Galatians - How The Gospel And The Word Of God Is Defended

God Centered Theology

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In a sermon entitled, Not Corrupting the Word, J .C.

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Ryle told the following account. In the 16th century there was a

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Protestant reformer in England by the name of Hugh Latimer. He was known as a great preacher of his day and as a result he had many opportunities to speak.

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Once he found that he was to preach before King Henry VIII of England, so he was certainly excited no doubt as I guess the equivalent would be if I got to preach in front of Trump or some politician which most politicians could use a lot of preaching.

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I think we would all agree. As he thought about his great responsibility though to bring a message before the king, he realized that the message that God had laid on his heart was not the message that the king would want to hear.

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As he began his sermon, it is accounted that he said, Latimer! Latimer!

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Do you remember that you were speaking before the high and mighty King Henry VIII who has the power to command you to be sent to prison and who could have your head cut off if it pleased him?

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Will you not take care to say nothing that will offend royal ears? Well Hugh then paused for a moment for emphasis and then he continued and basically repeated the same thing but in a different way.

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He said, Latimer! Latimer! Do you not remember that you are speaking before the

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King of Kings and the Lord of Lords and before Him at whose throne

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Henry VIII will stand? Before Him to whom one day you will stand and give account of yourself.

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Latimer! Latimer! Be faithful to your Master and declare all of God's Word.

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Will Latimer face the choice? Would he preach what man wanted to hear? Would he preach what

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Christ would have him preach? Well Latimer did take his stand for truth and he did preach boldly.

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And eventually he was martyred for it by Henry's daughter Queen Mary. Not exactly a happily ever after kind of story.

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But you'll notice I didn't start with once upon a time so you know it's not Disney. Now we would certainly hope that our obedience to God and His Word would not end in martyrdom.

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I mean we certainly don't think we go out every day, boy I hope today is the day I get martyred. No, I don't.

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I certainly hope you would not do that. We would not hope that. But a true child of God will face whatever comes their way as a result of their faithful obedience to their

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Savior. And in a world that is rapidly increasing in its hatred and wrath towards those who believe in the inerrancy and authority of Scripture, it is certainly possible that in our lifetimes we could see results like martyrdom come to America in increasing numbers as it already exists in other parts of the world.

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There are Christians that are killed for their faith every day in this world. No doubt it probably happens in America somewhere.

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We probably don't hear about it with the news media being as it is. But it certainly will come in increasing numbers, no doubt, as the great apostasy and judgment moves closer to our day and time.

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What will you do when that time comes? Will you stand for God's Holy Word, or will you fearfully retreat and submit to man?

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Have you already rejected God's Word in your life? Are you currently living under the authority of Scripture, or does your life paint a picture of rejection and figuratively spitting in God's face, telling

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Him that you will do as you please? Do we as a church operate under the authority of Scripture, or do we operate as we please?

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The temptation to disobey God's Word and follow Satan's lies and man's wisdom goes all the way back to Cain and Abel.

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In fact, John reminds us in 1 John to not love and not go the way of Cain, because there was the way of Cain, and there was the way of Abel.

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And while it's not the sermon for today, you remember one of those sacrifices was accepted by God, and one of them wasn't, because one was given on God's terms, and by faith and obedience, and one wasn't.

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That temptation is hard to overcome. It was hard to overcome in my life, but there was a time and place in my life where I finally submitted to the authority of Scripture, and I've been blessed since then.

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My life has been completely different, and He's never failed me. His words never failed me. People who profess to be in Christ too often, it seems, disregard or completely reject or even deny the authority and inerrancy of Scripture, both with their words and with their deeds.

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The Bible speaks of this very clearly in other parts of Scripture. Both our words and our deeds are a reflection of what's already in our hearts.

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See, that's why the Gospel message ultimately is not about changing behavior. Although being saved will change your behavior.

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It's not about following the Law. Although the Word of God tells us in Jeremiah that the coming suffering servant, who we know to be

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Jesus Christ, will write His Law on His people's hearts. It's about a transformation of the heart.

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It's a new creature in Christ. The heart is deceitfully wicked.

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Who can know it? I believe Jeremiah somewhere about chapter 9 says. It's the heart of man that needs to be changed.

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Sadly, too many professing to be in Christ fear man's Word and are more fearful of disobeying man than they are disobeying

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God and His Word. And see, we have such a situation in our text this morning in Galatians 2.

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We have two people in view, although there are peripheral people that we will touch on.

