Galatians: Called to Be Free (2:1-14)

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Our second reading this morning is from Galatians chapter 2, verses 1 to 14.

Galatians 2:1–14

Then after 14 years, I went up again to Jerusalem with Barnabas, taking Titus along with me.

I went up because of a revelation and sat before them, though privately before those who seemed influential, the gospel that I proclaimed among the Gentiles in order to make sure I was not running or had not run in vain.

But even Titus, who was with me, was not forced to be circumcised, though he was a Greek, yet because of false brothers secretly brought in, who slipped in to spy out our freedom that we have in Christ Jesus, so that they might bring us into slavery.

To them we did not yield in submission, even for a moment, so that the truth of the gospel might be preserved for you.

And from those who seem to be influential, what they were makes no difference to me.

God shows no partiality.

Those I say who seemed influential add nothing to me.

On the contrary, when they saw that I had been entrusted with the gospel to the uncircumcised, just as Peter had been entrusted with the gospel to be circumcised, for he had worked through Peter for his apostolic ministry to the circumcised, worked also through me for mine to the Gentiles.

And when James and Cephas and John, who seemed to be the pillars, perceived that grace that was given to me, they gave the right hand of fellowship to Barnabas and me, that we should go to the Gentiles and they to the circumcised.

Only they asked us to remember the poor, the very thing I was eager to do.

But when Cephas came to Antioch, I opposed him to his face because he stood condemned.

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.

And the rest of the Jews acted hypocritically along with him, so that even Barnabas was led astray by the hypocrisy.

But when I saw that their conduct was not in step with the truth of the gospel, I said to Cephas before them all, if you, through a Jew, live like a Gentile and not like a Jew, how can you force the Gentiles to live like Jews?

The word of the Lord.

Heavenly Father, we now come before you to hear you speak to our hearts and our minds.

But Father, we just ask now that you would take these distractions away, that we would hear your sweet words minister to our hearts and our minds.

Father, please pour out your Holy Spirit upon us in Jesus' name.

Amen.

Please be seated.

Now I've never been to Disneyland.

Um I never got the opportunity as a kid to uh to go off on the pilgrimage to um the land of fantasy, the land of make-believe down in Florida or California.

Never got that privilege.

But I was reading a CBC article this week, which I found really interesting, and I just want to talk a bit about it right now.

What this article was was this journalist um basically reiterating this uh podcast interview he had with this student um from Ottawa U who's doing um a study on this new phenomenon of these adults calling themselves Disney adults.

And what she what this whole podcast and the whole um the whole um article was about was that there's this new uprising of these Disney adults who make the pilgrimage to Disney year in, year out.

And what what what was I found so fascinating about this article was that they were coming at it from that saying that this has almost become like a religious experience, that this new religion of Disney adults is rising up.

And it breaks, it goes down in deeper.

Um I didn't get a chance to listen to the podcast, but I read the article, and it talks about, it gives the people who go every year, it gives them this sense of belonging.

They say when they enter into the park, it's almost like when you enter into one of the great cathedrals, you get that same feeling of the beauty, of the magnificence of it, how big it is, how the sounds and the sense of smell and the feelings that you get.

It gives you this religious experience.

And it allows them to, they say, to be free and to have this self-expression as they do this.

And I find this really interesting because with the the decline of religious attendance in North America, there's now this uptick of the secularists.

Secularists have replaced religion with other means of worship.

I found that article really interesting.

It really got me thinking about a lot of things and how we can see this happening within our culture, that the idea of um worship the worship of God has stopped, but now it's been replaced with these other things that people want to worship.

And I believe this is a deep, deep longing in every human being.

This need to worship, this need to have something, this other thing that you put before your life to worship.

And because of this, it gives you this sense of being accepted, it gives you this sense of feeling free within this worship.

And that is what I this article got me thinking about, and I found it really interesting.

And then as I came and approached the text that we're looking at today in Galatians, this this text shows two of those things.

It's the desire of being accepted and the desire of feeling free.

We're continuing our summer series in the in the letter of Galatians written by the Apostle Paul.

And now we're coming into chapter two.

And this letter is a very profound letter.

It is one that would be very helpful over the years to just reread and reread and reread and take notes and mark it up in your Bible.

It is a profound letter.

It has been called a mini book of Romans.

Um, Romans is a big book, I believe it's 16 chapters, and it some people find it very confusing.

