How Are We Justified? | Ayren Nelson

We're seeing this Christ is our firm foundation

Where We put our hope and our trust.

Christ is my firm.

Everything around Shake

won.

That's good news for somebody today. He won.

I still, I

He's never,

come on.

Let's say he won.

He won. We say he won't.

He won't,

won't

Fail.

He Won't. He

Won't.

He won't.

Come on. He won't. He won.

Won't. Let's go. Let go. Christ,

He won't

In the good and in the bad.

Jesus is faithful on the days

that it seems like it's all coming down.

Jesus is faithful.

We can stand in peace and trial because of who Jesus is.

Come on, we're gonna sing. Rain came and the wind blew.

So I

Won't.

He won't.

No, he won. Do you believe that today?

Church, come on.

Come On. We believe that He is

Christ.

What a beautiful, what a beautiful name.

The name Christ.

What a beautiful

what a beautiful the

What? A wonderful

What? A wonderful

Name is the name of Jesus

Christ. What a wonderful

Name is.

What a wonderful

The name Jesus.

What a wonderful The name

To you.

Father death.

Not hold

to silence

The,

The glory for you.

You Have no,

You have no now

Yours.

Yours is the glory.

Yours is the name.

What a what A

Christ.

What a

powerful

Jesus.

You have no

Christ.

What a

Jesus a

Jesus A

Let's give Jesus some praise,

some thankful for Jesus.

Come on. So good. So good.

It's because of Jesus that we can be a family

that loves God, follows Jesus and shares hope.

Whether you're in the room or if you're joining us online,

it's a good day to be gathered together

as the family of God.

Let's turn around. Let's greet those around us.

If you're online, hey,

we don't want spectators, participators.

We're in this thing together. It's good to see you.

Welcome to Hope.

Alright, hope Community Church. My name is Matt.

I get to serve as a Quy campus pastor. Way out in 2 7 5 2 6.

I gotta tell you something, uh,

this young man over here, where'd he go?

Jake, are you still in here?

Uh, one of our cameramen, Jake serves on the volunteer team.

Where'd this dude go? He's going to college.

This is his last night serving here.

And we are so excited

and grateful for everything Jake has done.

He's going to South Dakota to master metal

and be an engineer.

Super excited for Jake. Uh, that means two things.

If you're new here, uh, Jake won't be here next week.

We have a serving opportunity.

If you wanna run a camera, we'd love

to have you right up here.

But we do want to connect with you.

Uh, if you're new, or even if you've been coming for a while

and you just haven't found your people yet, uh,

we have people here that are ready to love you.

As Rob said, we're a family who loves God, follows Jesus

and shares hope so you can stop at next

steps on your way out.

Or if you're watching online, go to get hope.net/next.

All right. Uh, Sunday night. Go ahead and have a seat.

I should have said that already. Y'all are like,

this dude just keeps talking.

He's running outta breath. Uh, on Sunday night,

our church had an annual vision night.

And it's super special

because all of our campuses come together right

here at our Raleigh campus.

Every community we represent is in this room as a,

it feels like a family reunion.

Uh, and Jason Gore, our lead pastor,

shared some wins from the last year.

What God is doing in baptisms,

what God is doing in community,

what God is doing in the life of our church.

And he talked about some other things.

We, and it was so unifying.

We thought, Hey, let's share this with the whole church.

So, sit back, we've got a little update from

Lead Pastor Jason Gore.

Thanks.

Before we look to where God's calling us, I,

I just want us to stop for a minute and,

and celebrate some things that God's doing in,

in our church, our Homework Club.

Uh, we serve about 225 students this year across three

different locations through the Garner Community Ministry.

And I say, you know, garner Campus,

but it's not just about

where you gather together on the weekend.

Um, because of our investment in that school, the school,

for the first time ever, a Wake County School invited us

into do our homework club on site.

Um, the entire football team, they show Yeah.

Uh, is showing up at this thing.

Uh, the cumulative GPA on the Garner football team is like

above a 3.0 for the first time, maybe in the history.

Yeah. So that's a big deal.

Uh, but while we, we celebrate academic wins, um,

and, and support families in our community,

the greatest celebration through

that whole thing is a couple weeks ago, I had the privilege

of baptizing a student who came to know Christ

through the relationships

that he had at the Homer Club, at our Garner campus.

So, God's not just about changing

grades, he's about changing lives.

That's not gonna change. Uh, that's a big deal.

Ship outreach. We're still invested in Ship Man.

We, I think we contribute about $120,000 a year

annually to their ministry.

They've got Bread of Life, which feeds thousands

and thousands and thousands of people throughout the year.

They've got the shipyard. It's a, a weight room

where kids from that community right

behind South Saunders Street, come and work out.

They get mentoring. Uh, they've got a ministry

to rescue vulnerable women out

of trafficking situations outta drug addiction situations.

Provide them housing

where they can help them get back up on their feet.

And this is the one that we really need to celebrate.

'cause at the end of the day, if you said, Hey,

you can celebrate anything,

like any one thing, what would you wanna see?

And what's the thing? You'd be a little discouraged if you

didn't see, um, baptisms.

God is doing a work in our church right now

that I cannot fully explain.

I'm gonna try to, but this is

how you know there's fruit this year so far,

we've seen 194 men, women, and students.

That's 55% over where we were this time last year.

God is up to something. Here's our vision, alright?

