Conflict Gone Right

Uh Galatians, we're doing a seven weeks of a series on the six chapters of Galatians.

And um I kind of want to just jump right in.

We're we're gonna pick up where we left off last week in Galatians chapter two.

Uh we'll start reading in verse 11.

Said, but when Peter came to Antioch, I had to oppose him to his face, for what he did was very wrong.

Verse 12.

It said, when he first arrived, he ate with the Gentile believers who were not circumcised.

But afterwards, when some friends of James came, Peter wouldn't eat with the Gentiles anymore.

He was afraid of criticism.

I want you to make special note of that.

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.

I want to talk this week about conflict.

We have here drawn up by the Apostle Paul his side of the story, and it's this conflict that he has with the Apostle Peter.

I don't know how you feel about conflict.

I don't know what your track record is with conflict.

I don't know how much you like it or hate it.

Some people seem to be prone to it, others avoid it like the plague.

Um, but the reality is every one of us in this room have probably been impacted one way or the other by a conflict that we can't forget.

I um as I've grown older, I've gotten a little more selective about conflict.

When I was younger, I seemed to be pretty eager to charge in and uh bless the other person with my point of view.

And as I've gotten older, I've realized that there were times I said things I couldn't unsay and they heard things they couldn't unhear, and vice versa.

Uh conflicts are emotional, which usually clouds our judgment.

So when I'm emotional, I I you know some people uh become more aggressive, they say more.

And sometimes people, when they're emotional, shut down, don't say anything.

You gotta think on your feet, and your emotions are running wild.

It's not not not a great place to be.

Uh I I've been in a spot uh before where I've had conflicts go really well.

And uh healing took place, actually.

Something that started as a maybe a confrontation or a conflict ended up in healing.

I've had relationships get better than than they were before the conflict.

We brought something up, we got aligned, we talked our way through it, and through the process, we were able to actually earn each other's trust.

And on the back end, both of us would agree, hey, the this relationship got better because we had this conversation.

And then I've had conflicts do the exact opposite.

Uh I might have even thought it was gonna go well, and yet in the course of conversation, the com seemed like the relationship fell off a steep cliff.

And there are people uh no longer want to speak to me, or I don't speak to them.

And so if you if this has anything in common with you, you understand the stakes of conflict.

And the older I get, the more I find myself really uh, you know, measure twice, cut once when it comes to conflict.

I find myself going, you know, is it really my place to say it?

You know, everything that's said needs to be true, but not everything that's true needs to be said all the time.

And so I go, is it my place?

You know, do I have enough relationship?

Have I earned this person's trust?

What are the stakes of this conversation?

How receptive do I think that they are?

How much truth can they stand, even if I'm right?

Uh is this the right thing at the wrong time?

And so I find myself really being disciplined about this because I understand what a big deal it is.

But throughout life, there comes certain times, certain conflicts that are worth having, that need to be had.

And if the stakes are high enough, you you might need to have it whether they will or not, uh, whether they will or won't receive it.

It depends on the stakes.

You've got to sort of do all that math and make a decision.

And so this is what we see here with uh the Apostle Paul and the Apostle Peter that have what's actually culturally uh abnormal conflict.

Normally a conflict like this would happen in private.

Paul would take Peter aside, let's speak about this in private, but they actually have it out publicly, which lets us know culturally that Paul thought that this was an emergency.

He thought that this was important, that it needed to happen right here, right now in front of people, uh, which probably uh would have been overwhelming to everybody standing around.

So let's look at what's going on here.

Okay, I want to uh take the character of Peter and I want to look at him.

He's he's an interesting guy because we we have a ton of data on Peter even before the book of Acts.

So if you think about the gospels, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, Peter shows up pretty early in the story as one of Jesus' disciples.

Disciple is a learner, a follower.

So they come to sit essentially at the feet of Jesus to learn.

And so this is who Peter is.

We're gonna figure out pretty quickly that Peter in his life has a pattern of taking a bold step followed by a misstep.

He does it quite a bit.

