Galatians 2:11-16

and we want to say good afternoon, welcome. Good to be back. Book of Galatians, powerful stuff.

Before we pray, what did you think is the overarching theme of the Book of Galatians? It's about grace and defending the gospel of grace from those who would

Judaize it or culturize it, to use your word. Today it would be culturalized. Yeah, adding anything to the gospel and losing it.

Yeah, probably the big difference between the Judaizers and the culturalizers is the Judaizers were intending to have true faith but believing that works like circumcision validated the fact that you had true faith.

Culturalizers today, they're just trying to fill it up, the baby with the bath and the water. Last week,

Jeff took us through a great study on Paul's message, his report back, and the encouragement that he got from Peter to continue on with it.

In fact, it even says, as he goes down there, that even Titus, being a Greek, was not forced to be circumcised and how the truth of it was there.

Sandy, in my opening, I'm gonna ask you to get Galatians 1 .10 and read that for us.

This book is so rich with the reality that God's grace is the all -sufficiency.

Do you have 1 .10? For am I now seeking the favor of men or of God, or am

I striving to please men? If I were still trying to please men,

I would not be a bondservant of Christ. Hypocrisy, that's the theme,

I think, that we need to look at today. Am I trying to please men or am I trying to please God? If I call myself a believer saved by grace through faith, why am

I going back into works? And Paul's got a pretty strong indictment to give out, and then teaching as we get into this section, religious hypocrisy.

Could you open this with a prayer, please? Yes. Father, guard us from religious hypocrisy. Lord, let us be pure and genuine in the way that we stand for your gospel.

And we pray for John today as he opens a word to us. Lord, as the gospel is preached through the hearing of your word, we pray that we would be changed by it.

We pray that you would speak to us. We are listening, in Jesus' name, amen. Give me a definition of hypocrisy.

Saying one thing and doing another. Absolutely. Say again?

Acting, acting. In all venues, I think, this isn't just something that the conservatives would say, but pretty much all venues, all walks of life, it's a pejorative.

It's basically making a proclamation of, it's you're denigrating the person when you're calling them a hypocrite.

You're attacking their actions when you say they're filled with hypocrisy.

I decided to do a little bit of research on it. I have a dictionary from 1992,

Webster's Dictionary. So this is pre -Wolk. Wolk really hadn't come to be that powerful back in 1990.

The feigning to be what one is not with extreme insincerity.

Basically pretending to be what you're really not. Some of the synonyms for it are cheat, deceiver, imposter.

Now, if I go online today and I go to the online Google Dictionary today, behavior that contradicts what one claims to be.

Behavior that contradicts what one claims to be. I'm claiming to be all of this, I'm claiming to believe this, but my behavior just basically contradicts it.

False assumption of an appearance of virtue or religion.

The false assumption, assuming the appearance based on virtue or religion, which really does not describe who you are or what you believe.

These are the thoughts of hypocrisy. In the Greek, hupakrisis,

I believe. I don't know if that's exactly how to pronounce it. It was used frequently by Jesus, Matthew 23, when he's talking about the

Pharisees. You hypocrites, you whitewashed tombs.

You're beautiful on the outside, but you're dead bones on the inside.

Now, this hupakrisis actually shows up in James 5 .12, but you're not gonna find the word hypocrisy there.

It talks about that you're under condemnation. And it's basically what you're doing is the actions of what you're doing are being condemned.

So this same thought of hupakrisis shows up there. In the

Hebrew and the Old Testament, it basically is profane and godless. Hypocrisy, hupakrisis.

There's two individuals, grew up in the same house, religious by identity, a member of a religious group by identity, but not a born -again house.

And one of the individuals became associated with some people and the gospel message was proclaimed.

And that person was able to extricate himself from this empty religion and to become a believer.

Unfortunately, the other brother was overwhelmed by the hypocrisy of that religious practice and the people that were in it.

And that hypocrisy forced him into an atheist position.

Hypocrisy has its dangers. It's not a victimless crime.

It has, when hypocrisy sets in, those who are becoming inundated with the hypocrisy of actions, words, whatever, there is a high risk of negative impact.

We're actually gonna see that in this passage today. One of the things that we're gonna see in this passage today is

Paul is gonna be addressing the hypocrisy of one of the pillars of Christianity, Peter.

