Unite In Truth, Divide Over Error

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Well, good morning, everyone.
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Take out your Bibles and turn to Galatians chapter 2.
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We're going to read verses 1 through 10.
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If you remember, the first chapter of Galatians is a defense of Paul's message and his ministry.
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And the whole book is an argument against those who would try to add to the Gospel.
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Chapter 2 begins with Paul recounting his second visit to Jerusalem and how in that visit, he established unity with the other apostles.
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So let's read together.
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Then after 14 years, I went up again to Jerusalem with Barnabas, taking Titus along with me.
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I went up because of a revelation and set before them, though privately before those who seemed influential, the Gospel that I proclaimed among the Gentiles in order to make sure I was not running or had not run in vain.
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But even Titus who was with me was not forced to be circumcised, though he was 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 we or 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.
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And from those who seemed to be influential, what they were makes no difference to me.
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God shows no partiality.
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Those, I say, who seemed influential added nothing to me.
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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 the apostolic ministry to the circumcised worked also through me for mine to the Gentiles.
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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.
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Only they asked us to remember the poor, the very thing I was eager to do.
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Let's pray.
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Our Father and our God, we come to You in Jesus' name.
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I pray first and foremost, Lord, that You would keep me from error, that You would minister through the words of Your Scriptures and that You would fill me with the Spirit and open the hearts of these men to the truth, that they would hear the truth and the truth would set them free.
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Lord God, and as we look today at the subject of unity in the church and unity in the faith, Lord, we know that when we look out at the world, there is a fractured church.
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And so we would pray, as Jesus prayed that the church would be one.
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And yet, Lord, we know that for the church to be one, we have to mark out the false brothers and avoid them.
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So Lord, may it be that we understand the responsibilities of both unity and division and their roles they play in the church.
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I pray this in Christ's name, amen.
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There is a sense in which the church is very divided.
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In the 15th century, leading into the 16th century, the Catholic church said that if the Reformation takes hold, the church would divide and it would never be able to be brought together again.
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And there is a sense in which that prophetic statement is true.
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After the Reformation, men like Martin Luther and John Calvin and Ulrich Zwingli and the other Protestants who came after them, men like the Anabaptists and men like the Baptists of England would come along and the Presbyterians of Scotland would come along and the Methodists after them, following the teachings of men like Wesley and Whitefield, there has been a divided church.
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And now oftentimes, if someone asks you, what is your faith? To simply say that you're a Christian is not enough.
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You have to give some kind of delineation.
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Well, I'm a Baptist Christian or I'm a Methodist Christian or I am an Episcopalian or Presbyterian Christian.
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So to say that the church is unified is false.
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There is little unity in the body of Christ.
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There is great division.
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And some people believe that we should seek unity at all costs.
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But the problem with that is that if you seek unity at all costs, one of the first things that you end up paying is with the truth.
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You have to get rid of the truth to unify because so many people are steeped in falsehood.
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Paul is dealing in this chapter with the subject of unity, even though most people might not notice that upon the first reading.
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But what is happening in this chapter is Paul is traveling to Jerusalem to set before the apostles the message that he has been preaching.
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And the reason why he's doing that is not to receive their approval because Paul already has the approval of Jesus Christ.
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He's not going to learn from them because he's already learned from Jesus Christ.
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He's not going to put himself under their authority because he's already under the authority of Jesus Christ.
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Remember we talked about this, that Paul's ordination, like my ordination came through the church.
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Pastors today receive their ordination through the church.
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Paul didn't receive an ordination from the church.
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He received an ordination on the road to Damascus by the hand of the Lord Jesus Christ who blinded him and called him to faith and saved him, and it said, and gave him the commission to preach.
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And then when his eyes were opened, he immediately went out and began to preach.
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So that's Paul's ordination.
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Yet he still goes to Jerusalem.
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Why to Jerusalem? Because that is where the pillars were.
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You say, what are the pillars? Well, he tells us in this passage, the pillars were Peter, James, and John, but not the James that we often think about because we normally hear about Peter, James, and John as the three disciples who were closest to Jesus, the ones who were with Jesus on the Mount of Transfiguration.
