Additive Free | Galatians 2:1-10

The title of my message is additive free, uh, for reasons I'll get into

in a little bit, but somewhat related.

I, I'm actually wanting to hear from you guys a little bit, and I rarely

do too men- too much interaction.

But do you guys, like, frequently wash your car?

Like, let, let me ask.

How many of you wash your car more than once a week or once a week or more?

Anyone wash…

Okay, okay, a couple people.

More than, uh, once a month or more?

I'm curious.

Okay, so more, more, um, a little bit more disciplined.

Okay, once a year or more?

Okay, most of y- some of you guys aren't, I mean, okay.

Well, there you go.

I, I would say I myself am, am probably a once a year or

more in, in washing the car.

It's like I get, like, the quarterly car wash.

Uh, and frankly, it's just, um, it's just a frustration out of, uh, number

one, you know, how, how expensive water is in California and how dry

everything is that I just, I just don't wanna spend the, the time and

the money on these things when rain should be doing this, the work for me.

But I think in general, like, it also kinda irks me, like, how

many car washes are opening, like, on every single street corner.

You guys have noticed that?

Like, I live in Moreno Valley.

There's like…

I-- There's, there's literally there's blocks where there's

three car washes, and I'm like, "Who's going to these car washes?

How do they stay in business?

I don't understand."

But when I go to car washes, the thing I do is, you know, when I

go to my quarterly car wash, I get the regular basic car wash.

And, and I get, you know, it's usually, like, eight.

Sometimes, you know, with inflation, it's gone up to, like, ten dollars.

And no matter where you go, there's, there's always the basic.

And they always call it, like…

The, the lettering and the font doesn't look that great, and it's,

like, your basic, original, you know, the one you don't want.

And they, they usually call it that because they, they

always wanna upsell you, right?

They-- And especially if there's an attendant at the car wash,

they're like, "Hey, would you like to buy a subscription?

Would you like the deluxe car wash?"

And I'm really convinced that the deluxe car wash, they just use,

like, a different color of soap.

Like, I don't understand the difference for that.

Um, well, uh, the reason I'm, I'm, I'm joking a little bit

is that it-- I'm, I take…

Actually, I take all that seriously.

But the reason I bring that up is because I think that in the book of Galatians,

that's what the Apostle Paul's functional adversaries were doing, is essentially

they were, they were upselling the gospel.

They were saying, well, you know, from the Apostle Paul, you would

have heard the basic gospel.

You would have gotten the original wash, if you will.

But it was, you know, incomplete or it was insufficient.

Did you know that there is a gospel deluxe?

Did you know that there's a gospel, you know, if you will, with a wax coat,

and it was yours at an additional cost?

Maybe not a cost of money, sure, but it was at a cost of extra

obedience to the Mosaic Law

But this time, you're really saved.

This time, your, your car, if you will, is actually clean And that sounded good

enough to the Galatians that Paul chose to wrote this book, to write this book.

Where he grew astonished, as it is in Galatians 1:6, he was astonished that they

Galatians 1:6

are turning from Him who called you in the grace of Christ, meaning God himself,

and turning to a different gospel because the Galatians saw, "Hey, if we really

wanna be safe, we have to, we have to get the up-sold version of the gospel."

And in many cases, you might think, okay, uh, just taking the Galatian side

a little bit, at first hearing, you might think like, "Well, it's better, right?"

It, it, it, you know, it- there's a little bit more to it, but it was better.

Shouldn't it be better?

Well, the problem for the Apostle Paul was that it was not better.

In adding more to the gospel, it made the gospel worse.

There, there's a term for, um, in food service, uh, when, when, you

know, the, the county, uh, comes down on you if you are mixing ingredients

or trying to pass off ingredients or adding ingredients to something else.

It's called a- adulterating.

You're adulterating your food.

If you're trying to pass off olive oil, something as olive oil, but it's

really, like, water and vegetable oil, that's adulterated food.

You can actually get your business shut down.

And the problem for the Apostle Paul was that adding something to

the gospel was adulterating it.

