Bible Reading
This morning the word of the Lord is being read from the book of Galatians, chapter two, verses 11 through to 21.
When we first came to Antioch, I opposed him to his face, because he stood condemned. For before certain men came from James, he used to eat with the Gentiles. But when they arrived he began to draw back and separate himself from the Gentiles, because he was afraid of those who belonged to the circumcision group.
The other Jews joined him in his hypocrisy, so that by their hypocrisy even Barnabas was led astray. When I saw that they were not acting in line with the truth of the gospel, I said to Cephas in front of them all, you are a Jew, yet you live like a Gentile and not like a Jew. How is it, then, that you force Gentiles to follow Jewish customs?
We, who are Jews by birth and not sinful Gentiles, know that a person is not justified by the works of the law, but by faith in Jesus Christ. So we too have put our faith in Christ Jesus, that we may be justified by faith in Christ and not by the works of the law, because by the works of the law no one will be justified.
But if in seeking to be justified in Christ, we Jews find ourselves also among the sinners. Doesn't that mean that Christ promotes sin? Absolutely not. If I rebuild what I destroyed, then I really would be a law breaker.
For through the law, I died to the law so that I might live for God. I have been crucified with Christ, and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I now live in the body. I live by faith in the Son of God who loved me and gave himself for me.
I do not set aside the grace of God, for if righteousness could be gained through the law. Christ died for nothing.
Welcome
Oh, good morning everyone. What an incredible gathering to be part of this morning. Thank you, Emily, for sharing so honestly and for giving us an insight into exactly what our passage is talking about today.
We're in the book of Galatians, and we're going to be looking at the whole of chapter two today, even though we just read the kind of really pointed part. When you come to believe in Jesus, you have a new family. And belief, belonging and behaving are all part of the call to know Jesus.
When I became a Christian, I suddenly belonged to a new social circle. it will surprise you very greatly to know that I wasn't in the Cool gang. at school.
look, I wasn't ultimately in the nerds, but, and and at our school, it was it was reasonably accepted to try and be good at your studies, but I didn't have a packet of, Dunhill blues in my school bag. so, and I think I had the wrong school bag as well.
I think I had a backpack instead of the really one that was terrible for your posture, but was super cool. normal school bag. And but when I became a Christian, I suddenly found that I was in touch with and friends with people that I hadn't been friends with before in my year level, because we'd had something of a revival.
There were about 300 girls in my year level at school, and eventually, the Christian group, grew to the point that it was kind of 10% minimum of, the whole year level, and it became the place to belong. And so people would want to belong even before they believed in Jesus.
And so, you can imagine it was kind of a messy and fun and, strange place to find yourself. But this trope of, the kind of school cafeteria. Is a very shallow but useful way of thinking about the bringing together and the belonging that Jesus does as the Messiah.
So I had had an experience of kind of being in my own little table. But now that I put my trust in Jesus. Walls were down that were not down before.
I had things in common with people that I did not have before, and I had reason to be in fellowship, to be seated together with those who were different from me. The Apostle Paul found himself on this journey to belonging in a wider family when he met the Lord Jesus on the road to Damascus.
If you were here last week, you saw me, acting that out, in deeply profound and moving ways with a backpack full of squish mallows covered in garbage bags. Huh? That's what you missed if you weren't here.
he realized that in having, given his life to protecting a particular ethnic group, with laws and rules that defined how they related to God, that they believed that they were the ones invited to the table of the Lord, and that they could expect at the final judgment Day to be at the feast, with God, because they were zealous for him in keeping the law, in having the markers of their ethnicity.
and, Paul talks about those when he talks about circumcision. If you don't know what that is, you can look it up. No, don't look it up, because then you'll get all kinds of things on the internet. Ask a trusted friend.
So, they had markers on their body and in their lives which set them apart. But Paul, meeting Jesus, suddenly heads on this journey where he realizes that the gift of the Messiah is for more than just the chosen nation, but that the righteousness that God had promised was available to all people, that all were invited to the table.
And more than that, all were able to be made right to sit there. And so he spends his early years as a Christian missionary taking this message not to his own people, but all around the Greek and ancient world, speaking to those who were not Jews, but Gentiles.
Paul’s Early Journeys and Jerusalem
So at the start of Galatians chapter two, he says he's been on a journey. This is the end of chapter one. I went to Syria and Cilicia, and I was personally unknown to the churches of Judea.