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But the two main players in this account this morning are Peter and Paul. Peter had been fearful of upsetting and going against the

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Judaizers. Now you remember the letter of Paul to the Galatians was dealing with the issue of the

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Judaizers. These Judaizers were coming in and teaching that you not only had to have faith in Christ, but you also had to keep the

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Law. You had to be circumcised. That's why we'll see in our text today that it refers to Peter fearing the party of the circumcision.

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So they had different ways they would talk about them, or identify them, but basically it was all

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Judaizers. And he was fearful of upsetting them, so he put himself in a position where he was disobeying the

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Gospel, the truth of the Gospel, the truth of God's Word. And what we see is that his disobedience affected far more than just himself.

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And we'll point that out later in the sermon. What he should have been doing, and what we're going to see

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Paul actually doing, because remember we're going to have a contrast between Peter and Paul.

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What we see Paul doing is to defend God's Word at all times, regardless of what happens to us.

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So this section of Scripture, these short three verses here in Galatians chapter 2 paint a picture of two different choices.

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One is correct, and one is sinful. One needs to be repented of, and the other needs to be followed.

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Now as I've already said last time in Galatians, we considered the why, why the Gospel and God's Word needs to be defended.

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This week we'll find out how it is to be defended. One example will show compromise, disobedience, more fear of man than God, more fear of disobeying tradition than disobeying

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God. And the other example will show a firm faith, a firm trust, and a firm submission to God, the

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God of Holy Scripture, which is the final authority in both our Christian life and in the

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Church. So let's dive right in. Number one, there's going to be two things we're going to notice this morning in this text.

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Number one, we're going to notice that in order to defend the Gospel and defend God's Word, number one there must be an active refusal to compromise.

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An active refusal to compromise. Verse 11 says, Peter came to Antioch, I opposed him to his face, because he stood condemned.

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For before certain men came from James, he was eating with the Gentiles, but when they came he drew back and separated himself, fearing the circumcision party.

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And the rest of the Jews acted hypocritically along with him, so that even Barnabas was led astray by the hypocrisy.

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But when I saw that their conduct was not in step with the truth of the Gospel, I said to Cephas before them all, if you though a

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Jew live like a Gentile and not like a Jew, how can you force the Gentiles to live like Jews?

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You see Peter had compromised. In order to defend God's Word consistently and faithfully there has to be an active role in our life, an active refusal to compromise.

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Now, we are not going to belabor this this morning. I've taught this on Wednesday nights. There are obviously, all doctrines are not created equal.

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There are the First Order doctrines, the things that we would say are what has helped, or causes

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Christians to have fellowship among themselves. Things like the deity of Christ, and the Trinity, and justification by faith, the authority of Scripture, those things that are the most clear in historic

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Christian doctrines. There's also those other level doctrines that are very clearly taught in Scripture, but you're not going to go out and be a martyr for them.

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It doesn't mean they're not to be obeyed, or followed, but there's different sets and different orders. I take the leaning from Albert Muller who teaches it, and he titles it, a theological triage, or a setting in order of importance, and so on and so forth.

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But what we're dealing here with in this particular instance is not a difference of opinion over eschatology.

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It wasn't that Peter was a non -millennial, and Paul was a pre -millennial, and he's going there opposing him to his face, and telling him, well you're just not defending

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God's Word. No, he had a very serious matter being dealt with, what he was doing here in his compromise.

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You see, Peter had been eating with Gentiles for a long time. He didn't do it just for a week.

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This at some time had transpassed here. And he was enjoying fellowship with them, and rightfully so, with all those who cherished their love and true freedom in Christ.

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And this was based on the truth of God's Word, and the truth of the Gospel. As we know from Galatians 3 28, which we will obviously get to at some point, the dividing line is torn down.

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There's no distinctions. There's no Jew, no Greek. All one in Christ. And Peter was demonstrating this.

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He was doing right. He was acting exactly how God's Word would instruct him to.

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But when the Judaizers came on the scene, he draws back. He compromises. He begins to do what would please them instead of God.

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You see the Jews considered all Gentiles to be sinners, because they were not Jews. And they had many man -made distinctions.

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You had the Pharisees running around causing all kinds of man -made distinctions and dividing lines.

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We actually covered this in Colossians 2 at one point about these things. And they would withdraw back, and they always were tempted to go back to this.

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Even though they would profess to be in Christ, they had such an issue with this. It was a really big hurdle for them.

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So what Peter was essentially doing by, and this withdrawing back was not something he did over the course of one day.

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It's sort of a military understanding of you're staging a retreat. So you think about American conflicts, you usually hear about America's going to pull out of a place.

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They don't just go in there and say, OK, every soldier that's here, tomorrow you're on a plane. They usually do it in stages.

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They'll draw back a certain amount, certain amount, certain amount. And each time as you pull out there's different responsibilities of those who are left, so on and so forth.