Probably one of the most known of that pattern is in Matthew 14, where Peter walks on water.

Jesus walks out to their boat, they're freaking out because they think he's a ghost.

He announces himself, and Peter is like, wow, this is wild.

Jesus is defying the laws of physics.

He's walking on the water, and Peter says, Hey, if if you can make yourself walk on water, any chance, you could make it so that I could walk on water.

And Jesus says, Absolutely, climb out of the boat, come join me.

And so Peter takes a bold step.

He steps out out of the boat, he's walking on water, takes a couple steps, and he too now is defying the laws of physics, and then reality starts to set in.

Ever taken a bold step only to look and go, I could die here?

Peter's like, what is going on?

This is the middle of the night, it's dark.

Okay?

If I sink, it's gonna be hard to get me.

There's gonna be a very short window.

I feel the wind, I feel the waves, I know what those things do, I recognize this pattern, I'm a fisherman, I know how bad this can go.

And so doubt starts to creep in.

He starts to sink, and of course, Jesus snatches him up, takes him in the boat, and now they have a conversation, not just about what happened, but why it happened.

So they have a faith conversation.

So when Peter takes a bold step followed by a misstep, who's there to get him is Jesus.

And of course, this won't be Peter's last misstep.

We're gonna see uh there's a bunch of them, but I'll just give you another one.

In uh the book of John, chapter 18, you'll see that uh Peter denies Jesus.

John 18 · chapter mention

And of course, that misstep was preceded by a bold step.

So when Jesus predicts, he says, hey, listen, if pretty soon uh they're gonna kill me and you all are gonna hide.

You everybody's gonna abandon me.

And Peter's like, not me.

I'm ride or die.

Okay, now these guys might all punk out, but you can count.

There's one, okay.

Do you not see the alpha male all over me?

All right.

So when things go bad and you think you can't count on anybody, you just better know I'll be there.

And so he makes this bold, sort of bravado statement that there's no way.

I I I'm ride or die.

And so uh Jesus gets out, and in fact, Peter makes a bold move because when they go to arrest Jesus, he takes out his sword and he cuts a man's ear off, probably trying to cut his head off, frankly, cuts his ear off.

So he's not only willing to die for Jesus, he's willing to kill for Jesus.

And Jesus puts a man's ear back on.

Peter's sort of like, what in the world?

And then this is what leads up to his denial.

He denies Jesus three times.

I don't know him, I don't know him, I don't know him.

So that's Matthew, or sorry, John 18.

Bold step, followed by a misstep.

And then who's there to snatch him up?

And chapter 21 is Jesus.

So Jesus sits down to go, let's process through what just happened.

Let's not just talk about what happened, let's talk about why it happened.

And so essentially he drags them him through the valley of self-awareness.

And here's what he says He says, Hey Peter, do you love me more than these?

What he's not, he's not saying, Peter, do you love me more than you love them?

He's saying, Peter, do you love me more than they love me?

Why is he saying that?

Well, because that's the claim Peter made back uh before.

He said, I love, I uh they all may bail on you, I won't.

In other words, I'm different.

I love you more, I'll be more faithful.

So Jesus takes them back to the scene of the crime and he says, Peter, do you love me more than these?

And Peter says, Lord, you know I love you.

He says, Okay, then feed my sheep.

So he's he is reinstituting him because Peter has gone back to being a fisherman.

He's gone back to his old life.

He thinks his failures disqualified him.

But Jesus says, We're gonna wring every drop out of the sponge of this lesson so we don't miss one opportunity to learn and grow.

I'm gonna restore you, but not until it hurts a little bit.

So he says, Do you love me more than these?

Yes, Lord, you know I love you.

Peter, do you love me more than these?

Yes, Lord, you know I love you.

The third time he asked him, the text says, Peter was hurt.

He got his feelings hurt.

This hurts.

Peter, do you love me more than these?

Three affirmations to mirror three denials.

I'm taking you back to what you claimed.

Are you self-aware yet?

And so he takes him through it.

