NC Chapels
TJ Rexilius | Galatians 2:11-14
There'll be sweet. Okay. Thank you guys. You're the best. Okay. Starting verse 14. But when I saw that their conduct was not in step with the truth of the gospel, I said to Cephas, or Peter, before them all, if you, though a Jew, live like a Gentile and not like a Jew, how can you force the Gentiles to live like Jews? Let's pray. God would you be with us here this morning? Maybe more than just intellect, more than just head knowledge, more than just notes that need to be taken, more than just a pass for chapel time. May there be something said this morning from your word that pricks a heart that remains as stone and concrete in one's life. And they look back and remember this is a moment where the spirit did, we pray this in Jesus' name. Amen. All right. So really chapter one of Galatians, I filed freed by grace. And then chapter two is freed through faith. Okay. So chapter one, freed by grace, let's do a quick overview of that. The main truth that we would see over and over again in chapter one is that God's pleasure in you is not, is not based on your performance for him. And I want you to really think about that because often we'll think, ah, that's not me. I'm not trying to do works for the Lord, but deep down, you might ask me just to find some of that. You might be thinking, ah, I'm getting a little bit closer to the Lord. I'm finding a little bit more favor in his sight. He surely has more pleasure in joy in me. Now, he does not have pleasure in your performance for him. And that can seem really freeing for some of you, like, ah, that's a weight lifted off. I don't have to do anything to earn my salvation, to earn his joy. It's not like an earthly father. I don't have to do something to make him proud of me, right? But for some, that might not be freeing and actually might be frustrating. You might be thinking, so I can't do anything to please God, there's nothing I can do out there to at least help him find joy in me and saving me. And the answer to that question that we have, kind of the secret to it, in a sense, to the Christian life. And we're going to answer that this morning. Although we cannot earn God's favor, Scripture does talk about pleasing God. So we can't ignore that phrase. We see it in the Bible. 2 Corinthians 5, 9, Paul says that his aim is to be pleasing to him, to Christ. 1 Thessalonians 2, 4, we speak not to please man, but to please God. He tells the believers to have the same purpose, 1 Thessalonians 4, 1, how you ought to walk and please God. So if God's pleasure in me isn't based on my performance for him, then how can I please him? What does that look like? Well Galatians 2, this is what brings us to chapter 2, really gives us three different pictures that help us answer that question. Two of them are illustrative episodes from Paul's life, okay? Chapter 2, verses 1 through 10 last week where you were, and then this morning where we're at 11 through 14, and then next week you're going to get a really foundational, the key one, verses 15 through 21, kind of the one I wish I would have had, right? It's a good one. So I want to give you a quick overview. Here's the notes I want you to take. If you could break out chapter 2 into three chunks, three bite-size, three bites to get through this hamburger to fulfill you. This is what it is, okay? Number one is legalism, legalism, okay? You see this in verses 1 through 10 of chapter 2, do you want to reference that? And then I want you to put a dash off to the side, we're going to define legalism here. I want you to write right behavior with wrong belief, right behavior with wrong belief, okay? Point number two is hypocrisy. This is in the passage we're in today, this is verse 11 through 14, hypocrisy. This is what I want you to define this one as, right belief with wrong behavior. Right belief with wrong behavior. So legalism, we have the right behavior, but we have the wrong belief. And then hypocrisy is just the flip. We have the right belief with the wrong behavior. The third point is this, this is going to hopefully send a trajectory and excitement for next week. This is in verses 15 through 21, faith, faith, this is how you please the Lord. It's right belief with right behavior. There's the bullseye, right belief with right behavior. So quick overview from last week because it's going to flow well with where we're at this morning. Talk about legalism that we saw in verses one through 10 that Chris spoke on. So you have the right behavior with wrong belief going in those 10 verses. That's what's happening. There's this discussion between Paul and some false brothers there on whether or not Titus, this guy that came into the picture, who's a Gentile, he's not like them, okay? He's different whether he needed to do circumcised or not. And we have to remember if you were here last week that there was