Portrait of Paul Pt. 2 Notes

Good morning and welcome to Redeemer Church! I am Michael Badger, one of the pastors of Redeemer Church and it is so good to see you all this morning! We are currently in a sermon series on the book of Galatians. Now this sermon series is somewhat of a look at this book from 30,000 feet, looking down at the landscape of this book, taking a look at the primary points that the author, Paul, addresses in this book.

Lat week we closed the first chapter Galatians and in this first chapter of saw three important things:

One, that Paul was an apostle, meaning that his message, teaching and authority over the churches did not come from another human being, but it came from Jesus Himself. And he vigorously defended this point in chapter 1:11-24.

Secondly, Paul was writing this book to these churches in the region known as Galatia because there was a group, known as the Judaizers, coming in to discredit Paul, claiming that he was not an apostle and that his message was some concoction of another human being. And these Judaizers believed that if they could discredit Paul, they could replace his message with their own message.

Thirdly, we learned the contrasting messages of Peter and the Judaizers. The message that Paul preached was the gospel of grace, meaning that salvation only comes through the free gift of God that is given to you through faith in Jesus Christ and repentance of sin, which is the turning away from your sin to follow after Jesus. That is it, there is nothing that you can do to gain nor keep your salvation, it is all by the grace of God. And His pleasure in you and your relationship with Him ultimately comes from what Jesus accomplished on your behalf on the cross. There is no penance you have to complete, your debt that you owed God due to your sin was paid at the cross. That is the message of grace that Paul preached.

In contrast, the Judaizers were teach a false gospel devoid of grace. That you must not simply have faith in Jesus but you must add on works. And for the Judaizers that meant keeping the OT Mosaic law. Without doing those works, you faith in Jesus is not enough to save you. Today, we fall into similar false teaching. If you are here today, and you believe it is doing good things, it is going to church every Sunday or at least on Easter and Christmas, it is being consistent in your quiet time in the Bible or prayer that garners you merit before God, then friend, with love, you are wrong. That belief, torpedoes the true gospel, it annihilates it. It cheapens the grace of God by saying that God is not mighty enough to save you alone, that Jesus sacrifice on the cross was not quite adequate and that we, fallen human beings must add to our salvation in order for it to be truly effective. We are saying that God needs our help and it truly on ourselves to be saved.

So those are the three important points we saw in Galatians 1; Paul’s apostleship and his gospel of grace finds their origins not in man but in Jesus, Paul wrote this book because the Galatians were being taken over by the Judaizers who sought to replace Paul’s authority and message, and the message of Paul was the good, true gospel of salvation by grace alone through faith alone, and the Judaizers message was a false gospel of belief in Jesus plus your own works.

Intro Chapter 2

To continue Paul’s emphatic point that salvation only comes by grace, the unmerited favor given by God, and to drive home the truth of his authority as an apostle, Paul dives into two stories from his interactions with the other apostles.

Read with me again verses 1-10 in chapter 2 so we can see what is going on here:

What is at stake in this passage is a fractured foundation. There are many things that Christian churches can and do disagree. Things such as the mode of baptism, how often to take the Lords Supper, how to structure church leadership, we can even disagree on topics such as the relationship between free will and God’s sovereignty. And all of those things are not fellowship breaking. But these are not the issues Paul was journeying to Jerusalem for. He was not going to see the other apostles to make sure that the carpets in their churches matched the carpets in his churches, that wasn’t the issue.

Look again at verses 1-3. The reason Paul was given a vision to travel to Jerusalem was to see if Paul was running or had run in vain. Now what is meant here is not to see whether or not the gospel he was preaching is true, that was already settled in his mind and heart because he had seen and experienced the risen Christ and was instructed in a mysterious and miraculous way by Him. What Paul means here is that he wanted to be sure that the other apostles were preaching the same gospel of grace that he was preaching. He wanted to be sure that the foundations of the church were not fractured, that the integrity of the gospel remained intact among all the apostles.

