Who Has Permission To Tell You The Truth? | TURNED LOOSE WK3 (Galatians 2:11-21)

As iron sharpens iron, so a friend sharpens a friend. That's a verse that most of you probably are familiar with. Most of you probably heard of it. Some of you probably have it on a coffee cup or a t shirt, and just about every men's ministry in America is named for that verse. As iron sharpens iron, not ours by the way, but most of them are named after that because it's a great a great picture of what God intends for the church.

But I've never really understood that verse. I understand what he's going for as the Psalmist writes that but that's a weird picture for me when I think about it because when I think about what the psalmist is writing there, I picture two swords that are coming together and clanging against each other and sharpening each other with sparks flying everywhere. But you know what happens when you take two blades and rub them together? It doesn't sharpen them, it dulls them. And if if that's the picture that's being painted rather than than two knives being sharpened when they're rubbed together, they're gonna become two dull knives and probably you're gonna end up having to go at it extremely hard trying to get some friction going and you're gonna end up in the emergency room and I don't think that's the picture that the psalmist or the writer of Proverbs, I keep saying psalmist, that the writer of Proverbs was going for.

It never made a lot of sense to me. So I did some digging this week. What exactly was he writing when he put that down? What exactly was the goal he was trying to go for? And I I found something interesting as he writes that, and during the context of when he wrote it, during that time period, there would have been a sword and made of steel and then they would have had a file or some sort of sharpening object also made of steel and as the Psalmist is writing that, that's the picture that he's putting out there that there will be two pieces of of steel or iron that are coming together with one having a little texture, one having a rough edge, a little grit to it with the intention of cutting off those those dull edges and resharpening what was once there.

That changes the whole way I look at that verse. Iron sharpens iron, but it can't be two identical blades. One of them has to have some grit to it. That means a friend who sharpens you is not the one who agrees with you on everything you say. It's the one that has enough texture, enough grit to catch on to something in you and trim a little bit off.

To help you get that edge back, to help you be resharpened in your faith. As I was thinking about what that looked like in everyday life, I started thinking about the greats, the influential people in our history and I kept going back to Steve Jobs. I know kinda weird to bring that one up in church but think about who he is. Steve Jobs founded Apple. We all know what Apple is.

Even if you don't like Apple, it's influenced you. Steve Jobs created the Macintosh computer and during the first few years of Apple, it didn't go so great for that the Macintosh. Steve Jobs was actually removed from his position as CEO of Apple computers because it was not meeting the expectations that they had for what he had dreamed up and created. A decade later, Apple was really in the tank. Steve Jobs comes back on.

He comes back as as the new CEO. I think that was his title. He might have had a different title, but when he comes back, he comes full of ideas, but what did he do this time? He didn't come with just his ideas. He came and he had these ideas and he got in a room with some really good designers and some really good engineers, and out of that, a few years later, we end up with this.

Now, I don't know how you, feel about this, but you probably got one in your pocket, the majority of you do, and this one device has really changed the world. It's changed the way we interact with each other, the way we interact with information. It's changed everything and whether you carry this version of it or another brand of it, it started with this. But he didn't do it alone. He had learned that I can't figure this out by myself.

The most singular visionary, at least in the technology side of things of this generation could not do it alone. So he gathered around people who were great at designing and engineering, and they all did it together. Now now hold that thought for just a minute because there's there's a man in the New Testament that we're gonna look at today who needed exactly that, It is Peter. We all know Peter. If you've, even if this is the first time in church, you've probably heard of Peter and maybe not know a lot about him.

So, if you don't, Peter, Peter was one of the originals. He was one of the twelve, one of those that that Jesus had chosen to come and be his disciples but not only was he one of the 12, he was one of the the three in the inner circle. Those that Jesus pulled and poured into, he is one of the ones who saw things that the other nine never got to see. He walked with Jesus for three years and if you know Peter's story, not only did he walk with Jesus for three years, he's gonna die because of how he follows Jesus. And in this passage, we're gonna look at this morning.