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But this is a different James.
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That James has already died.
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The original James was beheaded.
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This is Jesus's half-brother, James, the pastor of the church at Jerusalem, the one who would write the book of James.
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It's a different James, but it's still the three pillars were Peter, James, and John.
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They were the apostles, and they were at the church in Jerusalem.
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Paul goes and sets his message before them, not for their approval, not for their instruction, not for their authority, but so that he would ensure the unity of the church.
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So that no one would say, Paul is over here preaching Paul's gospel, and we're over here preaching our gospel.
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Paul wanted to make sure that there was unity in the message.
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So that's what this is all about.
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2,000 years later, there's great division, but I want to tell you something.
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There is still unity among the faithful.
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Even though somebody might carry the label of Presbyterian, and I carry the label of, well, I guess you would call me a Reformed Baptist.
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Even though we carry a different label, we carry the same gospel.
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There are believers in China, and I received last year a statement that the Chinese pastors had written about their faith.
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And I actually preached their statement in our church because it was so solid and so biblical and so accurate.
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And these men live a world away from me.
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They speak a different language than I do.
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They have a different culture and a different heritage, and yet they're preaching the same gospel.
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So while there is disunity by name, and there is disunity because of false teaching, there is still unity among those who preach the gospel.
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Praise God.
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And so that is Paul's concern in this chapter is to show the unity that he had with the pillars, Peter, James, and John.
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So that is our introduction.
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Let's now read, and as we go through, I'm gonna make comments now that I've given you a little overview of it.
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Let's go back and dig into the weeds a little bit.
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It says in chapter two, verse one, it says, then after 14 years, this is 14 years after his conversion, most likely, which would have put this around the time of about 46 or 47 A.D.
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This book is written about 48, and then the Jerusalem council happened about 49 or 50.
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So all of this is happening within a span of four or five years.
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And so this is his second time going to Jerusalem.
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And we actually read about this in Acts.
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If you wanna just for a moment, jump with me to the book of Acts and look at Acts chapter 11 and go to verse 27.
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Acts 11, verse 27, I'll give you a second to get there.
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Says in Acts 11, 27, now in these days, prophets came down from Jerusalem to Antioch, which is where Paul was.
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And one of them named Agabus stood up and foretold by the Spirit that there would be a great famine over all the world.
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This took place in the days of Claudius.
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So the disciples determined everyone, according to his ability, to send relief to the brothers living in Judea.
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That's where Jerusalem was.
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And they did so sending it to the elders by the hand of Barnabas and Saul.
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So the situation is this.
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There is a famine in the land.
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Now, when it says throughout the whole world, it's possible that it's throughout the whole world, but you have to understand in biblical language, generally that meant the world of the recognized world.
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So it didn't usually include like the Far East.
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A lot of that part of the world was really unknown to them and they didn't know much about them.
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So this isn't a whole worldwide famine.
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But when we talk about the world in general, the world began and ended with Jerusalem.
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Everything starts and stops with Jerusalem.
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So primarily the place it's being affected is Judea and the center of that is Jerusalem.
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So that's the focus.
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And this is why Paul in Antioch is saying, okay, we're gonna gather up supplies and we're gonna go to Jerusalem and we're gonna take the supplies to Jerusalem because they're the ones who are gonna be in the most need.
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They're gonna be the ones who are going hungry and we're gonna go supply food to the church.
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This again is Paul's second trip to Jerusalem.
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This is the situation that I believe Paul's talking about in Galatians chapter two.
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This is this trip because of the timing and also because it also says Barnabas was with him.
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And we're gonna see in a minute in Galatians, Barnabas was with him.
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And so there's a lot of things that just fit together to make me think this is the time that this trip took place.
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So go back to Galatians two, hopefully you're still holding your spot there.
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He says, then after four years, 14 years, I went up again to Jerusalem.
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Notice he says again, because he's already mentioned, he's been there once.
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He said that in chapter one, verse 18.
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He said, I went up again to Jerusalem with Barnabas, taking Titus along with me.
