I would invite you, if you have Bibles with you, to open to the letter to the Galatians. We picked up Peter's story last night, and if you weren't here, no problem, let me catch you up briefly. The gospel of Jesus Christ, that is the news of Jesus' life, and then his death, and his resurrection, and his ascension, and the pouring out of God's spirit in Jerusalem, this news is starting to go out. At first, it starts in Jerusalem, and then it pushes out to the region of Judea, and it's beginning to push out even further. And Peter runs into someone who's not ethnically Jewish, someone who knows something about God, but is not part of or identifies with ethnic Israel. and the Holy Spirit's poured out on him and on his household because they turned to Jesus in faith. And this becomes an aha moment for Peter. The Spirit is being poured out on more than just those who ethnically identify as Israel, but rather is going to the full ends of the earth. So the road of God's redemption is moving from two lanes to six to eight and beyond. And that is an amazing thing that we participate in as a church community, as Christians in the 21st century. The road is the same road we continue to travel on. But that road comes with it, hardship, obstacles, construction complications. And this morning, we're gonna pick up Paul's letter to a number of churches in the region of Galatia, where he's recounting his own story with that Redemption Road work opening, as well as his interaction with Peter. We're gonna think about that together. Before I read, I want to make one other note. I will go no longer than 30 minutes, and then I'll stop. So by 10, 15, actually a little bit before, we will have a hard stop. And then I will leave like 15 minutes for interaction. Could be longer if you want it. I prefer to interact as a community. I think for all of you, it's a healthy way to think through the text, and then to actually get to work through your questions, or the things that don't make sense, or the things that I say and you're like, huh? And it's healthier to do that together as a group. And so I'll always create back our time at the end, the back end, so that we can engage. OK? Thank you for those who were here last night. You were a very interactive group, like surprisingly interactive for a retreat. I was impressed. I was like, wow. There are some smart people in this room. There are some people in this room who are willing to raise their hands and ask questions or make observations. And I'm grateful for it. So thanks. Okay, Paul's letter to Galatians, and I'm gonna read chapter two, verses one through 14, and then I'm gonna pray. Then after 14 years, I went up again to Jerusalem with Barnabas, taking Titus along with me. I went up because of a revelation. 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. 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 they might bring us into slavery, to them we did not yield in submission, even for a moment. so that the truth of the gospel might be preserved for you. And from those who seem to be influential, what they were makes no difference to me. God shows no partiality. Those, I say, who seemed influential added nothing to me. On the contrary, when they saw that I had been entrusted with the gospel to the uncircumcised, just as Peter had been entrusted with the gospel to the circumcised, for he who worked through Peter for his apostolic ministry to the circumcised worked also through me for mine to the Gentiles. And when James and Cephas and John, who seemed to be pillars, perceived the grace that was given to me, they gave the right hand of fellowship to Barnabas and me, that we should go to the Gentiles and they to the circumcised. Only they asked us to remember the poor, the very thing I was eager to do. But when Cephas came to Antioch, I opposed him to his face, because he stood condemned. For before certain men came from James, he was eating with the Gentiles. But when they came, he drew back and separated himself, fearing the circumcision party. And the rest of the Jews acted hypocritically along with him, so that even Barnabas was led astray by their hypocrisy. But when I saw that their conduct was not in step with the truth of the gospel, I said to Cephas before them all, if you, though a Jew, live like a Gentile and not like a Jew, how can you force the Gentiles to live like Jews? This is the word of the Lord. Thanks be to God. Let me pray for us. God, I ask that as we see and hear from Peter and Paul and the work that your spirit, God, has accomplished in the founding of the church and in the church's mission to the ends of the earth. God, I pray that as we think through these things here and now in the 21st century, in places like Laurel, and in the broader metro DC area, that we will not only learn about the facts of what happened at old, but we will prayerfully consider how the Spirit is at work to teach and lead us here and now. that the news, Jesus, of your death and resurrection, your ascension, the pouring out of your spirit, that that will continue to go forth, that the good news of Jesus, the gospel, will be proclaimed, not just by word, but indeed. We ask in the name of Jesus, amen. So my first profession was a nurse. I worked as a registered nurse in the Army for a number of years and then in civilian hospitals. And nurses are incredible. If you know a nurse, you should thank them. When someone says, I'm a nurse, you should thank them. Wow, the whole of health care depends on you. And we're grateful. And I know that there are some nurses here, so you can tell them later if you see them. But one of the things that I learned young in my career is