For our communities in all the world where we live, learn,

work, play Judea, Samaria, the end of the earth

for our communities and for all the world to know

and experience the love of God

and the life that Jesus came to make available.

How do we do that? This is our mission.

This is where you've heard the identity

stuff start to come out.

You know, over the last 12 months.

We move towards this by living life as a family

who loves God follows Jesus and shares hope.

That's our mission. This is what we do.

We make disciples of Jesus by teaching God's word

and helping people align their lives

and relationships to it.

That moves us into our strategic plans of 2024, uh,

or 20 25, 20 26.

One, an intentional focus on teaching God's Word.

Two, we're gonna continue

to share hope collectively, locally and globally.

That's not gonna go anywhere. Um, the third is, uh, we are,

we are stepping into a, an,

an intentional, I would just say this.

What is it? Well, it's a, it is a discipleship pathway.

We as a church need a clear transferable

discipleship pathway for people

to grow in the foundations of their faith.

You're gonna see a much higher investment in our small

groups, in our community groups here at Hope.

The reality is though, um,

why we should never stop celebrating what God's doing,

being loving, uh, as a church means sometimes talking

through some hard things as well.

But I believe these challenges, if we face them together

as a church family, they're gonna become opportunities

for us to see God do even more.

But I wanna be honest with you about 'em. Uh, two areas.

One, attendance, attendance across all of our campuses.

Um, it's down. So we had about 5,500 averaging across all

of our campuses in 2024.

This year we're averaging about 4,500.

Now it's the summer months, right? It's down.

People are on vacation. But

that's a real thing to pay attention to.

And secondly, it's finances.

Um, our giving is down about 15% year over year.

And so we came into 2025 thinking, Hey,

let's just carry this $16 million budget

over forecasted right now.

Uh, they hurt me on this.

It's not really 13, we're forecasting about 13.2. Okay?

So it's a little bit more than that.

But 13.2 to 13.4 being very clear.

We actually do have a cash flow challenge

right now in front of us.

Um, I I, I'll say this, it's not,

I would not correlate it to the drop in attendance.

Uh, and here's why of 4,500, first of all is

that's a large church.

Um, uh, secondly, uh, when you talk about a couple

of other churches that are about our,

around our size in the area,

and I'm not gonna name any names,

but, uh, there is one church around this area that's, uh,

they're about 2,500 on the weekend.

Um, their, their contributions.

We have close relationship with all the churches around,

not all of them, but those

that we kind of run in the circle with.

Uh, their forecasted budget this year is about

$11.5 million.

Uh, they're a church of 2,500 gathering on the weekends.

There's another church in the area, uh,

that's probably just over double our size.

I'm not even gonna tell you what their budget is.

Um, but if you take either one of those churches

and you do the math on, Hey,

let's take their average week in attendance

and then what their forecasting contributions are at a

current level, and then you take that number

and then apply it to 4,500,

our budget at Hope would be about $20 million.

Okay? And so what I would say is we,

we're not outta line in the ministry

that we're trying to do.

Um, we have a, a challenge as it relates

to the resources that we have available to us.

Notice I didn't say that the money's not here.

I mean, we're gonna see in a minute.

God says, I, the silver is mine. The gold is mine.

The cattle on a thousand hills. That's all mine.

But right now, if something doesn't change,

we're gonna have some very difficult decisions

to make all the ministry that we just heard about.

And we're gonna celebrate, and I'm not gonna harp on this

too much longer, but we're gonna have to, we're gonna have

to be strategic about areas of ministry

and actually pull back and we look, we can do that.

We can be strategic, but we have to be good stewards.

So we're taking a three tiered approach, uh,

as a strategic team.

And we're saying tier one, here's what we do.

Um, we curb ministry expense to the best of our ability.

I'm gonna go and tell you we're doing that.

And then we try to exit our administrative offices.

We have some offices over off Pinedale, off Kerry Parkway

that are essential services used to house.

Now here's the truth.

We've been trying to get out of that lease for a while.

Um, we're actually already in the tier one right now.

That's tier one. Tier two is gonna force us

to take a hard look at staffing costs relative to budget.

Um, what does that mean?

Uh, point Blake, that means there will be some men

and women who are currently on staff at Hope Community

Church that would be exited from a paid position here.

That's tier two. Um, tier three kind

of bumps down into further change in staffing.

And then we gotta have a conversation

about campus consolidation.

What does that mean? Uh,

I'm not gonna go into any specifics.

There's no, there's no

specific decision that's just been made.

This is just, Hey, we're here together as a family.

We gotta recognize if we've got empty seats at Raleigh

or if we've got empty seats at Apex that we have

to pay a lease on,

and then we're paying 160 to $170,000 to lease a school,

man, that's some money that we could potentially save.

We do have to evaluate some things over the next six

to eight weeks so that we can make some decisions

to get our, our budget in line as we head into 2026.

It's incredibly important.

So what's the call to action here?

'cause we've got some challenges in front of us.

One, I want you to pray, alright?

And like what we saw in Haga, I want you, I want you

to ask God to, to rekindle our

hearts, the hearts of our people.

Rekindle your heart right towards

what it is that God's calling you to.

And I'm gonna ask you to set an alarm.

Whatever time works in your schedule, I want you

to set an alarm daily to stop

and to pray for what it is that God is doing in your heart

and in the life of Hope Community Church.

