Galatians 2:1-10 Facing the Wolves

Welcome to the podcast of Recast Church in Matawan, Michigan, where you can grow in faith, community, and service. We're currently studying Galatians in a series called Off the Chain, Finding Freedom in Galatians.

Here's Pastor Don Filsack. This morning we're going to be back in the book of Galatians. We've been going through that. We finished Galatians chapter one over the last couple, well over the last month.

And then last week we took a week off and we had a missionary couple that were here from Costa Rica sharing about their ministry among law enforcement down there. They're from the Kalamazoo area. And then we're back in the book of Galatians this morning looking at what God has for us.

This is God's word to us this morning from this amazing letter that was written by the Apostle Paul. Now a little bit about Paul. Most all of us probably have at least heard of the Apostle Paul, but kind of understanding what his missionary journey was like.

He was a missionary. He was a church planter. He went around the areas of Rome and different districts, starting churches, proclaiming the good news of Jesus Christ. And wherever people believed, so he would go into a place and look for connection points to their culture.

He'd go into the marketplace. He'd go into the synagogue. He'd go into places where his voice could be heard. And he would speak and he would proclaim the gospel. And people would believe and he would leave a church behind.

He would try to provide some structure for them and some guidance and direction for them to move forward. And then he would move on to another area. So that's the way that Paul rolled. And the letter of Galatians was written to a cluster of churches that he started in what is now modern day South Central Turkey.

It was a Roman district called Galatia. And that's who the letter that we're looking at was written to. So he's started churches in five different towns throughout the district of Galatia. He's left them and now he's writing a letter back to them in his absence because some things have happened.

And so that kind of sets the stage for what we're looking at when we come to Galatians chapter two this morning. We know that shortly after Paul left, some new teachers came in behind him into that district into those churches in Galatia and began to question the authority of Paul.

They began to ask questions of them like, who does Paul think he is? That he could come in and discredit thousands of years of Jewish history and law and say, you don't need to follow the law anymore, but all you need is Jesus Christ.

Right? That's what he basically, that's what Paul was coming in and saying. And now these people are coming in and following up after him, calling him into question, saying, what authority has he done this?

And even questioning the truthfulness of the gospel. Is that really enough? These teachers were telling everyone that they themselves were followers of Jesus Christ and that they were coming to finish off the work that Paul had started.

He had only brought them partway according to these false teachers. He said, they said, Paul's only brought you part of the way by explaining that Jesus Christ died to forgive your sins. But now they began to say that you also need to follow the law of Moses in order to be saved.

Does that, is that clear? Are you understanding what these, these false teachers are kind of coming in, trying to mop up Paul's work and say, well, he started something, but you need more. You need what we have to offer.

And how many of you know that that's kind of a contemporary issue that you can find that there are people who purport to be spiritual authorities that are going to tell you that you need to, you need to dance to the beat of their drum.

You need to jump through their religious hoops. You need to do things their way in order to be okay with God. And we're going to talk about what is the only must in the Christian life as we go through this text this morning.

But grace is so amazingly simple that I think we have a tendency inside ourselves to even question it. Right? Like how many of you know that if, if grace is real, if we really are saved as in it is a gift from God, you can't earn it, you don't deserve it, but he gives it freely to anybody who believes by faith, then that opens you up for some criticism, right?

Like, how many of you have something, a question in your mind that comes to your mind when you think of salvation by grace? Does that mean that I can live any way that I want? Does that mean I'm free to do whatever I want?

If Jesus saved me, he's forgiven the sins of my past, he's forgiven the sins of my present, and he's forgiven the sins of my future, and he has saved me, I mean think about what the word saved means, he saved me unto eternal life that I might live with him, perfect, holy, righteous on the new earth with him forever, awesome, right?

If he saved me in that way, then wait, can't I do whatever I want? And I want to point out to you that if the gospel that you proclaim does not open you to that type of criticism, then I'm not confident you're proclaiming the gospel.

Because Paul was, I want to point out, they questioned Paul on this. They were literally saying, well wait, if you are saying that we are saved by grace and grace alone, then shouldn't we just go sinning, go on sinning more so that grace may abound all the more?

And he says, by no means. How can we who died to sin still live in it? So there is a sense in which God is progressing us, he's moving us along in this Christian life, it's a word called sanctification, by his spirit, not by laws, not by rules, not by regulations, but by his spirit, bringing to light this word in our lives, but it is solely, completely, 100 by grace.