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So what Peter was doing is he had been eating with them all this time. But then he began to slowly, and based on the understanding of what the word means, it was almost in a sneaky way.

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He really didn't want anybody to know. It's like, oh, man, Judaizers are coming around. I better not be seen eating with no

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Gentiles. Better come over here. It's a very slow and gradual thing. And what he was doing is he was putting up a dividing wall that God did not approve of.

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Well the next logical question to ask is do we do that today? I mean because we don't have the same issue that they did in terms of foods being clean or not.

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I mean you have people that will be vegetarians and make certain food choices, but they're not doing it from a, well some may do it from a religious perspective, but it's not the same exact apples to apples thing.

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But is there something we do today that's similar? Do we engage in anything that would separate believers artificially as Peter was doing?

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Yes, we do. We still have issues with the sin of racism, class distinctions, wealth or lack thereof, etc.

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We still see Christians and even congregations that will cater to those that have money. We'll see

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Christians not accepting of Christians that don't look like them, or they may not exactly live like them.

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You'll see a lot of this, well man they talk weird, or they look different, they dress different. Why do they do?

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OK, so they're different. They probably look at you and think the same thing. Every time you think somebody is weird, guess what?

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You're probably the weird in their view. Trust me I'm weird for everybody. I just walk around with a sign that says, hello there, my name is weird, because that's what

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I am. I'm weird. We're all weird. There is no normal! Stop trying to figure out what normal is because it's not there.

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We're all got nice little shades of weird in us. And so we do this though, we put up these artificial distinctions like what?

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There's somebody with a different shade of skin. There's somebody with a different income level. There's somebody that has a different kind of house than I do.

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So, guess what? Houses can be burned. Things like pulpits, buildings can be burned.

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Money, in case you ain't figured it out, it can leave your bank account really quickly. It stings.

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It stings. It's temporal. It's not eternal.

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People matter more than things. And infinitely so. Because we were made in the image of God.

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So yes, many today still sin the way

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Peter was sinning. Now notice it says that Paul opposed Peter. He said, when Cephas came to Antioch, I opposed him to his face.

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The word meaning, this word meaning, or this word translated opposed in Scripture here is a word meaning hindering or forbidding.

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And this word was usually applied to defensive measures meaning it was sort of the understanding of a defensive stance.

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So you would see the same thing in Ephesians chapter 6 when we looked through and did the spiritual armor, the whole armor of God when we looked at that.

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It wasn't those now, granted that armor is not just for defense, but it was also offense. This particular word has defense primarily in view.

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The understanding that something is gaining or seeking to gain a line on you, and you're holding that line and pushing back and hindering what is coming after you.

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And it means an understanding of the standing of ground, a strong defense of God's Word to oppose sin, and anything that's not in submission or in contradiction to it.

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Notice it says in verse 11 that it says because he stood condemned. Now, it is very important to understand we're not talking about Peter's salvation here.

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Justification is not being dealt with in this paragraph in Galatians 2. So anybody that would teach, well, use it to say you could lose your salvation, or that there's no perseverance of the saints, there's no eternal justification.

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That's not what Paul has in view here. Now, next week and following when we get into the

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Scripture beyond this paragraph, Paul is going to reemphasize Scripture about our justification and what that looks like to further refute the compromise that Peter was doing.

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So we will look at that. But justification is not specifically being dealt with in this paragraph.

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So what does it mean that he stood condemned? It means that he was condemned in the sense of being guilty of sin by taking a position that was against God's Word.

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And then notice, remember I told you we'd come back to this. Notice that Peter's sin affected far more than just himself.

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Look at the text. For before certain men came from James, he was eating with the Gentiles.

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But when they came, he drew back and separated himself, fearing the circumcision party. And the rest of the

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Jews acted hypocritically along with him, so that even Barnabas was led astray by their hypocrisy.

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So notice that Peter's compromise, Peter's sin did not affect just himself.

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It affected the Gentiles he had been eating with, because he had withdrew and separated from them.

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Think about how they must have felt. Think about how the questions and the doubts they must have had. Here's the

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Apostle Peter, one of the disciples of Jesus, eating with us, fellowshiping with us.

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What did we do wrong? Why is he going after these guys now? It affected the

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Judaizers for sure. They no doubt gained great confidence in their own sin in opposition to God's Word.

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And they no doubt probably saw themselves as having gained control over Peter, due to his compromise.

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It affected at least temporarily, we know, his relationship with Paul, because Paul was put in a very difficult position.

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He had to oppose Peter because of his compromise. Think about how Paul must have felt.

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Think about the shoes Paul was in, to have to go up to Peter. And this wasn't done privately.