And he goes, of course, you guys have already seen some of the opening arguments

of what the problem is with that.

And the Apostle Paul will continue in this time, i- in this passage in Galatians,

to say that, um, really there's nothing you need to add to the essential message

of the gospel, nor, and this is kind of his point in the, in the passage, nor do

the Apo- would the apostles in Jerusalem itself add anything to the gospel.

Jerusalem, the seat, if you might say, the, of Judaism.

Those who are leaders in the Church of Jerusalem would not add anything to

the gospel message that Paul preached.

And it was this we might call additive-free message that actually

offers you true freedom in Christ.

It's this one that offers you true forgiveness, true salvation, and

this is the one that God works through, most importantly of all, and

blesses in its preaching on Earth.

So as we think about that, let's read Galatians chapter two.

We're gonna read verses one through ten, and we'll spend

all our time in these verses.

Galatians chapter two, verse one: Then after fourteen years,

I went up again to Jerusalem with Barnabas, taking Titus along with me.

I went up because of a revelation and set before them Though privately before

for those who seemed influential, the gospel that I proclaim among the

Gentiles in order to make sure that I was not running or had not run in vain.

But even Titus, who was with me, was not forced to be

circumcised, though he was a Greek.

Yet because of false brothers secretly, uh, brought in who slipped in to spy out

our freedom that we have in Christ Jesus so that they might bring us into slavery,

to them we did not yield in submission even for a moment so that the truth of

the gospel might be preserved for you.

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

God shows no partiality.

Those, I say, who seemed influential added nothing to me.

On the contrary, when they saw that I had been entrusted with the gospel to

the cir-- uh, the uncircumcised, just as Peter had been entrusted to the gospel

t- to the circumcised, for he who had worked through Peter for his apostolic

ministry to the circumcised worked also through me for mine to the Gentiles.

And when James and Cephas and John, who seemed to be pillars, perceived

the grace that was given to me, they gave the right hand of fellowship to

Barnabas and me that we should go to the Gentiles and they to the circumcised.

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

There's a lot of parentheses in the way Paul tells stories.

Um, but he, Paul is continuing in this passage his own history with the gospel.

First, if you might have remembered from last week, 11 or, uh, chapter 1 verses 11

through, uh, w- through, well, through the end of chapter 1, verse, uh, 24, he tells

his own story of how he came to Christ.

And his point was, "Hey, I was not even called by a man-made gospel.

I was called by Christ himself.

That's why I can call myself an apostle, one who was sent, because I was sent and

charged with the preaching of the gospel by Jesus himself, 'cause he actually

appeared to me on the road to Emmaus."

So that was his contention for his own testimony and how people

reacted to that testimony as you, uh, would have went through last week.

This time around, Paul tells a history in which he compares notes functionally

to his counterpart apostles in Jerusalem to determine whether they

were on the same page with the message.

"Hey, are we, are we talking the same language?

Are we as the church in many different locations telling really the same story,

conveying the same message of the gospel of salvation only through Christ, not

by works, but through grace and th- through forgiveness and through faith?"

Well, that's why he tells this particular story.

But really quickly, um, to clarify, given that we have just finished the

Book of Acts just a few weeks ago, we might ask, like, "Hey, the story

that he's talking about that happened 14 years after he was converted,

like, when exactly did that happen?

What, like, what trip to Jerusalem was recorded in Acts, um, for us to

understand what was kinda going on?"

Um, many scholars frankly disagree about which visit this is.

Some scholars even say that, like, "Hey, it's not even a visit that's

described in the Book of Acts."

Uh, however, I won't get into all the reasons, but it really does look like

this was the visit that Paul took to Jerusalem, uh, in Acts chapter 15.

Acts 15 · chapter mention

Uh, I'm just gonna turn there really quickly, but if you remember in Acts

Acts 15 · chapter mention

chapter 15, the outcome of that meeting was really about a, a subject very close

to what we're reading about in Galatians chapter two, where, uh, there's a big

council in Jerusalem and the leaders of the church there and the leaders in the

church abroad w- litigated essentially this question of, "Hey, when people

are coming forth, when Gentiles are believing in Christ, do they need to

follow the law in order to, um, be saved?"