Judaizers that came in and they were saying in effect that in order to be saved, you needed to follow these certain laws, these Jewish laws. And most notably out of that, what they took was circumcision being the ultimate. Some of you might have different ultimates that you run into. We'll talk about that in a little bit. So why that's a big deal and why we're talking about legalism in the beginning part of that chapter is if Titus at any point would have been compelled to be circumcised, would have been compelled to do what these men were pressuring him to do, that would have been a huge victory for the Judaizers. It would have been a super bowl victory and on the flip side of that, it would have been a huge blow to the gospel of grace that these guys were preaching. Because it was adding, it was adding to the gospel, it was Jesus plus something, we should know it's Jesus plus nothing. Now thankfully Titus, you learned last week, he wasn't compelled to be circumcised and the leaders of the church in Jerusalem, Peter, James and John that were referenced in that passage, they affirm Paul as being an apostle, but also they're affirming the gospel that he's preaching. That's kind of a big deal for the passage we're going to get into here. So in chapter one, we would define legalism as working in our own power, according to our own rules ultimately to earn God's favor. Now these Judaizers were advocating good things. The temptation here is to say this is all bad and then you have a hard time kind of seeing how this works in your own life. The Judaizers came and they weren't bad things, they weren't. And that's why we've labeled their actions now as being a right behavior with wrong belief. Circumcision was super important in the Jewish life. They had all these other laws too that were really important. It established the people. And so as part of God's word, none of the Old Testament laws, 613 plus were bad in and of themselves, they weren't. It's really easy to come in and say they were really bad, but here's where it gets bad. Laws become legalistic when they're accompanied by the belief that doing them and performing those acts, you actually might earn merit before the Lord. And that creeps in to all of our minds in this room, all the time, mine as well. Now today our problem isn't whether to be circumcised or not, or any of the other Jewish laws, but there's a host of things that fall into this right behavior with wrong belief kind of category. Let me throw some at you, having a quiet time. Not bad, right? Study in the Bible, not bad, good. In certain sins, coming to worship, participating in things in church, helping other people. All those things are good. But when we do them thinking that we're earning God's favor, that's when we become legalistic. When you think, "I'm not going to give my life to the Lord because I need to read the Bible a little bit more, I need to get my life together a little bit better." All of us have this tendency, we're all recovering legalists, we're all born with this sinful nature thinking that we can earn our way to God. We have to avoid Paul's words in those first ten verses on legalism. So now this brings us to our passage. What does this have to do? Where's the flow here? You'll see. Look with me at verse 11. Really verse 11 through 14 are just kind of the reverse picture of what you saw in verses one through ten. One was one through ten, let's reverse that picture and show what hypocrisy looks like. Remember, that's right belief, wrong behavior. So this is kind of one of those most dramatic episodes, one of the most dramatic things recorded in Scripture than all of specifically the New Testament. This is why I love this part of Galatians. All the apostle, okay, famous Paul, he confronts famous apostle Peter, that's Cephas there. They're like, who's Cephas? It's Peter, Peter, Cephas, Simon Peter, get it all mixed up, Peter, okay. This is like two big celebrities in the church that confront and have this conflict here. What is this going to look like? What's going on here? And I think some background text here will actually really help you understand Paul and it's probably even more so going to help you understand Peter, okay. So the church in Antioch, that's referenced there, is made up of largely Gentile Christians. Not Jewish but Gentile. This was a big part of the New Testament. So when Peter or Cephas came to this church, he began eating and spending time with him, which was unheard of. It was unheard of. And that probably doesn't seem like a really big deal to you. Like, ah, he's eating with him, he's spending a lot of time with him. Who cares? But it's a huge deal for a Jewish man, a Jewish leader like Peter to be doing that. For centuries, Jews were known for Peter and his heritage was known for their strict laws and being separated from the Gentiles. That was a big deal because