And that is the point. All of that, I kind of got off on a little side note there. Which is really the main point, so that shouldn't be a side note. But, the gospel of grace is simply this. We are messed up, broken people.

Individually, this is true, if you look inside your own heart, it doesn't take long for you to get there, does it? We're messed up, we're broken, we don't even meet our own standards. But corporately, it's true.

I'm confident of what the word of God speaks, because I take by faith that you guys are broken too. Now, I get a chance to see that from time to time as well, but how many of you know that you run into a stranger at the mall, you know one thing about them.

They're sinful, they're broken inside, they're not what they were made to be, they're not what they're meant to be, and that's just true of all of us. Our willful rebellion against our creator has had devastating effects on our personal lives, on our interpersonal relationships, and the reality is that no amount of rules or regulations can truly correct our hearts.

Any of you been there, tried that? Like, how many rules does it take to get my heart right? I could try all I want, and rules are not going to take care of it. As a matter of fact, I find in my own life, and I know that different people have different experiences, but the more that I legislate my own heart, the more rules that I make around myself, the more I have a tendency to look for loopholes to those rules and regulations.

Anybody else relate to that? I'm alone. Okay, there's one person who relates to that, but when I see a speed limit sign, I think that it's for everybody else. It's like, I set my cruise control five over, right, because that's just, you know, those rules are for somebody else, or I see it and I'm like, oh, they didn't really mean that.

That's not what they meant. I know the spirit of the law, right, the spirit of it is just drive safe, right? It's a suggested speed limit, that's right. I think, now I think you guys are with me. But here's what Paul wrote in Romans 8, 3 -4, and this is how he relates law and grace.

For God has done, if you're taking notes, jot that down, you can look at it later, you don't need to turn to it now, but Romans 8, 3 -4. For God has done what the law, weakened by the flesh, that is sinful desire.

When Paul talks of flesh, he's not talking about skin, he's talking about our sinful desires that still reside within us, still in us after we're saved, it's still there, fighting against the spirit. But for God has done what the law, weakened through the flesh, could not do.

There's something that the law couldn't do that God has done for us. By sending his own son in the likeness of sinful flesh, and for sin, he condemned sin in the flesh, that is, Jesus died for us, is what he's getting at.

In order that the righteous requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not according to the flesh, we don't walk anymore according to sinful desires, but according to the spirit. And so as we come to this text this morning, and then come to worship, I'm gonna read the text in Galatians, and then the band's gonna come and lead us in worship, I want us to reflect on the simplicity of grace.

That we who once were far off from God, have been brought near by the blood of Jesus Christ. That we who justly and rightly deserve condemnation, have been granted the glory of new life in Jesus, and the promise of eternity with him.

That's what I want us to be thinking about as we sing songs to him this morning. So I want you to open your Bibles to Galatians 2, 1 through 10, we're gonna read this text together. If you take the Bible out in the seat back in front of you, it's easy to find, it's page 832 in that Bible.

It's probably not 832 in your Bible, if you brought your own. But if you don't own a copy of the Bible, I want you to take the one that's in the seat back in front of you, home with you. But let's dive into Galatians 2, and we'll read the first 10 verses, let's jump in.

The words of Paul, and ultimately the words of God to us this morning. Then after 14 years, I, that's Paul, went up again to Jerusalem with Barnabas, taking Titus along with me. I went up because of a revelation, and sat before them, though privately before those who seemed influential, the gospel that I proclaim among the Gentiles, in order to make sure 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 Greek, a Greek. Yet because of false brothers secretly 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 to be 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 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 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 that I was eager to do.". Let's pray. Father, I thank you so much for your grace. And as we dive into this text and we understand and seek to understand the history of what's going on here, this trip to Jerusalem, we could become so fascinated with the points or the history or the little nuances of ancient Greek and Roman history that we could miss the point.

Father, I pray that your spirit would speak into our hearts truth this morning. That where we need conviction, you would convict. That where we need encouragement, you would encourage. That where we need to experience your compassion, we would experience compassion.

And Father, where our hearts need to be moved to rejoice, that we would be moved by your spirit to genuinely rejoice. As we sing these songs, I ask that the words that we see on the screen would come through our eyes, into our heart, into our mind, and would actually impact our lives.