It can be confusing at times, especially in the later chapters.

But Galatians does an excellent job of summarizing the book of Romans.

And I would encourage everyone here, including myself, to always come back to the book of Galatians at least once every couple months and reread it because it is so profound and so rich and so blunt.

Paul is so blunt in it, and I really appreciate that about Paul.

And what we're looking at today, the passage, is talking about acceptance and feeling free.

So if you haven't already, turn to Galatians chapter 2, and we're gonna look at verses 1 to 14.

Galatians 2 · chapter mention

It's in your bulletin.

Um I don't think it comes up on the screen, but if you need a Bible, it's um just at the back.

There's a Bible at the back.

You can take it.

Um, if you don't have a Bible, just bring it home.

It is our gift to you.

I really encourage you to have a Bible so you can see um the what the text that has come before, and then also the text that comes after.

It's very important that you can read the whole letter and not just take verses on their own.

Because when we read something, we always read it entirely.

We don't just take points out of it, because then you can't interpret it properly.

So why is Paul writing this letter?

So he's writing it because people have come into the Galatian church that he planted, he's no longer there.

So he's writing them this letter because the Galatian church, the Galatian church, is already going astray from the gospel.

It's already going off.

It's all like he's he says it, he's astonished that it's happening so quickly.

And he gives the warning that those who teach a false gospel let them be accursed.

He says it twice in chapter one.

But what's going on in this text?

Well, he's continuing his testimony from chapter one, and he's talking about what's going on.

He uses his testimony to speak directly to what's going on into the text.

And what's going on is that these people have come in, and now it's in chapter two, he's using his testimony to prove that they're wrong.

They've been challenging his apostleship, his authority, but he's gonna use his testimony to prove that they're wrong.

And he does this because he wants to show them this very important fact that only the true gospel can give you freedom and bring lasting unity.

I'll say that again.

Only the true gospel can give you freedom and bring lasting unity.

Nothing else can do it.

So, point one, what is the gospel?

Creighton has done an excellent job the past two Sundays talking about what the gospel is, and he keeps reiterating it.

And that's something that's so important about church is that we come here and we remind ourselves of the gospel, the free gift given through Jesus Christ, that he died on the cross, that he came and he rose again after dying on the cross, and that all who've put their faith and trust in him will have eternal life.

It is a great hope.

The gospel is a great hope, it is a great message.

And the faith is freely given.

The grace and mercy are bestowed on those who have trusted in Jesus.

Now, this theme of someone giving himself to save the world runs deep within our inner longings.

We all want this to be true.

We want this so badly to be true.

Even those who don't come to church want this to be true.

If they're honest, they want it to be true.

And to use a pop culture reference or analogy, um, there's gonna be some spoilers here, I'm sorry, but it's been many years this has been out, so I'll just, and I'm not I'm not promoting um the these analogies, I'm not promoting that you should go read the books or you should go watch the movies.

It's just these books, this these movies that have come out have been so profound and have affected our generation, our culture so deeply.

So many people, like millions of people, have been impacted by the Harry Potter and by the whole Marvel universe.

They've been impacted by it.

Whole cult followings have happened from these two stories.

I'm not promoting them, I'm not saying you should go do it.

That's for you to figure out if you want to do that, if you want to read them or not.

But what we have to take account of these.

Harry Potter, I'm just gonna summarize really quick, is about good wizards and bad wizards battling it out.

I'm not gonna give all the details, but at the end, Harry Potter has to give his life in order to defeat um Voldemort.

And then he comes back because he is the last, they call it whore cruxes that holds a person's soul, and he he gives his life to break that.

And this has impacted so many people, so many people have longed for that to be true.

And then with uh with um the Marvel Universe in the final battle, the endgame movie, Iron Man gives his life to save the world.

He gives his life to defeat the ultimate boss, he gives his life for it.

Now, these are all stories, they're myths.

Tolkien has a J.R.

Tolkien, the writer of Lord of the Rings, has a fantastic essay called On Fairy Stories.

And he talks about this desire that's within us all, that we want these stories that we read to be true, but they're myths.

This is actually how C.S.

Lewis came to faith.

Um he was a a he was an hard atheist.

He had nothing could convince him.

But he had this deep longing within him when he read these stories, these myths, that he wanted them to be true.

But here's the thing about that's so profound about the Bible.