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This wasn't like, hey Peter, come here. Come around the corner here, I've got to talk to you. This was done, notice what it says, before them all.

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Before the Judaizers, before the Christians, anybody else who happened to be an earshot, he did it publicly.

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Think about the fear. Think about the doubts he must have had. Every Christian faces this.

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When you're tempted to compromise or disobey the truth of Scripture, that temptation that comes in your life, whether it's lust, or some sort of cheating, or stealing, or whatever the sin is, temptation comes.

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And it can be overcome through the power of Christ, but it's hard to overcome. And when we sin, and we must deal with that sin, it's a difficult position to have to be in.

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It also surely affected many Jews who may have been on the brink of salvation, or maybe they had just placed their faith in Christ, or maybe they were starting to really look at Christ, and maybe look at Peter and say, man, there's something different about those

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Christians. Man, they changed their life, man! Peter's out there eating with Gentiles! That guy has lost his mind!

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Wait a minute! Why has he now changed it? What's going on here? It maybe affected them.

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They saw their withdrawal, and it also affected Barnabas. You saw what it said, so that even

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Barnabas was led astray by the hypocrisy. So even Barnabas went along with them.

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He was led astray. Why compromise, Peter? Why'd you do it?

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Why, man? It's like you just want to get up to him and shake him, like what's wrong with you?

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That's essentially what Paul's doing. He's saying, man, what's wrong with you? You know better. This isn't how we're supposed to be living.

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We have freedom in Christ, not bondage of legalism and the bondage of these Judaizers want to put you under.

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The bondage of the law, which only brings about death. For the wages of sin is death, and he that wants to keep the law as his righteousness better make sure he keeps all of it, knowing that you can't because we're justified by faith.

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So why compromise, Peter? His life was not in danger. You remember

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Hugh Latimer in the beginning? Now, certainly at the time he spoke his message before King Henry VIII.

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His life was not necessarily in immediate danger, but you remember the account? He knew it was a possibility.

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It could have happened, and it did later when his daughter said, aw, for that guy's head. His daughter,

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Queen Mary said, yeah, we're going to take care of this guy. We can't have him preaching that. But Peter's life weren't in danger.

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Our lives, generally speaking, and hopefully would never be in danger for living for Christ, although it's always possible.

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Jail time, anything up to death. So why compromise? Many, or excuse me, in fact the only thing that Peter would have been in danger of had he told the

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Judaizers, take a hike! I don't want what you're selling. I'm in Christ now.

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These Gentiles are equally as saved as all of us Jews that place faith in Christ.

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There's no reason why we can't eat with them, have fellowship with them, be with them, call them brothers and sisters, all that.

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What would have happened? Well, if he had stood strong for God's Word, most of what would have happened is ridicule, being slandered by the

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Judaizers. He certainly would have lost his popularity with them, his power, his prestige with this group of hypocrites.

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They claimed to be in Christ. They claimed faith in Christ was necessary, but then they also said you have to keep the

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Law. You have to be circumcised. Notice it says at the end of verse 14, he separated himself, fearing the circumcision party.

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He feared man. He feared what they could do to him more than what disobeying

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God would bring to his life. And obviously brought to many other people around him.

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That would have been it. That's what he would have faced. Fearing the circumcision party.

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You see disobedience to God's Word is always the source of division and fracture among Christians and in the

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Church. And it affects far more than the one sinning. We see that so vividly here in these three verses.

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Peter's compromise because of who he was as a leader, because of who he was in the Church, because of the people that looked to him, because of his compromise on the

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Word of God and the truth of the Gospel. It affected Barnabas. It affected Gentiles. It affected Jews.

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It affected himself. It affected Paul. And it probably affected more people than what's recorded for us here in Scripture.

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It's always disobedience that leads to fracture and division. But sadly, in today's world, so many like Peter, Christians, we so easily compromise and deny and disobey

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God's Word. And usually all that's at stake for us, popularity, prestige, power maybe, something like that.

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Something very similar to what Peter faced. We should be ashamed of ourselves.

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Ashamed of ourselves! To think that we would hypocritically disobey

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God's Word over something so trivial, so temporal as what other people think.

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And that we would ever fear man above God. So number one, it takes an active refusal to compromise.

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And then number two, and lastly for this morning, it actually takes an active faith to obey.

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An active faith to obey. So we've looked at Peter, now we're going to look at Paul. Peter compromised.

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He needed an active refusal to compromise. Now we're going to see how Paul had an active faith to obey.

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For the Christian life and for any congregation of believers there can be no true faith without true obedience.

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And there can be no true obedience without true faith. Paul's faith was an active faith.