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Now, who are Barnabas and Titus? Barnabas is one of Paul's closest friends in the ministry and he is a Jewish believer, meaning he was a Jew from birth.
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His name is actually not Barnabas.
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His name Barnabas is a nickname.
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And the word Barnabas means a son of encouragement.
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That's what the first, if you ever hear Bar, anything like Bar-Jonah or Bar-Abbas or any of those things, that word, that B-A-R prefix means son of Simon Bar-Jonah.
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You know, it means Simon, son of Jonah.
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So Barnabas means son of encouragement or in layman's terms, he is an encouraging man.
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So that was his nickname.
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And how did he get this nickname? Well, if you go back to the book of Acts, we're not going to do it now just because of time, but if you find the places where you see Barnabas being used of God, it's almost always in the encouraging role.
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The first time we see him, he sold a plot of land and gave the money to the church because the church had a need.
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Right after that, a couple sold a piece of land and they died.
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Remember them? Ananias and Sapphira.
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I have believed this for a long time.
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I believe the whole reason Ananias sold their land and gave the money to the church is because they saw Barnabas do it.
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And they saw this guy do it and he got appreciated for it.
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They wanted to be appreciated.
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You ever seen somebody do that? Yeah, go ahead, man.
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Yeah, that's a different guy.
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There's a lot of common names.
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You know, John is several people, James.
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No, no, you're right, you're right.
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So you got Barnabas.
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The very first thing we see of him, this is a guy who's willing to sell what he has to give the money to the church.
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The next time we see him is when the Apostle Paul is being pretty much hands off by the church.
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This is in Acts chapter 9.
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The church doesn't want anything to do with him because this guy just got done persecuting the church.
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He's just gotten saved.
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So what does Barnabas do? The Bible says he goes and welcomes Paul.
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And he encourages other people to welcome Paul.
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So again, he's an encourager.
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That's what he does.
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That's who he is.
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Later, him and Paul divide.
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You remember what they divided over? Remember, Paul did not want to take Mark.
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But Barnabas said, no, we need to take him.
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Why? Because he's willing to give him another chance.
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Mark had already defected on the first missionary journey.
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Paul says, I'm not taking this guy again.
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He quit last time.
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He ain't got the gumption.
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He ain't got the guts.
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He ain't got what it takes to be a missionary, live in a missionary life.
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And Barnabas said, no, he just needs another chance.
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So Barnabas encourages.
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And then later in Paul's life, we see him say that Mark was actually valuable to him later because of that encouraging of Barnabas.
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So again, one of the things we can learn just as a side application of all this is Barnabas is a man of encouragement.
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And because of him, he changed other men's lives.
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That is a good example for us to be a person who encourages others.
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You can change somebody's life.
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He changed Mark's life.
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He changed Paul's life.
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He changed the life of the church, giving them what they needed.
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He was an encouraging man.
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The next name we see here is Titus.
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Now we know less about Titus, even though his name should be pretty well known to us because his name is a book of the Bible.
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First and second Timothy is followed by the book of Titus.
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And this is the same person.
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Titus is different than Barnabas.
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Not in that Titus wasn't an encouraging man.
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I imagine he was.
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But Titus is different than Barnabas because Titus was not a Jew.
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He had a Greek name.
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He was a Greek man.
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And he was not circumcised.
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He was not a Jew.
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He was a Gentile.
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So you say, why does that matter? Because Paul is about to go to the disciples and he's about to lay his Gospel before him.
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And one of the aspects of Paul's Gospel is very clear that Jew and Greek are equal in Christ.
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So I'm going to bring a Jewish man who you all love because he's an encourager and you've known him forever.
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And he's been a part of the church and he was in Jerusalem and he's been in Antioch and he's been with me.
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You know, you love Barnabas.
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He's the son of encouragement.
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And then I'm going to bring a guy who hasn't even been circumcised.
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And I'm going to bring them to you as equals in Christ.
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I'm going to bring them to you to show you that circumcision does not a Christian make.
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But faith in Christ alone is what unifies.
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So that's why he brings the two with him.
