This transcript was generated by whisper.ai.

Welcome to Day 3 of our look at Galatians chapter 2 together. We're going to
look at verses 11 to 14 together in just a moment. I just remind you as we begin
today, sometimes when we read the Bible, especially the letters of the Bible,
these epistles of Paul, we forget that the people we're reading about are
people.

They had to struggle with themselves and their feelings and their relationships
just like you do, just like I do. These verses that we're going to read today
are one of those times when those struggles that believers have with one another
become very clear and they give us some ideas about how to handle those times
when we have struggles with one another. Let me read for you verses 11 to 14.

Paul writes, "When Peter came to Antioch, I opposed him to his face because he
was clearly in the wrong. Before certain men came from James, he used to eat
with the Gentiles, but when they arrived, he began to draw back and separate
himself from the Gentiles because he was afraid of those who belonged to the
circumcision group. The other Jews joined him in his hypocrisy so that by their
hypocrisy even Barnabas was led astray.

When I saw that they were not acting in line with the truth of the gospel, I
said to Peter in front of them all, 'You are a Jew, yet you live like a Gentile
and not like a Jew. How is it then that you force Gentiles to follow Jewish
customs? '" As I read these verses, can you just imagine this conversation with
Peter and with Paul, the fisherman, now disciple, now leader of the early
church, Peter, and then the former Pharisee, now follower of Jesus, and apostle
to the Gentiles, Paul, two very powerful men?

Imagine this moment in the life of the early church, relationally, and how they
were honest enough to work through it. As I read these verses, they hit me
personally in three very powerful ways. One, they hit me personally in a
reminder of the power of our influence over others.

These verses say some men came from James, remember James, the half-brother of
Jesus, leader of the Jerusalem church. And they said, "Oh, Peter, you shouldn't
be eating with the Gentiles. I know that the Gentiles aren't saved by keeping
the Jewish customs, but you're still a Jew, and so we're not supposed to be
hanging around the unclean Gentiles.

You shouldn't be eating with them even though they're believers. " And Peter
bought into it. And then Barnabas bought into it.

Now this group that came that influenced everybody is called the circumcision
group. Remember that the sign of being Jewish for a man was circumcision. And
the Greeks who were being saved at this time, the non-Jews, had not been
circumcised as babies.

So the argument of the circumcision group was that they must be circumcised in
order to be saved. And Paul is writing, "Of course not. You don't have to keep
the Jewish law to be saved.

" That's what the Jerusalem council was about in Acts chapter 15. But here
they're still struggling with it. Now just to by the way on this, Paul is not
speaking here for or against circumcision as a medical practice or even a
cultural practice.

He's talking about it being a condition of salvation. And he's saying this
circumcision group came and they influenced Peter and they influenced Barnabas.
Barnabas, who had gone out to preach to the Gentiles, all of a sudden won't eat
with the Gentiles.

That is the power of our influence over each other. That's a deep personal
reminder to me that if I'm following Christ, I can help someone else. I can
encourage someone else.

If I'm following my own selfish ways, my own selfish ideas, it's going to hurt
someone else. I can say all I want, "Oh, it's just my decision. I'm the only one
involved.

" It's simply not true. As believers in Christ, we have a powerful influence
over each other. In fact, the second way that these verses hit me was how easy
it is to slide back into our old ways.

Here's Peter, who had taught the early church that the Gentiles were now
accepted. Remember, he was the one who went to the house of a guy by the name of
Cornelius and accepted the Gentiles into the church. Peter was the one who sat
up on the rooftop and had a vision from God that there were certain foods they
couldn't eat before that now they could eat.

And he went and he taught the church this. And everyone accepted it. They
believed it.

And now he's sliding back into his old ways. I call these comfortable practices
of self-reliance. It is so easy to slide back into these comfortable practices
of self-reliance.

The habits that I had that made me feel good about myself, good about my
relationship with God, good about how good I am. And Peter slid right back into
it here. Now, before you get too judgmental against Peter, think of how easily
we fall into these traps.

Peter relied on the ceremonies and the practices that he'd grown up with. And it
was easy for him to go back to those things because he'd grown up with those
things. We can do the same thing.

It's so easy to slide back into feelings of judgment about someone else's sin in
order to make you feel better about your own sin. And when was the last time you
heard about someone else falling, someone else's sin? Maybe a newspaper story,
maybe somebody in a small group, maybe somebody in your church.

And there was something in you that delighted a little in the fact that they had
fallen because it made you feel a little better about yourself. And then maybe
you talked to other people about it. And you never admit this to anyone else.

But it's one of those comfortable practices of self-reliance. Another one that
we easily fall into is this pattern of doing good to make up for the bad. I fall
into a sinful pattern in my life, and because I've sinned, I do something good
the next day to make up for it.