And so in, in Acts 15:1-2 we read, "But some men came down from Judea and

Acts 15:1–2

were teaching the brothers, 'Unless you are circumcised according to the

custom of Moses, you cannot be saved.'"

So this is a church not, you know, in Jerusalem.

This is a church I think at Antioch, and people were coming around and saying,

"Hey, um, you need to follow the…

You heard the gospel.

That's great.

Here's the upsell.

You need to also e- essentially be circumcised in order

to follow the gospel."

And verse two, "After Paul and Barnabas had no small dissension," meaning,

like, kinda heated disagreement, "and debate with them, Paul and Barnabas

and some of the others were appointed to go up to Jerusalem to the apostles

and the elders about this question."

So this seems to be, um, the occasion on which that…

the occasion which Paul is describing in A- in Galatians chapter two.

Nevertheless, what's most critical in Paul's telling of the story in

our passage today is that there are a couple things that are not as evident

in the Book of Acts which Paul would refer to as making this journey unique.

First, he references in verse two of Galatians chapter two, uh, he returns

to Jerusalem because of a revelation.

That's the reason he went up to Jerusalem.

He says That it was a revelation and he then, he set it, basically

he set before them the gospel that I proclaim among the Gentiles in

order to make sure I was running, not running or had not run in vain.

He had a revelation from God to tell him to go to Jerusalem.

We don't understand the content of the entire revelation.

It might have been, just been God saying, "Go to Jerusalem."

It might have been as simple as that.

But it also seems like it had to do with something, um, it had to do something

with his own ministry to the Gentiles in a way that God was sharing with

him how he was intending to work among the Gentiles and use Paul to that end.

We, of course, we saw in the Book of Acts how God was continually appearing

to Paul and giving him encouragement and giving him comfort, but really

giving him, uh, um, endurance and steeling his conviction to not only

preach the gospel abroad, preach in Jerusalem, but also preach to Rome.

And so this makes sense if you consider the life that, um,

God was calling, uh, Paul to.

So he goes to Jerusalem, not because he needed to make his name clear, not

because he needed permission from the apostles in Jerusalem, as he insists.

He was going to Jerusalem because God told him to.

And what's interesting, uh, secondly, in his telling of this story, this

was not a public council like we see depicted in Acts 15, but he, this was

a private, if you might say, this was a closed door session with the apostles.

He talked to them privately, as he says, uh, parenthetically in your Bible perhaps,

uh, it might be in verse two, privately before those who seemed influential.

So what could it mean that he discussed these things privately?

It was likely this, that it wasn't that, like, Paul was trying to keep, uh, do

a secret council with the, the apostles But it was that, you know, the Jerusalem

Council had its own kind of thing, but…

And it wasn't a, a judgment or a referendum on what the

Apostle Paul himself was allowed or not allowed to preach.

It wasn't about the content of his message.

What they decided in Jerusalem was what Gentiles were supposed to do

after they heard the gospel, and they were saved, what they were bound to.

So what Paul is basically saying is that he had a message that really

wasn't up for public debate, but just to make sure, he was privately going

to the individual apostles that were in Jerusalem to verify, "Hey, is this the

gospel that you guys are still preaching?"

And to compare notes with each other, that they were talking with one voice so that

he would not have run in vain, as he says.

Um, that's-- The idea is that he was laboring over the gospel.

He was going through persecution.

He was doing all these things because he was really holding fast

to the truth as he understood it.

And, and we, we know that Paul said he, "I didn't, I didn't consult with

flesh and blood in my own conversion.

Yet, you know, just to limit any chance that I could have been in

error at any point, I'm gonna check with my counterparts in Jerusalem

to see if our gospel matches their gospel, if our gospel was one."

Well-

Following that, it describes the meeting with this, uh, with these apostles,

and he describes one key outcome, and he talks about basically the, the, the

reasons why that outcome, uh, resulted.

