Getting  to the Point (Part II)
Galatians 1:6-10

The church is called to make disciples, not converts. Until a new believer is grounded in the Word, whether in Galatia or Montana, he or she is “prone to wander.” The apostle saw this danger unfolding and addressed the Galatians’ problems promptly.

1, Lack of depth (1.6)
2. Ignorance (1.6)
3. Confusion (1.7)
4. Gullibility (1.8-9)
5. Eagerness to please people (1.10) 

We are picking up where we left off a week ago in the first chapter of Galatians.

When I was in school many years ago in Portland, I worked for UPS in the Portland hub. I was blessed with the position in the pre-load department -- where we loaded those brown trucks prior to their delivery. Those trucks have to leave the hub before 8 a.m., which means pre-load begins anywhere between 2:30 and 3:30 in the morning, which meant I really had to get up early.

Here’s the problem. Pre-load works with all these delivery trucks backed up to loading docks in a long line. Running in the middle of all this is a track and three mechanized bins stacked three high, and a long train. Thankfully they are color-coded so that if you have, say, middle red – the middle bin, red color – middle red goes into these three or four cars.

It’s not just that simple. You have to load the cars the way they will be unloaded most easily for the driver, so every car, and every spot on every shelf, left, right, floor, ceiling, has to be loaded correctly. If the pre-loader doesn’t do the job correctly the driver makes sure that the supervisor learns about it.

I started with middle red and it was horrible. Here I am pulling one package at a time out of a bin, reading the address, finding the right one of the three trucks. Meanwhile the track keeps running, the carts keep running, packages keep going into middle red, and I’m slow, slow, slow. It was a horrible job at first. They give you 30 days to learn your bin and if you don’t have it in 30 days, then that’s the end of the trail.

It’s in the early days of the experience that we are most liable. I take us to Galatians. They haven’t been believers a real long time. Troublemakers have visited them and have, with some degree of success, convinced the Galatians that trusting Jesus only isn’t quite enough -- there’s more. And some are falling for it.

That’s why the apostle Paul begins this letter to Galatians unlike any of his others, without any commendation. He goes directly from the greeting to “I am amazed. I’m flabbergasted. I can’t believe you people. You are so quickly deserting Him who called you by grace for another gospel that is not even a gospel.”

We’ve talked about several of these traits of immaturity, which is where they were, and which is why he wrote. The first symptom was lack of depth. “You are so quickly changing.” “Oh this looks good. Oh, this looks better. Oh, I’ll go here.”

We talked about their ignorance. “That you would move away from the One.” Not the religious system that you once embraced, but the from Person, Jesus, who called you by grace, who stepped into your life and did what no one else could ever do. He brought you to faith, brought you to Himself, opened your eyes, quickened you, and you’re wanting more?

They were ignorant in many ways, ignorant of Jesus and clearly ignorant of much of what He taught. They are confused, agitated, perplexed because certain ones have gone in there and shaken things up. They’ve been stimulated from without. Troublemakers have come to them and have stirred things up to a point of distraction.

I want to point a few things out beginning in verse 7. There is something here that is a key, in my view, to the rest of the book of Galatians.

 ⁷ which is really not another; only there are some who are disturbing you and want to distort the gospel of Christ.

He says there are certain ones troubling you and goes on to say they are desiring to change or to corrupt or to pervert the gospel of Christ. What strikes me about Paul’s choice of words is that he is making it very clear that these people who have come to them, teaching them there is more than just trusting Jesus, are there among them presently.

As they receive this letter, he says they are there, they are now troubling you; it is now their current desire to change the gospel. They’re there! They’re with them now. They’re among them. That tells me something interesting about the rest of the book of Galatians. It tells me they are reading it. They too see the letter. They’re not going to just stand by and let these new believers go on their way. We can safely assume there are two audiences now to the letter – the ones who are there troubling them and the Galatians themselves. That helps us understand much of what Paul is going to say further in the letter. That will really become clear in the next couple verses

Gullibility

⁸ But even if we, or an angel from heaven, should preach to you a gospel contrary to what we have preached to you, he is to be accursed!
⁹ As we have said before, so I say again now, if any man is preaching to you a gospel contrary to what you received, he is to be accursed!

