The title of our sermon today
is, So Soon Removed. Let's pray. Dear Father, we pray
that you would hold us fast to the Lord Jesus, save us by your
almighty grace. That grace that comes from you
only and is eternal as you are eternal, unchanging as you are
unchanging, certain as you are certain. and by this grace you've
performed all of this good work. The glad tidings of the gospel
that's brought to us is all according to your grace and how thankful
we are for that saving grace, for your heart of grace, for
your son who gave himself in grace for us. Help us, Lord,
teach us. Make it the longing of our heart
and bind Your grace to us so that we would look no further
and look for no other than our Lord Jesus Christ. And we would
be so thankful. We would worship Him and admire
Him. And we would trust Him. And we would live our lives in
hope, expecting and looking for this salvation You've promised
in Him. In Jesus' name we pray. Amen. The Apostle Paul, as I mentioned
last week, was greatly used of God, and so greatly used that
I can see in the reading of Scripture that he was perhaps the most
used, at least in the New Testament, perhaps Moses more in the Old
Testament, but Paul is especially endearing because The law came
by Moses, but grace and truth came by Jesus Christ. Paul was
sent by Jesus Christ, through whom this grace and truth came
to us. All of God's eternal will, all
that Christ accomplished, is what Paul preached. This is what
we believe, and this is what saves us. This is what we must
not leave. And so we read in verse 1 of
chapter 1 of Galatians, Paul defends his place as an apostle
to the Galatians. He wants them to know that the
message that he brings is from God. It's not of men. And so
he relates to them the fact that he was an apostle. He says in
verse 1, not of men, neither by man. but by Jesus Christ and
God the Father who raised Him from the dead. Jesus Christ was
an offense to the Jews, but to the believing, the professing
Jews, those who profess to believe on Jesus Christ, Paul needed to underscore the
fact to the Galatians that he was a true apostle of Jesus Christ. He didn't make up this mission,
this assignment, this calling of himself. God gave it to him.
And so the words that he spoke were from God the Father and
from Jesus Christ, his only begotten Son, the one anointed by God,
the one who was anointed to be our prophet, priest, and king.
It comes with the highest possible authority. There is no other
authority than that authority that the Apostle was given. through
whom the apostle was given his apostleship, the Lord Jesus Christ
is that authority. He has power over all things
in heaven and in earth, and he rules on the throne of heaven,
and he rules over all things in the earth. And Paul is explaining
what is hidden to us, but what Christ has revealed in the gospel
alone. And so that's why this first
verse is significant. He's shooting down, he's squashing
the opposition that claimed he was not really an apostle. That he made himself a messenger
and that therefore his message had no more weight. It had less
weight than the weight of the Judaizers. And he's trying to
drive a resounding and sober note, an encouraging note, in
the hearts of the Galatians, the ones he had spoken to on
his missionary journeys, who had believed the gospel, by reinforcing
for them that he was sent as an apostle, a special office
designated by Christ to bring the words of heaven to men. the words concerning the Lord
Jesus Christ. And then in verse 2 he says,
"...and all the brethren which are with me to the churches of
Galatia." Paul wasn't alone. He wasn't a loner. There were
many brethren with him. Barnabas, for example. Luke was
with him because Luke wrote the book of Acts. And Luke was with
him in all of his travels. Timothy was often with him a
little later on, probably after he wrote this. But all these
men were men of renown in the gospel. They were men of faith,
men who were above reproach, men who were faithful to Jesus
Christ, faithful to God. And so he writes to the Galatians
with these men, and he tells them, and all the brethren. His message is not just of himself,
but it's the same message that all the brethren believe. So
he's trying to convince them, this is important. All the brethren
and I, by the authority of Jesus Christ and God the Father, are
writing to you, Galatians. And then he gives them a distillation
of the gospel in a few short words here. The first word is
grace. That dear word grace. Grace is
the moving cause. The moving cause that caused
God to save his people. It was his grace. Grace means
it was all found in God's heart. Nothing was found in us. Grace
means that God did this in spite of our sin. Grace means that
God did all the work and we do nothing. Grace means it's God's
work and He will see it through to the end. Grace means it's
an eternal will and work of God. And grace means that God gets
all the glory. And grace means that our salvation
is through faith. We look to Christ alone. We acknowledge by looking to
Him that salvation is of the Lord and in Christ alone. So it's of grace. The result
of grace is that we have peace with God. God is at peace with
those who offended Him by their sin, because in the blood of
Christ He made satisfaction for their sins. He's at peace. And
we are at peace because we see by faith that He's at peace with
us through the blood of His Son. Peace is the result of grace.