And of course, Peter is is now in a new way being snatched back up in the boat.

We're not gonna just talk about what happened.

We're gonna talk about why it happened.

And then through that process, Jesus is there to restore him.

So we move through the Gospels into now the book of Acts, which is a historical narrative of the Acts of the Apostles.

And in uh chapter one of Acts, uh Jesus essentially transitions them from just learner followers to now apostles, which are sent ones.

You guys are leading now.

He'd given them a trial run in Matthew 10, where he sent them away from himself, but they came back to the nest pretty quick and they processed.

This time in Acts 1, Jesus is going to ascend, and now you're on your own.

So now we have Peter who has matured before our very eyes, and yet he is not fully mature just yet.

How many of you know growing up takes a lifetime?

It seems to take a lifetime.

And so Peter now is uh Jesus is ascended to heaven, and now he in many ways is the one everyone is looking to.

And so now we fast forward to what we looked at last week in Acts chapter 10.

Acts 10 · chapter mention

He has a vision of these unclean animals and a voice from heaven saying, kill and eat.

And again, we talked about this last week.

It really wasn't about the animals, it was about cleanliness, and it really was about it was about their view of people of other ethnicities, other ethnicities and cultures.

Because to them, to eat these animals made you unclean.

So now, but a bunch of cultures do eat these animals.

So so when he's saying, when Peter says, I he says, No, I've never eaten anything unclean, and the voice from heaven says, Don't call anything unclean that I've called clean.

He's not talking about animals, he's talking about how you view these people of other cultures.

You've drawn lines in the sand, and all the way back to your patriarch Abraham.

I said, I want to bless the world through you.

It's time for that now.

And it's gonna be hard to bless the world when you think you're better than everybody else.

So we're gonna go ahead and remove these lines in the sand because you think people are clean because they eat unclean animals, and it's really not even about the food, it's about the table fellowship.

They're gonna feel second-class citizen at your table because you look down on them.

You have to literally hit the reset button mentally.

I'm doing a new covenant here.

I'm showing you, okay, the way that you should view others based on what Jesus did.

So this is tough stuff, dude.

This is his whole life, he thought this is what clean and unclean was, and he had never even questioned it because none of the people around him questioned it.

This is just this is what it is.

So now I've got a voice from heaven saying to eat this food, but to his credit, our boy Peter, back to his pattern, bold step.

He goes into the home of Cornelius, a Gentile, he sits at his table and he eats with them.

He takes a bold step, and then he takes another bold step in Acts 11.

All right, so so so follow me here.

Acts 10, he goes in the home of Cornelius, Acts 11.

Now he goes back to Jerusalem, which would we'll call it the home base.

This is where you know the essentially conservative Jewish Torah-toting, Torah fidelity-minded people are.

And so we go to Acts 11, 1.

It says, the apostles and the believers throughout Judea heard that the Gentiles had also received the word of God.

So when Peter went up to Jerusalem, the circumcised believers criticized him and said, You went into the house of an uncirc of uncircumcised men and ate with them?

Starting from the beginning, Peter told them the whole story.

I was in the city of Joppa praying and in a trance I saw a vision, da-da-da.

He tells them the whole story.

The story then crescendos at verse 17 when he says, So if God gave them the same spirit he gave us who believed in the Lord Jesus Christ, who was I to think that I could stand in God's way?

So you have this whole group of people in Jerusalem who think they're holding up God's law, but they're standing in God's way.

And so Peter says, guys, I get it, because I am you.

I grew up where you grew up.

I believe what you believe.

This is disorienting to me as well.

But God has profoundly showed me that this is what he's up to.

So I have to decide: am I going to allow my internal conflict to keep me from walking courageously into what God is calling me to do?

I gotta wrestle, we gotta wrestle that to the ground.

And so he he says, he says, Who was I to think that I could stand in God's way?

Verse 18 says, when they heard this, they had no further objections and praising God, saying, So then even to Gentiles, God has granted repentance that leads to life.

All right.

