remaining that you can find the text in your order of worship or you can follow along in your Bible. I'll be reading from Galatians chapter 2 verses 11 through 16. So I say to you, hear the word of God. But when Seifus came to Antioch, I opposed him to his face because he stood condemned. Before certain men came from the James, he came from James, he was eating with the Gentiles, but when they came, he drew back and separated himself, a fearing the circumcision party. And the rest of the Jews acted hypocritically along with him so that even Barnabas was led astray by their hypocrisy. But when I saw that their conduct was not in step with the truth of the gospel, I said to Seifus before them all, if you, though a Jew, lived like a Gentile and not like a Jew, how can you force the Gentiles to live like Jews? We ourselves are Jews by birth and not Gentile sinners. Yet we know that a person is not justified by works of the law but through faith in Jesus Christ. And so we also have believed in Christ Jesus in order to be justified by faith in Christ and not by works of the law because by works of the law, no one will be justified. Let us pray.
Father, I pray this morning again that you would bring the gospel to our hearts with great clarity as we see a great clash between two pillars of the church. I pray that you would teach us the strength of the gospel, the power of the gospel, and also the hope of the gospel. I pray for those who are here that do not know Jesus. I pray that you'd open their eyes that they might see him and open their ears that they might hear and those who struggle with the gospel give them hope and peace as well. I pray that you'd be in my head and in my thinking, in my heart and in my understanding and in my mouth and in my speaking. In Christ name, we pray these things. Amen. Amen. Well, if you've been here for the past few weeks, you know, that I've been going, started going through the book of Galatians. And the book of Galatians in short is a response from the Apostle Paul. The Apostle Paul had gone into the area of Galatia which would be what we know as modern day Turkey and he planted a church and he preached this thing we call the gospel. That what it takes to be saved from your sins is faith alone in Jesus and nothing else. And some people came behind him and apparently did a couple of things. One is they said, Paul doesn't know what he's talking about. Paul's not a real apostle or he's not as important as the apostles in Jerusalem. On one hand, on the other hand, they said also his message isn't right. His message, he's preaching you Jesus plus nothing. We're preaching, we come from Jerusalem saying it's Jesus plus circumcision. Unless you're circumcised as well as trusting Jesus, you can't be saved and obeying the rest of the law too. So Paul writes this letter to address him and Paul, Paul doesn't do something in this letter that he does in all the rest of his letters which makes it all that more sort of stark. And all the rest of Paul's letters, excuse me, when he's dealing with grievous sins, you know, the Corinth had everything from sexual sin, to financial sin, to worship issues, all those churches that seem from our perspective very messy. Paul opens up by saying, I thank God for you. On the other hand, with the Galatians, who everything was sharp and tight and they all look good, Paul did not say, I thank God for you, but instead he launched right in to his arguments. So remember up to this point, he's been basically making two arguments. The argument that they said that he wasn't as good as the other apostles, Paul makes the case in the first chapter that not only am I as good as the other apostles, but I got my gospel directly from God. And if anyone, including an apostle or an angel from heaven, preaches anything else than what I've preached to you, may he be a curse. So he establishes that. And so not only say I got my gospel from God, last week we looked at the beginning of chapter two where Paul basically says, not only did I get my gospel from God, but I laid it before the other apostles in Jerusalem and they said, thumbs up, you're good to go. They added nothing to me, he said. What was important about last week's text that was verses one through ten if you remember if you were here, Paul basically conducts an experiment. He conducts an experiment because he's going to go to Jerusalem and he's going up by revelation and he brings Titus with him who is an uncircumcised Gentile. And so the question is going to be, what are the Jerusalem apostles going to make Titus do? Are they going to demand that he is circumcised in order to be saved or are they not? And the apostles in Jerusalem did not. They added nothing. They said Titus, you don't have to be circumcised to his great relief, I imagine. On the other hand, there were others who came in. Remember it said they came in to spy out our freedom in order that they might bring us into slavery and Paul says to them, to that group of people, we didn't relent for even a moment. We didn't submit to them, not even for a moment. Paul wouldn't budge. In other words, if you remember what I told you, the circumcision is neither here nor there. If you think you ought to be circumcised, great. If you don't, great. But Paul, as soon as you make it a necessity for salvation, that's when the apostle Paul puts his foot down. That's when we should put our foot down. So the irony, remember I told you that there's every chance that he could have taken Titus into Jerusalem and no one mentioned anything. And Paul might have said to him, you know, Titus, it's