Grace is the moving cause, the spring of our salvation. And this grace and peace is from
God the Father and from our Lord Jesus Christ. God the Father
gave His Son, and Christ gave Himself. Verse 4, the Lord Jesus
Christ gave Himself for our sins. He didn't give creation that
was too small a price. God required something much higher.
He required the death of His Son, the life of obedience of
love that fulfilled His law, because love is the fulfilling
of the law. His sacrifice of himself was
to make satisfaction to the justice of God, to honor God's law, to
glorify God's grace, and to save his people from our sins. This is amazing, that Jesus Christ,
who had no sin, bore our sins in himself, the Lord of glory,
stooped to take our nature, and took our sins, and owned them
as His, and answered God for them, and the wrath poured out
on Him, God received full answer to His justice in the death of
His own Son." God did not spare His Son, and Christ spared nothing
of Himself. Everything was done. Now, if
God did this, and the Lord Jesus Christ gave that, what could
we possibly do? This was necessary, but it was
also all sufficient. Christ gave himself for our sins,
not for all people's sins, but for ours, those who believe.
And we believe by grace, and that grace was ordained for us
from the foundation of the world, as it says in Acts 13.48. Why
did He give Himself for our sins? Not only to remove our sins from
us, but to deliver us from all the consequences of our sins.
And primarily, especially in the book of Galatians, He focuses
on our deliverance from this present evil world. And what
is this present evil world? Well, if you look at the book
of Galatians, you'll see what it is. It's the place where Satan
has set up his synagogue. The place of religion that has
man's contribution as the main focus. That's the message. What
you need to do. That's man's religion. And this
is called this present evil world. Because of man's religion, men
are enslaved to Satan, and they are enslaved to their sin, and
they're enslaved to all the philosophies and the lusts of this world.
And so Christ came in order to deliver us, and He accomplished
that work in His own sacrifice of Himself. Our deliverance,
our redemption from all things and deliverance from this world
is by the death of Christ. We are passive in this. God does
it of His own accord and Christ by His own work. He gives it
to us by His Spirit out of His grace. And therefore all glory
belongs to Him. Verse 5, To whom be glory forever
and ever. Amen. You can hear Paul standing
here, as it were, on earth, writing to the Galatians, beginning the
chorus he expects to pick up in heaven and eternity. To Him
be glory. To the Father, and to the Son,
to the Lord Jesus Christ, to our God who saved us by His grace.
And he says, Amen. This is something that God himself
has stamped his Amen to. And so now we're reaching to
verse 6 here in Galatians chapter 1. Paul said this to the Galatians,
I marvel that you are so soon removed from him that called
you into the grace of Christ unto another gospel. I marvel
that you're so soon removed." And we read this about the Galatians. Don't you think, yeah, why would
they do that? They're so stupid. They're so
prone to believe something that's false. Why would they do this?
And we feel justified in joining Paul against the Galatians. But
what we forget is that we are so prone to fall by the same
kinds of things that the Galatians fell by. And that's what we forget,
is that we also are, as the song says, come thou fount of every
blessing, we are prone to wander, prone to leave the God we love.
And that's our case. When Jesus was going to the cross,
he told his disciples, one of you will betray me. And remember
what all the disciples said? Lord, is it I? And they didn't
just say that because they knew it was the right thing to say.
They truly doubted their own selves. They had seen Christ. They had heard His words. They
knew that He was sent from heaven. They knew He had the words of
eternal life, and that their salvation was in Him. But they
knew themselves, and they said, Lord, is it I? They knew that they were prone
to wander. They knew that they had to be
kept by the power of God through faith unto salvation, as Peter
said in 1 Peter. Remember Peter? He was the one
who denied the Lord Jesus Christ. Jesus told him, you would three
times. You'll deny me this night before the cock crows. And he
said, I will never deny you. Though all of these deny you,
I won't. He didn't think that, he thought
that he was above what his fellow disciples were subject to. They might, but not me. And he
was the one, Peter, the leader, you would say, of the disciples.
The one God would use the most, it seemed, in the book of Acts,
until Paul was on the scene. Peter was the one who fell when
he denied the Lord Jesus Christ. But he was upheld because the
Lord Jesus prayed for him And it was Peter, again, in the book
of Galatians, who actually left the table with the Gentiles to
go to be with the Jews, and by doing so preached salvation by
works. This is an amazing thing. He
was full also of this tendency to fall in hypocrisy. And even Barnabas, Barnabas who
was a companion of Paul in his missionary journeys, he also
was deceived by Peter's action. And so many others. Adam fell.
