatians.
However, I want to put out this warning- For this message, I will be dealing with some things that are of an adult nature later in the message so if you are here with young children, or listing by podcast, this is your warning to put on headphones for this message. I’ll keep it PG, but there isn’t really a way to sanitize this and have it still make sense.
So, back to the message-
The book of Galatians, along with the book of James, are the two books of the NT that scholars believed were the first books written after Jesus ascended and the church began to grow. As we go through this book, we are going to get a great look into the development of the early church as the Holy Spirit led the apostles in coming out of a very legalistic religion known as Judaism and into the freedom that we have in Jesus Christ.
But, it wasn’t just Jewish people converting to Christianity, but Gentiles- who is everyone else. Gentiles also came out of very legalistic pagan religions, which even if you followed it to the letter you had no real hope of this pagan deity helping you or offering you eternal life.
The author of this letter is the Apostle Paul.
The churches that he is writing too aren’t in a specific city, but an area that existed in what today is the country of Turkey, or geographically Asia Minor.
Galatia was what we could call a state or a province within the Roman Empire, and so this letter covers not just one church, but several.
It was expected that the scribes within that early church would have copied this letter and sent it onto the other church’s to help them learn about the truth of Christ because there were so many counterfeits rising up.
One of the things we will see is Paul trying, for lack of a better way of describing it, reprogram the way that people thought about faith and religion. The bible calls this the renewing of our mind- cleaning house of the clutter of our old life so the new life can flourish.
I mentioned that Galatians and James were the first books written in the New Testament, and therefore show us a progression of thought from a legalistic mindset regarding God to one of grace through faith in Jesus the Christ.
When I say legalistic I’m referring to the kind of religion people are practicing. For the purposes of this message, let’s just define religion as humanities attempt to reach God on our terms. Religion makes up laws, traditions and ceremony to fill that area in our spirits that God designed to be filled with HIM. Religion teaches if you do this, that, and the other thing God will bless you and be happy with you. It’s focused on your effort to please God just enough so that He will be satisfied.
Christianity, at it’s essence, teaches that God has made a way for you to come into his grace, and that way is by faith alone. Jesus did the work, through faith in that work you are saved. Period, end of story.
You are not made righteous before God by your effort but through what Jesus has already done. Not only did He make the way for us to come to HIM and achieve heaven when we die, but our Father gives us The Holy Spirit to empower us to live in a way that pleases God.
Christianity is all focused on what God did, does, and will do, not what we can do.
Paul says in plainly in
Eph 2:8 For you are saved by grace through faith, and this is not from yourselves; it is God’s gift?—? not from works, so that no one can boast.
This was a huge shift in the way the ancient world believed thought, and lived their lives. They were so used to having to do certain things, give certain offerings, perform religious ceremony’s, and in the case of Judism, obey 613 laws. It was so ingrained in them it took awhile for them to adjust.
That’s the background of this book. Really long intro today but you need to understand that to really appreciate what Paul is trying to teach this young church.
So let’s dig in.
Galatians 1:1-10 (Christian Standard Bible)
Gal 1:1 Paul, an apostle?—?not from men or by man, but by Jesus Christ and God the Father who raised him from the dead?—?
Gal 1:2 and all the brothers who are with me: To the churches of Galatia.
Gal 1:3 Grace to you and peace from God the Father and our Lord Jesus Christ,
Gal 1:4 who gave himself for our sins to rescue us from this present evil age, according to the will of our God and Father.
Gal 1:5 To him be the glory forever and ever. Amen.
Paul begins all of his letters in a very similar fashion, giving greetings- sometimes personal greetings to specific people, and then ends with a blessing or benediction before he addresses the immediate reason for his letter.
No Other Gospel
Gal 1:6 I am amazed that you are so quickly turning away from him who called you by the grace of Christ and are turning to a different gospel?—?
Gal 1:7 not that there is another gospel, but there are some who are troubling you and want to distort the gospel of Christ.
Gal 1:8 But even if we or an angel from heaven should preach to you a gospel contrary to what we have preached to you, a curse be on him!
Gal 1:9 As we have said before, I now say again: If anyone is preaching to you a gospel contrary to what you received, a curse be on him!
Prayer
So we just read in verse 6 about “different gospels”
That word Gospel means good news. It’s the pure plan of God to bring humanity back to HIM through Jesus.
However, something isn’t pure if you add even the smallest amount of poison. Calling something that has poison in it pure is simply a lie.
Therefore the Gospel + anything else is no longer the Gospel. (verse 9)
By definition, if you taint something pure with something not pure, we call that a perversion. Perversion is not just something dealing with intimate matters, but definitely can be. Perversion is simply taking something pure and making it unpure.