You are too gullible, people! Somebody showing up, telling you something, and you believe it! Another word for gullible might be lacking in discernment. At least initially, someone who is more trusting of the messenger than the truth of the message.

I look at it this way: You say to someone, “Do you trust your doctor?” “Oh, he is just the nicest man. Of course I trust him, he’s so nice.” “Is he a good doctor?” “I don’t know, but he sure is nice.” That doesn’t have to do with proficiency in the trade! It doesn’t mean a thing as far as how well that doctor does his job.

Children are particularly vulnerable at this point. Children tend to be trusting of adults with whom they’re familiar, which is why predators can have such an easy way – because children tend to be gullible.

People have the capacity to be gullible. Logically, there is no necessary connection between the messenger and the validity of the message. You can be in heated arguments with someone you know or someone you don’t know, someone who is now your adversary. That person could say something that is patently true, but because of the relationship you’re denying it.

The truth of the message has nothing necessarily to do with who the messenger is. Balaam would attest to that. The messenger is irrelevant and that is Paul’s point. It’s the truth you hang onto, not the person delivering it to you. It’s the veracity of the truth.

I want to share a couple verses, one from Ephesians, because this is where Paul is taking them. This is a lesson, always timely, for us.

Ephesians 4 – talking about the design of the church to make disciples and to get people grounded in the Word. The apostle Paul says:

14 As a result, we are no longer to be children, tossed here and there by waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine, by the trickery of men, by craftiness in deceitful scheming,
15 but speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in all aspects into Him who is the head, even Christ.

Let’s get beyond this being buffeted about by the winds. That’s characteristic of immaturity. Paul is saying, “Put down roots. Grow in faith.”

Peter says in I Peter 2:2, “Desire the pure milk of the truth, the Word, that you may grow thereby in respect to salvation.

II Corinthians 11
13 For such men are false apostles, deceitful workers, disguising themselves as apostles of Christ.
14 No wonder, for even Satan disguises himself as an angel of light.
15 Therefore it is not surprising if his servants also disguise themselves as servants of righteousness, whose end will be according to their deeds.

When the devil appeared to Eve in the garden, he wasn’t slithering. That came later, after he was cursed. He was beautiful, but he was bent on her destruction. Paul is telling the Galatians and those with them that this angel of light stuff won’t wash when the truth is at stake and he wants them holding fast to the truth.

Let’s look at verses 8 and 9. He says the same thing twice but he comes at it a little bit differently. I’ll explain to you how that goes. He first begins in verse 8, using sort of a “maybe possible” thing.

⁸ But even if we, or an angel from heaven, should preach to you a gospel contrary to what we have preached to you, he is to be accursed!
⁹ As we have said before, so I say again now, if any man is preaching to you a gospel contrary to what you received, he is to be accursed!

By the way those who were conscientious Jews in the first century were very angel sensitive. They liked them a lot and gave them a lot of credit for a lot of good things.

He says if at any time we -- that is Paul, Barnabas, those in his company, those from the church at Antioch – if we or an angel from heaven should preach a gospel to you that goes beyond the one that was preached to you, let it be anathema. That is a loaded word. It would grab the Judaisers by the shoulders and shake them. Anathema?

And then he repeats himself. The first time he says it as though it were a remote possibility or a maybe thing. The second time he says it a little bit differently. He says, “As we have warned you.” He is getting more intense. He is focusing. He says it could happen. As we have forewarned you I say to you again. Now it is happening. Since someone is there preaching this gospel to you that goes beyond what you received, let that one be accursed.

He starts at a distance and moves it in. He does it with his language. He says it’s happening, it’s there now. That second “if” should be a “since.” The first one should be an “if.” Since it’s happening, someone is in danger of being accursed.

Let’s pause just a second on that word “Anathema.” It’s a word that is left alone. It’s not translated into English; they’ve left it Greek, but it is a very, very significant word, especially to the Jews. Remember it is the ones we call the Judaisers who have come into the churches of Galatia telling them that you need to go beyond the gospel, beyond simply trusting in Jesus. You have beyond that into “our” religious heritage and include circumcision if you really want to be saved. That’s what they’re telling them. They are playing on their Jewish conviction saying they have to add something.