What was the key outcome of this meeting?

What was the most tangible outcome?

Was that there was a man named Titus, who we actually see later.

Um, Paul writes a letter to Titus.

It's called the Pastoral Epistle.

We don't see him as a character in the book of Acts.

Nevertheless, he was a companion of Paul who was a Gentile.

Titus, who accompanied Paul, in verse three, was not forced to be

circumcised, though he was a Greek.

For Paul, that was everything because that shows that, hey, if someone wants

to be in God's good graces, if he wants to be in good standing with the

church, even the founding church, even the church of Jerusalem, circumcision

was not necessary for the Gentiles

This is not Paul saying that circumcision itself was to be

derided or that it was bad.

But in answer to the question of whether circumcision should be expected and

required of all those who would call upon the name of Jesus in all forms and

in the most positive form in the, uh, person of Titus, the apostles answer,

"No, it does not need to happen."

And that should have been like just a done deal.

It was over.

Hey, we, we decided these things, and now, now we'll go and continue our ministry.

But it was-- it turned into a battle essentially, where that particular

issue, that particular outcome of Titus not needing to be circumcised, created

a whirlwind of conflict within the Jerusalem church as Paul describes it.

He describes r- uh, in verse four, 'Yet because of false brothers secretly brought

in who slipped in to spy out our freedom that we might have in Christ Jesus so

they might bring us t- into slavery, to them we did not yield in submission

for even a moment so that the truth of the gospel might be preserved for you.'

So there's already something that was decided.

Hey, Titus, you don't need to be circumcised, brother.

It's fine.

But then there was another faction who wanted to re-litigate this

entire thing, and what does Paul say?

We did not submit to them for even a moment.

We did not even give them a hearing on this issue, and it only steal his c-

steeled his conviction on the essential integrity of the gospel message.

And he actually calls them false brothers, that in insisting on circumcision,

they prove themselves outside of the bounds of orthodoxy, outside of the

bounds of any reasonable, recognizable Christian teaching in Jerusalem.

They were not Christians at all.

They were false brethren

But here's the good news It ended in unity, and it ended, this trip ended in a,

um, a transparent and resolved commitment to the simplicity of the gospel.

After all these battles, after who knows how many debates or, or backbiting that

could have happened among the false brethren against the Apostle Paul,

pro-pro-probably against Titus as well.

In verse six, we see that those…

from those who seem to be influential, those, I say, who seem to be

influential added nothing to me

Next, on the contrary, in verse seven, "When they saw that I had been entrusted

with the gospel," just as Peter had been entrusted with the gospel.

And when James…

I'm just skipping down to verse s- nine.

"And when James and Cephas and John," meaning James and Peter and John, "who

seemed to be pillars, perceived the grace that was given to me, they gave the

right hand of fellowship to Barnabas and me, that we could go to the Gentiles…

we should go to the Gentiles and they to the circumcised."

What-- How did this entire thing resolved-- resolve?

Well, it resolved in three ways.

That when the apostles in Jerusalem saw what Paul was preaching, saw the

controversy that rose up around Titus, they added nothing to Paul's message.

They said, "No, you're good to keep proclaiming the message

you've already been proclaiming."

Secondly, they perceived the grace at work in Paul.

Which is to say that they recognized that the work that Paul

was doing wasn't simply God's…

I mean, sorry, it wasn't simply Paul's work.

"Hey, I'm doing this stuff, and I'm just, you know, a rogue person

out there preaching the gospel."

No, they recognized, "Hey, God's actually working through Paul, through His grace."

And thirdly, they gave him the right hand of fellowship, which is to say,

we are not two different factions.

We aren't two different, you know, denominations, if you will.

We're all on the same side, and we're all doing the same thing.

And all they said was, "Hey, Paul, remember the poor."

The, the church at Jerusalem was also very poor.

And so they just said, "Hey, when you're going to the

Gentiles, remember us over here."

And Paul said, "Yeah, sure.

I would love to do that."

So from this particular occasion-

As we start to think about how this might apply into our own life

Think about this first.