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Very active faith. And he actively and consistently and firmly obeyed

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God's Word and opposed anything and anyone that would compromise it. Look what he did with Peter.

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These guys weren't strangers. They were buds. Cohorts.

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They were friends. They were colleagues, if you will. Apostles of the

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Lord Jesus Christ. His messengers that take the truth of the Gospel into the world. I can't even imagine how much it would have hurt

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Paul's soul and probably made him weep just thinking about having to do this.

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But his faith in God, his faith in Jesus Christ and his submission to the authority of Scripture was so much more vitally important to Paul than the temporary disharmony he may have had with Peter because he knew what was best for Peter is the repentance that he needed based on his compromise.

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Verse 14 again, But when I saw that their conduct was not in step with the truth of the

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Gospel or not in step with God's truth and God's word, I said to Cephas, before them all, if you though a

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Jew, live like a Gentile and not like a Jew, how can you force the

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Gentiles to live like Jews? What are you doing, Peter? What are you doing, man?

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You know this is wrong. You know what our teaching is. You know what the teaching of the

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Lord Jesus was. What the teaching of the Apostles is. What the teaching of Inspired Scripture is.

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What are you doing? We're supposed to be defending the Gospel, not compromising it.

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What's wrong? Well, what is worse?

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What really takes this up a few notches is this was Peter and Barnabas. Peter and Barnabas, they were leaders in the

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Church. You see everything rises and falls with leadership. If leadership in the

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Church does not obey God's word and are actively engaged in defending it, nobody else will. When leadership compromises, the rest of the

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Church will follow suit. Notice, this is what happened. Peter compromises.

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Who follows suits? There goes Barnabas. Right along with him. Now I've got all the Jews and Gentiles on both sides following suit and wondering what's going on.

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Hugh Latimer, the one that spoke before King Henry VIII, he could have compromised.

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He could have softened his message. He could have compromised his beliefs just one time.

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It won't hurt anybody. Just once. He could have begged

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God to give him another message. Lord, come on man. Anything but this. I've got to preach that?

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I've got this really good sermon over here. Man, it's going to sound good. I know we're living way before Joelstein, but I've got this vision last night that way down the corridors of time there's going to be a guy named

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Joelstein. He's going to preach these fluffy messages. He don't even crack a Bible. He says nothing about repentance. He just wants to make everybody feel good.

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I've got a sermon that's just like that. It's going to make the king so happy. Man, you know what? This could be good for my career.

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If the king likes me and this goes well, man, you know where I could end up?

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God, you want me to preach this one? You know where this is going to go, right?

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This guy chops people's heads off. You want me to preach that? God, come on.

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Lord, please let me preach that. The Lord did not compromise, and Hugh didn't either.

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He decided that obeying the God of the universe, the God of holy, inspired and inerrant

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Scripture, was a far greater consequence than compromising and obeying and fearing man who was, after all, just flesh and bones.

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King Henry VIII, give him all the titles you want. Give him all the authority you want from man's point of view.

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It's flesh and bones. He's rotting in a grave. If he wasn't saved, if he didn't place his faith in Christ, for he died, he's in hell right now.

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Why would you fear that person over the one who created that person?

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Flesh and bones. Better to offend the supposed royal ears of man than to offend the actual one true king with our compromised words and deeds by not submitting to the true authority who created us to begin with.

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If you're here today, first of all, if you're not saved, you will stand before God one day.

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And He's not going to judge you on anything else other than what you did with Jesus Christ.

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Did you repent of your sin and place your full faith and trust in Jesus Christ?

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You ever stop and think about this? Why do we pray? Why? God's Word tells us to pray.

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Why do we baptize in water? Who does that? Oh look, let's go dunk somebody in water.

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Who does that? God's Word tells us to. Why do we believe in Jesus Christ? God's Word commands us, repent and believe.

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You need to repent and believe. It's by grace and mercy you can earn it! But thanks be to God that we can't.

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Because if it was left to me, I would have already given up. But also, if you're here today and you're a

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Christian and you have not been living under the authority of Scripture in your life, you need to repent.

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You need to recommit yourself to obedience of Scripture. If we as a church have not been submitted to the authority of Scripture as the final authority in all that we do, we need to repent.

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And we need to seek God's face for forgiveness. We can come up with all the reasons in our life, trust me,

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I'm very good at it. I can come up with all kinds of reasons for compromise, for justification for what

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I'm doing, for what I want to do. But if God has said something on the matter, and God's Word is inerrant on all matters that it touches, we will be judged by it.

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We will be judged by the divine author of it. So let us commit ourselves to God and His Word, as Paul did, and defend it.