Second, participate. I want you to take a next step.

If you want to be a part of leading one

of these community groups that you're ta

that we're talking about right now,

you can text the word lead, the 7 2 9 8 9,

you'll get a link set to you

and then we can talk about how to help you take next steps.

And then lastly is provide, um, what do you mean by that?

I mean, you know what? We've got some financial challenges.

I mean, let's give sacrificially, I want you

to provide financially to what it is that God's calling to.

And I know you guys like, man, we're most

of you're in here might already be

giving, but I did some math.

Um, we could bridge a gap of about a million dollars

if 2000 families.

Alright? So we said 4,500 people across all

of our campuses on the weekend.

You know, everybody doesn't come at one time.

But if 2000 families said that,

I'm gonna give an additional $500 above

and beyond my current giving over the next five months.

So that's a hundred dollars a month, alright?

Above and beyond my current giving,

we could bridge a million dollar gap.

And so there's a reason why we set up recurring giving, man.

They may just, it makes it easy to make sure

that we're being disciplined in what it is

that God has called us to do.

Now here's the deal. I know some people hear that.

They're like, there's no way I can give an additional

$500 over the next five months.

That's okay. But the Bible talks about the widows might,

it talks about responding with

what it is that God has busted with.

There's also some of us in this room

and in our church that could probably cover somebody else.

We could give a thousand dollars, $2,000, $10,000

and not even not even miss it.

And so, if that's you, I just wanna encourage

you go before God in your prayer.

I'm praying that there would be somebody

that can't even leave the parking lot.

'cause the Holy Ghost is still just getting them.

Just getting them. I can't go.

Maybe the car won't start in Jesus name. That's fun.

In Jesus name. I'm sorry if your car breaks down.

I don't know. We got a couple of great mechanics here.

They'd love to, to help you out. Derek Fox, where are you?

Okay, here's what I wanna do. Isaiah 43, 18 and 19.

Remember not the former things

nor consider the things of old behold.

I'm doing a new thing now at Springs fourth.

Do you not perceive it? I will make a way in the wilderness,

in rivers and the desert, God is doing something new.

We've seen 194 baptisms this year.

You read scripture, God created

a world, said it was very good.

Man did about everything they could to mess it up.

So God set Jesus on a mission.

He made it way for things to be right between us.

And God, God Jesus goes back to heaven.

He sends down the Holy Spirit.

The Holy Spirit's on a mission.

The spirit comes inside of us

and then sends us on mission to the world around us

until Jesus comes back.

We are not a church that's a country club.

We're not a church that just comes and receives.

We are a church that takes the gospel to our communities

where we live, learn where it can play.

Period. That's who we are.

We pray because it matters.

So church, what I want you to do right

now is I want you to stand to your feet.

If you're at home, I want you to stand at your feet.

If you're driving, don't stand to your feet.

But listen, we pray because it matters.

God has brought us a long way.

And every single day we're gonna depend on him

to take us wherever he is that he wants us to go.

The thing that we're gonna do is we're gonna do it together.

So let's pray. Father God, we thank you

for your mercy and your grace.

And we know that you are a faithful

and just God, that all of our church

and all of our lives are in your hand.

So we can mission ourselves into that.

We believe you Father, we trust in you, father.

And we pray against any attack of the enemy.

We pray for a unified church under our king

and Savior, Jesus and Jesus.

Then we pray. Amen.

Come on, let's worship one more song together.

The

Holy

Redeem.

Sing the song forever.

The highest

halls and

name stands above, above our church.

Come on. Is the

highest, is the

The king

be

Holy.

Thank you Jesus. Yes.

Holy forever. That is our King Jesus church.

You may take a seat. See.

Hey everybody. Glad to be with you all here.

Um, for those of you who don't know, uh, my wife Morgan,

uh, until a few months ago worked

for the federal government.

And, uh, if you've been watching the news,

2025 has been a fun time to work for the federal government.

Uh, if you've been keeping up with things earlier at the

beginning of this year, uh, we had a, uh, new branch

of the military or the military of the government, uh,

that went into action called Doge.

It stood for the Department of Government Efficiency.

And ultimately what do's purpose was, was to say, Hey,

let's try to cut down on some of the overspending

that's happening throughout the government.

And so my wife being a federal employee for a couple

of weeks, for months, uh, her job was on the line.

And one of the ways that they tried to figure out, Hey,

who are we gonna keep around

and who are we gonna get rid of, was

by having every single federal employee.

This is around 3 million people, uh,

send in an email every Monday morning

with the headline over the subject line,

what did you do last week?

And in this email, these federal employees had

to give at minimum five bullet points

of what they did last week.

And the purpose of this was just prove

that you're worth keeping around.

And I wanna ask you, have you ever had this feeling

or this sense that you had

to prove your worth to somebody else?

Have you ever had this feeling that you had to, uh, come up

with a list of reasons why you were worth keeping around?

Are there any remote workers anywhere here who, uh,

maybe you're at home and you're working

and you feel your eyelids getting a little bit heavy

and so you think, well, lemme just go wiggle my mouse a

little bit so that my team's icon shows green.

And people think that like, God forbid I have

to go use the bathroom or anything, I need people

to know I'm a hard worker around the clock.

There's way too many people smiling and laughing

and nodding to know that that's a story, right?

But why do we feel that way?

We feel that way because, well, I have to justify

earning a paycheck every two weeks, right?