If you keep reading in Acts 11, you're gonna see the name Antioch show up pretty soon because they're gonna then go from Jerusalem, they're gonna go 300 miles to Antioch, which becomes their home base for their Gentile ministry.

So now it's all stuck.

Can you connect the dots?

Antioch, this is where then when we go back to the Galatians 2, and the Apostle Paul is telling the story of the conflict he had with Peter.

Where was that?

It was an Antioch.

So he says, this same Peter that went into the home of a Gentile and ate at his table in chapter 10, and then stood up to the criticism of the Jewish leaders in Jerusalem and said, No, this is the right thing, then goes from his big, bold step of obedience to now a misstep in Galatians, because even though he was willing to do it in chapter 10 and he was willing to stand up for it in chapter 11, it says that the fear of criticism got to him in Galatians chapter 2.

Galatians 2 · chapter mention

Let's go back and look at it.

Galatians 2, 12.

It says, when he when he arrived, when he first arrived, he ate with the Gentile believers who were not circumcised.

But afterwards, when some friends of James, these are the people of Jerusalem, came, Peter wouldn't eat with the Gentiles anymore.

Now look at this.

He was afraid of criticism from these people who insisted on the necessity of circumcision.

Paul essentially does the same thing for Peter that Jesus does.

In the Gospels, every time he took a bold step followed by a misstep, who was there to snatch him up?

Who was there to hold him accountable?

Who was there to reinstate him?

Who was it?

It was Jesus himself.

And yet after the ascension of Jesus, who is going to help him through the misstep?

Right?

So Jesus is no longer here.

He sent his spirit to fill the body of believers.

And so now Paul, as a part of the body of Christ, is there to help Peter in his misstep.

But that help, that accountability, that support comes in the form of conflict.

It comes in the form of a confrontation.

Because just because you got it right in chapter 10, chapter 11, somewhere after that, he now slips back into and gives into the intimidation or the fear of criticism of this specific group of people.

Let's take a minute to think about this because I love what Paul does here is he doesn't just call him a hypocrite in verse 13.

He does do that.

He says, hey, what you did was hypocritical.

It was hypocrisy at its finest.

So he calls out the mistake.

He says exactly what he did.

You acted one way when the Gentiles were there, and then when these other people came who you were more familiar with, you had more in common with, and you wanted to impress, and you didn't want to be criticized by.

You needed their affirmation and you were terrified of their criticism.

And so because of that, you changed your tune.

You're like an actor, and you just kept, you were just acting one way and then the other way.

So he definitely says what he did, but he does something that I think we need to take note of.

He zeros in on why he did it.

On why he did it.

He got to the root of the issue of why he did what he did.

He said the reason he did it, the reason he was so hypocritical, was because he was afraid of the criticism of the people who he had grown up with.

The people who he had a lot in common with.

And this is worth us just sitting here for a second, because frankly, uh, Peter doesn't have any issue about right and wrong in terms of whether he knows what to do or what not to do.

He knows exactly what to do.

He just did it.

You just did it in Acts 10.

It was hard, but you did it.

And then you stood up for it and stood up to the criticism in chapter 11.

This is not an issue of trying to figure out what's right and wrong.

This is an issue of whether or not you're willing to do it.

Uh I read a book one time called The Wisdom of the Bullfrog.

And it was uh it was written by uh uh William McCraven, who uh in the U.S.

Navy, the Navy SEALs are known as frogmen.

They call them frogmen, and the highest ranking seal uh in the in the military earns the moniker, the bullfrog, is the biggest of all the frogs.

And so that that's William McCraven.

And so William McCraven writes this leadership book and he doesn't waste a word.

It's really, really good.

And he says a lot of great things.

Uh, but at one point in the book he says something that I'll never forget.

He said, you know, most of the time leaders know what to do.

Every once in a while you'll come up on some conundrum, you'll come up on some catch 22, you'll come up on something like, uh, I just don't know what to do.

I'm like a deer in headlights, I just I just don't know what to do.

Those things do happen, but they're rare.

He said, most of the time, you know, you know what to do.