probably a good idea that you're circumcised. You know, you'll help you fit in and you won't stand out. And I don't know how they knew or didn't know. But that happened, apparently. And as soon as people said he has to be circumcised, that's when Paul said no. So if you want to get Paul to do something, hell in the opposite, I guess. That's what they did. So last week, the scene of events, if you will, was in Jerusalem, which is the center of the Jewish Christianity. And immediately this week, it shifts to Antioch, which was the center of Gentile Christianity. And you see what's interesting is in Jerusalem, the last passage we looked at, they solved the problem. They solved the problem of orthodoxy. In other words, does someone need to be circumcised in order to be saved? Or can they just trust Jesus? And orthodoxy says just trust Jesus. Orthodoxy means straight or right teaching. So right teaching says that a Gentile doesn't need to be circumcised in order to be saved. What they didn't solve was the issue of orthopraxy. But if you're a notetaker that's ortho, and then the word after that is PRAXY, orthopraxy, which if orthodoxy is right teaching, orthopraxy is right practice. Or straight practice. What is the outworking of this thing called the gospel? Sure, we all believe that you don't need to be circumcised in order to be saved, but what does that look like, for example, in a place like, I don't know, Antioch? That's what we're going to look at today. Today we're going to look at three things. We're going to look at a practical question. Then we're going to look at Peter's pretense, and the last thing we'll look at is Peter's Paul's offense. So what's the practical question that is raised in Antioch? It's just this. In Antioch, it was the center of Gentile Christianity. About 10% of the church they estimate in Antioch was Jewish. And for Jewish people who had become Christians or Jewish people who weren't Christians for that matter, eating was everything. It was a cultural event. Among other things, it was the way that you showed how obedient you were by avoiding certain things or eating certain things and obeying certain laws. You see, so the big question is that they solved in verses one through ten, is it's okay for Jew to be a Jew, and it's okay for Gentile to be a Gentile. But what happens when they try to go to the same church? What happens when you're preparing a church suffer? What do you fix? And is there any way to deal with this? In other words, they can believe the gospel, and you say circumcision is an issue of conscience, but at some level, it's going to come to loggerheads, because at some point in Antioch, they're now at the same church. What are you going to do? And if you think that question is not relevant for modern day, that question is the question I think is a past idea with all the time. All the time. Because different people have different things that are issues of conscience, for example, worship, right? Some people think it's a sin if you don't use organ 100% of the time. Some people think it's a sin if you do. Both of them are wrong for thinking it's a sin to begin with. What they've done is they've moralized differences, and the question is, how do you deal with differences? What's the gospel say about it? You see, when I was a church planner, I used to train a church planner, and one of the things I used to teach was worship. How to develop a worship team, how to come up with a worship style, and I would always ask church planners to break down into groups, and I would ask them to answer a couple questions. The first question they would have to answer is this, what kind of worship style do you prefer? Simple as that. What do you like? Do you like organ music? Or do you like traditional, whatever that means? Or do you like contemporary, whatever that means? What do you like in worship? Question number two, assuming that all worship is done to God's glory and is intended to glorify God, what kind of worship do you think will best communicate the gospel in the area in which you are going to plant a church? In other words, if you're going to plant a church in the deep south, should you be using high church liturgy? I don't know. Is it different than what you liked in almost 100% of the time? It was different. If not completely different, it was slightly different. And so the question number three is, what are you going to do about it? What are you going to do about it? Is there anything you're willing to give up? And it's the same question for our church. The mission of our church, vision of our church is to do what? Gathering, growing, serving, and going. And so the church has to ask the question, what kind of worship do you like? This is a great question if you're doing sermon-based small groups to discuss in your small group. What kind of worship do you like? What kind of worship do you prefer? Not a lot of question. Now given the fact that in the past 30 years, the neighborhood has gone from almost being completely white to now 50% people of color, what kind of worship do you think would best communicate to those who are we are supposed to be gathering in? And then ask yourself the question, is that worship style the same as what I prefer? And how does the gospel answer the division between that question? Am I willing to give up anything? Or do I need to stand firm on something? You see these questions, I could just keep taking down the list. You could come in my office for one day and you just hear this all day long. These questions come up. So it's a very relevant question. What