Sermon Tone Analysis

Bookmarks & Needs:

B: ; ; Acts 11

Housekeeping Stuff & Announcements:

Welcome guests to the family gathering, introduce yourself.

Thank the band and the Saltzmans.

Invite guests to parlor after service.

Hot Topics will be this Thursday night, August 15, at 6:30 in Miller Hall.

Topic this month will be Addictions, and our featured speaker will be Jennifer Smith.

Feel free to invite others to come with you.

Family Lego night this coming Saturday night, August 17, at 6:00 pm in Miller Hall.

Bring your own Legos, your creativity, and an excitement to have a great time.

Shine: Reimagine Charity event.

This is an event hosted in part by Shine ABQ, who we and Monterey Baptist Church are partnering with to share the love of Christ at Manzano High School.

We had kind of an organizational meeting about Shine on Wednesday this week, so more information on Shine will be coming soon.

Reimagine Charity is also sponsored by the City of Albuquerque’s One Albuquerque program.

It will be held on Friday, August 23, from 9am to noon at Sid Cutter’s Pilots’ Pavilion at Balloon Fiesta Park.

Cost is $20 payable directly to them, and that cost includes lunch, but you must purchase your ticket by August 16, as tickets will not be available at the door.

Visit shineabq.org/reimaginecharity

to find out more or to register.

CareNet’s Annual Walk for Life is going to be held on August 24.

There are four locations where you can take part in this fundraising event for another ministry partner: East Mountain, Northeast Albuquerque, Rio Rancho, and Los Lunas.

Go to carenetabq.org/events for more information or to register.

CareNet’s Annual Walk for Life is going to be held on August 24.

See the Page for more information.

Shine: Reimagine Charity event.

shineabq.org/reimaginecharity

Opening

Opening

We’re in a middle of a series through the book of Galatians that we’re calling “Dear Church.”

We’re going verse-by-verse through this epistle of the Apostle Paul to the churches in the region of Galatia, an epistle which many have referred to as one of Paul’s greatest works.

Paul’s primary focus in this letter is to deal with these legalists, the Judaizers, who claimed that people should have to follow the whole Jewish law to be saved.

Last week, we considered Paul’s mission as God’s appointed Apostle to the Gentiles, and part of that mission is to preserve the Gospel of grace… in his case against the threat of legalism: that salvation is found in Jesus + something else, instead of just in Jesus alone.

Paul had already dealt with this question of salvation by grace alone or by works.

In this week’s passage, Paul will continue his defense of the Gospel of grace, in this case from a surprising source—his brother and Christ and fellow Apostle, Peter:

Pray

gal 2:11-14

I had originally planned on going through verse 21 today, but with as full as this service has been this morning, I decided after starting to write that I would not do the text justice by rushing through it.

So we will look at 15-21 next week.

One thing to address right off is the name “Cephas.”

So here we have a little conflict between some of those who were pillars in the early church.

This happened after the visit we talked about last week, perhaps even after Paul’s first missionary journey.

This could have even been the situation that precipitated the Jerusalem Council of 49 AD that we see in Acts 15.

Really quickly: the reason Paul calls Peter “Cephas” is that “Cephas” (or more accurately, ke-PHAS), is the Aramaic for the Greek petros, or Peter.

Both mean stone or rock.

Aramaic was the “common language” of Palestine in the early NT period.

The church at Syrian Antioch was made up primarily of Gentile believers.

When Peter came to Antioch to visit, he spent time with these brothers in Christ, even going so far as to eat with them.

For a Hebrew man, this was a big deal, because under the Hebrew Law, just eating with a Gentile was considered by some enough to make you unclean.

The point of those laws was to keep the Jews as a separate and distinct people.

In their culture, sitting and having a meal together was more than just spending some social time together: it was a symbol of your acceptance of them and your approval of them.

That didn’t fit in the Hebrew mindset of how they thought they should relate to Gentiles.

Verse 12 tells us that when the “certain men from James” came to Antioch, Paul records that Peter “withdrew and separated himself,” from them.

And in so doing, he tweaked the rest of the Jewish believers, even down to Barnabas (v.

13).

The problem is that Peter knew better!

For us to fully understand just how well Peter knew this better, we need to look at and 11.

In , there is recorded the narrative of a godly Gentile, a centurion named Cornelius.

An angel appeared to him and told him to send for Peter, which he does, sending three men off to find Peter and bring him back to see Cornelius.

Peter has a vision while the men are traveling to retrieve him.

So Peter is shown a vision

So Peter is shown a vision three times: all the animals of the earth were lowered on something like a sheet, and he is told to go and kill whatever he would like for food.

The problem is that a major part of the Law was what you could and couldn’t eat, just like who you could and couldn’t hang out with.

So Peter says, “no way… not gonna do it.”

God tells Peter, “What God has made clean, do not call impure.”

So Peter is shown a vision

Right after this vision is when the men from Cornelius show up:

Acts 10:17-

Peter shows that he was paying attention to his vision and then what happened immediately afterwards.

He goes to see Cornelius, and does so specifically because of the vision that he has had from God: even going so far as to remind Cornelius that his being there is forbidden under the Jewish law, but that God has revealed that he is not to call any person impure or unclean.

(is there someone that you wouldn’t share the Gospel with?)

Cornelius tells Peter about his own angelic vision, and that he has gathered his family so that they could all hear what Peter has to say.

acts 10:34-

So Peter preaches the Gospel clearly to Cornelius and his family, and with amazing result:

These Gentiles: a Roman centurion and his family, hear the message of the Gospel, believe it, are saved, and are filled with the Holy Spirit, just like the Jewish believers.

And as soon as people hear about these Gentiles coming to faith, the problem begins—the same problem that Paul is dealing with in Jerusalem, and in Antioch, and in Galatia—people who think that the law has to be followed in order to be saved.

acts 11:

Notice what they were called here: “the circumcision party.”

After they hear his whole story, though, they respond appropriately:

Peter was one of the earliest apostles to preach to Gentiles, and he saw them radically saved just as the Jews had been.

And now those who had argued with him glorified God because He had saved Gentiles.

So Peter knew better.

He knew that the Gospel of God’s grace was for the Gentiles as well.

He knew what God had done—that the Jews and the Gentiles had become one in Christ.

But sometimes he still didn’t act like it.

So what was the big deal with Peter withdrawing?

When I lived in Silver City, probably about 8th grade, a kid about two years younger than me moved in on our block.

His name was Danny.

To be honest, Danny and I didn’t have a whole lot in common.

But my yard was the place where we would play football and wiffle ball (it was kind of a square yard, so it made for a good sports field).

Danny was small (makes sense, given that he was a 6th grader), and not particularly talented.

He wasn’t cool like me (yeah, right).

Anyway, he had one thing really going for him: he had a game room at his house.

Yep.

He had a pinball machine, a pool table, ping-pong, and an actual arcade game… I think it was Space Invaders.

So when I wanted something to do that I didn’t have, I’d go hang out at Danny’s house.

But (and I regret to say it), if another offer came up, or if someone I thought was more mature or more important asked why I was with a 6th grader, I’d throw him right under the bus.

He was good to hang out with as long as no one else knew.

This is the problem with what happened with Peter.

The Gentile believers were “good enough” as long as there were no other Jewish believers from Jerusalem around.

It sent a message: that Peter saw the Jewish Christians as better than the Gentile Christians.