You see Peter, one of the pillars of the early church, and he is dead wrong in what he does. And somebody has to get in his face and call him out for it. So we're continuing our look at the letter to the Galatian church. If you have your Bibles, open them up. We're gonna be in Galatians chapter two.

And if you remember, Paul wrote this to the Galatians because of false teaching that was happening in the church in Galatia, and he was angry about it. And here he takes it even a step further. So we look at Galatians chapter two verse 11, and here's what Paul says, but when Peter came to Antioch, I had to oppose him to his face. Think about that for just a minute. Peter, one of the inner circle, Paul who was someone who had hated Christians and sought for the entire Christian movement to be destroyed, he comes up to Peter, one of the earlies, one of the the pillars of the church as I said, and he says, I had to oppose him to his face for what he was doing was very wrong.

When he first arrived, he says, he ate with the Gentile believers who were not circumcised. Now, let's slow down for just a second. Because if you read past this too fast, we miss the whole point of what Paul is trying to tell us. He says he ate with the Gentile believers. Now, on the surface of that, that doesn't sound like a big deal.

Kinda sounds like nothing. We have meals with people all the time who who maybe we don't agree with on things but it was a big deal. In that world, the table was the most loaded thing in the room. Who you ate with declared who you belong to. Sharing a meal, it wasn't just some casual thing.

It declared this is my family. It was all about identity. This is who I belong to. It was about which side of the line you stood on and make no mistake, there was a clear line. A line that had been drawn for about fifteen hundred years.

Jews on one side, Gentiles on the other, and on the Jewish side, had the law, you had their their diet, you had their restrictions, you had circumcision, you had the temple, a wall that had been built out of rules and that wall told you who's in and who's out, and the Gentiles were not in. But here's Peter. Peter's a Jewish man, raised his whole life on that Jewish side of the wall and Paul says he sat down at a table with uncircumcised Gentiles and he passed the bread. He had a meal with them. And this wasn't Peter just being friendly.

This was Peter living the gospel without saying a word. At that table, the wall crumbled. The cross tore it down. These people, they're not outsiders anymore. Peter, by sitting at that table saying, you're family and I'm gonna prove it by having a meal with you.

The table was the Gospel in action. Some of you, you know exactly what that feels like. You've sat at it. You go through it every day. There's people in your life right now who you never, you never picked them.

You never thought this was gonna be my people. This was who I was gonna be around. They come from a totally different background than you. They got totally different politics. Their story and your story are total opposites, different in just about every way but the the reason you know their name is because Jesus tore down a wall where all people could come together and he put us all at the same table, and that is not a small thing.

That's the Gospel, doing what the Gospel does, the Gospel showing grace and mercy to the outsiders and bringing us all together as one big dysfunctional family. But Peter sees that and he sits at the table and something happens to him. He's overcome with some fear and fear caused him to leave this table that Grace had already built. Look at the second half of verse 12. Remember Peter sitting at a table with Gentiles having dinner, and then it says, but afterward, when some friends of James come, Peter, he wouldn't eat with the Gentiles anymore.

He was afraid of criticism from these people who insisted on the necessity of circumcision. There it is. Paul tells you exactly what happened. He doesn't make you guess. He doesn't try to pretty it up.

He says, Peter was afraid of criticism. He was afraid of criticism from these these friends of James and and the indication we get from scripture is these were likely people who James knew but they're preaching or teaching an entirely different gospel than what James taught. We we know from the book of Acts that James didn't even send these people. They come on their own. They're they're just people who are tied to him.

And Peter sees them and knows who they are. He's afraid of the criticism. And watch what Peter didn't do. He did not stand up and announce some change in doctrine. He didn't sit down and write a paper to to tell what's going on.

He he didn't renounce anything he had preached. He just moved. Got up, went to a different table. Didn't change what he believed, just changed where he sat. Because what Peter wanted was not some different theology.

He wanted a room where where there's nobody in the room who's disappointed in him. He wants the Gentiles to be pleased and he definitely wants those new Jewish people to be pleased. He wanted to keep the new friends and also he wanted to hold on to that old crowd. He wanted everybody at that table and everybody who had walked out or just walked in the door to think this is a pretty great dude. But you can't have it both ways.