are you going to do? They have to go to church together now. The Jews think they should be eating this way. The Gentiles said it shouldn't be eating this way. And what's interesting is you see two answers to the question. One good, one bad, one bogus, and one gospel driven. The bad one, of course, is Peter. Peter's pretence. That's what Paul does. This is one of the most interesting passages to study if you're a pastor at least in the New Testament because to read how many the ancient fathers struggled with this passage. I mean here you have two, the two maybe most famous people in all of Christianity who were having a cat fight or you know some kind of fight right in the front of everybody at a church supper. I don't know what it looked like but people said it couldn't have been Peter who did that. It must have been someone else named Peter. And if you read Luther, Luther says not only is it Peter but you should thank God it was Peter because here's Peter who's the king of the world if you will. He's the apostle that everyone looks to. He's the go-to guy and Luther said that no one's footing is so firm that he cannot fall. If Peter fell, then I too may fall. And here's the kicker. If Peter stood again, then I too may stand again. Peter falls here and Luther says the fact that someone big and important could fall should give you hope because even that person is able to be redeemed and raise up again. This isn't the first time for Peter by the way. Let's look at his pretense. In verse 11 it says when Cephas came to Antioch, I posed him to his face because he stood condemned. Before certain men came from James he was eating with Gentiles but when they came he drew back and separated himself fearing the circumcision party. And the rest of the Jews acted hypocritically along with him so that even Barnabas was led astray by their hypocrisy. If you want to get some sense I actually printed it out and I had it in the first service. I'll try and do it by memory here. I read to get a sense of how bad this was what Peter was doing. I read in the first service a copy of the Cotton Patch Bible. If you've seen that the Cotton Patch Bible was written in the 60s by a man named Clarence Jordan and he lived in the south and he was deeply embroiled in the civil rights movement and he re-translated the gospel to sort of like the message for southerners. That it was all couched in terms of the civil rights movement and his translation of this passage was interesting. I'll try and do it from memory and I'm not going to use the words he used. I'll get in trouble with sound bites. But he says he says when the rock Peter came to Atlanta, Antioch he says I opposed him to his face because he stood condemned. Before certain men came from Jim he was eating with black folks but when they came he drew back and separated himself from them fearing the segregationists and the rest of the liberal white folks acted hypocritically along with him so that even Barney was led astray by their hypocrisy. I think that's pretty close from memory. You see there's an element also of race in here. So here's Peter. He's eating. Remember in Acts chapter 10 Peter has this great vision from God that the curtain comes down and all these unclean animals come and Peter says you know God says take and eat and Peter says I'll never eat anything unclean. There's a Peter principle in business and there's a Peter principle in the Bible or the Peter principle in the Bible says this whatever he says he's not going to do he's eventually going to do. I'll never submit. I'll never suffer. I'll never eat something unclean and God says take and eat and Peter takes and eats and then he goes and preaches the gospel to Cornelius and he learns through all that that the Gentiles are acceptable not just acceptable in the sense that they can be saved but they're acceptable in the sense that you can fellowship with them and in Acts chapter 2 right the some of the Judaizers came and said Peter what are you doing eating with the Gentiles and he tells them the whole story that God you know they're unclean and the clean and Gentiles are acceptable who am I to argue with God. So Peter knows that the Gentiles are okay I mean that there's nothing wrong with eating with the Gentiles. In fact he does so Paul tells us he says when you got here you ate with the Gentiles and the Sizzis guys got here you stopped eating with the Gentiles what's the deal. Let me read to you again verse 12 it says before certain men from James came he was eating with the Gentiles but when they came he drew back and separated himself fearing the circumcision party. Now it would be interesting if you could ask Peter like we have the you know hindsight perspective we know why Peter did this it would have been interesting to ask Peter then Peter why are you withdrawing right these men from James came and we don't know if they were sent from James or they came and they just said they were from James because at some point James disowns people who are going it around in his name preaching circumcision we don't even know if they wanted anything we just know they showed up so you know imagine Peter is at a singles barbecue and he has a port sandwich in his hand and he's getting ready to take a bite and he looks in the back and some men from James are coming in and he sort of slinks out. Why did he do it? Usually the reason that we that is given that I've seen since I've been in church the reason that is given for not doing things you know let's say these Jewish from James are coming down and Peter's got the barbecue sandwich and his