Let me ask you this. Do you ever feel like you have

to justify yourself?

Maybe it's not with work. Maybe, uh, some

of you get creative like I do when it comes to money math.

So, uh, every year, uh, I go down

to a church conference down in Orlando.

And you know what else is in Orlando Islands of Adventure.

It's my favorite theme park.

I love going to Islands of Adventure.

And every single year I get my ticket to this conference.

And my wife says, not this year,

go for what you're going for.

We don't need any

extracurriculars or anything like that, right?

But then this past year,

something interesting started happening.

Well, for one, I got my ticket to the conference for free.

I decided to drive instead of flying.

'cause honey, that saves money. We use

points to book the hotel.

And so, you know, with all this extra money I spent, well,

I think, I think I've justified buying myself a ticket

to islands of an adventure this year.

Let me ask you one more time, do you ever try

to justify your actions?

Do you ever feel like, man, if I get the job,

I can justify all of my student loan debt?

Or if I get the grades, I can justify staying up

late and studying all night.

Or maybe if we try to think about the ways that we appear

to other people, we say, well, if I accomplish X, y, Z

by this imaginary finish line that I've created for myself,

well then I can prove to

other people that I'm not a failure.

If I get married by this time, then, then I can try to prove

to myself that I have my life together.

If I get the house, I can justify skipping work to pick up a

or skipping church to pick up a few extra hours at work.

So then I set myself up

somewhere better down the road, right?

We try to justify ourselves.

And in life it can feel so easy to pile up receipts,

uh, to prove that we are somehow enough.

Because on some level,

I think it's a question that all of us ask.

Am I enough? Am I good enough? Am I worthy enough?

Can I produce enough? Can I fill in the blank enough?

But if you're not careful, that mindset can easily creep

into your faith as well.

I mean, come on, God, if you, if you had the responsibility

to send God once a week an email

of the five things you did this week

to grow in your relationship with him,

that would honestly feel a little bit

easy to some of us, right?

We'd be like, okay, I went to church, I prayed,

I read my Bible, I served and I give, I'm a good Christian.

Gimme a gold star. But that is a mentality that

so easily creeps in.

Listen, as much as I want all of those things to be true

for you, I want you to also know

that they don't ascribe your worth or your value to God

or to other people around you.

In Matthew chapter seven, uh, Jesus talks about, uh, the day

of judgment, when there'll be people

who will come up to him.

And basically what they'll say is, Hey, Lord,

look at me and look at all of that.

I've, all that I've accomplished.

They'll say things like, Lord, I prophesied in your name.

I cast it out demons in your name.

I perform miracles in your name.

And Jesus says that He will look at those people

and say, depart from me.

For I never knew you. It's a scary thought, isn't it?

That you could do and do and do

and accomplish whatever you want and,

and do things even in the name of God.

And somehow that will not be the thing that proves

that you are enough.

But here's the beauty of the gospel, the message

of the gospel and the message of the crosses,

that you are saved and made righteous

by grace through faith.

Each of us has sinned against God

and our sin has built up a, a bill that none

of us could afford to pay.

And so what Jesus does is Jesus steps in our place.

He, uh, uh, takes the penalty for our sin,

places it upon himself, and the debt owed to God.

Uh, uh, the debt that God, um, um, that we rightfully owe

to him has been settled through Jesus.

And now we have nothing to prove, nothing to earn.

And we can stand before God not needing to be justified,

because in Jesus we are justified before him.

Colossians three, three teaches

that we are hidden in Christ.

What does that mean? It means that when God looks at us,

he sees the righteousness of Jesus.

But do you ever still feel like you're not enough?

Like, man, the gospel's good and we can hoop and holler

and get really excited about it.

It, but the reality is we all still feel at times like

we have something to prove.

It happens to the best of us.

It even happened to, uh, a man named Peter who was one

of Jesus's first followers.

And it led to a bit of drama

that we're gonna read about here now.

So if you have your Bibles, go ahead

and turn over to Galatians chapter two.

Um, if you're going digital, feel free to, uh,

switch over to the NLT.

That's the translation that we're gonna be looking at today.

Um, but for now, let me set up what's going on here. Okay.

Uh, the Apostle Paul, he's the author of the letter

of Galatians.

He's writing this to the people who live in Galatia.

This is the same Paul who wrote the letter to Titus

that we looked at over the summer, okay?

And the reason why Paul is writing this letter is

to refute the claim that Jesus requires anything

other than faith to be justified before God.

His goal in writing this letter is

to combat this false teaching going around that says, Hey,

faith in Jesus is good, but it's not enough.

There were people who were saying that, listen, in order

to really be saved, you have to follow Jesus.

But you also have

to follow the Jewish law laws about circumcision.

In observing the Mosaic law, the false teaching

that was being spread was this Jesus

plus the law equals salvation.

Now, it's easy for us to point a finger at the Galatians

and say, man, how could they possibly think that?

But really, how many of us think the same way?

Like we'd never actually say it, right?

But how many of us think, man, if I cry during worship

and somebody else sees it, well then man,

they're really gonna know that the

spirit's working inside of my heart.

You know, something's really happening.

Then maybe you thought, man, listen, I've,

I've been battling this addiction for years,

and if I could just get over this, then God would love me.

Then everything between me and God would be cool.