That we would genuinely be worshiping you, not just singing some songs together. I ask this in Jesus' name. Amen. Our text picks up in the middle of a short biography of Paul. So really, we got that started back in chapter one, and it's just kind of carrying on that short biography.

And the purpose of that biography in the text is really to defend his calling to ministry and to ultimately say that the gospel that he received was not one that was made up, but he received it straight from Jesus Christ himself.

In chapter one, he had clearly explained that both his calling and the message of the gospel that he proclaims to the Gentiles came straight from an encounter with Jesus Christ. Remember, Paul, in the book of Acts, we see that Paul was a person who was opposing the church of God with a ferocious attitude towards the church, a destructive attitude towards the church.

He wanted to see it destroyed, we saw earlier in Galatians chapter one, and he says as much. I wanted to see the church of Christ decimated. And then he encountered, on the road to Damascus, he was going there to persecute Christians and Jesus Christ himself in his glory appeared to him in a bright light, blinded him, shared the gospel with him, and called him into ministry to the Gentiles.

And so he received straight from Jesus Christ both his calling, which was ultimately his authority, and the good news itself. His conversion experience and his calling into ministry both happened from Jesus Christ himself.

So no mere human had taught him the gospel, no mere human had loaned him their authority, but those were both granted by Jesus Christ, and he was commanded to proclaim his message to the Gentiles by Jesus Christ.

And at the end of chapter one, Paul was traveling around following up on that calling. We saw him and he was traveling around the district of Cilicia, which was eastern Turkey and Syria, kind of associated with modern day Syria and Beirut up in the northern part, north of Israel.

And he was traveling around that area, proclaiming the gospel, and we saw at the very end of chapter one that many in the churches were rejoicing because the one who sought the destruction of the church was now traveling around building up the church.

He had had this conversion, if you will, a complete life change where Paul was running hard against Christ. He met Christ and he began a 180, and just with that same tenacity, that same passion, that same drive, he's now building the church.

And everybody was rejoicing because of the change that had happened in Paul's life. Most scholars figure that if you look at verse one, then after 14 years, so you've got some time frame here, he's given a biography, he's writing to them about what had happened in the past.

The 14 years Paul mentions in verse one are counted from his conversion experience, and that fits well into the timeline of his life, so if you were to line out the different events and different activities that happened in Paul's life 14 years from his conversion, he's going to take a trip down to Jerusalem.

We're going to read about that. He's going to tell us about that trip to Jerusalem and why it's important. Paul had only spent a total of 15 days in Jerusalem as a believer prior to the account that we're going to see here.

So only 15 days, and he had only ever met Peter and James. And then he's going to have spent 14 years in gospel ministry after that. Now how many of you kind of have in your mind like Paul knew the apostles really well, right?

Paul and the apostles just hung out and knew each other, and wouldn't you naturally think that? He spent 14 years in ministry and he'd only met Peter and James. And so what we're going to see in our account is his actual meeting with the other apostles, with the others who were doing the same type of ministry as him, just in a different venue in a different way.

And it's important to Paul's defense because people, remember, are coming into Galatia challenging his authority, challenging his message. He says, I had already spent 14 years in ministry before I ever got together with the apostles.

It's not like we cooked up a story together. I had already been in ministry for 14 years before I even met most of them. Are you getting kind of part of his defense here? That's what he's saying to them in essence through this story.

But as verse two makes clear, Paul received a revelation from God. Look at the text. It says, I went up because of a revelation and then set before them the gospel that I was proclaiming to the Gentiles.

There was a revelation from God, a dream, a vision, an audible voice. The text doesn't tell us. How many of you kind of would like to have that happen from time to time? Like for God to just kind of like appear to you and tell you what to do with your day.

I've mentioned many times that I would just love to have that happen. I haven't had that happen yet. But he was confident and I think that's kind of the point. I don't really know, like what would God have to do to make you confident that it was him wanting you to do something?

I can't answer that question. I don't really even know. But think about that. Paul was confident that he was supposed to go to Jerusalem. He was like, you got to go. And he's like, okay, I'm going. I'm going to go down to Jerusalem.

Now actually I say go down. The text says go up to Jerusalem and if you were to look at a map, where he's coming from is Antioch, up here in the north, and he's going to go down by the map to Jerusalem.

Why does the text say he's going to go up to Jerusalem? It has to do with elevation. It's kind of interesting to note that in ancient histories and in ancient documents, they talked in terms of elevation.