thing usually what you often hear is like I don't want to offend the weaker brother and so you put the pork down and if that's your understanding of what it means to offend or not offend the weaker brother you're completely off base. I learned this about 15 years ago my first general assembly this general assembly was with another denomination that was a little bit of more conservative and I went to general assembly general assembly if you're not presbyterian is basically a once a year meeting where the all the churches come together the ministers and the elders come together to do business and it was the first meeting of this my meeting being there and I was at dinner with my best friend Paul Warren and his mother and father his father is also a pastor and I'm sitting in this restaurant and everyone in the restaurant you know sort of had the khaki pants and the white shirt and the blue blazer except me of course and so they're in there and at some point Paul my friend ordered an adult beverage and I went is that okay you can drink beer here and his father rebuked me he said Tommy Bible says you should accommodate the weaker brother don't worry about them Pharisees I said what and he said anyone who's here who'd have trouble with you having a beer they're just a Pharisee I thought what come on but the point is is the weaker brother is really given that principle is given not so you don't offend Pharisees the weaker brother is given so that you do not lead astray people who are genuinely weak so for example if you have a friend who's an alcoholic when he comes over for dinner you probably shouldn't serve beer simple as that that's the weaker brother principle but if there's someone in church that you're constantly avoiding and skipping around because you're doing something which according to your conscience is okay chewing sugarless gum I don't know and so in order to not have to deal with them you're constantly saying oh I don't want to offend the weaker brother I'll split my gum out you know Peter might have called them weaker brothers a lot of people in the church might call people like that weaker brothers remember what Paul called them last week Paul called them false brothers Paul called them false brothers anyone who had come in and demand that you obey their rules in order to be acceptable is a false brother but that's not why Peter did it Peter stopped eating with the Gentiles because he feared the circumcision party and the language is interesting it says when they came he drew back and separated himself fearing the circumcision party the first words are he drew back is sort of like a military words that mean he retreated and the word that says he drew back is interesting because it's it's sort of like a girl that doesn't want to go on a date with a guy and so she just doesn't answer his phone calls in other words he didn't just see the guys in the back and go oh my goodness and run out the back of the room he just sort of began to slowly separate himself from Gentiles until at some point he was not eating with them at all so they'd say Peter you want to come over dinner at our house tonight hog roast can't do it sorry about their plans you know he mottled with the Judaizers you know I mean so he just sort of slowly backed out why he feared the circumcision party now did he fear harm from them I don't think so you know what I think Peter feared I can just tell you from being a pastor from being who I am I think he just feared the hassle he just feared the hassle he didn't want another argument he didn't want to have to deal with them he didn't want to have to go to Jerusalem and defend himself and he just thought you know the pragmatic thing to do is just quit eating with the Gentiles and I won't have to deal with them but we learn that Peter is weak here in other words his sin isn't malicious his sin isn't that he that he was doing something wrong his sin is that he refused to do something right in fact Peter does the exact opposite thing here that Paul does in the the previous 10 verses previous 10 verses the company people from the Judaizers come in and apparently demand that Titus be circumcised and Paul puts his foot down and says we did not yield to them even for a moment not one second Peter on the other hand sees the guys coming and just leaves the table and won't eat with Gentiles anymore so much for that huh but there's something else Peter's a leader everyone knows that so what happens when when people who are in leadership start to do that everyone else follows notice what it says says in the rest of the Jews acted hypocritically along with him so that even Barnabas was led astray by their hypocrisy the word there's interest in the word hypocrisy is all has the same root and it comes from Greek theater and and really what it gets to is someone who wears a mask someone who play acts he says the rest of the Jews were play acting they were they were led away in Peter's hypocrisy in other words Peter was was play acting he was giving a face to one thing but he was actually doing another thing refer you kids if you want to know hypocrisy is if I was thinking through it this morning you seen ice age the first one remember Diego the saber tooth tiger he goes along with the mammoth and Sid and those guys acting like he's their friend but really he intends to kill them it's hypocrisy he's playing the parts and Paul says the hypocrisy was so bad that even even Barnabas was sucked into it now why is that language so important the language that language is so important it because if the gospel is true you don't