The Bible is God working in history.

He is he is it's him working in this world.

That is the gospel message.

That Jesus walked this earth.

Myth became fact.

He would have gotten sick, he would have gotten hungry, he would have gotten tired.

See, this isn't a fairy tale, this isn't otherworldly.

This is a man.

There's historical evidence that he walked this earth.

There's a historical evidence that he rose from the dead after he was crucified.

This is God, and you can go to where he walked on this earth.

It is so profound, the gospel message, that this is historic history, history in the making.

Jesus walked among us, walked this earth, and he died and rose again.

This is Paul's gospel.

He's proclaiming it.

He's using the, and he's using his testimony as an example, as his journey to Jerusalem, to prove that the gospel he preaches to the Gentiles, even though there's people saying he's wrong, is the true gospel.

And this is where we come into the text.

Point two, how does the gospel give freedom?

Verses one to six.

Then after fourteen years, I went up again to Jerusalem with Barnabas, taking Titus along with me, and I went up because of a revelation set before them, though privately before those who seemed influential, the gospel that I proclaim among the Gentiles, in order to make sure that I was not running, or had not run in vain.

But even Titus, who was with me, was not forced to be circumcised, though he was a Greek, yet because of false brothers secretly brought in, who slipped in to spy out our freedom that we have in Christ Jesus, so that we might so that they might bring us into slavery.

To them we did not yield in submission for a moment, so that the truth of the gospel might be preserved for you.

And from those who seemed to be influential, what they were makes no difference to me.

Got God shows no partiality.

Those I say who seemed influential added nothing to me.

Now Titus is a key figure in his testimony when he's bringing it back to use it to prove that the gospel he is proclaiming is the same gospel that the Jerusalem leaders are proclaiming.

And he he uses Titus for this.

He's an important figure in this.

And Titus is a Gentile, he is uncircumcised.

Now you might be thinking, what's the deal with circumcision and uncircumcision?

Why are we talking about this here?

Well, the Jewish law, when God made a covenant with Abraham, God commanded him at all his offspring to be circumcised, to show that they are covenant people.

So Jewish people always always have to be, they always say they have to be circumcised.

And this became a form of legalism.

It became a form that they like, no matter what, if they want to be right with God, they must be circumcised.

But here we see Paul brings Titus to the Jerusalem leaders.

He's very strategic in this.

And he's reflecting, I guess he has come up before that the people have come into the church saying, you must be circumcised.

Yes, we believe Jesus did the work on the cross.

Yes, we believe Jesus is the Messiah, he's the one, but you need to be circumcised, you still need to follow the Mosaic law.

But Titus was a Gentile.

He didn't grow up the law, he knew nothing not much about it.

So Paul is dealing with legalism here within Galatia church, and that's why he's using his testimony.

The Judaizers are Christians, but they still believe that you must follow the Mosaic law to a T.

You must be circumcised.

So Paul brings up Titus here for a very important reason.

And you might be thinking, well, Matt, this seems so unrelatable that we're talking about circumcision here.

Well, the thing that's going on here is that it's a form of legalism.

It's a form of rules to make yourself right with God.

And that's what Paul is speaking against, because the gospel that these Judaizers are proclaiming says that you must follow these rules in order to be right with God.

Now, it is relatable.

You might be thinking it's not, but it is.

And the bring the make this relatable for us, we can think easily about, we can critique ourselves.

Some Christians like to make these rules that you need to pray every day.

You need the if you want to be a good Christian, you need to pray morning and evening.

You need to read your Bible morning and evening.

You need to do all these things.

You need to be a very pious person, upright person, give to the poor if you want to become right with God.

Other Christians say you must do all these certain kinds of rituals, all these things.

You must bow here, you must stand there, you must raise your hands here, you must be very solemn here.

They form these rituals and they say this is how you get right with God.

And other Christians, cultural Christians, say you must you must be involved in all the social justice movements.

You must be at the forefront, raising the flag or walking down a street to be able to get right with God.

You must be very involved.

Now, these are important, these are important things.

But if they take the ultimate, if they take the ultimate and distort the gospel, what the true message of the gospel is, it gets becomes lost, it becomes fuzzy, and you are now trying to make yourself right with God.

But that's not Paul's gospel, that's not the gospel.

The gospel is that there is no way you can get right with God.

It is only through Jesus' work on the cross.