And if Peter is vulnerable to this kind of thing, what makes us think that we're not?

In fact, this passage is going to change midstream from addressing

Peter to addressing we. And we'll see that as we go into it.

Jeff, if you would give us the section, I think it's 11 to 16, please. Okay. 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 away by their hypocrisy.

And 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?

We ourselves are Jews by birth and not Gentile sinners. Yet we know that a person is not justified by works of the law, but through faith in Jesus Christ, so that we also have believed in Christ Jesus in order to be justified by faith in Christ and not by works of the law, because by the works of the law, no one will be justified.

Starting on verse 11, I opposed him, I being Paul, him Peter. I opposed him because he stood condemned and he's making an immediate proclamation of the condition of what

Paul is now experiencing. What motivated Paul to oppose

Peter? It's an obvious question.

There were differences. I don't wanna say supposed differences, but there were assumed differences that needed to be straightened out between each of their, not dogma, but doctrine.

So that could be partially true. We're gonna see that there's an underlying problem.

What were you gonna say? I was gonna say, I think that back then, Jews weren't supposed to sit with Gentiles, so when

Jews came, Peter cowered and said, oh, I'm not sitting with these people, and went to go sit with the

Jews because he was fearing the circumcision party, which is the Jews. So out of fear of the Jews, he left the

Gentiles to go out and sit with the Jews, at least entirely. And you're absolutely right. Yeah, John? He was aligning himself with men he knew were in hell.

And you guys all have got, if you put all this together, Peter is reacting to cultural pressure.

Initially, he would be willing to sit down and share a meal with these non -Jews until the

Jews showed up, and then it's like, I can't do this. And he basically said, the cultural pressure is more important to me than anything else.

And it's that reaction of Peter's that Paul perceives and says, you already stand condemned.

Why did Paul think it necessary to address

Peter in this way? Because it was leading Barnabas astray, so.

True, absolutely true. He's got influence. It created harm and confusion among the

Gentiles. So here's the thing in what you're saying there. Truth cannot be sacrificed on the altar of culture.

And what he's doing by sacrificing truth on the altar of culture, he's leading people astray.

They're, what is this, is it okay? And basically, Paul is approaching and opposing

Peter, and the proclamation is, are you for truth or you are not for truth?

You can't be for truth, and you can't be sacrificing at the altar of culture. You can't do both.

It's one or it's the other, and that ties in with your message on there's one gospel, and any other gospel is not a gospel.

But his actions, so how did Paul handle this question?

Read verse 11 for me again. But when Cephas came to Antioch, I opposed him to his face because he stood condemned.

So how does Paul address this issue? He opposes him to his face. Face to face, yeah.

And that is an important teaching. We could probably spend time on it, but if there is an issue going on, talking behind somebody's back, sending text messages, can you believe what

John said in class? He went to him face to face. Now, first of all, that takes a whole lot of courage.

It takes a whole lot of awareness that I'm standing to truth, and it also takes love.

It isn't Christian love to let somebody go in error, but you don't do it behind their back.

You don't create a, he goes to him face to face and actually talks to him about it.

Give me 12 again, please. 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 part.

But when the Jews came, you drew back because of the consequences that might happen.

And there is a weakness of character that's there for Peter, but again, there's an important thing.

What was the substance? Why was Peter being hypocritical? Fear. Yes.

What was he afraid of? Being recognized as being with the right.

Has Peter ever had this problem before? He doesn't have many problems. He wanted to be accepted as a

Judaizer, okay, because that's where he was going. He was going into the synagogue, and he didn't want to be put down about it.

You're right. Right now, he's in the in crowd, and he could not be. But how about this little tiny slave girl?

After already denying Christ twice, this little girl says, aren't you part of them? He says, no, absolutely not, and he doubled down.

And then the crow, the cock crowed three times. Through that all, then

Jesus, as he is resurrected, he says, go tell my disciples and Peter.