that health care is a team effort. And different people on the team represent different specialties. And that means that sometimes you have to communicate with people who don't share your same view of things. And that inevitably leads to conflict. Because there are strong personalities in health care, including nurses. And so, you know, what you see on television is not always what happens at the side of a hospital bed or what happens in grand rounds or when a team is trying to figure out how to best care for an individual, somebody who's sick, someone whose life is on the line. This is where people who maybe by nature don't always speak up have to find their voice. If they see something, as the Metro announcement often says, to say something, right? See something, say something, all right. So this is what health care is like. And so what it means is the longer you go in your career and the more that you see and the more that you grow with your ability to use your voice, you have to be comfortable with some level of conflict. Because people are going to disagree. And when strong personalities with important things on the line don't see eye to eye, that's like the definition of conflict. That in and of itself isn't necessarily bad because when someone has a perspective on something that's really important and life and death is on the line, then you could just run away and avoid conflict, but that may not be in that patient's best interest. And so here in the story in Galatians, what's happening is Peter has heard the news that the gospel is now going out to the Gentiles, people who are not ethnically Jewish. The Spirit's being poured out on them, and they're being invited in by faith, and they're being baptized without all of the other typical or traditional markers of Judaism. And as this is happening, they're trying to figure out how do we live in this new reality. And so this morning we're going to take up how when Paul and Peter with different specialties, so to speak, come together in the city of Antioch with something as important as the gospel on the line, important matters, and they had different views of what was happening, this led to conflict. And we're gonna see how that unfolds, why it unfolds, and where to go with it. We're gonna do that in two points. First, the change unfolds, and then second, the conflict arrives. So, in the first 10 verses or so, Paul is effectively recounting a trip that he took to Jerusalem. where after in the book of Acts in chapter nine, so if you want to go read about it later, you can read about Paul's conversion. But he's recounting that after some season, after his conversion, he went to Jerusalem and he met with the leaders there, so kind of the epicenter at the time of the Christian faith. And he wanted to walk through, hey, this is what I'm preaching. It's as if Paul submitted himself, so to speak, in the Presbyterian world to a credentials exam with the Credentialing Committee. I mean, it wasn't exactly like that, but it was kind of like a gathering together to say, hey, here's what I have been announcing and declaring to the people who God has called me to. And so he recounts, he says in verse two that effectively he was steered there by God's hand of providence. God directed him and said, this is what I want you to go do. He went and showed up and began to engage with the leaders there. So this was after some period. And the center of what he's talking about is these expanded boundaries of the faith. In the first 10 verses here in Galatians 2, you get the sense, and Paul talks about it this way, that his mission and his focus with who he was taking the gospel to was the Gentiles. And there were others like Peter or leaders in Jerusalem who they viewed their primary call, their mission to take the gospel, the news of what Jesus had accomplished in his life, death and resurrection and how God's promises, his covenantal promises to Abraham and Isaac and Jacob had been fulfilled and made known through Jesus. They were taking that to the Jews. And so you see this, In verse seven, and following, Paul writes in recounting this trip, he says, 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, and then he goes on, they effectively shared with him the hand of fellowship. They recognized like, yes, this is God at work with the same gospel and two different missions. And so as this change unfolds, where this good news is going out in different directions and on different lanes, and here we see that happening both ethnically and geographically, so this good news is expanding beyond the boundary markers of ethnic Israel, so it's involving Gentiles, which is pretty much everybody else. We saw Roman Centurion yesterday, others are coming in. And it's also moving out geographically to different places. So not just in one particular city, but all over. And yet in that change and as it unfolds, it's the same gospel message. And that's what the church takes on as part of our mission here and now. As Paul recounts this, it's not altogether different from what you're doing. Our work as Christians involves the same changeless, unchanging truth that Jesus has been raised from the dead and that that is our hope, right? That truth is unchanged. That's the same message that Peter was taking to the Jews in fulfillment of God's covenant promises. It's the same message that Paul was taking to the Gentiles. So the message itself was unchanged, but who they were taking it to varied. And that, I think, encourages us, because when you think about your time and place, it's not just happenstance or incidental as we think about the New Testament. God has placed you in the metro DC