Maybe if I just, if I have the right answers

to everybody's theological questions,

then somehow I can prove

that I'm a next level Christian, right?

We do this all the time.

We may never say it out loud,

but subtly we can end up doing exactly

what the Galatians were tricked into believing.

They were pushing a performance-based gospel that was rooted

for them specifically in their ethnic

identity and in rule keeping.

So the great sin that we see in Galatia, it wasn't

that people were rejecting Jesus,

that would've been bad enough,

but it wasn't that they were rejecting Jesus.

The problem was they were adding to him.

And Paul says, this is not just a slight misunderstanding,

this is a total distortion of the gospel.

And even Peter, the one who had once walked with Jesus,

had fallen into this trap.

And so that's gonna pick us up where we're reading today.

Uh, Paul is writing to the Galatians

and he's, he's, uh, referring to an interaction that he had

with Peter sometime before this.

And so if it feels like we're picking up kind

of in the middle of the story, it's

because Paul kind of picks up in the middle of the story,

like he's talking to them about something

and then he says, oh, well, let me just kind

of tell you about this interaction that happened

between me and Peter a while back.

So starting in verse 11, it says, uh, Paul, Paul is saying,

listen, when, when Peter came to Antioch, he said, I had

to oppose him to his face for what he did was very wrong.

When he first arrived, he ate with the gentile believers

who were not circumcised.

Now, to the people in Galatia, they would've heard this

and would've said that Peter's, uh, atrocity his sin.

The thing that Paul wants to call him out on is

that he was eating with Gentiles

because, uh, this was considered a spit in the face

to Peter's Jewish heritage.

For him to be able to sit down

and eat with gentiles, this would've been a big no-no

to their culture in the day.

Now, here's the problem that Paul is about

to address what he's about to call out.

He said the problem wasn't

that Peter was disrespecting his Jewish heritage.

It's that Peter forgot that

because of his faith in Jesus, he has a new heritage.

He's a part of a new family with new rules and new standards

and a new way to behave.

And so, uh, imagine the scene, Peter's sitting down,

he's eating with these gentiles who

on paper he shouldn't be sitting down and eating with.

So let's keep reading it says,

but afterwards, when some friends of James came, so some

of Peter's Jewish friends came around, says that he says

that Peter wouldn't eat with the Gentiles anymore.

Why? Because he was afraid of criticism from these people

who insisted on the necessity of circumcision.

As a result, other Jewish believers followed Peter's

hypocrisy, and even Barnabas was led

astray by their hypocrisy.

When I saw that they were not following the truth

of the gospel message, I said to Peter, in front

of all the others, since you a Jew

by birth have discarded the Jewish laws

and are living like a gentile, why are you now trying

to make these gentiles follow Jewish traditions?

So Peter's hanging out with gentiles,

he's living out the gospel reality, right?

Everything is going great for,

for all the world to know type stuff.

Just like Jason just talked about from our vision night.

This is Peter is actively living into that.

But then some Jewish people comes around,

he starts acting differently.

He shuns the Gentiles, he pretends like he doesn't know him.

And thank God this is just a Peter problem.

Thank God none of us act any differently

around our Christian friends than we do from everybody else.

Isn't it true that for so many of us, we just like Peter,

tend to default to our fear

of other people when we have an opportunity

to live into the gospel reality

that we all claim to believe.

You see, we call that hypocrisy.

But Paul saw

that there was actually a deeper heart issue happening.

Paul recognized that Peter's heart had a spot

that hadn't been touched by the gospel yet.

And that's the reason why he responded the way that he did.

And I think this is one of the first lessons

that we can note out of this passage, man.

This is the reason why it's so important for us

to have healthy Christ-centered friends around

who don't mind calling you out when they see a part

of your life that isn't aligned with the gospel.

Man, Peter desperately needed someone like Paul.

I mean, I know this is true of my own life,

that when I'm not surrounded by godly healthy people

to call out the sin in my life

and to point out the areas where I'm not living like Jesus,

man, if it weren't for those people,

I would very easily revert back into my many

of my old behaviors and own ways.

And lemme tell you something else. They notice stuff.

I don't, they call out things when I don't recognize it.

See, for Peter, what he was doing was probably some sort

of like defense mechanism, but to Paul, Paul saw it as sin.

He said, listen, you think you're trying

to protect yourself, really, you're hurting yourself.

So let me step in here

and I just want to ask you, do you have a Paul,

do you have someone who is deeply concerned about your

whole, your personal holiness to the point

that they can call you out

and approach you even when you don't approach them?

I think sometimes we have people who are like, yeah,

I think I could go to this person

and tell 'em about when I'm struggling.

But man, what if you had somebody who is like, Hey,

listen, we're tight.

I know it's an open door policy.

At any point I can come to you

and tell you if I see something that doesn't align

with the Bible, listen, I,

I hope you have someone like that.

I hope you have a Paul.

But how many of us also push our Pauls away?

How many of us push our Pauls away for being too judgmental

or for being holier than thou

or man, they don't really know me.

They can't really speak into my life like that.

Listen, what Paul's doing here is totally biblical.

Paul is publicly rebuking Peter

for pulling away from the gentile believers.

Not just because Paul was offended, he wasn't like,

I don't like what you're doing, so

I'm gonna say something about it.

It's not that he was offended

because he saw that his friend wasn't living

like an image bearer.

And he said, man, you were made for so much more than that.

So let me gently and humbly restore.