But Peter has this weakness in him, and I think that the reality that Peter has this weakness,

Satan knows Peter has this weakness, and I think as we experience

Christian life, and we stand true, or we stumble, and everything else, Satan is always looking for what's the way

I can get at it, what's the way I get it. This is one of Peter's weaknesses, and he's gonna call him, how did this hypocrisy change

Peter's ministry? Well, I think

Peter got to the point that he had to speak the truth, okay? I think

Paul really laid it on him very heavily. What he was doing was wrong, and it opened up Peter's eyes.

It was not just the Jewish people that he was to talk to, but there were the Gentiles involved in this also.

God spoke to Paul very direct about that, and confronted Peter because he wasn't doing the right thing.

Peter was for himself. When you're spreading the word out, whether you're evangelizing, we were talking about Antoinette, and she's an apologist.

God gives her the ability to say words that need to be said in truth, and the courage to say.

Whatever it is that you're doing, are you doing it because you see a lost world, or are you cowering back?

Are you not doing it? Are you conforming because of your perceiving the power of the establishment?

Because you don't wanna be on the outs. You want to be on the in crowd. So Peter is being called out specifically for the hypocrisy of what he had done.

He says, you know what, you had time where you were enjoying fellowship with us.

You were eating with the Gentiles, but when the Jews came, it was time for you to get out of Dodge, and that's a hypocrisy, yeah.

Yeah, you know, we're looking at Paul, that he is focused here on being astonished at, and he says in chapter one, as you well know, that you were so quickly deserted him who called you, disgraced

Christ, turning to a different gospel. And so Paul's whole confrontation there is extremely important, since he's going to a church in Galatia to confront that maternity.

And he said, if myself or an angel from heaven, one of us, preaches to a different gospel, let it be from each of them who are accursed.

So this whole presentation, so when he's confronting Peter, it would seem like he would come across strong, because Peter was so well known as such a leader in the

Jewish community, and obviously in the book of Acts, was the first one that were used to bring the gospel to thousands.

Sure, the power of this particular section here is I don't see any evidence that Peter preached or proclaimed a different gospel.

But his actions were not, right? Exactly. But his actions didn't validate what his words said, yeah.

Some of the things I saw that were fascinating is that Peter, it was James, Cephas, and John, and Peter, I believe there were three disciples that were on the

Mount of Transfiguration, and they gave Paul the right -hand fellowship, and then he said, you know, not to eat.

Meat, all the animals. Right, and Paul said, oh, okay, I'm with that. And I almost see

Paul like saying, look, man, you know, I have to, Paul, he had to go right to his face and say, look, man, you know, you're withdrawing?

Like, what are you doing? I came, I'm a Pharisee, Peter was a fisherman. He was a Pharisee, this guy knew, like, the whole concept of religious adherence, and he was, so when he saw them doing that, he came to him and basically, like, you know, was saying, yeah, what are you doing, man?

Like, you know, call him out for his hypocrisy, but I don't, I think, too, that he uses this story to drive home the liberty and grace that he wants us to receive from the gospel, not so much to say, you know what?

You're doing it wrong, and you're doing it wrong, and you're doing it, no, that when we see things that we embody the gospel in ourselves so that we can freely share with one another and provide grace to one another to grow versus, you know, just admonishment, because that's what the law does.

If we go back to the law, then, you know, it's about do's and don'ts, and just these kind of, like, you can teach me these presuppositions and say,

I'm gonna do this now, but why? Because I'm safe, or to kind of hold on to something that I have that I don't want to lose, and in some ways, it's so precious to us that we don't want to lose it anyway, so.

So you go back to the classic story, how does a bank teller learn to identify a counterfeit by feeling true bills to the point where they are immediately aware of a deviation, and so giving truth and giving the true gospel, the story of grace and everything else so that you're equipped to walk by it, absolutely.

In this section, you cannot get away from the fact that there is a exhortation against an action, and there is times where believers need in love to speak in an exhortation.

Yeah. The differences between the initial contact between Peter and the

Lord and Paul and the Lord, I'm sure they're equally, they were equally as exciting, but Paul's experience was both physical and deeply spiritual, they knocked him out of his horse, and I think he, if that was a lie, then if he was not being taught by the presence of Christ at that point or beyond, then that was something he'd have trouble denying, but it is true, and I think it gave him the courage as well to go to the fisherman and straighten him out.

God has created each one of us according to his sovereign will. Each of us has strength gifts.