How do you preserve the gospel?

You simply don't add to it.

How do you maintain the integrity of something?

Sometimes we think, like, in order to, like, preserve the truth of

the gospel, we need to reframe it as though this was a, a painting

or a picture that we need to be…

that we need to treat very delicately, and we need to put

a new frame on it or recast it.

And I think that's behind some of the, uh, what we would call, like,

over-practical applications of the gospel or over-pragmatism of the

gospel, which is to say, like, "Hey, if you wanna share the gospel with

people, you need to make church fun."

That's why you see, like, you know, churches, um, online sometimes of,

hey, it just looks like a, like a show.

Like, hey, they're putting on a show.

Uh, I saw one occasion, you know, the, the church had a rollercoaster built,

like, on the stage somehow, and I thought, like, how expensive, how much money

did they spend on that rollercoaster?

And they…

But their heart was probably, "Hey, we need to preserve the gospel.

We need to show people that the gospel's important."

Well, if you really wanna preserve the gospel, you stick to the essentials.

There aren't upgrades, there aren't series of levels, there aren't extra

features that you can add to the gospel to maintain its effectiveness.

Nor in the Christian life do you need, like, subsequent, you know,

gospel boosts or, uh, booster shots or something like that

Rather, the gospel is kind of like a medicine that if you dilute it

or if you added other ingredients to it, it loses its potency

It becomes tainted if you mix it with something else

In the same way, yes, let's guard against anything from slipping into

our core message in which we hope that Christ died for our sins, and there

is no other way to experience that salvation than by grace through faith

In First Corinthians chapter 15, verses one through three

1 Corinthians 15 · chapter mention

Again, it's the Apostle Paul writing, and he says to the Corinthians, describing

the gospel that he preached to them, he said, "Now I would remind you,

brothers, of the gospel I preached to you, which you received, in which you

stand, and by which you are being saved, if you hold fast to the word I preached

to you—unless you believed in vain."

Verse three, "For I delivered to you as of first importance what

I also received: that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the

Scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day in

accordance with the Scriptures."

So Paul's message essentially is like, "Hey, I have-- we can-- there's a bunch

of things we can talk about in church.

We can talk about what the Bible says about marriage, about family.

But of first importance, it's this one thing, that Christ died for your sins."

It's in your bulletin.

The Puritan William Perkins said this, "Let us observe that when justification

or salvation is ascribed to works or sacraments, the truth of the gospel gives

place, and falsehood comes into the room."

There are ways in which The gospel being more palatable or, or being

a little bit changed or being added might achieve a desired outcome.

In other words, like, if you were to tell someone that, "Hey, believe the gospel,

but also, you know, vote for the right candidate," or something like that.

"Hey, we'll, we'll, we gotta do these two things in order to be saved."

You might get, you know, better candidates in office.

You might get, you know, some good things as a result.

But is God actually gonna work in it?

Well, if we read our Bibles and we see the Book of Galatians, we see

that people aren't saved by that.

People are saved by grace through faith.

People aren't saved by voting for the right person, doing

the right thing, following the Mosaic law, getting circumcised.

People are saved because they cri- they came to Christ and they asked

for forgiveness of their sins.

Secondly, we should note from this story, take to heart that many dangers to the

Church's message come from the inside.

The threat here to the Church, particularly even the church, the

individual church at Jerusalem, was a lot different than we're used to

seeing even from the Book of Acts.

The Book of Acts, the Church was often persecuted from the outside, right?

They were in trouble from, yeah, the, the Jewish leaders, but they

are also trouble, uh, from the authorities and from other persecutors.

People, remember in pe- the Book of Acts, people were defending the honor of the

goddess Artemis, and it caused a riot.

Yeah, there, there are a lot of threats from the outside, and that's true today.

But the true story of the churches is told in the epistles, in the letters

that Paul writes, and they all remind us of the, uh, fallibility of the

churches and how quickly right doctrine slips out of our reach because of

people that might be in the church shaping the way the church believes.