You see, Paul's goal wasn't just to correct behavior.

He's saying, Peter, you're actions are actually out

of step with the gospel.

The issue that Paul is calling out is

that Peter knew the gospel but defaulted to fear of others

and their opinions and their traditions.

But then Paul notices something else,

and this is something he's definitely not going to let fly.

Uh, the problem, one of the problems

that Paul noticed about Peter is he says, Hey, listen,

what you're doing is wrong.

But Peter Barnabas

and some of your friends, man,

they're following your example too.

And Paul is definitely not going to let that fly.

He wasn't going to allow Peter to set a poor example of

what it means to be a Christ follower.

And I think again, this is something

that we can draw out away from this text and,

and apply to our lives

because I think that one of the issues in our culture,

specifically in like Western Christian culture is

that we've created a Christian subculture that some

of us assimilate to without even realizing

that it's a church culture, but it's not the faith.

So what I mean by that is, is

that there are certain just Christian behaviors

that we all do and that a good Christian should do, right?

Like, oh, you watch the chosen

and you listen to K love and you learn how to dance.

The Forest Frank's new song like you must be a Christian.

But nowhere are any of those things prescribed

to us in scripture, but we just do it.

Why? Because we see other people doing it.

I wanna challenge you with this and,

and hopefully this actually changes your perspective on

what it means to live the life that Jesus came to offer.

Did you know that nowhere in the Bible, not once

does Jesus ever look at someone

and say, you should be a Christian, not one time.

You know what he says? He says, follow me.

Why would he do that? Maybe it's

because Jesus knows that if he were just

to say be a Christian,

then we would just look at other people

and say, that's my example.

But instead Jesus says, follow me

because he is the only example any of us should ever follow.

How dare we allow anyone else,

any other fallen broken human being to be the barometer for

what holiness is When we have direct access to view

and follow Jesus himself, this is

what Jesus invites us into.

This is the life that he wants all of us to have.

And the problem is, is that when we become more concerned

with following the Christian down the street

or the church down the street

or any other person instead of Jesus,

we end up playing this game of religious telephone

where we just resemble American Christianity

and we get so far away from the life

that Jesus came to offer us.

And that was never the goal.

The goal was always to follow Jesus himself.

Now, that's not to say anything about discipleship, right?

Even Paul writes, man, follow me as I follow Christ.

But if you're walking behind somebody

and they're claiming to lead you the way

that Jesus leads you, at some point you need to kind of look

around and be like, Hey, who are you following?

Let me make sure we're going the right way.

Let me make sure that even the way

that you're training me up

and discipling me is accurate with the word of God.

Because this is what Peter's starting to do.

He's setting a bad example for other believers.

And so Paul goes on to set the record straight and,

and as we read this next part, here's what I want you to do.

I just want you to, to kind of have your, your mind

and your eyes attuned to see if you notice anything

repetitive through this next chunk of scripture, okay?

It's a little bit of a big chunk. And so I just want you

to look out for, for key phrases.

This is verses 15 through 18,

still in Galatians chapter two, Paul writes to,

to Peter, he says this to Peter.

He says, you and I are Jews by birth,

not thinners like the Gentiles.

That's sarcasm, by the way.

Yet we know that a person is made right with God

by faith in Jesus Christ, not by obeying the law.

And we have believed in Christ Jesus so

that we might be made right with God

because of our faith in Christ, not

because we have obeyed the law

for no one will ever be made right with God

by obeying the law.

But suppose we seek to be made right with God

through faith in Christ, and then we are found guilty

because we have abandoned the law.

Would that mean that Christ has led us into sin?

Absolutely not. Rather,

I am a sinner if I rebuilt the old system of law

that I already tore down.

I want to ask you, did you notice a key phrase that pops up

through that over and over again?

We'll go ahead and throw the full

passage up on the screen here.

Have you, do you notice anything

that stands out in this big chunk?

There's a phrase, it's four words made right with God.

Let's just go ahead and highlight so we can see it.

Four times Paul includes in this, in this passage.

This is how you are made right with God.

The the theological term for being made right

with God is justification.

Paul's deepest concern is he wants

to make it clear, abundantly clear,

because Peter seems

to have gotten it mixed up somewhere along the way.

He says, listen, Peter, the way you were made right

with God, Galatians, the way y'all are made right

with God hope community church, the way

that you are made right with God, the way you are justified,

the way you are proven to be enough is not by anything

that you do or that you try to conjure up out of fear

of acceptance from other people.

The way that you are justified and made right with God is

because of the gospel and what Jesus has done for you.

Nothing else. This is Paul's main

concern for all of us.

He wants Peter to know Peter, there is nothing

that you can do that will ever be enough to justify.

The Old Testament talks about this as well.

Isaiah 64, 6, the prophet Isaiah writes, we are all infected

and impure with sin.

When we display our righteous deeds, they are nothing

but filthy rags like autumn leaves.

We wither and fall

and our sins sweep us away like the wind dirty rags.

I I don't wanna get too, too graphic here,

but man, that's Paul is saying that everything that we do,

it's, it's useless.

That word that's actually used, I'm sorry, I said Paul,

Isaiah, the word

that's actually used in the Hebrew language,

I'll let you use your imagination,

but originally it referred to culturally, um,

basically a cloth that a woman would use

for personal hygiene once a month.

I'll let you use your imagination there.

