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Reading Galatians 1:11-14 where the Apostle Paul recalls the time he had to oppose Peter, and this was out of love, for the purpose of keeping the gospel pure. Visit wwutt.com for all our videos!
If you try to please man, you are not a servant of Christ. You can either be committed to pleasing the masses, or you can be committed to pleasing your Lord, but you can't do both when we understand the text.
This is when we understand the text, studying God's word to reach all the riches of full assurance in Christ. Find all our videos online at www .tt .com, as well as links to follow us on Facebook and Twitter.
Here's your teacher, Pastor Gabe Hughes.
Thank you, Becky. We come back to our study in Galatians, Chapter 2. If you want to open a Bible and join with me there. Now when we started this series, I was playing sermons from when I preached through this book a few years ago, but I've got a gap in there where I don't have any sermons from the middle part of Chapter 1 to the middle part of Chapter 2, so I'm kind of filling in that space.
I had other people preaching for me during that period of time, but we're going to get back to the sermons next week, picking up in Galatians 2 .15. Today we're looking at verses 11 to 14, and I'll be reading from the English Standard Version.
This is the word of the Lord through the Apostle Paul writing to the churches in Galatia. But when Cephas came to Antioch, I opposed him to his face, because he stood condemned. For before certain men came from James, he was eating with the Gentiles.
But when they came, he drew back and separated himself, fearing the circumcision party. And the rest of the Jews acted hypocritically along with him, so that even Barnabas was led astray by their hypocrisy.
But when I saw that their conduct was not in step with the truth of the gospel, I said to Cephas before them all, If you though a Jew live like a Gentile and not like a Jew, how can you force the Gentiles to live like Jews?
Now with this opposition that Paul makes of Peter here, this demonstrates that Paul does not fear man. He is not a man pleaser. He pleases Christ with the gospel that he proclaims. Going back to Galatians 1 .10, Paul said, For am I now seeking the approval of man, or of God?
Or am I trying to please man? If I were still trying to please man, I would not be the servant of Christ. And then from chapter 1 verse 11 through chapter 2 verse 14, Paul has been demonstrating his service unto the Lord, not to please men, but to please God.
And that the gospel that he proclaims is offensive. It's not a gospel that he preaches so as to win the most number of converts. That was something that the Jewish opposition was accusing him of. The Judaizers, they were saying that because Paul preaches this grace, that you don't have to adhere to the law, but you can just sin as you want and then come to Jesus and he'll just forgive you of all of those things.
So they were claiming that Paul was preaching a message that was a man pleasing message. But Paul is showing here that he's never been a man pleaser. The persecution that he faced from the very moment that he became a believer, the right hand of fellowship that was extended to him by the other apostles.
So he's not preaching anything that's contrary to what they're preaching. And then here, the opposition that he makes of Peter, a friendly opposition, something that he does in love, also showing to the Galatians that when he's opposing them, because they have turned to a gospel of works instead of understanding that justification is by faith alone.
When Paul has to make this contestation of them, he has to correct their wrong thinking. He shows, hey, I had to oppose Peter and that was done in love. This was not to try to divide the body. It was because we needed to preserve the gospel.
That's going back to chapter two, verse five, where he says, we did not yield to these false teachers even for a moment so that the truth of the gospel might be preserved for you. And so he's continuing to demonstrate that love and affection that he has in his opposition, but also that he's not a man pleaser in the gospel that he proclaims with this testimony here of the confrontation that he had to make of Peter.
Now, let me step back just a moment, once again, to what we were looking at yesterday in chapter two, where Paul says, we did not yield to the Judaizers. We did not yield to those spies who slipped in to try to bring us into slavery.
We didn't submit to them even for a moment so that the truth of the gospel might be preserved for you. That's verses four and five, as we were looking at that yesterday. Be very aware of this going on, even in the church today, that there are many man pleasers, especially when you get into those larger churches.
Now that's not to say that every pastor of a really big church is a man pleaser, but more often than not, you get into those mega churches and you've got men who are willing to say what they need to say in order to keep the most number of followers.
The Southern Baptist Convention is going through this right now. They want the biggest tent possible, and they're not even shy about saying that. The elite, the guys who are in control of the SBC, they'll say that that's what they're after.