under the old covenant, God established certain dietary laws we would see this in Leviticus, we'd see this in Deuteronomy. There would be other commandments that we would see and he intended to do that. Why that's there is so that the Jews wouldn't be intermingling with the Gentiles under the old covenant and being corrupted by the adultery and immorality that's happening with those people. You all have parents are like, yeah, probably not a group of friends you should hang out with. That's what's going on here. So that then made eating with any kind of Gentiles, a pretty dangerous situation, a pretty precarious thing. Gentiles would eat certain foods that were forbidden. They were unclean to the Jews and then even coming and sitting at the table with them. Even if you're like, I'm not going to eat that food, welcome, sit at the table with them. That would also be considered to be impure in case you get like an aroma of ham or something. That was too much. This is a big deal. Table fellowship back then, I hope it comes back more today, but back then to have somebody and have fellowship around the table over a meal, that is considered as a sign of acceptance. It's considered as a sign of approval. You're letting someone in into the intimate parts of your life. Why else would people freak out when Jesus hangs out with tax collectors and goes and eats with them? The religious people were freaked out by it. You can't do that. But something happened to Peter in Acts 10 that had this paradigm shift to even bring them to Antioch to be hanging out with the Gentiles in the first place. So in Acts 10, we don't have time. In Acts 10, there's this man named Cornelius representing the tile community there. And Cornelius has this vision from the Lord. He's a God-fearing Gentile. He's a vision from the Lord by an angel and he's told to go find and send for Peter. And you flip on the other side of the scene, Peter goes up on the rooftop one day to pray and he has a vision three times. And it's a sheet of paper coming down from the heaven. And there's animals, reptiles, birds. And he's told in the vision to kill any and Peter says, in response back to God, I cannot eat those things. They're unclean. It is not common for me to eat that. Let me show you the vision again, just in case you didn't get it. And again, just in case you didn't get it. Peter's like, "What's this vision about?" Shortly after that, Cornelius sends some men for Peter. Peter ends up, "We just have to see it." Turn to Acts 10 really quick. Sorry. So he sends back for Peter, Peter then goes, "Okay, I'll go with you." He comes, he meets Cornelius, Cornelius is like bowing down and worshipping him at the door. Peter's like, "Stand up, I'm a man. Just like you. I love it." A lot of really cool details in this. But look at verse 34, "What's the result?" Peter would never go to the Gentiles on his own. So through these vision, God orchestrated how Peter would extend from the Jews to the Gentiles, and we would see what does Peter do? Verse 34 of Acts 10. He opens his mouth and he does what? He preaches the gospel, but look what he says. God shows no partiality. He shows no favoritism. I don't see you as a Gentile and me as a Jew. I see you as brothers and brothers in Christ. You're like, "Well, why is that a big deal?" Go back to our story. Now, at the end of Acts 10 is really cool. People get saved. They're getting baptized. It's like crazy stuff. I love the crazy stuff in the Bible. All of Cornelius' household and friends, it was really cool. We would see later in Acts 11 that people were upset because, "Hey, you stressed circumcision. Now you're visiting the uncircumcised, eating with them. What are you doing, Peter?" And Peter explains to them in Acts 11, 18, "Upon believing the Lord, what happens is the Gentiles receive the gift of the Lord's same Holy Spirit that's in me, upon the believing Jews, also for the Gentiles." And when the people had heard that, they became silent. And what they did was they glorified God, saying that God has now granted repentance, resulting even for the Gentiles. This is why this is a big deal, because now when you get to Galatians chapter 2 verse 11 through 14, you kind of get a little better sense. But the background in mine here of what's going on, Peter should be the one who paved the way for the Gentiles in preaching the good news to them. Why is he the one that's backing off from them now? He was the forerunner for this. Did he change his mind? What happened? Look at verse 12 of Galatians 2. Peter used to eat with the Gentiles, but because he feared, who did he fear? It's a circumcision party. Who's that man? Who did he fear? Man. And that's why not only are all of us in this room battling with legalism, but we're also battling with hypocrisy. Peter's at the top here, the top in our minds. He's the forerunner. He shared the gospel