you have your Bibles at this time would you turn with me to Galatians and chapter number one the book of Galatians and chapter number one we are at a an intense I would call it an intense section of Galatians where Paul is breathing out some pretty under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit and under the authority of Christ himself as he was an apostle. But nevertheless, we feel the weight of what Paul was saying and hopefully we see the importance of it, not just in the day in which he was writing to the Galatian church, but recognizing that the battle for truth and the battle for the gospel So again, if you found Galatians chapter number one, and if you would, let's stand for the reading of God's word this morning, if you're able, Galatians chapter number one. And again, for sake of context, we're gonna read verses one through nine. Verse 10, nor through man, but through Jesus Christ and God the Father, who raised him from the dead and all the brothers who are with me to the churches of Galatians 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. 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, 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 Grass withers in the flower. The title of the message this morning is a dust phrases of both of those verses. Paul says, let him be a curse. This is a powerful statement. Nevertheless, though, by way of introduction, danger of forsaking God and the one solitary gospel to another, address. Believers is their willingness to so rapidly desert God and the astonishment is bringing these kind of things with truth in love. We live in a world today where confrontation for the sake of truth is automatically labeled as intolerance or in doctrine or practice is labeled as a Pharisee or a religious zealot. And recently, I've heard both of those labels being given, not coincidentally. They were being used in the context of persons who were feelingsies, as he was being called to accountability and correction by Christian brothers and sisters. And in the other instance, a lesser known pastor who was clearly contradicting scripture and knew it, labeled Christians who would hold the authority of scripture as those true and the souls of man which also leads us to recognize the foundational truth concerning doctrine. In matters concerning doctrine, there's ultimately only one correct position, men. The challenge is the term position is. The greatest challenge, doctrinally speaking, is between what is true and what is almost true. And so then Paul moves from identifying the error at hand to defining the consequences goes up on Sinai to receive them and wondering when Moses will return, they begin to fashion a golden calf, bondage of slavery, they departure from the truth, the gospel. These things that we can think, wow, it would be so hard to go back. And so now we find here in verse eight, Paul says, And so we should say, well, what exactly did Paul say to them? Well, petition of what is written in the book of Galatians. But before we go there, let's just summarize the message, the gospel that Paul is... We see, first of all, in chapter two, follow with me here, in chapter two of Galatians, verse 16, it says, yet we know that a person is not justified by works of the law, but through faith in Jesus Christ. So we also have the law, because by works of the law, no one will be justified. I don't know that it could get any clearer than that. It's straightforward, it's simple, it is clear. He repeats again in chapter 3, verses 10 and 11. Look with me there. For all who rely on works of the law are underwritten in the book of the law, and do them. Verse 11, now it is evident that no one is an echo. That should be an echo in our mind. And verses, some believes. The Jew first, and then also to the Greek. because we're coming right back. Certainty, or was there any lack of clarity in the message that Paul, Acts chapter 13, and Israel, and you who fear God, listen, right? He's getting their attention, and then he goes on and begins to preach, and he starts, back in the Old Testament, the God of this people Israel chose our fathers and made the people up with them in the wilderness. And after destroying seven nations in the land of Canaan, he gave them their land as an inheritance. All of this took about 450 years. And after that, he gave them judges with Samuel. And he comes to David, he comes to David of whom he testified and said, I have found in David, the son of Jesse, a man has brought to Israel, a savior, Jesus. to these people, and he goes grace by faith. And we come over to look at verses 38 through 41 of Acts chapter 13. Herein lies the clarity of the gospel, the doctrine of justification by faith alone. Acts chapter 13, verses 38 through 41. Let it be known to you, therefore, based upon all these things the Old Testament has revealed to you, therefore, brothers, that through this man, And by him, you can underline this, circle it with free, the law of teaching. Unless you are circumcised according to the custom of Moses, you cannot be saved. Again, there's so much clarity in that statement. They weren't mincing words. They were saying that unless you obeyed circumcision, unless you obeyed the law of Moses, you could not be saved. And after verse two, after Paul giving them the Holy Spirit, just as he did to us, He made no distinction