Someone is always gonna be unhappy with who you are. So Peter, he did what we all do. He picked the group that he was most most scared of their opinion. So let me ask you a question. A question you really need to wrestle with.

You need to think about who this is for you and it's this, whose disappointment do you organize your life around? Maybe it's not some something that you really consciously think of but we all have it. There are people we don't wanna disappoint so we organize things around them so that we don't disappoint them. There's always somebody. Maybe it's a face that that you think about and you know you need to tell them the truth.

Maybe it's your parent or a boss. Maybe it's that group text you're in and you don't wanna be the weird one in the group text. Maybe it's the guy at work. Somebody's opinion who has more weight in your life than it should have, and you quietly just kind of organize things so you don't upset them. But the catch is, it's not just you, it affects.

Verse 13, as a result, other Jewish believers followed Peter's hypocrisy. And even Barnabas was led astray by their hypocrisy. There's a couple of words in that that really should kind of perk your ears up and make you think what's going on here. Even Barnabas, Paul says. If you don't know who Barnabas is, Barnabas is not just a bystander to all this.

He's right in the middle of all of it. His name means the son of encouragement. This is the guy who had sold his field and laid the money at the apostles' feet. This is the guy who had brought Paul and vouched for him when the whole church was still convinced he was going to to seek for them to be arrested. Nobody would come near Paul.

Barnabas walked him through the door. Barnabas, when you look at this group in the early church, he was one of the best of them. And Peter's fear, Peter's worry about criticism takes Barnabas down with him. That's what we need to see. Peter's pretending didn't stay Peter's.

Peter's pretending didn't stop at the edge of his own life. It moved through that whole room of Jewish believers just like water that had something in it and it swallowed this man who was not even a part of the argument to begin with. Our actions affect other people and fear is contagious. Fear always costs somebody who was never, never had a say in it to begin with. It took down Barnabas.

Before I was in ministry full time, I worked in video production, most of you all know that. But I was in video production and entertainment business, you're around a lot of people who don't know Jesus. I know you guys are too. If you work in the secular world, you are around a lot of people who don't know Jesus. We'll go in the entertainment business and double it.

I mean, it's a lot of people who don't know Jesus. There was a guy who I became friends with. I was there maybe three or four years, we worked together and almost every day he would be in my office and we'd just have a conversation. We didn't we didn't share an office, he would just come. We'd find each other and we always talk and have a good conversation.

Two or three days a week, we'd even go out and grab lunch together. We had a good relationship and and he knew I was a believer. He even knew that I was in part time ministry and moving towards going into full time ministry. He knew a lot about me. And he knew that he was not anywhere near that.

He knew about Jesus, he knew who Jesus was, but he also knew he was a long way from God, And I never said anything. Now, at the time, I had a reason for it, a reason that I thought was good and it's a reason that a lot of us use. I told myself, preach the gospel with my life. I would use that old saying that you've probably heard before, preach the gospel and if you have to, use words. I loved that line because I was the guy I didn't like conflict.

I didn't like for someone that would look at me and kinda get offended, I was gonna preach it with my life. I told myself I'm preaching the gospel with my words, but I was actually just using a strategy that was helping me and not him. Just keep my mouth shut. Because what was really going on is I didn't want to offend him. I didn't want to make lunch weird.

And probably in the back of my mind, I was a little concerned about what that would mean for my job if I was to say something to him and it was who offend him, how would that affect my work? So I called it wisdom. I'm earning the right to be heard. I'm protecting this relationship and it was none of that. All it was was fear.

Then his mom died and he called me. He didn't call another pastor, he didn't call some church that he he was aware of, he called me. There was really nobody else for him to call. He knew me, he knew me well, he knew what I stood for and he called me and he said, can you do my mom's funeral? So I stood up in that room, a small gathering, I stand up in front of them, this man who I'd eaten lunch with three or four times a week over the course of years, sitting there on the front row and I had the truth sitting there right in my mouth, the perfect opportunity to share that there is hope after death, and I thought this probably isn't the right time.