Each of us are still with the flesh, but this is still God's sovereign will.

For Paul, there is a calling to go into the world and to preach and understanding that he is called to the

Gentiles, Peter is called to the Jews. That does not get Peter off the accountability to live his life in a way that validates his message of salvation by grace and grace alone.

What he's bringing out here, he's saying, you have done something,

Peter, and what you did, specifically, you were eating with the Gentiles until the

Jews came, and then you cowered away, fearing the circumcision party, is what it says.

And then verse 13 says, this is not an impactless problem that you have.

He says, and the rest of the Jews acted hypocritically along with him, so that even

Barnabas was led astray by the hypocrisy. Actions have impact, and in this particular case, not letting your life demonstrate what you say is true.

Been a lot of discussion in the last period of time about Alistair Begg, and how he apparently, and I say this very carefully because I only know things second or third hand, so I don't know anything firsthand.

From what I've been told, he counseled this woman to go ahead and attend a grandson's transsexual wedding.

I think that's the account, and so now the debate continues, and one of the things that falls into there is, well, where's your life been with this person all along?

Are you standing in truth? Are you willing to speak truth into this person's life all along?

Or is all of a sudden, there's a wedding, and now it's time for me to make a decision? Paul is making a point to Peter that you proclaim truth, in fact, we went down to you, and we were with you, and you said, yes, go and preach to the

Jews, just donate meat offered to idols, and give money to the poor, and he was happy, and they went there.

But now Peter comes up to be with Paul, and he has this opportunity to enjoy the fellowship with these

Gentile believers until the Jews see them, and what he's telling them is, dude, you're hurting the

Jewish believers. What you're doing is, it says, the rest of the

Jews acted hypo, huh? Hurting Gentile believers, yeah. The rest of the

Jews acted hypocritically along with him. Yeah. He's hurting the Jewish believers.

Oh, yeah, because they're falling in with him. They're falling in behind him, because they're thinking, well, maybe, yeah,

Stan. During this time that Peter's being confronted, how long of a period of time was this going on with Peter, with the

Jewish people, the Judaizers? Okay, and then Paul sees it. How long did this, you know, did

God allow Paul to go in a direction that he was going? It doesn't seem like it was a day or two.

It looks like it was weeks, maybe months. I don't know that we can parse that out.

What do you think, Jeff? I don't think there's a time marker on there. I don't know. It is clearly a pattern, it's a behavior that he sees.

Is a behavior a single event or a pattern of behavior? You can't say pattern, because it doesn't say that, but it is an event that it came to Paul's intention that he needed to address.

He was also hurting his testimony. And that's part of this message here, is that the, you can maybe believe, you know what,

I sinned before the Lord, I'm gonna confess it, I'm gonna repent it, and everything else. But there are ramifications that could hurt the weaker brother.

It's like throwing a fence. You break a pillow and you never get out of the fence.

And that's what he did. He hit the

Jews by showing that separation that wasn't correct when he was with the

Gentiles. And like we're saying here, some followed him, but how many more feathers went?

Yeah. That's a personal experience. Do you guys have pillow fights?

No, never, don't answer that. You know, you look at Peter from the Old Testament.

That's the only thing he knew at that point, was the Old Testament. How God really accepted these were his people, the

Jewish people. And that's how Peter grew up, knowing that. Okay, this was God's people.

So he went to the Jewish people and he was just talking to them and owning them until now

Paul comes along and Paul confronts him. So Peter's had some examples, some experiences with God.

I'm thinking of the, what was it, the blanket with? Yeah, the sheep.

The sheep and goat. So he knows that God is establishing a new order of things.

He was there on the Sermon of the Mount. He heard him speak. It's not just the outward action, it's the heart.

There are a lot of things Peter should have been aware with, but he does have a weakness. Now Peter should have been the one whose actions, the external actions and everything else would validate.

He would be encouraging his Jewish followers to understand the greater calling.

You brought it up. It's all the way back in Exodus, Genesis 12. Through you all nations will be blessed.

But what he ends up doing, the lesson that he gives is that he subliminally, or perhaps just by his actions, you know what, there's a time for the faith and there's a time for the flesh.

