Galatians 2:11-14
Amen, you can be seated. Please
turn in your copy of God’s word to Galatians 2, 11 through 14. Remember in our study of Galatians,
Paul skips over his usual niceties because he has to defend his
apostolic calling from Jesus on the Damascus road. He also
has to defend the purity of the gospel So as we have seen in
our couple studies in Galatians, Paul says, my apostleship is
not from men. I didn’t get it from Jerusalem.
He also said his gospel is not from men. He got it directly
from Jesus Christ. And today we’re going to hear
a practical application of Paul’s love for the true gospel. He’s
going to speak of a moment in the church at Antioch where He
had to oppose Peter. Now remember Peter, Pope Peter,
I suppose we might call him, he by tradition became the Bishop
of Rome. He was one of the leaders of
the Church of Jesus Christ. He made a pretty big mistake,
we’ll see, and Peter was corrected by God’s grace through Paul. Let’s give our attention now
to God’s word, Galatians 2, beginning at verse 11. But when Cephas
came to Antioch, I opposed him to his face, because he stood
condemned. For before certain men came from
James, he was eating with Gentiles. But when they came, he drew back,
and he separated himself, fearing the circumcision party. And the
rest of the Jews acted hypocritically along with him, so that even
Barnabas was led astray by their hypocrisy. But when I saw their
conduct, and that it was not in step with the truth of the
gospel, I said to Cephas before them all, if you, though a Jew,
live like a Gentile and not like a Jew, how can you force the
Gentiles to live like Jews? Amen. May God add his blessing
to the reading and the preaching of his word. About a hundred
years ago, I think some of you are familiar with the fundamentalist
and modernist movement. If you’re not familiar with it,
you should have been, shame on you, you should have been in
Sunday school about a year ago when the class looked at this
great controversy. The fundamentalist believed in
the Bible. They believed in God. They believed
in the sinfulness of man, the salvation God offered through
Jesus. They believed in God’s wisdom,
his power, his providence, all those wonderful things. Well,
the modernists believed that mankind had somehow evolved,
not evolution, though they did get into that, but man had somehow
evolved enough to stand in judgment over the word of God. And so
they said, we live in a more enlightened time and man can
look at the scriptures and rip it to shreds, basically. And
so this battle 100 years ago between the fundamentalist, that’s
the good guys, and the modernist, that’s the bad guys, went on
and on. And some of you will remember
Harry Emerson Fosdick, the famous Presbyterian preacher from New
York City. He preached a sermon called, Shall the Fundamentalist
Win? And his answer was, well, no. Now, we know because we believe
the Bible. We know because we’ve, Read the book of Revelation,
we know because Jesus is strong and mighty that the fundamentalist
will win if they believe in the true things of the scripture.
But it did seem that the modernist won for quite a while. If you
look at the past 100 years of church history in the United
States, lots of reasons the church is in the state that it is in
today. But one of the big reasons the
church is in a low ebb, I would say, is the modernist in some
sense, did take the day. Their liberalism, their mainline
attempts to push away the doctrine of God, to push away the inerrancy
of scriptures, to push away the unique blood atonement of the
virgin born Jesus, and on and on you could go. If you think
I’m stretching the truth, just look at the fracture of the United
Methodist Church. We’ve been witnessing the summer
synods, as you might call them, and they’re fracturing. The main
Presbyterians have been fracturing for a while. And on and on you
can go through the main denominations and you can see that, well, modernism
has hit every one of them. And so thanks be to God, the
fundamentalist, we’ll call them. have carried on and they have
seen fit by God’s grace to build up a remaining church that’s
true to the scriptures, true to the historic confessions,
true to the beliefs we have that we perhaps just recited in the
Nicene Creed and are found in other places. But we also need
to take heed in a generation or two, these good evangelical
churches, they’re also called, can themselves fall on hard times. And so the caution is that we
always need reformation. We always need to search the
scriptures, return to the scriptures, and we need to fix what’s broken
and reform what has become deformed. And this creep and this seep
of culture is nothing new. We know the age old proverb of
the frog in boiling water. When did the frog? figure out
he was in a pot of hot water? Well, not till it was boiling.