Noah was drunken and uncovered in his tent. Abraham was attempted
to accomplish by the flesh with Hagar, what only God's promise
could accomplish, David with Bathsheba, and so many others.
It causes us to cry out, Lord, I am prone to wonder, I feel
it, and unless you hold me by your grace, I will decline and
prove like them at last. And so we come. That's what it's
meant to do, to bring us to the throne of grace. Fall on our
faces, Lord, save me. Save me by your grace. I can't
find it in myself. There will never be there in
myself. I need you to save me all by yourself." And so he says,
I am amazed, I marvel that you're so soon removed from him that
called you. Because when we depart from the
gospel, we depart from Christ. When we preach the word of God,
we preach the gospel. When we preach the Gospel, we're
preaching Christ. If we preach Christ, we're preaching
the Gospel. We're preaching the Word of God. And so to fall from
the Gospel, to leave the Gospel, to be removed from that is to
be removed from the Lord Jesus Christ. That should sober us
up, shouldn't it? The book of Galatians is a very
serious book, very serious book, as we're going to see in a couple
verses here. It's so serious that Paul is saying, if you leave
the gospel, you've left Christ. I'm amazed! You're so soon removed
from the gospel, from Him who called you. Because Those in
the churches of Galatia were actually called by Jesus Christ. What does it mean to be called
into the grace of Christ? Well, it means that the Gospel
comes to us through the preaching of God's Word, and when it does,
the Spirit of God convinces us He convinces us of our sin, convinces
us of Christ's righteousness as our only acceptance before
God. That is a perfect and complete
acceptance. And we find a refuge from the
wrath of God. and the justice of God, and the
justice we deserve in the blood of Christ, and we find acceptance
in the righteousness of Christ, and we take refuge there, and
we find rest there. That's what the call of the Gospel
does when the Spirit of God comes to us in saving power. He convinces
us of who Christ is. How He stood for us as our substitute
and our surety and our mediator. And how He accomplished all of
our salvation by giving Himself for our sins. This is the Gospel.
And this is what God accomplishes in us. The call of the gospel
is an inward call, and it's effectual. We use that word, and I wish
there was a substitute word, because it sounds like a big
word, and I don't like big words. But this word is the best word
I can think of. It's effectual. What does it
mean? It causes the effect intended to occur. That's what effectual
means. Whatever God meant to have done,
the call actually produces that effect. That's what effectual
means. God's call of grace is inward,
and it gets done what God intends. He saves His people by that call.
In Isaiah 55-11, God says His word won't go out void. It will
accomplish the thing He sent it to accomplish. It's effectual.
This call is so effectual that it's never rejected. It's never
rejected. It's an irresistible call to
life. Lazarus was called to life when Jesus cried when he was
in the tomb, Lazarus, come forth. And he that was dead came forth.
It's a call from death to life. and the dead can't resist it.
It's a call from unbelief to faith. And the unbelieving sinner
is given by grace a gift of faith to see persuasion of Christ and
a hand to embrace Him. And this call of God is a call
from condemnation to justification and from shame to glory. This
is a call of God. Jesus said, all that the Father
giveth me shall come to me. It's an effectual call. It's
a call we can't resist, like a call from death to life. And it's an eternal call. We're
called from our sin to grace and glory. Look at 1 Peter 5.
In 1 Peter 5, he says in verse 10, But the God of all grace, who
hath called us unto his eternal glory by Christ Jesus, after
that you've suffered a while, make you perfect, establish,
strengthen, and settle you." This is a call of God the Father
by Jesus Christ. of His people from the kingdom
of Satan into the kingdom of His dear Son. He translates us.
He changes our status from slave to free men. And He gives us
the title of sons, and He makes us know by His Spirit in our
heart that we're free in Christ. That's what the message of Galatians
is. It's a call to life and freedom from condemnation to justification
and righteousness in the Lord Jesus Christ. And so he says,
I'm amazed, I'm so amazed that you're so soon removed from him
that called you into the grace of Christ to another gospel.