Notice that, yes, there was a council to talk about and decide in wisdom

about what the Gentiles should do.

There was not a council about what the gospel is.

The apostles were defending that in the same way that's not up for, that shouldn't

be up for debate, but sometimes it is.

We see many examples of the fallibility of the church in scripture, and

as we'll see actually next week, some examples of the fallibility

of the ministers of the gospel.

So lest we think like the Jerusalem church, like being like the

mothership, "Hey, they, uh, they have all the events, they have all the

programs, they have all the funding."

No, they're actually pretty divided.

They were infiltrated with false brethren, and what's more, they were poor.

So they had a lot of stuff going on.

So what is the answer?

You know, I'm, I'm, I feel like I'm, like, trash-talking the church.

Do we abandon the church altogether?

No, because God established the church, and he will always be faithful to it

If you wanna talk about a messed up church, a church that was infiltrated

from the inside, think of the church that's described in Revelation 2:21-25.

Revelation 2:21–25

He- God says, "Hey, I have this thing against you, that you tolerate Jezebel."

And we're like, "J- who's Jezebel?"

Well, Jezebel was someone who was teaching someone else, or teaching a, a gospel

that was contrary to the true gospel.

We don't know that her name was actually Jezebel.

It's very likely that it was a pseudonym or a, a, a symbolic name.

But God says, or Jesus says in, in verse 21 specifically, "I gave her

time to repent, but she refuses to repent of her sexual immorality.

Behold, I will throw her into a sickbed, and those who commit

adultery with her will f- I will throw into great tribulation,

unless they repent of her works.

And I will strike her children dead.

And all the chil- churches will know that I am He who searches mind

and heart, and I will give each of you according to your works.

But the rest of you in Thyatira, who do not hold this teaching, who have not

learned what some call the deep things of Satan, to you I say, do not lay on,

I do not lay on you any other burden.

Only hold fast to what you have until I come."

So this was a church that was way bad.

But God's saying, "Hey, even those who are in that church…"

You know, you would think, like, "Hey, are there any even faithful

Christians still going to the church?"

God's saying, "Hey, if you're still faithful in this church, to fight for

what's right, I will reward you, and I'm not gonna lay on you any other burden."

God can redeem churches even through conflict, though.

Thirdly

We should remember that the gospel brings you freedom.

And that's what Paul was willing to fight over, fight tooth and nail.

Because those who wanted to circumcise Titus, for instance, were

jealous of the freedom that he had.

They were sent as outsiders to spy the freedom they had in Christ.

It was freedom that was at stake, the freedom that comes from the gospel

This was a feature and this is a feature of what Christ does for us today.

He frees us.

It wasn't that we were, we were good people and the gops- gospel

helps us to be better by degrees.

It was that we were slaves to sin and the law, and God frees us from that

So although it was a feature of the gospel, the religious

leaders, the Judaizers as we see here, they saw it as a bug.

Oh, it's a, that's a defect.

You guys are being too licentious.

You guys are, are abandoning the law and you don't care about the law of God.

Well, what does it say in Romans chapter six, verses 20 through 23?

"For when you were slaves of sin, you were free in regard to righteousness.

But what fruit were you getting at that time from the things

of which you are now ashamed?

For the end of those things is death.

But now that you have been set free from sin and have become slaves

of God, the fruit you get leads to sanctification, and its end, eternal life.

For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal

life in Christ Jesus our Lord."

In Christ, you are free from the bondage and the slavery, not only

to the law, but to sin itself.

And notice Paul even says there, "Hey, you were, you were, um, in bondage.

Before you came to Christ, you were in bondage to sin, but you were

free in regards to righteousness."

Meaning, like, you were completely unmoored from righteousness, so it

felt like you were free, like you were doing your own thing, but you

couldn't even a- access righteousness if you wanted to because you didn't

realize how much you were tied to the sinful things that you did.

How much that is true in our own life before we came to Christ, and

we often see it in people who are non-believers around us, where they're

like, "Hey, I'm, I'm free to do these things and I, I'm free to party."