His mom just died. Not today. There'll be another opportunity. I wanna be careful because I know what some of us end up thinking. We think, I didn't share with him.

Is he gonna never have the opportunity to hear the gospel? What God does tell us to share the gospel, but his soul is not mine to save. The Lord is bigger than my mistake. I don't have to answer for that. That's God's work.

What I do have to answer for is not following his leading in my life and just sitting there being silent when I knew I had hope that would help him. Four years of friendship. I had something important to say and I never said it. We would sit at that table three times a week for four years, and the most important thing I could ever say to him, it never came out of my mouth. I was just like Peter.

Fear was pulling me away from this grace. Fear left the table that grace had built. So Paul sees what's going on. He walks into the room. And what he does, it's really a remarkable moment in the New Testament what Paul does.

Look what happens in verse 14. 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 the Jewish traditions? Watch what Paul does not do. He doesn't tell Peter, you got to be braver. He doesn't tell Peter to suck it up.

You got to man up. He doesn't say you got to go try harder, get a spine. He doesn't say any of that. Peter was afraid. Paul didn't argue with that.

But he goes to in front of everyone and he calls out Peter in truth and some of you sit there and you think, why thought Scripture said we go to each other and love in private? It does. That's how we handle. When we have conflict with each other, that's how we handle it. But this wasn't conflict that was private.

This was a public proclamation against the truth of the gospel. It had to be handled publicly and Paul handled it publicly. And he doesn't just just say you gotta do better. He gets underneath all of it and he asks a better question. Why does their opinion have so much power over you in the first place?

Why do you care what they're saying? The gospel's bigger than that. You know, fear of criticism only has teeth if you need somebody's approval to feel like you are acceptable. And that means that the gospel doesn't make Peter braver. When he lives the gospel, it takes away that need.

It cuts off that need for the fuel line that feeds those things. In verse 15, You and I are Jews by birth, sinners like the Gentiles. Yet we know that a person is made right with God by faith in Jesus Christ, not by obeying the law. We believed in Christ Jesus so that we might be made right with God because 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.

Look at who's in this room. You got Peter, pillar of the church, part of the inner circle. You got Paul who we talked about last week literally kicked off a horse by Jesus and pulled in to share the gospel. You've got these other Jewish believers who were there, these friends of James, then you got the Gentile believers. And here's what Paul is saying, everyone in the room, we got here the same way.

Not because we're Jewish, not because they're Gentile, not because I did this and they they did that because Jesus died on the cross. That's how we all got here. It was all him. It was not us. Not one of them had earned their seat at the table.

And that's why when Peter gets up and walks away, it's not just a rude thing. With his actions, he was telling a lie about the gospel. Verse 17, 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 Christ has led us into sin? Absolutely not. Rather, I am a sinner if I rebuild the old systems of law that the law already of law I already tore down.

Sorry. That was confusing to me. Now, I know some of you, you sit here, you start building your list. I do need to be braver. I need to I need to have a conversation with that person.

I need to speak up more. I need to be bold. Gotta find that person and finally have that conversation. Listen, I get it. I was there.

That's totally understandable. But if that's all we get out of this passage, we're missing the whole point. That's doing the exact same thing that verse 18 spoke against. That verse 18 said it tore down saying that the law isn't the thing anymore. This passage is not telling you to try harder.

Trying harder is what got Peter in this spot in the first place. Verse 19, but when I tried to keep the law, it condemned me. So I died to the law. I stopped trying to meet all 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 lives in me. So I live in this earthly body by trusting in the Son of God who loved me and gave Himself for me. He says, my old self has been crucified. My old desires, they're dead. That man is dead.

The version of you that has to perform, that has to seek approval to manage the room, that has to keep everyone happy, Paul says, Jesus went to the cross and your sins were taken with him. That man is dead. And the life Paul is living now is not Paul. It's not Paul trying to do things harder. He says it is Christ living in me, only received by grace, by trust in Him, not earned by anything that I did.