But they just heard about me. I was with the Gentiles. Then after 14 years, I went up again to Jerusalem, this time with Barnabas, his co-worker, who was also Jewish.
But I took Titus along also. Titus is a Greek Gentile believer. I went in response to a revelation, probably in the way that he talks about.
That means that someone in his circle who operated in the gift of prophecy, or who they called a prophet, had said something, and he followed that. It might have been about there's going to be a famine. We read about Agabus saying that in the book of acts, so he might have gone up there for that reason, but it might have been specifically about this topic that we're about to look, and I went in response to a revelation and meeting privately with those esteemed as leaders who I will shallowly refer to as the cool kids table.
I presented to them the gospel that I preach among the Gentiles. I wanted to be sure I was not running and had not been running. My race in vain will come back to what he meant by that.
Yet not even Titus, Gentile believer who was with me, was compelled to be circumcised to enter into the ethnic and ritual group of Jewish believers, even though he was a Greek. This matter arose because some false believers had infiltrated our ranks to spy on the freedom we have in Christ Jesus and to make us slaves.
We did not give in to them for a moment, so that the truth of the gospel might be preserved for you. Paul had been on a journey where he was understanding that the big gift of the Messiah was for everyone.
But as is very normal, humans are tribal and exclusive. And so there had been pressure from those who had grown up in Judaism but who were interacting with the early church. For people who believed in Jesus to also follow all the rules of the Jewish religion.
Paul is concerned not that he's got it wrong. So when he says, I wanted to be sure I was not running and had not been running my race in vain. Not that he needed to check that he'd got his understanding right and that he'd been doing his ministry right, just in case he'd got it wrong.
No. His conviction was so strong that if people were adding to the centrality of Jesus and the sufficiency and finality of Jesus for being invited and being made right to sit at the Lord's table, then his ministry would be being undercut. So the effort that he was putting in, everything that he was going through would be in vain.
If the cool kids table started saying something different and people got confused. People started to question, is it really Jesus who's sufficient? and so it was not that he was worried he was getting it wrong. He was worried that from the center outward, it would start to muddy the ministry that he had been doing.
And he found that he was absolutely on the same page as the leaders in Jerusalem. Titus was not compelled to be circumcised, and he received two marks of stamp of approval. They added nothing to my message.
So that's at the end of verse six. And they recognized I'd been entrusted with the task of preaching the gospel. The one that we share not to.
I just do it to these guys. You do it to those guys and those esteemed as pillars James, Cephas or Peter and John. The apostles gave me and Barnabas the right hand of fellowship.
They said, we are together. We are family. There is nothing separating us.
The mission that you have, even though it is distinct and different from ours, is still exactly the same gospel. We add nothing to it and we are together in fellowship. And verse ten says, all they asked was that we should continue to remember the poor.
The very thing I had been eager to do all along. So part of Paul's interaction with the church in Jerusalem throughout the book of acts is about a famine. And you notice in some of his letters as well, he's making a collection, taking a collection up from the Gentile churches and bringing it to the poor in Jerusalem.
And so this is part of that shared conviction and mission as well. So he's come to the center of all Christian ministry, and he has been entirely validated. Here he is with all the big boys, and they have given him the right hand of fellowship.
They sit together and they share in ministry together. But something changes. When Cephas came to Antioch.
Cephas at Antioch: Fear and Pulling Back
This is later on. We're not sure exactly how long. Something was different.
I opposed him to his face because he stood condemned for before certain men came from James. He used to eat with the Gentiles. But when they arrived, he began to draw back and separate himself from the Gentiles, because he was afraid of those who belonged to the circumcision group.
The other Jews joined him in his hypocrisy, so that by their hypocrisy even Barnabas was led astray. Peter had experienced actually the same freedom that Paul had experienced. If you know the book of acts, you might remember that Peter has a vision of God lowering down a sheet full of all unclean things to eat, and they were unclean in the sense of Old Testament ritual and ceremonial law.
And God says to Peter, Peter, you can eat these things. And Peter is like, And, he says, I've made them clean. Don't call them unclean.
What I've been what I've called clean. And actually, what, God was saying to Peter was, I've made non-Jewish people who don't keep all these clean laws. I've made them clean in the Messiah.
Jesus death and resurrection is so big, so powerful. And the plan of God was for all humanity, right from the word go that now that that has been fulfilled, I have made all things clean. And you can go go to Cornelius house, hang out, have ministry, baptize them, see the Holy Spirit come upon the Gentiles.
this is your turnaround journey. But he began to be afraid. So he knew this.