between us and them, having cleansed their hearts by faith. Now, therefore, why are you putting God to the test by placing a yoke on the neck of the disciples that neither our fathers nor we people have received the gift of the Holy Spirit by faith? In other words, God's confirmation, God's confirmation that you have been reborn, that you have been regenerated, that you have been justified, that you have been saved, that you have been adopted into the family of God is by Him indwelling you with His Holy Spirit. You don't receive that by doing any kind of sacrament or any kind of religious exercise or any keeping of the law. It is all by grace through faith in the finished work of the Lord Jesus Christ, period, amen. It was clear, it was clear. So the argument takes place, but in spite of that, sadly though, that's not the case, that's not the case. But Paul's pointing to the fact that they had in fact, they had in fact with Clary, heard the true gospel and so he talks about with respect to the ones who were bringing that message if anyone even he says even we Paul did not set a standard for one standard, and that points us back to Moses, that there were angels involved with the giving of the law, and the intermediary was always a man, and specifically in that case, it was the intermediary of Moses, and the ministry of God were very much a part of the revelatory work of God in the Old Covenant. And so there were those who, you know, here we are now in the New Covenant, and they know these things. Surely if an angel would come to us, and proclaim to us a different gospel, we should probably listen to it because God works through angels. Again, with respect to persons, Paul says, no, you can't believe us if we preach a different gospel, and you can't even believe an angel if they preach a different gospel. And so how would one know? Well, Paul, he actually identifies the reality that there were angels even Satan disguises himself as and it sells as servants of righteousness again we're not disconnected from these coming and some will even say Christ himself comes to them and reveals whatever is being revealed to them is not consistent of men and women. But anyhow, suffice it to say, that was an angelic beings, and in fact, he's a messenger of darkness. To confuse, to agitate, to stir up, make things unclear. That is the work of Satan. In other words, if you can't understand in your mind. Now, the sinfulness of man is always at work in that as well, but don't miss the reality that that is coming from a godly source. It is coming from an angel of darkness. it is coming from that which would restore it. And so Paul calls this out. He says, we can't listen even if it's an angel who's telling you that there's a different gospel or there's a nuance or a variation, a distinction, contrary to what we preach to you. And again, anybody who's receiving a special message, and I don't know what year it was exactly. I do, but it fleets my memory. But Joseph Smith, visit one night in his home, in his bed, Moroni. And Moroni told Joseph that he was going to give him the true gospel, as if that was not actually present or able to be known. And so then Mormonism, they don't have one book, they have five books and in their doctrine, but also study the lives of these people. And you'll find out that Joseph Smith was a bad actor. lives. Is this the kind of person that an angel is going to be? No matter who it is that is saying it, whether it's a really nice smiley guy, right, who is easy to like, or whether it's the gospel itself, the message itself, of the message. And that's what he says here. He says in verse 8, but even if we, or an angel from heaven, so clearly that the message is to be respected and unchanging no matter what or who the messenger is. And so we have people just worried that somebody was gonna follow somebody else rather than him. And that's completely defeated in Paul's letter to the Philippians. In chapter one, verses 15 through 18, listen to what Paul says about antagonists toward him personally. The latter do it out of love, knowing that I am put here for the defense of the gospel, my prisoner. Only that, in every way, whether in pretense or in truth, Christ is proclaimed. And so Paul was not a bit concerned about his own. Was that there was only one true gospel, and that gospel could not be changed. And don't base the validity of the message on the person bringing it to you. Base it upon what has been established in time past. What is one of the greatest attacks that is constantly happening all around us today? Everything is trying to be redefined, right? Did you notice that? They're trying to redefine words today. Do you realize that when you can redefine a word and what a word means, you can change a message? Hello? Where's this coming from? Not a spirit of God, not a spirit of truth. But this is in fact a spirit of evil. and it's working overtime right before our eyes. So Paul, again, he establishes this principle that there's a respect to message, not to persons. We must move on. Then in verse nine, he gives us a double damnation, a repeated damnation. He emphasizes, reemphasizes this idea, verse nine, as we have said before, so now I say again, If anyone is preaching to a gospel contrary, and then notice he changes something here, contrary to the one you received. So now he's going from the