It is only through that.

And we see here in the text that when he brings Barnabas and Titus to the Jerusalem apostles, they're not forcing Titus to be circumcised.

So they're saying here, what's going on here is that we do not teach legalism.

We only teach the true gospel of Jesus Christ's work on the cross.

That's why they don't make Titus become circumcised here.

And that's why Paul is using it here as a testimony to speak directly against those who have seeped into the Galatia church and who are teaching that.

It breaks legalism.

The gospel breaks legalism.

But at the same time, we see the gospel, it breaks this, it's an old word called antinomiaism.

And but just to put it simply, it is that through God, this idea that through God's grace, we don't have to follow God's moral law anymore.

We can do whatever we want.

But look what comes next.

Because the gospel speaks it directly against this as well.

Verses 7 to 10.

On the contrary, when they saw the Jerusalem disciples, that I had been entrusted with the gospel to the uncircumcised, just as Peter had been entrusted with the gospel to the circumcised, for he who worked through Peter for his apostolic ministry to the circumcised, worked also through me for mine to the Gentiles.

And when James and Cephas and John, who seemed to be pillars, received the grace that was given to me, they gave the right hand of fellowship to Barnabas and to me, that we should go to the Gentiles and they to the circumcised.

Only they asked us to remember the poor, the very thing I was eager to do.

Now, just a quick note, when you see Peter and Cephas, it's the same person.

Paul just switches, um, he switches and starts using the Hebrew name of Cephas.

It's the same person.

It's Peter, the man who walked with Jesus for three years when Jesus was doing his ministry.

The man who probably know who knew if Jesus snored or not.

He knew he would have known if what Jesus' food was.

This is the man that was so close to Jesus.

He was one of the disciples.

So just don't get confused on that.

It's Peter.

Even as if it says Cephas.

And just as we're going through this, Paul has been commissioned by Jesus to go to the Gentiles.

And now he gets the right hand of fellowship, which means that he's gotten the thumbs up, that he's been playing the right gospel.

And what's a Gentile?

A Gentile is someone who worships many gods.

He can do whatever he wants.

He goes through life as someone who has no leaning or no commitment to anyone, any gods.

He just goes through and does whatever he wants.

He can do whatever he wants.

There's no rules on his life.

And you might be thinking, well, how is this relevant?

Well, there's this upbringing, this uptick, which I believe connects right to this Disney article.

Is that this whole idea of my truth, that I define my truth?

The idea that you define meaning of truth.

Truth becomes relative anymore now.

There's no solid truth.

It's whatever as you wake up in the morning and how you feel, and that defines your truth through the day.

And it could change.

It could change at lunchtime, your truth.

It's however you want it to be.

But Christians fall into this as well.

They start to question God's word.

They start to question, is that actually the truth?

They claim we need to let the culture interpret in God's word.

And churches become clubs and no longer following the truth of the gospel, constantly searching for truth.

But the gospel sets you free from this constant search of truth, of relative truth.

See, Jesus is a historical fact.

Jesus' death on the cross is a historical fact.

Jesus' resurrection is a historical fact.

And because of this, we set our hope on absolute truth that never changes.

So the gospel breaks this idea of legalism, of these rules to make yourself right with God.

And then the gospel also breaks this idea that I'm right with God, I can do whatever I want, and I'll get to heaven in the end.

It breaks those two things.

So the gospel is something else.

It's not legalism and it's not relative truth.

Do whatever you want.

It's something completely different.

It sets you free from these two things.

And just to use a quick analogy, I keep setting my hopes on the current food prices, it won't go high.

But every time I go to the store, they're higher.

They change.

The gospel doesn't change.

It's absolute truth.

The gospel sets you free from legalism, that which enslaves you.

The gospel sets you free from constant search for meeting, which enslaves you.

This idea of searching for your identity, it slaves enslaves you.

Because when you put your faith and trust in Jesus, your identity is that you are a child of God.

Yes, you may have different cultural backgrounds, but you are a child of God.

And that is great truth, that there is freedom.

The freedom is freely given.

The gospel is freely given to all those.

This is why Paul is using it here.

He's using his testimony to show this to the Galatian church that he's been teaching that they know who he is.

He wants to remind them of the gospel truth.

And now point three the gospel brings lasting unity.

Verses eleven to fourteen.

But when Peter came to Antioch, I opposed him to his face, because he stood condemned.