Because he did that. There's a time for the faith and then there's a time for the flesh. I'm afraid of the concern of what my

Jewish fellow people are gonna say, and they cannot be so. So the influence that he's had is he's actually joined others to join in with the hypocrisy, even

Barnabas. Give me 14. Yeah. So, and then they were followers of the way.

So, you know, Paul said he left all this teaching behind.

But I don't see the Old Testament as being not online with our faith.

Amen to that. I think that the sword, it's like a scalpel. Going into the

Old Testament, you need like a sharp blade to separate and dig deep into those truths.

The real truth is there. I mean, the gospel really is in the Old Testament. Greater than.

And the New Testament is more doctrinal because it lays out procedures for behavior and things that we can do.

I just thought, I was really amazed at reading this, that just like getting stumped down, just like verses, just words, just like to his face.

I mean, you experienced that. Yeah. And you know what that means that goes to somebody. Give me verse 14.

14, 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? It's a tough sentence to parse through.

What he's saying is, all right, dude, you call yourself a Jew, but you live like a, what does it mean to live like a

Gentile? I'm not talking about Gentile believer. What does it mean to live like a Gentile? I'm sorry?

Apart from God. Yes, it definitely means apart from God. How did

Gentiles experience religion? Many gods.

Many gods. Many gods. Sacrifices, appeasing God, appeasing, finding ways to earn your right in front of God, earning your way,

Gentiles, earning your way. And you, a Jew, who should know better, what does the

Lord want? Deuteronomy 6 .5, he wants your heart. But you, a

Jew, who should have had this relationship, Yahweh, this special, you,

Peter, are trying to earn your way because you're trying to follow the ceremonial situations that the

Jewish establishment wants you to have. And we can certainly relate to that today because we have religious around to teach you you have to do certain things because I have been, year across,

I was raised 24 years like that. So I always thought that. So it'd be like me, leaving my brothers and sisters here, who truly are my brothers and sisters, and going to sit with people who are, quote unquote, religious.

Same principle. So let's even take that further deep. You've been to churches,

I'm sure, where, man, if you're not speaking in tongues, you just ain't complete.

Or you go into a church that says, you believe in free will, free destination?

Dude, the man doesn't have, you get into these arguments over minutiae.

And so now you either are conforming to the argument or you are making your heart lined up with the gospel message of Christ.

Peter was actually doing, earning my right, religion, is what he was doing by what he did there.

The actions, truths, Peter denied accepting

God solely on the basis of Jesus' atoning sacrifice.

He denied solo Christo. John, you know what

I love about this too is that you almost see the macro and the micro aspects of salvation working out.

And it goes to your cultural point too. The macro is the Jewish religion, this was the religion, and here it is, this circumcision taking place and going to the

Gentiles, as we do individually. I mean, within ourselves, it's almost like a war between a Gentile and a

Jew or a Gentile and a wolf, right? But he, it just, the macro, and then it comes to the cultural thing, because I always said this stuff.

We talked about the woke last week. You were heavy on the woke stuff. I always said, who are the apostates?

The people who left McLean and the people who stayed? There's David Glass Church.

Who were the apostates? The ones who got up and left were the ones who stayed and said they were wrong and they were right.

We deal with this culturally, because this is in our churches now, and in our life, not just our churches.

You've got sisters and aunts and all this stuff we're dealing with. I see that the embodiment of the gospel is central here, because Paul was saying, hey, man, you're a

Jew. You're like, we know where we came from. What are you doing? We're followers of the way here.

And he was preserving the purity of the gospel there. And what should have been central to how

Peter perceived when he's at that dinner is sola Christo, and he lost that, so that when it became time to be confronted with the decision, do

I continue to eat with the Gentiles, who, by the way, have bowed the knee, or do

I accept the cultural pressure of the Jews and stop associating with them?

That's a worse solution to meeting the cultural demands. And any time you compromise to the cultural demands, you lose sola

Christo. I mean, if we go all the way back into Deuteronomy 6, verses four to six, love the

Lord with all your heart. Then when Jesus was challenged, what's the first greatest commandment? Love the

Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, and all your mind. Second, like it. Love your neighbor as yourself.

Jeremiah 17 .10 is going to teach us that God tests the heart.