principle that he has laid out in verse number eight, and he's actually applying it specifically to his listeners. And there's a repetition for the sake of application. Paul's not stuttering. But instead, he's doubling down in the respect that in verse eight, he's defined that there's no respect to persons when it comes to who is preaching the gospel. The message itself is the clearly critical matter. So now, Paul is actually applying this principle to the matter him. If anyone is preaching to you a gospel contrary to the one you received, that you received. In other words, Paul says, Galatian churches, you received this message. You gave confirmation of it. You've seen the mighty works of God that were surrounding the coming of the preaching of the gospel and dwelling of the Holy Spirit. And he says, you received it. So I'm telling you to stand where you were planted, okay? Go back to what you heard, go back to what you received. Because if you listen to something else, if you go away, And this is a twice-repeated word, this curse. In the Greek, it is the word anathema, anathema. And it's translated in its most literal sense, okay, a thing that is placed up or laid up. And I could not believe, I could not believe all the things that I read about this statement. There is, again, there's a battle of words taking place and I came across a man who took a quite interesting translation of this, and I'm not gonna go into that, but suffice it to say this, I did cross some translations here because the word itself has a variation in just the nature and the vow, the one vow in the word in the Greek, that it could be translated in one direction or the other, but the context is king, right? challenging interpretations. Language matters, so does context, and the context of the language is, again, its king. But have you ever read a new international version of the Bible? is good, it's actually really good, and the New English translation of the Bible says, let him be condemned to hell. In other words, you can tell by the way that it's being translated what the context of the word itself is implying, that this is not just, as a liberal scholar would say, just setting them over to the side, basically giving them to God in a, passive kind of way, as if God is just going to pat them on their, you know, on their patties and maybe dust their rear end a little bit. No, it's not at all what's being communicated here. And what helps us even more is not just the Greek usage of this word, but actually the Greek New Testament, the Septuagint, translates the word and now we're going somewhere now we're cooking okay because when we study harem in the Old Testament and connect it with anathema in the new we now have a depth to what this word actually means and over and over again in the Old Testament you find the word harem and the translation of that is voted to destruction. It's used in Joshua chapters voted to destruction. You see that in verses 16 and 17 of Joshua six. And then if you just, let's just take a pause from that for a minute and travel back to that story of Joshua and Jericho, right? We see Jericho surrounded by the Israelites and they go around the wall. down the walls of Jericho and destroys the city. I gave them very specific instructions after this occurs that they're to go in and they're to pillage, but they're not to take anything that was harem, devoted to destruction. And that was basically everything that was pagan in that place. So God pronounced a judgment, not only upon the people, but upon their possessions, and they weren't even to touch it. Now they had one exception, they were allowed or permitted to take the gold and the silver with them. But there was one man in the assembly, the one soldier in the group, who did not obey what God said, and his name was? Remember? Achan. Yeah. Achan took from Jericho that which was devoted to destruction. And we get into Joshua chapter number 7 and the Israelites who just had a profound victory at the mighty hand of God in chapter 6 fall to a battle at Ai and are humiliated there and Joshua is like, what in the world happened? Why is this thing, why can't we who just defeated an army just by marching around and, you know, yelling out and God destroys and now here we are being pushed back by of all people, Ai, right? And so he didn't understand why. Well, it came to light that the reason that they suffered such a great loss, that Ai, was because Achan had taken that which was devoted to destruction. Or in other words, Achan took what was under the divine wrath of God, which was set aside to experience the divine justice of God, And Mark, well, Paul is making a declaration here of divine justice, of wrath upon anyone. Why? Why? Because anyone preaching another gospel, and we would connect this to the language that is used in the same context of Joshua, Joshua chapter seven, verse 15, God reveals why they suffered the defeat at Ai. He says, because Achan has transgressed the covenant of the Lord. Think about that. The reason that the people were in the shape they were now in was because that which was devoted to destruction had entered into the camp, and now, because Achan had transgressed the covenant of the Lord, they were now being chastised by the Lord. Can I just put it this way? Whenever you change the gospel of Jesus Christ, that it is by grace