Adam Greenway, who's the president of Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, said as much this past June, when the Southern Baptist Convention decided they were going to be receptive of churches that have woman pastors, even though that completely is in contradiction with the Baptist Faith and Message 2000, the statement of faith that the Southern Baptist Convention has adopted.
Even though there are churches with women pastors that would be in opposition to that statement of faith, guys like Adam Greenway and Jimmy Scroggins were saying, hey, we want a big tent, so we're going to welcome those churches, even though we personally might not attend those churches, but we want them together with us.
Then the statement of faith doesn't mean anything. It doesn't matter. It doesn't matter that the Southern Baptist Convention has this statement of faith saying that the office of pastor is limited to men.
If you're willing to say, hey, churches out there with women pastors, you guys are one of us, and you can come in here and do ministry with us. If they're willing to say that, then there's no reason for that statement of faith.
They're man-pleasers, or in this particular case, they're woman-pleasers attempting to appease the feminists who have found a way in the back door of the Southern Baptist Convention through the Me Too movement, but bottom line is they want to please man rather than please God.
Now, I don't think they're sitting around in their offices twiddling their thumbs thinking to themselves, how can I destroy this institution? But that's ultimately what's going to happen. Their intentions may be very good.
They may think, hey, we want the most number of people as possible so that we can reach more people with the gospel. But the road of good intentions leads to where? You know the old adage, right? The road of good intentions leads to hell.
It does not lead people to Christ. If you become a man-pleaser, you're not leading them to Christ. You're leading them back into themselves. You're leading them back into the world. Peter, his intentions were good when in Matthew chapter 16, he told Jesus he was not going to let him go to the cross.
And how did Jesus respond to Peter? Get behind me, Satan, for you are thinking not with the mind of God, but with the mind of man. Peter was thinking for himself. And you understand, if Peter had his way there in Matthew 16, we would not be saved.
If Peter had been able to prevent Christ from going to the cross, then the salvation of mankind through Christ shed blood for our sins, his resurrection from the grave, those things never would have happened.
It doesn't matter how genuine Peter's desire was. He thought that he was doing what was best for his Savior, who could not have been his Savior if he was not going to die for his sins. Once we abandon the truth of God's word, once we try to bend it a little, just so we can bring in the most number of people, it doesn't matter how good our intentions, you go against what God's word says, you destroy people, you don't bring them to salvation.
Paul here is not a people pleaser. He was not willing to bend even for a moment to those guys who were coming in and trying to enslave the people once again back to the law. You have to do all of these things in the law in order to be saved.
Paul said, we did not yield to them even a little bit so that the truth of the gospel might be preserved for you. One of the things that we're seeing among many popular pastors today is that they will appease the left.
You know what I mean? By the left, we're talking like the cultural left, the political left, those, you know, where you would find the LGBTQ movement, where you find the Me Too movement, Black Lives Matter, which is the social justice or the cultural Marxism movement, all that stuff that's going on there on the left.
We don't want to stand in opposition to that. And speaking of some of these elite evangelical leaders, we don't want to we don't want to express opposition and offend too many people because then they won't come in to listen to the gospel.
And so they'll try to appease them a little bit. They'll wade around in social justice light in a little bit of LGBTQ stuff. There was a video that just came out earlier this week from a church, an Acts 29 church, part of the Acts 29 network, of which Matt Chandler is the president of.
And the pastor of this church says, we need to lean into the rights of LGBTQ people, whatever that means. But it's appeasing language. It's trying to make it sound like to the sodomites, we don't want to turn you off too much.
We don't want to look too bad in you guys' eyes. And so we'll give you a little bit to try to draw you in. Of course, that's not the way that's going to go. You bring the LGBTQ movement into your church.
Your church is over. We've seen exactly what their agenda is. They don't want to know the truth. They just want to be perverts. And so you proclaim the gospel to them, and it's through the proclamation of the gospel, unapologetic, unashamed.
You preach the gospel, and either it's going to penetrate their hearts. They're going to be convicted over their sin. They'll turn from it to Jesus Christ, or they'll hate you for it. That's the dichotomy.
That's what it is that we see in the New Testament. Paul's saying to the Corinthians, we preach Christ and him crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and folly to Gentiles. They're going to hate you for the gospel that you proclaim.