God had revealed it to him. He'd had a very powerful experience, not just internally, but in seeing the gospel come to the Gentiles. And he's had Titus amongst them and allowed that fellowship to happen.
He's had no issue. And in fact, I think it was very likely that when Paul says to him, you know, you're you're a Jew, you live like a Gentile. He was experiencing and expressing his freedom in being able to eat and be quite free in the whole of society, not just maybe, coming and and standing next to someone when you had the Lord's Supper and they get their tiny piece of bread and you get your tiny piece of bread and go back, it's likely, given the way that Paul uses the word ethnic for Gentiles, that he's not just talking about, Christian Gentiles.
But the Peter had found a freedom that enabled him to be part of the wider society as a as an ambassador for Christ. But when these, ones come who well, started to say, look, you are the true Israel. You are the true followers of God.
You're circumcised, you've got the ethnicity. Maybe it's okay that there are other people in this school cafeteria, but you guys need to come to the cool table. You really are diluting what God intended for people by hanging out with all the other riffraff.
Bring it in and start to put up the walls again, because purity at the center is essential. And so he actually started to do that. And it's not because he was convinced by a different vision or a theological argument.
He was afraid. I found that. Resonated with me, because you and I are likely in everyday life not to be convinced by a different argument, to behave in a way that's contradictory to our convictions, but to behave in a way that's contradictory to our convictions because we're afraid, because we're under pressure, because we might be excluded, persecuted, damaged, that we might lose the alliances that we have are we might be ashamed.
And this is Peter's experience, and I have a lot of sympathy for that. And Barnabas too, because it's very attractive to be at the cool kids table. Right. You're afraid of being left out, and then you're also deeply affirmed by being right at the center now in church life.
that can happen. We can have people who are at the center and people who are at the margins. I don't know what it's like at Angelina, but I'm sure that a lot of work needs to be put in to ensure that one group doesn't sit at the center, and that back and forth learning from each other is an essential part of that.
So Paul will not stand for this, not just because it starts to divide the church. Now, we've seen we live in the 2000 years of that. But that's not what he is primarily concerned about, that it might split people off into smaller groups, even though they know that they're still Christians.
That has its weaknesses and is a poor witness to the world and all kinds of things. But what he's really concerned about is that by doing that, the entire message of the gospel is being nullified, is being canceled, is being undercut. And so that's what he does in this next part of the chapter.
He starts to talk us through the implication of having a special call kids table to the truth of Jesus Christ. So he's talking here. I think this is the I think this is the little spiel that he gave Peter.
I think he didn't just say I opposed Peter to his face. I think this is what he said. And it was essential that it was public, even though that we who I would have hated that.
That's not my bag, you know, take someone aside quietly and have a little know this is how important it is. We who are Jews by birth and not sinful Gentiles write we who could be at the cool table. Not like that riff raff over there.
He doesn't mean sinful in the sense of that they're sinful and we're not. He's saying this is the sort of language you're using. We know.
We already know that a person is not justified by the works of the law, but by faith in Jesus Christ. This is nonsense. To think that there could possibly be another reason why you would gather at the pure, at the center and add things.
How could you? You've already worked out that faith in Jesus Christ is the only way to be invited to the table of the Lord, to feast with him forever, to know the presence of God and His full, righteous forgiveness. So he says, we to all of us, you and me, Peter, and all these people, all the big boys watching on, have put our faith in Christ Jesus.
That we may be justified by faith in Christ and not by the works of the law, because by the works of the law no one will be justified. But if in seeking to be justified in Christ, it pushes us out. We Jews find ourselves also among the sinners.
Everybody's at the table. Or where? At everybody else's table. Doesn't that mean that Christ promotes sin?
That's what they're saying. Well, you're going out and and being with the riff raff. You're saying that that being free in Christ means you go out and then that makes you a sinner.
That's that. That can't be right. Stick in here. Be pure.
Does that mean that Christ promotes sin? Absolutely not. If I rebuild what I destroyed, then I really would be a lawbreaker.
What does he mean if I, by saying that going out amongst the Gentiles makes me more sinful? I'm rebuilding the place of the law. I'm rebuilding the barriers.
I'm rebuilding. the validity of the law in making me pure. So if I even say, don't go out there, I'm starting to rebuild the very thing that Christ has given me freedom from that never could have led to my justification before God.