These people were not necessarily Jews from Jerusalem. They were known as Helenistic Jews. Jews ethnically, but they didn’t grow up in the home country speaking Aramaic. They grew up at a distance, speaking Greek. That’s why they’re called Helenistic Jews. Helenism and Greekism, I guess, are the same thing. They are Greek speakers, therefore they are Greek readers.

Several hundred years prior to this, there had been a Greek Old Testament written just for people like this. It’s called the Septuagint. The Old Testament originally was Hebrew but so many Jews in North Africa and in Turkey and elsewhere were speaking Greek, thanks to Alexander the Great’s influence, that they began clamoring for a Bible, an Old Testament, in their language.

About 250 B.C. a bunch of fellows got together and wrote one. It’s a Greek Old Testament and they had them in Paul’s day. Paul had one and when Paul quotes the Old Testament and we read it in the New, he almost always quotes out of the Greek Old Testament, the Septuagint, rather than out of a Hebrew Old Testament, the original.

These Judaizers went from the Greek Old Testament and that’s what is significant because that word “anathema” is a Greek word. It comes from a Hebrew word and that Hebrew word surfaces in Joshua and in Deuteronomy. It first appears in Leviticus. It means to devote to destruction, to place under the ban. The idea is anything that is anathema is set apart to be destroyed because in some way it is either hindering God’s work or offending God’s person. So it is to be done. It’s His to destroy.

There is no stronger term for curse available, particularly to a Jew. Let me read a few Old Testament passages to illustrate. The word is to ban, to devote to destruction. Those expressions mean the same thing.

Leviticus 27
28 Nevertheless, anything which a man sets apart to the LORD out of all that he has, of man or animal or of the fields of his own property, shall not be sold or redeemed. Anything devoted to destruction is most holy to the LORD.
29 No one who may have been set apart among men shall be ransomed; he shall surely be put to death.

This is very, very serious talk. This isn’t just some hocus pocus, voodoo, curse thing to their minds; it goes much further than that. Something placed under the ban is an object, a person, an animal perhaps, surrendered to God for destruction because that person, object or animal would impede God’s word or offend God’s person.

Deuteronomy 7 – The reason we’re going here is because the people who are Judaizers are reading this. This is coming through like the warning lights on a railroad crossing.

2 When the LORD your God delivers them (that is, the Hittites, Girgashites, Amorites, etc) before you and you defeat them, then you shall utterly destroy them.

Remember this from Joshua? Place them under the ban; devote them to destruction. Make them anathema. It’s all the same; you’re saying the same thing. You shall make no covenant with them, you shall show no favor to them, you shall not intermarry with them, you shall not give your daughters to their sons, and you shall not take their daughters to your sons.

If you do, God says, His anger will be kindled against you. He will quickly destroy you. You have to tear down their altars, smash their sacred pillars, hew down their Asherah rings, burn their graven images because you are a holy people to the Lord your God. He has chosen you to be holy, He wants you to stay that way and if you run away it is His  people that will be adulterated. You have to place them under the ban; you have to devote them to destruction. They have to be put under God’s curse.

If you’re a Jew and you’re reading this – “Let him be anathema,” you realize that what the apostle is doing is placing you in the same category with those Amorites and Girgashites and all those ones who would have ruined God’s people. That’s a very weighty word.

In the 6^th and 7^th chapters of Joshua, Achan learned about it firsthand. After the fall of Jericho, he saw some stuff that was devoted to destruction, placed under the ban. He took these things -- silver, gold, and a nice mantle from Babylon. Things that are placed under the ban are to be destroyed. He dug a hole in the floor of his tent and buried them.

This meant not only are those things devoted to destruction but the one who took them is also devoted to destruction or put under the ban, or cursed, or anathema. They took Achan out and treated him that way. He was cursed and his name will always signify cursed in their heritage.

This would surely get the attention of the Galatian believers and those who would trouble them. They have identified themselves with the enemies of God and are pronounced deserving of God’s curse. What is their crime? How serious is this? It’s extremely serious. Their sin is going beyond the gospel, that’s the word Paul uses.

Salvation by faith through grace plus nothing. It has to be all of grace or God doesn’t get all the credit and He will take it all. He deserves it all. Anything that goes beyond the gospel is not a gospel and deserving of curse. It is very, very serious when anyone adds to the finished work of Jesus.