alone, through faith alone, in the finished work of Christ alone, it's not that you are just manipulating something small. You are transgressing the covenant of the Lord. That is the heaviness of this reality, and therefore, and therefore, Paul says two times, anyone who preaches a gospel contrary to the one that we preach, the one you receive, let them be accursed, anathema, devoted to destruction. You know, nowhere in this do we see Paul saying to the Galatian churches, but you should pray for the salvation of these people. When something is devoted to destruction, it's irreversible. You say, somebody who is preaching a gospel that is anathema, accursed, there's no hope? I don't think so. I think that they have become so hardened in their sin. Now, I'm not talking about those under the statements to basically, go against or respond to the 95 theses that Martin Luther had nailed to the door of the Wittenberg. And in Canon number nine, this is what the Roman Catholic Church established. Okay, you ready for this? If anyone says that the sinner is justified by faith alone, let him be judged. Oh yeah, the Roman Catholic Church says we're all to be accursed because we stand on faith alone, apart from works. Well, what the Roman Catholic Church failed to recognize was themselves by saying, anyone says that the sinner is justified by faith alone, let him be accursed." We live in a day, again, where nobody wants to have any kind of confrontation, any kind of conflict. The Roman Catholic Church, which wrote the doctrine, this doctrine, or this statement in the 1500s, doesn't mean that every Roman Catholic believes that, okay? Because I believe there's some that actually do read their Bibles, and they see that salvation, according to Ephesians 2, 8, 9, and for by grace you are saved through faith in that God of yourself that is the gift of God, God of works, so that any man should boast. We are his workmanship created in Christ Jesus unto good works, preparing beforehand that we should walk in them. And they can read that and they can know without a shadow of a doubt and still, but let me just say it this way. They would be the exception, not the rule. Roman Catholics are not our enemy. They are our mission. And we need to understand it in those terms. They believe by and large under the umbrella of the church in a false gospel, period. Why is it so important? Because the difference is between heaven and hell. We don't need more sermons of doctrine of the gospel by grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone. So that, so that, not just to make us feel comfortable so that we can go out and we can be soldiers for the truth. And that God would raise up a generation, should he tear it, that's not gonna back down to confrontation. And yes, it may indeed and probably will cause persecution, but it's worth every ounce of it. Every ounce of it, because lives are in danger. You know, I have two things here written for application, but I think we kind of covered it. If you're a preacher of the message, make sure, make sure that you're not concerned about what people think of you. I'm not saying be careless with your living, don't be. You discredit yourself. But be more concerned about what they hear than what they see. What is the litmus test for truth? Is it me? Is it you? Is it your friend's dad who's a preacher? Is it your dead pastor from 20 years ago? No. It's the Word of God. So if what is being said is inconsistent with what is written and settled long ago, Don't believe it. Don't believe it for a second and expose it with the truth. Amen. Let's pray. Father, thank you this morning for your word. Lord, I believe that we do indeed feel the heaviness of this and feel, Lord, the task that is at hand. God, we are in a battle. into the battle by grace in Christ. And Father, we're thankful for that. Lord, we're thankful. We would echo the words of the apostles that they would rejoice in being counted worthy to suffer for the gospel. And Lord, we're so apt to run away from persecution today because of the feminization of our culture. But Lord, I pray that we would have soldiers of truth within this place. young and old alike, and God, I pray that you would use us. May our words be seasoned with the truth and the grace of the gospel. Father, may we be careful to live our lives in keeping fruit with repentance, but also, Lord, may our minds and our hearts be full of your word. And just as Christ has prayed that you would sanctify us by that truly your word would sanctify us and that we would be in your word and studying your word and growing in your word. And Father, that we would be proclaiming your word. Father, I pray that you would bless each one here this morning. And Lord, if there's anybody here that has never received salvation as the free gift of God in Christ, that today would be that day. Lord, reveal to them that there is nothing that they can do outside of faith in Christ to save themselves. No amount of good, no amount of circumcision or any kind of external activity. No works, but simply trusting, putting their faith in you and in you alone. Father, we pray that you would impress that upon each one's heart. God, we just give you thanks and praise for all these things. Lord, now as we turn our time to your table this morning, we pray for your blessing. And God, as we have heard the word,