You went up to a city because it was higher in elevation. Because how many of you know that if you were walking places, going up makes a difference, right? So that was first and foremost in their mind.

We don't think about going, we don't think, well, thought about it. How many of you can tell you, how many of you can tell whether you go up or down to Kalamazoo? I guarantee if you walked it a lot, you would begin to know whether you were going up or down to Kalamazoo.

But that's the way that the culture was. That's the way they wrote. And on top of that, they didn't have maps like we have. It's not like they just pulled out their GPS or pulled out a map and north is this way and south is this way.

So that explains why he mentions going up to Jerusalem. But he takes along with him two friends. He takes Barnabas, who's an older friend, who was one of the first people to welcome him as a believer.

How many of you know that that would have been a scary thing for Barnabas, right? Like here is Paul who has been persecuting, killing, slaughtering, murdering Christians. How many of you would just be real quick to give a hug and say, welcome, brother.

I'm glad you're a Christian now. You know what I'm saying? I mean, that would have been pretty tough. Barnabas was one tough cookie for him to do that. He was older than Paul. He was longer in the faith than Paul.

And then Paul also took along a younger Greek convert named Titus. And we're going to talk about Titus here in a minute. But in Jerusalem, he is going down there, we see in the text, to seek a private audience with the church leaders.

Now this shouldn't be confused with the much more public Jerusalem council that happens in Acts chapter 15. You can kind of correspond different things in Acts versus, you know, the book of Galatians and try to put together a life of Paul and it fits.

But this is not the Jerusalem council. But it's interesting to note that a couple of times Paul highlights in this text here that he meets with those who seemed influential. Now do you see that in the text?

It starts in verse 2. He mentions it again down in, let's see, a couple of other verses. Verse 9. All throughout this is kind of this notion that they seemed influential. Now you might think, okay, was it that they thought themselves higher, more highly, thought of themselves more highly than they ought and they were acting influential?

And he was like, well, they just kind of perceived themselves to be influential. I don't think he's being derogatory towards the other apostles and being like, well, they thought themselves. I think what we're seeing here is actually Paul didn't know who was in charge.

That's how literally ignorant Paul was of the church in Jerusalem. He's like, I went and I met with the ones who seemed like they were the ones in charge. Are you getting what I'm saying? And I think it actually speaks to the fact that those in Jerusalem were not claiming authority.

They were not like wearing special robes and all, you know, I am the chief of the church in Jerusalem. Do you get what I'm saying? If they were clamoring for authority, he wouldn't have had to say they seemed like they were the ones in charge.

Well, obviously, by what they were wearing, they were in charge. Are you getting what I'm saying? So I think that's what you're getting there is literally and understanding that Paul is meeting with these people for the first time and he's like, I'm going down to Jerusalem.

God told me to. I'm going to proclaim, share the gospel that I've been preaching for the last 14 years with them. Make sure we're like on the same page and stuff. But he's meeting with those that seemed to be influential.

He didn't know them very well. He's meeting them for the first time. And in this gathering of those who seem to be influential, Paul lays out the gospel that he's been proclaiming to the Gentiles, like I said, for the past 14 years.

He's preached it in Arabia. He's preached it in Cilicia. He's preached it in Syria. And I don't think for a moment that Paul questioned whether or not his gospel was correct. He's just got to go back to chapter one to figure that out, right?

If you go back to chapter one, it's not like he's sitting there scratching his head going, I need confirmation. I'm afraid that I'm leading people astray. That's not Paul. If you study anything of Paul in scriptures, you know, he's a pretty confident dude, okay?

He's not like, oh, please validate me. He was doing all right. So that's not what's going on, but then we have to just kind of figure out why is he even doing this thing? Why is he going down to Jerusalem for this validation?

Because he had spoken so directly that there was only one gospel and that his gospel is correct back in chapter one that he even said that if anybody came in and proclaimed a gospel different than the one that he proclaimed in Galatia, let them be condemned.

Do you remember him saying that back in chapter one, those of you who were here? Pretty strong statements. And so he is sure that his gospel is the right gospel. So why go down there? Why talk to the leaders in Jerusalem?

It appears as though he's trying to make this, like get some confidence or something. So what is this running in vain that he's talking about at the end of verse two is what I want to get at. I think to Paul, running in vain was for him to be doing something apart from the Jerusalem church that would end up dividing Christianity into two different religions.