And when did the church figure out it was in a pot of boiling
water? Well, for some, not until the heat got really high and
the water became a roiling boil that was cooking the church.
It’s good for us to remember that God’s church, God’s people,
are a peculiar people, and we are to remain unstained, even
separated, consecrated for the Lord as holy. We are not to let
the world seep in our lives or our institution. We remember
that Abram was called out of Ur of the Chaldeans, out of Babylon,
and to live in the promised land. Moses, by faith, left the palace
of Egypt to identify with his Hebrew people, the slaves. We
think of Israel, a chosen people, a light to the nations. They
lived within a boundary according to the civil laws, the Levitical
laws, and the moral laws of God. And they were to be a distinct
people in a holy precinct emanating as light to the world. We remember
the Babylonian captivity of God’s people after they disobeyed God
again and again in the promised land, Babylon carried them away. And you remember well, Daniel,
couple tests, eat the diet of the land. And he said, no, I
would not defile my body in such a way. Let me eat the Hebrew
diet, the diet of almighty God and see if I don’t fare better
than your own diet does your own people. And then there was
the great tall monument. And when you hear the sound of
the instruments being played, you’re to bow down and worship.
And Daniel said, no, I will worship my God and him only. And on and
on, we see examples just before the birth of Jesus. After Israel
returned from exile, we’ve been thinking of that in Ezra and
Nehemiah. But between then and the coming of Jesus, there was
the great Hellenization or the Greek culture influencing Israel,
the people. And there was a great resistance.
And then, of course, with the coming of the Roman Empire, we
got to keep ourselves separate. So this idea of being separate
from culture, distinct from other people, is nothing new. And so, brothers and sisters,
I want to encourage you as we think through Paul opposing Peter,
how steadfast are we to the scriptures? How firm are we in our faith
in God? How much do we love his decrees? Do we wonder at his
creation? Do we marvel at his providence
and his miracles? Do we understand the fall of
man into sin and God’s eternal covenant to save a people for
himself through Christ, his own son? Do we understand that God
calls his people through the gospel and when they come to
faith in him, he works in them by his word and his spirit to
make them more Christ-like until the day he brings them home to
heaven. Do we understand the importance
of worship? Do we understand the value of
being a part of the family of God, the church? Do we, do we,
do we relish and cherish the sacraments, our baptism and the
Lord’s supper? Do we have an eye on heaven for
the second coming of Jesus? And do we fear the coming judgment
and wrath of God, yet know we’re standing in Jesus. And there
is therefore now no condemnation. We should receive these things,
accept these things, believe these things, study these things,
practice these things, uphold them, defend them. And if necessary,
we should contend for them when they are opposed or when the
heart of the faith, the gospel itself, is under trial, for we
stand on the apostles teaching. We stand on the foundation of
the church. Christ is the cornerstone, but
it can quickly be taken from us. We saw it in the fundamentalist
modernist movement. We see it in plenty of other
examples throughout church history. Jude, the half brother of Jesus,
writes that little bitty letter just right before Revelation.
in your copies of God’s word, and he says, I was gonna write
to you about some, kind of some nice things about being a Christian,
but now I must write to you to contend for the faith, once and
for all, handed down to the saints, by the apostles, by the prophets. Quickly, quickly, quickly, the
church and her doctrine can erode. And perhaps in your mind, you’re
saying, Peter, what’s the big deal? Paul, what’s the big deal?
Why fuss and fight over it? Well, it’s the gospel that’s
at stake here. It’s the gospel that’s on display
in this little mealtime, in this dinner fight, this food fight
we find in the early church. The message and the meaning and
the power of the gospel, its ability to convince and convert
sinners and comfort and build up saints, that’s what’s on the
line. And the setting here is a dinnertime
fight. It’s Antioch. It’s the big church other than
Jerusalem. It’s a little bit North up in
Syria. And it’s the church where Paul preaches and teaches and
is sent on all his missionary journeys. And there’s a, there’s
a dinner and there’s Jews and Gentiles and Peter is eating,
but he sees the circumcision party, the, the, the church police,
you might call them, they’ve come from Jerusalem and He in
his actions, not necessarily his words, but he in his actions
separates himself from the Gentiles and acts in a way that is not
in accord with the gospel. It is not in step with the gospel.