He's not got a checklist of the actions. He's testing your heart, so much so that in Isaiah, he says, even when you pray,

I won't listen, not because prayer's a bad thing, but because the way that you're praying is empty and meaningless.

Second, 1 Samuel 16 .7 reminds us, point blank, God sees the heart.

The opportunity to stand true, God surrendered on the altar of hypocrisy.

In Matthew 23, Jesus goes after the Pharisees and calls them hypocrites because you do this, hypocrites because you demand that they do that, and it's all just so empty and meaningless.

Give me 15, please. We ourselves are Jews by birth and not Gentile sinners.

That's it. Did you notice a subtle change there?

From talking to Peter directly to addressing we.

So you gotta ask yourself, who is we? Is we just Peter and Paul?

Is we whatever? And I firmly believe because the paragraph is here, even though it's not in the original

Greek, there seems to be an expansion of this discussion.

This is a letter written by Peter, I'm sorry, written by Paul to the church at Galatia, to believers, and he talks about them, and he admonishes the church in general to remember its faith.

And then he even speaks of him as seeking the approval of man or of God, and he talks about another gospel.

This is clearly a message that is greater than just Peter and Paul.

I think this is a challenge that says there is a universal risk of hypocrisy, and each one of us are under this perhaps we.

Paul in this warning says we, and I believe it's those Jews who are saved by faith.

We ourselves Jews by birth, not Gentile believers, and he's shifting to them now to get in this letter.

I'm not just writing about Paul, I'm giving you all a teaching that you all need to go to, and it goes on then in the rest of this section, verse 16.

Yet we know that a person is not justified by works of the law, but through faith in Jesus Christ.

So we also have believed in Christ Jesus in order to be justified by faith in Christ and not by works of the law, because by works of the law, no one will be justified.

This is our protection against hypocrisy. Just have this ingrained in your mind, have this always at the forefront.

It's not by works of the law, not by works of the law, not by works of the law.

I'm justified by faith. Have this ingrained in your mind when the culture comes up to you and you are afraid.

You're concerned about not being part of the end crowd, and so you cower away from, or you accept a little bit of what they're doing.

Have this ingrained in your mind that it's by faith. I can't act a certain way and gain

God's salvation. It's at the cross.

It's at the cross. We are in a battle. We are in a spiritual battle.

But, and works or flesh cannot win the battle.

I know from personal experience on the basketball court, when a coach gets really, really nasty at me, and I've told this story a few weeks ago, he was very vocal in arguing the call, that's fine, and then he challenged my integrity, and I wasn't ready for that, and so I fought back.

No, this is, I am saved by grace, and my actions should always be driven by.

So the question is, why would a believer revert to the hypocrisy of works?

Fear. Go ahead with that one. Well, you're looking at the outside forces coming in.

Okay. Or you're not looking for the forces that are coming from above. Okay. So there's a circumstance, and you're afraid of that circumstance, so you're gonna take control and protect yourself from that circumstance.

That's what fear gives you. Yeah. No, it would be pleasing. You do it by works because you're trying to please

God Almighty. You're thinking that if I do this, this, and this, I'm pleasing him because of your works.

So what you're saying there is I'm now in a situation where there are others around, and I can improve on God's working in my life by changing who

I'm gonna appear to be. I'm superior to God in this situation, and because I can do it better than God can do it through me,

I'll be accepted. You are living in a human reality. Yes, we are.

You reacted according to that. All of this stuff.

Sola Christos. These denials of how

I should be walking in accordance with God's word, empowered by his Holy Spirit, filled with his grace,

I'm gonna do it better because I'm afraid. I'm gonna do it better because I'm gonna have more fun.

I'm gonna do it better because I could be rejected. You are basically denying sola.

Yeah. You wanna help God. I wanna help God. Well, we're supposed to do good things, but we can't let those, we need to do them because we're a good person and we wanna help people, but that we have to realize we're not stacking them up.

It's our ticket to heaven. So there are two approaches to good work. One is doing good works because this is what

God wants me to do. Another is doing good works as defined by the culture. Right.

And that's the hypocrisy side of it. Right. Yeah. First Corinthians 7, starting with 18.

He says, was a man already circumcised when he was called? He should not become uncircumcised.

Was a man uncircumcised when he was called? He should not be circumcised. Circumcision is nothing and uncircumcision is nothing.