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, 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 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?

You might be thinking, Well, isn't this the complete opposite of unity?

If these two men who are then pillars in spreading the gospel of the church, how you see here that they're not in unity.

Isn't this teaching something completely opposite?

Well, is and you might be also thinking, Well, is this telling me that I need to start calling people out publicly?

No.

This is a unique situation.

The gospel truth, the very truth of the teaching of God's free grace to people, was at stake.

And we all must stand for that truth when it comes.

And Paul here stands for it, right?

Right in front of everyone, he does this.

Now I'm not telling that we should do this.

I'm just saying this is what happened here in the text.

Paul stands up for the gospel.

And what we see what's going on here is Peter is falling back into a form of racial prejudice.

It's this prejudice that the Jews thought they were better than the Gentiles because they had God's law and that these Gentile unbelievers, these they called them Gentile sinners, were just doing whatever they wanted.

And they they considered the Gentiles unclean.

And if they socialized with the Gentiles, they would be unclean themselves and would have to go through all these religious ceremonies to become clean again in order that they can come into the temple and worship God.

So this is racial prejudice.

Anyone who puts down someone because of race and elevates themselves above them is committing racism, or you can call it racial prejudice.

Paul saw this happening and acted because it was hurting the truth of the gospel that all are equal in front of God, and that all are saved through grace.

That is it.

That is the gospel message.

You put your faith in Jesus and you are saved.

It's great hope.

You become a child of God.

Well, we might be thinking, well, Matt, I would never do this.

I would think this too.

I hope I would never do this racial prejudice, what's going on here in the text.

But hypocrisy creeps in as well.

And you see here that Paul's calling Peter out also on his hypocrisy because he's teaching one thing and then he does this other thing.

It could happen in other forms.

It could happen in ways that we don't want to sit with these people with certain people because we find them hard to deal with.

So we go sit with the people we find really easy to deal with.

And that's creating a segregation.

We avoid certain people, or that we think our church is better than other churches, or that we think God would never save that person, but he would save me, because I'm better than that person.

The gospel breaks that.

It breaks that because the gospel brings lasting unity.

And it is the unity that all are equal in Jesus.

That we are all here.

We're all different people, we have different walks of life, different upbringings, different statuses in life, but we are equal with God through Jesus Christ together, and that is a great thing.

We are family, we are brothers and sisters in Christ.

See, we have more in common, if you have put your faith in Jesus, you have more in common with a nomad in Mongolia, someone who lives off the land, off the grid, who is a believer in Jesus, than your neighbor who is not a believer in Jesus.

You have more in common because of Jesus is their hope in life and death.

See, Peter was falling back into his old ways, denying Jesus again, and he was becoming a hypocrite because he was doing that.

And that's why Paul says at the end here though you act like a Gentile, but you teach the Gentiles to act like Jews, he's becoming a hypocrite again, and he's falling into racial prejudice.

But as I said before, only the true gospel can give you freedom and bring lasting unity.

It is through Jesus, and that is it.

That is through the hope of Jesus Christ on the cross.

And then we also, just very quickly, is that churches can preach the true gospel.

They can preach it, that Jesus is the only way.

But as it said in verse 10, only they asked us to remember the poor, the very thing I was eager to do.

If a church doesn't help those who are hard, um, who are poor maybe in with finances or poor in spirit, they're not acting out in the gospel.

We must help those of less who have um who are in need.

And I find great, great comfort that we just finished the backpack drive, that we've been able to bless, I believe, those 24 families with the backpacks.

That is great work, and that is the work of a gospel church is to help the poor, to help those in need.

The true gospel of Jesus Christ allows you to be truly human and it satisfies all longings, that you are fully accepted in Christ, that you are accepted through Jesus' work on the cross, and you are fully free because of God's great love for you.

Let's pray.

Heavenly Father, um, we thank you for the great truth of the gospel, that it is um that we that it is all through Jesus' work, that you sent your son for us to die on the cross, to rise again, that we can put our faith and trust in Jesus' work, his finished work, that it is not about us trying to follow certain rules to get right with you, or it's not about us trying to go on this endless search of our own truth to get right with you, but it is only through Jesus' work.

And we thank you for that, Father, and we ask that you would remind us daily with that with our through our hearts and our minds.

In Jesus' name.

Amen.

Thank you for listening today.

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