You just don't know if you want to do it or not.

You you don't know if you will do it or not.

Uh I know what to do, but I also know what it'll cost me.

I know what to do, but when I do the right thing, it'll cause me to be criticized.

Uh, it might cost me a relationship.

It might be mean taking on a responsibility that's a really heavy weight that's going to cause me to lose some sleep for a while.

It might cause me to be completely misunderstood.

It might cost me something.

It may it may be like a heavy, crushing weight on my emotions.

It it may cost me uh my job.

He said, it's often not that they don't know what to do, it's that they don't want to do what they know that they're supposed to do.

So the question is not what do I do?

The question is, will I steal myself and go do it?

Will I put some steel in my spine, reach down for the courage to go, you know what?

I honestly don't know how this is gonna play out.

It could turn out really bad, but I'm gonna do it anyway because I'm gonna do the right thing for the right reason.

So this is the issue that Peter's having.

If you're not, if you don't get to the heart of the issue, then it'll just keep haunting you.

Right?

So so so Paul puts the right question in front of him, essentially.

Why are you so afraid of the criticism of this group of people?

And and so I think the larger lesson here is whatever it is that's causing you, like maybe you find yourself knowing what to do but not wanting to do it or not doing it.

And and so going, okay, this is a this is starting to become an issue of courage and character.

Okay, now what I have to do is get to the heart of why that's happening.

Uh I I think when it comes to to criticism of this nature, I think if we just sit here just a little bit longer and look through Peter's perspective, I think we get some things that really might make sense to us.

Why, why are we so afraid of criticism?

Why are we so afraid of criticism?

Of conflict.

I think one one of the reasons, and again, conflict is a very complicated, broad thing, so I don't mean to try to oversimplify it, but but I was thinking about what we know from this story.

I think one of the reasons sometimes is um a low view of self.

So I think I think sometimes people are afraid to have a confrontation or have a conflict or they're afraid of criticism because they see themselves as very expendable.

They see themselves as very leavable.

That it would be very easy to cut me off.

And especially if your life experience has given you data where people seem to have no problem just tossing you off to the side and moving on.

And if that's been your if that's been a part of your life experience, it it's maybe uh reinforced that that belief in you in you.

And so you start to go, you know, I have to pretty much walk on eggshells around people because if I'm if I'm more trouble than I'm worth, they'll just kick me off to the side.

And so if I bring this conflict and they don't like it, okay, and they're triggered by it, they're just gonna, and so one day I'm gonna be all by myself.

I'm gonna be alone, and my survival instincts have sort of been triggered that that I feel like I don't know if I want to take this risk because I think I'm pretty expendable.

The second is lacking trust for the other people.

So if I don't trust you, like think about from Peter's position, as much as uh he does do a cowardly, hypocritical thing, I kind of feel for him because you you have a guy who uh just like a few minutes ago uh went and had a meal, a table fellowship with a Gentile for the first time, and he knows exactly what these Jerusalem holy men are capable of.

Guess who else knows?

Paul.

Because when you read in the book of Acts, we're introduced to Paul when he's in the middle of helping murder someone because they were um, you know, essentially seen as a heretic.

And so uh Paul was holding the coats of the people who were stoning Stephen in the book of Acts.

So Peter knows that these uh holy men that that ultimately are dead set on giving their lives for Torah fidelity, that if they turn on you, okay, the criticism is a shot over the bow.

And if I don't respond to the criticism, and I okay, now all of the all of a sudden these people could completely turn on me, and now my life is on the line.

If they do that to Stephen, what would they do to me?

And so I don't know if I trust them.

I don't know if I trust their integrity, I don't know if I trust their ability to listen.

And then frankly, you even if they don't kill me, you're asking me to essentially abandon my entire community that I grew up in to go be accepted by the Gentiles who haven't earned my trust either.

I don't know that they're gonna welcome me at their table long term.

I don't know anything about these cultures.

This is brand new.

And so you you have this guy who, when we start to look at it, a lot of this gets down to self-survival.