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Verse 2, he says, I went up because of a revelation.
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Now very quickly, let me just mention, remember we read in Acts 11, Agabus gave a revelation about the need for food.
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I believe that's what Paul's talking about here.
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I came here because God made it known that we needed to bring you food.
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There's a revelation.
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And set 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.
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Now let me say this.
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One, about what he says about them being influential.
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He sets his Gospel down privately before Peter, James, and John.
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So imagine I'm a preacher.
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I come here to preach at set free.
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And I say, okay, I'm going to sit down with the two marks.
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I say the two marks, Mark Sauter and Mark T.
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How do you say your last name? Terrell.
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So I sit down before the two marks and I say, okay, I'm going to tell you what my Gospel is.
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And I'm not really seeking your approval, but I want to make sure we agree.
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I'm not really looking for you to endorse my ministry, but I do want to make sure we're unified in the ministry of the Gospel.
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The very first time I ever met Mark outside of him visiting my church was we went to eat at Pollo Tropical, a little restaurant, little chicken joint up in River City.
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And it was an interesting meeting because our wives met first.
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They had become friends.
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And so we need to get our husbands together.
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And so we met at Pollo Tropical and we sat down.
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And Mark, you know, he's a very serious man.
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Once you get to know him, he's a little bit more fun.
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But when you first meet him, he looks very, very serious.
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And he sat there and I could tell he's wanting to make sure that I'm not crazy.
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And I wanted to make sure he wasn't crazy.
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So we're asking each other questions about the Gospel.
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We're asking each other questions about what we teach.
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We're asking each other questions about how we understand certain Scriptures.
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Because we're seeing if there really is unity there.
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Or if there are areas that we need to grow or areas that we need to divide or discuss.
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And we did that.
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I'm thankful for that because it was only a few weeks later he called me and he said, hey, there's a spot has opened up and we need someone to teach in that spot.
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Would you be interested? I said, absolutely.
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I'd come every day if I could.
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So by God's grace, I started I guess about a year ago coming here to preach.
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But again, it started with making sure there was unity.
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So that's what Paul is doing.
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He's come in and he's preached to them not for their approval necessarily, but to make sure they were unified.
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Do we agree on these? And he says, because I don't want to be running in vain.
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By that, he doesn't mean he doesn't want to be preaching something that he thinks is wrong, but he doesn't want to be running away from what the church is doing.
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He doesn't want to be a man on his own.
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He wants to be running along with the church.
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He doesn't want to be dividing the church.
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He doesn't want to be the lone wolf.
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He wants to be part of the team because the team is the church.
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The church is not meant for lone wolves.
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There's no such thing as a lone wolf Christian.
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The church is called a body.
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And the body in 1 Corinthians 12 is hands and feet and eyes and ears and all the other parts.
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And the hand can't say to the foot, I have no need of you.
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And the eye can't say to the ear, I have no need of you.
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For if the eye was all you had, then where would be the sense of hearing? Right? And that's the idea.
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There's a team.
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Paul wants to make sure the team is united in the truth.
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And so he sets before them his message.
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But then in verse 3, it seems like he almost changes the subject.
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But verse 3 is not changing the subject.
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Verse 3 is the subject.
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Read verse 3 with me.
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He says, "...but even Titus, who was with me, was not forced to be circumcised, though he was a Greek." This is the case in point.
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Paul has gone before the pillar apostles.
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He set his Gospel before them.
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And he has preached to them.
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And then he said, but understand this, this man, Titus, is not like this man Barnabas.
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This man Barnabas, Jew from birth, circumcised, lived a Jewish life before he became a Christian.
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We all know Barnabas.
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Titus is not like him.
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Titus is a Gentile.
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And yet, he will not be forced to become a Jew because he is equal with Barnabas in Christ.
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And I imagine, I can't say this for certain, but I feel like this is the point in Paul's message to the pillars, this private meeting.
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I think this is the point where he's setting before them the challenge.
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Are you going to accept this man or not? Because this is where we will divide.
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You will either accept him as a full Christian, or we will not be united in this mission.