You see, he's out proclaiming to who? Gentiles. Who are the apostles in Jerusalem proclaiming the gospel to? Jews. And what's going to happen if the two of those groups never get back, never get together?

You're going to eventually end up with two different religions, two different perspectives on how to approach God, right? One is a Jewish brand of Christianity where you still have to keep the law and circumcision and dietary laws and all that kind of stuff, and the other one's going to be a Gentile brand of Christianity.

And that's what I believe Paul meant when he said, I didn't want to run in vain. I didn't want my run to be different than your run and for us to be opposing each other. So that's what he sees this trip in Jerusalem primarily, not about him getting validation of his message, not about his gospel gaining authority, but about unity happening.

You seeing that? That's what he's getting at in this, is he wants to see things come together. To Paul, his ministry would be a failure if the believers in Jerusalem never fully recognized the believers outside of Jerusalem as brothers and sisters in Christ.

So after carefully laying out the message he had been sharing with the Gentiles, Paul used Titus. He brought Titus along as a visual example. Here's a case study of a convert who was a Gentile, who was raised a pagan.

And when I say a pagan, I mean just somebody who worshipped idols and false gods and worshipped probably the whole Roman group of gods and maybe a couple Greek ones mixed in there. And that was his lifestyle.

Both parents would have had idols in the house and he has now come to faith in Christ with no Jewish background whatsoever. Very little understanding of the Old Testament, very little understanding of the law.

Titus comes from the town of Antioch of Syria. So just again, the city where Paul was sent out from and he was a full-blooded Greek. And Paul is going to point out to the Galatians that the leaders of the church in Jerusalem did not even require this former pagan Greek dude who came to faith in Christ.

They didn't even require him to be circumcised despite the fact that he was Greek. All of a sudden circumcision just showed up in the text and it's like, what? Where does that get in there? Sometimes I wonder why God didn't just give them a nose ring or a gauge in their ear or something like that.

But circumcision is a serious theme in the Bible that dates back to the very first Jew. So you need to understand what that's really about because it appears in the text and it appears throughout the New Testament in Paul's argumentation.

It's like, what is that doing there? So just a real quick history lesson here. There was a guy named Abram. Now when we talk about pagans, we talk about people who worship idols, literally physical idols I'm talking about.

I like to use the word pagan for somebody who's going to bow down to something made out of stone or wood or silver or gold. Literally bowing to these things. That was Abram's culture. That was his name, Abram, great father.

Okay? And he was raised in an area where they knew nothing of the God of the Bible. It was all paganism. It was all the worship of idols, all the worship of trees and stars and rocks and the sun and the moon.

And that's where Abram was brought up. But God appeared to Abram, changed his name to Abraham from great father to father of many for a reason, because he's going to make a promise to him. Now, how did God appear to Abram?

Anybody ever just kind of scratch your head on what that meeting looked like? The text doesn't really tell us very clearly if he appeared in a physical form, if he again shown like a bright light or whatever, but God appears to Abram, changes his name and gives him a promise.

He says, if you will let me be your God and follow me, covenant, relationship, kind of two sides of an agreement. If you'll follow me and let me be your God, then I will give you three things. I will make you a great nation.

I will give you many, many offspring. Now you know the story, Abram, Sarah, Sarah was really old, infertile and having a baby. But he says, you're going to have a lot of offspring. Like the whole stars of the sky thing, sand of the seashore, that's what your offspring is going to be like.

And not only that, but because I'm going to make you a great nation, you're going to need a land. And so I'm going to give you a good land, which is Israel. And we talked about that when we went through the book of Joshua a couple of years ago.

We walked through that and it was about the giving of the land and the fulfillment of God's promise to his people. But there was a third promise that one of your offspring, I said, your offspring, God's talking to Abram, your offspring is going to be like the stars of the sky, but one of them is going to be a blessing to all peoples, to all nations.

Does anybody have a guess of what the name of that one offspring was? Jesus. That promise given to Abraham way back early in the book of Genesis. One of the most, just something awesome about the meeting between God and Abraham is if you read the Bible, if you were to read big chunks, and I actually read through the Bible in 30 days one time a couple of years ago.

And how many of you know you have to read a lot in one day if you're going to read through the Bible in 30 days? I'm sorry, not 30 days, 90 days. But still, you have to read like 30 chapters a day to get through it.