It gets down to major fear.

It's not just that I'm I don't want somebody saying a bad thing about me.

You've got to kind of wrestle this stuff all the way to the ground.

What led to the hypocritical action?

What took me to that place where even though I knew better, I didn't do better.

And so when Paul enters in, now this is where Paul actually serves as an amazing example.

And when you look at the story the way we've been looking at it, it gets pretty cool because it's like layered, right?

So you have Paul who's writing to the Galatians, and he's having a conflict with the Galatians and the Judaizers and all these people, right?

So in the middle of his letter, that's a conflict, he starts telling them a story about another conflict that he had with Peter.

So I'm gonna tell you about a conflict while we're having a conflict.

And he's using in many ways Peter as a case study of how this could be done right.

And so, but what what what Peter, okay, needed to understand is that the apostle Paul, in many ways, was offering to him a partner.

Like, hey, I don't know what the Judaizers are gonna do, I don't even know what Jerusalem's gonna do, but I'm telling you, I'm here with you.

And one of the advantages that Paul had over Peter was that Paul had 17 years of data of knowing that there was life beyond Jerusalem.

So if you remember when he's at the beginning of Galatians chapter 1, when he said, Hey, after I had a revelation of Jesus essentially on Damascus Road, he tells them, he tells them where he didn't go.

Galatians 1 · chapter mention

He said, I didn't go to Jerusalem.

I went to Arabia, I went to the Nabataean kingdom, I went to a bridge culture, I went to I went a long way away from Jerusalem.

I walked away from that culture.

Part of it, number one, is he needed to begin to understand the people that God was calling him to.

But secondly, I think Paul probably needed to prove to himself I can survive without the approval of Jerusalem.

I don't need Jerusalem, and I'm gonna give myself three years of proof that I can make it for three years outside of this.

Because what I don't want them to do is have this sort of instinctive of connection to me that rouses my fear to think I'm gonna die without them.

Paul needed to know I can live.

There is life outside of Jerusalem.

So he goes back after three years and he says, essentially, I went to them and basically said to them, read the text, I'd like to work with you, but I don't need to.

I'd like to, he said, I'd like to work with you.

He said, you know, I went to talk to the pillars of leadership, he said, who everybody was impressed with.

He goes, doesn't really matter to me.

God doesn't distinguish.

He's like, at the end of the day, it's fine.

He goes, what I'm trying to do is find out.

I'd like to work together, but if if you're not in alignment with the gospel, I'm okay without you.

I've proven it for three years in Arabia.

So now he goes from there 14 years with the Gentiles.

So by the time they have this conflict, okay, in Antioch, Paul knows I can survive without Jerusalem.

Peter still feels that his survival is dependent on what James and his friends think.

And Paul is essentially offering himself as a partner in the gospel.

Now you gotta take your hat off to Peter.

Because this is a guy who at this point in his life, after you've had enough bold steps followed by missteps, and you start to get to the place you think you're too old for this, you go, yeah, that you know, it's one thing to do that when you're young, but what about when you're getting older?

And you see that even when he's been put in a place of apostolic authoritative leadership, in many ways, Peter is like the alpha of the leaders.

And yet his response, his response to Paul saves the day.

Um maturity is not measured simply by how few mistakes you make.

Maturity is measured, I think, more accurately, by how you respond to your falter.

How you respond when you falter.

Of course, over time, as we grow in wisdom, we start to see the mistake before it happens, and so we get better at decision making.

But I think we probably need to embrace the fact that growing up does take a lifetime.

And for Peter, uh, his denial of Jesus was not his last mistake.

And now here he is having the same issue in Galatians 2 and responding now to the confrontation, the conflict with Paul.

Now, this is where the story gets really good, and I got five minutes, so just hang with me.

Okay.

Thank you, James.

I appreciate it.

James told me to take my time, so I'm gonna take my time.

This could take about 20 minutes, maybe 30.

Um, okay, so so here's what happens.

In Galatians 2, we don't have a dialogue back and forth.