Now look how he ends it, who loved me and gave Himself for me. He doesn't say who's watching me, who's grading me, keeping this checklist, who's waiting to see if I get it right. He doesn't say any of that. He says he loved me and He gave Himself for me, past tense. He doesn't say, He loves me and if I do this, He'll give Himself for me.

He's already done it, Paul says. Loved me, gave Himself for me. Finished. Verse 21, I do not treat the grace of God as meaningless. For if keeping the law could make us right with God, then there was no need for Christ to die.

If you could pull it off, Paul's saying, Jesus didn't have to. There was any other way. There was any list that we could take, any performance, there was any version of you that would end up being good enough, then the cross is the most unnecessary thing in history. But I know nobody in this room believes that because Jesus did die. Jesus did walk out of the grave.

Nobody in this room with Paul believed it either. So we come back to Peter again. Peter's fear was never about these friends of James. Those people, they had no power over him. What what they had was this ability to make him feel like he's not worthy, make him feel unacceptable.

And Peter? Peter still somewhere deep inside his soul, he he's still living like there's a verdict that has to be made. Like something I'm doing still counts towards that. And the gospel says, that's not true. The verdict is already in.

There's nothing you can do. It came in at the cross and it's not up for review. Your verdict has already been given. It's Christ's performance, not yours. It's what we've talked about every single week so far through this series in Galatians.

It's Jesus and nothing else. It's only Jesus. We have nothing left to prove. We got nothing left to protect. And when we don't have anything we have to protect, we're not afraid of that table anymore, that opinion anymore.

For Peter, fear left a table that Grace built, and we can't we can't miss what it cost to build it. That table that Peter walked away from, it cost the blood of Christ to build it. That grace that brought these two opposing sides together that tore down this wall, grace bought that. Only the body of the Son of God was able to do that and only because he walked out of a tomb three days later. So what does it look like to be set free from that, to be turned loose from that every single day?

Means you don't have to be louder. You don't have to be tougher. You don't have to dig deeper for some sort of willpower. It means you just don't carry around whatever it is that made you afraid anymore. It's not yours to carry.

Christ took it. It means you stop managing your image because there's nothing left to defend. It means you can tell the truth in a hard conversation because you don't have to audition for God anymore. It means you can be wrong and someone correct you and you know what? You'll still survive it.

But that's not the only thing. We bring it back to where we started. Iron sharpens iron, but not two identical blades. One of them has to have some grit. Be willing to speak the truth.

Peter had a pall. And really, that's that's the only reason that this story has an ending that's worth spending a Sunday morning talking about. Somebody who had a little grit walked into a room and saw a brother doing something he shouldn't have been doing and had enough guts to knock off those rough edges. I didn't have that in those four years. I didn't have anybody who could could look and say, Greg, you've been quiet a long time.

Your friend needs to hear the truth. I didn't give anybody permission to do that at that season of my life. So here's your step. Don't go be braver. Come back to the table.

And the easiest way to do that is to surround yourself with some people who have the permission to call you out. That doesn't mean we jump up after church and start calling each other out. You have your group that you trust. And they got permission and you got permission to call each other out and say, Hey, that's not gospel centered. Not pointing fingers, but knocking off the rough edges for each other.

The easiest way we do that at our church there's all kinds of ways to do it, but our easiest way is through getting in a life group. Surrounding yourself with another group of believers who you begin to know well enough, you know they're praying for you, you know they're going encourage you, you know that they love you, and you give them permission to tell you the truth. Give somebody permission to tell you the truth. Get in a LifeGroup. If you can't get in a life group, show up to Fight Club and flourish.

If you can't do that, find a group. Ladies, find you a group of women. Men, find you a group of men and give them permission to tell you the truth. For me, I've got all of that now, but I didn't have it over those four years. Don't leave the table that Grace built.

Don't get up and walk away out of fear of what someone else may think. Some of you in this room, you're like my old friend. You know about Jesus, but you've never surrendered to Jesus. You're trying to figure out if I'm gonna do this, what do I gotta give up? What's it gonna take?

