Devoted to Destruction

Galatians 1:6-9

     We're studying the Book of Galatians in our new study, which we began last Lord's Day evening.  And this time we find ourselves in Galatians, chapter 1, verses 6 through 9.  Galatians 1:6-9.  And I'd like to read those verses to begin with.  Galatians 1, beginning in verse 6.  Paul, writing to the churches in the area of Galatia, writes, "I marvel that you are so soon removed from him that called you into the grace of Christ unto another gospel, which is not another, but there are some that trouble you and would pervert the gospel of Christ.  But though we, or an angel from heaven, preach any other gospel unto you than that which we have preached unto you, let him be accursed.  As we said before, so say I now again, if any man preach any other gospel unto you than that ye have received, let him be accursed."

     Now, God has set certain things apart for cursing, for destruction.  Whenever God sets something apart to be destroyed, it is devoted to destruction.  And the word that literally means devoted to destruction is the word "anathema."  And that is the word that is used at the end of verse 8 and at the end of verse 9.  And throughout the history of God's dealings with man, there have been certain things which God has devoted to destruction.  And I'd like to give you an illustration of that, not by any stretch of the imagination being able to cover all the times, say, in the Old Testament, that God talks about things devoted to destruction, but at least to give you an indication. 

     Turn in your Bible to Joshua, chapter 6, and here is an incident which will illustrate to us God's cursing.  Joshua, chapter 6.  And for the sake of time, we'll go directly to verse 17.  Of course, the time historically here is the conquering of the Promised Land.  Moses has passed on.  Joshua has taken the people in.  And it is around the time of Jericho and those great events. 

     And in verse 17 the Bible says this.  Joshua 6, "And the city shall be accursed, even it, and all that are in it, to the Lord."  In other words, God was devoting Jericho to destruction.  There was to be nothing left.  "Only Rahab the harlot shall live, she and all who are with her in the house, because she hid the messengers that we sent."  God spares Rahab.  "And ye, in every way, keep yourselves from the accursed thing, lest ye make yourselves accursed, when you take of the accursed thing, and make the camp of Israel a curse, and trouble it." 

     Now here, in just two verses, the word "accursed" or "cursed" appears six times, or five times.  This is something which God is cursing.  And it means that He is devoting it to be destroyed.  He is setting it apart for the purpose of destruction.  And he says in 19, "the silver, gold, and vessels of bronze and iron," those things which are worth something, "are to be consecrated unto the Lord and come into the treasury of the Lord."  The rest of it, which was worth nothing, was to be destroyed.

     But in chapter 7 we find an interesting thing that happened, beginning in verse 1.  "But the children of Israel committed a trespass in the accursed thing."  Instead of leaving alone what God had devoted to destruction, they tried to salvage something.  They tried to salvage something out of that which was anathema. 

     And the man who did it was a man by the name of "Achan, the son of Carmi, the son of Zabdi, the son of Zerah, of the tribe of Judah."  He "took of the accursed thing, and the anger of the LORD was kindled against the children of Israel."  Now go down to verse 11, just to see what happened.  "Israel hath sinned, and they have also transgressed my covenant which I commanded them, for they have even taken of the accursed thing, and have also stolen, and dissembled also, and they have put it even among their own stuff."  Remember, he buried it in his tent. 

     "Therefore the children of Israel could not stand before their enemies, but turned their backs before their enemies, because they were accursed.  Neither will I be with you any more, except you destroy the accursed from among you."  You see, God had devoted it to destruction.  They had tried to salvage it, at least Achan had.  And God said, "You'd better get rid of it or I'll turn my back on you."  "Up," He says, "Sanctify the people, and say, Sanctify yourselves for tomorrow, for thus saith the Lord God of Israel, 'There is an accursed thing in the midst of thee, O Israel.  Thou canst not stand before thine enemies, until you take away the accursed thing from among you.'"  And it goes on down to see what happened. 