So Paul grabs his companions and sets off for Jerusalem for the first time in 14 years.

Now, look back in verse 1 at Paul’s choice of companions. Barnabas was a hellenized Jew, meaning he was a Jewish man who took on some of the aspects of the Greek culture he grew up in. But Titus was a Greek gentile, a non-Jewish man, who had come to faith through Paul’s preaching of the gospel.

Now his choice in taking Titus was very purposeful. As a Greek gentile, Titus did not adhere to the Jewish laws that are found in the OT, especially the law that said that Jewish boys at the age of 8 days old must be circumcised as a sign that they belonged to the covenant people of God. It was one of the most important Jewish laws and customs. So essentially Paul was bringing Titus along with him as a case study, as an example of what God was doing among the Gentiles! That Jesus was saving these people through faith in Him without need to adhere to the OT laws.

When Paul, Barnabas and Titus reached Jerusalem, much to the immense relief to Titus, they were warmly met by the other apostles and after hearing the gospel of grace that Paul preached acknowledged him as a fellow apostle and acknowledged and encouraged Paul’s mission to bring the gospel to the Gentiles.

So Paul’s worry of a fractured foundation was put to rest! And he was able to demonstrate to the Galtians, the ones who would be reading this book, that though he was preaching independently from the other apostles, isolated to the North, their messages about salvation through faith in Jesus alone was the same. As verse 6 makes clear, no one added anything to Paul, meaning there was nothing about the gospel that the other apostles thought he needed to change or add! They were in complete unity!

Now this should be encouraging to us in multiple ways

The first is that we do not need to fear disunity in the Bible about the clear message of Jesus. From the gospel of Matthew to the book of Revelation, the story remains the same. There is no disagreement among the authors of the New Testament, not just because they knew each other and colaborated or read the others letters. Even if they did that there would still be discrepancies and contradictions. No, there is absolute unity in the message of the gospel because it was divinely inspired by the Holy Spirit, working through these men to write the words God ordained, God desired to be written. These ultimately are His word and His word is true and without contradiction!

The second is that the main drive force of unity in the Christian church is the gospel. That we are sinners who must repent of our sin and place our faith in the life, death and resurrection of Jesus as our only hope for salvation. Though we may disagree on other things that are important, we can have unity and fellowship as long as the core of the gospel remains the same. We can worship side by side, focusing on what unites, that we are beloved of God!

But in the pursuit of unity among believers, we must still be cautious. We must not and cannot compromise the integrity of the gospel for the sake of unity. Look with me one more time at verses 4-5.

What would have been the path of least resistance here for Paul? To simply give in the these Judaizers. Remember, the Judaizers claimed to be Christians. They believed whole-heartedly that you must have faith in Jesus Christ to be saved, they did not deny that! But these false-brothers, as Paul called them, saw the freedom that Paul, Barnabas and Timothy had in Christ. That they were free from the bondage of the law, that because Jesus kept the law perfectly on their behalf, they no longer had to! And the Judaizers despised them for it, and they sought to strip the freedom away from them and bind them once again to the chains of the law. And in this specific instance, that would mean for Titus to follow the Jewish law of be circumcision in order to be truly saved.

It would have been easy to say ok, for the sake of unity we will allow for this compromise, we will allow for this momentary distortion of the law! It would have been easier for Paul, maybe not Timothy, but easier for Paul make this compromise for the sake of unity.

But brothers and sisters, this would not have been unity. Why? Because we as Christians are united with Christ. 1 Corinthian 1:30 says, “And because of him you are in Christ Jesus, who became to us wisdom from God, righteousness and sanctification and redemption,” So if we are united in Christ, we cannot be united to those who are not in Christ. To those who believe in a false gospel, who believe anything, anything apart from the true gospel of grace! That means we cannot seek a spiritual unity, we cannot give credence to Mormonism, to the specific teachings of the Roman Catholic Church, to Islam, to Jehovah’s Witnesses, to New Ageism, or any other worldly religion because they are opposed to the gospel of grace found in Scripture given to us by God. Now, we are called to love others from these differing worldviews, in fact we are called to sacrifice everything we have in order to love them and share the gospel with them, but to seek spiritual unity with them, to say that their belief system is equally true as our own, to adopt the worlds deadly view of religion and abandon the only name by which men and women can be saved, it is to about the gospel of Jesus Christ.