And when you read big chunks of scripture like that, you get some flow that is awesome and amazing. And I'm not a, I don't tend to be a real touchy-feely guy, but by the time that I got to the meeting between Abraham and God in Genesis 12, I was moved.

I was moved because you see the darkness of the result of the fall and man being wicked to man and Noah and the flood and all of the evil. And then it's like, but God breaks in and makes a covenant with us.

He takes the initiative and meets with Abraham. And it's awesome. And it's just like, wow, you didn't give up on us. And that's what's going on there. But part of that, one of the signs of that covenant promise given later in Genesis 17 is circumcision.

It's part of that covenant. Every male that was willing to come under the old covenant relationship with God in the Old Testament was to be circumcised. And so one of the logical questions, the reason that carries over into the New Testament, the reason that word appears here in our text is that a very logical, reasonable question facing the early church was whether or not a follower of Jesus Christ must be circumcised.

Can you understand why they would be asking that question? The covenant given to Abraham was a covenant signed and sealed by circumcision. Okay, so like, do we need that? And you have a person like Titus who was raised in a Greek home, never circumcised.

Now he's a follower of Jesus Christ. Does he need to go back to that old law? Are you seeing how the questions are starting to form? It's a reasonable question. But to even ask the question, must a person be circumcised?

Must a person keep the dietary law? Must a person just fill in the blank? Must a person do this to be okay with God? Misses the point of grace. It's a completely misguided question. And that is why Paul is on the attack in the book of Galatians.

That is the one thing he cannot stand. That's the one thing that is going to get a rise out of Paul quicker than anything, is suggesting that the cross of Jesus Christ is not enough, that there are other musts in the Christian life.

In the new covenant, there is only one must. There's only one thing that you need. Only one must. And that is belief, there's different ways to say it, belief, trust, or faith in Jesus Christ. That is the must in the Christian life.

And the only one in order to be okay with God. Now I'm talking about true faith, I'm talking about a true understanding of what Jesus Christ has done, but faith in the sacrifice, faith in the resurrection of Jesus Christ, is the only must.

Faith in what Jesus Christ has done for you, that whole thing. All the other goodies come later. Things like a new heart, a changed life, obedience, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, all of these things.

Those things come later. But faith is the one must. Are you hearing me? That is the must. But even in this private gathering in Jerusalem, so they get together and Paul's making a point. They didn't even require Titus to be circumcised.

Like the leaders of the Jerusalem church, whose primary focus was Jews, didn't even add that to Titus, they were okay with him. He's saying that to the Galatians to get the point across because somebody is coming in behind Paul and saying all you Gentiles need to get circumcised.

You need to start following the law and following the dietary laws and no more bacon and things like that. Ah. So even at that private gathering in Jerusalem, some false brothers who claim to be followers of Jesus Christ, notice the phrase that's used in the text, false brothers.

Okay, they look like, in verse four, they look like believers. They look like brothers and sisters in Christ, but they are not. They claim to be followers of Jesus Christ. But Paul identifies them ultimately in terms, he doesn't use the term here, but he does elsewhere, wolves among the sheep, and that illustration of a flock with wolves there.

And the words used in verse four are pretty strong words. They came in secretly. They slipped in as, I was interacting with Kyle about that this week. He said, kind of the picture he had in his mind is that the Indiana Jones their way in.

Did anybody know that? The walls coming down and he's like, oh, I gotta get my whip and it's like, and he just gets under just at the last second. Like they slipped in. And their motive given in the text, the reason that they're in the meeting, the reason that they even showed up to this private meeting is given.

It's to spy out Paul's freedom. To spy out Paul's freedom. So here's the picture in a nutshell. Paul comes to Jerusalem by a revelation from God. God says, go to Jerusalem. He goes to Jerusalem. He takes Barnabas, takes Titus.

To have a private meeting with the church elders and the apostles. Some false brothers sneak in to spy out Paul's freedom in Christ to kind of see what does he think he's free to do with the intention to bring Paul back into slavery to the law.

Look at the text, it's in there. That's their goal. They have an agenda for Paul. They have a desired outcome for this apostle of Jesus Christ that he would come under the law, come under rules, come under regulations and now they want Paul to dance to their tune.

To look like them, to dress like them, to act like them, to be like them so that then they're sure that he's okay with God. That would never happen in America, would it? That couldn't happen in our church, could it?