     Well, just going over to verse 25, "Joshua said, 'Why hast thou troubled us?  The Lord shall trouble thee this day.'"  And this, of course, is spoken to Achan.  "And all Israel stoned him with stones, and burned them with fire," that's his family, and, incidentally, his animals and his tent and everything he had, "after they had stoned them with stones."  So they stoned them first and then burned him. 

     "And they raised over him a great heap of stones unto this day," as a monument to the fact that nobody touches what God has cursed and gets away with it.  "So the Lord turned away from the fierceness of His anger.  Wherefore the name of the place was called, The valley of Achor, unto this day."  And Achor simply means "trouble."  It's always trouble when the saint of God, the child of God, fools around with a thing which God curses.

     Now, apart from the Old Testament, there are some very specific things in the New Testament that God curses.  There are at least two things that stand out very pointedly above all the rest that God curses, two things that are said to be anathema, devoted to destruction, banned, if you will, by God. 

     The first one is false teachers.  False teachers.  Now, I want to talk about that tonight, because that is the context of Galatians 1:6-9, false teachers.  And twice, in verses 8 and 9, God says they are anathema, they are accursed, they are devoted to destruction. 

     Now, God has always felt the same way about false teachers.  They have always been something that God did not tolerate, even in the Old Testament.  But in the New Testament God makes some very specific statements.  In fact, in Matthew 24:24, it says, "For there shall arise false Christs, and false prophets, and shall show great signs and wonders; insomuch that, if it were possible, they shall deceive the very elect."  Now, in every age, there have been false prophets.  And He says in the last times there are going to be false prophets who are going to be so sharp that, were it possible, they would actually deceive the very elect.  Clever false teachers. 

     Now, keep in mind that Satan operates primarily in the area of false doctrine.  In John 8:44, Jesus simply and very, very pointedly classified Satan as the father of lies.  He operates on false doctrine.  To give you some illustrations of that, I only need to take you to just a few passages in the New Testament.  Some will be reminders to you, because we've studied them in the Book of Acts. 

     In the 13th chapter of Acts, we run into one of Satan's Class A false prophets.  And this man's name was Barjesus.  And if you look down at verse 10, he speaks to Barjesus, does Saul, or Paul, and says, "Oh, full of all deceit and all mischief, thou child of the devil, thou enemy of all righteousness, wilt thou not cease to pervert the right ways of the Lord?" 

     Now, if you want a classic definition of a false prophet, there it is.  One, full of deceit and mischief.  Two, child of the devil.  Three, enemy of righteousness.  Four, perverter of the ways of the Lord.  There's a fourfold definition of a false teacher.  Whether he comes into the category of Christianity or the occult, it all comes out the same.  He's full of deceit and mischief.  He's a child of the devil.  He's the enemy of righteousness.  And he's a perverter of the right ways of the Lord.  That's a classic verse to finding false prophets.  And giving us an example in the character of Barjesus, and he's not the first example.  Previous to this there was Simon, the sorcerer. 

     Now, in II Thessalonians, chapter 2, and verse 9, Paul talks about the end time, the time of the Tribulation, and he says there's going to come a great man, the man of sin, called in verse 3, the son of perdition, the antichrist, if you will.  Verse 9, "Even him, whose coming is after the working of Satan with all power and signs," now, watch, "and lying wonders, and with all deceivableness of unrighteousness in them that perish." 

     Now, another characterization of a false prophet, the ultimate false prophet, the antichrist is, again, he deceives.  Satan functions in the area of false doctrine.  He is from the beginning a liar and a deceiver, and he started that way in the case of Eve, and he has never changed. 

     The classification of Satan comes in Revelation 12:9, that points this out.  "And the great dragon was cast out, that old serpent, called the Devil, and Satan, who deceiveth the whole world."  That's his business.  His business is to be a deceiver, and it implies, you see, it implies the concept of a wolf in sheep's clothing.  Deceit is that which is not supposed to be obvious on the surface.  He's a deceiver. 

     In chapter 13 and verse 14, the antichrist sets up this image, and it says, "He deceives them that dwell on the earth by the means of those miracles which he had power to do."  You would be amazed throughout history how many people have believed that God was doing something because it was miraculous.  And in our society and in our day in which we live, people tend to see something miraculous and assume that God did it.  It is not necessarily the correct assumption. 