But when you realize what's actually happening, you're like, oh, they're,

they're just slaves to this thing.

They're slaves to pleasure.

They can't stop doing these things because they know no other good to do

The freedom that God gives us in Christ because of the gospel is true freedom.

In Galatians chapter five, um, later in the book, very famous verse says this,

uh, Galatians chapter five, verse one, "For freedom Christ has set us free.

Stand therefore and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery."

Paul's saying there is actually freedom if you believe in Christ

and you repent of your sins

And the way it's manifested is to say, "I don't need to follow, I

don't have to follow the Mosaic Law.

I don't have to follow these outward ceremonies in order

to be approved by God."

That's one of the great benefits of the freedom that's described there.

Lastly, this passage shows us, and should encourage us, in ministry.

Our great joy in ministry is that we run and God works.

Earlier in our passage here in, um, Galatians chapter two, as I noted, Paul

wanted to make sure that he was not running or had, uh, not run in vain.

That was verse two.

So he double-checked on his message to say, "Hey, is this the message

that's still part of the Church?

Like, like, hey, is this the message that God is still going to use?"

And I think sometimes we as…

You know, the Apostle Paul is human and, and so are we.

When we serve in ministry or if we do our best to just be o- obedient to

what we think God is calling us to, sometimes we might have apprehension about

whether the gospel works, so to speak.

We might say, "Well, I've, I've been sharing the gospel

with my neighbor for years.

I don't know if it works.

I've been sharing the gospel with my family member.

Have I run in vain?

Like, is…

Am I going through all this for nothing?"

But from this passage, if we sympathize with the, the consternation and

the apprehension of the Apostle Paul, let us also sympathize

with his own encouragement.

Because after he had met with the apostles, he had a third-party review

of what he was doing, and they said, "The grace of God is at work in you."

I'm sure Paul would- was glad to hear that

He also said

And I'll just read verse seven and eight in whole.

"On the contrary, when they saw that I had been entrusted with the gospel

to the uncircumcised, just as Peter had been entrusted with the gospel

to the circumcised, for he who worked through Peter for his apostolic

ministry to the circumcised worked also through me from mine to the Gentiles."

So it's that, that, you know, that kind of strange parenthetical.

But what is Paul saying?

That ultimately they could agree that their, their number one was not a separate

gospel for the Gentiles and the Jews, for the circumcised and the uncircumcised.

It was just a degree, a measure of a degree of audiences

that was the difference.

But what was most comforting and most encouraging to the Apostle Paul, and

all the apostles I would guess, was that it wasn't that they were just doing

this, it was that God was at work in it.

He who worked through Peter also worked through me

So a lot of times in our own ministry and, and sharing the gospel and in

treating it as precious and trying to preserve it and being obedient to

it, we can feel like we're running, and we can feel like we're tired, and

we can wonder whether it's working.

But I would say, let us take encouragement from our own testimonies and from people

we know to remind us that God is always at work, and therefore, we should feel the

freedom of preaching the gospel, that God is actually the one who brings results.

It's not up to us.

And when we are faithful with the essentials, when we are handling the

gospel correctly, when we are not adulterating the message, it's not simply

that it works, it functions, it behaves, it's that God is in it and does things.

Let's pray together.

Lord, we thank you for your Word.

And Lord, if your word is true, then that means that you

are at work among us even now

That your gospel, which is that you sent your son to live a perfect life and to

die a perfect death in payment for our sins, and that if we simply approach

him with faith and receive him into our lives, we are forgiven of those sins and

guaranteed salvation here and in eternity.

Lord, this very gospel, this message, is what you work through, and I ask

here that you would work even on our own hearts, even for anyone in here who has

not yet believed in that gospel message, who has not put their faith in Christ,

who has not put their trust in the, the, the work that he is doing rather

than their own good works purportedly.

Lord, I ask that you would work among us, that, Lord, you would change us

from the inside out, and that, Lord, we would be faithful not only to

preserve the gospel, but faithful to do the work of sharing the gospel.

We ask that you would bless us in this time.