And I want us to understand it’s not what’s coming out of his
mouth that Paul is so upset with. It’s the actions that imply a
different gospel that Paul is concerned. I want to remind you
of Peter’s vision. Back in Acts chapter 10, Peter
was going to minister among the Gentiles as God had sent him.
He was gonna, well, he’s staying at the house of Simon the Tamer,
a taxidermist. And after we just read Leviticus
11, should he be staying at the house of a taxidermist? Well,
not unless Jesus said it was okay. So Peter’s vision, he’s
in Joppa, he’s staying with Simon the Tanner, he’s in prayer, he’s
up on the housetop. God gives him this vision, he gives it
to him three times, and there’s this big sheet with all kinds of animals
in it. A lot of the ones listed in Leviticus
11. And God says, take and eat. And
Peter says, no. Peter’s good at saying no to
God, isn’t he? No, no, Lord, I’ve never done such a thing.
I would not defile myself. God says to him three times,
it’s okay. What I have called clean, don’t you call unclean. And so Peter has this vision,
this vision of a significant change in redemptive history.
What God formerly called unclean, now through the work of his son,
the Lord Jesus, it is declared clean and it is okay for Peter
to eat whatever and with whomever. Well, it leads us to wonder about
Peter’s fear, doesn’t it? After seeing such a grand vision
of God, perhaps like you read a clear portion of the scripture
and you said, oh, I see that. Oh, I believe that. I got no
problem with that section of scripture, as if you should have
a problem with scripture. But but it’s it’s it’s I’m good
with that. Well, then he goes to this dinner
party and his fear shows up. He fears the circumcision party.
Certain men came from Jerusalem. Certain men came from James and
you might call them The early church police, these are the
Judaizers. These are the ones that say,
yeah, believe in Jesus, but you still gotta be circumcised. Yeah,
believe in Jesus, but you gotta keep the dietary laws. Believe
in Jesus, but you’ve gotta keep the ceremonial laws. And they come to Antioch. And
you know how us Reformed people can be sometimes. We look at
another church and we say, they’re kinda loosey-goosey. You know,
they got, you know, rock and roll in church or, you know,
whatever we say. That’s kind of how these Judaizers looked
at the Antioch church. They bend the rules. They don’t
do things the way we do in Jerusalem. We better go police them. We
better go show them what’s really the better way and report back. Well, there’s another factor
in this. Jerusalem is boiling. Roman persecution is getting
heavier and heavier. The Jews are afraid of losing
their identity as a people of God. They’re afraid of being
absorbed into the Greek, into the Roman culture. And so this,
this rise of nationalism and Rome and the Pax Romana say,
no, thank you. We, we don’t allow. And so the
Jews are afraid of losing their centuries old identity, which
is mostly now on display since there’s no temple in the rituals
they keep. And so the Pharisees and others
are already hostile to Christianity, but they are desperate not to
lose their identity within the Greek and the Roman culture.
And so they do not like these Greek Christians. They do not
like these Gentile Christians, and they definitely don’t like
that they have no requirements of the old covenant law placed
upon them. And so Peter fears their criticism.
Peter fears their tattletailing back in Jerusalem. Peter fears
the persecution that could come on the church at Antioch. See,
they were a little distance away from Jerusalem and they enjoyed
some peace from all that was boiling at Jerusalem. His fears
were probably legitimate, but think about it, brothers and
sisters. Just because man presents a dilemma for us, should we give
up on what God has revealed to us as good, right, and true?
Now, the Bible says the fear of man is a snare. To live under
the weight of the fear of man will only lead you to live out
of poor motives and poor behavior, and that’s exactly what it leads
to for Peter and for Barnabas and the others. You know, we’re
probably gonna enter a stretch of persecution It probably lasts
50, 75, 100 years. Some of you may not live to see
it. Others of us will live through the beginnings of it. You and
the younger generation will probably have it most of your lives. And
there’s a challenge here. Don’t fear man. Hold fast to
the scriptures. Hold fast to the truth of God’s
word. Well, Peter’s fear leads to Peter’s
hypocrisy. Hypocrisy is play acting, right?