It doesn't matter how much you think that you can sneak it in there on them. Like, I'm not going to be too bold. I'm going to be nuanced. I'm going to be winsome. And then I'm going to sneak the gospel in when they least suspect it.
Once you offend the passions of their flesh, they're going to shut down. They're not going to listen to you anymore. You appease the passions of their flesh. Well, you have to keep doing that in order to keep their attention.
Paul is demonstrating here. He's not after that. He's not out for pleasing men. He is a servant of Christ. Am I seeking the approval of man, he says, or am I seeking the approval of God? Am I trying to please man?
If I were still trying to please man, I wouldn't be a servant of Christ. You can't be a servant of Christ. And please, man, going back to what we read in 2 Corinthians 6, 14 through 16. Do not be unequally yoked with unbelievers.
For what partnership have righteousness and lawlessness? Or what fellowship has light with darkness? Or what harmony has Christ with Belial? Or what has a believer in common with an unbeliever? Or what agreement has a sanctuary of God with idols?
For we are a sanctuary of the living God. Just as God said, I will dwell in them and walk among them. And I will be their God and they shall be my people. Therefore, come out from their midst and be separate, says the Lord.
And do not touch what is unclean. And I will welcome you and I will be a father to you. And you shall be sons and daughters to me, says the Lord Almighty. I kept reading on from there. That was 2 Corinthians 6, 14 to 18.
But you understand here, you can please Christ or you can please man. You can be out to serve your Lord or you can be out to appease the masses. But you can't do both. And so again, Paul in his testimony here saying that he was not a man pleaser, even to the point that he had to oppose Peter, who was like the head apostle.
That was what everybody thought of Peter as it doesn't necessarily mean that Christ gave Peter headship that the rest of the apostles didn't have. But that's the way people thought of Peter. He was like Jesus right hand guy.
So Paul opposes Peter. Like, is that OK? I mean, surely Paul is doing something that would be displeasing to the Lord if he's going to do something like that. But again, this is to show that Paul in his apostleship was not out for preaching a message that was going to tickle the ears of people.
If he has to oppose Peter, he most definitely is not a man pleaser. So Cephas came to Antioch and I opposed him to his face. We don't read about this in Acts. The account that we have of this is really right here in Galatians chapter two.
But the letter, of course, was verified just because it's Paul that's saying this doesn't mean, well, all we have is Paul's word. No, this letter was circulated through the churches, all the churches in Galatia.
And there were many other churches that had it as well. Peter even says as much in second Peter three, 16 and talking to the churches there in Asia Minor, some of which were probably the churches in Galatia.
And he says the letters of Paul are equated with scripture. And Paul says things in them that are difficult for people to understand, which the ignorant and unstable twist to their own destruction. So all of this was verified.
This is where we have this story. It's here in Galatians 2, 11. Cephas came to Antioch and I opposed him to his face because he stood condemned. Now there's the statement. And then Paul explains it verses 12 through 14.
For before certain men came from James. Now, again, this goes back up to talking about those guys that had kind of snuck their way in by saying they came from James means they had come from the Jerusalem church, not that they were sent by James, but they encourage the Jewish Christians to follow the dietary laws like what we have in Leviticus chapter 11.
So they were being told by the Judaizers to be kosher. That's the word that we use for that. K-O-S-H-E-R following the Jewish dietary laws means you're kosher. So they encourage the Jewish Christians to eat separately from the Gentiles and to be kosher following the dietary laws in Leviticus 11.
Now, Peter went along with this. And he probably did not realize. And again, Peter's intentions may have been very good. He did not realize that his example was going to make the Gentile Christians feel like they were second rate, like we're less than you guys because we're Gentiles.
You guys are the better because you have the oracles of God, because, yeah, Jesus was a Jew and you're all circumcised. So you've done everything according to the law. And that makes you better. We Gentiles have never had that.
So we're always going to be less than you guys. And so now the Gentiles feel condemned. And so in verse 13, well, I'm sorry, I didn't finish verse 12. So Paul says, for before certain men came from James, he was eating with the Gentiles.
Peter was eating with the Gentiles. That's what's supposed to happen. If you remember back to Acts chapter 10, where Peter receives the vision of, you know, the sheet that came down from heaven and all the animals that were there and the voice that comes to him saying, rise, Peter, kill and eat.