I’m making this point so we are all following the same definitions moving forward because this world will try to use a word like perversion as something fun and exciting. It’s not- it’s a poisoning of purity.
There were several perversions of the Gospels that Paul was contending with-
The first one, and one that we have been alluding to is the Judaizers- The Judaizers were trying to mix Jesus with the Law of Moses.
When I say Judaizers, it does not mean all Jewish people are evil. This was a movement that occurred over 1900 years ago in the Roman Empire, but has nothing to do with Jewish people today. No antisemitism in this church.
The Judaizers were people who came from the Jewish faith, and believed in Jesus, but wanted to keep their Jewish faith and add Jesus to it. What I mean by that is the wanted to keep the law of Moses, and have Jesus at the same time. The problem was-
They believed everyone else should also. One of the major sticking points in the early church were men who came into the church from the Gentile world were not circumcised, and the Judaizers insisted that they follow the Law of Moses and become circumcised.
And people thing church membership today is demanding.
I had a 1000 jokes here…but decided against all of them.
I’m not going to go much further into Judaizers in this message because it’s mentioned throughout the book of Galatians.
The only thing I’ll say here is Jesus+ anything= No Gospel, and no salvation.
Jesus did it all.
The second group Paul was contending with in the early church was the Gnostics. Gnostic comes from the Greek Word “i-gin-osee” which literally means knowledge.
The Gnostics believed that only those who had the correct knowledge about spiritual things could please God, live successfully, and obtain a degree of salvation dependent on how knowledgeable they became.
Gnosticism is still around today. In some measure, Christian Science is a gnostic religion. Scientology to a point has it’s roots in Gnosticism and in the imagination of L Ron Hubbard. Some ultra-charismatic churches believe that whatever prophet they follow has secret knowledge that only they know and if you don’t have this knowledge you can’t see heaven.
Again, Jesus + anything = no salvation.
Jesus did it all.
The third largest group that Paul was contending with came from a mixture of pagan worship with Christianity.
Here is the warning to parents of small children, it’s about to get a little rough so you might want to pause here or put on headphones. 3,2,1. Here we go.
Nicolaitans (NICK o Late ans)- trying to mix Jesus with paganism, and in particular with lascivious sex.
Remember, when this was written, it was written to a people living in a world ruled by Rome.
This is a world filled with Roman temples, and in many of those Roman temples they had “servants” who as part of the worship service would engage in intimate acts with those who paid to enter the temple. It was woven into the worship of whatever pagan deity that temple represented.
Of all three of these ancient heresies, this one is actually addressed by Jesus Himself in Rev 2:6. In Revelation, the resurrected Jesus appears to the Apostle John and has him write letters to leaders of the church’s in Asia Minor, and he starts with Ephesus. Jesus gives them a rebuke about loosing their love for HIM, and the says this-
Rev 2:6 Yet you do have this: You hate the practices of the Nicolaitans, which I also hate.
Hate is a pretty strong word, but I want you to remember this- Jesus hates these practices.
The Nicolaitan believed you could have one foot in hell, and one foot in heaven, and still obtain salvation.
Particularly, they had a particular sin they were guilty of. If you jump a few more verses forward in Revelation 2, we see the sin exactly the sin that Jesus was calling them out on.
Rev 2:14-15 But I have a few things against you. You have some there who hold to the teaching of Balaam, who taught Balak to place a stumbling block in front of the Israelites: to eat meat sacrificed to idols and to commit sexual immorality. (15) In the same way, you also have those who hold to the teaching of the Nicolaitans.
Let’s unpack that a little bit.
In the Old Testament book of Numbers chapter 22, there was an evil prophet named Balaam. He was hired by a local king named Balak to curse the Israelites as they approached the promised land.
The condensed version of this story is that Balaam fails to curse them as ordered, but offers the king some advice- here is how you weaken or beat Israel- their strength is in following the law of their God.
If you send your most beautiful woman into their camps to seduce the men, and then let these woman lead them into worshipping their god called Ba’al. If you do that, their God will grow angry with them and turn HIS back on them, and they will be easy pickings for your armies.
So the chief sin of the Nicolaitans was allowing sexual practices into the church that are forbidden in scripture.
Mainly, fornication and adultery- both of which leads to idolatry, because the enemy knows if he can get you to disobey God in his commands about your sex life, then you are already kneeling at the devil’s altar and worshipping him instead of God.
I’m spending a little more time on this one because the sins of the Nicolaitans is still very prevalent in our world today, and even in our American church.
I personally have known people that hold that you can be Christian, and be a swinger at the same time. If you don’t know what a swinger is- it’s a person or a couple that believes you can have sexual relations with whoever you want as long as your spouse approves of it, and vice versa.