We put on a mask. We pretend to be someone we’re
not. And here Peter is not living
out his convictions. He’s one of the 12. He’s one
of the apostles. Remember, Jesus spent a lot of
time with Peter. He invested in him because he
knew that God would use him to bring the gospel to the ends
of the earth. But here he fears man and does
not fear God. You might be saying to yourself,
well, here we go again, Peter. But I think Peter’s hypocrisy
is something that we’ve all dealt with. We wrestle within ourselves. What will people think? What
will people say? What will people do? And he’s
at this dinner party and he’s been sitting with Gentiles at
the church at Antioch, but here comes the Judaizers, here comes
the circumcision party. And so he wrestles within himself
and he begins to slowly withdraw from the Greeks, from the Romans,
from the Gentiles, from these new converts. He was eating with
them and now he’s not. And Paul says he’s condemned.
He’s guilty, it’s obvious. The gospel says everything is
clean, eat it. But the Judaizers say, no, there’s
things that are unclean, don’t eat it. The gospel says this,
the vision that Jesus gave to Peter says this, but he’s acting
out of accord with the free grace of God and the gospel of Jesus
Christ. He is, James will write later, knows the right thing
to do, but he chooses not to do it. And for that, or for him,
that is sin. And Paul’s going to say to him,
you’re a Jew living as a Gentile now requiring the Gentiles to
become Jews. Isn’t it easy to do to feel the
peer pressure? Isn’t it easy to do to feel the
pressure of a certain crowd or a certain company of people and
make adjustments? Now, there’s a time and a place
to be charitable and not do certain things in front of certain people
that might cause them spiritual harm. But for Peter here, it’s
not charity, it’s fear of man. It’s fear for his own skin, his
own neck. And it leads us to think of Peter’s
example. This dinner is a slow moving
train wreck. Peter is wrestling in his mind
and in his heart. And you can imagine he looks
up from the table. He sees the Judaizers. He excuses himself
from the table. He stands aloof. And as he stands
aloof, he’s picking the barbecue out of his teeth, isn’t he? Because
as he separates himself from the table, he’s also got to clean
up the fact that he’s not just been eating with unclean people.
He’s been eating unclean things, according to these Judaizers. How much do we worry? about what
others are thinking, what others are watching us do. But here’s
a good reason to worry, for Peter’s bad example is on display here. The other Jews, including Barnabas,
acted hypocritically along with him. They got worn down. No more
fear of God, we fear man. How much do people watch and
do because of you? Maybe you’re a parent. Maybe
you’re a pastor. Maybe you’re an elder. Maybe
you’re a person who is in a position of superiority and there are
inferiors under you. Maybe you’re a boss, a manager,
a supervisor. Whatever that position you’re
in where you’re over others, they watch you and they may do
because you do. And it’s an example to us, a
challenge to us, a reminder that in all our spheres of life, people
are watching. Most things are caught, right?
Not taught. And so our example is important.
Well, then there’s Peter’s condemnation. It’s public. There’s Peter’s
condemnation. It’s obvious. He’s doing this
in front of the whole dinner party. There’s Peter’s condemnation. There’s no need for a news conference. Mistakes were made. You know,
I wish I hadn’t done this. I’m sorry for what I did. And
I love the apology. I’m sorry that you got offended
at me. That’s usually how it goes. There’s not going to be
a slow moving investigation, right? There’s not going to be
a he’s innocent until proven guilty. It’s just obvious here. Paul is defending the gospel
to the Gentiles, to the Galatian church. And he’s saying, my apostleship
is not from men. My gospel is not from men. And
I’ll even tell you a scenario of how serious my love for the
gospel is. At this dinner party, Peter and
Barnabas and others were acting hypocritically. And I challenged
them face to face. His condemnation was obvious
to all. And this is just an example of
a practical example of how Peter offends the gospel and Paul defends
the gospel. The faith of the Galatians is
on the line here. And so he’s writing to them this
example. All you need for salvation is faith alone in Jesus Christ,
not faith plus diet, not faith plus don’t eat with certain people,
not faith plus certain this, that or the other, but faith
in Christ alone is loud and clear the message of the gospel. But
Peter is condemned. He’s not saying it loud and clear
with his body language. What he’s saying is Gentiles
aren’t saved. Romans aren’t saved. Greeks aren’t
saved unless they eat like Jews, unless they follow the dietary
laws. Remember, this is Pope Peter. I mean, he’s he’s a big
guy. He’s he’s he’s seen the vision
take and eat. He’s seen that things are made
clean by God. He’s told by God to make no distinction
among people or things. And in fact, there’s a account
in Acts before it’s after the vision, but before this, where
he argues with the same Judaizers and says, God says, make no distinction.