¹⁰ For am I now seeking the favor of men, or of God? Or am I striving to please men? If I were still trying to please men, I would not be a bondservant of Christ.

Am I seeking the favor of men or of God? Am I trying to impress you people, or am I reflecting a healthy fear of the God of heaven? He uses a rare and interesting construction in verse 10 as though he is hammering nails and hitting them as hard as he can. He says if I were still seeking to please men, which I patently am not, I wouldn’t be a slave of Christ which I patently am. He is just vehement here.

He cannot say it in any stronger terms. If I were still trying to please men, which I am absolutely not, in parentheses, I wouldn’t be a servant of Christ which I sure am.

He has their attention and he is sharing his heart. He is certain of his position. There is in his mind no doubt whatsoever. He remembers his previous life. He will note later on in Galatians how as a budding Pharisee, a rabbi, teacher, how he advanced ahead of his colleagues. He was at the head of his class. He says in the 3^rd chapter of Philippians that he was as Jewish as you could get. He’s not a Greek-speaking Hebrew; he is a Hebrew-speaking Hebrew.

As to the law, a Pharisee; as to the things in the law, faultless; as to zeal, a persecutor of the church. He had it all. Who is he trying to please? Himself? Colleagues? His past life was people-oriented and along comes the gospel, which says it’s not about you now, Paul, and it isn’t about people, and it isn’t about any of these things. It’s all about God now. Are you ready, Paul, to surrender to that truth?

Indeed, he did. It wasn’t people who knocked him to the ground on the road to Damascus. It wasn’t the voice of any person he heard from heaven. He knew it was all God and he knew he was headed in one direction and God unilaterally just grabbed him, threw him to the ground, turned him around and sent him another way.

He knew it was all God. He was headed in one direction and God just turned him around. He’s saying now, “Who dare I try to please?” Only the Lord. He knows something about the gospel that we need to get hold of ourselves. He knows that the gospel is not designed to affirm people or to impress people. The gospel is designed to convict and convert people by revealing their emptiness, not their worth, and by showing them that only in Jesus is their hope. That means all credit to Jesus. That means none left for me.

If I’m not fine with that, then I have to go beyond the gospel and insert myself and then it’s not a gospel. A people-oriented gospel was a problem then and it’s a problem now. The Galatians had to deal with it. Salvation by grace through faith plus circumcision? Or how about church attendance, church membership? Or salvation through Christian family? Plus baptism? Plus what?

How people-oriented can it go? I have it narrowed down. It seems a people-oriented gospel can take one of two courses or perhaps a combination. Perhaps it’s a gospel somehow by me. I work, I throw something in, I add something of myself.

Every religion in the world is this way. There are many religions that combine faith with works -- eastern religions, western religions, sects, cults. They are leading religions that say you have faith, plus. You have to go beyond – plus join the church, plus renounce this, plus pray this way, plus, plus, plus. The gospel by me. God sort of sets it up and then I work with him. Between the two of us, we get it done.

That’s not the Bible’s point of view. The Bible’s point of view assures me it’s about Him. Sometimes we say it’s about me. Christians get confused here. It’s as though somehow in the back of my mind I harbor the notion that there is some sense in which I deserve this salvation. Maybe some sense by nature, like inside I really am a pretty good person. Or maybe we don’t make ourselves better. Sometimes we reduce God in order to make it salvation about me.

We’ll say things like, “God was in heaven and God needed me.” Like God was lonely, like God needed my fellowship so much that He created me and saved me. No – the Bible is very clear that God needs nothing or He is not God any longer. “For His pleasure,” is one thing. For His need is entirely something else. God has never needed me. God has never been lonely, except when Jesus hung alone on the cross, guilty with your sins and mine.

Some would say God somehow looked and saw that I was worth saving, that I had some merit to it. Then again we have a gospel that is about me. It is not. The Bible says, “Not by works of righteousness which we have done, but according to His mercy He saves us. By the washing of regeneration, the renewing of the Holy Spirit, not by anything I do

Not by anything I’m worth. God gives us intrinsic worth by creating us in His image. We are the pinnacles of His created work as human beings but we are fallen and nowhere near deserving of any grace. Yet He sends grace. We sometimes hear that we need to give Jesus a chance, but Jesus doesn’t need a chance -- we do. And He is giving us one with every breath we draw.