with Cornelius and the households. Like it's saved. He's eating with them. He's rejoicing. Antioch to preach heavily Gentile community. And now man comes and he's like, I don't know about that. Is there somebody in that group that he has high esteem for that he wants to impress? Maybe. Is he feeling uncomfortable? Maybe been around some worldly things and all of a sudden he's like, eh, it would be a lot easier just to go through this, hang out with my people. Doesn't tell us. Just as he stopped eating with the Gentiles, he began separating himself from them. This is the apostle Peter Cephas who brought the gospel to the Gentiles in Acts 10 that we just read. And so what happens, look at this domino effect, hypocrisy is contagious. Like you all that come from a big family, when one person gets sick, no matter how much you avoid it, everybody's getting it. It's like the calm before the storm, right? Look, verse 12, "For before certain men came from James, he was eating with the Gentiles, with the Gentiles, but when they came, he drew back and separated himself, fearing the circumcision party." Okay. So first Peter, then what verse 13, "Then the rest of the Jews, and then who?" Then even Barnabas, the dude who approved the gospel of grace that was being preached, what's going on here? This shouldn't be happening. This is like your pastor doing something that's completely out of whack with the Bible and you're like, "Why would you do that?" That's what's happening here. The other believers began to follow Peter's lead. "Oh, is that what we're supposed to do? Like back away, hold back from the message that we've been proclaiming, not live to it?" Peter's being a bad leader here. And what's the implication of Peter's actions? He's saying that the Gentiles may not be fully acceptable before God. He's fracturing the gospel message he's been preaching. Okay, verse 14, "They were not in step with the truth of the gospel." I like the translation. They were deviating from the truth. We'll come back to that phrase at the end for our application. Guys, this is right belief with wrong behavior. This is hypocrisy. Peter knew the gospel. He believed the gospel, but his actions aren't reflecting the gospel. And that's why Paul comes in to call him out. This is essential. This is the top tier. This is what we've been called to do, Peter. Now, today we're not dealing with issues of whether or not Jews and Gentiles should be eating together or what kind of food they're eating, but we've got plenty of inconsistencies. There is much in our wealthy, self-indulgent lifestyles that is not in line with the truth of the gospel. That too is hypocrisy. If someone claims to follow the Savior who came to preach good news to the poor and the powerless, yet we ignore the poor and the powerless, that's out of line with the gospel. In the same way, if you're following Christ but you're living in sexual morality, there's hypocrisy there. And it should be confronted biblically, like that's recorded here that Paul confronts Peter. I mean, there could have been a lot of things where we got Peter will figure out, he knows this. He's been preaching this gospel. It's just one mishap. Look at all the other stuff he's done. Are he? Oh man, he knows God's word so well. He's got so much scripture memorized, he'll figure it out. I'll just pray for him. It's not what we see. Galatians reminds us, all of us, how easy it is to drift towards legalism or hypocrisy. And listen, it is a joy, it is a privilege to be able to come to Nebraska Christian. You won't know the weight of that, probably till later in life. But I also know, and my greatest prayer for you is how much more intense your spiritual battle is. Because it's seeped in the seaweed of religiosity, of legalism and hypocrisy. You need to avoid both of theirs. Only the word can help us do that. One of the issues that Paul confronts in Galatians too, is this two tiered system of Christianity. That was emerging in the first century there. That there would be Jews on one side, on this top tier, and then there would be Gentiles on the other side, they would be a little bit lower. You go to state track, right? You got the podium up and down for one, two and three, one's always the highest, right? That's what we're talking about when we talk about tears. That was seeping into Christianity then. The Jews claimed that they had way more favor before the Lord, because they're the ones that were actually observing the law. And so they claimed that the Gentiles were the second class Christians. Here's the tendency here. We could say, hey, we go to a Christian school, everybody else that doesn't, they're second class Christians. Or sometimes the situation is even reversed, as we would see in Romans 14, we don't have time. But those who observe the law would be looked down upon, either way, we have to guard ourselves against