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So he's laying before them a challenge.
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Now, I don't know if it was a hard challenge or a soft challenge.
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I don't know if it was an in-your-face or a what-do-you-think-of-this situation, but Titus is the case in point.
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He is the picture of the issue.
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Are you willing to unify with this man or not? Thankfully, we'll see in a few moments, they were.
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But before that, Paul mentions something else.
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Look at verse 4.
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He mentions those who wouldn't accept Titus.
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He says, "...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." Who are these people Paul is talking about? We've already addressed this.
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We've talked about this in chapter 1.
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These are the Judaizers.
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But Paul uses a word here for them that I think you all should become familiar with.
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In fact, my next sermon may just preach on this word.
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It's a specific word that Paul uses here, pseudo-adelphos.
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In that Greek word, pseudo-adelphos, you're probably familiar with the word, the prefix pseudo means false.
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Like if you have somebody who writes a book under a false name, they call it a pseudonym or a false name.
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If you hear somebody talking about something that's science, but it's not really scientific, they call it pseudoscience.
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Fake science, right? So you've heard this phrase pseudo.
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Well, adelphos means brothers.
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It's where the root of Philadelphia comes from.
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Brotherly love, right? It's Philadelphia.
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Well, adelphos means brother.
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So pseudo means fake or false.
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Adelphos means brother, so put them together means a false brother.
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Like I said, next week I'm probably going to talk about false conversion, because that's what creates a false brother is false conversion.
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But for now, I just want to make mention of what Paul says about them in this text.
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Notice what he says.
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He says these false brothers secretly brought in who slipped in to spy out our freedom.
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And the picture he's painting there is if you imagine a castle that has fortified walls and is protected by archers at the corners, and it's got a large drawbridge and a moat around it.
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It's very well protected.
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But then you have somebody who tunnels in from underneath.
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In fact, one of the translations actually translates it, they wormed their way in.
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They snuck in under the cover of darkness.
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Now how does someone sneak in to the church? That's right.
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They put on the fake facade of being a brother.
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Sometimes people say I'm too harsh, because I will say so-and-so is a false teacher.
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And they say, well, you shouldn't say that, Pastor.
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That's awful mean.
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And I understand.
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We live in a society and in a day where everyone's feelings are only a millimeter thick and can be easily broken.
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And everyone's feelings are so easy to have that chip sitting right on the edge of the shoulder just waiting to get knocked off.
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And so when I stand up and I say this person is a false teacher, oh, for shame, Pastor! You shouldn't say you're being judgmental.
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Well, if a man's preaching a false Gospel, I can say he's a false teacher.
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Because the only thing he's supposed to be teaching is the Gospel, and if he's getting it wrong, he is a false teacher.
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But I'll go even further than that.
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Paul doesn't say these were false teachers.
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He says they were false brothers.
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Not only should they not be teaching, but they're not even saved.
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They have snuck into the church and they're just as lost as they were before they came to the church.
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You say, why would lost people care anything about coming into the church? Well, the answer to that is relatively simple.
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The Bible tells us in 2 Corinthians that the devil masquerades as an angel of light.
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Yes, sir? Well, let's read it.
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We'll look at it.
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2 Corinthians 11, verses 12-15.
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We'll just go over it real quick and look at it.
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Because it's actually a whole passage.
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It's very good to read.
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2 Corinthians 11, verses 12-15.
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This again is Paul writing.
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He says, And what I do I will continue to do in order to undermine the claim of those who would like to claim that in their boasted mission they work on the same terms as we do.
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For such men are false apostles.
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Right there.
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They're false apostles.
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Deceitful workmen disguising themselves as apostles of Christ.
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And no wonder! For even Satan disguises himself as an angel of light.
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So it is no surprise if his servants also disguise themselves as servants of righteousness.
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Their end will correspond with their deeds.
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That is a poetic way of saying their end will be destruction because they've sought to destroy the church.
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So you ask the question, is there a false brethren in the church? Absolutely.
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And sometimes they're in the pulpit.
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Sometimes they're in the deacon board or however you do deacons, deacon group.