     And later on, in chapter 20, just in case you might've forgotten when you finished up reading the Bible, you're reminded again of what Satan's been doing.  Chapter 20, verse 2, and here this angel lays hold on this dragon, the old serpent, Devil, and Satan, bound him a thousand years, cast him into the bottomless pit, shut him up, and set a seal on him, "that he should deceive the nations no more, till the thousand years should be fulfilled."  That's what he's been doing all along.  And then in verse 10 of the same chapter, after the kingdom is over and he's cast into the lake of fire, it says, "And the devil that deceived them was cast into the lake of fire." 

     So you notice that it is characteristic of the mention of Satan that he is always mentioned as a liar and a deceiver.  And, incidentally, all those who propagate his lies and propagate his deceit will be damned along with him.  And if you read Revelation 21:8 and 22:15, you'll find that all those who reject Christ, all those who accept Satan's lies, wind up in the same lake of fire that he winds up in. 

     Now, Satan, then, is a liar.  He is a deceiver.  And he is a counterfeiter.  And he doesn't work alone.  He has lying spirits that work with him, demons, fallen angels.  And they usually work, now, watch this, they usually work through human beings, through human beings.  And, listen, I'll go a step further.  They usually work through religious people.  They usually work through religious people.  In fact, I would say far and away the preponderance of all of the activity of Satan is directly through religion and religious people. 

     And he's subtle.  You see, if Satan is going to pervert the truth, he's got to get inside the truth.  Right?  He can't stand on the outside and just yell at the truth.  He's got to get in and corrupt it from the inside.  And that's where he operates.  And so, to pervert the truth, Satan comes across and he appears very godly and very religious.  And all the time he's sowing the seeds of damnable heresy. 

     Now, lest you think I've put myself on a limb that can't be supported, in II Corinthians 11, we have a classification of Satan's lying spirits and how they operate.  II Corinthians 11, verse 13.  Paul says, "For such,," and he's been talking about false teachers, "For such are false apostles."  Now, watch, here is the first characterization of a false apostle.  Here it comes.  They are what kind of workers?  "Deceitful workers, transforming themselves into," what?  "The apostles of Christ." 

     Listen, Satan wants to be as much like a Christian as possible.  That's the deceit.  That's the subtlety.  And he says, in verse 14, no wonder.  "No marvel."  Don't be surprised at that, "for Satan himself is transformed into an angel of light.  Therefore it is no big thing if his ministers also be transformed as the ministers of righteousness."  And then Paul can't resist this.  "Whose end shall be according to their works." 

     Now, you see, Satan is a liar, and he is appearing as an angel of light.  As I've said many times, I don't believe Satan fools around with bars and he fools around with sex and he fools around with Playboy magazine.  I don't believe he's fooling around with that stuff.  I believe the lust of the flesh takes care of that whole operation.  I think where Satan works is in false religious systems.  And in our system, and in our culture, I believe he works mostly, and I think this has been true in the past history, I think mostly he works through the framework of Christianity. 

     Now, lately he's been really getting into the occult and a lot of other Eastern religions that have been imposed on our culture.  But up until recent days he worked through Christianity.  And that's why today we have what we know as liberalism and modernism.  Because Satan for years and years took what began, say, in the Great Awakening in America, and under the great preaching of men like Whitfield and Jonathan Edwards and others, and great ones even like Moody, and he began to pervert that and pervert it and pervert it until all of a sudden we woke up at the end of the 19th century and said, "We've got a world here in America full of modernism," and the Bible Institute of Los Angeles was founded to react against that.  And the fundamentals were put in print.  And men started saying, "We've got to get back to the Word." 

     And what had happened?  Satan had infiltrated America's Christianity and turned it into liberalism, and sucked the very life blood out of it.  Well, now, that's long past, so Satan's exploring new avenues, the occult, the Eastern religions, the whole thing.  But Satan operates within the framework of the church yet to this day. 

     Now, I want to show you something about this