area, and particularly in the Laurel area, to take this same, unchanging, changeless, eternal truth of what God has done through Jesus, but you're trying to work that out in the particular context that God has placed you. So for us, that's in the metro DC area, or for you in Laurel. And that helps us, I hope, to recognize, wait, even in the beginnings of this expansion, people had to begin to think through what did it look like to take this unchanging message of Jesus to very different places, right? And so in our day and age, one that's increasingly a secular one, for example, and I mean by that the Charles Taylor definition of secular, that basically hundreds of years ago, no one would question the existence of God. It would just be assumed. Of course God exists. And you may ask other questions, but that wouldn't be the question. Charles Taylor, who's a philosopher, would describe our current secular age as a time and place where increasingly in the West, that's not the prevailing question. That's not the starting point. because of advances in science, because of how quickly technology has changed our lives, people feel pretty comfortable living in a world that doesn't involve the question of God's existence. And that's our current cultural moment. Those are the waters that we swim in. That's what we're doing as Christians in the 21st century when we think, what does it look like to bring this unchanging news of the work of God in redemption to a changing world? What does it look like for us to talk about the meaning of faith to people who increasingly don't know that they see value in faith at all? Does that mean that we don't have to engage them at all? No. I would say, or make the case that as this change unfolds, that God continues to work through the church today, is that we have to take that up. So living in a secular age, we have to think through how does this good news come to bear for people around us. In our area, that also means with the ethnic diversity. So that's something that we share in common with the Jew-Gentile rubbing together as this unchanging news went to very different cultures. That's something, it's a reality of living in a global city that we live in a time and place where people have different backgrounds, They're asking different questions. They have different experiences of America. And so in this time and place, that's going to come out when you begin to talk about important things like, what do you value? Or where is your hope? Or where do you look to in hard times? That's going to be shaped by those things. And so as Christians, part of, I think, the challenge of seeing how this is unfolding with this rapidly growing road of redemption is that we're thinking through that actively as a church today. I've said this a few times, but I just want to make sure it's not lost on anyone. It's not that the gospel message changes. It doesn't. So I don't want you to hear me or try to chalk up what I'm saying to relativism or to, oh, we just have to shift with the times, but rather how and who we're communicating that message to changes. And as I understand it, part of what's happening in the New Testament is God is placing people in different times and places to take that unchanging message to particular people. That's what he's doing, I think, with Peter and the leaders in Jerusalem to the Jewish people, and so their gospel presentations may have fit with who they were bringing the message to. That's what he's doing with Paul to the Gentiles, and that's what he's doing with us in Laurel. And so that's how we think through it. So as this change unfolds, though, not everything goes swimmingly. You catch this, right? After verse 10, when Paul finishes recounting his trip to Jerusalem, you get to verse 11 and change of setting, right? And then conflict, right? Remember, People who have slightly different specialties, but the same mission, who are now engaging together over important questions. And Paul seems to be saying here, the gospel is on the line. In verse 11, when Cephas, that's Peter, came to Antioch, I opposed him to his face, conflict, right? Because he stood condemned. For before certain men came from James, he was eating with the Gentiles. But when they came and drew back, he separated himself, fearing the circumcision party. And the rest of the Jews acted hypocritically along with him. Even Barnabas was led astray by their hypocrisy. we can miss a little bit, unless you're in middle school. And if you're in middle school, I'm so glad you're here. Thank you for joining us. This is right for you, like right up your alley. You'll get it right away. But if you're older, you may not get like, what's the big deal? Like, so he was eating with some folks and then some leaders came from Jerusalem and then he switched tables or whatever. He went and went a different light. So, I mean, what's the big deal? One New Testament commentator on the Book of Galatians kind of makes note of this and says behind the kind of simple and almost subtle description of what's happening can be lost on us, but would have been familiar and obvious to any first century reader in the Greco-Roman world. And it's this, hospitality is important. Who you share a table with matters. And so the importance of a shared meal and extending hospitality, inviting someone else to eat with you or to be with you or to spend time with you, that wasn't merely about who got to eat or who was hungry. It was who was accepted, who is in. And if you can get that at all, put on your first century lenses to understand like, oh, so like in middle school, who you eat with and what table you're invited to, it has social