Couple that with the extremely available access to internet pornography, the American church is committing the same sin 1900 years after these words were written.
Listen to me for a minute. I’ve seen firsthand the horrific damage this kind of thinking and practice can cause. If you are here this morning and practicing sexual sin and thinking God is ok with it- You are deceived.
Repent. Sexual immorality is completely incompatible with calling yourself a Christian, or following Jesus. Whether it’s actually adultery with another person, or pornography, God looks at it the same.
You cannot be a Christian and a Nicolaitans- I’m saying this because Jesus HIMSELF says he hates them.
Paul puts an exclamation point on this in 1 Cor 6
1 Co 6:9-10 Don’t you know that the unrighteous will not inherit God’s kingdom? Do not be deceived: No sexually immoral people, idolaters, adulterers, or males who have sex with males, (10) no thieves, greedy people, drunkards, verbally abusive people, or swindlers will inherit God’s kingdom.
I say this again, if this is you, and I say this in love - repent- turn away from that sin and come back to Jesus. He will forgive you and put you back on the road to heaven, but you can’t have one foot in the devils camp and expect your other foot to be anywhere near God’s Kingdom.
So, those were the three primary things that the early church, and Paul were fighting against.
Let’s jump forward a bit and see what exists today in the church that Paul would be writing to us about-
Prosperity Gospel
This perversion of the gospel states that God wants to make you wealthy, prosperous, healthy, and happy. If you are not experiencing that in your life, it’s because you lack faith.
You remember Jesus saying he hated the practice of the Nicolaitans?
This is my pet peeve.
It says- I will only serve Jesus if he gives me stuff. If my life isn’t going the way I think it should, well that means that Jesus is mad at me so I guess I better do something to make Him happy again.
That’s pagan thinking.
Jesus deserves our worship because of what HE has already done for us.
Jesus died in the most humiliating way a person of that time could die-naked on a cross after spending the night taking a beating that should have killed him, paying the penalty for our sin against God, and then rising again to give us a new life in HIM.
That’s the Jesus we should be serving- not some sky genie in a lamp that if we rub him the right way he performs for us and gives us stuff.
The prosperity gospel ignores the fact that most of the Christians outside of this country are suffering persecution, are in hiding, many under the threat of death if they are caught even with a few pages of the bible.
What would a prosperity preacher say to them- they are risking their lives for God and the faith, but here- spend your live sin prisons or watch your family die….guess God wasn’t pleased enough with you.
I hate prosperity preaching.
You know it’s funny- whenever my wife and I are watching a medical drama or something related to firefighting and Hollywood as usual messes the scene up my gift of sarcasm comes out and I start openly mocking the TV show, and she has to tell me to hush.
It’s even worse when I heard a prosperity preacher. Every time I hear a radio or TV preacher start vomiting this garbage at people I want to reach through the airwaves and….well. You get the idea.
The next heresy that is popular today is
Political Gospel
This Gospel is more concerned about everyone living according to Christian ideals than it is for the actual salvation of souls. Therefore, it’s more focused on earthly power instead of Kingdom living.
You’re going to see this for the next several months- people holding up bible, claiming to be regular church attenders, all while living in ways that even a child could call out as not good.
This might shock you- but I do believe in the separation of Church and state- that the government should not ever tell a person what to believe in. I also, within the time we are living in, do not want the church running the government. Influencing it for the glory of God- YES. But not running the government.
The last time that happened in Western Civilization, we called that the dark ages. Evil men, more concerned with earthly power than God’s Glory, did evil things in the name of God.
The cry, “God wills it” preceded some very evil actions done on behalf of a state run by a church.
So, be discerning when a politician holds up a bible and claims to be a Christian. Look at their lives and what they represent, and make a determination according to their actions, not just their words.
The last one we will look at this morning is-
Personal Gospel
This is ala carte Christianity. This is very popular in the media, and in the entertainment industry. We will take the salvation, maybe be nice sometimes, give a bit to charity.
But live according to the bible? That outdated book? Are you kidding? I mean God is my copilot so I’m good.
Another way of saying the personal gospel is the shallow Gospel. I’ll take the salvation, but don’t expect me to grow or act like it.
I want to make one thing very clear- salvation is through the finished work of Jesus- period. We can’t add to that by our actions here on earth.
Saying that, if you have received salvation through Jesus Christ, your nature should be changed, and obedience is not a chore, it’s a reaction to that new nature.
If you are still wanting to constantly do things that the bible calls sin, and refuse to at least try to let Jesus heal you from those things-
I have to question- are you actually a Christian? Have you completely surrendered yourself to HIM?
Altar Call