So why does he chicken out here at Antioch? He affirmed it before
and now he’s living a different way. And don’t you imagine Paul’s
confrontation sounds a little something like a rooster crowing
to him. Don’t you imagine Paul’s confrontation? of Peter has echoes
of a serious failure to serve God faithfully. Well, thanks
be to God for Paul. Thanks be to God that he is willing
to speak up, to speak out, and to confront. I always like to
say this to people in the church, or you say it to kids, you say
it to young people. A couple of you in the room are
police officers, and a lot of you are parents and grandparents.
It’s a mercy. to get tattled on. It’s a mercy
of God to get caught. It’s a mercy of God for a God-given
human authority to come to you and say, put a stop to your madness. Whether it’s a policeman, a pastor,
a parent, a teacher, a friend, a loved one, a neighbor, a brother,
a sister, whoever it is, it’s a mercy to be rescued. Paul is
gonna write later in Galatians 6, if any of you are caught in
a sin, Let the one who is spiritual gently restore him. And so at this dinner party,
as Paul’s temperature was rising, he’s overheating, he’s he’s wrestling
to what to do, and he sees a whole room that was harmoniously eating
together. And now he sees a table of Gentiles
and all the Jews are standing around the corner picking the
barbecue out of their teeth. And he’s angry. He’s upset. He
must speak. He’s an apostle of Jesus Christ.
Peter is caught in a sin and Paul must restore him in a spirit
of gentleness. Firmness, yes. He opposes him
to his face. Oh, love covers a multitude of
sins, doesn’t it? And maybe we overlook somebody,
you know, bad hygiene, you know, bad habits, rude manners. You
know, maybe they say something they didn’t mean. We overlook
those kinds of things, but you can’t overlook a blunder of the
gospel of Jesus Christ, whether spoken with our mouth or lived
or not lived by poor example. And this is not just Peter going
astray. It’s Barnabas. It’s the other Jews. And when
Paul confronts Peter, when Paul rescues Peter, Barnabas is there
to hear. The other Jews who are misbehaving
are there to hear. And it benefits them to see Paul
handle this public sin, handle it publicly. And he reminds them
of grace that is full and it is rich and it is free and that
we receive and rest in Christ alone for our salvation. There
are no strings attached. You come to Jesus and him alone.
No laws, no dietary, no ceremonial things. We are justified by faith
alone. God sees us in Christ just as
if we’ve never sinned and just as if we’ve always obeyed. These
are the two men that, I don’t know, some months past, recognized
in each other God was at work in their apostolic labors. They
shook hands, they gave each other the right hand of Christian fellowship,
but friends, faithful. are the wounds of those who will
speak up when it’s necessary. Faithful are the wounds of friends
to say, dear brother, you’re getting it wrong. Faithful are
the wounds of a fellow believer who says you’re mixing the gospel
up in front of others. You know, the fear of man is
a snare. The fear of man will motivate us to do bad things
and therefore be a poor witness. And so it’s good for us to be
challenged from this passage, to think through what motivates
us. Is it the love of God in Christ that gives us freedom?
Or is it the fear of man that would again enslave us? Paul is telling the Galatians,
we sang of it earlier, by works of the law, no man can be made
righteous, but only through the work of Jesus that he so freely
offers to us. Let’s give him thanks. Our Lord,
we thank you that our salvation is through Jesus. No strings
attached. No extras, no rules, no no thing
other than to believe in him and receive him by faith alone,
remembering that he has bled for us, he has died for us, he
has obeyed for us. And we thank you that as we come
united to Jesus Christ, we have all the benefits of the cross.
all the blessings of heaven, all the resources of the Holy
Spirit to live a faithful Christian life. Lord, we do wanna do that,
so help us. Give us your grace and strength,
we pray in the name of Jesus, amen.