And brothers and sisters, there is immense pressure in our culture today for you to do just that. But that is nothing new. All throughout the centuries, even down to the early church, there has always been pressures from the world and pressure from the enemy, Satan, to compromise the truth of the gospel, to back away from the truth and become a hypocrite, saying in your mind that you believe the gospel, but when faced with the world to act contrary to your beliefs.

Even the apostles, the pillars of the Christian faith were not immune to this, to falling into hypocrisy. Let’s look at the next story Paul shares with us from his time with the other apostles in verses 11-14:

This is a very dramatic and intense episode. Paul is confronting the apostle Peter. Allow me to quickly give you some background info that will help shed a little bit of light on what exactly is the problem with what Peter is doing.

Antioch was a city that was primarily made up of Gentiles and therefore the church that was established in this city was made of Gentile Christians. When Peter arrived in Antioch, he began to eat and spend time with these Christians, and this was actually a very big deal. You see, as we mentioned before, for centuries Jews held to the a set of God given laws, which included not just circumcision, but dietary laws as well. The purpose of these laws were to set them apart from all other nations, to set them apart as the people of God, and to even eat with someone who was not a Jew was considered to them to be unclean and to be accepting of their pagan ways. This is why it was such a big deal when in Mark 2:16, Jesus was seen eating with sinners and tax collectors. But something happened to Peter in Acts 10 that changed everything. For the sake of time, allow me to paraphrase it for you and explain what happened:

In Acts 10, Peter was on a rooftop praying when he became hungry. And while the owners of the household he was staying began to prepare something, Peter was given a vision from Jesus. In this vision, Peter saw a large sheet, being lowered from the sky by its four corners. On this sheet was every animal that was forbidden for Jews to eat. And a voice from heaven called to Peter three times to kill and eat these animals. But Peter’s respoonse was shock! He was a Jewish man and these were unclean animals that would make him unclean if he ate of them! But the voice from heaven said to Peter, “What God has made clean, do not call unclean.” God is revealing to Peter that because of Jesus obeying all the laws of God perfectly, including all of the feasts they had to observe, circumcision, and every dietary law, that they were no longer bound to those things! God was saying, "Peter, a new era of redemptive history has dawned; the Messiah has come. The sacrificial and ceremonial laws of the Old Testament have done their preparatory work; let them go! Peter was free to eat whatever pleased him! But more importantly, this vision signified the tearing down the dividing wall between Jews and Gentiles. God, in this vision, was revealing that salvation did not only belong to the Jews, but to the Gentiles as well, for all who believe in Jesus!

So fast-forward back to our passage in here in Galatians 2, and we see Peter doing what he should be doing, eating and having fellowship with Gentile believers.

But read again what happens in verse 12, “For before certain men came from James, he was eating with the Gentiles; but when they came he drew back and separated himself, fearing the circumcision party (another name for the false brothers or the Judaizers).

Now we can only speculate what it means that these men, this circumcision party, came from the apostle James. Most likely that they were in Jerusalem harassing James and he sent them away, so they decided to come to Antioch. But what we do know for sure is that Peter feared them. Peter, who God revealed the beautiful mystery of the gospel to, that salvation is for the Jew and the Gentile, not by works but by grace through faith, who God revealed in a dramatic fashion the freedom Christians have in Christ, crumpled and withdrew his fellowship with the Gentile Christians when faced with the pressures of the circumcision party and began to play the part of a hypocrite.