You've been given everything. Why are you tending to leave
Christ? They hadn't completely apostatized
yet. They hadn't completely forsaken
Christ, but they were in the process of embracing the error
that these Judaizers taught. And so, in verse 7, he says to
us, which is not another gospel. You're turned away from Him who
called you into the grace of Christ to another gospel. But
what you're called to is not another gospel. There's no other
good news. God doesn't have any other good
news besides this good news. That's the point. You've left
the only gospel. It's not another, but there be
some that trouble you and would pervert the gospel of Christ. So far he's laid down the measurement
line, the straight edge of the gospel, and against it he's going
to compare what the Judaizers are saying. But they pervert
the gospel, he says. And they pervert it by changing
it, by adding to it, by saying that what God says He did in
Christ also requires your help. As if God only made salvation
possible and you have to fill up the leftover gap that's needed
for you to do. That's not the gospel. That's
a perversion of the gospel. And so he says this in verse
8 and 9. Since we know that the gospel
In the gospel, there's only one Savior, there's only one way
of salvation, and that way is in the Lord Jesus Christ, in
His life and in His death, in His reigning rule in heaven,
in His eternal achievements by His death on the cross. Paul
brings the most severe a denunciation and condemnation ever recorded
in scripture on those who pervert the gospel. That's how serious
this book is. In these two verses, the Apostle
Paul pronounces a curse upon all who would change the gospel.
Not only men, but angels. He says in verse 8, But though
we, we apostles, or an angel, or the brethren that are with
me, or an angel from heaven, If anyone preach any other gospel
to you than that which we have preached to you, let him be accursed. Let him receive a full rejection
from God. The vengeance of God will now
come upon him in a curse. because he's twisted the gospel
of the Lord Jesus Christ, and he repeats it. And you know when
anything's repeated in scripture, it means, like Joseph told Pharaoh,
the dream was doubled because God has established it, and it's
going to come to pass shortly. Those who pervert the gospel
of Christ, this curse that Paul is pronouncing on them will most
certainly come to pass because he repeats it. He says, as we
said before, so say I now again, if any preach any other gospel
unto you than that you have received, let him be accursed. That's a
serious condemnation that Paul is using here. Now, the Apostle
Paul had authority from Jesus Christ. Remember in the book
of Acts, there was a man who was a Jew who was a sorcerer,
and he spoke against the things that Paul and Barnabas said,
so that this man who was in the island of Cyprus, he was a deputy
over the island who wanted to hear the gospel that Paul and
Barnabas were preaching, this man whose name was Bar-Jesus,
or Elemas, he tried to speak against the things that Paul
spoke. And Paul said that this man was going to be blind for
a while, and immediately a blindness fell upon this man. Paul had
the ability to not only heal people by the Spirit of God,
but also to pronounce this condemnation on people, and it would surely
come to pass. And so when he speaks here, As the Apostle,
he's speaking the Word of the Spirit of God with the authority
of Christ on the throne and God the Father, that if we twist
and change the Gospel, then we are going to be under the curse.
This is the seriousness of this. The book of Galatians is so serious
because the gospel is serious. To deny that Christ saved us
by Himself, without our contribution, is to say that His death on the
cross was an unnecessary waste. that God killed his son unnecessarily,
and that Christ gave his life unnecessarily, and that it did
nothing. That's what it says in Galatians
2, verse 21. Look at it with me. Galatians
2, verse 21. He says, I do not frustrate the
grace of God. For if righteousness come by
the law, then Christ is dead in vain. He died for nothing.
If there's something that we do in order to make ourselves
right before God, then Christ died for nothing. And the person,
or the angel, whoever it is that preaches that gospel, as it's
so called, is under the curse of God. By the authority of the
Apostle, the authority of Christ, the Spirit of God speaking through
him, through the Apostle, is making this clear. It's a serious
sin, isn't it? Leaving the gospel is a serious
thing, and so Paul repeats it. Doctors of our bodies deal with
the healing of men's temporal and physical bodies, but the
gospel deals with the salvation of men's eternal and spiritual
souls. And so this matter of perverting
the gospel is such a serious matter because you're dealing
with God's glory and the salvation of His elect people. And God
will not handle it. God will not tolerate that. He
will not allow that to continue. And so, all throughout scripture,
whenever those who despised Christ and hated the gospel did this,
a serious curse was pronounced upon them, as it says here. The
gospel is the only way that God saves sinners. The gospel, according to Paul,
is the power of God unto salvation. I'm not ashamed of it, he said,
and neither are we. There is only one gospel. And
then there's only one way of salvation. There's only one Savior. There's only one way of acceptance
with God. Only one way to have fellowship
with God. Only one mark of a true member of Christ's body is that
we believe the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ. It's the gospel
of God's sovereign saving work in Christ to God's great glory. And we cannot change it without
ruining the value of the gospel, not only to ourselves, but to
those that hear us. To change the gospel is to attempt
to rob God of His glory, and it's an attempt to take from
His people their salvation. It's a serious thing. And to
leave the gospel is to leave Christ. It's to make the death
of Christ a meaningless, unnecessary waste, as if His sacrifice accomplished
nothing. It's to trample underfoot the
blood of the Son of God. There's so much warning throughout
scripture of this. This is what Paul is saying here. And so he
says it this way in verses 8 and 9. Don't change the gospel. It's
the only way God saves sinners. It's all to God's glory. It's
our only hope. We don't just believe it once.