standing and importance that goes beyond just who's eating lunch and what you're eating. This is happening at a gospel level in the first century with Peter. So he was eating with Gentiles. He was sharing openly table fellowship. An expression of what Peter would have seen with Cornelius, by the way, hospitality in effect in Acts 10 from last night. Then here, hospitality in Antioch, a multi-ethnic and maybe the first real multi-ethnic church that we see described in the book of Acts. And so he's enjoying this multi-ethnicity, this sharing together of meals, this open hospitality to all who've heard the news of Jesus and believed. And then some people from Jerusalem show up, and Peter gets a little nervous. And Paul reads this as fear. Now he doesn't exactly unpack, like fear of what? Fear that Peter would lose face in Jerusalem, like his status as a leader would drop down? Maybe fear of conflict itself. You know, one way to avoid conflict, I'm sure none of you know this, but one way to avoid conflict is just to run. You know, you can't get in a fight with me if I'm running fast and far enough, you can't catch me. And so was it fear of like conflict itself that Peter just kind of takes off and he's like, I'm not dealing with this. I don't have the emotional energy to go another five rounds with these Jerusalem characters, so I'm going to just step away. Or, you know, whether it's, you know, some other fear that's operative here, whether it's losing faith, reputation, conflict itself, some combination of all those things, Peter takes off. But Paul, who's also there, recognizes what this is communicating to the Gentiles. Because whatever's going on inside of Peter when he makes that move, what the Gentiles see is, wait a second, Peter, this Jewish authority in Jerusalem was with us until people from Jerusalem arrived, and now he won't share table fellowship with us. Again, not about who's getting fed, but who is he sharing communion with? Who does he spend time with? Who is invited and allowed in? This is the source of the conflict between Peter and Paul. And Paul, because in his mind and how he frames it up here in verses 11 through 14, the heart of the gospel is on the line. if Pentecost happened, and then the interaction with Peter happened, and Cornelius that we read about last night, and the Jerusalem Council happened, and Paul's mission is to bring this news that they don't need anything else other than a turning in faith to Jesus to be adopted in and accepted into the family of God because of Christ's work and righteousness for them, they don't need any other boundary marker or cultural sign, then for Peter to step away undercuts that, sweeps the leg out from under it. makes it back into question, or pulls it back into question. So Paul stands up and he says, he has to speak. So Peter runs and Paul speaks, right? That's effectively how this unfolds. And he stands up and he says before all of them, effectively, this can't be. You can't have it both ways, Peter. And we need to make clear just what this unchanging news means for our Gentile sisters and brothers here in Antioch. It's hard to have conflict. And I want to be clear here that not all conflict is healthy. And so I hope you don't hear that. But I don't know any good marriage where there's zero conflict ever. And in fact, typically, when I do premarital counseling with a couple, I'm trying to prepare them for, like, they can think, oh, when I get married to this person, if we fight or have conflict or don't agree, that's bad. And so good is living in perfect harmony all the time. But that's a bit of a fantasy for what it's actually like to live with someone who you're married to. And so what I try to frame up to them is like conflict is inevitable because you both are together, you're both committed to one another and have taken vows, and you're going to be talking about important stuff and making important decisions. And so really the key question is how you navigate that conflict, not if conflict exists. And I think that is a healthy dynamic for what's happening here. Paul saw that something so important that undercuts the heart of the gospel is on the line here that he has to speak up. At that point he can't be like Peter and just run just to avoid the conflict, so he stands up and he speaks to it. But as the story further unfolds, this doesn't irreparably damage Paul and Peter's relationship. This doesn't sidetrack the gospel in Antioch. They're able to continue to move through this. Because as Christians, whether it's seeing Paul and Peter's example, whether it's in our own marriages, and certainly when it's within our own churches, it's not a question of if conflict will exist, it will, if you're talking about anything of substance. It's how you navigate it and do you do it in a healthy way. This is true for the important decisions that Christ Reformed Presbyterian Church is gonna be taking up. So, in the coming months, I pray that as the Pastoral Search Committee does their work, they're going to have to make decisions, and people may not all agree, but it's not gonna be a question of like, does everyone, do you get 100% unanimity on all of these decisions and priorities? The question's gonna be, how do you navigate it where you disagree? And do you speak with one another, or do you run, or does fear control things? And how do you actually engage? The same is true when you think, well, what direction are we headed as a church? What does it look like to really enter into and bring the gospel to bear in Laura with the changing demographics of our place? How is that going to call and stretch us in new ways? How are we going to