What “Justified” Means
So what does he mean by the word justified? He uses it quite a bit here. It's the first time he brings it in to the book, and we will get to unpack it throughout the following chapters.
We often use it as a term that might come from the law courts about whether you're innocent or guilty. And so it it's about a declaration in that sense from the from the judge. Do you, Megan, stand guilty of this charge or are you set free? Are you justified? Are you just. Are you good or are you bad? Wrong.
And so to be justified is to be said that you are right, not wrong, that you are free, not punished. But when it comes to the picture of being in God's family around God's table, Jesus actually gives us another image that helps us to understand justification here. And he uses the image of a wedding feast.
So this comes from this is a this is a wedding in Italy. This is not me and Phil's wedding. we had 100% no money.
when we got married, there was also no wine or alcohol. I've told you that before. Was like the worst wedding anyone's ever been to in the world.
No, we we loved it, but, it saved us a lot of money also. Anyway, it did not look like this. But Jesus tells a story about a really special wedding banquet.
The kingdom of heaven is like a king who prepared a wedding banquet. He prepared it for his son. It's like Jesus.
It's not very veiled allegory here. He sent his servants to those who had been invited to the banquet to tell them to come, but they refused to come. Jesus is talking to the people who are at the cool kids table right now.
Then he sent some more servants and said, tell those who have been invited that it's ready to go. It's going to be the best food ever. Meghan and Phil didn't choose the, the whatever you call it.
Some what? Some sommelier for the wine. That's how much I don't know anything about wine. They paid no attention.
They went off, and they actually were so against coming that they mistreated the servants and they killed them. Then he said, okay, no, I really want people to come to my banquet. I really want people to be at my table.
I actually created humanity because I love them and I want to share my love with them. This is my heart. It is hospitality and community.
And so he says, all right, go and find more and more and more. And so this is Jesus saying, cool kids, huh? You're going to miss out. We're about to extend this to the rest of the cafeteria.
And in fact, the people who aren't even in the cafeteria, people who are outside, I don't know, with their Dunhill Blues. No. Hang on. That's that's.
They were the cool kids. Whatever. The king came in to see the guests, and the hall was filled, and he was so happy.
But he noticed a man there who was not wearing wedding clothes. He asked, how did you get in here without wedding clothes, friend? The man was speechless and he gets thrown out this harsh and we think, but you've just been talking to us about how you wanted the people to come, and didn't you bring them in? And wasn't this, you know, your whole heart to be hospitable?
Well, actually, what he's telling us is his invitation goes out to all and the way in which you are seated at the table. Is that you are made right. You are dressed in the clothes that the Messiah gives you.
So when in Galatians, Paul says. We are justified by faith in Christ. He's not just talking about law court.
He's talking about being made clothed rightly, to come to the wedding feast of Jesus, to come to the heavenly banquet. You are dressed rightly. You are seated with Christ, not simply Gentiles being invited as well, but they have to dress in the way that the Jewish law brings them.
No, all people who are invited have to be dressed in the righteousness that God requires. And the only way that you are dressed in the righteousness that God requires is through faith in Jesus Christ. The law does not make you righteous for the wedding feast of the lamb, for the heavenly banquet, that you long for the presence of God, not just eternity, but now seated at the table with God.
The law cannot do that. But if you die to the law through Jesus, then you live for God in His presence, in his family. So he says in verse 20, I have been crucified with Christ.
What I was wearing before is gone. And I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. When the King sees me at the banquet, he sees me dressed in the righteousness of Christ.
Christ lives in me. Christ is bringing me his purity and perfection. Christ is as the son of the father, making me a child of God.
And I'm still me. The life I now live in the body. I live by faith in the Son of God who loved me and gave himself for me.
Somehow, in his mysterious grace and love, God enables me to be me. But a me that is clothed, I think, in from the inside out. With the righteousness and purity and love for God that Christ has.
That's what it means to be justified by faith in Christ. I put my trust in him to be the one that clothes me for the wedding banquet. And so I can never exclude.
I can never say people aren't invited to the table of the Lord. I can never do that because it's by grace for me just as much as it is for them.
Whether that be people of a different race, a different self-understanding, a different worldview. A different language. A different socioeconomic class.
A different bank account. A different value system. If righteousness could be gained through being how I think pure and right is, then Christ died for nothing.
We are all called to be seated at freedom's table. Jesus making us right and all of us together. Amen.