We hold to it throughout our life. If you leave the gospel,
then you've become apostate. and you prove yourself to be
reprobate. What does it mean to apostatize
from the gospel? To apostatize from Christ? What
does it mean to be a reprobate? It means that we prove ourselves
to be unworthy of eternal life by turning from what God has
said concerning His Son. It means we not only turn from
it, but we deny that there's salvation and that the Lord Jesus
Christ actually saves us from our sins. We deny that He's our
only hope. We deny that He's all of our
salvation and that His salvation is to God's great glory. It's
to turn away permanently and not turn back. It's to depart
from Christ and to depart from His gospel. We see this throughout
scripture, meaning departing from the faith. If you look at
Hebrews, I'll give you just this one example here. In Hebrews
chapter 3. The Israelites in the wilderness
didn't believe God, and you know what happened to them. They fell
in the wilderness. They died. They didn't go into
Canaan. And this was a picture of those who turned from Christ
in unbelief. And so he says in Hebrews chapter
3 and verse 6, Christ, as a son, over his own house, Whose house
are we? The household of Christ, or the
people of Christ. And we are His house if we hold
fast the confidence and the rejoicing of the hope firm unto the end. What is our confidence? What
is our one confidence? Isn't it that Christ died for
me, and that His death on the cross did everything necessary
to take my sin away, and bring me to God, make me acceptable,
and to obtain eternal blessings for me? Look at verse 14, the
same thing is said. Hebrews 3.14, for we are made
partakers of Christ. That means we partake of Him
and His saving grace, this salvation that's in Him. We are partakers
of Christ if we hold the beginning of our confidence steadfast to
the end. Don't depart from Christ. That's
the message of Galatians. Why are you so soon removed?
If you continue in this way, you will prove yourselves reprobate,
to be without grace, to be those who have to stand before God
in judgment and face God's judgment in their own person, because
they denied that Christ answered and was necessary to answer for
them. It's a serious thing, and I don't know how to make it seem
more serious to you than the words of the Apostle himself
in verses 8 and 9. and throughout scripture. To
turn from Christ is a horrible thing. It's a terrible thing. And we tremble when we see anyone
leave the gospel. And we especially tremble when
we see someone who appeared to understand and believe the gospel
begin to preach another gospel. And this warning of Galatians
is meant to teach us to be on our guard so that when we hear
things, we use a discerning ear We don't just swallow down what
anybody says, as if it's all truth. People say, well, you
know, you can be saved in lots of different ways. The Catholics
are saved, the Methodists are saved, the Seventh-day Adventists
are saved, the Mormons, the Jehovah's Witnesses. We can't all be going
to hell, can we? How many funerals have you gone
to where people said, it's a shame this person didn't believe the
true gospel, didn't believe Christ? You never hear that, do you?
Because everybody's going to heaven. And I know a woman who
couldn't accept the fact that Jesus Christ is the only way.
We've got to allow other things too. People have to be able to
believe whatever they think is true. You know there's this common
phrase nowadays, that's your truth. Have you ever heard that?
What a pile of manure. I'm telling you, that's just
too kind a word. There's so many things, all that the world says,
is the evil, the present evil world from which Christ died
to save us from. And to leave Christ is to fall
away. Jesus asked the disciples when
he gave them that sermon in John 6, will you also depart? Everyone's
leaving. They didn't like to hear about
God saving grace in Christ, sovereign, and accomplishing His work. Are
you also going to go away? And Peter said, where else are
we going to go? You have the words of eternal life, and we're
sure that you are the Christ. And so, that's how serious it
is. Let's pray. Dear Lord, we pray
that you would hold us fast. Don't let us depart from our
Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. We have no other hope. We're
sinners. We deserve your wrath. And we
can't find one thing in ourselves that would give us reason to
escape it. Not one reason to cause your blessings and favor
to be towards us. And so we look away from ourselves
and look to the Lord Jesus Christ alone, and we pray for this grace
of faith that we would continue looking to Him. We would understand
ourselves to be sinners and needing Him with all of our heart and
soul. Save us by Your grace, Lord.
Heal us from our sin-sick souls. Hold us fast. Intercede for us
and advocate for us. Make us your own in life and
eternity. Bring us to yourself that we
might see your face. Conform us to your image and
don't let us fall. In Jesus' name we pray. Amen.