The fear of man so overwhelmed Peter that he abandoned the gospel of grace that he knew to be true and began to act in a way contrary to his beliefs! And what is worse is that verse 13 tells us that the rest of the Jewish Christians, even Paul’s companion Barnabas followed the lead of Peter and also began to act hypocritically, by acting as if the false gospel of the Judaizers, the circumcision party was the correct gospel and that these Gentile believers who they once had fellowship with were second-rate Christians because they did not meet the requirements of faith plus works, faith plus adherence to the OT law. And Paul, seeing clearly in verse 14 that their hypocrisy was out of line with the true gospel of grace, called out Peter in front of everyone, saying, “That just moments ago you were eating like a Gentile, completely free from the OT law that was fulfilled in Christ, but now, now that the these men who you fear are around, you are playing a completely different tune! You are saying that they must now live like a Jew!”

Now, brothers and sisters, this story of Paul is difficult to preach on. Not because there is anything overly ambiguous or confusing or hard to understand. No, the real reason this passage is so hard to preach on is simply because the Bible often acts as a mirror. When we read it, we often see our own reflection staring back at us, warts and all. And in this case, when we look at this passage, we can see our reflections in not just Paul, not just in the great defender of the faith who in verse 5 of our passage, did not waiver in the face of opposition, but we can see our reflection staring back at us in Peter.

I know I will not be the only one that feels this way, and that is because everyone, at some point in their Christian walk will in one way or another be guilty of being a hypocrite. To surrender to the fear of man when we should take a stand for the gospel! When we are speaking with someone about the religion they follow and we know we should say something to them, that what they believe is not the truth but we just nod along, fearing confrontation. To, as we said earlier, compromise what we know to be true about the gospel in order to placate the world and avoid an uncomfortable, or even dangerous or reputation damaging situation.

And, like Peter, we inadvertently lead others astray. We begin to point people away from the narrow path that leads to heaven and encourage in their journey on the path that leads to destruction. And we Christians, who are meant to be shining the light of Jesus to the wayward and lost, begin to hide that light under a basket.

But Christian, even in your hypocrisy, take comfort. There is forgiveness and freedom from shame and guilt. Our friend Peter here was as thick headed a disciple as they come. You see Peter not only acted hypocritically here, he did so in the hour he was needed by Jesus the most, at His crucifixion. Peter was identified as a follower of Jesus three times and three times Peter, fearing man, denied his Lord. But upon the resurrection of Jesus, Jesus did not send Peter away from Him, He did not punish Him or seek vengeance, but in John 21 we are told that Jesus ate with Peter, broke bread with him, asked Him to care for His sheep, meaning the church. And Christian, Jesus forgave Peter of His hypocrisy in this passage as well.

If you are carrying around guilt and shame for denying Jesus, for acting hypocritally, Christian, you must know that you are forgiven. Jesus has already forgiven you and He does not want you to cast your eyes down to the ground out of fear that He will chastise you or not accept you any more, but He wants you to cast your eyes up in joy because just as Jesus forgave Peter time and time again for his hypocrisy, he has forgiven you!

And next time you are in a situation where you are given to roads to walk down, to either make a stand for Christ as Paul did in verse 5, or to act against what you know to be true as Peter did in verse 12, hold on tightly to this truth found in 2 Tim. 1:7 and pray it with all your might, “For God gave us not a spirit of fear, but of power and love and self-control.” God has given you, by His Spirit, the power to face every opposition that comes your way. Even if that opposition destroys your reputation or worse, you have been given the divine power to stand firm in your faith and boldly proclaim the freedom that is in Christ, to be a beacon to those who desperately need a savior!

Now, as I close, I want to take this opportunity to mention on last thing on the topic of hypocrisy. As I said a moment ago, every Christian, as some point in their walk with the Lord, because they still struggle with sin, will fall into acting hypocritically. And this was true even for those Christians we least expect it from! Just take a look at the last five years of Christian news. It will not take you much searching to find story after story on Christian pastors or leaders who have been caught in affairs, who have been complicit in hiding sexual misconduct in their churches, Christian leaders who have even left the faith saying that they have been battling unbelief for years as they get up to the pulpit every Sunday morning and preach the glories of God!