this divisive mindset, there are no second class Christians anywhere in God's Kingdom, none. So we have to reject this two-tiered Christianity that we create in our minds, and we create them with divisions like this. Well, those who go on missions trips and a little more serious about their faith and those who don't, or those who give a certain amount of money to the church and then those who don't, or less, that tear Christianity, or those who go to youth group consistently and those who don't, the list goes on, you know where it's at for you. Now this doesn't mean that we don't encourage one another to follow Christ and obey the mission of Christ. We have to hear that too. There ought to be, and there are, practical ways for this to happen here at Nebraska Christian. You have teachers, you have coaches, you have adults all around you, you have teams that you're on, you have classes that you're in, you have e-groups that you're a part of now. We encourage each other in our pursuit of Christ, but we're not in competition for who can get the most favor before God. We need to lock arms with each other, trying to avoid legalism and hypocrisy. Galatians is really good for us. It reminds us that from Scripture, what we say, Scripture alone, the Bible is our highest authority, not man, and I didn't even write this up, but every teacher so far, every chapel speaker is mentioned, grace alone, and then we're kind of building on that faith alone. Scripture alone, faith alone, we're saved through faith alone in Jesus Christ. Grace alone, we're saved by God's grace alone, Ephesians 2, 8, this isn't anything that you do so that you can boast, and it's Christ alone. Jesus Christ alone is your Lord and Savior, and it's to the glory of God alone. We live for the glory of God, not for man. Peter at some point thought there might be glory in it of himself with that circumcision party as he withdrew. I want to look good for that group. I want them to esteem me, living for others, glory. I see each one of these played out in Galatians. Let me give you a sneak preview, little bite for next week, it's faith. That's our third point, right? From hypocrisy and faith, that's the third picture, so good. Paul describes what right belief with right behavior looks like, how do you bring those two together? And the key word is faith. Everything revolves around faith, not faith plus anything else, simply faith, justification, by faith alone, through faith in Christ, we're accepted before God. Here's what I want to do in closing, I told you I had three more things for you to write. I want you to, I was trying so hard to think how to have kids come up here and try to do this. Kyle has been going through physical therapy for ACL. Some of you have probably done that as well, or something along that line, and they're doing things to strengthen their knee, and I was watching on a certain beam, trying to hold it, doing what they want, and they have bars on the side to helper, or the physical therapist will actually come up aside and help. And I'm like, the truth of the gospel is like a balance beam. Think about this, task is to stay on this balance beam, but the world outside of us, the people around us and the sin within us are constantly pulling at us, are constantly teetering us, trying to get us off weight, off balance, tempting us to lean us in one direction or another to fall out of step with the truth of the gospel. How can you keep your balance and stay in step with the truth of the gospel? I told you we come back to that phrase, it's a glorious phrase in this passage. So number one, write this, first, and if you got a dry little cute picture of a balance beam on there for you to remember, go ahead and do that. First, number one, look straight ahead. Don't look down. That will only cause your mind to think about falling rather than staying on. Don't anxiously worry about falling into hypocrisy. Instead, fix your gaze straight ahead upon the single point right in front of you, and that point is Jesus Christ. Don't look around from side to side checking out who's in the audience watching, what expressions they're making on their face, look how great they are, or whether they're smiling at you or frowning at you because they're disappointed in you. That's only going to mess you up and cause you to lose your balance. Instead, fix your gaze intently on the one who smile we truly long to see. We should seek to be pleasing to Him rather than being a pleaser of anybody else. Number two, hold out your arms. That's how you stay balanced, right? I don't know how many times I saw, hopefully Kyla is not in here, I'm going to get it later. How many times I saw her like, you need your arms to balance. That's how you stay balanced, and when it comes to staying in step with the truth of the gospel, we have to hold out our arms not just for balance, but also for