need to be a hypocrite in other words if hypocrisy has to do with with wearing a mask if the gospel is true you don't need to wear the mask anymore you know I got a new album by Pierce Pettis it's one of my favorite singers and he has this great line in one of his songs he said God always sees you naked no matter what you put on on the outside God sees you exactly as who you are and if God sees you naked and loves you and accepts you and is willing to give his life his son for you who cares what other people see you see if the gospel is true you can take off the mask if the gospel is true you're acceptable to Jesus and I mean that not just for you individuals but as a whole church you know it's interesting I'm I'm rarely mistaken for being a pastor now if I'm out in the community and say guess what I do not one time is anyone ever said oh you look like a pastor you could you could be a very holy person no one's ever said that which I used to migrate advantage because I was asked people you ever heard of first CPC oh yeah I heard of that place you been there yeah I went once or twice why didn't you come back it's too clean I guess that's kudos to the janitors what do you mean by that everyone there just looks like they got their act together and everyone just looks like happy and I mean that's just not me my life is screwed up I don't have anything together and of course you know I want to say at that moment if you only knew what I knew but why is it that people can walk in and I think everyone has everything together when I know you don't it's because we're so busy keeping that mask on and the gospel of Jesus says take it off you can take it off because you have something else you have the righteousness of Jesus that's the remedy to this problem by the way that's the remedy to the judyizers that's the remedy to the problem in Galicia that's the remedy to everything is this gospel of Jesus and what the gospel of Jesus does it justifies us before God that's Paul's offense Paul's offense is simply the gospel of Jesus let's read it he says in verse 14 he says when I saw that their conduct was not in step with the truth of the gospel I said to see this before them all if you like a Jew live like a Gentile and not like a Jew how can you force the Gentiles to live like Jews and he says that their conduct was not in step with the gospel that's important for you to get in other words remember at the beginning of the sermon I told you there's difference here between orthodoxy and orthopraxy that you can be orthodox in your thinking but not necessarily orthodox in your walking that's what Paul is saying here he said they were literally they were walking out of step or they're walking crookedly and not in line with the truth so they believed the right thing but they weren't living the right thing and the question is do you do you believe the right thing one and believing the right thing do you therefore live the right thing
in other words if the gospel calls us to reach out to our friends and neighbors do you do that if the gospel calls us to show hospitality do you do that we tend to think of the gospel only in terms of sin have I have I done have I avoided doing bad things and you should do that but if you don't all these good things because if you're not if you're not reaching out to people if you're not gathering as well as perfecting you're walking out of line with the gospel are you contributing to the mission of the church this church or any church for that matter are you walking in line with the gospel and if you think man I'm not walking in line with the gospel I feel that makes me actually feel guilty Tommy well then Paul the the next two lines from Paul are great news because what Paul tells you is that your righteousness before God is not based on what you do it's not based on bad things that you avoid are good things that you do what is it based on it's based on what Jesus has done in other words the law asks this question what have I done the gospel asks a completely different question what has Jesus done the law asks what is what what what is God demanded me the gospel says what is God done for me Paul tells us next verse 16 of this of this passage let me read verse 15 before you put that up Brian and verse 15 Paul peels to their common heritage I think he's still talking to Peter and he says we ourselves are Jews by birth and not Gentile sinners so he's telling Peter you know we're the Peter you and I are on the same boat here you know we're both Jews we're both born in the covenant we're born under the law we're both circumcised that eight days all of these things we have in common so what and then Paul brings in this thing called the gospel Brian can you put that up for me I wanted to put verse 16 up here just to emphasize something for you let me read through verse 16 number 16 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 believed in Christ Jesus in order to be justified by faith in Christ and not by works of the law because by works of the law no one will be justified okay and it doesn't you don't need a Bible dictionary you don't need anything at least if you use an ESB Bible if you have an ESB Bible in the footnote it gives you an alternate translation for this word justified and it's an important one go ahead and hit it Brian you could also write or translate that as counted righteous and so when you read through that it would say we know that a person is not counted righteous by works of the law over and over it's three times and one verse Paul says that you're not counted righteous by works of the