Keeping God's commands is what counts. Absolutely. Amen to that. I'm gonna give you five verses, which

I think are a great foundation to build on, to remain on as life is going to be there, to have these foundations that who you are and you remain in.

Second Corinthians 5 .17, it's gonna say you're a new creation. Old things are passed away. All things are become new.

What you were is no longer gonna drive you. You're a new creation. Second Corinthians? Second Corinthians 5 .17.

On the backside. It's on the backside. Ephesians 2 .20 is gonna say that we are now built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets and get this

Jesus Christ as the chief cornerstone. And the cornerstone is what's put in place that defines the location of the building, the orientation of the building, and everything in that building is measured off the cornerstone.

Our cornerstone is Jesus. Romans 8 .10 is gonna tell us that Christ in Christ, our spirit is alive.

The spirit is alive in us. We have the fullness of the Holy Spirit. Then in Romans 6 .3

and 4, it's gonna talk about we're baptized in Christ. We walk in newness of life.

Not in here, first Corinthians 10 .13, when temptation comes, he provides the way of escape.

Romans 5, it says we're justified by faith. We have peace in Christ and we have hope in glory.

Doing things to compromise and to be hypocritical, to be accepted because it might be fun. We are justified by faith.

We have peace in Christ and we have hope in glory. I'm gonna close with Matthew 5 .13

and speak on that briefly. Would you give me that, Jeff? Matthew 5 .13. Right off the notes here? That's, it's not written down.

Yes. You know that. I wanna get it right now. You wanna get it right. You are the salt of the earth, but if salt has lost its taste, how shall its saltiness be restored?

It is no longer good for anything except to be thrown out and trampled under people's feet.

I wanna explain this one. This has nothing to do with losing your salvation or becoming forever unusable by God.

That is not what this passage says. You are a believer, you have the Holy Spirit, but you are going to stumble.

If any man says he has not sinned, he deceives himself. That's in 1 John. There are gonna be those times where we do sin, but what this is saying is you are the salt of the earth and if your actions, your hypocrisy in this particular case has become evident, those seeing you are going to look at you differently.

Your message is gonna be confused. You're not gonna validate the message by your life and as long as that is remaining in you, an unsalty salt does not salt anything.

It's no longer good for anything, but I wanna encourage you with this. As a believer, there is not a sin that is, that has, there is not a sin that was omitted from the cross.

The sins that we commit, we're on that cross and our privilege is to acknowledge those, confess those sins and repent from those sins and be restored in him.

That makes you salty again. Don't use this as a, we're done, we're through, we're useless.

That's a message from Satan. When Satan attacks, when we follow and become religious hypocrites, our ministry is then depending on ourselves and not on God.

Our recourse, confess, repent, be restored by the grace and forgiveness of God and get back up on that horse because you still are salt.

Don't be defeated when Satan says you're a hypocrite. We confess and repent.

You wanna close in prayer? Father, thank you for the cornerstone, Christ Jesus, our

Lord, the rock of our salvation. Thank you that we stand on the firm ground of Jesus. And you also say in Colossians 3,

I think it's verse 11, here there is no Greek or Jew, slave or free, barbarian,

Scythian, but Christ is all and in all. And so Lord, our prayer this morning, this afternoon, is that Christ would be all in this church, that Cornerstone Church would delight in Jesus Christ and not be sidetracked and divided into these groups by ethnicity of people of color or white people or any other arbitrary division like the

Jew and Gentile, but we would all just keep our eyes set on Christ and that Christ would be everything to us.

And so we would have unity. We thank you for the example of Peter and how he evidently was called to repent and did.

Lord, I pray for all of us that we would walk in humble repentance before you daily, that we would keep

Christ in the center of everything in this church and in our personal lives. So thank you.

Guard us, Lord, from hypocrisy. Any of us are prone to become hypocritical in ways like Peter did.

So we pray in the name of Jesus that you would protect us from that and help us to confess in turn if ever we do stumble.

So we thank you for your grace and the gospel is of grace. We thank you in Jesus' name. Amen. Amen. Thank you.

Rick, I did not finish, is Rick here? I did not finish in the middle of a sentence. Oh, he's not here.