help, right? If my hands are in here and I fall and I don't have something to support, my hands are now, I'm breaking both my wrists, right? No, no, if you have a buddy on the right and you've got a buddy on the left holding your hands or hands on their shoulders, helping you stay in step with the beam itself. Staying in step with the truth of the gospel is just like that. You're not meant to do it alone. This was so great about Nebraska Christian. We need each other and sometimes we need a brother or a sister to grab us to keep us from falling headlong into hypocrisy and most of the time we need others to speak truth in our lives. I can't see a lot of things. I'm blind to it. I'm really good at justifying the things that I do. I need close people in my life to call them. Do you have people like that? Number three, trust that you'll stay on. If you're fixating on how narrow the beam, the balance beam is, that's going to set you up for failure. The worst thing a gymnast could do is to walk out there with a tape measure right before the competition to measure the balance beam, right? You should know it. The breast Christian, listen to me, the truth of the gospel is not a narrow behavioral sliver that we need to anxiously worry about staying on. Once we're on it, we realize both broad and wide. We need to walk and step with the truth of the gospel confident in God's grace that it will indeed keep us. But let me close with this because I know it's circling in some of your minds. What if I fall? What should I do if I lose my balance and I step away from the truth of the gospel? And I stumble into hypocrisy like Peter did or I stumble into legalism. What can I do if I realize that my conduct is not in step with the truth of the gospel? It's in those moments, right? This big on the bottom of your notes, you return to the truth of the gospel, you return. We should say with the apostol as he told Peter in verse 16, if you look at it, we know that a person is not justified by works of the law, but through faith in Christ Jesus. God freely justifies the ungodly by faith and that is a glorious truth of the gospel. Go back to it again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again for the rest of your life. Or as the famous sandlot said, forever forever. Interestingly, let me close with this Martin Luther actually looked at this passage and he said, this passage in the example of Peter is a great comfort to believers. We might read and go, this isn't comforting at all. The great famous Peter is a hypocrite. This is what he said. This is so good. He says, for it's a great comfort to us here that even such great saints sin, a comfort which those who say that saints cannot sin would take away from us. He continues sin, David, many other celebrated men who were full of the Holy Spirit fell into huge sins, Job and Jeremy accursed the day of their birth, Elijah and Jonah. They grow tired of life and for death. Such heirs and sins of the saints are set forth in order that those who are troubled and desperate. If you're trouble and desperate that you may find comfort that those who are proud may be afraid, no man has ever fallen so grievously that he could not have stood up again. And on the other hand, no one has such a sure footing that he cannot fall. If Peter fell, I too may fall. If he stood up, so can I. This teaches us about true gospel rooted living. You are feeble and frail, even the best and the most godly among us. We are never more than a hare's breath away from hypocrisy ourselves. Who among us is stronger or has greater resolve than the apostle Peter. So we see that our steadfastness or our inherent holiness is never in itself enough. Go to the gospel again and again and again. Let me give you 30, 60 seconds, answer the question that we came back to at the beginning. Is the gospel changing how you walk in every area of your life? How would you answer that? You don't need to show anybody it. E group leaders don't ask about somebody sharing if they don't feel comfortable too. That's between you and the Lord. That is the gospel message doing your life every area and then we'll pray. I've got to pray that this morning, whether it felt long, whether it felt a lot like a whole lot of Bible language of gentiles and Jews and circumcision and justification, maybe just felt like too much to even stay engaged. But God that even through your word and the power of it as we see the phrase that we would be in step with the truth of the gospel, not deviating. This is a message we hear at this school over and over and over every single day. More than anything, hope our hearts not to become calloused, but may ignite, maybe like embers on the fire that ignite it over and over and over, may be the very water that we drink from and thirst no more. Be enough because Christ, you are enough alone in Jesus' name. Amen. [Applause] [BLANK_AUDIO]