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Sometimes they're among the elders.
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Sometimes they're among the women.
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Sometimes they're in the worship group.
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Satan peppers these false brothers into the church to sow division in the church.
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And that's what we're seeing here in Galatians.
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Paul says these people have come in.
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They have snuck in.
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They've wormed their way in to spy out our freedom that we have in Christ Jesus so that they might bring us into slavery.
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That's heavy language.
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Because what Paul is saying is this, these people have come in with this Judaizing heresy and what they want to do is they want to tie that burden around our neck and we would be like slaves dragging this heavy burden around our neck.
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When I was a kid, my dad had a pit bull.
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And that pit bull was the meanest dog that you've ever seen.
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And my dad tried to keep him chained up and he seemed every which way he could get out.
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So dad tied a cinder block to a 15 foot length of chain thinking that ought to hold him.
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Well, dad went to work and he came home one day and that dog had run around the house all day and created a ditch by dragging that cinder block all around just to show how ornery he was and how he wasn't going to be tied down.
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That was my dad's attempt at putting a burden on that dog so that he couldn't have his own way.
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Well, that's a small picture of what these men are trying to do.
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These false teachers are chaining the religion of the Jewish ceremonial law around the necks of the Gentile Christians.
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Something that God had never intended to happen.
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And basically make them slaves to a covenant that they were not a part of.
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So, Paul says to them, v.
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5, we did not yield in submission even for a moment.
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I think that King James says for an hour.
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And I think the actual translation is hour, but it's Paul's way.
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In modern vernacular, we'd say we didn't listen to them even for a second.
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We didn't give them an inch.
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Some people you give an inch, they want a mile.
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You give them a rope, they think they're a cowboy.
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You don't give them nothing.
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Right? We didn't give them anything.
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Not even for a moment because we're more concerned about the truth than we are about unity.
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I told the church that years ago when I first became the pastor.
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I said I will always strive for unity here because my goal is to have a unified body, but we will never sacrifice unity for the truth.
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We will never sacrifice unity for truth.
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Or rather, I'm saying it backwards, we will never sacrifice truth for unity.
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If you can't...
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Yeah, I was backwards.
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Forgive me, brother.
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And I've tried to hold that firm.
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When there have been people who have tried to come against the truth, my response is you would be better elsewhere.
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Submit to the truth or find a new home.
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And you say that's awful harsh.
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I had a man sit in my living room on my couch three feet away from me.
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And he was upset about the church.
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And I was talking to him and pointing him to the Scriptures.
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And he said, well, pastor, I don't believe the whole Bible is true.
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To which I responded, you are in the wrong church.
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I said if you believe that the Bible is not true, I can throw a stick and hit 14 churches that will agree with you.
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Go there.
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But if you stay here, know this, we believe the Bible is true.
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And that will be the basis for all unity and division.
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We will stand on the truth of the Word or you will leave.
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That's it.
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We don't have a third option.
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There is no conscientious objector.
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We'll stand on the truth or we'll divide over the truth.
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But we will not stand unified in error.
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Alright, so the next part, verses 6-10, we see Paul's attempt to create unity is blessed by God and unity is established.
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So let's read through and I'll make a few comments and then I'm going to draw to a close.
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We're getting close to the end.
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Verse 6, And from those who seem to be influential, what they were makes no difference to me.
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God shows no partiality.
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Those, I say, who seemed influential added nothing to me.
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Now let me just stop right there.
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It seems like Paul's being really ugly here.
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They don't mean nothing to me.
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I'm my own man.
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That's not the attitude.
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What he's saying is he came and he gave his message to Peter, James, and John to make sure there was unity there, but just so that everybody understands, he's not seeking their approval because he has the approval of Christ.
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He wants to be unified with them.
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But the very fact that they were pillars didn't add to his Gospel at all because he received his message from Christ, not from them.
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He wants unity, but again, not at the sake of truth.
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So just so everybody understands, they added nothing to me.
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Meaning, they didn't make me an apostle.
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They didn't make me a preacher.
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They didn't give me the Gospel.