So we don't know how Peter responded at the time of the conflict.

We don't know what he said back, if he said anything at all.

But here's what we do have.

So let's go back to Acts.

Right?

So follow my timeline.

Don't let me lose you here.

Chapter 10, he says he sees the four-footed animals, and God gives them this speech about don't call anything unclean, I've called clean, and then he goes and eats at the table of a Gentile.

Chapter 11, he stands up to the criticism of Jerusalem.

Okay, and in the bottom of chapter 11, he goes to Antioch.

Somewhere between chapter 11 and chapter 15, we have Galatians 2.

In Galatians 2, he goes from the bold step to the misstep, and then they have this conflict.

And so we don't know exactly what was said, but here's what we know.

We get to chapter 15 of Acts.

And in chapter 15 of Acts, this whole issue of the Judaizers and the Pharisees and the people who are uh insisting on cultural uh adherence to their cultural things, not moral things, cultural things.

Uh now it comes to a head in the council of Jerusalem.

So now people have come, these leaders have come from all over back to Jerusalem, so we can get aligned and settle this.

And so here we go.

Now it's about to get really good.

Acts 15, verse 8.

Acts 15:8

They're having this, uh they're in this council of Jerusalem.

It said, uh Verse 5.

Acts 15, 5.

Said, then some of the believers who belonged to the party of the Pharisees stood up and said, The Gentiles must be circumcised and required to keep the law of Moses.

Verse 6.

The apostles and elders met to consider this question.

After much discussion, Peter got up and addressed them.

Verse 8.

Here's what Peter says, all right?

Now, now now come on, don't miss the scene.

Don't miss the scene.

He talked to him in chapter 11, he faltered in Galatians 2, and now everybody, all the people whose criticism he was afraid of, are all present and accounted for, and they're smack in the middle of a criticism.

This is what we think needs to be done.

And so the people that intimidated Peter in Galatians 2 into not doing what he knew to do because he needed their criticism so bad, because of the healthy accountability and conflict brought by Paul, took what was in his blind spot and put it in his focus.

And Peter, to his credit, instead of saying, You're not perfect either, mind your own business, get out of my way.

I'm the rock, I'm Peter, I'm somebody.

He looked and said, Dog on it, you're right.

You're right, and he owned it.

And this became a crucible moment.

This became a time of getting back on track, recalibrating.

And so he stands up in front of all the people who he was afraid of their criticism, and he says, verse 8, God who knows the heart showed that he accepted them by giving the Holy Spirit to them just as he did to us.

He did not discriminate between us and them, for he purified their hearts by faith.

Now then, why do you try to test God by putting on the necks of Gentiles a yoke that neither we nor our ancestors have been able to bear?

No, we believe it is through the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ that we are saved just as they are.

Are you getting this?

This is conflict gone right.

This is conflict gone right.

All of us are prone to a bold step followed by a misstep.

All of us are prone to letting the criticism of somebody's, the fear of their criticism, causing us to actually fall back in our character.

And yet here we have Paul, now Peter, because Paul was there to hold him accountable and to support him and snatch him up after his falter, that when the moment of truth came, when the council of Jerusalem came, he stood down the barrel of the criticism and he did the right thing.

So by the way, James then pipes up, right?

Who was the people whose friends he was all afraid of?

They come together, and here's what they say in verse 23, Acts 15, 23, it says, with them uh they sent a letter.

So they sent the send this letter back to Antioch, and here's what they said, greetings.

We've heard that some went out from us without our authorization and disturbed you, troubling your minds by what they said.

So we all agreed to choose some men and send them to you with our dear friends Paul and Barnabas, men who have risked their lives for the name of the Lord Jesus Christ.

Therefore, we are sending Judas and Silas to confirm by the word of mouth what we are writing.

In other words, they're starting to send support.

They're sending more support, more reinforcement.

Verse 28, he says, It seemed good to the Holy Spirit and to us not to burden you with anything beyond the following requirements.

You're to abstain from the food sacrificed to idols, from blood, from the meat of strangled animals, and from sexual immorality.