think through what it looks like to bring that unchanging good news of Jesus to our place and our time? And you may have disagreements on that. But it's going to be worthwhile to navigate those in a healthy way as opposed to jumping to avoidance or to kind of flattening out all of the challenges. So you'll see this sometimes if in America in a workplace or in a neighborhood or even in church communities where the question comes up with America's history with race and with racism. And sometimes people will say, well, I don't want to talk about this stuff at all because That, you know, it's going to bring up conflict. We're going to disagree. Let's just not do that. That would be one way to go. And another way to go would just be to flatten it out. Hey, hey, we don't need to talk about race anymore. You know, we just kind of live in a pluralistic and colorblind society. Let's not engage that at all. And that would be another way to go, but I think that flattens everything out. I think as Christians, the way that we, in particularly the metro DC area, a global city with immigrants and people who are born in America, with people who are coming from different cultures and certainly different ethnicities, then I think the way forward is to pray and listen and learn. And that when conflict comes up, that we're going first to listen and learn and see and think through how the gospel comes to bear. That is what we try to do in my church, and that would be a Christian practice in the metro DC area for sure, that I would say that's an application for what it looks like to travel on this highway in the 21st century in a global city like DC. I think it looks a lot like sometimes there are conflicts about what are my patterns of behavior communicating to someone else. I may think it's entirely benign. Peter may have been utterly convinced that, hey, I'm just trying to save some trouble here. I'm just going to move over here, right? And Peter may, and we don't know and I don't want to psychologize it, but Paul saw this dynamic and said, hey, we got to talk about this because I can tell you what that's communicating to our Gentile sisters and brothers who are sitting at that table that now has the empty seat. Well, that's a lot what it looks like to engage in diverse communities as a Christian church in the 21st century, is you're trying to think through what are the ways in which what we do communicates to the people around us. What are we trying to communicate? What are they hearing? What are they experiencing? And how do we listen and even know that? That's what it would look like to apply this out. Well, why would you want to do that? Sounds like work, Joel. Like conflict? I went on a retreat, and you're like, do some conflict, but do it in a healthy way. Well, it's what I have. Because just like on the retreat where I encourage you to get to know other people, surely you know this. The minute you move beyond someone's name and their occupation, you begin to hear a little bit more about their story. And you begin to hear a little bit more about their hopes and what motivates them, but also their pains and their struggles and their hard spots. Once you get there, you move into really important waters of what it means to be known, and what it means to have friends, and what it means to actually be in connection with people. But you also are very likely, at that point, to experience conflict, a disagreement, something you care about that the other person seems to be treating kind of flippantly. And you're going to have a choice. Do we navigate that in a healthy way? And there are healthy ways to do it. Or do we choose an unhealthy way? Why would Christians choose a healthy way? Because there are plenty of people and communities that take the most unhealthy routes of handling conflict, trust me. If you want examples, I can tell you during the break. Christians have received the hospitality of God. We're going to hear about this in the next session but Ephesians makes clear that we were dead in our sin and God took the hostility that existed between us and him because of our sin and through the work of Jesus took it away and offered us hospitality. God in his grace took our hostility and gave us hospitality. That's the motivating impetus for Christians for why you would do it. Why you would come on a retreat and talk about, man, you mean I may have to experience conflict and try to navigate in a healthy way? Yes! Not because that's easy, but because that follows the pattern of following a Savior who came into the world to take away hostility and bring hospitality. And so that's why it's worthwhile as a community when you work through these things to say, okay, this isn't gonna be easy, this is gonna be a hard conversation, let's all settle in, grab your coffee or tea, but for the sake of the love and mercy that God has shown us in Jesus, let us figure out if we can deal with hostility and move toward hospitality in our place in Laurel, in our time in the 21st century, with our people here and now, and certainly with our neighbors and surrounding community. That's what it looks like to be a Christian in a changing time with an unchanging gospel. Let me pray. God, I ask that you will give us wisdom because that just seems like such a tall order to do that. And I pray, God, that this morning, here and now, that the people are present, young and old, woman and man, different generations, that that would land on us, not as some sort of impossible task, not some sort of mission impossible thing to carry out, but rather a healthy gospel impulse to move toward one another in healthy ways. I pray in Jesus' name, amen.