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I preached to them to ensure that we were unified, but they didn't add to what I know because I got it from Christ.
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That's not Paul being arrogant.
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That's Paul pointing out the reality of his commission being directly from Christ.
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Now, he goes on.
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He says, On the contrary, verse 7, 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.
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And when James and Cephas and John, Cephas there being Peter, 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.
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So here's the unity.
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When they saw that I had the Holy Spirit, when they saw that I was preaching the truth, they stood up and they extended their right hand, which again, even to this day, is a greeting of fellowship.
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It's a greeting of love.
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And they extended the hand and they said, We agree that you're a man of God.
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We agree that our message is essentially the same, that our message is the same Holy Spirit, the same Jesus Christ, and the same salvation by grace alone through faith alone.
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They extended the hand of fellowship and by joining hands, they joined forces.
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They demonstrated the unity that they had in the Gospel.
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And at that moment, all of the issues of the Judaizers were now no longer, We the Judaizers come in the name of Peter.
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We the Judaizers come in the name of James.
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No, no more.
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They have agreed with Paul.
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And the difference is going to be this.
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They were going to bring the Gospel to the Jews.
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Paul was going to bring the Gospel to the Gentiles.
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Why? Because that was the commission that God had given to Paul.
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He would be the apostle that reached the Gentiles.
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And you should be glad that he did.
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How many of you in here are Jewish by birth? Not anyone? Okay.
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So aren't you glad that God assigned an apostle to the Gentiles? Because that's why you got the Gospel.
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Because God was willing to give an apostle to bring the Gospel to us.
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That it would not be founded only among the Jewish people, but that it would be within all tribes, nations, and tongues.
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Now the last thing he says, and this is where we'll finish.
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The last thing he says is something that seems like it's out of place, but I'm going to explain why it's not.
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Verse 10, Only they asked us to remember the poor, the very thing I was eager to do.
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I want to remind you, why is Paul there to begin with? Acts 11, there was a famine.
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Paul came to Jerusalem to bring food for the famine.
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They are now saying, okay, we agree that you're a man from God.
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We agree that you are a sent one, an apostle, and your apostleship is on equal terms with Peter's.
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Notice they said that.
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Peter has an apostleship.
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You have an apostleship.
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They're equal.
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You're going to go to the Gentiles.
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We're going to go to the Jews.
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But don't forget the poor.
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You say, well, why does that matter? Because the poor that they're referring to most likely are the Jews.
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Even though you're going to be going and taking the Gospel to the Gentiles, don't forget that there are needs among the church, and don't forget that the ministry is going to go to the whole church, and that there are those who have real needs, Jew and Gentile alike.
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Don't forget the Jews even though you're going to the Gentiles.
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And what does Paul say? That was the very thing I was eager to do.
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That's why I'm here.
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I came here because I love the Jews.
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I came here because I knew you needed food and you needed help.
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And I brought you the food and I brought you the help because I knew it was needed.
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It's the very thing I was eager to do.
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I'm not going to stop doing that.
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But now that I know there's unity, I'm going to be a man on fire for the Gospel of Jesus Christ even more than I was before, knowing that now the church is unified in the Gospel, more so than it ever had been up until this point.
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So, again, how do we conclude? We cannot have unity with false teachers.
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We cannot have unity with false brothers.
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But there is a unity among every person who believes in the Lord Jesus Christ and is truly saved.
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The same Spirit who lived in the Apostle Paul, the same Spirit who lived in the Apostle Peter lives inside every one of you who believes on the Lord Jesus Christ.
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And there is unity in the Gospel.
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We may divide over small things, but on the things that matter, God, the Trinity, Jesus, salvation by grace alone, through faith alone in Christ alone, these are the foundations and the things which unify the whole church.
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Let's pray.
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Father, I thank You for this time of study.
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I pray that it has been fruitful and will continue to be fruitful in the hearts and minds of these men.
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May You bring unity in this group as men are brought to Christ, such that they would see that they are one in the Spirit, they are one in the Lord, and that You have brought them together as one in this place to minister to one another and through this ministry to the whole world.
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In Christ's name, amen.