And the unbelieving world can look in on the church and see this hypocrisy and wonder “why in the world would I want to be a part of that?” Or Christians can see the hypocrisy that can come from these trusted leaders, from these supposedly godly men, and the bedrock of their faith can be shaken and they can begin to doubt every thing that is in this book because if the one who was teaching this to them, who was speaking into their lives and telling them how to love and follow God can be such a hypocrite and live such a lie than surely the faith which they hypocritically preached must also be nothing but a lie! And their faith crumbles. So there are two points I want to make concerning this:

One, there is no perfect church. Every body of believers is made up of first and foremost, sinners who were saved solely by the grace of God. There is not a church out there that is totally free from sin and hypocrisy. There is no church that you can ever join where you do not run some risk of being offended by someone or possibly hurt in some way and that is simply because we are a family of people who are still in the midst of our struggle with sin. And as you visit churches, and you believe you found the one where everyone seems perfect and no one struggles with sin, and they play the perfect music you like and the pastor never says anything that makes you feel uncomfortable, run from it. Get as far away from it as you can because they are putting on a front, a facade, they are play-acting and preaching a gospel foreign to the one found in Scripture and soon the mask will slip off and reveal the ugliness underneath. There is no perfect church.

My second point is this; We as Redeemer Church want to make it clear that we are just that, sinners saved by the loving grace of God who need His mercies and forgiveness daily and who rely on the love, grace and mercy of our church family to forgive us when we act hypocritically and sinfully towards each other. And you and I will need much forgiveness from one another, that is why Jesus, when asked how many times a person is supposed to forgive another person, He answers by saying you are to forgive someone who does you wrong 70x7 times.

Forgiveness is the heart of the Christian faith! Do you understand friends, the gravity of what God forgave you of? Do you fully understand it? You and I sinned, meaning we disobeyed the God who spoke the universe into existence. We chose to spit in the face of the Almighty and say to Him that our way is better than His and because of that we broke everything. The reason evil is in this world, the reason why we get old, the reason we suffer, the reason we die is because of us! Because of our sin! We are the cause of it all! And get this, you and I deserve eternal punishment, not because of the details of our sins, but because of the one who we sinned against. A single sin, whether it be the most heinous, evil and sadistic thing you can think of, or whether it be the most innocent of white lies, because it is done against an infinite and holy God, it is deserving, we are deserving of an infinite punishment. But instead of delivering that to us He chose to die in our stead, to forgive. Please feel the importance of that. He could have annihilated us, but he he didn’t, He forgave. So head these words from Jesus in Matthew 6:14, “For if you forgive other people when they sin against you, your heavenly Father will forgive you.” To accept the forgiveness of Jesus for your sins, but to withhold forgiveness from others, friends, is to live in the deepest hypocrisy. If that is you, brothers and sisters, repent and ask the Lord to help you forgive just as the He forgave you. Don’t live in a hypocrisy that sucks the life from your relationship with God.

And if you are here today and you have not yet experienced the forgiveness of your sins, have not yet experienced the freedom of salvation that comes from placing your faith in Jesus as your Lord and Savior, please do not wait. You may be thinking to yourself that before you can come to Jesus you must first stop cussing, or you must first start behaving better or that you need to get your life together first and then when all your ducks are in a row, then you can worry about Jesus. Friends, Christianity is not moralism. You don’t “prepare yourself for salvation by keeping a list of moral do’s and dont’s! Jesus has kept all those for you so come as you are, place your faith in Him, repent of your sins and He will give you a new heart! He will make you a brand new creation! And friends, you will never have all your ducks in a row and you are not guaranteed tomorrow, so do not tarry in coming to Him, there is forgiveness and there is, salvation and there is deep abiding joy to be had for those who are in Christ Jesus.

Please pray with me.