law do you think that's an important concept to Paul how then are we counted righteous it can't be by works of the law and people say what are works of the laws it ten commandments is the civil law Martin Luther said anything that is not grace is law okay you're not justified by it but what does it mean to be justified most of us think in terms of when we think of our Christianity in the gospel we think in terms only of forgiveness and here's what forgiveness is forgiveness is just this let's say that you owe a $50,000 debt and someone comes along and they say Tommy I'm going to write a check and for $50,000 and fill that hole after that fact although that's a good thing where you would agree I'm sure am I at that point rich am I at that point wealthy once someone has paid off my $50,000 and my wealthy at that point absolutely not I'm just I'm neutral so now what now I just try and keep my nose clean what the gospel says is this is that we are not only forgiven of our sins our debt is not only paid but we are made righteous so in other words instead of someone saying I'm just going to pay the $50,000 what if someone says Tommy you got a $50,000 debt and I'm going to put a trillion dollars in your account what I at that point be rich I would be and what the gospel says is not only are our sins forgiven because of the cross of Jesus but also what happens at the cross of Jesus is that all of our sin becomes his and all of his righteousness or positive credit toward God becomes ours and the way we gain positive credit toward God is not through works of the law it's not through works of the law but through the righteousness of Christ received by faith alone in other words do you believe it and Paul gives the three different ways here he gives a general way a personal way and a universal way the first thing he says is a person is not justified or made righteous by the works of the law but by through faith so so general principle you can't be made righteous through works of the law and again to quote Luther Luther said if you're not going to believe that God will forgive you and count your righteous for the sake of Jesus works what in the world makes you think that he could count your righteous for the sake of your works good day then Paul personalizes it to Peter says Peter you you know that we have not been counted righteous by works of the law you and me Peter and then finally he says no one he universal is it no one is made righteous by works of the law you can't do it how then we made righteous by faith alone in the work of Jesus Christ to do anything else is silly Brian you can take that down please to do anything else is it's futile you know close with this when I was in Ethiopia you know I had to do like home visits where I'd visit like me a translator me and a doctor we'd visit like one woman who was sick and this and that and three or four times they said I'd look at the schedule and it would say spiritual counseling what does that mean and they never really told me but that meant I had to go and meet with about 10 or 15 people who were at Muslim or Orthodox basically almost anything except Christians and I'd have to meet in there and it was totally sort of dancing around time because it's sort of like so what do you guys want to talk about don't speak English that's the problem right okay that you know the translator would say that and we'd chip chip chat and I'd say how about this how about I sing a song I remember I sang Jesus loved me to them I saw I'll sing a song of you sing a song you know I'm buying time here until it's over and the first time I did that the the translator said I said okay I guess the time to go and she put her hand up she dog whispered me Frank said she said don't you think you should tell them about eternal life and I said don't I guess I should you know and so thinking fast realizing I was in Ethiopia and not impure all of her somewhere I didn't say you know did you cry when old Yehler died that's what I often will say to people I use the old standard if you died tonight how do you know God would let you into heaven and to a person 15 people good works good works good works good works good works good works good works good works good works good works okay now I gotta think fast I said tonight what do you mean I said if you died tonight why would God let you into heaven and I brought I had to forgot this at the first service what would have I said what what about tonight but right now you die what what would God do and here's what I heard crickets nothing in other words I went around and said are you good enough right now crickets crickets crickets crickets crickets crickets because if you're not good enough right now to satisfy God and get into heaven what makes you think you were ever going to be good enough to satisfy God and get into heaven most of those people had never thought about that how about you have you thought about it are you here today you're maybe you're not a Christian maybe you never thought about it maybe you thought maybe it's all about being a good person I grew up as Presbyterian I'm here now do you realize that your goodness counts for nothing and that the only thing that matters is the person and work of Jesus think about that let me pray for us Father I pray that you would continue to work the gospel deep and deeply into our hearts that you continue to root out the the Pharisee that lives in each one of us the hypocrisy that lives in each one of us and that you would enable us to be gracious as you in fact are gracious in Christ name we pray these things amen and amen