How do I need to clean myself up? But verse 21, it answers that whole thing. If the law could make us right with God, there's no need for Christ to die. So there's nothing you gotta do except come in faith to Jesus Christ. I trust Jesus.

Will you be my Lord? He would not have gone to the cross if there'd been any other way. He is the Savior. He is the Lord. He is the only way.

He died for your sin and he walked out of a tomb, Jesus and nothing else. That's all that it takes. Surrender to Jesus. And the invitation this morning, it's not go get better first. It's not try to perform better.

It's not clean yourself up. It's simply this, I believe he is who he says he is. And I know I can't do this without him. Will you save me? Jesus, will you be my Lord?

Can't miss the last part, Lord. That means he's first in everything. Some of you, you've known Jesus a long time, But you've been quiet. There's a conversation that you avoid. A room where you let people think you've got nothing worth saying.

A table you sit out with a friend for lunch and never say the most important thing. Maybe it's your one. We've talked about our one all year. But maybe you're not having that conversation with your one because you don't wanna offend your one. Maybe it's a friend at your lunch table.

We need to see Peter one more time because Peter Peter is the mercy of the story. Peter blew it. Paul says he's lying about the gospel. He blew it and he blew it publicly and he got rebuked publicly in front of everybody by a man who used to arrest Christians and God didn't remove him. He didn't take his position from him.

God kept him. God used him. Peter wrote part of the New Testament. So fear has kept you quiet. That same gospel that saved you is the gospel that turned you loose, set you free.

You haven't lost anything that you can't walk back into, and a fear if you feel like because I didn't speak up, you've lost anything you've not. Peter is the mercy in the story. So if you'd bow your heads, as the band comes back, my question for you is simply this. Number one, have you surrendered to Christ? Some of you are sitting here right now, you know you've never surrendered to Christ and you know, you know that if you were to die today, you would go to hell.

And maybe you're playing a game saying, maybe I can do it later. Later may never come. But the gospel says that if you believe he is who he says he is, if you put your faith in Christ and you make him Lord of your life, declare him as Lord, the scripture says you will be saved. Not just believing it, but declaring him as Lord. Have you ever really done it?

If you've never done it, it's not a magic prayer. It's simply something along the lines of, Lord, I know I'm a sinner. I know I need a savior. I believe Jesus died on a cross for me. I know he walked out of the tomb.

Lord, will you save me? Will you be the Lord of my life? That's it. And then you tell somebody. We walk through with you what that looks like to follow Jesus.

You don't have to come up publicly. You can grab me after church. You can grab a parent. You can grab a friend. You can grab whoever and just say God did this in my life and I want to know what it really looks like to follow him.

But there's also a group in here, you are Christians and right now that name, that face, it's there. You know you've been quiet and you've done what Peter did. You've walked away from a table because you were afraid of criticism either from them or from other people. And right now, you have the opportunity to repent of that, not to become braver, but to share the truth of the gospel with those who you care about. Maybe you need to come to the altar and lay it down.

Maybe you need to call that person as soon as you leave here today. Maybe you need to show yourself some mercy in the middle of all of it. However he leads today, don't quench what he's trying to get you to do. Follow him. He's calling you to lay down your life and surrender to him, do it.

Whatever it looks like, don't say no. Father, this morning, there are people in this room who don't know Jesus as savior, and I pray, God, that they would see that whatever they're chasing in this world is not worth it. That there's always gonna be the next thing and the next thing and the next thing, and it's just exhausting. But Jesus, Jesus is worth it. Jesus is forever.

Jesus is the only way. And Father, I pray that people will see the mercy in that. That they'll see the grace that's offered to them, God, that they would come to the feet of Christ right now and just be honest with you. Repent of their brokenness, their sin. Declare Jesus as Lord of their life.

I pray for those in this room who sometimes we worry about things that are not Gospel centered, and we end up like Paul or Peter. And we move away from that table when really we just need to be there and show the truth and show grace and speak in love. God, give us courage. And God, I pray that we would all be willing to give someone permission to tell us the truth. Lead how you want us to lead, Lord.

Tell us what you want us to do, and give us the courage to respond. In Jesus' name, amen.