And Peter's going, I've never eaten some of these animals before. That would make me unclean. But the point was that you should not call unclean what God has called common or what he has said is clean.
You go back to the Noahic covenant, even in Genesis chapter nine, where God said, I give you every living thing for food. It wasn't until the dietary laws that there were certain animals that were said were clean and some were said to be unclean.
And that was for ceremonial purposes. But since one greater than the tabernacle had come greater than the temple, which is Jesus Christ, then those dietary laws weren't necessary anymore. Jesus said in Mark seven, he declared all foods clean.
And we have that in multiple places. Acts 10 being another place, Romans 14 in Colossians as well, so on and so forth. There are numerous places in the New Testament where it is said that these dietary laws no longer apply.
Now, after that incident, after the vision that Peter had in Acts 10 and then going to Cornelius's house and sharing the gospel, Peter then ate with Gentiles. But this event happens after that. And Paul says before he came to Antioch, Peter used to eat with Gentiles.
He used to he used to eat with those who were uncircumcised. But when they came, he drew back and separated himself, fearing the circumcision party, the Jews. And here at this point, Peter becomes a man pleaser, and it's probably not the intention of his heart.
He may have had good intentions, but he makes the Gentiles feel like their second rate. And the rest of the Jews acted hypocritically, Paul says, along with him so that even Barnabas was led astray by their hypocrisy.
So Barnabas joined them in that he was doing the same thing that Peter was doing. He did what he saw Peter do and verse 14. But when I saw that their conduct was not in step with the truth of the gospel, part of the gospel is understanding, as it says in Ephesians two and three, that the dividing wall of hostility between Jew and Gentile has been broken down.
So that which was previously to Jew and Gentile has been made into one in Christ Jesus. That's part of the message of the gospel, that Christ has reconciled Jew and Gentile to himself. So Paul says, when I saw their conduct was not in step with the truth of the gospel, I said to Peter before them all, if you, though a Jew, live like a Gentile and not like a Jew, and that's talking about the way that Peter had conducted himself before this incident here, you used to live like a Gentile.
You used to eat with them. So then how can you force the Gentiles to live like Jews, which is essentially what Peter is saying by this witness that he's giving right here in this moment. By separating himself from the Gentiles and then just eating with the Jews, he's communicating to the Gentiles, you have to be like a Jew in order to be with us.
But they can't be. They're not descendant from Abraham, not physically anyway. They're not circumcised. They'd have to go out and get circumcised in order to be among the Jews in order to feel like they're part of the family of God.
They have to submit themselves again to all these laws and rules and regulations that have been fulfilled in Christ. And if you're going back to the rules and regulations, then why did Christ die? If you still have to do that stuff in order to be justified before God, then the sacrifice of Christ is of no purpose.
And Paul gets to that. He says it exactly that way as we will continue on here in Galatians. Yesterday, I finished with Galatians 2 20. Let me add into that verse 21. OK, Paul says, I have been crucified with Christ.
It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me and the life I now live in the flesh. I live by faith in the son of God who loved me and gave himself for me. I do not nullify the grace of God. For if righteousness were through the law.
Then Christ died for no purpose. But righteousness is not by our keeping the law. Righteousness is through faith in Jesus Christ who imputes his righteousness to us so that we are clothed in his righteousness and we are received by the father, not by the works that we have done, but by what Christ has done on our behalf and all the blessings of the Lord we receive by faith in Jesus.
Amen. Let's stop there. We'll pick up with our study of Galatians next week. Heavenly Father, we thank you for this good word that we would be reminded it is not by our works. It's not by what we do that we come into fellowship with God that we are justified or declared innocent of our sins that we are given the righteousness of Christ.
It is just by your grace and by relying not on ourselves or trusting in our own abilities, but putting our faith and trust in Christ. You forgive us our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness so that it is no longer I who live, but it is Christ who lives in me.
Teach me to walk in his ways today as a son of God. We ask in Jesus' name.
Amen. This is When We Understand the Text with Pastor Gabe Hughes. There are lots of great Bible teaching programs on the web, and we thank you for selecting ours, but this is no replacement for regular fellowship with a church family.
Find a good, Gospel-teaching, Christ-centered church to worship with this weekend, and join us again tomorrow as we continue our Bible study When We Understand the Text.