I'm kind to somebody, I'm kind to my wife, I'm loving to somebody that I might
not have been loving to before, and I'm making up for my sin. And I feel better
about myself. Well, you can't make up for your sin.

It's good to be kind to your wife. It's good to be loving to people. But if the
motivator for your kindness, if the motivator for your love is the sin that you
committed yesterday, that's another one of those practices of self-reliance.

You're relying on yourself to make it better. I could go through a list of a
dozen things. We all have our practices, those things that we've done in the
past.

Ways that we go to church, ways that we read the Bible, ways that we treat other
believers. The truth of the matter is, in all of them, I'm relying on myself,
myself, to build a better relationship with God rather than relying on him. The
ways these verses hit me were, one, the power of our influence over each other,
two, how easy it is to slide back into old ways, but three, these verses also
hit me with the need to confront one another in love.

What if Paul hadn't said anything to Peter? What if he just let it go on? But he
did say something.

Now, the truth of the matter is, when you and I have to confront someone, no one
likes it. No one likes it. But we all need it.

We just talked about those comfortable practices of relying on myself. If it's
so easy to slide back into those things, how do I stay out of the trap? Well, I
can't do it by myself.

It's easy to slide in by myself. That's why I have to have people in my life
like Paul, people who have a broader perspective, people who will speak to me
honestly. And then I have to listen to those people, even though I don't want
to.

I've got to listen to those people. And sometimes I may need to do more than
just listen to someone else confronting me. Sometimes I may need to confront
someone else.

And none of us feel good about that, because none of us are perfect. So when I'm
confronting someone else, I realize my own sin, I realize my own faults. But you
don't confront as someone who's perfect.

You confront as someone who's the same. We all have the same struggles. And so
we all need someone to come into our lives from time to time to say, this is not
the right direction.

If you keep heading down that road, if you keep heading down that road, you're
going to lose faith, you're going to lose hope, you're going to lose the
opportunity to love other people. You're not going to lose your salvation once
you have your relationship with Christ established. That is sure.

But you can certainly lose your effectiveness in ministry. You can lose the joy
that you need to have in your life. The need to confront one another in love.

None of us like to do it. But God needs us to do it. I need it in my life, you
need it in your life.

Now remember, when we confront, it is done in love. Now it's important to
realize that the reason that Paul tells this story to the Galatians, why is he
telling them this? Is it because he's prideful that he confronted Peter?

No, not at all. He's telling this story to confront the false teachers. They
were saying that Peter's gospel was better than Paul's because Peter had gotten
his straight from Jesus and Paul had gotten his from Peter.

And so Paul writes and says, "No, I got it straight from Jesus also. We read
about that last week. " And Peter's gospel said, by the way, these false
teachers, that you have to keep the law to be saved.

And Paul says, "No, that's not what Peter's gospel says. Peter and I agreed that
it didn't say that. " Paul says that he got his gospel by revelation as well as
Peter did.

And he proved that he didn't get it from Peter. And then he says they'd all
agreed on the gospel that didn't include the keeping of the law. And then he
notes that he even confronted them all when they lived in a way that was
opposite to what they'd agreed on.

And the confrontation in this case was not for Paul's sake to make him feel more
powerful or to get better position. It was for the sake of the gospel so that
the good news wouldn't be confused. And I need to draw a distinction.

Sometimes I confront someone else because I've been hurt personally. Well,
that's a different kind of confrontation. It may be just a relational
difficulty.

There's other times when I confront someone because I know they're going to be
hurt if they continue down the same road. Those are two different kinds of
discussions. It's interesting to me that we're more willing to have the first
one oftentimes because we want to solve the hurt that's in our heart.

But it's the second one that's the most important. Someone heading down a wrong
road. It's happened to me many times in life where I've just had this sense,
"Oh, there's something not right here.

" And there's been too many times in my life where I haven't said anything. And
then six months later, a year later, I've discovered, yeah, they were heading
down the wrong road. If only I'd said it in time.

Maybe there's someone you need to confront right now. Maybe there's somebody
who's confronting you right now and you need to listen. Jesus Christ, as we take
a few minutes to talk to you today, we pray that when we're confronted with the
truth, you give us humility, humility to listen and humility to change.

And even though our first reaction might be to push away, help us to set that
aside and instead to listen, to hear. And Jesus, we pray that when you call us
to confront someone else, you'd give us humility. Humility to realize that none
of us are perfect, but that we need to be your voice in that circumstance
because we don't want to see that person that we love, that family that we love
be hurt.

Jesus, help us to confront one another in love. In your name we pray. Amen.