That's what Isaiah is comparing your good works to.

He says they're autumn leaves, they're dead.

They're on the ground. Maybe you can can use 'em

to start a fire, but that's about it.

I want you to imagine that you're standing in court,

you're on trial for a crime,

and the judge is saying, Hey, listen,

I'm gonna give you one more chance to prove to us

that you're innocent and you stand up.

Maybe you're still shackled

and you say, your Honor, did you know

that an octopus has three hearts

and when it swims, two of 'em stop beating.

Maybe you get some cheap amusement out of that.

But guess what? It serves no purpose to your case.

That has literally no weight, it has no bearing.

If that feels completely outta place, completely irrelevant,

completely useless.

Isaiah's saying you and you're trying your absolute best.

That's how good it is

to contributing to your own righteousness.

You might as well have thrown it out.

You didn't, you didn't even have a case to try

to raise up for yourself.

And p and Paul looks at his own life as an example of this,

in Philippians chapter three verses two

through 11, Paul writes this.

He says he's, he's talking

and addressing the same issue that's facing the Galatians.

These people who say you need Jesus plus something else

in order to be made righteous.

Paul is saying, uh, Philippians two, sorry,

three verses two through 11.

He says, watch out for those dogs, those people who do evil,

those mutilators

who say You must be circumcised to be saved.

For we who worship by the spirit of God.

Shout out to Rob Jones in the message last week.

We who worship by the spirit of God are the ones

who are truly circumcised.

We rely on what Christ Jesus has done.

We put no confidence in human effort,

though I could have confident in my own

effort if anyone could.

This is Paul talking. He says, indeed, if anyone has a right

or has reason for confidence in their own efforts,

trust me, I have even more.

And then look at what Paul does here.

He starts running down his resume.

He says, I was circumcised when I was eight days old.

I'm a pure blooded citizen of Israel

and a member of, uh, of the tribe of Benjamin.

I was a real Hebrew if there ever was one. I'm a member.

I was a member of the Pharisees

who demand the strictest obedience to Jewish law.

I was so zealous that I harshly persecuted the church.

And as for righteousness, I obeyed the law without fault.

Hit sin. There's the five things I've done this week.

Look at me, look at what I've accomplished.

Look at how good I am.

And this is what so many of us try to do.

God, look at all I've done for you.

Look at all the reasons why I'm worthy.

But let's keep reading to see what happened,

what shift took place in Paul's life.

He says, listen, I once thought these things were valuable.

Before we keep reading, I

just want you to think about your life.

Think about your accomplishments.

Think about the things you've done.

Think about that place where pride creeps in.

Maybe, maybe it's not church related.

Maybe it's something that you've done in the business world

or or something that you've done at school

or some way you've performed somehow

that you take genuine pride in

and say, man, I know I'm the best at that thing.

My prayer is that what happened in

Paul's heart would be true of us.

That at one time maybe you did think those things were

valuable, but now he says, I consider them worthless

because of what Christ has done.

Yes, everything else is worthless when compared

with the infinite value of knowing Christ Jesus.

My Lord, for his sake, I have discarded everything else.

Counting it all as garbage.

If you thought the Isaiah reference

and the history of that language was interesting,

you should go back and look at

what Paul meant when he wrote the word garbage.

If he were to repeat it on this stage, you say, get

that guy outta church because that is how uh,

worthless he thinks of his, his acts.

He says, garbage, why I get rid of all that stuff? Why?

So I can gain Christ and become one with him?

Paul is saying, listen, all of my accomplishments,

all the things I took pride in, they isn't,

they weren't actually a barrier to my unity with Jesus.

But he says, when I let go

of those things, now I can gain Christ.

So I can become one, one with him.

I no longer count my own

righteousness through obeying the law.

Rather I become righteous through faith in Christ

for God's way of making us right with himself.

There's that phrase again, depends on faith.

He says, I want to know Christ

and experience the mighty power

that raised him from the dead.

I want to suffer with him sharing in his death so

that one way or another I will experience the

resurrection from the dead.

Listen, Paul is confident.

He's confident enough to call all of his efforts garbage.

And I just want to ask you, are you,

because a lot of us find our confidence in

what we've accomplished, but Paul is so confident

and so spiritually mature

that he looks at the best things on his resume

and says, I don't need 'em.

It's just window dressing. It's, it's not important.

It's nothing because Jesus' way is so much better

and he knows he has nothing left to prove.

Paul knows you can argue Paul's accomplishments.

You can't argue with Jesus's.

You can look at what I've done

and you can tell me it's not enough.

But you can't look at what Jesus did on the cross

and say, that wasn't enough to make me right with God.

Back to Galatians, Paul says, when I tried

to keep the law, it condemned me.

Have you ever felt that way?

Have you ever felt like, man,

I'm every day I'm gonna wake up and I'm gonna read my Bible.

And then you sleep through that alarm

and you think, man, I'm a terrible person.

That's what Paul said. He said, listen,

I set other people, set these standards for me.

I set the standard for myself.

And when I didn't live up to that, it condemned me.

So guess what? That standard wasn't

God's will for me to begin with.

Instead, God's standard was,

Hey Paul, can you just be with me?

Can you just rest with me? So this is what, what Paul does.

He says that I died to the law.

He said the law was condemning me. So I died to it.

I stopped trying to meet all of its requirements so

that I might live for God.

My old self has been crucified with Christ.