You will do well to avoid these things farewell.

So the men were sent off.

They went down to Antioch, the scene of the crime, where they gathered the church together and delivered the letter.

The people read it and were glad for its encouraging message.

The people read it and were glad.

Think about this.

Because Paul was willing to confront Peter, and because Peter was humble enough to receive the confrontation and to admit he cared more about doing God's will than he did about saving face.

And he said, You're right.

I can do better, I have done better, and I will do better.

And because of that in Galatians 2, this awkward public conversation now turns into Peter redeeming his mistake in Acts 15.

And now that letter goes back to the Antioch church and to the Gentiles in Antioch who had felt the the discrimination of Peter who wouldn't eat with them.

And he said, No, this is what this entire group is saying.

And so now it says what it says, they were glad, and for its encouraging message.

So I want to end with two questions as we process that some of you, as I'm talking about conflict, you're like, well, that's sort of uncanny because I'm in the middle of it right now.

Maybe you're on the back end of a conflict, maybe you've been avoiding a conflict, um, and and you've seen it gone right and gone wrong, and unfortunately, in the complexity of conflict, you you don't have full control of how it goes, but the best you can do is to handle your part the best you possibly can.

So from this story and what we just looked at, I leave you with two questions.

The first one is this Is there anywhere that fear of someone's criticism has scared you away from doing the right thing?

Is there anywhere that fear of someone's criticism, of someone or someone's, has caused you to not do the thing you know you're supposed to do?

It's not a matter of what's the right thing to do.

You know what's the right thing to do.

The question is, will you do it?

Or are you allowing you have not wrestled that fear all the way to the ground, you've not essentially made it to where, hey, look, I I'm gonna try to bring these people along, or I'm gonna try to deal with this, but even if they toss me out, even if they reject me fully, I'm gonna walk in obedience to God.

So is there anywhere that this is is happened or is happening to you?

And the next is is there anywhere that you may be mishandling a conflict?

By mishandling a conflict, maybe maybe there's one that you've been avoiding that you know is long overdue.

I've been tolerating this too long, I've been holding back too long.

So maybe it's like Paul initiating a conflict.

Or maybe, maybe, this might be hard, but this might be the whole reason that you're here today.

Maybe somebody brought one to you and the truth hit a little too close to home.

And it became a lot easier to just go, you're not perfect either, and and and to point fingers and to deflect and to get defensive.

And and maybe it was somebody who doesn't wake up in the morning taking mean pills.

They didn't try to come for you, they're not trying to dishonor you, they're not trying to embarrass you, but they brought some truth to you of something that frankly you know better.

I know better, I've done better, and maybe you've started to mishandle it, maybe you've started to reject it.

And maybe today is that interception where you go, you know what?

Actually, I was going this way.

I I need to I need to fall back.

I I need to actually listen to what's being said, I need to admit the truth because here's what I'm gonna tell you there are stakes.

And the stakes are in Acts 15.

There's still work needs to be done.

Not only does this impact your relationship with Paul, your relationship to yourself, there's some work God wants to do through you in Acts 15 that won't happen if you harden your heart and you reject accountability and you you won't you'll not make the change, you won't repent.

And so maybe there's an area, one way or another, that you may be mishandling conflict.

Lord, search our hearts.

Lord, I thank you that there's therefore no condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus.

So even if we find ourselves in a place like Peter, where we do something we know we're not supposed to do, Lord, I thank you that you're always there in the misstep, in the faltering to pull us back.

Lord, sometimes that comes straight from you, and sometimes it comes through a brother or sister in Christ.

So Lord, help us to get good at this.

Not every confrontation has to turn into a brawl, a bar room fight.

Not everything has to be everybody unfriending each other and pushing each other away.

Lord, help us to listen.

Help us to listen to our brothers and sisters, help us to listen to your voice.

Help us to be humble enough, Lord, to learn a lesson or maybe to learn a lesson again.

In Jesus' name.

Jesus' name.

Everybody said amen.