It is no longer I who live but Christ who lives in me.

So in this earthly bo,

so I live in this earthly body by doing what?

Trusting, not working, not earning

by trusting in the son of God who loved me

and gave himself for me.

I do not treat the grace of God as meaningless.

He talks about this in other parts.

Listen, I, I don't just say, oh God gave me grace

so I don't have to do anything.

I'm just gonna sleep all day and eat Doritos

and wait for Jesus to come back.

Like that's not what he's saying.

What he's saying is, is man,

because of this grace, well now the fruit is

gonna come out of my life.

He says, I don't treat that grace of God as meaningless

for if keeping the law can make us right with God.

Here's the, here's the main point

of everything we're talking about today.

If keeping the law could make us right with God,

there was no reason for Christ to die.

Listen to that again.

If your effort could be enough, then Jesus's effort wasn't.

And I pray that we would never be the type of people

who feel like we have to add to what Jesus did on the cross.

I think there are two shifts that are evident in Paul's life

that will transform ours

as well when we allow the Holy Spirit, uh, to help us

to make these shifts in our lives.

And the first one is this, it's an identity shift.

This whole series we've been talking about identity.

And I want you to recognize Paul is the type of man

who stopped identifying himself with his accomplishments

and instead identify himself as someone

who has been crucified with Christ.

And I just want to ask you, is that what God wants

to do in your life as well?

Do you find your identity in the

things you have accomplished?

Or do you find your identity in Christ?

Paul is beginning a life of looking in the mirror

and seeing himself as Jesus saw him.

But in order to do this, it says that he had

to die to the law first.

And I just wanna ask you, what do you need to die to?

What expectations from other people

or from yourself do you need to put to death?

So that can stop being your barometer for good enough?

The second shift that happens is that we have to recognize

that our salvation is not Jesus plus my effort.

It's Jesus instead of my effort.

In other words, if you need a simple way to put this, Jesus

plus nothing equals everything.

As long as I have him, I have everything that I need.

One more time. Galatians 2 21, I I, by the grace of God,

I hope this punches you in the chest.

If righteousness could be gained through the law,

Christ died for nothing

because my effort will never be enough.

Here's the, here's the bad news.

The bad news, you'll never be good enough.

The good news, you don't have to be.

And this is what makes the gospel different.

Every other arena of your life expects something of you,

expect something of you in order to declare your worth.

But guess what? Man? Jesus defined your worth at the cross.

He says, I love you so much. I'm gonna to die for you

and spill my blood for you.

That's how much he loves you. Jesus declares our worth.

When these shifts happen, that's when we realize

that we have nothing to prove to anyone.

So if you didn't have your quiet time

this morning, guess what?

God still delights in you.

If you blew it in a relationship,

maybe you made somebody

angry and you didn't mean to do that.

Hey, come back to Jesus. 'cause there's grace.

If you didn't get the job or the house

or the recognition, guess what?

Those things don't define you.

My wife said something when she

was pregnant with our daughter.

I'll, I'll close with this. She said,

when our kid gets here, she says,

I never wanna place an expectation on her

that God doesn't place on her.

And that was so profound to me.

And ever since I have been trying to live that way myself,

man, God, I don't wanna place any expectation on me

that you didn't put there.

And the gospel gives us the freedom to do that.

This is a quote from John Mark Comer in

his book called Live No Lies.

He says, the gospel gives us the freedom to fail

because we are loved no matter what happens,

whether we succeed or not,

whether the business venture works out

or not, whether we get into that school

or have to settle for second, Beth, whether she says yes

or he doesn't return your call, it doesn't matter.

Our self-worth doesn't come from any of that,

which means we are free to risk, to fail,

to get back up and to try again.

It's okay. And that is a beautiful reminder of the gospel.

Lemme pray for us. Father God, I just pray that all of us,

that you would just help us to get a glimpse

of how you see us.

God, my prayer is that you would just help us to, uh,

stop defining ourselves by all of these fake metrics

that other people have imposed on us.

Lord, there's stuff, there are people in this room

who have stuff that somebody told them when they were seven

or eight years old, that

that still deeply informs the way that they live their lives.

God, I pray that you would rip that stuff out from the root

and that you would replace it with the truth that said,

you are worth the, the blood of my son Jesus.

And God help us to find security in that.

Help us to find our identity in that We love you.

We ask all these things in your son's name, we pray, amen.

Amen and amen. Um, speaking of prayer, uh, across all

of our campuses on Sunday, August 24th,

every campus is gonna have a family prayer gathering.

And I encourage you to come to that.

Uh, we we're gonna pray with one another.

We're gonna pray for our communities, for our schools,

for our church where God is leading us.

Because here at hope, we pray because it matters.

And I have one more update for you. Uh, next Thursday.

Uh, this room is gonna be filled with people

who I'm from Texas Field.

That's how we say that in Texas.

It's gonna be full of people

who are worshiping, uh, king Jesus.

But they will be all from NC State.

We've invited cruise ministry here.

There's 800 students that'll be in this

room on Thursday night.

So we will not be having Thursday night service next week.

We've invited, we are leveraging the building

that God has blessed us with for ministry.

So I would encourage you, since we won't be here to pray

for those students, pray for college students, pray

for college and ministry.

'cause God is moving in this young generation,

and we need to be praying for those folks.

All right? We love you guys. We'll see you next week.